Re: How Robots Will Steal Your Job

WINGED MIGRATION? Pretty film! Took years to film. They used ultra-lights with the birds for a while before filming to get the birds used to these Big Noisy Others flying around so close.

---------------- None needed, there are no structures with that complexity. Without that you can't merely suppose something purely subjectively. It's like saying you are in another city while you're standing here, and asserting that there you are invisible and can't affect it for anything.

-Steve

-------------------------- Mine is based on finding the pandemic presence ONLY of Neanderthal tools and nothing else that is at all representational, whatsoever.

------------------------------------- All I see in the fossil record is a sudden change in it at the time of human incursion, and then the species vanished, an of those examples it is consistently said that it looks as though they were attempting to imitate h*mo sapiens poorly and without comprehension.

Other than that I see no appreciable set of development examples that do extend simply to the change called the very beginning of Neanderthal, not a progressed stage.

---------------------------------------- The Neandethal in this sense is all of the h*mo erectus type who did share that same common tool set and sophistication for a million plus year duration. Donald Johanson has stated this many times.

------------------ Actually I was being facetious based on a cartoon I once saw, I don't actually believe a cat HAS a "mind", which is defined as an awareness.

------------------ You've become carrried away with my reading a cat's mind/hieroglyphics statement, which was jest, and innaccurate about what I know, so I withdraw it altogether.

-Steve

------------------------ If you died, in some sense it would cease to, but that's NOT the sense in which I meant it.

-------------------------- I know what solipsism is, and have for many decades.

Don't you merely smirk and posture at us instead of think.

-Steve

------------------- Only in the loose, erroneous lay usage of the word "aware".

And that's NOT the one under discussion, however a blithering idiot might persist in pretending it is.

-Steve

It was a JOKE, son. A JOKE, I say!

---------------------- That's because you only succeeded in placing a witness "inside" something which actually has NO such witness, NO such "inside".

One of the reasons humans act SO differently from other animals is PRECISELY that we have strong objection to settling for what other NON-conscious animals do by reflex, without inner obervation with any kind of awareness such as would be that bored to tears.

-Steve

In other words, you didn't do the search, and don't intend to, since it might provide evidence counter to your statements. Enough said - bye, now.

An assumed premise. Have you read the works of Desmond Morris?

That sentence doesn't parse for me. Could you rephrase?

Then it should be obvious that if Roedy Green is the only conscious being on earth, there *are* no "others" to regard him as obtuse.

If you mean that others might think him obtuse for making the argument, you must regard as obtuse a number of well-known and respected thinkers which you have undoubtedly encountered in your decades of philosophical study.

Solipsism is the theory or view that the self is the only reality. Self is the consciousness of one's own being or identity, i.e. self-awareness. It does not preclude the "self" of others, however a sociopath might view themselves as the only conscious being on the earth, at least the only being that matters. No offense intended to anyone, just making the point that an awareness of Self is a critical part of intelligence.

---------------- Solipsism is classically defined as precisely the sociopathic view.

I prefer a Multipsism or Omnipsism.

-Steve

---------------------- Okay, Foghorn, I am a bit humorless about this stuff.

-Steve

On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:33:30 -0700, Alan Balmer wrote or quoted :

It is obvious to YOU that I am not, but not "obvious" to me.

However, try to imagine an experiment that would conclusively prove to that YOU are not the only conscious being in the universe. I actually spent a day in 1974 seriously pondering this. It appeared to be so. I concluded that I could not tell one way or the other, and it was far more comfortable to presume I was not alone, so I would return to that presumption.

We hold deep-seated opinions on consciousness, but they are based on AIR. That is why we defend them with such vigorous rounds of ad hominem. We have nothing else.

You might try with an argument against solipsism like this:

I appear to be like every other being. Why should I be any different in consciousness since I appear nearly identical in all respects like others? I am clearly wiser and free of false opinions, but what has that to do with consciousness?

You might then conclude that other humans are conscious too.

Just how "identical" you consider yourself to a chimp (98% same genes), a firefly, or an amoeba or a rock determines where you assign consciousness. How wide you cast your net is a matter of ego and religious upbringing, namely how special do you think you are.

We desperately need something to measure consciousness that correlates with subjective measures of human consciousness. Then we would have something a little more concrete to go on.

-- Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming. See

On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:27:22 -0600, Programmer Dude wrote or quoted :

yes.

-- Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming. See

Much of this argument melts away when one realizes that consciousness is not a binary condition, but states_of along a spectrum. Degree of, or completeness_of, or sopphistication_of consciousness would be a more appropriate way of measuring and comparing.

On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 22:15:36 GMT, "R. Steve Walz" wrote or quoted :

I can see that it could be either way, but I don't see what evidence you have that birds should be unconscious. They appear do all the things that conscious humans do except write on the Internet (which many supposedly conscious humans don't do either).

-- Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming. See

On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 22:15:36 GMT, "R. Steve Walz" wrote or quoted :

Men in cities do. But individual humans and humans in primitive societies are not that different from other primate societies.

When did humans become conscious in your view -- when they started using technology?

how could something as interesting as consciousness spring so fully formed so late in evolutionary history, without corresponding changes in anatomy?

If we humans are different in terms of consciousness from other animals, there should be some anatomical difference. Removing or damaging the organ of consciousness should reduce subjective experience, but still allow everything else to function on automatic. I am not aware of such an organ.

The weirdest thing about consciousness is the way it seems to be a seamless whole - the way it integrates sound, sight, touch. As though it were a field generated by the brain.

-- Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming. See

Yup. Smarter people than me (and maybe even you :-) have spent more than one day pondering that question.