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What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

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Suzanne

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Re: What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

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Turing had an obsessive desire to create a machine that could make choices, retain information and apply knowledge like a human. He believed a machine could respond like a human if it was programed correctly. Turing made improvements to an existing machine and created a program that solved the Germans enigma code during WWII. It most certainly was not hypothetical.
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DB Roy
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Re: What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

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That's not a Turing Machine. A Turing Machine makes mechanical responses based on input of certain words or phrases. I did have one written in BASIC language that I could re-program in a number of ways. It MIMICKED consciousness but could not possibly be conscious. For instance, your buddy Joe Sacco who got a black eye could sit down at the computer and talk to the program. You could program it to ask his name and when he responds "Joe Sacco" then the program responds, "Hi, Joe, sorry about your black eye." It seems as though the program is conscious but it's not because YOU programmed it to give that response when the input for a name was "Joe Sacco."

The program could ask Joe what his favorite beverage is and he might respond "coffee." The program would then ask, "Do you drink coffee in the morning only or all day?" Again, it appears to understand Joe's response but it is just mindlessly spitting out the response you programmed into it should the beverage answer contain the word "coffee."

Some researchers were saying a Turing Machine IS a model of consciousness. The objection, one that I fully agree with, is that consciousness requires processing the input and choosing a response rather than a mechanical response to specific input. In other words, if your friend types, "Joe Sacvo" by accident, the program won't give the response about the black eye because that wasn't the name it was told to give that response to.

For a far more detailed account of the Turing Machine please refer to the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine
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Suzanne

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Re: What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

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DB Roy wrote:That's not a Turing Machine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe

I am referring to the Bombe in my post.

Turing believed human responses are based on algorithms and as such Turing believed if a machine was programed to decipher and imitate these algorithms the machine could imitate acceptable human responses. This is the foundation for Turing's imitation game: programed to imitate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
DB Roy wrote:Some researchers were saying a Turing Machine IS a model of consciousness. The objection, one that I fully agree with, is that consciousness requires processing the input and choosing a response rather than a mechanical response to specific input.
I agree with you. Human consciousness can be seen as original and spontaneous thought and it is very subjective, therefor impossible to create in a machine. Turing wasn't trying to create human consciousness, he wanted to replicate deliberate and intellectual responses which could be interpreted as human responses by programing a machine with a limited set of non-subjective instructions.

I have an image in my head now of Alan Turing collecting random boxes and talking to them.
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Re: What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

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DB Roy wrote:it appears to understand Joe's response but it is just mindlessly spitting out the response you programmed into it should the beverage answer contain the word "coffee."
it's fascinating because humans can work like this too, for example if you say to someone "i think we should help those less well off" and they spit out a pre-programmed response like "ooooh you're not a communist are you?" :-D

then later if the conversation continues you can get past the pre-programmed responses to the real consciousness hiding underneath so to speak.

humans seem to me to work on two levels, a pre-programmed response level and a deeper "realer" more active level, getting us to actually think.... well, you can lead a human to slaughter but you can't make them think :yes: i jest of course as i remember all the effort people expended to encourage me to weed the garden occasionally.
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Re: What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

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Suzanne wrote:
DB Roy wrote:
Turing believed human responses are based on algorithms and as such Turing believed if a machine was programed to decipher and imitate these algorithms the machine could imitate acceptable human responses. This is the foundation for Turing's imitation game: programed to imitate.
Yes. I should point out that the Turing Machine was hypothetical because its response database was infinite. While my BASIC program was essentially a Turing Machine, it was limited in that I could not program responses for every type of input I met get. Sooner or later, someone is going to provide input I didn't have covered. The Turing Machine, however, has an infinite database that will give responses to any input no matter what it is and can give infinite responses to the same input so that it really looks like consciousness at work. You would never hit its limits.
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Re: What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

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youkrst wrote:
DB Roy wrote:it appears to understand Joe's response but it is just mindlessly spitting out the response you programmed into it should the beverage answer contain the word "coffee."
it's fascinating because humans can work like this too, for example if you say to someone "i think we should help those less well off" and they spit out a pre-programmed response like "ooooh you're not a communist are you?" :-D

then later if the conversation continues you can get past the pre-programmed responses to the real consciousness hiding underneath so to speak.

humans seem to me to work on two levels, a pre-programmed response level and a deeper "realer" more active level, getting us to actually think.... well, you can lead a human to slaughter but you can't make them think :yes: i jest of course as i remember all the effort people expended to encourage me to weed the garden occasionally.
I think our pre-programmed responses are for conversations with strangers and are designed to avoid confrontation rather than promote it being that confrontation does not contribute to survival and may very well be detrimental to it.
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Re: What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

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DB Roy wrote:I think our pre-programmed responses are for conversations with strangers and are designed to avoid confrontation rather than promote it being that confrontation does not contribute to survival and may very well be detrimental to it.
no doubt and i agree.

i was thinking more along the lines of "fear of thought" or "fear to have a mind of ones own" or "fear of being wrong" or "fear of being an outsider" etc etc

i meet a lot of people that are scared, scared more than anything by their own shadow.

"war on terror" "war on drugs" "war on crime" the fear machine keeps grinding the innards.

if it's the truth that will set them free then they are in trouble, they are scared of it. Scared of their own reflection.

i'm thinking though in the psychological sphere rather than day to day actual hazards. i mean i wouldn't tell a bunch of Cardiff fans down the pub that their team was shit, i'm not suicidal :-D

so i was thinking perhaps fear reduces humans to turing machines.
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Re: What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

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Fear sells in America. Just ask the gun industry.
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Re: What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

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so true, it's interesting how fear sells and sex sells etc, so those who want us to buy their stuff or their lie have whole industries counter productive to human flourishing which are based on overcoming reasoned thought by heading it off at the pass with fear or sex or whatever else they can interject between us and a good understanding.

so my thoughts are leading to the conclusion that us humans can be reduced to "turing machines" by our more primal aspects such as fear, sex, power etc etc those baser aspects can cause us to go with pre-programmed responses rather than a course based on reasoned understanding.

no wonder those old sages said things like "know yourself"
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