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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Penrose & Banach-Tarski/Axiom of Choice
Message-ID: <jqbCynrnE.LoG@netcom.com>
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References: <385i1s$69h@toves.cs.city.ac.uk> <burt.782758488@aupair.cs.athabasc <burt.783368171@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca>
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1994 20:59:38 GMT
Lines: 42

In article <burt.783368171@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca>,
Burt Voorhees <burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca> wrote:
>>In article <burt.782758488@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca> burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.
>ca (Burt Voorhees) writes:
>
>>>Penrose doesn't say that humans,
>>>or at least intelligent humans,
>>>can always recognize things which
>>>are true but unprovable, only that
>>>sometimes this can occur, while it can
>>>never happen for a computer.  He doesn't
>>>even claim that this "intuitive"
>>>recognition is always correct.
>
>[attribution to Marvin Minsky lost or omitted]
>>Well, that's really silly because it's self-inconsistent -- because a
>>computer can "guess" *all* hypotheses, by enumerating them.  And of
>>course it can do much better than this by using heuristics.
>
>>What is intuition, anyway? I suspect that, for mathematicians, it
>>usually means using heuristics that you're not aware of using.
>
>What kind of idiot would confuse
>intuition with enumeration?

How delightful to return to c.a.p to find such ad hominem trash.  Not.  I humbly
suggest, Burt, that if you truly think that Marvin Minsky's statements could
only have been produced by an idiot, then you have made a serious mistake
somewhere.

Here's a puzzle for you: find a minimally complex algorithm (see Peter Lupton
for details) that will produce a series of numbers which, when used as indices
into the character set, will produce the life works of Roger Penrose.  If that's
too difficult, how about just producing this text: "I recognize as true certain
statements that I cannot prove.  Since this can never happen for a computer, I
must be human."

*My* intuition tells me that all these anti-strong AI arguments are so obviously
and trivially flawed as to barely deserve a response.
Of course, I may be wrong.
-- 
<J Q B>
