« Intelligence Test | Gobbledegeek »
@ 2007-11-28 – 12:25:55
Is it possible to loose consciousness if your "brain" is built up from a set of inference rules, and probability wave functions? I think Roger Penrose might have something to say about such a rash claim as consciousness for an artifact. But, maybe Robogeek's Robot has some quantum effects that raise mere computational functioning to the level of the human mind.
Then again, I think Penrose is talking b***ocks.
Thoughts?
bunstan
robogeek
Gosh, that was clever. I'm going to have to think very carefully about what you said, formalise a suitably robust response, and lay out my reply with citations and quotations.
Then again, this is a comic blog, so I'll just reply blithely off the top of me head:
IMHO Penrose (in the Emperor's New Mind) is falling into the same trap that most human beings do, which is to explain the unknown by recourse to a higher being or mystical process - in his case quantum effects.
In the end I think he refuses to allow the possibility that we are evolved animals, and that we are nothing special really.
Having said that, I don't think we are close to replicating any real conscious intelligence in robots, but that is not to say it can't be done ...
bunstan
I copied it off wikipedia!
I'm actually with you on this, I think it's ego defences kicking in and refusing to believe that there is a rational explanation for consciousness. Hence God/Magic/Quantum effects etc it's a coping mechanism to deal with the stress of feeling that you are not in control of your own destiny, but rather you are the end result of a series of competing impulses - kill it/eat it/screw it etc nice isn't it.
course I have the benefits of hindsight, me being a sophisticated sex robot from the future and all.
robogeek
cooo, sex-robot. How did you guess the secret project I'm working on?
Hang-on, if you are from the future, maybe you are one of my creations!
Come to Daddy !?*!
robogeek
OMG - Birth of Space Man !
You weren't kidding - you are from the future !!
So, what is it like there? Has the world been taken over by Endemol and everyone is now the subject of a global reality show? Are the King and Queen now Vernon and Tess, with prime-minister Ant (and Dec)???
bunstan
Hahahaha, cheers bud.
actually I can't talk about anything that happens in the future, ripples in time and all that Jazz.
Suffice it to say Prime Minister AntandDec is a big fan of your strip, which served as a blueprint for the now celebrated H.U.M.O.R chipset.
oh bollox me and my big mouth
Munzly
LOL - Specially the comments and replies..... 
robogeek
Cheers Munzly
BTW, it turns out Bunstan wasn't joking about the future sex-robot thing - I've just seen his YouTube video of "Birth of Space Man" ... LOL!
Munzly
OH Er! My Tardis only goes backwards in time (second-hand from Who-R-Us, retroactive guarantee only) otherwise I'd nip up ahead and check him out.
er...i agree with everyone else (at least, i think i do!)
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Cicuit,
This is based on claims that human consciousness transcends formal logic systems because things such as the insolubility of the halting problem and Gödel's incompleteness theorem restrict an algorithmically based logic from traits such as mathematical insight.
I thought everyone knew that?
; )