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Article 2905 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: lookup tables
Message-ID: <1992Jan19.161555.2440@arizona.edu>
Date: 19 Jan 92 23:15:54 GMT
References: <383@tdatirv.UUCP> <o2wseB3w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> <1992Jan19.213507.11148@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
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So how would you actually construct one of these mongo
lookup tables (assuming you had the memory to store it)?

I can only think of one plausible (?!) method.  You construct an
A.I. capable of passing the Turing test, and feed it the
initial portions of all possible conversations, recording 
the responses in the table.

Effectively, then, when you use the lookup table, you are
actually using the A.I. you have constructed.  The lookup
table is simply a ridiculously wasteful way of implementing
the A.I..  There is no reason to believe that such a thing
cannot be conscious.

You can't trust your intuition when you're talking about a
table with 10^10000 entries.  You should not expect to have
any intuition at all about such a thing, and if you do, you
should not trust the conclusions it suggests to you.  (Remember,
there are on the order of 10^80 atoms in the universe.)

(If you are going to counter with the claim that the lookup
table need not originate from an A.I., I will demand that
you give another possibility.  If you cannot give some
reasonable story of its origin, you are hypothesizing magic,
and I need not take your conclusion seriously.)

	-- Bill


