Jaron Lanier: Alan Turing and the Tech World's New Religion

View the entire video at: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/
Silicon Valley guru Jaron Lanier explains how the man credited with helping invent the computer also planted the seed for a new religion for technologists.

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News & Politics

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• jaron lanier
• alan turing
• silicon valley
• singularity
• ray kurzweil
• religion
• computer
• internet
• technology
• web 2.0
• you are not a gadget
• technologist
• Zócalo
• public square

[qulqunick]

The idea of the singularity is being made into a bit of a straw man here.

The more bare bones idea behind it is the idea of if computers could design computers improvements for computers better(IE do so quicker) than humans.

Because the human brain is a physical object it would stand to reason that an object to do its function can be made in some way (seeing as we already do that though intercourse). Thus an object to do one function of it but better is not too impossible of a leap.

[pistolino69]

this guy's breathing so hard i think he's gonna have a heart attack

[TheGrandGazou]

@hotamali I didn't say it right i think, i don't mean to say that we think at the speed of light, but that our psyche is bound in the physical world. There is no supernatural, so it's wrong to say that our consciousness could be slowed to eternity. It can be slowed (or better to say enhanced), but not to such exaggerated depths as some are claiming.

[hotamali]

@TheGrandGazou Well by that logic would it make sense with maybe more efficient wiring, our neurons could process at a faster rate? Our neurons aren't bound by the speed of light, but by the speed of neurotransmitters, which are very slow compared to the speed of light. The power of the brain comes from parallel wiring, not speed.

[TheGrandGazou]

@hotamali the "speed" at which you can experience things can speed up or slow down moderately, but nothing more. The brain is a physical thing. Cognitive processes are not supernatural, they are bound to physical necessities. If neuron's fire at the speed of light in order to process complicated thoughts, that is it's limit. It cannot process things faster or slower. The "speed" at which we process (or experience) things is what it is not just because we had no evolutionary use for slow speeds.

[hotamali]

Ok, come back soon. I Really enjoyed your point of view.

[hotamali]

Ok sophisticated troll. See you then.

[hotamali]

"Consciousness can only run 'at a certain speed' in some sense" Why is this? Different entities can experience time and consciousness at different speeds. Ask any stoner. So if you sped up indefinitely the clock speed of a simulated brain, it could perceive a second as near-eternity.

[hotamali]

Ok, I take back all of my attempts at civil discourse, since I've just read your comments page. GG Troll, your meta-crap wont work in the real world.

[hotamali]

However, "emergence may be simulated but it CANNOT be copied" Here I disagree. If we had sufficient computing power to simulate the universe at quantum levels, we could EMULATE consciousness (i.e. a perfect simulation)