John Searle

[ciphergoth]

The question I asked was

"The Church-Turing thesis states that any machine we can really imagine building, certainly any machine that can be built using the physical law that we know, can be simulated on a computer. That includes the human brain, which we agree is a machine. So do you agree with Penrose that there's physical law we don't know that will extend the powers of the brain beyond those of a Turing machine?"

The question I should have asked was

"When you represent what you call Strong AI as being based on the belief that the brain is like a digital computer, that's a deliberate misrepresentation designed to make it seem less plausible. Strong AI is, as you know perfectly well, based on the belief (which you share) that the brain is some sort of machine, and as such is amenable to simulation on a computer. You fuck."

As for the way he misrepresents Dennett... well, anyway, I'm kicking myself because I'll never get the chance again...

Dreamt about a Goth weekend being run by this year's BiCon committee, in a town a bit like Whitby but different; people were bemoaning the absence of the Elsinore. Instead of sleeping in beds, we slept in mattress-shaped tanks of water; they were quite comfy once the heat of your body warmed the water. I went to what I thought was a plenary, but it turned out to be a crisis meeting of the commitee; adjectivemarcus said I should stay because of being involved in last year. They were trying to call emergency services because of some sort of drug-related medical emergency, but their mobiles weren't getting reception and the landline was tied up because (babysimon explained to me) some interfering busybody had insisted that the best way to get them would be to dial out and raise them online...

Comments

[babysimon]

> The question I should have asked was...

Am I being dumb here? What's the difference between "like a digital computer" and "amenable to being simulated on a digital computer"?

> Instead of sleeping in beds, we slept in mattress-shaped tanks of water

That's supposed to be a surprise!

[lovingboth]

Does Church-Turing say that? When Turing talked of 'mechanical', didn't he mean something more like 'without thought or insight'?

For a start, surely there are machines we can build that we cannot accurately simulate. A certain radioactivity-based random number generator springs to mind. If you could accurately simulate it, it wouldn't be random...

OMAS

[some-fox.livejournal.com]

In asking Searle a question you may have stumbled up against OMAS (older male academic syndrome), a viralent strain of which seems to infect all men (and even some women) who have been in the academic world for more than a couple of years. Warning signs are:
- expressing simple concepts in unnecessarily complicated ways in order to alienate and confuse mere mortals
- answering questions with irrelevant statements about something they'd rather talk about
- ignoring points made by young/female/alternative-looking people and then applauding the Exact Same Point when it is made by another OMA
- a complete inability to confront the possibility that they might be (shock, horror)... wrong.
Sounds like he has an incurable case. The only way forward is to hurl Searle into the OMAS pit and leave him there with all the other pompous, arrogant gits.

Btw, where do you stand on the connectionist view of the brain? From my limited understanding of such things it seems to make a lot of sense and there seems no reason why this way of brain functioning couldn't potentially be modelled on a machine.