[Haskell-cafe] Re: Re: Re[2]: Wikipedia on first-class object

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello Ben,

Saturday, December 29, 2007, 7:14:47 PM, you wrote:

>>>> "for a computer" is superfluous here. people are not smarter than
>>>> computers and can't do anything that's impossible for computers
>>>
>>> I don't think my computer can be sorry, but I know I can be.

i've about smartness, but well. i, your computer, is really sorry

and? it's only question of *your* perception. when you hear "a'm
sorry" from the man - you think that he does it. when you hear
ABSOLUTELY THE SAME from the computer - you *belive* that some man was
programmed it to speak. if you will believe that computers have free
will and people are directed by God/spirits - you conclusions will be
just opposite

the same true for thinking. it's you who believe that people are smart
by itself but computers are smart only in the bounds they programmed
by people. you may believe that human wisdom is created by the Creator
(or Natural Selection, if you believe in Science Religion) or,
opposite, you may believe that computers are smart creatures

but you select mean point. why? only because it's pleasant for people
to believe in their free will, creativeness, smartness and don't
believe in computers' ones. nevertheless, there is no difference
between acts of creating people by Natural Selection and cresating
computers by engineering

>>>
>>> And don't forget that there are 'undecidable' problems.
>>
>> Which I have never yet seen decided by a person...

> In many cases, equality of functions has been decided by humans, as has
> termination of programs. Of course this doesn't prove that humans can, in
> principle, decide equality for any pair of functions. But neither has the
> opposite been proved.

yes, it's great example of unfair treatment of computers vs people!

let's see - computers don't have general method of checking function
equivalence. and you conclude that computers are limited in their
abilities. but the people don't have it too! moreover, if some way
will be discovered - it should use mathematic notation which can be
used by computers too, so this immediately means that it's impossible!

but you don't want to notice it! instead, you notice that humans can
do it in some particular cases. and you absolutely doesn't notice that
computers can do the same. there is no general algorithm to find
algorithm of checking f.e., humans can only do it by try-and-try
method

so where is real difference? it's in what we have formal math model
for computers which allows to prove some theorems about them but we
doesn't have model for humans. does this really mean that they are
smarter? why you don't believe that Martians are smarter than humans
only because we don't know anything about them?

moreover, with assumption that humans are physical creatures and
strictly obey to the rules of physical world (and that's common
assumption for Science - are you believe in it) and with standard Physics
assumption that any physical objects may be described by mathematical
equations you immediately draw conclusion that humans are not smarter
than computers and both doesn't have free will. people aren't sorry by
free will, it is some circumstances together with their education that
force them to sorry - exactly like virus in your computer may force it
to say "please give me a choke". this is that your experience say, are
you agree? you never hear that anyone say "sorry" without some
previous cause as you have never seen computer saying "give me choke"
without previously been infected by a virus. it's only you that
believe that some of them does it by free will (but not without any
reason) and some doesn't it only because they are programmed by some
external activity. where is the real difference? ;)

-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin at gmail.com