X-Message-Number: 3953
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #3949 - #3951
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 10:43:23 -0800 (PST)


Hi again!

1. Brains don't "just move information around". They do it in a particular way.
   If it were not for the fact that their actual architecture is constantly
   changing, we would say that (at any fixed instant) they work because their
   architecture, which is IDENTICAL to their "memory store", causes them to
   work.

   This simply isn't the way our current "computers" work. With megaimmense
   computing resources plus much more knowledge of how brains work than we 
   now have, it might be possible to simulate such a brain. Of course, the 
   amount of hardware needed would dwarf the hardware of a brain itself...
   even given nanotechnology. We might, of course, create another kind of
   machine which operates in the same way but is based on other materials ...
   perhaps materials coming from nanotechnology. My posting about "uploading"
   was asking, among other things, whether this constitutes "uploading"
   or something else.

2. About building machines "superior" to ourselves: for the sake of this
   argument, I will suppose that superior means that they will compete us
   out of existence. Superior at calculating or other particular tasks
   mean very little: we've built machines "superior" to ourselves ever
   since we started making machines (a catapult is "superior" to a human
   being at throwing rocks).

   First, Moravec makes such talk because he's nowhere near being able to 
   actually do it. Even Moravec is someone whom I doubt would make such 
   a machine when push comes to shove. If he wanted to commit suicide, 
   simpler means to do so already exist and don't require high technology.

   Second, as I understand what he's saying, he wants to BECOME such a 
   machine, not just create one. I think of this as a worthy goal, though
   clumsily and ignorantly expressed: we want to improve ourselves past our
   current design. Good thing. 

   Third: sorry, Ralph, but you are far too idealistic in what you say.
   Races, nations, and individuals have murdered others of their kind 
   eons into the past, and in response to threats to their actual existence
   they (and we) will continue to do so. Those who try to get in the way
   because they have some sense of morality that says that what is being done
   ought not to be done will be either shoved aside or annihilated also.

   I don't identify such activities with natural selection, which is much
   broader in the way it acts. However, both of us are the survivors of 
   thousands of years of such conduct, and those who could not survive did
   not pass on their genes (and real moral inclinations) to any progeny.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas

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