cRPG

Off Topic => General Off Topic => Topic started by: Xant on June 11, 2014, 07:22:12 pm

Title: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 11, 2014, 07:22:12 pm
http://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/do-rationalists-exist/

 8-)
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 11, 2014, 08:12:40 pm
The idea of rationality is absurd anyway. We are very advanced machines, nothing more.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 11, 2014, 08:16:11 pm
The idea of rationality is absurd anyway. We are very advanced machines, nothing more.
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 11, 2014, 08:22:17 pm
Would you say that a machine sometimes makes irrational decisions and sometimes makes rational decisions ?
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Tomas_Miles_again on June 11, 2014, 08:25:18 pm
The idea of rationality is absurd anyway. We are very advanced machines, nothing more.

I agree with your second statement (minus "nothing more"), but the first one is probably overlooking something key to working out how these machines work.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 11, 2014, 08:51:33 pm
Would you say that a machine sometimes makes irrational decisions and sometimes makes rational decisions ?
No.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Christo on June 11, 2014, 09:03:25 pm
Would you say that a machine sometimes makes irrational decisions and sometimes makes rational decisions ?

Kafien pls
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 11, 2014, 09:07:21 pm
No.

So, how can humans do that ?
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Tomas_Miles_again on June 11, 2014, 09:10:18 pm
OH SHIT HARD DETERMINISM
HAPPY FEET
WOMBO COMBO
WHERE YOU AT?!?!
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 11, 2014, 09:30:03 pm
OH SHIT HARD DETERMINISM
HAPPY FEET
WOMBO COMBO
WHERE YOU AT?!?!

I plus because no idea what this is
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 11, 2014, 09:34:31 pm
So, how can humans do that ?
Drugs are dangerous, Kafein.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Christo on June 11, 2014, 09:46:59 pm
Drugs are dangerous, Kafein.

Drugs are dangerous. Kafein.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Teeth on June 11, 2014, 09:47:20 pm
Is this surprising?
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Tomas_Miles_again on June 11, 2014, 09:47:58 pm
What a fucking loaded question anyway. Rational and exist in the same sentence. Piss off to an academic forum with your academic questions Xant!
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 11, 2014, 09:51:28 pm
I'm ok with rational biases, being aware and resistant to them etc.

However, at a more basic level, you can't call things rational if they don't have an actual objective to maximize. Machines and humans alike are pure processes. If we consider a function that takes the state of a human as argument then we can unequivocally determine what will that human do. We don't need to assign to that human a goal to describe his actions. That is true regardless of whether the actions taken are called "rational" or not by an observer.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 11, 2014, 10:10:45 pm
Whatever it is you're on Kafein, I would dearly like to sample it
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 11, 2014, 10:40:59 pm
Oh well I wanted to start a conversation. It's a nice article.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Chosen1 on June 11, 2014, 10:43:56 pm
Whatever it is you're on Kafein, I would dearly like to sample it

You made a thread to discuss an article, and then someone tries to discuss and you insult them. wut
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Daunt_Flockula on June 11, 2014, 10:55:07 pm
You made a thread to discuss an article, and then someone tries to discuss and you insult them. wut

Sounds quite like Xant to me. The entire thread is just his subliminal e-peen attempt anyway.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: WITCHCRAFT on June 11, 2014, 11:28:37 pm
Do... do people exist at all, man? It's like... like, what if it's just a dream...?

Or like, maybe... we're, like, all part of a real person's imagination... and he's real and we're imaginary?

Like, dude... that guy would be God.

*stares at Pink Floyd poster for 23 minutes, silently crying*
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Utrakil on June 12, 2014, 01:21:29 am
Pure rationality is no function of human.
Because fast decissions are vital in many situations and our RAM is limited we have to solve most tasks by simplyfying the equations.
Like this we get a pretty good model of the word in which we can judge and react fast.
Unfortunately this fast reaction is such a big part of our nature, that most people refuse to even try to solve an equation in all it's  accuracy.
More educated people are mosly trained better to take their time to solve a problem. But in everydaylive even they use the simplyfied lifemodel to interact with the world.
And this is completely neccessary. Imagine A person waking up one morning starting to calculate every step he takes during the day by it'S full extend.
He wouldn't be able to figure out if he should get up or not befor it is getting dark again.

So pure rationality would be a deadly feature for a human being.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Molly on June 12, 2014, 10:04:05 am
A classic "Xant" - gonna be gud :D
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Prpavi on June 12, 2014, 10:36:09 am
No they don't, cuz of feels

visitors can't see pics , please register or login
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Umbra on June 12, 2014, 10:48:18 am
Dont you know?

Feels>Reals
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 12, 2014, 11:39:46 am
You made a thread to discuss an article, and then someone tries to discuss and you insult them. wut
Now, now, better rein in those ASSumptions a little bit.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Tagora on June 12, 2014, 01:19:49 pm
I lost my post by accident.  Basically: "rational elite" can't be proven to exist because (as per article citations) there is no way to quantify them.  Also, Kafein was wrong about humans because the nothing he so aptly refers to is what's responsible for all the technology and progress we've made today.  Thank our consciousness (& the metaphysical pondering thereafter) for that.  Finally -- anatomically/psychologically, the human brain is almost nothing like a computer.  Look dat shit up, yo.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: [ptx] on June 12, 2014, 01:29:11 pm
Human brain is quite a lot like a computer. There are plenty of artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms, based on how the human mind works.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Herezy92 on June 12, 2014, 01:32:07 pm
Aww, please ... this talk, and made by Xant... c'mon Kafein... Xant! why awsering ????
Why ? why ? why ? why ? WHY ?!

But okey, let me add something interesting in this thread then :

(click to show/hide)

FrenchKiss
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 12, 2014, 02:02:32 pm
Human brain is quite a lot like a computer. There are plenty of artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms, based on how the human mind works.
You say "quite a lot", Tagora says "almost nothing like", yet you two aren't necessarily even disagreeing. Depends on how you define it. Certainly, some processes are computer-like, but over all, the similarities aren't that striking. Learning how the human brain works would definitely help with developing AI, though. Which isn't guaranteed to be a good thing.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 12, 2014, 02:21:30 pm
I lost my post by accident.  Basically: "rational elite" can't be proven to exist because (as per article citations) there is no way to quantify them.  Also, Kafein was wrong about humans because the nothing he so aptly refers to is what's responsible for all the technology and progress we've made today.  Thank our consciousness (& the metaphysical pondering thereafter) for that.  Finally -- anatomically/psychologically, the human brain is almost nothing like a computer.  Look dat shit up, yo.

Electrical currents in your brains completely describe your so called "consciousness". What's responsible for all the technology and progress we've made today is also present in animals. And actually it's present in computers too, if you simulate it.

You say "quite a lot", Tagora says "almost nothing like", yet you two aren't necessarily even disagreeing. Depends on how you define it. Certainly, some processes are computer-like, but over all, the similarities aren't that striking. Learning how the human brain works would definitely help with developing AI, though. Which isn't guaranteed to be a good thing.

We already know pretty much all we need to know about the brain to develop AI that does the same as human brains. Neural networks are already a thing in AI, and theoretically those are universal learners. We just lack the computing power.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 12, 2014, 02:23:15 pm

We already know pretty much all we need to know about the brain to develop AI that does the same as human brains. Neural networks are already a thing in AI, and theoretically those are universal learners. We just lack the computing power.
Source?
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: [ptx] on June 12, 2014, 02:23:56 pm
The current algorithms are nowhere near advanced enough for that, regardless of computing power. It's all ongoing research, afaik.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 12, 2014, 02:26:18 pm
The current algorithms are nowhere near advanced enough for that, regardless of computing power. It's all ongoing research, afaik.
Yep. To even claim that we understood brains well enough to build a computer capable of the same thing would be to claim that we understand consciousness perfectly and thus can replicate it -- nope.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 12, 2014, 02:33:20 pm
Source?

A neural network can approximate any function down to arbitrary precision :
http://scholar.google.be/scholar?q=Neural+net+universal+approximator&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=ZpyZU9WuD6G9ygPD2oGgAQ&ved=0CB4QgQMwAA

Take "human behavior" as the function you want and voilĂ . Anything that has a finite number of inputs and outputs can theoretically be learned by a computer.

Yep. To even claim that we understood brains well enough to build a computer capable of the same thing would be to claim that we understand consciousness perfectly and thus can replicate it -- nope.

We don't need to understand consciousness to replicate it.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 12, 2014, 02:45:39 pm
A neural network can approximate any function down to arbitrary precision :
http://scholar.google.be/scholar?q=Neural+net+universal+approximator&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=ZpyZU9WuD6G9ygPD2oGgAQ&ved=0CB4QgQMwAA

Take "human behavior" as the function you want and voilĂ . Anything that has a finite number of inputs and outputs can theoretically be learned by a computer.
That isn't how it works.

Quote
We don't need to understand consciousness to replicate it.
Yes, we do.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 12, 2014, 03:20:12 pm
Look I'm arguing like you now.

That isn't how it works.

Yes it is.

Yes, we do.

No we don't.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Xant on June 12, 2014, 03:51:54 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_consciousness
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 12, 2014, 06:30:13 pm
What about a computer being able to mimic a human perfectly, from an outside perspective (same inputs, same outputs) ? Would that prove that the machine has "consciousness" at the level of a human ?
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Tagora on June 14, 2014, 07:23:16 am
Your thesis is wrong.  Machines are entirely rational because the languages that operate them are literal and have precise meanings.  Do you think Boolean algebra is irrational?  People, on the other hand, are quite susceptible to irrationality and bias.  The only time a program seems "irrational" to you is when the person who wrote it made an error.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 14, 2014, 04:44:14 pm
Your thesis is wrong.  Machines are entirely rational because the languages that operate them are literal and have precise meanings.  Do you think Boolean algebra is irrational?  People, on the other hand, are quite susceptible to irrationality and bias.  The only time a program seems "irrational" to you is when the person who wrote it made an error.

Well, no. By that logic a computer is irrational because cosmic rays can influence it.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Leshma on June 14, 2014, 04:51:02 pm
Computer is digital machine. It can run algorithm or not run it at all (due to malfunction). But what it does will not be affected by cosmic rays.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: SirCymro_Crusader on June 14, 2014, 05:02:20 pm
.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 14, 2014, 06:32:27 pm
Computer is digital machine. It can run algorithm or not run it at all (due to malfunction). But what it does will not be affected by cosmic rays.

Yes it can.
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Leshma on June 14, 2014, 08:30:26 pm
Well you got me there. Cosmic rays are broad concept.

Wouldn't that be like hacking?
Title: Re: Do Rational People Exist?
Post by: Kafein on June 14, 2014, 10:01:40 pm
Well you got me there. Cosmic rays are broad concept.

Wouldn't that be like hacking?

Well no, the sun doesn't try to steal your bank account details. I guess it depends what you mean by "like".