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"How do I know I'm not in the matrix?"

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15 minutes ago, Invictus2017 said:

If a concept is a floating abstraction, any statement that makes use of it is necessarily arbitrary.  More generally, once you use the arbitrary in any purported process of reasoning, all of the products of your reasoning from that arbitrary are arbitrary.

I would be inclined to distinguish between an arbitrarily formed concept and a floating abstraction, because a floating abstraction can be a perfectly valid concept in some cases. For example, the concept "justice" is a floating abstraction in most people's minds, but it is valid in fact. Almost any concept can be a floating abstraction - the term floating abstraction just means it hasn't been grounded in facts in a particular person's mind, not that it's formed out of thin air.

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34 minutes ago, Invictus2017 said:

That's a different kind of "arbitrary" than I've been talking about.  One might distinguish them as "epistemological" and "rhetorical" arbitrary.  The former indicates statements that an individual has not related to his context of knowledge; the latter to statements that others insist one must accept without examination.

It's not clear that this is a sufficiently significant distinction. The cases have in common that in the first instance you yourself accept an assertion without evidence, and in the latter case you present an assertion with the the intent that others accept it without evidence. You can always subdivide any concept into different types, for example "arbitrary, with respect to moral principles" versus "arbitrary, with respect to epistemological principles", but why would you? A hammer used to drive a nail is a hammer, as is one used to smash a window. Is there a useful reason to subdivide the concept "arbitrary" into "with respect to one's own knowledge" versus "with respect to the knowledge of others"?

 

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5 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

As for the "arbitrariness" of a statement or a concept, it means that it has no basis in evidence.

Okay, agreed.

What I was fixated on is the issue of "they are to be ignored".
That is why I could not understand an "arbitrary concept".
If I have an arbitrary concept in my mind, it is too late to ignore (I can only categorize it differently as unimportant).
I can only ignore a concept in transit, from someone to me.

That is why I could not accept it.
Okay, I can see that we can use "arbitrary concept" as a concept with no evidentiary basis too.

I want to be able to easily identify what should be ignored.
I also want to be able to explain to the other person that they in a sense don't have right to expect it to be incorporated in my knowledge.

So, it is clear that "imaginability" will not help in identifying it.
Similarly, I see that "ridiculousness" also, does not help.

So what I am left with is becoming clear about how evidence (or adequate evidence) is easily identified.

The guy says "we are in a matrix".
I am to ask, "what is the evidence".
If he says, "I just know" (then he has an arbitrary concept in his mind, and he is arbitrarily stating it")

The issue of "they think they are entitled to NOT give evidence" is fascinating.
The idea of looking for that in the other person is brand new to me.
Also, that attitude is a hard nut to break. I can just see myself saying "You are making an arbitrary statement, I have every right to ignore you". BOOM! (in my face)
 

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3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

Okay, agreed.

What I was fixated on is the issue of "they are to be ignored".
That is why I could not understand an "arbitrary concept".
If I have an arbitrary concept in my mind, it is too late to ignore (I can only categorize it differently as unimportant).
I can only ignore a concept in transit, from someone to me.

That is why I could not accept it.
Okay, I can see that we can use "arbitrary concept" as a concept with no evidentiary basis too.

I want to be able to easily identify what should be ignored.
I also want to be able to explain to the other person that they in a sense don't have right to expect it to be incorporated in my knowledge.

So, it is clear that "imaginability" will not help in identifying it.
Similarly, I see that "ridiculousness" also, does not help.

So what I am left with is becoming clear about how evidence (or adequate evidence) is easily identified.

The guy says "we are in a matrix".
I am to ask, "what is the evidence".
If he says, "I just know" (then he has an arbitrary concept in his mind, and he is arbitrarily stating it")

The issue of "they think they are entitled to NOT give evidence" is fascinating.
The idea of looking for that in the other person is brand new to me.
Also, that attitude is a hard nut to break. I can just see myself saying "You are making an arbitrary statement, I have every right to ignore you". BOOM! (in my face)
 

Heh your conclusory remarks remind me of a physicist - lawyer friend who cannot (actually will not) give up the idea that "anything is possible".  He does not have a good grasp on the arbitrary and takes almost anything stated as "possible"... he is unaware that he really means "who am I to know?"

Generally the ideas of "possible" "probable" "certain" as well as "evidence" and "knowledge" and "claiming a positive" are widely misconstrued... Personally I blame the tendendancy toward Rationalism (ideas over reality) for these and most errors in philosophy.

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2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

who cannot (actually will not) give up the idea that "anything is possible".  He does not have a good grasp on the arbitrary and takes almost anything stated as "possible"... he is unaware that he really means "who am I to know?"

Interesting, I had not made the connection between "arbitrary" and anything is possible. (now that you mention it, it's embarrassingly obvious)

So that is at the heart of it. It is what the whole exercise it all about.
We are beings that need to know "the possible" to survive.

We are like hungry mouths, waiting to be nourished by "the possible", and sometimes we take in a trash/poison/virus that is "the arbitrary" that looks like food.

The arbitrary misguides us when we miscategorized it as possible, it will take us well ... to the arbitrary. (sometimes the impossible, after all, it's arbitrary)

And Objectivism is saying that it does not have to be that way. In fact, it should not be that way.
The defense/disinfection starts with "I can know the difference".
Sad to note that they refuse the healing respect we provide when they reject it with "who am I to know?"
 

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  • 1 year later...

It's been almost 2 years, to the day, since last watching this February 17, 2018.

Is there a term for the sequence of events that seems to go on within the screen play?

Neo wakes up when the words "Wake up, Neo." appear on the screen.

"Knock, knock, Neo" appears as a knock occurs at the door.

The girl turns at the door, revealing a white rabbit tattoo on her shoulder, after the message "Follow the white rabbit" appears on the computer screen earlier. Neo takes that as a sign to accept their invitation to the club.

Skipping ahead, as Neo and Morpheus arrive at the oracle's abode, Morpheus uses the analogy he can show Neo the door, but it is Neo that need walk though. As Neo reaches toward the door it opens.

This and other things of a similar nature, peppered though-out the move. On one level, it is written into the script. On a deeper level, it plays into terms such as "the fates", coincidences, the preordained, etc.

Even the oracle plays into this, albeit a mixed role, playing the oracle/devil's advocate to the oracle simultaneously.

One more, while it is still fresh in the mind . . . after the deja vu scene where Cipher is shown pulling the plugs on Apoc and Switch, and then puts forth the challenge to Trinity, that if Neo is the one then he cannot pull the plug on him, and indeed Tank intercedes as the "karma" that prevents Cipher from carrying out his dastardly deed.

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2 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

Is there a term for the sequence of events that seems to go on within the screen play?

Neo wakes up when the words "Wake up, Neo." appear on the screen.

It strikes me as a kind of foreshadowing. But the connected events happen in such quick succession that they indicate a plot-theme integration of predetermination. You see that the movie was so well done that the issue of choice versus fate was there in the initial scenes. Also, the "wake up" bit not only foreshadows his immediate waking from sleep, but also his later choice to escape from the matrix. 

Edited by MisterSwig
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  • 7 months later...

@Easy Truth

I was hoping ask you a couple questions about the following two example claims that you gave.

Quote

Everything we know is simply a simulation ...  (there is a variation below)

 

Quote

Everything we know could simply be a simulation (the variation)

I was hoping you could first state what the difference is between these two claims.

You mentioned that the latter claim belongs in a category of arbitrary that “is the hardest – it seems tentatively arbitrary?”  So what makes you think that the latter claim belongs in a “tentatively arbitrary” category?  What is “tentative” about it or what makes it more “tentative” than the former claim?

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How is the matrix scenario or a brain-in-a-vat scenario significantly different from Descartes’s all-powerful evil deceiver scenario? Do the rational criticisms of Descartes’s scenario transfer to those two modern ones? 

Excerpt from Foundational Frames: Descartes and Rand (2019):

Quote

 

Descartes’ possibility for doubt by conception of an all-powerful deceiver is not fully coherent. The proposed deceiver—which we may liberally consider as personified concrescence of our proposed systematic possibilities for error (and illiberally as an image arresting and seducing the meditator’s critical mind from reality)—who might deceive us about the existence of our bodies and the physical world might also deceive us about the existence of any possibilities. Then one would be sentenced to the infinite idle circuit: (. . . [might be {might be x}]). Without real possibilities ranging over actualities, nothing actual will be drawn in mind from any actuality. No thought would remain. The meditator is then not only shut out, but shut down, which is a good reason for Descartes to substantially constrain his “all-powerful” deceiver.

Another incoherence with the conception of either an all-powerful deceiver or an equivalent total systematic error of all we think we know or could ever come to think we know is that they must stop short of total identity between the real and the illusory. If the deception-world is not in fact different in any way from the real world—not different in any of its elements, attributes, relations, history, or potentials—then they are one and the same thing, and there remains no room for such a total foolproof deception. The deception must be thought to stop short of that total likeness. Here the all-powerful-deceiver conception, unreal as its possibility is, can be a bit less contrived than conception of an equivalent natural total systematic deception: it is easier to think of a deceiver who, knowing the thoughts and knowledge of his victim, does not deploy a total foolproof deception, but simply stays a step ahead of any finite-minded victim who might uncover the deception. It seems flatly not possible to conceive a natural, unintelligent, form of systematic error having the characteristic of always being only some steps ahead of the “deceived” victim no matter the creative endeavor and progress of the latter. Notice that under the all-powerful-deceiver conception, which is Descartes’ express formula, there can be no conception at all of such a deception without conception of an actual world in which the deceiver abides and in which it has its machinations. Then too, there is no possibility of systematic error without systematic truth in which such an error can be identified.

Descartes is furthermore not entitled, in his thought experiment, to help himself to the thought of an all-powerful deceiver for other reasons. . . .

 

 

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On 10/3/2020 at 3:49 AM, ReasonFirst said:

You mentioned that the latter claim belongs in a category of arbitrary that “is the hardest – it seems tentatively arbitrary?”  So what makes you think that the latter claim belongs in a “tentatively arbitrary” category?  What is “tentative” about it or what makes it more “tentative” than the former claim?

You may be asking something deeper but my immediate thought is,

could be        is tentative, you have to check many alternatives to confirm. Many possibilities  x = y + z

is                    is a fact, a single mental alternative.   as in x=5

another way of saying it would be that 

is                   is solved

could be       is partially solved or unsolved

 

 

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Replying to the original question, two physicists have an interesting take:

https://www.sciencealert.com/quantum-complexity-rules-out-our-universe-as-a-computer-simulation

People here might find it interesting.   Just as an aside, while the above looks fine, in general beware of popular articles discussing Quantum Mechanics - many are to be blunt total BS.   If you really want to know about QM get Susskind's book:

https://www.amazon.com.au/Quantum-Mechanics-Theoretical-Art-Friedman/dp/0465062903

Thanks

Bill

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On 10/3/2020 at 7:32 AM, Boydstun said:

How is the matrix scenario or a brain-in-a-vat scenario significantly different from Descartes’s all-powerful evil deceiver scenario? Do the rational criticisms of Descartes’s scenario transfer to those two modern ones?

The modern scenarios are science fiction, Descartes' is pure fantasy. At least in the modern scenarios a body or brain is required for the experiencing of the false world. Descartes apparently requires only pure consciousness for the evil demon to manipulate.

Regarding rational criticisms, the machines of the modern scenarios are not presented as omnipotent, but why should omnipotence be necessary to prevent a human subject from awakening to the real world? The machines only need to be able to keep the subject unaware of the real world. The subject might doubt his reality, but as long as he can only experience the false world, his belief in another must remain arbitrary.

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Are these machines intelligent? Are they living?

Intelligent machines that are not living artifacts of natural living intelligence are chimera as unfounded, as empty, as Descartes' supposition of the evil genius fashioned as an obverse of an all-knowing and all-powerful world-creating cosmic intelligence that would not deceive.

Science fiction chimera are entertainment. Fancy is their contribution. Science---hard science---is the light.

Is there any basis for such a machine (say it is a living intelligent artifact of natural living intelligence) in the known real potentials of anything in nature or engineering. To conjecture a buckyball as a potential had a basis. It was not conjecture on mere imagination. Rational possibility is rightly constrained by noncontradiction in the full-bodied sense pertaining to natures, such as was espoused by Rand. And that is not the only helpful constraint for rational possibilities: there must be no supposition of the organization that is intelligence as without a developmental history and a living (and social) one at that. (And of course there must be the constraints of computability and no conflict with other mathematical results we have.)

The chimera of "machines" posing our world as pure deception is only new theater for supernatural-like-possibility thinking, which is in truth not thinking to the world, not philosophy, but entertainment and/or deception by fools gold. (Scratch a skeptic and you'll find a fideist, even if only a fide-drifter on science-fiction worlds.)

Edited by Boydstun
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4 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Is there any basis for such a machine (say it is a living intelligent artifact of natural living intelligence) in the known real potentials of anything in nature or engineering.

I don't know, but I believe the basic proposition is based on the real potential of human-computer interfacing.

Ultimately it doesn't matter if the subject is aware of any real potentials in nature, because the proposition assumes that he is not aware of reality. His "reality" is the false world, thus he couldn't know what's possible in the real world of the machines that manipulate his experience. In this aspect the modern scenarios are no better than the evil demon, since the subject in either case has no real-world evidence for his notion of the real world. 

Edited by MisterSwig
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6 hours ago, Boydstun said:

The chimera of "machines" posing our world as pure deception is only new theater for supernatural-like-possibility thinking, which is in truth not thinking to the world, not philosophy, but entertainment and/or deception by fools gold. (Scratch a skeptic and you'll find a fideist, even if only a fide-drifter on science-fiction worlds.)

Interesting take.   Would the Turing test now being passed make any difference?

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27762088#:~:text=The 65-year-old Turing,London that it was human.

Thanks

Bill

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5 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

I don't know, but I believe the basic proposition is based on the real potential of human-computer interfacing.

Ultimately it doesn't matter if the subject is aware of any real potentials in nature, because the proposition assumes that he is not aware of reality. His "reality" is the false world, thus he couldn't know what's possible in the real world of the machines that manipulate his experience. In this aspect the modern scenarios are no better than the evil demon, since the subject in either case has no real-world evidence for his notion of the real world. 

The real potential of human-computer interfacing presupposes the notion of a real world, and the capacity to identify the factors necessary to create the infrastructure needed for a human-computer interfacing.

The "evil-demon" arises from loosing touch with the such facts as the concept of non-existence is derived from existence, inaccuracy from accurate, false from true.

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Bill and all,

Concerning the success reported in the BBC story, I’d have to say Mr. Turing would not be impressed with a 30% fool-em rate. He’d not count that as passing his test. I was a student of John Haugeland. He was author of the books Artificial Intelligence - The Very Idea, editor of Mind Design II, and author of Having Thought. Let me first block-quote my answer to one of the questions he gave for a mid-term take-home. (He thought my answer good.) Then I’ll say what I think of the Turing Test.

Quote

 

The basic idea of the Turing test is that any machine capable of conversing in natural language would be exhibiting the general competence we call intelligence. More particularly, any machine (any digital computer) that could engage in verbal conversation with a normal grown human being, so well as does one such human with another, would be a machine possessing intelligence.

The ability to engage in natural-language conversation with normal grown humans is a demanding test for machine general intelligence. One can converse about most anything, notably about one's own intellectual abilities. Unless one has in ample degree the abilities one claims, one will quickly trip during a conversation with someone truly having those abilities. Conversation will manifestly falter unless there is mutual understanding by-and-large of what is being expressed in the language of the conversation, of what is meant by the linguistic expressions, one's own and those of one's partner. To understand what some linguistic expression of one's partner means is to make sense, the right sense, of that expression.

An adequate sense-making, linguistic machine would need to implement background common sense in order to disambiguate ordinary language. Take Bar-Hillel's example: "The box was in the pen." Common-sense knowledge that boxes are typically larger than ink pens is enough to eliminate that interpretation of pen. Making the right sense of "the box was in the pen" also requires understanding of the topic of conversation and how the declaration fits the topic. Pen might mean animal pen or child playpen, depending on fit with topic. Then too, making the right sense requires understanding of metaphor and fancy. "The box was in the pen" might mean that a drawing of a box flowed out of an ink pen. Moreover, to understand make-believe in conversation, a participant must comprehend its contrast with real-believe. And to understand "the box was in the pen" as a real-believe assertion, one must have the notions truth and falsity, being so in reality and not being so in reality. Holding up one's end of an elementary verbal conversation requires profound intelligence.

There are nonlinguistic sorts of performances that indicate prima facie intelligence within well-partitioned arenas. Such is the world-champion chess-playing machine Deep Blue. The performance of Deep Blue is not by exhaustive reckoning of all possible eventualities stemming from the legal next moves. Such a reckoning would never finish. Intelligence requires avoidance of combinatorial explosions.

There is something basic about chess that normal human chess players understand about it and that Deep Blue does not: chess is play, a game. One does not understand what playing a game is unless one understands its resonance with, and its contradistinction to, real life. Still, lacking that understanding should not warrant defeasance of the prima facie removed-from-life specialty-intelligence of the chess machine.

A machine passing the Turing test would exhibit a general intelligence, one subsuming the various specialty-intelligences it has, one enabling it to talk intelligently about those specialties and their wider contexts.

 

In talking about intelligence in the case of humans, the Matrix, or God, we are usually talking about general intelligence. The God case is mostly imagined as not requiring language, though God knows all about human language. It is a defect in the concept of possible intelligence, I say, that it be accomplished without language, whether natural language or logic languages kindred of natural, such as in Tarski. (Possesion of the latter requires literacy to attain; natural language does not.) I should say as well that inerrancy is also a defect in a concept of possible intelligence.

Then too, I should say that there is no intelligence without consciousness. There is no intelligence without awareness or without feelings and emotions. (There is a mammal that does not dream; whether an animal with general intelligence must have dreams or even must have sleep is so far unknown—so far as I know, theory of higher animality does not yet extend that far.) The successful Turing machine, I specify, has ability to talk about those things with such communicative success as two humans talking about them. Insofar as the Turing test is a good test of general intelligence, I maintain, the machine needs to have those things in order to successfully converse on them. Insofar as a general-intelligence test for a machine is good, the machine must be able to understand the meaning when it says with Augustine: "We exist, and we know that we exist, and we love that fact and our knowledge of it.”

Consciousness we know is living instrumentation-and-control system of whole living organism. It has an evolutionary and individual-developmental history. I think inadequate any concept of general intelligence that does not belong to a living (valuing), moving, sensing agent. We might someday make such an artificial thing that has likeness to us, but is not identical to our kind; although, I imagine that’s not what people usually have in mind when thinking of an intelligent machine having general intelligence. What they have in mind is mere chimera. That is not to say that construction of inanimate machines performing better and better in a Turing test will eventuate in nothing useful to us.

Some readers might like also to read the analysis of Gary McGath (1993) on the Turing Test.

Edited by Boydstun
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19 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Are these machines intelligent? Are they living?

Intelligent machines that are not living artifacts of natural living intelligence are chimera as unfounded, as empty, as Descartes' supposition of the evil genius fashioned as an obverse of an all-knowing and all-powerful world-creating cosmic intelligence that would not deceive.

Science fiction chimera are entertainment. Fancy is their contribution. Science---hard science---is the light.

Is there any basis for such a machine (say it is a living intelligent artifact of natural living intelligence) in the known real potentials of anything in nature or engineering. To conjecture a buckyball as a potential had a basis. It was not conjecture on mere imagination. Rational possibility is rightly constrained by noncontradiction in the full-bodied sense pertaining to natures, such as was espoused by Rand. And that is not the only helpful constraint for rational possibilities: there must be no supposition of the organization that is intelligence as without a developmental history and a living (and social) one at that. (And of course there must be the constraints of computability and no conflict with other mathematical results we have.)

The chimera of "machines" posing our world as pure deception is only new theater for supernatural-like-possibility thinking, which is in truth not thinking to the world, not philosophy, but entertainment and/or deception by fools gold. (Scratch a skeptic and you'll find a fideist, even if only a fide-drifter on science-fiction worlds.)

Nonsense. There is zero reason say that only an arrangement of matter that we call "living" can produce intelligence, and that a different arrangement of matter that we call "non-living" can not when explicitly designed for that purpose. In fact, making that claim amounts to invoking a form of implicit superstition with regard to the existence of intelligence.

The fact that both life and intelligence are more than the sum of their parts doesn't imply that the latter can not exist without the former. While life is the natural producer of intelligence, it doesn't mean that it's the only producer possible. Better simulations of what we call intelligence are a function of technological advancement, and eventually there is no difference between a perfect "simulation" and reality.

The second paragraph also hints at my opinion of "living in a matrix" instead of the "real" world. They are one and the same thing if the "simulation" is perfect, so it doesn't matter in which one exists.

Edited by EC
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10 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

The real potential of human-computer interfacing presupposes the notion of a real world, and the capacity to identify the factors necessary to create the infrastructure needed for a human-computer interfacing.

Yes, and this poses another serious problem for the "false world" proposition. Either this world must be the real one or it must be a near-perfect simulation of the real one, at least in terms of the potential for human-computer interfacing. And if this is the false world, how would we know if the simulation accurately reflects the real one? Again there is only an arbitrary assertion. Thus, apart from Morpheus appearing and showing you the other world, there is no reason to doubt the realness of this world being experienced.

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3 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

Either this world must be the real one or it must be a near-perfect simulation of the real one, 

Speaking of arbitrary assertions . . .

Even the notion of an existence based on computer interfacing relies on the evidence you would have acquired in a simulation, and, like Plato's cave, those only familiar with the fire cast shadows have no inkling of the sunlit skies outside the familiar walls. It is our own understanding of sunlight contrasted to firelight produced in a darkened environment that imports plausibility to Plato's example (rationalization, or more kindly, reasoning by analogy.)

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On 10/7/2020 at 1:02 PM, EC said:

The fact that both life and intelligence are more than the sum of their parts doesn't imply that the latter can not exist without the former. While life is the natural producer of intelligence, it doesn't mean that it's the only producer possible.

Maybe I asked you this before, but could you give your definition of "intelligence"--for the sake of this particular thread? Google offers this:

1205031864_Screenshot_2020-10-10-06-08-002.png.8cc9fc174ff1afc8d7270907d5b58ab6.png

#1 seems okay for a starting point. The genus is "ability." But I think it matters why something has the ability of intelligence. Otherwise isn't "intelligence" merely a stolen concept, severed from its roots? We wouldn't have this concept without the idea of a living, conscious entity capable of gaining knowledge. So I don't understand your basis for suggesting that a nonliving entity could produce intelligence. What evidence supports that assertion of possibility? If there was never anything living in the universe, might there still be intelligence produced? If so, how?

I believe all intelligence, even the "information" kind in definition #2 above, requires a life form to produce it, either directly via its own natural system or indirectly via an artificial system it creates, in which case I prefer the term "artificial intelligence."

On 10/7/2020 at 1:02 PM, EC said:

Better simulations of what we call intelligence are a function of technological advancement, and eventually there is no difference between a perfect "simulation" and reality.

I think we've debated this before. Supposing someone creates artificial people perfectly resembling or simulating real people down to every organic system, such things would still be artificial inventions of man, not the results of natural reproduction. You could never escape that real difference, except through ignorance or willful evasion. Even if the artificial people could produce offspring, their children would be the products of an invention of man. Relatedly, I think there are some theories that mankind was invented by ancient space aliens, but I still subscribe to the theory of evolution.

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If artificial intelligence is something that is not actually intelligence but merely imitates intelligence, we have a lot of that already.

If someone eventually develops a computer system that is conscious and has the faculty of reason, I would call that synthetic intelligence, not artificial.

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Computers, by clever programming and massive computing power, can perform specific tasks that used to require intelligence, such as playing chess or go, recognizing faces, speech, or other patterns, or mapping out a route for a trip.  This is what I meant above when I said we have a lot of artificial intelligence already.  All this is very different from computers possessing the faculty of reason, or even simply being conscious.

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