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Article 6044 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Quantum mechanics (no AI here, sorry)
Message-ID: <1992Jun02.170026.31570@spss.com>
Date: 2 Jun 92 17:00:26 GMT
References: <1992Jun1.201556.24184@news.media.mit.edu> <1992Jun01.234940.40210@spss.com> <1992Jun2.010249.29321@news.media.mit.edu>
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In article <1992Jun2.010249.29321@news.media.mit.edu> nlc@media.mit.edu 
(Nick Cassimatis) writes:
>70 years is not that long of a time.  And to the best of my knowledge,
>QM has evolved since it's invention.  

I don't know what you mean by "evolved" here, but I don't think the basic
nature of the theory has changed much.  I don't think anybody's corrected
the Dirac equation, for instance.  The changes have mainly been applying QM
to new things and finding better ways to calculate with it.

>That it and the rest of science
>keeps on changing seems to be good enough reason to not let a priori
>arguments based on *any* scientific theory move us too far on issues
>of such importance.  Though you're right that replacements to QM might
>be even more flaky.  My point was only that we can never be too
>certain about this flakiness.

Certain, no.  Philosophical conclusions based on QM could be wrong.
But I like my philosophy to be consistent with the known facts,
and for now that means facing up to QM.  (I don't like it when
sf stories posit faster-than-light travel, either...)

>PS Of course, I don't see any of the possible outcomes such
>discussions would changing the way I think about AI or MOI (my own
>intelligence).

I'm with you here.  Attempts to link QM with intelligence have so far been,
to my mind, pretty wispy.


