On 17/03/2017 10:04 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: <quack...@outlook.com<mailto:bobcook39...@gmail.com>> wrote: I don't think machines will be able to duplicate what a bird brain can do, any time, ever. Machines which we can invent are things that we can understand almost completely. I do not think there is rigorous proof of this. On the contrary, decades ago, computers began doing things that people considered creative, such as re-inventing devices that AT&T patented in the early 20th century, and winning at chess and go. So far, every time people have set a goal post and claimed "computers will never do this" the people have been wrong. They have responded by moving the goal posts and saying, "that is not intelligent after all." All the advances that have been made are ones which can be imagined and achieved with sufficiently advanced technology. However AFAIK all of our great minds have so far failed to come to grips with consciousness and some (eg Penrose) have demonstrated that human minds at least can do what no computable algorithms can do. When our best minds can't even imagine how something might be done given any imaginable computing ability, and there appears to be proof that conciousness can do the non-computable, I suggest that AI (being based on computable algorithms) will never achieve it.
In any case in order to achieve the telepathic ability that seems to regularly occur between consiousnesses (which was the thrust of my original post), we will clearly need some new physics which has not yet been dreamed of. Indeed it is so far from what we imagine possible that most will deny that it is even occurring! However consciousness, even animal consciousness, is something we will never understand sufficiently to create it, because it is a supernatural phenomenon.” Supernatural phenomena do not exist, by definition. The universe and every particle in it is governed by uniform laws of nature. There are no exceptions to them. Any phenomenon that occurs in the universe is natural, by definition, and explicable in principle. While you are correct, you cheapen our language by being pedantic about what useful adjectives *should* mean. The fact is that almost every educated and intelligent person would regard telepathy as supernatural - even though in the end it must be incorporated into our understanding of nature and thus become "natural". One could argue that it is also a physical phenomenon. However we really need an adjective to differentiate between the physical world that we can touch and feel and the invisible world of telepathy and disincarnate intelligence and conciouness - the super-physical or super-natural. At least, that is how things appear to be. That is the basis of science. No exceptions have been discovered so far, and there is no reason to think that brains or intelligence is an exception. A great deal is known about how brains work, and there are no pending mysteries that seem to be outside the known laws of physics and chemistry. Only if you walk around with your eyes shut and ears blocked and refuse to notice them! Did you even look at the evidence or read the guys paper? How do you explain telepathy within our known laws of physics and chemistry!?
