Kurzweil against an AI critic: (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, September 15, 2010, 01:08 (4991 days ago) @ dhw

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ray-kurzweil-responds-to-ray-kurzweil-does-not-understand-the... 
> Dhw, 
> 
> As I consider your question more on whether I think it is possible, Kurzweil's discussion at this link certainly makes it seem possible. At the same time I find it hard to say it IS when we don't have a firm grasp on what consciousness IS? Trial by error, again...
> 
> As this is one of the many subjects on which I am horribly ignorant, my response is made with some hesitancy, but I'm here to learn.
> 
> Kurzweil says that thanks to modern technology "we can see how our brain creates our thoughts and see how our thoughts create our brain." Modern technology can certainly show up the activities in the brain, and the respective locations of our different mental processes, but I do not get the impression that Kurzweil actually knows HOW thoughts are created. If he did, would he not be able to build his sentient robot now? I find his statement extremely misleading, and your own comment on consciousness (along with the scepticism of B_M and David) reinforces my doubts.
> 
> Kurzweil asks what makes the brain "capable of self-organizing and learning from its environment?" If he is to build a human brain, should he not also be asking what makes the brain capable of consciousness, creativity, imagination, love, empathy, self-doubt, arrogance etc.? You've quite rightly identified my main interest as being whether such a "human" robot is possible, and the discussion you've referred us to seems to me to ignore most of the attributes that actually make us human. There are primitive organisms that are perfectly capable of self-organizing and learning from their environment.
> 
> Kurzweil talks repeatedly of "massive redundancies", suggesting that the brain is in fact far less complex than it seems. Since he hasn't solved any of the above mysteries, I wonder ... very speculatively ... if what he calls redundancies might not turn out to be the equivalent of what was once thought to be junk DNA. Or of course there is the possibility that there is more to the human mind than meets the technological eye.-Your comments, coupled with Dunstan's has reminded me that there is more to being human than what goes on when we think. The experience argument is firmly lodged in my mind now, and I will have to chew on it a bit to see if I still find a human AI is possible. -At the same time, nothing here will be learned by not trying; I'm as committed now as I was when we first broached the subject: we won't learn about the brain (or the mind) by sitting still and theorizing. It's time to get dirty and do the work of a madman!

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"