On the topic of intelligent design Take for example a computer's operating system and its hard drive. You could associate this to the human mind and the physical brain. The operating system needs to be on the hard drive, hooked up to a working computer, to use all the functions of the operating system. No matter how much you zoom in and look at the hard drive, you will never see what the operating system is capable of. Zooming in on the brain will never get you a glimpse of where concsiousness hides. Can the operating system exist outside of the hard drive? Yes but, it is completly worthless sitting there on its installation cd. Zooming in on this disk will still not give you a look at all the awesome things it can do. It needs to be in a vessel that can use all of its features. Can the mind exist outside the physical brain? probably, but much like the installation disk, what use is a dormant consiousness? plus there is no way to get a consiousness out of a brain, there are no cd burners that hook up to our heads. the intelligent choices our parents made in selecting a partner designed us. same as their parents did and so on. if A.I. takes over the world say a million years from now, would they be trying to zoom in on their hard drives to see there operating systems. or wonder of a way of taking the Artifial intelligence they have off their drives? Would they wonder if they were made by a higher power that used intelligent design? (Or would some say, like the Linux OS, as it goes along people now and in the future selectively make the program better and better and find a way to make the program test and do for itself to find a way through out time to become better and better and evolve into a highly complex stable OS.) would they be trying to know everything there is to know about there original operating system God creator? Could their minds understand what it is to be the all omnipotent Bill Gates?
Hi Truth Hurts, Just some comments. It’s a bit pattern. If you diagnose the pattern then you will understand the features of the OS. It’s a set of neural networks. Once we are able to locate and diagnose all the networks then we will understand ‘consciousness’. This seems to be only a matter of time. The approach is to scan and digitize the neural networks and transfer the functions to a computer based substrate, otherwise known as mind uploading. It’s a goal currently being actively pursued. The singularity is expected within decades. I'm not sure where religion enters into this though.
Also, it's not at all clear that computers are the result of intelligent design. If intelligence is the primary cause of computers then why didn't cavemen design computers, since they are just as intelligent as modern man? It seems to me that computers evolved just like everything else. I.e. there is no evidence of anything being the result of intelligent design.
the same reason that cavemen could not take a rocket ship to the moon is the same reason we cannot time travel.(if possible) they were more stupid than us as we are more stupid than than those who will be here thousands of years from now. i believe in natural evolution but it takes a long time to happen naturally. youve got to admit that we now are tweaking and hurrying it along faster than it has ever gone naturally. cavemen were not ever as intelligent as we are. they were taught little bits by each other through time and we now teach each other loads and loads of info every day.
Truth hurts, No. You are confusing knowledge with intelligence. Homo Sapiens have had the same brain size throughout their existence, i.e. cavemen were as intelligent as modern man. The primary difference between us and them is that we have acquired more knowledge. And we will remain as intelligent as those that follow unless we take steps to specifically alter our own genes to favor greater intelligence and other factors. So yes in this respect we are at the start of beginning to direct our own future evolution.
RE: Cris Agree. It seems that the human brain is at its culminating point. Computers will take over. They can think/process info faster in greater areas of data (then we). Now they are in the role of tools but it's only temporary. At some point we will not be able to follow/control their thinking/processing. When their (for the humans) ununderstandable conclusions will show correct in testings, we will have to follow/trust their directions. It's inevitable.
To quote the movie WARGAMES Starring Mattew Broderick... "I'll piss on the spark plug, if you think it will do any good." (what the chubby general said to Dabney Coleman when the "Whopper" computer wanted to start a nuclear war.) (we will alway kick the computers ass and then just unplug it) If you are defining intelligence as the amount of neural pathways we have as remaining a constant. then I state the following... Through selective breeding, we have always wanted to "during a drunken saturday night" wanted to bang the stupid chick, but we want to marry and have kids with the smart chick. iterestingly enough you should read all the info the hospitals give parents of newborns nowadays, interesting trivial bits of information like a newborns brain is 60% fat. the neural pathways continually develop at a rapid fire pace until about the age of 21 when brain cells start to die off and no new cells are created. so they encourage these parents to expose their children to classical music "which they beleieve promotes more pathways" by stimulating the "artistist part" of the brain. we are ever forward tweaking and pushing forward the faster creation of more and more neural pathways by selective breeding by choosing not to have reproductive sex with screwed up people. (it is said that we use 10% of our brain consiously, yet when einstien died they did tests on his brain and concluded that he had instead of 10% usage, he had at his disposal 12% of his brain for thought. did this extra 2% make him such a genius? is he the beginning of the evolutionary change that our great great grandchildren will all be naturally in the fuiture? yet einstien did have kids and one is in a maximum security mental hospital with the most severe case of paranoid schizophenia they have ever seen... I guess its true, there is a fine line between genius and insanity.)
Truth hurts, Take care with those urban myths. In the developed more prosperous world the bright parents have few children. In the poorer, undeveloped world, less intelligent parents have many children. The result is likely to be a decreasing value in world mean intelligence. The rate of neural death is so slow that it will take many hundreds of years to have any noticeable effect. But it is not the number of cells that are the most important it is the number of pathways and these can be significantly increased by mental stimulation. New neural connections can continue to be created in all normal healthy humans. Yup it was said long ago and was also dismissed as a myth quite some time ago.
quote*******In the poorer, undeveloped world, less intelligent parents have many children. The result is likely to be a decreasing value in world mean intelligence. this is a flat out racist comment, you stated that cavemen and us today have the same amount of intelligence. the poorer nations have more children simply because the death rate is higher, and when they grow up(if they grow up "and then get jobs") thats more money coming back to the familiy...not to stupid if you ask me...but then again thats how our social security system is set up. (hey have bunches of kids write taxes off, your kids will pay us pack ten fold what we give you in savings.) their "lack of knowledge" to be able to be great salesmen and scam the pharmacitical companies like a pro, and rake in huge salaries to afford the medicine the great smart men that create and deserve to be rewarded for doesnt make them stupid for not doing this... geez to bad they choose to be not ambulance chasers.
