FooBarrington

joined 3 years ago
[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

It's not really possible to give a concrete answer without a concrete definition of "understanding". But unless you assume supernatural explanations, either systems must be able to "understand", or humans are also incapable of "understanding", since we ourselves are physical systems too.

For instance I feel that a gravity coin sorter is made with understanding but does not have understanding

I get the example and agree that such a coin sorter does not meaningfully have an understanding of gravity. But IMO it does have a (minimal) understanding of the different coins you're sorting, since it contains a mechanism for differentiating between their sizes.

Imagine we replaced the gravity mechanism with a bunch of actuators controlled by organic neurons, which are connected to something like an eye. The neurons fire and cause the actuators to sort the coins. Now, if say the neurons just react to brightness levels it'd be hard to argue there's an understanding. But if the neurons are part of a real human brain, they can definitely understand the coins etc. and sort based on their understanding.

As you take away more parts of said brain, when does it lose the understanding?

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world -2 points 10 hours ago

No, and if you want to discuss the philosophical idea, please don't waste my time with dumb questions.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 0 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Yes, I think it proves that understanding does not require consciousness.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 0 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

No, you're still a necessary part of the system, since otherwise there is no interaction possible. And yes, I don't think understanding relies on consciousness.

Where is the semantic difference?

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (8 children)

I'd like to add a rebuttal I tend to agree with: You're only a component of a larger system, and the whole system (you + the room + your list of instructions) does encode some understanding, otherwise a chinese speaker wouldn't be able to interact with the room in any meaningful way.

In almost any system, you can look at a specific part and argue that part doesn't fulfill a property that the entire system taken as one does.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wouldn't it be more sanitary to clean them beforehand?

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Fair, though I'd like to mention that you don't need a pot to boil something. It's enough to use sticks to move/roll hot stones into a natural bowl-shaped indentation. Sounds complex, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened at least a couple times before pots.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

Yeah, throughout human existence I'd guess that no preparation method is more common than "throw it in a pot and boil it". Can't go wrong with that for almost any food - even if the texture isn't amazing, you can't really over-boil most stuff to where it's dangerous.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

And all that while they're off the air? Oh, duh, time travel.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago

No thank you, not interested. I've wasted too much time giving the benefit of the doubt to people after they misattribute such decisions. It never leads to anything worthwhile.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Unfortunately I can't take you seriously if you really think this:

Are you telling me the people behind the decision to ban certain mods due to bigotry were holding a stance of “we are more than happy for you to publish your content, just not here for completely unrelated reasons” or are we being serious and we accept the fact that the stance is an explicit “these mods should not exist and we don’t want any part of them”?

The "people behind the decision" are business people who were worried about ad revenue due to being associated with such mods. These people don't give a fuck about the mod being available anywhere else as long as it doesn't negatively affect their own bottom line. So yes, I'm telling you exactly that.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago

The limits of the countries where the businesses operate, and any ethical and moral limits the people behind the company see?

Come on, at least give arguments instead of asking questions with obvious answers.

 

It doesn't stop. It just never stops.

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