From: fudley (fuddley@fastmail.fm)
Date: Sun Jan 15 2006 - 23:02:14 MST
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 "Phillip Huggan" <cdnprodigy@yahoo.com> said:
> Yes silicon is versatile. Not as much as carbon, but
> probably #2 if you are building stuff.
I am not interested in silicon’s ability to form compounds, I am only
interested in its electrical properties.
> tracing the specific engineering roots of why we don't
> yet use carbon-based semiconductors.
I’m sure in a few years we will be using carbon-based semiconductors, it
should work great, we don’t use it right now because crystallized
silicon is cheap and crystallized carbon
(also know as diamond) is a tad less cheap.
> you've defined in the past that anything
> either is random or is not.
What I said is everything happens because of cause and effect or it does
not and thus is random. Nothing wrong with randomness, I know of no law
of logic that demands every event have a cause.
>True Randomness is unpredictability, unintelligibility.
Yes, and that is why it has nothing to do with “free will”, whatever
that means.
> People are using these rules to construct a class
> of computers called Quantum Computers that aren't
> the least bit random.
Not true, a properly programmed quantum computer can produce a true
random output, something a Turing Machine can not do.
> Here we can use Anthropic reasoning to conclude
> the entire universe is not truly random.
I didn’t say nothing had a cause, I only said everything didn’t have a
cause.
> Yes neurotransmitter molecules exhibit properties
> of a molecular computer.
No, they are not nearly that sophisticated. Neurotransmitter molecules
are more like a very low bandwidth ridiculously slow wire that has
serious crosstalk problems. And this kludge is the key to our humanity?
I don’t think so.
> In our neurons there is a specific system orientation
> that has to be maintained for emotions to emerge.
You are simply stating that brains can only be made of meat but you
don’t give one reason why this must be the case.
> You can't have computation without a
> physical computer substrate.
I think so, but you say people are not computers yet we know they can
perform computation, so one of your statements must be wrong.
> But your computer software only affects physical
> changes within your computer.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, if you can’t get answers out of
a computer it’s useless. My computer effects my CRT screen and my
printer, and those things effect yet another physical system, me.
> If you add robotics or nanotech or any sort of engineering
> to your computer, now you are affecting physical fields
> and particles and other mind-building tools. If you ask
> this type of computer to figure out a blueprint and then
> build it... viola, the computer can then kill us off or whatever.
Shit happens. One way or another the human race as we know it will
become extinct sometime during this century, probably in the first half.
John K Clark
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