This is totally different from what you said erlier "We count, but only because nature does" — Alkis Piskas
Our concepts of numbers, indeed our existence at all, is dependent on these laws being true, and to that extent derives from them. — Kenosha Kid
the conversation is doomed. — Kenosha Kid
"Does a tree exist without an observer?". Which can be recognized as a classic philosophical question — Alkis Piskas
. It seems the subject matter of science, especially physics, leads to such doom. — Cartuna
So what's happening? Am I just inventing a trend? Or are Western societies (or folks) getting sick of their own endless blah? Are we growing tired of always having to share the agora with others? — Olivier5
No doubt about that. Yet, there are philosophers who doubt it. Thtat's why I said "classic philosophical question".The tree still exists — Cartuna
. I like knowledge but you can overrate it. — Cartuna
Isn't sound equivalent to colour here? Sound involves your eardrums and your brain. — Daemon
My preferred definition of consciousness is subjective experience — GrahamJ
For me, the fundamental question is: How does anything ever feel anything at all? — GrahamJ
For me, the hard problem of consciousness is about feelings. Feelings are physical pains and pleasures, and emotions, though when I say emotions, I only mean the experience of feeling a certain way, not anything wider, such as 'a preparation for action'.
My preferred definition of consciousness is subjective experience. The unemotional content of subjective experience includes awareness of the environment and the self-awareness, all sorts of thoughts, but no emotional content. I am quite happy to follow Dennett as far as the unemotional content of subjective experience is concerned: that is just what being a certain kind of information processing system is like, and there is nothing more to explain. — GrahamJ
Could you say more about why you distinguish emotions from the other aspects of experience?
Could you give some examples of thoughts with no emotional content? — Daemon
Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. — Wikipedia
The purpose of reinforcement learning is for the agent to learn an optimal, or nearly-optimal, policy that maximizes the "reward function" or other user-provided reinforcement signal that accumulates from the immediate rewards. This is similar to processes that appear to occur in animal psychology. For example, biological brains are hardwired to interpret signals such as pain and hunger as negative reinforcements, and interpret pleasure and food intake as positive reinforcements. — Wikipedia
It seems like we will one day be able to make very intelligent self-aware machines with thoughts and behaviour quite like ours. — GrahamJ
We only ask that question thanks to centuries of established Western philosophical and scientific dogma which presume a split between mind and matter, subject and object, feeling and thinking. — Joshs
It seems that self-awareness, thoughts and behaviour are made of complex information processing — GrahamJ
Input Voltages for Logic Gates
Logic gate circuits are designed to input and output only two types of signals: “high” (1) and “low” (0), as represented by a variable voltage: full power supply voltage for a “high” state and zero voltage for a “low” state. In a perfect world, all logic circuit signals would exist at these extreme voltage limits, and never deviate from them (i.e., less than full voltage for a “high,” or more than zero voltage for a “low”).
However, in reality, logic signal voltage levels rarely attain these perfect limits due to stray voltage drops in the transistor circuitry, and so we must understand the signal level limitations of gate circuits as they try to interpret signal voltages lying somewhere between full supply voltage and zero.
Voltage Tolerance of TTL Gate Inputs
TTL gates operate on a nominal power supply voltage of 5 volts, +/- 0.25 volts. Ideally, a TTL “high” signal would be 5.00 volts exactly, and a TTL “low” signal 0.00 volts exactly.
However, real TTL gate circuits cannot output such perfect voltage levels, and are designed to accept “high” and “low” signals deviating substantially from these ideal values.
“Acceptable” input signal voltages range from 0 volts to 0.8 volts for a “low” logic state, and 2 volts to 5 volts for a “high” logic state.
“Acceptable” output signal voltages (voltage levels guaranteed by the gate manufacturer over a specified range of load conditions) range from 0 volts to 0.5 volts for a “low” logic state, and 2.7 volts to 5 volts for a “high” logic state: — All About Circuits Textbook
I am not trying to separate thoughts from feelings in brains (or programs). I am saying that we can, in principle, explain thoughts using science-as-is, but not feelings. — GrahamJ
I like the idea of creating a new kind of cute little life, or a big mean one, but it's just not possible to create conscious life in a lab from microchips (or quantum stuff). — Cartuna
I read some of it when it first appeared, I looked again at it now, it's incoherent. — Daemon
Try putting the essence of it in a few sentences. — Daemon
I agree with you that we have to give meaning to machines. But not at the level you suggest (assigning 0 or a 1 to a voltage range), because it wouldn't help. — GrahamJ
AI researchers give meaning to their machines... — GrahamJ
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