BadThink6655321
Joined 10 years ago
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122
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71
Member since
Nov 12
Recent submissions
Comment · 1 year ago
Only because "actual understanding" is ambiguously defined. Meaning is an association of A with B. Our brains have a large associative array with the symbols for the sound "dog" is associated with the image of "dog' which is associated with the behavior of "dog" which is associated with the feel of "dog", ... We associate the symbols for the word "hamburger" with the symbols for the taste of "hamburger", with ... We undersand something when our past associations match current inputs and can predict furture inputs.
Comment · 1 year ago
Wnat about Gödel incompleteness? Comptuers aren't formal systems. Turing machines have no notion of truth. Their programs may. So a program can have M > N axioms in which case one of the N+1 axioms recognizes the truth that G ≡ ¬ Prov_S(⌜ G ⌝) because it was constructed to be true. Alternatively, construct a system that generates "truth" statements, subject to further verification. After all, some humans think that "Apollo never put men on the moon" is a true statement.
As for intentionality, programs have intentionality.
Comment · 1 year ago
A ridiculous argument. Turing machines don't know anything about the program they are executing. In fact, Turing machines don't "know" anything. Turing machines don't know how to fly a plane, translate a language, or play chess. The program does. And Searle puts the man in the room in the place of the Turing machine.
Comment · 3 years ago
I don't remember when I first started using BBEdit. Perhaps not long after the demise of MPW. I still use it for everything but Lisp development.
Comment · 3 years ago
Does the testimony of the adults who were negatively affected by it, both as adults and as children, count?
Comment · 3 years ago
Just recently a black child, who was born at home with jaundice, was taken from the parents to be given care in a hospital, because a doctor didn’t think the parents would provide effective treatment.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/temecia-rodney-mila-jackson-ret...
Comment · 3 years ago
Earlier today I came across this on Scott Aaronson's site:
"Also, are the ultimate equations that govern the universe “real,” while tables and chairs are “unreal” (in the sense of being no more than fuzzy approximate descriptions of certain solutions to the equations)? Or are the tables and chairs “real,” while the equations are “unreal” (in the sense of being tools invented by humans to predict the behavior of tables and chairs and whatever else, while extraterrestrials might use other tools)? Which level of reality do you care about / want to load with positive affect, and which level do you want to denigrate?"
Comment · 3 years ago
Edward Feser published a review of Koon's book ([0], [1]). I was struck by the number of times Feser argued that a "common sense" view of QM is the one that is "basically correct." Given the documented failures of common sense in mathematics and physics (see especially Feynman's comments in the first 15 minutes of [2]), why should anyone think common sense is a reliable metric to how things are?
[0] https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/01/86512/
[1] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2023/01/koons-on-aristotle-...
Comment · 3 years ago
They also "broke" the ability to set/remove a bookmark by double-tapping the page. The more Books degrades to become like Kindle, the less incentive I have to buy books from the Apple store.
Comment · 4 years ago
I'm a theist. His writings wouldn't have converted me, either.
Comment · 4 years ago
The lock analogy fails. First, the viewer was given the data. Second, obfuscation is not a lock.
Comment · 5 years ago
Should I be bothered that "=" is (((x•x)•(y•y))•(x•y)) so if he's going to write his axiom in terms of NAND, he needs to write all of it using NAND?
Comment · 5 years ago
Comment · 6 years ago
While I see a lot of discussion about the contents of the article (politics, engineering, etc...) I want to comment on the article itself. Very well done. A delightful read during lunch. Bravo!
Comment · 6 years ago
It’s the same complaint made against the ending of Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galáctica.
All this has happened before and all this will happen again.