Re: [sl4] Complete drivel on this list: was: I am a Singularitian who does not believe in the Singularity.

From: Mu In Taiwan (mu.in.taiwan@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 12 2009 - 16:16:18 MDT


Once upon a time there was a fixed goal mind with his top goal being to
obey humans.---

John,

1. You appear to be far more interested in making yourself out to be a
misunderstood martyr than in describing your ideas in terms that can be
studied and discussed by other people. You are being given a fair chance by
your skeptics to show that you have even a remote clue about what you're
talking about, and you're throwing that chance away with self-pitying posts.
In particular:

- You've been asked for maths that shows minds are turing machines, you
haven't provided it.

- You've been asked for definitions, you haven't provided them. I quoted
part of your text above to show your use of particular phrases such as 'top
goal' and 'fixed goal mind'.

- Please give a definition of your understanding of *at least* each of the
following - ideally with sufficient precision that we can compare them to
the formal definitions of algorithms, turing machines, etc.:

a) "goal" b) "fixed goal" c) "top level goal" d) "*real* top level goal" e)
"mind" f) "fixed goal mind"

I've seen plenty of different definitions for some of these things from
different people, and some of them seem to be phrases that are unique to
your own emails - so I really have no idea what they mean to you. I'd like
to see a clear description of what *you* think the phrases mean. But, I
suspect you probably won't do it, even though it is the most basic courtesy
when you are presenting a new idea to someone.

- The halting problem is not what you think it is. As far as I am aware, is
quite possible to show that *some* algorithms will or will not halt by
static analysis. It is not possible to show that for *all* algorithms. A
quick example; here is pseudo-code for an algorithm that is capable of
detecting a simple infinite loop and not running the code. It has the form
of a regular expression with ? as a wildcard representing i, n, or whatever.
It works for a tiny subset of all possible algorithms, specifically, 1 line
for statements with empty bodies.

if sourcecode.string.compare("for (?=0; ?>=0; ?++) { }"); then
infinite.loop.detected=1; fi

By restricting the contents of the braces to be code known to execute in
finite time (e.g. single step op-codes, no loops, no recursion, etc), and
prohibiting the use of whichever variable is represented by "?" while inside
the braces, you could also carry out this test on a larger subset of all
possible algorithms.

Mu

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 10:47 PM, Pavitra <celestialcognition@gmail.com>wrote:

> JKC, by "fixed goal mind" do you mean "deterministic algorithm", or do
> you mean something different?
>
> If something different, would you please provide an example of either a
> deterministic algorithm that is not a fixed goal mind, or else a fixed
> goal mind that is not a deterministic algorithm?
>
> I suspect that this would greatly clarify a lot of things.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
> Pavitra
>
>



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