Comments on: In the year 2030 http://virtualbreath.net/curious/2009/01/01/in-the-year-2030/ Little and big things that make me wonder Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:08:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: BobR http://virtualbreath.net/curious/2009/01/01/in-the-year-2030/comment-page-1/#comment-31 BobR Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:17:11 +0000 http://virtualbreath.net/curious/?p=141#comment-31 I think that there is a conceptual and theoretical problem with this opinion "Everything you say and do will be recorded by 2030." - As far as I have understood the main issues in artificial intelligence and in the philosophy of mind, it is virtually impossible to automatically record EVERYTHING somebody does or says, since you would have to define what it is that you want to record... If it's to be stored in a "verbal" or symbolic way, like "then she turned right, then she said 'hello', etc.", then it will inevitably not be EVERYTHING... since discrete descriptions of reality are always abstractions of a continuum that we cannot grasp by these means of representing the world and every action in this world... it's always a question of level-of-description, or would you consider that every movement of every atom should be recorded, too? No? well, then somebody could claim that you don't record EVERYthing! and so on... this is of course a never-ending story... and there would be very much debate about what counts as "something somebody does", and how to describe and record these "actions" or "handlungen" or "activities"... I think the idea itself of being able to simply record everything even a single person says or does is an illusion due to the fact that we as humans have these already interpretative cognitive mechanism in our mind that make us think we perceive the world as it is, while this is not true... and we only "see" our interpretation or construction of the world and this "nice story" is full of discrete "objects", like pencils, cups, and the like, while these are continuous phenomena in the physical world, without any clear cut boundaries at even sub-molecular levels... So I'm not at all afraid of being "fully recordable"... :-) I think that there is a conceptual and theoretical problem with this opinion “Everything you say and do will be recorded by 2030.” – As far as I have understood the main issues in artificial intelligence and in the philosophy of mind, it is virtually impossible to automatically record EVERYTHING somebody does or says, since you would have to define what it is that you want to record… If it’s to be stored in a “verbal” or symbolic way, like “then she turned right, then she said ‘hello’, etc.”, then it will inevitably not be EVERYTHING… since discrete descriptions of reality are always abstractions of a continuum that we cannot grasp by these means of representing the world and every action in this world… it’s always a question of level-of-description, or would you consider that every movement of every atom should be recorded, too? No? well, then somebody could claim that you don’t record EVERYthing! and so on… this is of course a never-ending story… and there would be very much debate about what counts as “something somebody does”, and how to describe and record these “actions” or “handlungen” or “activities”… I think the idea itself of being able to simply record everything even a single person says or does is an illusion due to the fact that we as humans have these already interpretative cognitive mechanism in our mind that make us think we perceive the world as it is, while this is not true… and we only “see” our interpretation or construction of the world and this “nice story” is full of discrete “objects”, like pencils, cups, and the like, while these are continuous phenomena in the physical world, without any clear cut boundaries at even sub-molecular levels…

So I’m not at all afraid of being “fully recordable”… :-)

]]> By: Ed Webb http://virtualbreath.net/curious/2009/01/01/in-the-year-2030/comment-page-1/#comment-30 Ed Webb Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:44:53 +0000 http://virtualbreath.net/curious/?p=141#comment-30 We will always have loved Big Brother... We will always have loved Big Brother…

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