Could Deep Blue play a smarter AI ?

[Brighteye]

@ Brighteye

A thought experiment is based on logic.
You proposed a thought experiment, not a scientific one.
Logical certainties and scientific laws are not the same.
Your thought experiment's conculsion was based on scientific laws, not logical certainties.
The conclusion you drew to your thought experiment was not logically certain.

OK, I mixed up scientific laws and scientific principles. I based my thought experiment on scientific principles. I actually said laws, but I meant to say fundamental principles. As I have said, these principles are as certain as anything can be.

It's really that simple. Try to conflate and confuse scientific laws with logical certainties all you want. You're just being illogical, and the conclusions you derive in your thought experiment are therefore illogical. Claiming that scientific laws are "the best we can do in this world" is irrelevant. That does not make your thought experiment logical.

It is as logical as it is logical not to jump off a tall tower. I say that causality will make me splat rather unpleasantly when I hit the ground. Similarly I say that causality will govern my thought experiment. When thinking of things in the physical world we generally assume that physical laws apply to them. In fact, we always do unless specifically trying not to. When you think of your next cup of tea, do you imagine pouring cold water into a cold mug and having the water heat miraculously under pressure from your mind? If you do, do you sincerely believe that this will actually happen?
My experiment was entirely logical. If you want to question the assumptions, feel free. But as I have said in my last post, questioning causality means questioning all of it.

If you had proposed a scientific experiment, I may have agreed with your hypothesis. I would never have claimed that it could be proven 100% under current scientific laws. Current science does not allow us to test your hypothesis, so it will remain a hypothesis and not a proven conclusion.

The idea that science and scientific laws won't change dramatically before we can test whether a man-made brain acts identically to an identical human brain is simply absurd, and does not deserve further comment. Even if laws do not change, your hypothesis will remain a hypothesis until it is tested.

Current science often does not allow us to test a thought experiment. That's why it's a thought experiment. The idea that we could ever make identical objects seems absurd, but that's not the objection we've been talking about. We've been talking about causality, and it is entirely logical for me to assume that it applies. Scientific laws may change, but as I have just said, it was a mistake of mine to call causality a scientific law. It's a principle.

 

[jar2574]

@Brighteye

Re: thought experiment. Cause and effect is all very nice. But since you confuse "effects" and "things," cause and effect in no way saves your thought experiment. See previous posts below.

Re: science. We would definately use cause and effect as a premise before we tested your hypothesis in a scientific experiment (or any scientific experiment). But we'd still have to test your hypothesis before we could get our conclusion published in any scientific journal. Until then, it's just our hypothesis.


Previous posts:

Originally Posted by Brighteye:
3: Intelligence has an effect on the physical world
4: Things in the physical world are subject to physical laws
5: Effects on the physical world are, by their definition, part of the physical world.

Originally Posted by jar2574:
Regarding your premises 3-5:
You fail to distinguish between "effects" and "things" in the physical world. 3-5 could all be true, and yet something could have an effect on the physical world, without being a "thing" in the physical world subject to the laws of the physical world. That something could be a soul.

To simplify:
3. Intelligence = effect.
4. Things = subject to laws.
5. Effects = part of physical world.

This does not make effects = things, so it does not make intelligence = things, so it does not make intelligence = subject to laws.

 

[Brighteye]

E follows logically from B.
B. Souls could be the cause of self-awareness / intelligence (as opposed to the cause arising from things in the physical world.)
E. Since souls could be the cause of (at least some) self-awareness / intelligence, a physically identical brain may not behave identically.(because it might lack a soul)

r=replica, b= original brain, s=soul, I=intelligence
Your argument
1. S causes I
2. b has S
3 r might not have s
A) r might not have I

You cannot use this argument against mine, because it is based on a premiss (3) that my thought experiment concludes is untrue. To deny my conclusion on this basis is mere assertion and not logical at all.
4. Causality governs physical interactions
5. I influences physical actions
B) I is governed by causality
C) From B and 1, I conclude that s is governed by causality
D) From C and 2 I conclude that 3 is false and that r has s.

Regarding your premises 3-5:
You fail to distinguish between "effects" and "things" in the physical world. 3-5 could all be true, and yet something could have an effect on the physical world, without being a "thing" in the physical world subject to the laws of the physical world. That something could be a soul.

To simplify:
3. Intelligence = effect.
4. Things = subject to laws.
5. Effects = part of physical world.
This does not make effects = things, so it does not make intelligence = things, so it does not make intelligence = subject to laws.

Add another point:
effects=subject to causality too
Or change 4 to: Causality governs all interactions in the physical world. Effects are interactions.

 

[jar2574]

Good grief.

Call cause and effect a "fundamental principle" instead of a "scientific law" if you like. Changing what you call it will not change the fact that it is a "scientific law."

You have simply begun to understand that science cannot prove things 100%. The "fundamental principles" of science cannot prove things 100%.

The only truths that are 100% certain are those that are logically certain. Your "fundamental principle" is not 100% certain. Play with words all you want, the conclusion to your thought experiment is illogical.

 

[jar2574]

Add another point:
effects=subject to causality too
Or change 4 to: Causality governs all interactions in the physical world. Effects are interactions.

You improved your logic. But as has been shown, your principle of cause and effect is not a logical certainty, it is a scientific law.

Therefore we may be damn sure that you're right, but we're not 100% that you're right. Science has not proven that identical brains think identical thoughts and undertake identical actions. To our knowledge, identical brains have never even existed.

The logic behind my argument was not faulty, though:
Non-physical souls may exist.
Self-awareness / intelligence may come from non-physical sources.
Self-awareness / intelligence may come from souls.

Science may be damn sure that souls don't give intelligence, but this argument is logically correct.

 

[jar2574]

By the way, is it me, or does anyone else notice a difference between jumping off a building and trying to create a thought experiment about identical brains?

One involves flesh and blood. Lots of it. On concrete. And its been tried before.

One involves the use of logic and no flesh and blood or concrete. And nothing like it has ever been tested in the physical world.

Maybe it's just me.

 

[friskymike]

I would urge all of you debating the concept of an created intelligence becoming self-aware to read the first chapter "Orphanogenesis" (on-line in full) from Greg Egan's book "Diaspora" which describes a possible mechanism for this occuring in great detail and with high plausability. He's a science fiction author and computer programmer and a pretty bright guy. Heres an excerpt:

There was no difference between the model of Yatima's beliefs about the other citizens, buried inside the symbol for Yatima … and the models of the other citizens themselves, inside their respective symbols. The network finally recognised this, and began to discard the unnecessary intermediate stages. The model for Yatima's beliefs became the whole, wider network of the orphan's symbolic knowledge.

And the model of Yatima's beliefs about Yatima's mind became the whole model of Yatima's mind: not a tiny duplicate, or a crude summary, just a tight bundle of connections looping back out to the thing itself.

The orphan's stream of consciousness surged through the new connections, momentarily unstable with feedback: I think that Yatima thinks that I think that Yatima thinks …

Then the symbol network identified the last redundancies, cut a few internal links, and the infinite regress collapsed into a simple, stable resonance:

I am thinking —

I am thinking that I know what I'm thinking.

Yatima said, “I know what I'm thinking.”

Inoshiro replied airily, “What makes you think anyone cares?”

 

[Zombie69]

I don't see a difference. Both are cause and effect.

As for "your argument is illogical", "no yours is"... I think both your arguments are logical, but you use different premises.

 

[Brighteye]

Good grief.

Call cause and effect a "fundamental principle" instead of a "scientific law" if you like. Changing what you call it will not change the fact that it is a "scientific law."

The only truths that are 100% certain are those that are logically certain. Your "fundamental principle" is not 100% certain. Play with words all you want, the conclusion to your thought experiment is illogical.

It's not playing with words. It's defining more appropriately something that was ill-defined. It is not a scientific law. That's why I changed how I described it. It is a principle, and my initial desription was a mistake. You calling it merely a law, and not a principle does not change the fact that you kept on carping about it being a law when it clearly isn't.
Taking advantage of my mistake is understandable. Trying to claim that when I correct myself I really mean what I originally said is the straw man fallacy.

 

[Brighteye]

The logic behind my argument was not faulty, though:
Non-physical souls may exist.
Self-awareness / intelligence may come from non-physical sources.
Self-awareness / intelligence may come from souls.

Science may be damn sure that souls don't give intelligence, but this argument is logically correct.

This argument, as it is here, is entirely irrelevant to whether a replica will also have a soul.

 

[Brighteye]

By the way, is it me, or does anyone else notice a difference between jumping off a building and trying to create a thought experiment about identical brains?

One involves flesh and blood. Lots of it. On concrete. And its been tried before.

One involves the use of logic and no flesh and blood or concrete. And nothing like it has ever been tested in the physical world.

Maybe it's just me.

First of all we have the straw man argument, a highly popular rhetorical tool, and now we have pure rhetoric itself. Yes, they're quite clearly different in the respects you mention. Are these differences relevant? No. Being different in many respects has no logical bearing on whether they are different in the quality concerned.

 

[Brighteye]

And as you've said many times, and before you repeat it again, no we cannot be 100% certain that I'm right.
However, that small percentage of uncertainty is the uncertainty that comes from universal doubt of principles such as causality.
Anything in this realm of doubt is solely subjective and not subject to logic at all.
As far as logic can reach, my point remains true.

 

[jar2574]

I don't see a difference. Both are cause and effect.

I guess the next time I see you involved in a thought experiment I'll ask you to jump off a building, since you don't see a difference. My guess is then you may "see a difference."

As for "your argument is illogical", "no yours is"... I think both your arguments are logical, but you use different premises.

His premises are based on scientific laws. Scientific laws are useful in the physical world, but are not 100% logically certain. Since his premises were not 100% certain, his conclusion was not 100% certain, and therefore not logically true.

My premises are untestable, and much less useful within the physical world. But they logically sound and support my conclusion, and therefore my conclusion is logically sound.

 

[jar2574]

Edited -- Unnecessary post.

 

[jar2574]

And as you've said many times, and before you repeat it again, no we cannot be 100% certain that I'm right.

Thank god. We agree now.

As far as logic can reach, my point remains true.

As far as science can reach, your point remains a hypothesis until tested.

Logic can be applied to test the validity of any point.


Sidenote:
If I used rhetoric, it is because I was responding to your argument that my side in this debate was as illogical as jumping off a building. If that's not rhetoric, I don't know what is. I just pointed out that I thought your argument was silly. Jumping off a building would be illogical, taking my side in this argument was not.

 

[troytheface]

You can not apply logic to having fun.

 

[Zombie69]

Let me restate my point then.

Logic is how you go from a set of premises to a conclusion. If the logic is good, then the conclusion must follow from the premises.

You both presented good logic, but starting from different premises, you naturally arrived at different conclusions.

So please stop trying to figure out who's logic is good and who's logic isn't, and realize that your difference of opinion isn't based on logic, but on premises, which have nothing to do with logic.

 

[jar2574]

Logic is how you go from a set of premises to a conclusion. If the logic is good, then the conclusion must follow from the premises.

Exactly. And if premises are not 100% certain, then a conclusion cannot be 100% certain. Claiming that a conclusion is 100% certain when the premises are not 100% certain would be illogical.

 

[Zombie69]

Logic doesn't put value on premises. It assumes premises to be true and goes from there. Whether the premise actually is true or not has nothing to do with logic.

Your premise, by the way, has a heck of a lot less chance of being true than his.

 

[warpus]

Exactly. And if premises are not 100% certain, then a conclusion cannot be 100% certain. Claiming that a conclusion is 100% certain when the premises are not 100% certain would be illogical.

The only premise that we can be 100% certain about is a logical or mathematical one.

For example, I am 100% certain that 2+2=4 when we use the most commonly accepted definition of +. Likewise, I am 100% certain that "If A is true and A implies B, then B is true"

Fuzzy logic applies to everything else.

Most premises in science have not proven to be 100% true. In most cases, proving something to be 100% certain is impossible.

Most scientific theories say something like: "Given the data we have, this is the most likely explanation"

So if you're looking for a 100% certain answer to the question of free will, good luck.