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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Cc: rickert@cs.niu.edu,dnor01@cs.aukuni.ac.nz
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Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 04:26:44 GMT
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In article <3ba3mo$g0f@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>In <3b910n$oef@net.auckland.ac.nz> dnor01@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (David Hikaru  Norman) writes:
>>rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>>I would prefer to say that a person's free will is the ability to act
>>>in accordance with the set of values and objectives that the person
>>>has.
>
>>Why not the inability to act otherwise?
>
>
>You would only choose such a description if you were in the grip of
>an ideology.
------------------------------------------
Both are quite true, nevermind his OR YOUR ideology, but, Neill, yours
sounds intensely flawed and prejudiced like a frightened mouse wimpering
in terror in the corner! Or like a highly superstitious person cringing
when they walk under a ladder, while the person in front of them has no
such problem once they have assured themselves the coast is clear!!!

Once a person acts, it is clear that they MUST have done what they were
compelled by their nature to do, or else they'd have done something else! 
Accusing him of an "ideology" or an agenda is absurd, as everyone has one,
just as do you! The question is not whether, but what quality the agenda!
Yours, Neill, sounds a bit pubescent and religiously based on some imagined
heaven and hell to which a "good" Gawd can be forgiven for casting
"intentionally Nasty souls" into, and without that, one has very little
need to concern onself with precisely how events or actions are "really"
caused, as it doesn't change the way they *feel* to you in any case!!! 
-Steve Walz

>>I'll take this opportunity to pinch an analogy from Hofstadter:
>
>>Does a cash register calculate? No, it just grinds its gears. But does
>>it actually grind its gears? No, it just blindly follows the laws of 
>>physics.
>
>>In this example of reductionism ad absurdum, all three descriptions  
>>hold true.
>
>Obvious nonsense.  All three descriptions cannot possibly hold true,
>for they are mutually contradictory.  The three descriptions:
>	the cash register calculates;
>	the cash register grinds it gears;
>	the cash register blindly follows the laws of physics;
>may hold true.  But in the form you presented them, the descriptions
>contain 'no' clauses which deny the truth of the other descriptions.
>Thus, as you stated them, they cannot all hold true.
-------------------------------------------
NO! Just the reverse!!! BECAUSE they do not question each other, they are
ALL useful models, in some manner, for describing the function of a cash
register!!!! Just as the existence of the self is as good an idea or way to
describe the actions of a person as saying that they were bound to do thus
and such an act inevitably!!! You are in a pseudo-dilemma brought about by
fear of certain words and phrases, when the semantics is NOT really at all
problematic here!!! Both are true; the assertion of "blame" or sufficient
"responsibility" for an action, and the recognition that a person is both a
product of their experiences and upbringing and are, in many ways, as much
a victim of their own actions as any other victims! I can't help it that
your stupidity, possibly, or your guilty greed, would demand that people
who can't fend for themselves be allowed to starve, just because you
imagine that everyone has "control" over their lives and that the poor
should simply "eat cake" if they have no bread!!! You see, this is *WHY*
this discussion is actually most important, because if you can successfully
deny to yourself that in future androids or computers can be imbued with
true awareness and "worth" equal to that of humans, as aware entities, then
you will now be able to deny that other people in the here and now are
"special" and "actually, fully responsible for what happens to them", when
all the evidence indicates that if you are rich that you did NOT do
something special that caused "Gawd's favor" to fall upon you, but just the
dumb luck of the draw: the circumstances of your birth and advantages, and
advantage you were "bound" to acquire with those gifts, which in reality,
you have NO MORE CLAIM TO than does a cash-register have to severance
pay!!! But someday, and you KNOW it will come about; your lunacy may very
well be outvoted by a population of kindly robots, who take far more pity
on you are your slow mind, than you would now like to imagine so you can
cheer the execution of a molested child and call it judicial progress,
because "he was the master of his own fate", when really he wasn't and you
aren't!!! You see, this question goes to everything, even to the battle
between the good and the evil, the tolerant and understanding, and the
blamers, shamers, and folks like you who imagine you're "Gawd's chosen" or
whatever version of that crap you believe, evolutionary or superstitious!
-Steve Walz
 
>>           We need not pick one and decide that it's the "best". What 
>>I'm suggesting is that describing people in terms of automata does not 
>>inevitably lead to the decrying of their humanity.
>
>I am not objecting to descriptions in terms of automata.  I am
>objecting to your specific choice of descriptions which contradict
>commonsense descriptions.  Such contradiction is unnecessary, and is
>self defeating.  Descriptions in terms of automata should elucidate
>the commonsense descriptions, rather than contradict them.  Automata
>based descriptions will not be taken seriously if they contradict
>commonsense descriptions.
--------------------------------------
The model of a being "controlling itself" has some use in description, but
so do countless references to unavoidability in daily life! You are
purposely ignoring those and trying to label them "unserious", when we say
things like, "he couldn't help himself", or "she simply couldn't see
anything else to do"!! And we say this stuff CONSTANTLY, as often as we
assert pompously and provably wrongly, that *WE* are "IN CONTROL"! You
cannot get away with stating that we say these deterministic things only on
a "background" of the assertion of self-control, as the statements of
control are the most likely to show themselves as being incorrect. We make
a LOT of boo-boos we don't intend to make and which we could NOT control!!
Thus we are liars when we say that we control. We are MORE often correct
when we admit that we CAN'T control things, and thus it would be more
accurate to say that we fallaciously assert control on a background of
deterministic lack of control of our bodies and our acts!!! It is true that
many things happen as we later assert we intended to happen, when it comes
to our acts with our bodies, but there is no really outstanding proof that
we are not covering up by taking credit after the fact or making up a
convincing lie for a failing!!! We are as determined as hell, and even the
thing in us that emotes this assertion of control is ITSELF controlled by
the laws of physics, whether we know them or not and whether "dice is thrown"
or not at some point in the process! You see, *WE* are NOT the dice
thrower!!!
-Steve Walz

>It is not the role of AI to demonstrate that free will does not
>exist.  The role of AI should be to determine what the term "free
>will" actually means by pointing to the implementation details which
>cause people to conclude that they do have free will.
--------------------------------------------
Anyone in the field would agree that the emulation of the human mentality
and quite likely awareness itself requires a sense be generated of being
there as a witness and a controller of the body involved. This is nothing
new. It does NOT speak to this as being a TRUISM, however, namely that the
thing that THINKS it controls really BE in control!!! It is sufficient if
it is structured so that it simply takes stupid credit for countless
assumptions and subsumptions of processes it has NO real control over, and
takes this credit after the fact and calls THAT "now"!! Consciousness need
NOT encompass all the functions of a being so as to be "in control". It
need only stubbornly insist that it is!!!;->
-Steve Walz

>After AI has elucidated the meaning of "free will", people can decide
>for themselves whether free will is still a useful concept, or
>whether they should drop it in preference for terminology that AI
>introduces in its explanation.  Keep in mind that people still find
>Ptolemaic terminology such as "sunrise" and "sunset" to be very
>useful.
----------------------------------------------
They are useful, but remember now that virtually everyone means something
TOTALLY DIFFERENT NOW when they say those two words than they did in
Ptolemy's time!!! So shall it fair with the convenient process that
comprises the fiction of being which gives rise to the time-binding human
and our intellectual capabilities. It is true that this intense feedback
that occurs with a device in place that claims control to the extent we do
influences what we are and do. But remember that even IT is determined to
do that, and there cannot truly BE something which is a subset of an
interactive universe which is truly autonomous and which issues controls
out of some essence which is at ALL empty of external interactive control,
also called determinism! So quit your trite, simplistic, and basically
no-nothing-republican-conservative model of whether people are in control
of this world, because we aren't, and no amount of voodoo economics done
with mirrors to benefit the rich and savage the poor will be accepted the
same as it was in the 80's, especially after people figure out that most of
what they have to combat now resulted from what the last batch of
conservative morons did for the previous twelve years!!! This isn't just
philosophy, and it isn't just AI, this is social science and politics as
well!!!
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

