Are people only algorithms?

Terxpahseyton said:
By claiming to be right. As warpus has said, bio-design is absolutely amazing. Without a "designer", relatively blind and "dumb" algorithms must be able to do amazing design-work. Because that is all evolution got to work with.
The key to great design - which in its greatness appears almost magical - then is the mere assembly of in themselves pretty ordinary or rudimentary design elements which chance can produce so plentiful that eventually they will assemble in an intelligent way all by themselves.
That is pretty much the anti-thesis to the mythical idea of a human consciousness which is more than the sum of its parts.
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Claiming to be the best fit for the evidence at hand does not bring one to that conclusion. An algorithm is just a human construct that we impose on what we see to help us make sense of what is complex. One thing we can say though is that evolution does not shy away from complexity. Simple organisms are common, but complex ones seem to keep making their appearances even after vast destruction. To add consciousness to this discussion, we would have to define it in some way.

Perfection said:
It's not just people, reality is only algorithms.
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Our reality is an illusion on which we impose various orderly processes to help us cope. :p
 
Birdjaguar said:
Our reality is an illusion on which we impose various orderly processes to help us cope. :p
Click to expand...
Everything is math
Math is God
God alone is
 
But then, logically speaking, if those three statements of yours are correct, Everything alone is.

Which is fine. But it isn't very informative.
 
things are going to get weird

I agree, Warpus, and have been saying that for some time. Me, personally, I like weird. I am weird. I embrace weirdness. We're all gonna make it.
 
Weird is fine. Weird is good.

Craziness is not good.

Being ordered about by a computer isn't good, either.
 
warpus said:
Better than being ordered around by a moron (i.e. the people we keep voting into office)
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You haven't considered that the computer will be the same as the moron, except a bit more murder-y.
 
warpus said:
Better than being ordered around by a moron (i.e. the people we keep voting into office)
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People, by and large, would rather be badly but accountably governed, than well but unaccountably governed.
 
Why is it always 'only' x? People are 'only' or 'just' algorithms? Isn't being an algorithm enough for you? Picasso's Guernice is literally 'only' paint on canvas. Beethoven's 9th is 'only' dots on a piece of paper. A supercomputer is 'only' 1s and 0s.

This reminds me back when I was 16 and I flipped out because of determinism. People are 'only' the sum of their experiences and outside influences. Well, a few months after that I had that epiphany that probably many people had:

Isn't it enough to be 'only' a product? Do we really need free will or is 'only' the illusion of free will enough? I don't believe in determinism anymore and I've had many a existential crisis since, but this one insight stuck with me. Don't be reductive. I would be glad to be an algoritm, not 'only' an algorithm.
 
yung.carl.jung said:
Why is it always 'only' x? People are 'only' or 'just' algorithms? Isn't being an algorithm enough for you? Picasso's Guernice is literally 'only' paint on canvas. Beethoven's 9th is 'only' dots on a piece of paper. A supercomputer is 'only' 1s and 0s.

This reminds me back when I was 16 and I flipped out because of determinism. People are 'only' the sum of their experiences and outside influences. Well, a few months after that I had that epiphany that probably many people had:

Isn't it enough to be 'only' a product? Do we really need free will or is 'only' the illusion of free will enough? I don't believe in determinism anymore and I've had many a existential crisis since, but this one insight stuck with me. Don't be reductive. I would be glad to be an algorithm, not 'only' an algorithm.
Click to expand...
God alone is; math alone is; etc has a history that goes back at least a decade at CFC. It comes out of the many "god based" threads we have had here. Perfection made that particular post and worded it for my amusement. He knows my weaknesses. :)
 
Birdjaguar said:
God alone is; math alone is; etc has a history that goes back at least a decade at CFC. It comes out of the many "god based" threads we have had here. Perfection made that particular post and worded it for my amusement. He knows my weaknesses. :)
Click to expand...

I was actually referring to the OP. The Perfection quote sounded like something out of Phillip K. Dick novel :D
 
yung.carl.jung said:
Why is it always 'only' x? People are 'only' or 'just' algorithms? Isn't being an algorithm enough for you? Picasso's Guernice is literally 'only' paint on canvas. Beethoven's 9th is 'only' dots on a piece of paper. A supercomputer is 'only' 1s and 0s.

This reminds me back when I was 16 and I flipped out because of determinism. People are 'only' the sum of their experiences and outside influences. Well, a few months after that I had that epiphany that probably many people had:

Isn't it enough to be 'only' a product? Do we really need free will or is 'only' the illusion of free will enough? I don't believe in determinism anymore and I've had many a existential crisis since, but this one insight stuck with me. Don't be reductive. I would be glad to be an algoritm, not 'only' an algorithm.
Click to expand...

I agree almost completely.

I've had a few arguments discussions with evangelicals, and proselytizers of a few kinds, where they exclaim "So you say we're ONLY made of atoms, molecules and elecctrons and stuff?!"

And I agree with them except for their use of "ONLY". Which is pretty much redundant, imo.

I think atoms are amazing enough on their own, without being denigrated with the use of "only".
 
are you telling me you're literally just eating a slop of flour, water and some weird fungus that's been heated up? that's disgusting, warpus.

Spoiler :

at-ausgehobenes-krustenbrot-01-titel.jpg

hnnnnnngn
 
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