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From: jbuck@epicen.UUCP (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.math
Subject: Re: Mind as Turing Machine
Message-ID: <258@epicen.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 2-Nov-85 22:06:49 EST
Article-I.D.: epicen.258
Posted: Sat Nov  2 22:06:49 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Nov-85 07:26:58 EST
References: <1996@umcp-cs.UUCP> <667@hwcs.UUCP> <2031@umcp-cs.UUCP> <212@ucdavis.UUCP>
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 23
Xref: watmath net.philosophy:3102 net.math:2509
Summary: x

> From: cccjohn@ucdavis.UUCP (John Carlson)
> 	1)  Assume you could design a Turing-like machine equivalent to
> 	    yourself.
> 	2)  Then you could comprehend all of this machine's actions,
> 	    because you would know all of it's inputs and outputs.
> 	3)  Then you could comprehend all of your actions.

Statement 2), even when applied to a much simpler system that a person
(such as a theory of the natural numbers 0, 1, 2, ...), is what Godel
disproved. That is, even though we write down exactly what the rules of
arithmetic are, there are an infinity of statements that we can't determine
the truth of. This is a common fallacy made by people who argue against
machine intelligence: that knowing the inputs and the rules of a machine,
you understand it completely and it can never surprise you. This just isn't
so.

If you personally don't suffer from this limitation Godel discovered (as
some people like to argue) I have a few computer programs I'd like to
have you debug. :-)
-- 
Joe Buck				|  Entropic Processing, Inc.
UUCP: {ucbvax,ihnp4}!dual!epicen!jbuck  |  10011 N. Foothill Blvd.
ARPA: dual!epicen!jbuck@BERKELEY.ARPA   |  Cupertino, CA 95014