290 réponses à ce sujet

[Wildecker]

Shandepared wrote...
They are just ones and zeros as far as I am concerned.  They may mimic life, but they aren't aren't alive, they don't have a real mind. They are ultimately virtual intelligences after all.

It is a matter of philosphy, I suppose. I don't care if characters in the game consider them to be alive. Also you can copy-paste a geth program and save it indefinitely. You could even write it down on paper (a hell of a lot of paper). You can not do the same with an organic.

The measurable part of your mind is, at any point in your life, a bunch of neurons that either gives an active (1) or inactive (0) signal. How exactly these neuron process information is the topic of research. In the meantime, philosophers can debate if there is a thing like free will or if everything you will do in the future is based on past experience/stored information and reaction to external stimuli. So - are you a machine?

I can even argue that according to the Bible human history starts with a malfuntioning servant when the janitor of Eden picks an apple he was told to stay clear of. Is curiosity and the wish to add more data to your knowledge a malfunction or a sign of sentience?

[sergio71785]

I haven't read this thread, and I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but this is how I see it.

Brainwashing them to be "good" is the lesser of the two evils. Thus, it's the paragon option.

[Nightfish103]

I agree with the OP, this is one of the bigger WTF moments I had in ME2. It just makes no sense, and Tali even points out that Legion is doing the very thing he's fighting the heretics for in the first place. I guess the main reason things play out as they do is that there are only those two options. Blow them up or rewrite them. If they had made it possible to reason with the heretic Geth the whole premise of ME1 kinda goes out the window. Since blowing them up is obviously more badass than rewriting, that one has to be Renegade and the only other option has to be Paragon. I think that's sorta how it went.

To me, being a Paragon is about making the morally right choices, even if that isn't the most beneficial thing for yourself. Obviously the Geth need to be dealt with, but I find perverting their very nature to be way more sinister than just killing them. Personally I'd rather be dead than have my sense of right and wrong turned around by 180°. But maybe that's just me.

Modifié par Nightfish103, 24 avril 2010 - 07:38 .

[Wildecker]

Nightfish103 wrote...
To me, being a Paragon is about making the morally right choices, even if that isn't the most beneficial thing for yourself. Obviously the Geth need to be dealt with, but I find perverting their very nature to be way more sinister than just killing them. Personally I'd rather be dead than have my sense of right and wrong turned around by 180°. But maybe that's just me.

So ... if you had been brought up in the Soviet Union under Stalin and his heirs, or in Germany during the Third Reich, you would have preferred to be killed rather than to adapt to a world that follows a different set of rules?

[Wildecker]

Shandepared wrote...

Wildecker wrote...


The measurable part of your mind is, at any point in your life, a bunch of neurons that either gives an active (1) or inactive (0) signal.

What about the non-measurable part, what about the specific configuration of the parts that make those neurons right down to the atoms and so forth?

In any case, several of you clearly know a lot more about physics than I do, so I won't debate that.

Perhaps I'd be willing to concede if someone had managed to map the human brain onto a piece of paper, but so far they haven't.

Hmmm ... as in Phrenology? Granted, the scale leaves something to be desired.

[Solomen]

Shandepared wrote...

Wildecker wrote...

Hmmm ... as in Phrenology? Granted, the scale leaves something to be desired.

I was under the impression that was pseudo-science.

In all seriousness they have mapped and simulated the neurons of half a mouse brain.  The simulation behaves exactly like the neuron of half a mouse brain. 

[Wildecker]

Shandepared wrote...

Wildecker wrote...

Hmmm ... as in Phrenology? Granted, the scale leaves something to be desired.

I was under the impression that was pseudo-science.

... and you may well be correct. But why is that? They try exactly what you demanded - map the brain to see which part is managing specific tasks. The fact that brains can re-learn things as in stroke rehab says there's more to it than simple maps can grasp, but depending on the complexity of the A.I. they may defy simple mapping just like a human being does.

[Koen Casier]

abstractwhiz wrote...

The fallacy you mentioned is not a fallacy - 0.99999....(infinitely) is exactly 1. All real numbers have a finite and an infinite representation - that is just the infinite representation of 1. Infinite series can sum up to finite quantities, and 0.99999... is just 9/10 + 9/100 + 9/1000 + ... = (9/10) / (1-1/10) = 1.

Sorry I have not the time to respond to all your comments (some are quite good) but on this subject I wish only to say:
I see your real numbers maths and raise you with hyperreal (or subreal or ultrareal or whatever (dont remember the name) but I like hyper it sounds science fictiony) numbers maths where it is shown that 1 =/= 0.(9)

Maths are fun: if you don't like something you can always find a way to make it work, reminds me of the divide by zero stuff e.g. want to divide by zero: crack out the Riemann sphere and do your stuff, or use calculus or simply make the statement that in your personal manifold 1/0 = whatever the heck you want 
(guess you see mathematics origin in philosophy, they do it all the time)

[Koen Casier]

Solomen wrote...

Shandepared wrote...

Wildecker wrote...

Hmmm ... as in Phrenology? Granted, the scale leaves something to be desired.

I was under the impression that was pseudo-science.

In all seriousness they have mapped and simulated the neurons of half a mouse brain.  The simulation behaves exactly like the neuron of half a mouse brain. 

How do they know (e.g. compare)? Wouldn't such a process be destructive to the part that is simulated? And how do they interface with the organic part? This kind or reminds me of the novel Accelerando by Charles Stross, there they use real cat brains as a base to simulate cyberpet cats (should really finish the last five chapters of it) If you want to read it I think it's available as a creative commons work since I discovered it as CC recommendation by Doctorow on Boing Boing. (bought a hard copy a few years later)

[Cra5y Pineapple]

I brainwashed them because I like geth and didn't want to wipe out 6 percent of their population.

I hope it affects ME3 and stops me running into heretic geth and maybe meeting more friendly geth? I want to visit geth cities in ME3.

[Wildecker]

Shandepared wrote...

Wildecker wrote...


... and you may well be correct. But why is that? They try exactly what you demanded - map the brain to see which part is managing specific tasks.

No, that is not what I asked. You can write out a geth program on paper and solve it by hand. Can you do the same with a human brain?

The simple programs I know and the few I have written myself (years ago, in Pascal) had no solution.They were tools to get a job done - for example, get a game file and change the value of a mission to success instead of failure or replicating the unique most powerful gun of the game to all four weapon mounts of my starship. If a number of programs I wrote would have interacted and done something I never imagined I'd consider that a strange bug/feature and would like to know what exactly made them do it. 
That's what makes debugging software such a pain.

The biggest challenge with artificial intelligence is that we know so little about non-artificial intelligence. Let alone souls. I can imagine how the question "Master? Do I have a soul?" continues. "No you don't!" - "Do you, master?" - "Yes, I do!" - "What does it look like? Who installed it, and when?" - "You can't see it. I got mine from God when I was born." - "Can you prove you have a soul? Can you prove I have none? Can I talk to God about it?"

Modifié par Wildecker, 24 avril 2010 - 10:36 .

[Bill569]

Wildecker wrote...

Nightfish103 wrote...
To me, being a Paragon is about making the morally right choices, even if that isn't the most beneficial thing for yourself. Obviously the Geth need to be dealt with, but I find perverting their very nature to be way more sinister than just killing them. Personally I'd rather be dead than have my sense of right and wrong turned around by 180°. But maybe that's just me.

So ... if you had been brought up in the Soviet Union under Stalin and his heirs, or in Germany during the Third Reich, you would have preferred to be killed rather than to adapt to a world that follows a different set of rules?

Definitely yes. That is what happened in my country (Greece) seven years after the coup d'état by George Papadopoulos.

EDIT: What happened was that university students overthrew the junta, although many of them were killed

Shandepared wrote...

Wildecker wrote...


The measurable part of your mind is, at any point in your life, a bunch of neurons that either gives an active (1) or inactive (0) signal.

What about the non-measurable part, what about the specific configuration of the parts that make those neurons right down to the atoms and so forth?

In any case, several of you clearly know a lot more about physics than I do, so I won't debate that. 

Perhaps I'd be willing to concede if someone had managed to map the human brain onto a piece of paper, but so far they haven't. 

The specific configuration of the parts that make those neurons right down to the atoms and so forth is the DNA which can be written down on a piece of paper.

Modifié par Bill569, 24 avril 2010 - 11:05 .

[TheMufflon]

Solomen wrote...
In all seriousness they have mapped and simulated the neurons of half a mouse brain.  The simulation behaves exactly like the neuron of half a mouse brain. 

No, they have not. 'They' haven't even been able to simulate the nervous system of a nematode yet.

[TheMufflon]

Wildecker wrote...

The measurable part of your mind is, at any point in your life, a bunch of neurons that either gives an active (1) or inactive (0) signal. How exactly these neuron process information is the topic of research. In the meantime, philosophers can debate if there is a thing like free will or if everything you will do in the future is based on past experience/stored information and reaction to external stimuli. So - are you a machine?

Neurons don't just give active or inactive signals.

[Bill569]

Shandepared wrote...

Wildecker wrote...


... and you may well be correct. But why is that? They try exactly what you demanded - map the brain to see which part is managing specific tasks.

No, that is not what I asked. You can write out a geth program on paper and solve it by hand. Can you do the same with a human brain?

Yes you can. We may be unable to do it with the technology we have today, but it is possible in the future. Simply you can describe with some way the state of all atoms of the human brain and write it down. 

[TheMufflon]

Bill569 wrote...

Yes you can. We may be unable to do it with the technology we have today, but it is possible in the future. Simply you can describe with some way the state of all atoms of the human brain and write it down. 

The problem being that we can't know the quantum state of every particle in a human brain.

[Bill569]

TheMufflon wrote...

Wildecker wrote...

The measurable part of your mind is, at any point in your life, a bunch of neurons that either gives an active (1) or inactive (0) signal. How exactly these neuron process information is the topic of research. In the meantime, philosophers can debate if there is a thing like free will or if everything you will do in the future is based on past experience/stored information and reaction to external stimuli. So - are you a machine?

Neurons don't just give active or inactive signals.

Even if they don't,  the signals are discrete, they come in discrete packets. Therefore, you can write it down as 0 and 1.

[cruc1al]

TheMufflon wrote...

Wildecker wrote...

The measurable part of your mind is, at any point in your life, a bunch of neurons that either gives an active (1) or inactive (0) signal. How exactly these neuron process information is the topic of research. In the meantime, philosophers can debate if there is a thing like free will or if everything you will do in the future is based on past experience/stored information and reaction to external stimuli. So - are you a machine?

Neurons don't just give active or inactive signals.

Yes they do. They are excitable cells. They can be either in a state of resting potential of -65mV, or they can carry a signal of positive action potential. If you're referring to how that signal is interpreted at synapses, that's another thing. Whether a neuronal signal activates or suppresses other neurons is not dependent on whether the neuron is excited or not, it's dependent on proteins that receive the signal. Or something like that

[Bill569]

TheMufflon wrote...

Bill569 wrote...

Yes you can. We may be unable to do it with the technology we have today, but it is possible in the future. Simply you can describe with some way the state of all atoms of the human brain and write it down. 

The problem being that we can't know the quantum state of every particle in a human brain.

Yes, because it is too big. But just imagine the enormous amount of space a geth intelligence needs in oder to be stored. Is is sapient, therefore trillions of terrabytes are needed in order to store it. Anyway, DNA, which can be written down on a piece of paper, describes the human brain. Hence the human brain can be written down on a piece of paper.

[cruc1al]

Bill569 wrote...

TheMufflon wrote...

Bill569 wrote...

Yes you can. We may be unable to do it with the technology we have today, but it is possible in the future. Simply you can describe with some way the state of all atoms of the human brain and write it down. 

The problem being that we can't know the quantum state of every particle in a human brain.

 Anyway, DNA, which can be written down on a piece of paper, describes the human brain.

Sorry, no, the DNA does not describe the human brain. The DNA describes proteins. What the human brain ends up like depends on development.

[TheMufflon]

cruc1al wrote...


Yes they do. They are excitable cells. They can be either in a state of resting potential of -65mV, or they can carry a signal of positive action potential. If you're referring to how that signal is interpreted at synapses, that's another thing. Whether a neuronal signal activates or suppresses other neurons is not dependent on whether the neuron is excited or not, it's dependent on proteins that receive the signal. Or something like that

Neurons send electrochemical signals. The electrical part is mostly, but not entierly, just an on/off switch. The chemical part is not. What signal is send depends on which neurontrasmitters are currently present in the synapse and in which amounts they are present, which in turn depends on a HUGE number of factors. One neuron can send an amount of information much larger than 1 bit.

[Bill569]

cruc1al wrote...

Bill569 wrote...

TheMufflon wrote...

Bill569 wrote...

Yes you can. We may be unable to do it with the technology we have today, but it is possible in the future. Simply you can describe with some way the state of all atoms of the human brain and write it down. 

The problem being that we can't know the quantum state of every particle in a human brain.

 Anyway, DNA, which can be written down on a piece of paper, describes the human brain.

Sorry, no, the DNA does not describe the human brain. The DNA describes proteins. What the human brain ends up like depends on development.

Ok, I don not know that many thing about biology but what I am doing is a logical assumption. DNA can be written down on a piece of paper. The DNA is the blueprint of every part of an organism (I don't care about what it describes, the fact is that based on the DNA every organism is "constructed"). Therefore, the human brain can be written down on a piece of paper.

EDIT: What I mean is that you can write down on a piece of paper how to construct a human brain, therefore the human brain itself.

Modifié par Bill569, 24 avril 2010 - 11:12 .