(09-03-2024, 06:48 AM)homebiscuit Wrote:

(09-03-2024, 06:31 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: It's an incredibly interesting subject, and hard to discuss in a few paragraphs.  You have to start with a very strict definition of what you are talking about.  

The 30,000-foot view from my perspective is this: I don't think there's anything that can only be particular to humans.  I don't see any reason why machines can't become so human-like it in terms of their thinking that it would be very hard to tell the difference.  The basic reason I think that is because I think humans are machines.  I think all living things are just machines in essence, and completely governed by the laws of science.  

Whether we ever engineer human-like machines is an open question.  We might decide to leave out some human characteristics that we consider weaknesses.  

The subject of what is consciousness, and what is unique about human consciousness, will always veer into religion at some point.  To me, the possibilities are divided into two: the natural and the supernatural.  If you don't believe in the supernatural, then you can only believe in the natural, that is, that everything that is and everything that happens is a result of natural forces, which are governed by the laws of nature.  If you do not believe in the supernatural, then you do not believe in the soul.  That makes a human being simply a machine, subject to all the laws of nature.  And then, depending on your knowledge of science, you can design a machine that is completely human-like, with a consciousness that is exactly human-like.  At that point, have you created a human?  

I think a religious person would tend to say that machines can never be human, and a non-religious person would say they can.  

And I have to stop there, because I am veering off into what could be the very best and most interesting thing we could discuss on this message board- religion.

If humans are essentially machines and divided into two camps, natural and supernatural, then the same life experiences for two people of the same camp should produce two people who think, believe and behave identically. But it doesn’t. 

However, distilled down to its most basic elements, all of nature is purely mathematical. So, in the purest of essence, we are indeed machines.

You misinterpret what I said.  What I was trying to say was that whether you believe that a machine can be human depends on whether you believe in the supernatural.  If you don't believe in the supernatural, then you only believe in the natural world which is governed by the laws of nature, and if you believe that, then you should believe that humans are machines.  Then you would believe that, depending on our expertise at science, we can create machines that are human.  

As to your statement, if two humans have the same life experiences, then they would think, believe, and behave identically, I would say that if two identical humans had exactly the same life experiences, they would indeed believe and behave identically.  Those two people would have to start with the exact same biology because we are governed by our biology as well as our experiences.  For example, identical twins who have exactly the same life experiences.  Those two people would think, believe, and behave identically.  But it can't happen because they can't have exactly the same life experiences.  They are not in the same body and in the exact same spot looking out at the world in the same direction at all times.  But if you believe there can be a parallel universe, then a person in a parallel universe who is identical to you and who has the exact same life experiences would then inevitably behave exactly as you do in this universe.

So on the question of whether a machine could ever be so human-like we can't tell the difference, I would have to say yes.

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