meat [was: computer-go: Pattern matching]

[John Aspinall <jga@xxxxxxx>]

At 1:33 PM -0600 11/11/99, rbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> David Elsdon asserted:
>
> "There is no inherent difference between the human brain and a computer system
> which prevents knowledge that it [sic] stored in a human brain from being
> emulated by a computer."
>
> This is a _very_ strong assertion.  I think it can easily be disproved.
[...]

> The Turing test is useless here, it's not enough for your program to type,
> "I'm hungry" even if it can fool me into thinking that it is a human.
It is vitally important to distinguish between
(1) Fool me into thinking you're intelligent.
(2) Fool me into thinking you're human.
Eldson's claim is about (1); you are contesting it on the basis of (2).

> As for what that difference is, it may simply be that we are made of meat
> instead of silicon, that our memories are stored electro-chemically as RNA,
> instead of being stored upon coarser media.  So, all you have to do is build
> a meat computer, and re-try your assertion then.  Until then, such 
> an assertion
> about the capabilities of computers is at best wishful thinking.
Twaddle.  There is a strong claim here - to wit:
The nature of intelligence is such that it does not depend on the 
hardware on which it is implemented.

For an entertaining debunking of meat-o-centrism see
http://www.sasquatch.com/~asharpe/humor/meat.html