James Lovelock Explains Gaia Hypothesis on The Sacred Balance

On 02/04/2017 22:41, Davoud wrote:
Chris L Peterson:
"Living" is an arbitrary definition. So it's possible for someone to
create a definition that, not unreasonably, places any sufficiently
complex system into the "life" category.

Davoud:
If you're going to call the Earth, which is largely made up of
inorganic minerals such as iron, silicon, aluminum, etc., a living
organism then it seems to me you would have to call a bus, largely made
of inorganic minerals such as iron, silicon, aluminum, etc., a living
organism when it is carrying a load of people.

Have you not seen "Life on Earth as viewed by a Martian" in Random Walk
in Science?

Chris L Peterson:
I think it's entirely likely that inorganic life exists in the
Universe. I think that we may be quite close to creating self-aware
artificial intelligence inside of inorganic machines. So I wouldn't
place a strict requirement for organic chemistry on our definition of
"life".

I'll stick with the biologists rather than the roboticists for now. I
don't think we need a new name for the so-far non-existent "self-aware
artificial intelligence inside of inorganic machines" because the word
"machine" is good enough. I think that it will be possible to build a
machine that is be very good at imitating self-awareness, but not one
that approaches self-awareness in the sense that humans possess that
faculty.

If self awareness is an emergent property of a sufficiently complicated
neural network then it is more or less inevitable that eventually AI's
will be built that surpass humans in that respect too. There will
certainly be people who argue that it is merely an imitation.

Arguably some computers are now already better at passing the Turing
test than dumbed down Twitterfed humans and airhead Facebook junkies.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 04/04/2017 13:54, Quadibloc wrote:
On Monday, April 3, 2017 at 5:46:23 AM UTC-6, Gerald Kelleher wrote:

Theorists created this pretense that they have some
understanding denied the wider population via a mathematical
script invented in the late 17th century.

As an initiate into the sacred mysteries of first-year Calculus,
I can tell you that it indeed serves genuine useful and practical
purposes.

Though you should give thanks that today we use a version of Leibnitz's
calculus rather than Newton's clumsy method of fluxions and fluents.

f' and f" still live on in some schools.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Tue, 4 Apr 2017 14:15:59 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

If self awareness is an emergent property of a sufficiently complicated
neural network then it is more or less inevitable that eventually AI's
will be built that surpass humans in that respect too. There will
certainly be people who argue that it is merely an imitation.

Arguably some computers are now already better at passing the Turing
test than dumbed down Twitterfed humans and airhead Facebook junkies.

I think it is a mistake to confound passing the Turing test with
having self-awareness. I think it's possible some artificial systems
already have self-awareness. There are a great many animals that
almost certainly are self-aware but lack the intelligence required to
pass the Turing test.

On Tue, 4 Apr 2017 14:10:27 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:
It is a damn sight more extreme in the Sahara desert 40C peak
diurnal
range 30C than it is in an equatorial rainforest typically 28C +/-
5C.

40°C peak is a cool day in Sahara. When I viewed the 1973 total solar
eclipse in Mauritania we had 40°C during totality. After totality the
temperature went up to some 55°C...

On Tuesday, April 4, 2017 at 8:04:45 AM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

I think it is a mistake to confound passing the Turing test with
having self-awareness.

That may be true, but the Turing test was specifically proposed
as a proxy for self-awareness - given that we can't get inside
the mind of even another human being to perceive whether that
person actually experiences being and sensation as we do. We
simply have to accept as a reasonable conclusion that, since
one is self-aware, one should expect that other humans, whose
brains are similar to one's own, would be self-aware too.

So one skips the intractable philosophical question, and sticks
to what can be tested.

John Savard

On Tue, 04 Apr 2017 20:59:11 +0200, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

On Tue, 4 Apr 2017 14:10:27 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:
It is a damn sight more extreme in the Sahara desert 40C peak
diurnal
range 30C than it is in an equatorial rainforest typically 28C +/-
5C.

40°C peak is a cool day in Sahara. When I viewed the 1973 total solar
eclipse in Mauritania we had 40°C during totality. After totality the
temperature went up to some 55°C...

I suspect that was essentially a ground temperature, not a true air
temperature. Or a temperature in the Sun. The temperature during
totality was a good indicator of actual air temperature.

On Tue, 4 Apr 2017 12:36:28 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 4, 2017 at 8:04:45 AM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:

I think it is a mistake to confound passing the Turing test with
having self-awareness.

That may be true, but the Turing test was specifically proposed
as a proxy for self-awareness - given that we can't get inside
the mind of even another human being to perceive whether that
person actually experiences being and sensation as we do.

Yes. But my point is that it's a poor test for self-awareness, neither
telling us if the example is self-aware (after all, you'll pass the
Turing test, but I have no way of knowing that you're self-aware), nor
if a less intelligent example is.

What the Turing test tells us is how well something can emulate a
human being, and it's quite arguable that human beings can fully
function without self-awareness at all.

So one skips the intractable philosophical question, and sticks
to what can be tested.

I don't think the question of self-awareness, however, is either
intractable nor philosophical.

This business of self-awareness is only a recent reheated term for gnosis ,something which popped up in early Christianity. The inspirational lights up the physical within and outside a person so anything contrived in the mind is a cul-de-sac or worse.

The warmth of spirituality/inspiration rarely lights up this era although the technological tools humanity has created have greatly benefited me and what I can see,at least in astronomy. To be able to witness the dual surface rotations to the Sun remains a wonderful realization of something which once existed only in the imagination conditioned by physical considerations and reason -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFrP6QfbC2g&t=49s

On Tuesday, 4 April 2017 09:10:31 UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 03/04/2017 01:44, RichA wrote:
On Sunday, 2 April 2017 04:58:02 UTC-4, Chris.B wrote:
On Sunday, 2 April 2017 02:12:13 UTC+2, StarDust wrote:
On Saturday, April 1, 2017 at 3:58:26 PM UTC-7, RichA wrote:
On Friday, 31 March 2017 23:44:17 UTC-4, StarDust wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44yiTg7cOVI

I agree with him about the Gaia theory!
Read his book back in the 90's, I think his theory still holds up!

He's an idiot.

I think , he's right! Life regulates the planet!

But Republicans hate regulations.
So it's fake news.

It's a fairy-tale, so yes, fake.

It is not a fairy tale. Life does to some extent regulate the planetary
temperature by creating shade and cooling by transpiration in plants.
Even some ancient sea dwelling plankton are thought to be up to it by
modulating cloud formation. eg

https://www.scientificamerican.com/p...let-formation/

It is a damn sight more extreme in the Sahara desert 40C peak diurnal
range 30C than it is in an equatorial rainforest typically 28C +/- 5C.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

And yet global warming KOOKS have REJECTED the influence of things like the "heat island effect." Just can't get their propaganda ducks in a row...

RichA wrote:
On Tuesday, 4 April 2017 09:10:31 UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:
On 03/04/2017 01:44, RichA wrote:
On Sunday, 2 April 2017 04:58:02 UTC-4, Chris.B wrote:
On Sunday, 2 April 2017 02:12:13 UTC+2, StarDust wrote:
On Saturday, April 1, 2017 at 3:58:26 PM UTC-7, RichA wrote:
On Friday, 31 March 2017 23:44:17 UTC-4, StarDust wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44yiTg7cOVI

I agree with him about the Gaia theory!
Read his book back in the 90's, I think his theory still holds up!

He's an idiot.

I think , he's right! Life regulates the planet!

But Republicans hate regulations.
So it's fake news.

It's a fairy-tale, so yes, fake.

It is not a fairy tale. Life does to some extent regulate the planetary
temperature by creating shade and cooling by transpiration in plants.
Even some ancient sea dwelling plankton are thought to be up to it by
modulating cloud formation. eg

https://www.scientificamerican.com/p...let-formation/

It is a damn sight more extreme in the Sahara desert 40C peak diurnal
range 30C than it is in an equatorial rainforest typically 28C +/- 5C.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

And yet global warming KOOKS have REJECTED the influence of things like
the "heat island effect." Just can't get their propaganda ducks in a row...


Don't be ridiculous. The models take this into account. And isn't this
still anthropogenic warming?