Ah ok that is a good point, though it is tangential to my point. I was talking about the kinds of data processing that would uniquely qualify as "intelligent." You know, the very high level things we do like write computer software, debate law and philosophy, create works of art, and so on.

The kinds of processes you are talking about happen in things that generally don't fall into the category of "intelligent" as we are using it in this context. Like micro-animals, and even plants.

Generally speaking, the higher reasoning functions of the human brain are not involved in the task of healing minor injuries...the body just does that independently. And the parts of the body that manage that sort of thing are generally not involved when humans ARE engaging in higher reasoning functions. So, the vast differences we see here are not evidence that some organ other than the brain is the place where these higher level functions take place.

Chop off someones legs, arms, lower torso, and they can still converse. Take out their vocal chords, and they could still converse with sign language or whatever. But take out the brain, or even the higher-level parts of the brain, and all conversation stops.

It would be a really strange challenge to say "the brain is not the part of the body that performs higher reasoning functions."

Ah, I see, you are just trolling.

You accuse me of lying when obviously I have no intent to deceive, and was looking for an actual discussion on the topic.

Then you grossly oversimplify the scientific knowledge we have developed around the brain and the tremendous amount of data processing that it has been shown to do.

And then you just refuse to answer my perfectly reasonable questions for no good reason, and act like I am the one who did something wrong.

These are exactly the sorts of actions that religious zealots take whenever they are confronted with scientific evidence. Exactly.

Like what?

I was upset when I read the article saying they block third party ink. So I am happy to at least hear this refutation. But I wonder....

1. Was the accusation simply false?
2. Did maybe something else go wrong and Rossman assumed it was the firmware update?
3. Maybe the firmware update DID block the third party ink, but it was accidental, and due to the third party having done something wrong that wasn't a problem before.
4. Maybe the update intentionally blocked the specific third party ink that was on the market, without explicitly blocking the possibility of third party ink, so that Brother could claim innocence while also forcing the third parties to spend time and money figuring out how to get it working again, and creating a window of time when sales of their own ink are bolstered.

Option 4 is by far the most convoluted, but also the most evil, which is why I would generally land on that conclusion when dealing with international tech companies.

Well, "intelligence" is a complicated word, it has more than one definition and most of them are complex multi-faceted definitions that themselves include some vague terms. This is necessarily so, given that our usage of the word in normal conversation is naturally fuzzy. We have "intuitions" about what intelligence is and they are hard to define in a precise and complete way.

It is not likely that in some future day we will have a much better definition of intelligence than we do now. The word will probably remain as vague as it currently is, forever, largely because the vagueness is precisely what makes the word useful to us, in this case.

So, if we go around insisting that we cannot possibly achieve artificial intelligence until we can define, with perfect precision, what intelligence is, then for sure we will never achieve artificial intelligence. But this won't be a technological limitation so much as a semantic one.

When we have computers talking to us so well that we can't distinguish them from other humans, then we will have achieved artificial intelligence for any *practical* purposes. And that would be plenty good enough for me.

That makes no sense.

When the snake says "don't trust the scorpion," do you then defiantly trust the scorpion?

No. You trust neither the snake nor the scorpion.

Well here's the thing.....we have observed that brains are the part of a human where intelligent data processing happens.
It's not the kidneys. Not the lungs. Etc. It's in the brain, and that's a well-established fact, at this point.

It is true that there are loads of details we don't know. Far more that we don't know than that we do. But we DO know that brains do it.

So what does that mean? It means that intelligence is possible. It means that complex neural networks, like the brain, can do it. So, if intelligence is possible and complex neural networks can do it....perhaps complex neural networks that aren't made of gross squishy cells can also do it.

This line of reasoning doesn't prove that it can be done. But it gives us a good enough reason to expect that it might be possible, and there is still plenty we can learn from the attempt.

I will also point out that we might not need to understand every detail in order to achieve it. There are many unsolved mysteries lurking in technologies that we use on a regular basis. Sometimes we just need to understand enough in order to get something working, without understanding everything.

From your original post, calling physicalism "quasi religious," I was curious to know if you were going to assert some religious concept like the soul as the true seat of intelligence. Usually people who accuse science of being religious are just religious zealots themselves who are defending against scientific ideas that would conflict with their religious beliefs, and hence projecting. I don't know if that's you or not, but that's really what I was fishing for.

Can you explain, in a non-religious way, why biological brains would be capable of intelligence whereas electronic brains would not?

Clearly we don't have the technology yet, but we've got something that is promisingly close.

Is there something more to intelligence than data-processing? And if so, what is it?

Brother has been my favorite brand of printer precisely because they have avoided this level of evil.

Well, now they have officially joined the ranks of HP, in my list.

Brother, you failed us!

Hey, I get your point. I have something to offer up for your consideration.

Since you don't like fluoride in your drinking water, you could consider distilling it. And if you are one who erroneously believes that distilled water is unhealthy, you can easily buy trace mineral drops to add to it after you have distilled it. Then, it is just like tap water, without the fluoride (and, without other pollutants that can creep into our tapwater these days, including and especially estrogen).

It's a bit of fuss of course. But you can buy countertop distillers online for under 100 dollars, or a couple hundred for the fancy ones, and they are simple and sturdy devices that will last for years and years.

PostScript:

Crash course on distilled water not being bad for you:

1. it is not strongly acidic. It is exactly neutral in its natural form, but once it is exposed to the atmosphere it instantly absorbs a little carbon dioxide, which makes it barely acidic. The ph scale is logarithmic, which is critical in understanding how trivial this as. A banana is much more acidic. Soda pop is thousands of times more acidic. Your body is built to handle it.

2. It does not leech minerals from your body. It simply fails to replenish the electrolytes that you naturally lose through perspiration (and other natural ways). Tap water does the exact same thing, in fact. The difference is so trivial that it is a rounding error. This is only a concern for marathon runners, people recovering from illness, or people recovering from hangover. And in all cases, you should be drinking electrolyte-enhanced water, not tap water. Also, never give water to babies (distilled, tap, or otherwise), as their bodies aren't ready for it yet.

3. You do not need the minerals tap water provides. The amounts are trivial to the point of being worthless. That's why the bottles say "minerals added for taste." You get orders of magnitude more minerals from one bite of broccoli than from a cup of tap water. It is really that simple: we get our minerals from food, not water.

4. Studies done in rats that show that distilled water is harmful don't translate to ordinary human lives. You aren't drinking a gallon of water a day while eating a controlled diet that lacks nutrients. What happened to the rats won't happen to you.

5. If you simply can't grasp the concept of "order of magnitude," go ahead and add trace mineral drops to your distilled water yourself. Problem solved.

Do these organizations make this recommendation based on the expectation that most people won't brush their teeth well, or often enough?

My guess is "probably," and probably they are right.

I was able to access LibreOffice just fine, all day!

Spoilers incoming!

Yes. The Old Empire had thinking machine servants. Robots with AGI circuitry. Androids, though they were not called that. And, of course, somebody decided to weaponize them. And, of course, they turned on their masters and became the evil robot overlords of the galaxy. They enslaved the humans and kept them alive largely as a quirk of their programming, but treated them very badly and wantonly experimented on them and killed them whenever it was convenient.

The evil robot overlords ruled the galaxy for about 1000 years.

Then there was a human revolution, called "The Butlarian Jihad," which was a very long and terrible slog. During that war, a cult sprang up (initiated by the above-quoted "Rayna") that considered it their holy mission to rid the galaxy of thinking machines. They didn't stop there though, anything that had too much digital processing was a target. They made some exceptions for space ships and medical devices (eventually) largely out of practical necessity.

That's why you don't see much digital tech, and no AI robots, in the Dune universe (most of which takes place thousands of years after this Jihad). They rely on specially trained humans, called "Mentats" to do most of their number crunching, so they don't need computers.

You sound a bit frustrated. There will always be people who disagree with you, no matter how right your post may be. It's just the way of things.

Incidentally, America has been functioning as an oligarchy for quite a long time. It had been going on long before this decade-old article was written. Notably: the wealthy elites make all the important decisions regardless of which political party dominates the white house.

Of course that's bad. But just to add perspective, a pure democracy is pretty bad too. It is essentially "mob rule," where hordes of people with no education, no capacity for critical thinking, no mental defenses against manipulation, and nothing but "what's in front of my nose at the moment" to motivate them, making all of the most important decisions. History has shown us that this goes really badly (example: ancient Athens). The whole "power to the people" has a nice ring to it but fails due to raw impracticality.

So we have a sort of mish-mash where the most important decisions are made by un-elected, un-appointed rich people who have no loyalty to anyone but themselves, and many lower-level lower-impact decisions are driven by votes and cultural trends. It's not great, but it limps along. It is better than straight-up mob rule because the wealthy elites need the economy to be strong in order to support their wealth, which gives them at least some incentive to do things that benefit the lower classes. A mob has no such incentives, nor the wherewithal to think their actions through anyway.

Be that as it may, if you really want to ensure that people like Trump stop getting elected, there is a simple way to do that: convince the liberal left to stop spewing hatred towards men and whites. These two demographics have had their needs roundly unaddressed by the democratic party, and have felt a steady stream of judgment and anger from the left, in recent years. So, that pushed them to the right, and they voted republican.

So, in a sense, Trump is the monster you made ("you" as a representative of the left and the Democratic party). All the young-male and white swing votes swung away from you, in response to all of your negativity towards them.

Want to win them back? Embrace them. Actually try to understand their problems objectively rather than immediately blaming them and finding some narrative-fitting-but-false explanation for them. Propose legislation that will actually be fair towards them rather than just try to justify that they don't deserve the equality. Show them that they have a home in the Democratic Party that cares about their needs and will make a sincere effort at including them and their concerns among all the others.

Then they will vote Democrat again, and you won't have to face more presidents like Trump.

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind." -- Rayna Butler, a survivor of the Butlerian Jihad

(from the Dune prequel "The battle of Corrin")