Re: outsider everything

Posted by glen ropella on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/How-Laura-Poitras-Helped-Snowden-Spill-His-Secrets-NYTimes-com-tp7583618p7583715.html

Steve Smith wrote at 08/20/2013 07:18 PM:
> I depend on what you say about the way it works, but that doesn't stop me from seizing up when an opinion or decision is handed down that is "just plain wrong".  Lawyers, i suppose will try to trace back it's provenance to find where the flaw occurred.  Me, I just want to hold a mirror up to, or shine a light on, it's flaws.

I think this is the heart of the problems many people have with the speculation that computers (as we know them) are sufficient for generating consciousness.  I seem to remember Penrose making the argument that human mathematicians can "leap" to proofs (or methods of proof) that can't be found algorithmically (walked toward by purely mechanical means).  The same would be true of law as construction, rather than law as declaration.

At the end of the computation, if you can look at it and say "This is wrong", then you're effectively playing the domain expert in a face validation exercise.  It's tantamount to claiming "that machine can't or shouldn't produce that output".

I think the most interesting games are those immune to face validation, where either the declarations are impoverished compared to the constructions or the space circumscribed by the declarations seems much much larger than what the machine can construct.  If the experts can't tell whether or not the end state obtained through construction or (merely) chosen arbitrarily from the space of "legal" outcomes, then you have an interesting game.

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Roll up your expectations, and feed them into my sleep
 

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