Your post was very informative and I for one thank you.
I have nothing to add except Athanasius Kircher was brilliant and possibly before his time.

There is nothing wrong with Cromulency if used correctly.

Really? Another take on Jane Eyre? I'm sorry but I asked for a terminating pass from my English professor in Romantic Literature as I had an instinctual 'flight or fight' response after reading the genre.
That doesn't mean that The Eyre Affair won't be on my reading list though but I already have slight nausea thinking about it.
OTOH I'm thinking of writing a Sci-Fi time travel specific to 17th century Turkey and the Ottoman attempts to conquer Vienna. No eggs though, scrambled or otherwise. Maybe I can put a reference in there somewhen?

Congrats to Hubble. The whole thing is only 2" across!
http://astronomynow.com/wp-con...

I understand you post and was written with a great example. I do not deny that Deep Learning has a long way to go, yet I (as a Philosophy sub-major) can't leave my original contention alone. So with my technical knowledge I can build a do-able A.I. machine which can have elements of Deep Learning if I understand it correctly.
In this case let's use our imagination:
The simplest A.I. is a feedback circuit - like a thermostat. It always tries to control temperature within a set range. It finds it difficult to operate if the external environment is beyond it's mechanical capacity to operate. I.E. if the external temp is too cold (if it is a heat pump) or too warm (as a fridge). Uncontrolled, it eventually burns the compressor out. This damage can be avoided if another temp sensor on the compressor/motor allows it to shut itself off. So it protects itself from damage, but it still wants to work, that is achieve its purpose-of-being.
So let's give it mobility and more sensors around its environment to find a more environmentally friendly position to operate. So as soon as the temp becomes out of range, it moves to a position where it can operate longer.
Now for an example:
Imagine a split system air conditioning compressor motor that can move on rails around the corner of a house. In very hot temperatures it will move towards the cooler regions around the corner in the shade. In very cold conditions, it will move to a warmer part of the exterior. Remember, this is do-able and relatively easy to implement.
The Learning aspect:
Now let us give the machine the ability to store its own movement data based on time, days, months. It can now 'predict' where it can go and does so much earlier. It can move to a better position for better efficiency and it gives itself a +1 for purpose-of-being. It can even do statistical operations on the probability that a certain location at a certain time would be better for it.
Now give it the internet.
What machine intelligence is needed before it can work out how to log into a weather forecasting service? Although it can monitor local wind speed and temperature and find the optimal position all the time, it can also determine if the house/structure inhabited, determine power draw and communicate with other 'house A.I.' to route warmth and cool to inhabited areas.
But the big question is to hard code the weather service. Supposing it goes down? Can it find another? What other services would it require? Maybe we can get the House A.I. to crawl the net or Cortana/Siri to find an alternative or maybe associative services we have not considered when the machine was first set up.
As long as it knows that the new service may/would give it a +1 - or prevent it from getting a -1
So 'preservation' drives this machine and it has a sense of purpose.

Serif fonts forever! IlIlIlIlIl (that's iLiLiLiL btw)

In one of the last Top Gear (UK), there was a discussion about the decision making process in a car's 'AI' where it had to decide if it were to protect the occupants by mowing down pedestrians, or kill the occupants and save the pedestrians.
What say you?

I just can't wait for the first Bollywood movie on/about the Moon!
It's going to happen guys and gals. Just wait!
(I have the Bollywood app on my Windows phone)

Yeah and I look like He-Man. It's the sort of thing that made me stop collecting Barbies in the first place. I blame my parents for the way I turned out and my wife who poisoned my tom boy daughter by giving her pink stuff.

A. The study hasn't been published yet. This is a preview only.
B. It's a psychological study and not sociological. That makes a significant difference as the question only relates to the generic meaning of science, the methodology - or some part of it, is trickery, swapping answer keys randomly, thus getting statistical data for keystrokes.
C. A sociological approach would be more considered and break science down to various disciplines where I feel that results would be different.
The study makes the assumption that science is hard coded physics (for example) and classifies female with liberal arts and so on.
So far I can see a few problems with this and seems to fail in the testing design with a lack of understanding by the study's authors.
The sort of thing I would like to see if there is a corollary between "Men hunt, women gather" and the disciplines of science.
In my expanded family, I have 2 female scientists (organic chemistry) and 1 male - (medicinal chemistry). The 2 females became scientists because they couldn't become engineers which had the stamp of a male profession because it was physical work as well as mental. Holding test tubes over a Bunsen burner doesn't take much physical strength. Hmmm.. Maybe THAT has got something to do with it?

Well written. I agree with you. Let it be. Many people find comfort in church and as a Roman Catholic (the Western Rite), I have more respect towards the Eastern Rite religions like orthodoxy because they are much more community oriented, they allow their priests to marry and generally are more traditional, closer to apostolic faith.
As far as I'm concerned, we should all accept (therefore not deny) everyone's choice to follow and act with any belief system they wish, as long as it doesn't interfere with the choice of others.

That brings to mind if any church will condone and marry gay couples?
That way you can get religious and civil registrations for marriages and deaths. I really don't know how important that is though. Maybe for some people.

Begone you spawn of the Devil!
Sinner! You WILL rot in Hell.

Perhaps an interdisciplinary pov might be of help here. We do run programs based on hard wired (unconscious) programming.
Principally it is self-preservation, from biological respiration to environmental choices. That's the core programming from which all other extensions spring from. Replication is group preservation, so is war for survival, hunting and gathering, society, friendship, love, art, recording of knowledge etc.
The fact that AI is not concerned with that basic tenant is bemusing to me.

There has never been a benevolent godlike human in any culture without fault. That I postulate would be impossible.
One approaching fallacy is that humans have free will without constraints. That is obviously not true and humans in their environment have finite responses for any real situation. They are no different to robots. We all operate within natural law.
For humans to be other than that which they are would mean some kind of transformation and thought and philosophy has totally explored most of that for thousands of years, rehashed it countless times with pretty much no result, either in thought or reality.
Philosophically, the origin of this was the Garden of Eden, the story of how humanity became separated from Godhead, or so they say. The end of this lies in the future. In the meantime, we create robots and give them intelligence because of some ingrained impulse?
Personally that's why I became interested in computers and automata. A machine created by humans to do work that humans can do.