Man, my new password is kicking me in the balls. I had the unfortunate idea to pick a word I type a whole lot. Of course, being the good little computer nerd I am I felt compelled to replace certain letters with numbers. The pitiful and totally unforeseen effect was every time I type the word now I add the numbers.
It's entirely possible my password is in this very post.
1?
h4v3?
v3ry?
Li77l3?
b4ll5?
**Edited because I am not in fact l337.
It's entirely possible my password is in this very post.
1?
h4v3?
v3ry?
Li77l3?
b4ll5?
**Edited because I am not in fact l337.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
I was glancing through the old philosophy group threads and came across your thing about God being a programmer and was really suprised that no one mentioned that there is a big history idea that the human mind is essentially a computer program and that it is only a matter of time before we create computers with minds.
It was quite a fashionable view for a while and it seems strange that no-one on the thread said anything about the Chinese room argument by John Searle. In brief this was the argument that we will never be able to make programs that think (in the sense we think) because this doesn't make sense as a concept. The Chinese Room argument tries to show that human minds have semantics or meanings while even the best programs have no semantics only syntax that is they only shuffle around symbols in a way we told them to when we designed them.
Obviously there are people that disagree with Searle on this though. I haven't looked closely at a lot of the really good objections but the one that sticks in my mind is the objection that Searle begs the question in assuming that human minds have semantics ... although now I think about it that doesnt sound so hot.
Anyway there's a lot of stuff on the Chinese Room and Strong A.I (which is what Searle calls it) on the net although if your really interested you should see the relevant chapter 'can computers think' in Minds, Brain and Science by Searle. I think there's something in his Rediscovery of the Mind too.
I'm sorry if this has been annoying ... I'm not trying to be bitchy or clever I just thought you would like to know about this argument of Searle's if you want to develop your idea.