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Article 2459 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey)
Subject: Re: Turing on ESP
Message-ID: <1991Dec31.141541.8598@news.larc.nasa.gov>
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Organization: NASA Langley Research Center
References: <1991Dec30.214930.66372@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU> <1991Dec30.235437.31112@mp.cs.niu.edu> <61219@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1991 14:15:41 GMT
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In article <61219@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1991Dec30.235437.31112@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@mp (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>If you wish to believe in extra sensory perception, horoscopes, rein-
>>carnation, ghosts, etc, that is your prerogative.  I choose not to.
>
>Curiously enough, Turing believed that ESP was the best counterargument
>to machine intelligence!

   I haven't seen any evidence for the existence of ESP in human beings.  But
when a machine intelligence is constructed, it should be possible to implement
any senses that the designer sees fit.  This could include a cellular modem
to simulate telepathy with other machine intelligences.  It could include any
form of electromagnetic signal detection or transmission, from infrared
sight to radio transmission.
   Just because it isn't part of the human apparatus doesn't mean that it
wouldn't be useful.  If we are to build subhuman machine intelligences it
would be expected that many of them would be idiot savants designed for
specific applications, and speciallized sensory apparatus may be useful.
--scott


