X-Message-Number: 4322
Date: 30 Apr 95 22:28:44 EDT
From: Michael Riskin <>
Subject: If it acts intelligent....

 Your partner fakes an orgasm. You believe it is real. S(he) experiences
it as an "as if"; to you it is an "is". If it acts like an orgasm, moves
like an orgasm, moans like an orgasm....?  
 
There is an experiential sex therapy exercise, (when treating preorgasmia
and other similiar situations), in which the patient is instructed to act
"as if" the desired experience is occuring (with full knowledge of this "as
if" by the partner). The patient gets a chance to try a variety of
responses without having to or trying to, make it really happen. This
tends to reduce or eliminate performance  pressure, adds some fun, and
frequently turns into an authentic and spontaneous sexual response. Will
the real orgasm please stand up...the "as iffed" one, or the biologically
authentic one released by the "faked" one.
 
One cryonet contributor stated that if something acts intelligent, it is
intelligent... and then says, by way of proof by example, if something is
large it is big. That does'nt entirely make sense to me. While a thing is
itself (A=A) as Ayn Rand often pointed out as if this was a huge
revelation, behaviour is not the same as being. A usable subset perhaps
...but not the same.  Take "To be or not to be....." for example. Try
substituting "to act" for only one one of those "to be's". It
seems to lose something.
  This same contributor refers to Hitler. While it may be true that Hitler
acted bad and was also bad, one's child may act bad but not be bad. It
seems that "being" is a global term, the forest if you will, while acting
is a detail, a tree.   
  Obviously part of the problem is having an agreed upon definition of
intelligence. It can include the ability to perform computations, the
possesion of information, the perception of the intelligence by an
observer/  interactor, and the intelligent understanding, by the
intelligence itself, that it is being intelligent as compared to
making believe and deceiving. 
 Does intelligence mean choices? Free will? Or is that irrelevant?
 Does it merely require any stimulus-response capability?
Once again, just like a duck, it seems necessary to define what it is to
decide if it is what it looks like.
 It is easier to discuss what something seems like than what it really is.
The former is therefore far more popular.
Michael Riskin


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