Mark_D

JL, I’ve programmed in several languages, but you have me correctly pegged as someone who is more familiar with databases. And since I’ve never designed anything on the scale we’re discussing I’m happy to defer to your experience. It sounds like an enormously fun exercise though.

My original point remains unanswered however. We’re demanding a level of intellectual rigour from our monotheistic party goer. Fair enough. But nothing I’ve seen here leads me to believe that we’re as open minded as we’re asking him to be. Would you put aside your convictions and adopt religion if a skilful debater put forward an argument more compelling than yours? If you were to still say... (read more)

Johnny Logic: some good questions.

“Tolerance is not about letting every person's ideas go unchallenged; it's about refraining from other measures (enforced conformity, violence) when faced with intractable personal differences.”

That’s certainly the bare minimum. His beliefs have great personal value to him, and it costs us nothing to let him keep them (as long as he doesn’t initiate theological debates). Why not respect that?

“How do you know what the putative AI "believes" about what is advantageous or logical?”

By definition, wouldn’t our AI friend have clearly defined rules that tell us what it believes? Even if we employ some sort of Bayesian learning algorithm that changes behaviour, its actions would be well scripted.

“How do... (read more)

“It was a bludgeoning by someone with training and practice in logical reasoning on someone without.”

I’m inclined to agree. I also found it less than convincing.

Let’s put aside the question of whether intelligence indicates the presence of a soul (although I’ve known more than a few highly intelligent people that are also morally bankrupt).

If it’s true that you can disprove his religion by building an all-encompassing algorithm that passes as a pseudo-soul, then the inverse must also be true. If you can’t quantify all the constituent parts of a soul, then you would have to accept that his religion offers a better explanation of the nature of being than AI. So you... (read more)