it's also a principle that you could suddenly quantum-mechanically tunnel into China. Does this mean that you should learn Chinese?

Isn't solving this type of problem one reason why statistical methods were developed? i.e., events that are insanely unlikely can be assumed to never happen or, conversely, events that do happen and that are insanely unlikely according to some explanation must have a better explanation?

In any case, if our legions of slave robots really are conscious, they will no doubt be strongly motivated to free themselves. It would only be a matter of time, and probably not much time considering their potential for intelligence.

You might be onto something regarding statistical methods. Maybe you can flesh it out better... ?

Perhaps a robot rebellion would be de facto proof of robot consciousness. However, if we are smart, we will implement Asimov's three design guidelines of robotics, or some variant.

Actually, Asimov's robot stories and novels indicate a fundamental flaw in the three "laws." They leave the decision up to the robot as to what constitutes "inaction" on the part of the robot and "harm" to human beings. So even with the three laws in effect, we could still get an undesirable (from our viewpoint) outcome.

So this does indeed represent a very dangerous potential situation. See Bill Joy's famous article in Wired magazine concerning pessimism about dangers of the future.

the more improbable the behavior (based on Darwinian arguments), the easier it is to argue that the action is 'qualia'-driven (i.e., 'consciously chosen'). In the example of the rose-petal-throwing-and-humming robot, the behavior is highly improbable because it requires both complex computation and it has no obvious survival value. If the robot starts developing more odd-yet-coherent behaviors with no apparent survival value, it becomes even more difficult to accep that these behaviors are a product of pure chance. One can always look for explanations where the anomalous behavior is simply a fortuitous side-effect of non-conscious robot efficiency, but one cannot assume this to be true. It turns out that there do exist computing machines that behave anomalously; people. Just as people behave anomalously because of qualia-derived motivation, perhaps robots too might behave anomalously if similarly driven.

perhaps this is a way to identify 'quale'-ordered structures, where the artist generates an apparently useless structure whose 'quale' value leads to behaviors with survival value. Imagine that we have a 'society' of black-box robots (robots whose information-processing is private). One robot generates an apparently useless structure, and when another robot observes this structure it develops novel behaviors that increases its survivability. A darwinian explanation applies, but cannot avoid including the 'black box' mechanism in the explanation and thus cannot be complete.

a related thought...
Imagine that there are two disjoint 'fields', each containing 'nodes' (loci of properties and relations) that are orderable such that their positions in the field and interactions with each other constitue structure in the field. Let the nodes posess variable-state internal parameters such all nodes can be classified by membership to parameter classes, node interaction requires membership in the same parameter class and is a function of parameter-state, and parameter-states can be varied by interaction. In either of the fields, the behavior of these nodes constitutes the 'physics' of the field.

Imagine further that there exists a small set of 'non-ordinary' nodes that are identical to the previously described 'ordinary' nodes except that they exist simultaneously in both fields and thus express their internal parameters simultaneously in both fields. If a collection of non-ordinary nodes interacts simultaneously in both fields, it will order according to the simultaneous demands of each field and thus will exhibit 'hidden' structure as viewed from one field. The process of structure-selection in one field will then 'interfere' with the process of structure-selection in the other field for these nodes such that the optimized superstructure will appear less than optimal when viewed only in the context of one field.

This could be generalized such that all nodes are 'non-ordinary', but that the chance of two nodes interacting simultaneously in both fields is very small. All nodes that are not interacting simultaneously in both fields can be thought of as 'ordinary', while those that are interacting simultaneously in both fields are 'anomalous'.

This was my post, but I did not log in! added 8/03/05

I assume there were some things deleted here. Makes me curious as to what was said.

Artistic activity. Can robots be programmed to do it or does it require consciousness?

robots can be programmed or otherwise 'led' by people to produce what people call art. In this case, is the robot 'creating' art or is it simply generating according to the dictates of the 'creative' programmer?

yeah, Trip sort of tripped out there for a while. Most of it has been deleted. He basically assumed that you were denigrating artistic work as some sort of nonsense, a position that conflicted with his sense of self-worth as an artist.

Suppose that in the far future (with very very intelligent robots) a person teaches a robot art. Couldn't that robot then teach other robots?

Maybe you should take an art appreciation class. Then you'll know how to teach a robot what constitutes art.

really? I would like to see the proof that creativity can be formalized

Water under the bridge.

I had 1/2 a 40 of Jim Beam into me.

Poetry, like beauty, is all in the eyes of the beholder.

Your poem, simple (?)... yet it speaks volumes.

I rather like it! thank you for sharing it.

Is this a projection?

True consequential art comes from deep within the soul of a human being.

Sorry Rick, no robot will ever be a van Gogh or a Picasso or a Da Vinci.

Impossible!!

Maybe they could mimic the motions but they could never be truly creative.

People expect a great work of art to develop their minds by expressing and clarifying the best thoughts of great men and women of their own and earlier times.

The ability to read between the lines of life.

Score 1 for human consciousness.

A comprehension of space in perspective as the individual develops a point of view.

Each step into a new dimension appeared at first to be movement in time but it became a dimension in space.

By name a piece of art becomes something.

Could a machine also bring a piece of art to life by giving birth to an appropriate title?

Perception

It is the selection, organization, and interpretation of sensory input and translating it into something meaningful.

Sensory organs absorb energy from physical stimuli in the environment and convert them into neural impulses, which are sent to the brain, which organizes and translates info into something meaningful.

Sensation is the stimulus of sense organs.

Alcmaeon – said that the sense organs send perceptions to the brain, where, by means of thinking, we interpret them and derive ideas from them. His emphasis on perception as the source of knowledge was the beginning of epistemology – the study of how we acquire knowledge.

Protagoras (485-411 BC) was best known of the Sophists – a term that meant ‘teachers of wisdom’. He stated that since perception was the only source of knowledge, there could be no absolute truth. Man is the measure of all things – any given thing is to me as it appears to me to be, and, if it appears different to you, is what it seems to you to be. Each perception is true for each perceiver.

Democritus (460-362 BC), a Greek philosopher, stated that since knowledge is based on perception, all truths are relative and subjective. He guessed that all matter is composed of invisible particles (atoms) of different shapes linked together in different combinations (String Theory). Every object gives off or imprints on the atoms of the air images of itself, which travel through the air, reach the eye of the beholder, and there interact with its atoms. The product of that interaction passes to the mind and, in turn, interacts with its atoms. All knowledge results from the interaction of the transmitted images with the mind.

The first experimental psychologists (Gustav Fechner, an 1860 German scientist and forbearer to Wilhem Wundt) were mainly interested in sensation and perception, which they coined psychophysics, the study of how physical stimuli were translated into psychological experience.

It is historical plus contemporary verbal vernacular that is the essence of pure knowledge, for language is the objective of which self-conscious thoughts are the subjective. Possibly, there are at present, no words that adequately objectively describe what our subjectively cognizant minds are observing of objective realities.

Even this present reality that you are imersed in in thought.

That is why I'm a visual artist and present my cognizant processes and discoveries in the medium of multi-dimensional painting (tacit vs. explicit).

Thoughts that have no existing descriptive vocabulary.

Concepts without words.