Androids Versus Humans

[JosephM]

 

Joseph,

 

I have about 20 years experience in programming. For 16 of those years I worked for a company that designed and manufactured computers. The debates between the hardware and software engineering groups was often informative, and sometimes amusing. Some of the debates were over whether it was best to implement a new feature with hardware or emulate the feature with software. Hardware is faster, software slower but easier to modify. The human brain is similar. Some functions are executed by hardware, some through learning. But, hardware is stil necessary for learning to occur and, in some cases, is selective.

 

That aside. Speaking of computers, in one heated exchange, the head of engineering exclaimed "But it was humans who invented this darn contraption in the first place ... God help us understand what we're doing!"

 

Myron,

I certainly agree and can relate to both the facts you mention concerning software and hardware and also the exchanges between the 2 in my 20 some years of experience in both.

I'm not really sure what Hawkins means by "prior programming". It sounds like a Blank Slate stance and I'm not sure why nature evolved all of this stuff running around in my head for no reason at all.

 

Myron

 

P.S. This program is telling me I am almost out of posts that I can make today.

 

Thanks for yur input on Hawkins quote and sorry about the limit. I need to figure some way to change it for experienced users such as yourself. It is a protection to limit the amount of damage a spammer can do before we catch it in a 24 hour period and in the past had no way (hooks) to differentiate . I will look into it and see if i can find a number of current posts hook to allow differentiation between new members and seniors.

Joseph

[JosephM]

OK Myron. Found hook to use. You have nopost limit with your experience level

[minsocal]

OK Myron. Found hook to use. You have nopost limit with your experience level

 

Joseph,

 

That is a relief for me, and I thank you.

 

Have not heard the term "hook" since I left programming for psychology, but I think psychology has it's own term for "hook".

 

Myron

[GeorgeW]

 

George,

While it may say or assume we have no free will in a sense of the meaning of the word truly free why would that assume that we wouild all behave the same with the same genetics and experience? We still occupy different space as humans and cannot therfor have the same view and experience of things regardless of genetics. In my view, your hypothetical presentation is not possible so there is no answer. Besides hypotheticals have no existence , in my experience, of reality.

Joseph,

 

My point is that a particular computer programed in a particular way would behave precisely as programmed and would exercise no free will. Even, if some variability were programmed in, it would just be responding to that which was written in the program.

 

George

[JosephM]

Joseph,

 

My point is that a particular computer programed in a particular way would behave precisely as programmed and would exercise no free will. Even, if some variability were programmed in, it would just be responding to that which was written in the program.

 

George

 

Ok George ,

Thanks for clarifying that for me.

 

Yet, i would think that what you say here would not necessarily be so unless it was desired to be that way. I could program it to acquire new data constantly that would become part of its experience and weight that against what existed by some formula of my choosing and allow that new experience to influence or modify decisions it made in the future. This is already being done successfully and in fact in the late 1960's a friend of mine wrote a program solely in machine language at RCA Information Systems in Palm Beach Gardens Fl where i worked on hardware with him. He wrote a program to teach a computer how to play Tic/Tac/Toe. As it played and lost, it modified its behavior to win until it was unbeatable. So computers can learn beyond their written program if the program is written to teach the computer how to learn by trail and error or other means and modify its memory accordingly. That was in machine code which we were familiar with in 1969 or 1970.

 

Now computers are much more sophisticated, powerful and programming much easier and sophisticated in higher level languages. In summary, i am most confident that programs can be written to write and modify their own code or modify their memory based on learning for themselves rather than just doing the same thing over and over on the original program. Once you devise an initial process or method for the computer to learn or a way of learning, the job is half done. the software code is the easy part.. The original programmer may not even know what decisions the computer will make a month from now because he has no idea of exactly what the data input to the computer will be in advance. he only know how it learns and weighs what it sees but not the content of its learning unless he asks for a report of it which he programs in.

Just my own view that i base on my past experience.

Joseph