I don't want to go back and read all the nonsense between you two, so can you point out where naffat made categorical statements of an egregious nature? I don't recall him being that absolutist.

hackenslash wrote:
That is my entire position and it has been this from the outset and indeed on every topic
in which unsupportable statements have been erected as constituting categorical fact

True : The only absolutionist position you accept is the refusal to be absolutionist and tend to agree
Though there is nothing wrong with referencing a hypothesis which is not a categorical statement

hackenslash wrote:Citation required.

"Fuckwittery" comes to mind; you just used it again.

hackenslash wrote:Making a prediction such as 'the evidence suggest that...' is qualitatively distinct from saying categorically 'X is going to win, and I know it', when you know no such fucking thing. That's what you are doing here in erecting your 'post-biological civilisation' drivel.

How about "posterior probability near unity"?

hackenslash wrote:Err, except no, because the discovery of Neptune falsified the hypothesis that those perturbations were a violation of Newtonian mechanics. Falsification is alive and well, which is more than can be said for your palsied understanding of how it actually fucking works.

I'd bring up the Duhem-Quine thesis and Paul Thagard's notion of healthy vs degenerate research programs at this juncture but I think I'd just be wasting keystrokes.

I would also like to add that the preponderance of evidence still testifies against hackenslash's insistence that the terms "omnipotent" and "omniscient" are only to be used literally.

Unfortunately, autistic whims don't define what words mean.

How are humans going to be extinct?

The day we find out the answer to the question "What is consciousness?", we'll disappear into a puff of logical absurdity. So keep an eye on the philosophy forum.

natselrox wrote:How are humans going to be extinct?

The day we find out the answer to the question "What is consciousness?", we'll disappear into a puff of logical absurdity. So keep an eye on the philosophy forum.

Someone's been reading too much Douglas Adams...

Actually, scratch that. There is no such thing as too much Douglas Adams...

naffat wrote:"Fuckwittery" comes to mind; you just used it again.

Refers to the content of your posts, not to you. Care to try again?

How about "posterior probability near unity"?

Nice.

hackenslash wrote:I'd bring up the Duhem-Quine thesis and Paul Thagard's notion of healthy vs degenerate research programs at this juncture but I think I'd just be wasting keystrokes.

You're never wasting keystrokes if you're actually supporting your position.

hackenslash wrote:Refers to the content of your posts, not to you. Care to try again?

Presumably posts full of "fuckwittery" are generally written by "fuckwits".

hackenslash wrote:You're never wasting keystrokes if you're actually supporting your position.

The pattern you've exposed here is having only rudimentary knowledge of a given topic and pontificating about it like you've had at least eight beers—in spite of anything else, so I'm not sure I agree with that.

naffat wrote:Presumably posts full of "fuckwittery" are generally written by "fuckwits".

We've already discussed where your idiotic presumptions get you, which is why you're in this pickle.

The pattern you've exposed here is having only rudimentary knowledge of a given topic and pontificating about it like you've had at least eight beers—in spite of anything else, so I'm not sure I agree with that.

You still seem unable to grasp the basic point, which is that no amount of knowledge in cognitive science will provide support for your asinine fucking statement. In any event, your agreement, much like your opinion, is as worthless as it is irrelevant.

All this sidebar is apologetic flim-flam. Pay no attention to the assertion behind the fucking curtain.

You should check out the umbilicus-inspection forum. Their attempts to bend spoons will be right up your street.

hackenslash wrote:You still seem unable to grasp the basic point, which is that no amount of knowledge in cognitive science will provide support for your asinine fucking statement.

I made a prediction. I am confident about that prediction. I gave you my reasons. You don't have to accept it but let's just say I am devoting resources to its fruition by virtue of my occupation. You on the other hand can just sit there and naysay all you want. I'd rather work for a better world.

hackenslash wrote:
You still seem unable to grasp the basic point, which is that no amount of knowledge in cognitive science will provide support for your asinine fucking statement.

What was his asinine statement?

naffat wrote:I made a prediction. I am confident about that prediction. I gave you my reasons. You don't have to accept it but let's just say I am devoting resources to its fruition by virtue of my occupation.

And if you'd said that from the get-go, we wouldn't have arrived here.

You on the other hand can just sit there and naysay all you want.

Not naysaying, challenging an unsupportable statement.

I'd rather work for a better world.

As would I, by the expedient of helping people to think properly. You're welcome.

epete wrote:

hackenslash wrote:
You still seem unable to grasp the basic point, which is that no amount of knowledge in cognitive science will provide support for your asinine fucking statement.

What was his asinine statement?

The thread's only 5 pages long.

Yeah, but I can't see anything egregious that he has said.

Who said anything about 'egregious' (not that that is anything other than ill-defined and subjective in any event)? He made an unsupportable statement and I jumped on it. It's what I do. Start from the top of page three, where he outlines his central claim, a claim that he hasn't yet been able to support with anything other than irrelevant appeals.

I just meant something so extraordinary that it deserved such ridicule. I haven't seen anything like that. I'll go and have a look at page 3 now.

hackenslash wrote:Not naysaying, challenging an unsupportable statement.

It is supportable. "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

hackenslash wrote:

I'd rather work for a better world.

As would I, by the expedient of helping people to think properly.

You wouldn't be the first person I'd turn to.

Well I've looked, and I don't see anything too wild there. Of course he's speculating to a degree as he is basically making predictions about the future. The question is, does he have valid reasons to make that speculation?

His thing about (paraphrasing) 'humans inherently being ecologically destructive' is essentially right, in that every organism is destructive to it ecosystem in a way. You can't actually destroy the ecosystem (unless we nuke the whole planet) so essentially he means change the ecosystem. All organisms effect and modify their ecosystems. The problem is, in the case of humans, our shear numbers and technology have allowed us to change it to a degree that vastly out does any other organism. If that's what he meant, then I see no problem with that. If he meant something different then we'd have to look more closely at it.

Regarding the post-biological stuff, he qualified that in his second post on that page:

If you mean the part about "postbiological civilization has the opportunity to become greater [than humanity]", that remains to be seen, but there are many reasons to expect that this is the case and many reasons to make it the case. Generally speaking, when something in nature is reverse engineered, it can then be improved greatly. As Alan Turing put it:

I see nothing absolutist here.

You answered this by saying that there are some (including Penrose) who think that it might not be possible to mimic the brain/consciousness in AI. As I understand it, this is a minority position. And to further bolster his case, naffat linked to the researcher at MIT(?) who was using a different architectural approach to neural computing.

I'd say he's qualified and supported his position sufficiently to speculate.

naffat wrote:It is supportable.

No it isn't, or you'd have managed to do so by now.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

Ah, one of those truisms that turns out to be bollocks. Michelson and Morley would like a word with you about that.

You wouldn't be the first person I'd turn to.

And this is interesting to me because..? Again, tell somebody for whom your opinion is worth two shits.

epete wrote:I'd say he's qualified and supported his position sufficiently to speculate.

Well, opinions and arseholes and all that...