Turing the Gospel

[jporter]

Ms. Oy

>Please explain what is at all mysterious about some rules run on a machine.

I don't think there is anything mysterious about it.

>How is a deterministic, finite state machine anything like ESP?

It wouldn't be unless the running of some particular rules on the
"discrete" state machine resulted in the emergence of what was judged to be
artificial intelligence by natural intelligences. In that case, the
d.s.m.'s thinking would have transcended the bounds of animacy, including
our apparent cognitive needs for a particular sensory-perceptual
bio-structure, with all the familiar limitations of the body, which seem to
deny any obvious possibility for E.S.P. to even the mildly sceptical. As
you might know, the particular structure of Turings universal machine is
unimportant, within the logical bounds he described. True sceptics, of
course, go further, and deny even that we have "selves-" all an illusion,
you know, parlor trick of the brain, etc.- and claim, as you might already
suspect, that our brain is the equivalent of an d.s.m. (can be modeled by
one), only biological.

That's fine. But If we are deterministic, then, through the parlor trick of
self-determinism, what are we waiting for?  Splice in the new genes, the
bio-chips and the tranceiver, and throw away the telephones. Scepticism and
materialism lead to E.S.P. by denying the reality of "the self" as the
necessary center of consciousness. (Reminds one of Gallileo v. the Pope- it
really is all about systems of belief- as is GR) Once that is accepted, it
all becomes a matter of design. Data still must be "sensed." The final
words of Turing's article acknowledge that- he suggests that the new
machine be given the best sensing device money can buy. In the market of
the near future, the computing machine would be a quantum device, and
"sensing" is tantamount to and simultaneous with state vector reduction.
Throw away the transceiver.


>How does whatever Turing 'believed in' relevant to anything? Where does it
>state that it was a matter of 'belief' rather than the statement that
>statistics seemed to not throw ESP out as coincidince?

Turing explicitly states in the article cited that it is his belief that
A.I. will be a testable reality by about millemium's end. Further, as if in
anticipation of questions like yours, he mentions that it is OK for
scientists to stop pretending that speculation and belief are not part of
scientific enterprise- in fact, form an integral basis for theorizing- as
long as there is no mistake about what is speculation and what has
scientifically been proven.

jody