Yeah I've seen this, it's very cool, but does it 'know' why it does it? Or is it just some biological imperative compelling it to do so?
Of course not. I live a life under the illusion of free will, but I am a concoction of millions of chemical imbalances and reactions, and my existence is within a framework of experience. I've chosen to go to Holland in 2 weeks, but that was always going to happen. Which is why I don't 'disagree', because I see no evidence for spiders being self-aware. But it certainly knows what it looks like to others.
Predeterminism; absolving people of all responsibility since time immemorial. That's why religion loves it so. - Just busting your chops mate. I believe in fate/destiny too, I just won't surrender myself to it willingly
Does it? Why does a spider build a web the shape it does? Is it because it knows it is the most efficient shape to catch prey? Or that it knows its the most efficient use of silk to cover the required area maybe? No. It does it because something deep in it's being compels it to do it that way. What that something is, I wish I could say, but that's the wonder of the natural world. Maybe we aren't supposed to know. Also, do spiders use mirrors? Or pools of water as mirrors? Without acknowledging a reflection, how does it know what it looks like to itself, nevermind others...
Oh, that's absolutely fine. To be honest, as we live our lives, who actually stops and thinks that the decisions they make are affected by fate unless they are monumental and life-changing. I'm not sure I believe in collective-determinism, weirdly, but since I stopped studying philosophy a good eight years ago I don't spend too much time contemplating it really.
I agree with you on this. However, there is no way a being can be totally absent from discussions of being self-aware when it can construct a version of itself that is roughly what it actually looks like. I'm not stating a spider thinks "hey, I have a leg like this, and my other one goes there, and they attach to the body like this..." but there is no other explanation that comes to mind to describe how a spider could replicate its image. Or its fake and a person did it.
True. We're always trying to assign 'meaning'. Why can't something be just because it is? That's a perfectly plausible explanation, but it's not good enough for us. Meaning! There has to be meaning! Why, goddammit! Why! Because. Just because.
That's a possibility mate. Crops circles didn't work out, so they moved on. I honestly think it's genuine. At least I want it to be genuine as I love it when mother nature slaps us on the back of the head and reminds us how awesome she is, but I have to believe it's the same compulsion that makes any spider build a web in the first place. The bolas spider for instance: where'd it get THAT idea from? Awesome, but it didn't think building a web was a mugs game and decided to experiment. It just evolved. It just happened.
You have to ask yourself what separates Homo sapiens from all other beasts? Our imagination, and an innate capacity for irrational thought. Our minds are built for irrational, imaginative thought... we are predictably, and wonderfully irrational! How could an Artificial Intelligence be innately irrational?.. be intuitive, be a dreamer? It's not solely about intelligence, researchers have studied some species of crows and ravens that can figure out complex puzzles quicker than humans... but does a crow leave his car keys in the car, while it's still running, and then go in to the quick mart for a six pack of beer, only to return moments later to find he's locked himself out of an idling car.. NO! Only I can do that!
No, but when a squirrel buries nuts for winter, it buries more than it could ever eat. Why? Because it forgets where it buries them. So to increase the odds of stumbling on a nut, it buries more. Animals also forget stuff. Elephants don't. Apparently.
We can't. Machines don't "care", they're programmed. If you program a machine to self-destroy itself, it will. If you program a machine to destroy the entire planet, including itself, it will. No second thoughts, no questions asked. Artificial intelligence will never surpass what it was programmed to do. We like to think it will because we're projecting in AI a reflection of ourselves that is merely fictional. We evolve and we tend to think that everything evolves as well. We're self-centered like that. But no, it's only science fiction.
There was a time when I would have agreed with you here, but with recent and ongoing advancements in quantum computing, I'm not so sure anymore...even now computers are able to perform decision making and while, yes, this is based on preprogrammed parameters, it is not so different to how we ourselves perform decision making.
That is totally incorrect. The human mind is not a computer. An AI can only simulate human thought and behavior, it can never replicate it.
That, and, the computer exists within a framework that we have crafted for it. It's expansion can only grow with our own.
I disagree that I am totally incorrect: that is simply your interpretation and whilst I never said the human mind was a computer, consider this: your interactions now affect and indeed dictate your interactions in the future. That is called experience. By definition then, is experience not simply a form of preprogramming? Can not a person, by strict management of their interactions now, be 'programmed' to interact a certain way in the future? This is most certainly possible and, some say, has been done by governments and military's across the world.
Well it wont. It might build other computers which are more capable than they were previously, but it cannot do anything beyond its own programming. Knowledge of Universal Turing Machines and Finite State Machines would be useful here, as for me it explains why a computer cannot develop a real consciousness, but can probably imitate one based upon programming.
You shouldn't say that, because no one knows. There are theories and ideas like those you quoted but their major flaw, like anything else that we 'know' is that they are all based on our current knowledge of the subject. Year after year so-called truths are debunked because we've learned something new. When talking about what may or may not be possible in the future, keeping an open mind and avoiding talking in absolutes helps.
Ok, I've just read my last sentence and it could sound very condescending. That was not intentional Jaiden, please don't read it that way.
It's fine. Having a background in science and in philosophy means I'm quite okay with people disagreeing with me. Yet, for all that, I assert that gravity exists, the earth is not and never will be flat, and computers will never think independently of the programming we give them to action. Ex nihilo doesn't work outside of creation ontologies.
Disagreement is fine, being rude about it is not. I didn't want you thinking that of me. Anyway, we'll agree to disagree Apologies to the OP, we seem to have hijacked his thread. Let's return to his story where an AI can be taught existentially.
I'd say that it's because billions of billions of spiders built webs in all sorts of ways, and the ones with the most successful webs survived and made lots of baby spiders who, because of similar genetics to their parents, tended to build webs in the same way. Evolution. Now, evolution isn't flawless. If Joe the Spider builds Web Type X, and happens to have some other characteristic that is overwhelmingly valuable for survival, then Web Type X may go forward in spiderdom not because it's better, but because of that coincidence. In theory. Except that assumes that evolution based on web type will stop, and why would that happen?
I totally agree mate, but evolution is a different topic entirely. We're after what compels the spider builds the web that way when it has no knowledge of the spiders or webs that came before it.
But it's the same thing. It's wired to build a web that way. It's in the genes. In Animal Vegetable Miracle, the author bought some turkey chicks. Most turkeys have not reproduced naturally for many, many generations. They haven't been bred to be "good parents"--that is, to exhibit behaviors that support keeping eggs and chicks alive--for all those generations. And these were those sorts of turkeys. But at least two of those turkeys figured out how to have sex (something else that turkeys aren't allowed to do these days), and at least one of the females sat on her eggs, and tended her chicks. That behavior had absolutely not been modeled for her. It was in the genes. I don't think that we think of behaviors as being genetic--we think of genes as determining hair color and things like that. But apparently behaviors are indeed genetic.
