

The Fundamental Distinction Between Brains and Turing Machines (2002) [pdf] - maximgsaini
http://web.mit.edu/asf/www/PopularScience/Friedman_BrainsAndTuringMachines_2002.pdf

======
tgflynn
This is a long verbose article that contains some confused ideas, however I
think it also contains some very interesting ones which could serve as a basis
for further consideration.

The two ideas I find most interesting here are:

A) True random numbers cannot be computed by a Turing machine whereas human
minds may have access to them. The author does not address the fact that it is
relatively easy to augment a TM with a physical RNG. I'm not aware of any
evidence that such an augmented TM can solve problems a simple TM cannot.

B) Human minds seem to be able to always abstract to a higher level meta-
language whereas programs/TM's seem to lack this ability. I have a feeling
this issue may be key to the difficulty in producing machines that seem "truly
intelligent" but I don't currently have a clear grasp of this problem.

The author makes a great deal of use of the term "consciousness" without being
very clear about what he means by it. He seems to be using it in the sense of
what I would call "true intelligence" or strong AI rather than in the sense of
"capable of having subjective experiences".

I have generally tended to hold the following "beliefs":

    
    
      1) Algorithms cannot have subjective experiences (strongly held).
    
      2) A strong AI algorithm could exist (somewhat weakly held). 
    

Issue (B) above leads me to question belief (2). Perhaps it will turn out that
"subjective experience" is necessary for strong AI and hence that no strong AI
algorithm exists ?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
It did have some interesting ideas, but too much "proof by handwaving" and not
enough actual proof. (It's fine if he's presenting ideas that he can't prove,
but he seemed to be trying to use enough words to give an impression of proof,
rather than admitting that he couldn't prove his ideas.)

