Chinese Room

I find the using of the Chinese Room argument to disprove AI is possible to be completely backwards. Most everyone agrees consciousness is the process that arises from the passing of electrical signals between neurons in an organized fashion. Each individual neuron is merely executing/passing along instructions based on reading instructions (receiving incoming nerve impulses) with no understanding of the overall program. Thus our minds ARE a Chinese Room. Consciousness is the byproduct of the process of message passing between neurons which individually have no understanding of what they are doing.

It may seem alien and ethereal, but should you create a Chinese Room large enough to simulate in sufficient detail the message passing of the neurons of someoneâ(TM)s brain, then that Chinese Room would possess a consciousness (albeit one that runs incredibly slowly). Not just a simulation of one.

It shouldnâ(TM)t matter whether the message passing is pieces of paper with a number representing the weight of an action firing potential or a flood of sodium ions in an actual synapse. Both are message passing between discrete elements. In the case of the Chinese Room simulating a human mind, when the person in the Chinese Room shuffling papers gets bored and quits then the Chinese Room mind dies, just like a human mind dies when its brain is starved of oxygen and its neurons decide to quit their jobs.

Now to get our Chinese Room mind up to speed lets do our message passing with electrical signals between transistors in a computer. This is much closer to how our neurons work anyway (though irrelevant as to where consciousness derives from). Whether it is conscious or not will strictly be determined by its degree of self-awareness. Not what components it is made of.

Note: this is a re-posting of a response I made to Android Authorityâ(TM)s Will the emergence of AI mean the end of the world?

This #OPMhack clearly demonstrates that America needs a president who will set up an insecure email server in her mud room.

At first I figured it was likely that this person foe'd me after I called out (slashdot heroes) Ron and Rand Paul as fascists. However this user posts so little it is hard to tell if they read that or not. I notice they do have Barbara on their foes list as well, which may have been the reason instead.

Ever meet someone who you last saw each other as kids? My sister Sandra in the convalescent home gave me Sherri's phone number and we agreed to both visit Sandra yesterday, and that I'd be there a bit ahead of time.

She had already talked to my sister Cathy, and when Sherri had asked about me, Cathy had said "______ is now Barbara."

So I'm sitting there talking to Sandra and Sherri walks in. We say "hi" to each other, and Sherri asks Sandra "Did she hang around with us when we were kids?"

I say "You know me." "No I don't." "Yes, you do!" (LOUD) "OH F*CK!

Life is like magnets - it's magic :-)

Back in 2011, I asked How Long Until OWS Gives Up With Nothing?

I figured they would eventually get pushed aside and things would go back to business as usual. Indeed, that has mostly happened - wall street still runs the show and tells Washington what to do while the rest of us get screwed.

However, it appears that not only did something come from the Occupy movement, but it is a tangible product that you can buy.

Pretty wild, hmm?

This tallies with one report that, while he was prez, he visited his old uni and was introduces to an m2f transsexual, and he was very warm and gracious towards her. Can't have that getting out - it would kill his base.

here

The list:
1. Adolf Hitler
2. Osama bin Laden
3. Saddam Hussein
4. George W Bush
5. Joseph Stalin
6. Mao Zedong
7. Vladimir Lenin
8. Genghis Khan
9. Saladin
10. Qin Shi Huang

I really want to like libressl. But it pretends to be openssl badly. They refused a patch that would have mitigated this whole RAND_egd problem by simply returning that it doesn't work when someone tries to use it, which means that you commonly need a patch to use it at all. If it's not going to work like openssl, then it shouldn't occupy the same space in the filesystem.

Back when I said that the Duggars were irresponsible over-breeders who were ignoring the over-population problem, I got a *lot* of flack saying, basically, that they were able to raise their kids properly and provide for them, so so what".

Turns out they were most certainly NOT raising their kids properly, despite their smarmy christian family values. Turns out they've been hiding a secret - their son Josh molested 5 of his sisters and at least one other young girl 12 years ago, and they covered it up.

They did tell the cops - specifically a friend of theirs, a sheriff who is now doing 56 years for kiddie porn. All he did was give Josh Duggar a stern talking to. The church? Pray for forgiveness. After all, they hid it until the statute of limitations was past, so not much else to do.

The only reason it came out was because one of the victims had written about it, and hid the story in a book, which she lent out years later. Otherwise, the Duggars would still be on TV.

Josh "no longer works for the Family Research Council, a right-wing christian organization that recently campaigned against same-sex parents adopting children because of the potential dangers to the child.

Told you so - though it's sick that it had to come to this when there were warning signs that something was not right with that family years ago.

If you can make it through his 45 seconds without falling asleep you might hear him say:

I will say though, that if somehow the "democrats" manage to nominate Bernie Sanders, it would be fantastic to watch the two square off. Unfortunately Bernie can't raise enough money to be taken seriously by those who have the power to select a candidate - and will eventually be assassinated by the media (in the same was they offed Howard Dean) - which will result in a subpar nominee being on the ballot.

On the plus side, the Kevlar Kandidate keeps packing his offices with people who worked for the Teflon Candidate. This suggests he has a low probability of actual success. Unfortunately, Wisconsin will still be stuck with him after that failure occurs.

Slashdot's greatest knave should spring into action to defend Her Majesty against the latest tidbit:

Instapundit notes: "THEN SHE STOOD NEXT TO THE COFFINS OF THE DEAD AND LIED" also "they locked up a filmmaker for a year, just to support their cover story. Nice people."

I realize it's more of a difference of degree than kind between her and any other megalomaniac running. However, I think that after eight years of electro shock therapy from #OccupyResoluteDesk, Her Majesty has the potential to turn an economic hangover into a full-on coma.

I'm surprised this wasn't on the front page. I noticed today in the bottom right corner

And was left to wonder if the Slashdot parent company was bought out. Apparently they just changed their name for better branding. I'm sure this can only lead to good things for this site, right?

Chrome's new bookmark manager is definitely a poster child for "half-ass it then push it to the masses". It seems to be working hard to almost replicate the Windows 8.0 Metro interface that everyone loved down to the "checkmark a tile to open the menu".

Tips:

If you want to make a new folder, go to the folder you want it to be in and press the NEW button on the left outside of the folders, there's no button for it on the right inside the folder (but there is a button to delete the entire folder from inside the folder).

If you want to drag items into your new folder, drop them quick. If you hesitate Chrome decides that you are re-ordering the items and you want the bookmark to go before the folder even though your mouse is directly over the tile.

If you have nested folders, opening a subfolder seems to randomly display all the elements in the center of the screen where you can't click on anything because its all on top of each other. Sometimes. There's no tree view of nested folders. Top level folders are on the left, after that you have to drill down individually.

No right clicking. Haven't you heard that there's no way to right click on a tablet?

When you checkmark a folder you don't get the option to edit its name or description. You have to open the folder then rename it from the inside.

Now, wait: the fruit of Progress is an impenetrable thicket of legislation/regulation produced by the clerisy. Of course it's rigged. You can't stab capitalism in the heart and then bemoan the rise of the nomenklatura. Or maybe the entire article is just a refined Progressive troll.

Bloomberg View says it is unlikely.

...

...