[Evan]

Originally Posted by ygolo

I know it quite well, I've had to show the undecidability of the halting problem for homework sets.



These are also points of contention. I am not saying you are wrong. But the Church-Turing Thesis remains a thesis an not a known fact.

Spend a little time writing and debugging compilers. It's amazing how often humans see optimizations that even the best optimizing compilers don't. This doesn't prove that we ARE made up of stuff that that sets us apart from the kind of stuff that can't solve the problem. But I am pointing out that it is open in either way.

So, sure, humans are better at certain things than computers (a lot of things actually). That's right now, though.

I'm not saying any of this is "fact". I'm just saying its the interpretation that makes by far the most sense given the information we do have.

Put it this way:
what if describing human reasoning algorithmically is equivalent to solving the halting problem?

Then how do interactions between cells do it? It can't be incomputable, because it's already been done.

And it's not like there were ever any "intuitive leaps" in humans' programming. Think of it this way -- the earth has solved the problem of creating consciousness. The earth is just a piece of matter. The problem has been solved before -- we know it is solvable.

I am arguing against that word in particular, even (especially) if you go bottom-up. It may be possible, but there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical till it's actually done.

There are some who believe that consiousness is actually quantum coherence of a particular type. What if the threshold of consiousness needed for human reasoning is such an intricate entanglement of the coherent states, that by quantum mechanical principles, it is not possible to recreate it by setting the "pieces" with initial conditions (chaos theory, comlexity theory and other such things can be evoked to pose siimlar problems)--IOW, what if we have to enlist one of our existing biological processes like reproduction as the only way to reproduce human reasoning without ever deciphering how those bioligical processes creates human reasoning.

I see what you're saying. I just think that interpretation fits less data than mine. Sorry I can't really go point by point on this one.

(Honestly, how could it be impossible to create a human reasoning system when it's already been done???)