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Article 6047 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu (Stephen P Spackman)
Subject: Re: Quantum mechanics and CS [shades of AI maybe]
In-Reply-To: clarke@acme.ucf.edu's message of 2 Jun 92 12:46:21 GMT
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Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1992 17:42:28 GMT

The argument you'll hear from me is NOT that physics has nothing to do
with intelligence - in fact, physics has a LOT to do with
intelligence. My contention is, rather, that computation can, and
should, be presumed adequate to intelligence until proven otherwise,
because it seems increasingly clear that intelligence is a very
mundane phenomenon, determined by boring macrophysics (in the form of
social and linguistic interactions), most of whose "interesting"
properties are subjective anyway.

The clever thing about people is that they get away with being so
stupid, but that's to do with evolution, not quantum mechanics or
divine intervention.

The whole discussion seems to me like _Chariots of the Gods_ - why go
to all thi trouble to construct an exotic solution to a problem that
can clearly be solved in fifty conventional ways, the hard part being
just pinning down which one obtains in practise (and which other one
gives the most efficient engineered implementation, if that's even
useful at all).
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stephen p spackman         Center for Information and Language Studies
stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu                    University of Chicago
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       Believe in Strong AI? I don't even believe in Strong I!


