8 Bit Philosophy: Do Humans Operate Like Computers (Kant + Contra)

[Lightknight]

Incorrect actually, as much as people hate it sociology is the science of predicting group behavior and it's wielded with devastating effectiveness. Advertising is an example of sociology in action.

Sociology is statistical analysis. It is not equivalent to knowing that if you enter 1+1 in a computer that it will tell you "2" is the answer. There is a tremendous difference between predicting the response and KNOWING what the response will be. We have so many different factors from everything we've seen to our hormone levels for the day playing a role in our decisions. We are like computers in that we are the sum of our parts but we are not like computers in that our software alters itself constantly and in ways that aren't entirely within its control. Putting billions of other humans on the planet all with the extreme level of complexity and their interactions dynamically change the formula. One conversation can change everything. The same conversation at a different moment can change nothing.

One human "failing" is our refusal to understand ourselves, and want to see each individual as a unique and special snowflake that is different from all others and thus should be handled on an individual level. In reality your a lot like tons of other people, which is the basis for sociology, and where stereotypes come from, stereotypes being very true in fact for the most part, it's just that most people misunderstand them and think it's something like a "cookie cutter" as opposed to a set of shared traits the majority of which will be held by people within the stereotype. People can belong to more than one of them, and in general by trying to deviate you automatically enter into others. Everyone is by definition stereotypical even if they do not recognize the stereotype which they belong to. Being so predictable is terrifying to people which is why there is so much opposition to things like the government wielding sociology for things like profiling, yet in reality we're pretty much hurting ourselves due to denial of our fundamental nature.

Sure, we're a lot like other people. Predictability is not inherent know-ability. Being able to predict the normal human response is only accurate up to a certain percentage and even that is highly relative to the activity being performed and the region it is being performed in. A computer, unless it's something like a quantum computer set up to generate true randomness, will always give you the same answer every time. 100%.

What's more is we also don't really know that we don't operate like a quantum computer on some level. It's possible and that would really add to complexity if so. That would be interesting.

 

[deleted_by_strongbad]

Is almost certainly why so far there are no real software AI's. it may not be possible to run a simulation of something complex enough to thought of as intelligent.

IBM's Watson is an amazing AI tool.
And for that second part: just a matter of time before it's fully possible to have enough computing power to slam it inside a Terminator's brainpan: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10567942/Supercomputer-models-one-second-of-human-brain-activity.html

This is a great point, and to expand on it, even non AI programs can (and frequently do) include what is essentially an implementation of 'ought' though admittedly the 'decisions' made are not being performed by choice, but human choice is also debated.

In well designed programs actions are evaluated against various settings and parameters for that action and the pathway is 'decided' upon based on the states of these. Really most AI is just an extremely complex version of this sort of validation/routing. There are many other ways that this concept is frequently utilized including pretty much anything labeled a 'Protocol' (like http (web) & smtp (email) these protocols are formally declared rules that like protocols for humans, don't force/dictate actions but inform the actor on what they should be, and the actor can 'choose' to deviate as they want, and like with humans deviations from stated protocol often result in conflicts.

And it can be argued that the decisions are ultimately made by the human(s) writing the software, but to be totally honest, programming is, for the most part, just deciding which sets of rules to include and connecting the dots with the necessary actions and states for the program. The actual decisions are mostly performed at run time (when program is running / well after programming) when all of the conditions are being evaluated and without human interaction.

 

[Blackpapa]

I'd like to argue with someone, but everybody here seems to agree on the deterministic nature of the human brain.

So instead, here's an interesting aspect: There is no "present". There is no privileged "now" - the past and the future are different values on the timeline, both are equally real, and there is no internal clock tracking what time it is currently. The perception of continuity is thus an illusion, governed by deterministic mechanics. What we perceive as consciousness is a biochemical state of our brains at each frame of time, but the moment of our birth, the moment of our death, and the moment you're reading this post are equal points.

Physics does support this - time is relative after all, and according to special relativity, there should be no privileged "now" time, and the order in which things happen is subjective.

It's called Eternalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

 

[Strazdas]

will is not free. you can be preprogramed to refuse healthcare (for example those nutters who raise kids to believe healthcare is satan). Any free will is an illusion that we create when we cannot explain the cause.