A time machine that could actually deliver and tell us who would win mythical match ups... Is it more of a reality than we think?!

[Bundana]

Well lets separate two things here: Emotions are an affect. An argument could be made that any form of sympathy is developed from the need to process information. Like If I see someone's head fly off, and the threat is near... It probably serves me well to imagine not only that this could be bad, but to be able to put myself in that place... to feel the same horrid sensations, giving me a lot of incentive to move fast. It also makes communication a lot easier... and our brain has developed considerably to be able to, for example, "smell the scent of a rose, when we see someone else smelling it." Mental pictures, language all allow us to elicit empathy. On a higher level this turns to altruism... Humanity, which ironickly animals can possess, and many people do not possess, allow us altruism. We can actually die to sacrifice for someone who is better, more valuable to us... Like the bunt in baseball, this potentially allows us to preserve the social structure and to provide for out offspring even when dying to do so... I know this all sounds so cold lol... But its the right vocabulary to make the distinction between empathy and self awareness IMO.

Before I go on: Why is it that dreams have the potential to actually appear more real than reality at times? Interesting form of empathetic response! Always wondered about that lol.

With self awarness, we are talking about something that definitely reflects empathy, I mean we have to be aware of self to be aware of others... But there are a lot of problems with understanding self awareness. The first problem is we don't know where it comes from. This is a really big problem with materialism... When people want to say "we are simply a bunch of things that work together and when the body material ends, so do we" This does not account for self awareness, or consciousness. just as, we do not really know how a thought comes and becomes an action and... The TRUTH about our corpereal selves is that our bodies are a flux of instructions on the cellular level, these cells constantly change... every like 6 months, there is not one cell in our body that is an original cell... so there has to be something else unifying our self identity and consciousness, some set of instructions, maybe? something saying "take these proteins and repair cells in liver and brain, now reproduce skin cells here, etc."

I keep mentioning Empathy because it is the closest thing one can kind of find that pinpoints consciousness. To the Hindus consciousness is a form of energy like light that manifests and we become smaller vessels of it for a prescribed time...But again where does this come from? And again, the materialists logic is just incorrect: You cannot reason that the body is the creator of consciousness, because a dead body has no more consciousness. Thats like saying our appetite is gone because a ham sandwich does not exist to eat.

With artificial intelligence the way for it to evolve into sentient beingness is through cyber technology. creating a system that has elements of bio, organic construction which the computer can develop within. But to do this we can only do so blindly: Does a Virus have consciousness? It is the very most basic building block that MIGHT be alive (this is debated). Does a single cell organism? And is there a qualitative difference between an animal that can forsee its end? and one that perhaps (appears) not to be able todo so? We might create a sentient machine by making it sufficiently complex, with either biological components, or faux biological components that are identical to the real thing... and we would probably know we had done so when as you say: "The computer was aware of its self as an entity distinct from other en******."

how much of a mind fck is this whole thing Bundana? Ok...So we develop the best 3d printers and they can make organs, just like the real thing, including a brain... So you make a frankenstein with this printer ok? now how do you make it alive? what if you have a computer that can make all the organs work together, duplicate all the biochemistry, everything a body can do... would it become alive? would we, by working backwards (not knowing what consciousness is, but creating the thing that makes it manifest) create consciousness?

The scary thing is we have 3d printers that can make organs... We might yet make a machine that is alive...

It's now 3 AM in my part of the world - so it's about time, I finally hit the sack! But before I do, I want to thank you for your detailed and well thought out explanations to my questions. Also thanks for starting the thread itself - which turned out to be even more interesting (and educational) than I could have imagined!

[billeau2]

It's now 3 AM in my part of the world - so it's about time, I finally hit the sack! But before I do, I want to thank you for your detailed and well thought out explanations to my questions. Also thanks for starting the thread itself - which turned out to be even more interesting (and educational) than I could have imagined!

I enjoy the dialogue tremendously. You and some others here can appreciate some of these wonders... its hard to find an interest otherwise, so its always a pleasure.

[dreamroom]

It kind of can... If you really think about it it is terrifying because everything... every action we take is based on probabilities which ultimately are predictable. Your thinking like a human being... to us we cannot possibly have enough data to predict something like "David Haye stubbed his toe and had to pull out of a fight" but you have to understand that if there is any probability of such a thing happening, with enough data about David Haye, his toe, his schedule, his life, what he said to his mother 20 years ago... These things can actually be predicted. its complicated but with information about enough outcomes? virtually anything can be predicted. Quantum physics is ironic in that it deals with small things that look random, when in fact given how our actual observation of such an event determines outcomes, and how many times an event happens... a computer with enough information held might concevibly be able to tell you how heart, and other supposed unknowns are predicated and predictive of an outcome.

Do they factor in the difference in training, nutrition and supplementation of today as compared to 50 years ago? Have they done any computer predictions of current fighters? If so, how accurate are they? Are they any more accurate than the "experts" in their predictions? I don't know much about this stuff, but it is fascinating.

[Willie Pep 229]

Do they factor in the difference in training, nutrition and supplementation of today as compared to 50 years ago? Have they done any computer predictions of current fighters? If so, how accurate are they? Are they any more accurate than the "experts" in their predictions? I don't know much about this stuff, but it is fascinating.

They haven't invented the magic machine yet; no predictions yet - for now we'll all just have to be satisfied with Sherman and Mr. Peabody's wayback machine.

And yes all those things will be taken into account, in theory.

[billeau2]

Do they factor in the difference in training, nutrition and supplementation of today as compared to 50 years ago? Have they done any computer predictions of current fighters? If so, how accurate are they? Are they any more accurate than the "experts" in their predictions? I don't know much about this stuff, but it is fascinating.

Nothing Yet. Lol.

One way to look at it: You can start on Monday and not know anything about boxing... Depending on your capacity and drive to learn you could be quite knowledgable by next Monday. Any machines of the sort I am speaking about would be intelligent Having the capacity to take data and subject it to analysis. One way to really oversimplify a traditional computer is to say it can add more knowledge based on a binary system... "Yes/No" so to speak. So was Marciano better than Ali... Hard question perhaps but a computer could maybe ask it... But ask the computer what made Marciano great? That is not a binary proposition is it?

Quantum Computers are not binary (Yes/No). They have a qidbit (information) system where three probable outcomes are processed bsed on probability. Again, this is a real over simplification... BUT a Quantum computer could answer "What made Marciano great." It would do so by taking an extraordinary amount of data, comparing many scenarios and eventually figure out what outcomes made Marciano "great." So for example... Most men at a height and weight of Marciano have a physiology that makes the probability of hitting as hard as Rocky rare... And through examining all these outcomes that rarified Marciano, the computer could say something like "Marciano's rarest traits were his willpower, strength per size, and endurance. It would come up with this by comparing vast amounts of data on what people can do, what other boxers have done, etc.

We don't think like that. We synthesize knowledge and use our experiences and then apply skeptacism and the two types of thinking: Inductive and Deductive, Inductive reasoning from a conclusion, Deductive reasoning towards a conclusion, BUT in both, the case of the computer and a person, a type of intelligence is being applied, in both cases the entity (the computer, or us) are teaching ourselves through data and construction of the data. We store our conclusions and refer back to them like a law book works... A precident is set the lawyer now can use the precident and not have to relearn all the concepts engendered in the decision... The computer stores the outcomes and now can refer back to them when deciding other outcomes. This being possible because of the great speed of a quantum computer, and memory.

[markusmod]

They haven't invented the magic machine yet; no predictions yet - for now we'll all just have to be satisfied with Sherman and Mr. Peabody's wayback machine.

And yes all those things will be taken into account, in theory.

Hahahahahahahaha

[billeau2]

Hahahahahahahaha

I grew up in the Irwin Allen generation... this guy produced TV shows, like Lost in Space. In those days you had to have imagination to an absurd level.

So, let's say for an episode of Lost in Space they find this computer we are speaking of... It would be found by Mr Smith, and would look like a fifth grade diorama project...

[markusmod]

I grew up in the Irwin Allen generation... this guy produced TV shows, like Lost in Space. In those days you had to have imagination to an absurd level.

So, let's say for an episode of Lost in Space they find this computer we are speaking of... It would be found by Mr Smith, and would look like a fifth grade diorama project...

Didnt they make a Lost in Space reboot?

[Anthony342]

Didnt they make a Lost in Space reboot?

Yes. And it was more like a diarrhearama instead of a diorama, which is also what Dr. Smith's time machine would probably look like. "Oh dear".

[billeau2]

Didnt they make a Lost in Space reboot?

Probably so... I do remember that the series lasted an incredibly long time... The robots, both Robbie and the evil robot are in the Seattle musuem for science fiction. They have a full scale model of the Alien as well... scary looking!!