Re:“Computers enable fantasies” – the continued relevance of...
by pixl97 on Friday January 27, 2023 @02:01PM
(#34550200)
I mean it seems there is some conflation between the human mind and human senses, and the computer mind and computer sensing going on here.
You're stating that a large part of human behavior is reacting to the environment presented to them via sensory input/output mechanisms. What you have not stated is why a machine entity cannot do the same things?
What price is an airline ticket on the first day of a global pandemic? No one knows, and there isn't anything to provide a "procedural system" in order for it to model what our "intention" would be in those cases.
This seems obvious with a pandemic, but it is common place. Every day is a genuinely novel occurence, and counts only as a repetition of some superficial patterns in very very limited respects.
When this novelty becomes relevant to a problem can never, (obviously), be pre-stated because we don't yet know what that novelty is.
There is simply no substitute for being-in-the-world as animals are, that is: moving around, communicating, acting, reacting and participating. Growing, learning, reproducing, and problem-solving in direct causal contact with reality.
This isn't magic, but there is no "procedural model" of it; nor should we expect there to be. There aren't procedural models of almost any phenomenon.
What we can build a computer to do is "almost nothing", and we shouldnt expect the trivial problem space given by this to exhaust what we actually need machines to do.