BWE
Posts: 1902 Joined: Jan. 2006
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Quote (sledgehammer @ Mar. 02 2010,22:40) | Quote (midwifetoad @ Mar. 02 2010,12:23) | So if I'm understanding you correctly, you are asserting that quantum effects are "essential" to awareness, all the way down.
Not just as triggers to chemical processes, as with photons and light sensitivity, but somehow facilitating communication between bits of a cell, or even between cells.
EDIT to add:
And when you speak of quantum effects, you are speaking of something like entanglement, not anything covered by conventional chemistry? |
While I agree with TP that "free will" and consciousness are probably a macroscopic manifestation of quantum indeterminacy (e.g. thermal noise), I don't believe that "quantum computation"(coherence, entanglement) is a requirement. A completely deterministic algorithm, such as a software program, can be made to exhibit anything from complete indeterminacy to quasi determinism with the addition of true randomness (as opposed to algorithmic pseudo-randomness) somewhere in the program. I'd even venture to guess that a sufficiently complex algorithm which included several sources of true randomness and sufficient memory, could be made indistinguishable from an intelligent agent exhibiting free will, and pass the Turing test with flying colors. I also strongly suspect that we will see it within a decade or three. |
I suspect within a decade at the outside. In fact, I'm not sure it isn't being studied in a lab right now. And true randomness isn't even a requirement.
In the last 5 years, the world changed. Learning algorithms are commonplace, there are dozens of computer models of neural networks which function exactly as they would be expected to, and embodied intelligence has crossed the hurdle of creativity.
If you want a good place to start, http://www.umass.edu/neuro/faculty/files/siegelmann.html
EDIT: No link on that page to her publications. If you actually care, here is that link: http://binds.cs.umass.edu/publications.html
this lady has some interesting math she has been working on for quite some time. The list however, is nearly endless.
AI is not theoretical anymore. All that is left to do is hammer out a set of consistent definitions and build some already understood architecture.
If it is essential to awareness that some quantum thing happen, then it happens whenever the conditions in the relativistic universe are met. i.e. it need not be understood to be applied.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
The Daily Wingnut
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