Freethought & Rationalism Archive

excreationist · 01-30-2003, 05:15 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by malpensante
...intelligence, i claim, is limited to bioprocesses....

What if a person created an artificial creature that could solve problems about as well as a rat or a kitten can... would that be intelligent? Would "bioprocesses" be involved? Doesn't "bio-" suggest that life is involved?

malpensante · 01-30-2003, 11:21 AM

excreationist:
an intelligent artificial being would be artificial life, and i think real artificial life falls into the category of what stuart kauffman, in his book "investigations", calls "autonomous agents". according to kauffman, any physical system that performs at least one work cycle, possesses autocatalytic closure, and behaves in the way schrodinger described as "feeding on negative entropy", is an autonomous agent. now, autonomous agents are the subject of what kauffman calls "general biology", which is a potential future science, of which current biology is a subfield. in other words, general biology is concerned with life as it can exist, not as it does exist. so, artificial life can be thought of as a bioprocess, in the general sense.

rehpotsirhc · 01-30-2003, 03:24 PM

Anybody ever read about Sodom and Gomorrah? It's the part of the Bible where God gets mad and kills a lot of people. Bada bing.

Seriously though, apparently Abraham found out about God's plan to kill all of those people. This bothered Abe, so he asked God if He would spare the towns if he could find 50 good people. God said yes. Abe said, "Well what if I only find 40?" and God said if he could find 40, He'd spare the towns. Well, the number got systematically worked down to about 5 or 10 people and God said if Abe found any good person that He'd spare them. The scripture reads: God would have spared the whole place had he known one good soul would turn to Him.

That scripture pretty much debunks the whole idea that anyone can have free will. God didn't give the children, infants, or the unborn a chance because he knew that they wouldn't worship him. God judged them by their future actions, meaning that they had no free will. If he sent those children to Hell based on their future actions, I sure wouldn't trust him not to do the same to me.

After all, if the Bible taught us anything it's that YHWH has kind of a sick sense of humor.

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01-30-2003, 11:21 AM	#52
malpensante Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: bogota, colombia Posts: 91	excreationist: an intelligent artificial being would be artificial life, and i think real artificial life falls into the category of what stuart kauffman, in his book "investigations", calls "autonomous agents". according to kauffman, any physical system that performs at least one work cycle, possesses autocatalytic closure, and behaves in the way schrodinger described as "feeding on negative entropy", is an autonomous agent. now, autonomous agents are the subject of what kauffman calls "general biology", which is a potential future science, of which current biology is a subfield. in other words, general biology is concerned with life as it can exist, not as it does exist. so, artificial life can be thought of as a bioprocess, in the general sense.

01-30-2003, 03:24 PM	#53
rehpotsirhc Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: arkansas Posts: 14	Anybody ever read about Sodom and Gomorrah? It's the part of the Bible where God gets mad and kills a lot of people. Bada bing. Seriously though, apparently Abraham found out about God's plan to kill all of those people. This bothered Abe, so he asked God if He would spare the towns if he could find 50 good people. God said yes. Abe said, "Well what if I only find 40?" and God said if he could find 40, He'd spare the towns. Well, the number got systematically worked down to about 5 or 10 people and God said if Abe found any good person that He'd spare them. The scripture reads: God would have spared the whole place had he known one good soul would turn to Him. That scripture pretty much debunks the whole idea that anyone can have free will. God didn't give the children, infants, or the unborn a chance because he knew that they wouldn't worship him. God judged them by their future actions, meaning that they had no free will. If he sent those children to Hell based on their future actions, I sure wouldn't trust him not to do the same to me. After all, if the Bible taught us anything it's that YHWH has kind of a sick sense of humor.

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