When writing code for both client and server, it's difficult to mentally "switch".
E.g. after writing some code in client, I'm starting placing curly braces in python's code :)
It would be nice to write both client and server in one language.
In my opinion, this argument have existential consequences: either it's not possible to emulate mind on turing machine or we don't have qualia and consciousness (it's just the illusion, that we have). And i don't like the latter.
"What's the difference between having an illusion of consciousness and having the real thing?"
Primarily, the word "illusion".
At this point, having read up on these issues for a while, anytime I see the word "illusion" now I tend to just shut the book/leave the webpage/whatever. Have you ever, once, seen someone sit down and say what they mean by "illusion", or give a way of telling you how to distinguish between "illusion" or "reality"? Maybe you have (no sarcasm intended), but I've never seen it, and without that the word basically just marks someone who is trying to sound insightful without doing the hard work of actually being insightful and saying something without leaving an enormous linguistic void right in the center of the argument.
Whether consciousness is only illusion is of no consequence. This path of thoughts (just like Berkeley's subjective idealism or its modern form, the Matrix movie) ain't leading anywhere (besides madness) hence it can be classified as solipsism.
In my opinion, what matters that you experience consciousness, life, happiness or sadness. Have great meals, love the people who love you, do cool stuff as a 'hacker'. Your life will be as 'real' as it could get, whether it's an illusion or not.
It's not just your opinion ;) This argument is about the nature of consciousness more than anything. It fights for a "subjective ontology" of the mental and is not easily dismissed as the earlier commentator would like to believe. The rapidity of upvotes and apparent sympathy to that claim by members of this community is certainly understandable given that the stance is anti-verificationist and presents problems for a purely scientific explanation of consciousness, but imho at our current level of intelligence/intellectual evolution a purely scientific explanation is horribly dehumanizing and insufficient.
Take a look at "Society of mind" by Marvin Minsky. We already understand pretty well that the mind is a colony of mostly independent system, working in various configurations. Here's the first chapter: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/minsky07/minsky07_index.html
As far as I'm concerned, qualia is just a fancy synonym for "soul". I don't miss it one bit. Consciousness on the other hand, that we have. Only it turns out to be a more elusive concept then we once thought.
According to the "Chinese room" argument, a machine is not capable of genuinely understanding a language (since it is only looking up and applying transformation rules). It is generally believed that a human can, so that would mean a human mind cannot be fully emulated by a Turing machine. The only alternative seems to be that a human actually has the same limitation as a Turing machine (non-consciousness) and does not really understand language either.
Internet is already influencing governments to some extent. Rally in Moldova last year (which become a riot) was organized mostly with Twitter and Facebook.
If you have a mac, open Spotlight and type "battle of trafalgar." You'll get a result from Dictionary.app with the date of the battle and a very short summary.
The answer to his question now sits on the hard drives of millions of consumer computers around the world. This guy must be some sort of anti-psychic.
I just highlighted "date of the Battle of
Trafalgar" from your comment, right-clicked chose "search google for..." from the resulting pop-up and had it in about one second.
I strongly suspect that no nearby shopping mall has done more business this afternoon the entire internet has this month, either. Kurzweil, this guy is not.
Why a day for a shopping mall and a month for the internet? Also, why just one nearby mall? Why not the entire internet vs. all shopping malls for an equal amount of time?
Of course, we'd have to ignore the business the shopping malls do over the internet. So maybe all in person transactions at all shopping malls vs. all consumer purchases over the web, for an equal period.
It would be nice to write both client and server in one language.