My doggy died, where did he go?

Agent,

It is an interesting statement and raises many issues.

For example how do you define life? It might feel intuitively obvious but it is a difficult question.

And what do you mean by power? You might mean some super-force beyond our imagination, or you might mean that we simply do not have that skill yet.

It has only been some 50 years since DNA was discovered, and DNA has evolved in a somewhat chaotic nature for quite a few million years. I don’t think we should expect to unravel all of the implications of DNA just yet. The human–genome project was a massive step forward but it is only a step. And it doesn’t look as though it will be impossible for us to create a living cell, but it will take us a while longer. I see the issue more like having to map a giant maze before we can build our own. It isn’t that we can’t do it but more that we haven’t done it yet and that it will take some time.

But the comparison with machines is valid. But then what is meant by the term “machine”? Here we consider a machine as something mechanical and man-made. Are machines alive? We don’t normally think so although a computer virus has been compared to the characteristics of a bio-virus and it is difficult to say that a computer virus is not a new form of life.

But living things are autonomous and self-directed, even the simplest forms of bio-life seek to survive. There are no machines quite like that yet, because we haven’t built any yet. Will we? Yes, for certain. Until recently the most powerful computer could only be compared, in brainpower, to that of an insect. Within the next 15 years with the geometric rate of increase in computing power we should exceed human brainpower. And what then of self-directed autonomous machines? They’ll be here within that time if we so wish.

And that brings me back to the original question – what is life?

So when you say “living life” you really mean biological life, because, within a few years there will be non-biological life.

What is his energy? What happens when you turn off an electrical power generator? The energy stops flowing. What is meant by biological energy? The most important is the electrical energy that represents the flow between the neurons in the brain. Once that stops then the brain patterns dissipate and decay, the patterns that controlled the self-directed lifeform will simply fade away. Literally any residual energy dissipates as heat into the surrounding atmosphere, just like any energy transfer.

But more importantly is the recognition that your brain patterns are what makes you, you. If we take two brains from two people, they may well appear chemically identical, even in terms of weight, but the information patterns in each will be very different. Your dog would have had unique patterns that made it special to you and different to any other dog. If those patterns could have been saved somehow, then perhaps at some future time we could have rebuilt your dog and replaced those patterns that made him, him (sorry for the male assumption). But now consider a self-directed non-biological machine of the near future; the software and memory would again represent information patterns most likely similar to a biological brain. If the brain patterns really represent what we are then the question of life is not what we are made from, soft material or hard material, but what are the characteristics of our brain/software patterns.

Hope you followed some of that.

Cris

 

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Bebelina,

It is certain that a unilateral decision will terminate a partnership. It certainly takes two to tango.

But we never reached a resolution, I'm dissapointed you don't want to continue the challenge.

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Cris

 

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Agent@5,

He is in your heart

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And also in the sky... in a bright star...

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He just went back home...
But he will always be with you...

 

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That is a beautiful answer TruthSeeker.

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You optimist. On what do you base that fact? That "a few years" I mean. In a few years there easily can be no more life, biological or otherwise. (to late for uploading human minds in a machine)

 

Optimistic...?
That seems pretty much cadaveric for me...:bugeye:

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I mean... non-biological "life"...??
Cris... what is your definition of life??:bugeye:

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Kay,

There no facts concerning the future, only probabilities. The greater the extent of your knowledge and wisdom of the past then the greater the chance you have of predicting the future with any reasonable degree of accuracy.

Religionists rely little on knowledge only fantasies and illusions and will be ill-prepared for the dramatic events expected in the near future.

Truthseeker can indeed make beautiful statements but then most fantasies are of that variety. Truth tends to be harsh.

Cris

 

Well... he will always be with Agent@5...
If you think about it... it is in Agent@5's mind... so it can also be in his or her heart...

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Thats a great perspective, to constuctivley counteract that I will try I give you my interpretation of your questions.

For example how do you define life? : LIfe to me, and how it is has been socialised into my living is biological matter that produces energy and has a consciousness. Now that may differ from culture to culture, perhaps even from time to time, but what I am saying is relative to the time I live right now. THis in mind, what could or should be made is not relative to my experince of my dog dying a few months ago.

Power: In the context in which I have used it, I reffered to the idea that human knowledge of science has no advanced so much as to create its own life form. We have created the computer, it has not been to reffered to as 'life' as such, therefore there must be a difference between these two things. We do not have the skills+technology+knowledge to create life, therefore we have not created to force(power) to do so.

Machine: something that does not feel emotions. To me. I have not explored it past that as yet. If you have seen Blade Runner, the replicants are not considered human for this reason. Now, they interacted and performed as humans, and in the end discoverd 'love' .. this was the monumental point where they induced human qualities. HOwever the defining point, even though they looked, acted & spoke as 'humans' were not thought of as humans until this point.

PS I belive, the 'truth' if there is such a thing, can only be found by open debate. I dont claim I am right when i say these things, I am suggesting the most comphrensive idea I have available to me and throw it in here for contestation. I hope you guys know thats how I htink, just so you dont think im being arrogant.....

 

I'm sorry to dissapoint you Cris, but I don't think we will ever reach any conclusion on who is right and who is wrong, because we have such widely different views on the world. So maybe we can settle at that, that either we are both right, or both wrong?

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agree to disagree, I think thats the conclusion of most things

 

Agent wrote:

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
- Lord Kelvin, (1895), British mathematician and physicist

"The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it... Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient."
- Dr. Alfred Velpeau (1839), French surgeon

Agent, history is littered with the bones of those who thought impossible, what we take for granted today.

Can you imagine a debate taking place between Socrates and Polemarchus 2300 years ago, on the prospect that man might one day build a planetary network of high-speed electronic computers? They would scarcely have been able to pose the question, let alone be in a position to give an intelligent answer.

Thinking machines in the form of both men and dogs evolved rather haphazardly. Our eyes, for example, are an excellent example of outrageously "poor design." Our retinas are actually flipped backwards! The result is that we have a blind-spot in front of each eye. However, our eyes were not "designed," they evolved, and as you know, evolution proceeds through the modification of pre-existing structures. An intelligent designer would have corrected such an obvious flaw while the design was still on the blackboard.

My point is that thinking biological brains developed without the benefit of a designer. It took millions of years of evolution to produce a machine capable of thought. The thinking machine we very likely will design, has the enormous advantage of being designed by thinking beings. So, rather than millions of years, we might only need a hundred years to produce an intelligent life-form based on silicon, or gallium arsenide, etc.. Cris might make the arguement that we could do it in even a shorter time.

In the words of Michael Shermer, "It took 10,000 years to get from the dawn of civilization to the first powered flight, but only 66 years to get from wood and fabric airplanes to a Lunar landing." Yet the advancements in aviation are positively dottering when compared with the explosive growth of computers. When I studied first-year Algebra in school, there was a giant slide-rule mounted above the blackboard of the classroom. Have you ever even seen a slide-rule, Agent? I received a clunky, four-function electronic calculator for my Christmas present the following year. I was so amazed that I must have spent a hour just doing random long division on it. If you would have told me then, that in only twenty-five years I'd use a computer to write a letter to a girl in Australia from the top of a mountain in New England, I'd certainly have thought you were insane. Yet here we are.

I understand your reluctance to think of yourself as a machine, yet I would remind you that not so long ago people reacted the very same when it was suggested that humans are actually animals. A second stumbling block might be that you're thinking of machines in terms of automobile engines, and sophisticated calculators, etc. A machine capable of thought on-par with a human, bears a relation to today's computer in the same way that a CRAY supercomputer compares to an ancient Babalonian clay arithmetic tablet.

Agent, you naturally have a bias for biological life-forms simply because every life-form you've seen up till now has been biological. Yet what reason could you give me to suggest that inorganic chemical compounds might not serve just as well as organic compounds for the production of life? You have to explain to me why life can only be possible using the elements of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus, out of the entire periodic table of roughly 100 naturally occuring elements. You have to give me an explict reason why silicon, for example, might not be as useful as carbon for the creation of life.

The basic building-block of our brain is the neuron. It's a sort of switch which acts as a logic element. We each have roughly one hundred billion of these simple little switches in our heads (Incidentally, this is approximately the same number of stars in a galaxy, and coincidentally, the same number of galaxies we reckon are in the universe). The number of possible logical configurations these hundred billion switches might assume is beyond astronomical!

Kay makes the valid point that humanity might well destroy itself before it's able to create a non-biological life-form. The continuity of human life has never been assured. One thought of the fate of the Dinosaurs, or of our close relatives, the Neanderthals tells us that much. However, the precarious nature of our life should, if anything, only fuel our enthusiasm to produce a more robust form of higher intelligence. Humans are the product of an ongoing process of evolution. If we somehow manage to annihilate our own species in an act of global suicide, then we will become the end product of this evolutionary process. Another possibility is that evolution has brought us to the point where we could rationally design a being superior to ourselves, which in-turn would create an even more superior form of life...

Michael

 

KAy, i get your point, and there are many many variables. To an extent i agree with you. First of all, i am talking about today... the world i live in everyday, not what is in the future, what I know right now. ANd what I know right now may not be scientifically correct, but its what I know. And you may think I am living in ignorance, but there are many things a lot of us dont know.
I think my fallacie is that I am assuming a machine with a robot. Is thins what you mean?> coz then i disagree with you. RObots can be fixed when they 'die' new parts bit of welding here and there good as new! People its a diffrent story, you decay too fast after your death. Robots you have plenty of time to fix, not with humans. I AM TALKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW. It will probebrly be VERY VERY possible if we have the technology. But as I said before we dont right now!!!!! I never denied that it wasnt possible, only right now...

look, humans have little to cherish. Dont spoil it by giving us less purpose.

 

Actually, Agent@5 ...

He went off to that never-never land that all good dogies go to.

Even though that nasty vet. you took him to in hopes of saving Beau,
if at all possible, called the Vietnamese restaurant down the street and
had them pick up the carcass. Just think of how many total strangers
partook of, and enjoyed, your little Beau.

Do you grok what I'm trying to say?

Take care

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Re: Actually, Agent@5 ...

What about Vietnamese restaurant?

 

Chosen,

Dogs are seen as food in some parts of the world, and not pets. Puppy meat is quite popular.

Cris

 

I find that very disrespectful

 

Agent@5 ...

To whom was your comment directed?

Take care.

 

Re: Agent@5 ...

actually the comment you made beofre

 

Yes, he should not single out "Vietnamese" rather just mention Asians. Vietnamese people in America barely eat dog meat, Hawaiian locals eat dog meat, but back in Vietnam it is a delicacy...sad to say. Korea also...

btw, I'm Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

 

Okay, okay already ...

I promise not to disrespect veterinarians in the future by stating or implying
that anyone in that august profession would call an 'asian' restaurant to
dispose of a canine carcass.

There! Everybody happy?

Take care

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