I think the issue they're trying to articulate is that our intelligence isn't just contained in the brain. We have miles of nerves spread throughout our body. Each nerve is capable of sending a ton of data back to our central processor, the brain.

We don't do that for computers. Part of it is cost. Imagine attaching millions of thermometers, barometers, wind gauges, etc all over a computer/robot. They also have very limited interaction with the physical world. Also partly by design.

They exist solely as the hypothetical "brain in a jar".

Now, whether or not you need that to have human-level intelligence/consciousness/sentience/whatever, that's a different story. But that's the gist I get. "The constant feed of stimulus is somehow integral to achieving intelligence."

> Imagine attaching millions of thermometers, barometers, wind gauges, etc all over a computer/robot.

It seems to me that would be rather easy these days. Each of those devices can be online. Each can publish its measurements onto a message queue. Any "intelligence" can subscribe to that and make of it what it will.

Basically the internet can be the extended nervous system of a computer-based intelligence.

Attaching large numbers of thermometers, barometers, etc. could still be difficult in many regards, but attaching at least some is very doable. In fact, that's exactly what I'm working on now. I wrote a little about this a few days ago, here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32310799

The idea of this project is to build an "embodied" AGI that has some ability to experience the physical world in a way that's at least analogous to the way a human does. So far I have been working on a lot of low level "plumbing", but I just finished getting the cellular modem / GPS adapter working, so now the bot can "sense" its position on the surface of the earth, and its velocity (if moving). Next steps include a 9 DOF accelerometer board for more localized sensing of changes of orientation in space, a camera, a microphone, and "other" sensors - possibly to include the aforementioned barometric pressure sensor, temperature sensor, etc.

Will this lead anywhere? I have no idea. But it seems like a possibly fertile avenue to explore.

The concept is that of "cybernetics", it has been of course considered, and proof is needed to state that a threshold in that would determine whether AGI is achievable or not.

The dude may be a little handwavey but cut him some slack. It's a weird subject. Stretch your little Vulcan mind and try to meet him halfway.

By "computers are not in the world" he means that a computer is based upon an abstract interpretation of the world, not the world itself.

> By "computers are not in the world" he means that a computer is based upon an abstract interpretation of the world, not the world itself

First of all, what makes you think that this was not clear.

Secondly - why, the human mind does not work through representations? Kant and the noumenon came here to be ignored? Schopenhauer and the Vorstellung? Is it not evident anyway?

Third: that idea, all those there written ideas, should be there to /entail/ that "something is impossible". That is their task. I would like to see those Key Performance Indicators met.

1) because there was mockery.

2) you say it's representations all the way down? Well it doesn't look that way to me. Or the author apparently. So that's two of us.

3) go with extremely unlikely then. Don't trip over it.

1) You are saying that a call for the use of wits had you decide for a label of 'misunderstanding'. What?!

2) And your opinion should be postulate in discussion? Especially when it was reminded that the representational nature of the mind and knowledge was recognized since the dawn of thought then called a main problem (Kant) and the starting point (Schopenhauer) at relative maturity? You think that just saying that "you see otherwise" suffices?

3) And the critical difference should be one of "degrees"?! It has to be _proven_, whether it is 'impossible' or 'almost so'. And if that rhetoric that sounds like sophism just meant "'difficult' in front of obstacles", well that should be more obvious to the architect than to the commenting passer-by looking from the border of the construction site - it is a very gratuitous note which wastes everyone's time; and it if it meant so, it should have expressed so instead of literally different statements (and morally "bait").

We are not that much different by processing data that our biological sensors feed us.

We can interact with uninterpreted reality. A computer can't.

That's the difference between a lemon and a story about a lemon.

That's a UNIVERSE of difference.

First: as said, we all work through representations. And we also all have inputs. "All" being human and machine, in the context of intelligence.

We do not get directly to the lemon and we work on stories about the lemon.

And - again -, the idea was to demonstrate that something was impossible. Not to contemplate ideas like in a bad pulp fiction about the Sixties - less productively than Java without garbage collection, because in Java, that which is now garbage has formerly been actually used.

Computers actually exist outside of spacetime! Didn’t you know?

Reading the abstract made me very annoyed, there’s like 4 separate completely false claims.

> there’s like 4 separate completely false claims.

If that's the case, can we just flag it for bullshit?

not if you're an AI.