StringJunky

Yes, it's a strategy used by many political groups. I think the redder Tories know they won't get away with it. A blackhole, which is the NHS, is always gagging for money.

I think it stems from the brain's default mode to put things in boxes. When the thing being boxed fails to find a match it will llook through itself to find some thing to match it. When it starts thinking really hard, maybe motivated by beliefs, it will concoct a category for it in the direction of those beliefs.

This cartoon illustrates that MO quite well: We need them because we don't know what we need in the future.

NO. It is a dessicant. It has an affinity for water. They love each so much and it takes energy to separate them.

Time to get your card out. How many OS versions since xp? You cannot reasonably expect backward compatibility for this long, given the rate of change..

I know your not, I meant it rhetorically, but that's an obstacle.

How does one discretely segment a process, that is a continuum, to allow us to answer that question? If we look at a rainbow, where does one colour start and another begin? Only if we look from far enough away do we see sharp banding i.e. we have less data available.

The way I look it can be expressed as "All swans are white until we find a black one." There is an expectation but, as yet, no confirmation. I'm disinclined to speculate because there is nothing to work with that has gained any traction. The present knowledge is too vague and fuzzy to commit to a binary position.

You are probably not far wrong there.

I think it will just happen somewhere with the starting gun for AI going off recently.... after that they will try and figure out how it happened. Let us hope we know when it happens.

If it responds like a human, then another human will sense the same familiarity as they would with another human... it would pass as an autonomous thinking device.

Because we don't know the language/sensory model they use, so how can we know? Using other organisms is a non-starter because there is no intrinsic familiarity between bees and humans. With humans as familiar models, we can collate, correlate subjective experiences and objective observations to bring us closer to a useful description.

Using anything other than ourselves will get you nowhere because what reference do you have, we don't know the subjective experience of bees but we do of ourselves.

When a posse of expert people say it has. Confirmation has to come from that 'system' it is trying to emulate. That system is our consciousness, which is needed as the reference point.

Right. Yeah, magnets. I was trying to think what is magnetic in a modern tv and forgot about the speakers.

Could it be from static electricity in or on the tv?

1, A machine is an apparatus, which may be of physical or virtual construction, that can perform useful work. 2c Once it passes that test, then we know what is necessary for consciousness. 3. I was wishing to keep to the operative/process side, rather than the nuts and bolts... obviously, such a device won't be the same in construction and likely won't pass sight differentiation. We cannot know a priori what we need to know. This seems to be a feature to me of emergent phenomena.

A machine is conscious when we can't discern the difference functionally.

"Ooh, look at my little Johnny, he's the only one marching in step."

It could be ten years or more before it is released, subject to approval.

Think about it, but don't let your brain fall out. This is a science forum, which means we are voluntarily binding to sets of agreed standards; aliens do not yet meet the evidentiary thresholds.

@Sensei might know

There is, and there is going to be more water in the sea... I don't know how that cannot be seen as a physical fact. Saying that we might not be to blame and therefore shouldn't feel obliged to do anything about it is pure asininity.