Hello Ben, Saturday, December 29, 2007, 7:14:47 PM, you wrote:
"for a computer" is superfluous here. people are not smarter than computers and can't do anything that's impossible for computers
I don't think my computer can be sorry, but I know I can be.
i've about smartness, but well. i, your computer, is really sorry and? it's only question of *your* perception. when you hear "a'm sorry" from the man - you think that he does it. when you hear ABSOLUTELY THE SAME from the computer - you *belive* that some man was programmed it to speak. if you will believe that computers have free will and people are directed by God/spirits - you conclusions will be just opposite the same true for thinking. it's you who believe that people are smart by itself but computers are smart only in the bounds they programmed by people. you may believe that human wisdom is created by the Creator (or Natural Selection, if you believe in Science Religion) or, opposite, you may believe that computers are smart creatures but you select mean point. why? only because it's pleasant for people to believe in their free will, creativeness, smartness and don't believe in computers' ones. nevertheless, there is no difference between acts of creating people by Natural Selection and cresating computers by engineering
And don't forget that there are 'undecidable' problems.
Which I have never yet seen decided by a person...
In many cases, equality of functions has been decided by humans, as has termination of programs. Of course this doesn't prove that humans can, in principle, decide equality for any pair of functions. But neither has the opposite been proved.
yes, it's great example of unfair treatment of computers vs people! let's see - computers don't have general method of checking function equivalence. and you conclude that computers are limited in their abilities. but the people don't have it too! moreover, if some way will be discovered - it should use mathematic notation which can be used by computers too, so this immediately means that it's impossible! but you don't want to notice it! instead, you notice that humans can do it in some particular cases. and you absolutely doesn't notice that computers can do the same. there is no general algorithm to find algorithm of checking f.e., humans can only do it by try-and-try method so where is real difference? it's in what we have formal math model for computers which allows to prove some theorems about them but we doesn't have model for humans. does this really mean that they are smarter? why you don't believe that Martians are smarter than humans only because we don't know anything about them? moreover, with assumption that humans are physical creatures and strictly obey to the rules of physical world (and that's common assumption for Science - are you believe in it) and with standard Physics assumption that any physical objects may be described by mathematical equations you immediately draw conclusion that humans are not smarter than computers and both doesn't have free will. people aren't sorry by free will, it is some circumstances together with their education that force them to sorry - exactly like virus in your computer may force it to say "please give me a choke". this is that your experience say, are you agree? you never hear that anyone say "sorry" without some previous cause as you have never seen computer saying "give me choke" without previously been infected by a virus. it's only you that believe that some of them does it by free will (but not without any reason) and some doesn't it only because they are programmed by some external activity. where is the real difference? ;) -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com