> At 16:48 17/02/97 -0600, Ken wrote:
>
> >I am confident that both the grammar checker and the spell checker [you
> >mentioned] actually think.
>
> Can you define "think" please Ken? When I read this one of my cerebral
> hemispheres detached from their stump, and I had to screw them back on...
> now I'm thinking, maybe that was an unjustified reaction, but it hinges on
> how you define "think".
My working definition of thinking: Information/data manipulation,
resulting in actions to predict/control/describe various aspects of
objective/subjective reality. Note that this definition has NOTHING to
do with consciousness.
Consciousness seems to be intimately related to the self-programming
aspects of human memetic systems.
> >I'll want to concretize metaphysics to test this....
>
> Does that mean going round burying churches in solid concrete? Excellent!
Whatever the context was for what you were responding to last [it wasn't
the immediately preceding clip], your amusing pun describes how most of
the faithful would react if metaphysics *were* concretized.
If we wish to stave off the Raving Religious Right's "Antichrist"
[meaning deprive some poor innocent soul of the disprivilege of playing
that role], the religious stranglehold on the spiritual domains via
ignorance *must* be broken. I know we must be at the working tech level
of somewhere before 17th century chemistry, but one alwasy starts
somewhere.... It would be absurd if science broke down when dealing with
this domain--but that is the claim of most religions, apparently.
A second useful idea is protecting the environment. The mythological
Second Coming seems to be an armed takeover of Earth *AFTER* the planet's
ecology is completely destroyed, incapable of sustaining oxygen-based
life.
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
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