Can Computers Pray? 294
GreyyGuy writes "Found an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education linked on Wired about an artist who made a prayer circle of computers that recite prayers to one another...." Reminiscent of an old Arthur C. Clarke short story, The Nine Billion Names of God, in which a group of Tibetan monks who believe the purpose of the universe is to name God in all possible ways - and buy a computer to speed up the process. The British techs who install the machine are skeptical, but when the program finishes its run they look up at the sky - and see the stars going out, one by one.
Re:pentagrams (Score:2)
Jesus was definately NOT born in the winter, but it just so happens that the winter solstice is on Dec 21. All Saints Day is the day AFTER holloween. Sabbats were subverted by Christians, Easter, All Saints Day and Christmas are the most blatent.
People refused to stop celebrating pagan holidays after the rise of Christianity in Europe. In order to Christianize those holidays their meanings were twisted.
LK
A thought from the article that scares me. (Score:1)
That thought scares me a little bit. Why must any intelligent entity (if and when computers do develop AI) be evangelized? Why can't intelligent entities make their own spiritual decisions?
Re:Wiccan softwares (Score:1)
0 == 0
Re:Wiccan softwares (Score:2)
What that effect is doesn't really matter now does it?
Believeing something strongly enough can make it be reality. Ask any doctor, haveing a positive outlook is a VERY BIG part of getting well when you're very sick.
Not that there is necessarily anything supernatural at play, but perhaps still beyond what modern science is capable of explaining.
LK
Re:Praying computers (Score:1)
mechanical prayer != prayer (Score:1)
I knew I'd heard that somewhere (Score:1)
Actually his proof is valid. (Score:1)
of God, by saying that for you to prove it, you
must at least be able to prove that yourself,
and the world, existed 5 minutes ago.
You can't do that. Because, everything _could_
hva just been created, complete with your memory,
All of our science and all of our knowledge, _could_ have been created with the world.
Besides, this whole world could just be an illusion, and all our technical data with it.
In reality we are all just sitting right besides
God, in heaven, we just don't know it.
You can never prove me wrong with science, because
I could just say: "prove to me that all your work,
science and view of life is not an illusion. Heck.. prove to me that YOU exist".
Of course, this isn't possible.
Now.. I don't believe in either God or the world
as an illusion, but I can't prove my view, and neither can you.
Re:Praying computers (Score:1)
Well... (Score:1)
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
Re:Praying computers (Score:1)
Like I said, I could be wrong, and these are just my vague ideas. They have absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever. There is no possible way I could test with any certainty that any event happened because I willed it. I could devise a scientific test, but I think it would still be inaccurate -- I may not be able to get into the right mindset, etc -- I am fairly certain that I couldn't do this under pressure. If I had 10 angry /.ers in lab coats standing around me waiting for me to "will" something, I am sure I would not be able to do it -- simply because their "counter-will" would be too strong.
Also, you caught an obvious flaw in the wording of my original post -- I don't see it as "fact" that I have willed some things around. I just think that some highly improbable things have happened partially because I was in the right mindset to "make it happen". This is a distinct mindset, and when I am in it, I know I am in it, and I always seem to have "good luck" in what I am trying to do. That's the only way I correlate the "good luck" and the mindset. Sometimes I do things so unlikely (like rolling 10 dice and all of them coming up "1") that I freak myself out and start laughing uncontrollably, and the mindset goes away. It comes and goes. I've also won blackjack games (not played for money, just fairly meaningless "chips") using almost no logic -- only being in this mindset and doing what my intuition told me to do. So, anyway, I'm not ready to go to the casinos yet. =) In fact I would probably be pretty distracted if I was in a place like a casino, combined with the fact that I would be risking money -- and I don't think I could hold that mindset for very long, if at all.
Come to think of it, when I have been in mindsets where I am almost certain I have "willed" reality around, it wasn't in a prayer like manner at all. But, whatever, I think thoughts could be more powerful than they seem; that was really the only reason I started this thread. I just wish I had more sources to back me up, now that I'm being challenged left and right. (They exist; trust me!) =)
The French word for 'computer' ... (Score:1)
Even then... (Score:1)
You just can't prove that any of our physical
laws are omnipresent. What if these physical
laws only apply to our concious world, but in
reality it is all an illusion.
You provide a scientific explanation to conciousness, but anyone can just as easily say
that for you to prove to me that the proof is valid, you must first prove to me that you even
exist. Neither is possible.
Re:Actually his proof is valid. (Score:1)
Examples:
You also can't prove that the world wasn't created 5 minutes ago by a giant pink elephant, and that therefore pink elephants will eventually throw off their oppressors and conquer the universe. Unfortunately, you're just a random mutation on another planet, so who cares what you think?
if (42==0) then {I am a giant pink elephant.};
The conclusion is true because the assumption is false. This is vacuously true. Similar to:
if (something unprovable) then {my favorite conclusion.};
Due to its nature, this is no way to argue *anything* correctly if you want real answers. A good counter-proof would involve two assumptions yielding contradictory results. They can't both be true, yet individually they should be. Therefore, there's something wrong with the approach.
Of course, that's just my opinion, much like the rest of philosophy...
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pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Of Course! We can use y2k to prove it... (Score:1)
1) If something thinks only logically and is affected by the year 2000, it must be Christian.
2) Computers think only logically.
3) Computers are affected by y2k.
Hence, computers are Christian, and hence pray!
(This conclusion follows regardless of whether Christianity is correct or not).
We can also show that (for preventing unwanted pregnancies), abstenence works better when combined with the pill... noone (that I have heard of) has successfully abstained while on the pill and become pregnant. With abstenence alone however...
Disclaimer (1): This post is tongue-in-cheak! So don't flame about Christians not seeing any reason from what you read in this post!
Disclaimer (2): I'm not bagging out Christianity in this post... I happen to be one who has [a very strange] sense of humour.
Re:Praying computers (Score:1)
I have little faith in modern medicine. I doubt that a cheap cure for Cancer or Osteoperosis or heart disease will be devised any time soon. (That's one reason I took matters into my own hands and became a vegetarian.) I don't have faith in the modern medical industry any more than I have faith in prayer.
Science, on the other hand, I don't have to nessecarily have faith in, but I know that it tends to work well sometimes. For example, if I fall off of a 10-story building, I can calculate without too much uncertainty what my velocity will be right before I hit the pavement. I would say that I have more faith in science (that has been proven to work well) than I have faith in prayer. All the will and prayers I can muster will not stop my bones from breaking from that impact.
Re:interesting... (Score:1)
My Boxes pray... (Score:1)
Father Torvalds, who art on the 'Net,
hallowed be thy named;
thy Penguin come;
thy will be done,
at home as it is on the LAN.
Give us this day our daily kernel;
and protect us from coredumps
as we protect others from GPF's;
and lead us not into Windows,
but deliver us from Microsoft;
for Linux is the power and the stability forever,
Amen.
Re:Somewhere.... (Score:1)
Re:If your computer prays..... (Score:1)
Re:interesting... (Score:1)
I don't see how my post could be considered "bigoted" until the "funny" label is slapped on it, really. "Funny" is in the eye of the beholder. My post was asking a valid question, and some people obviously thought it was funny, and hey, that's okay!
What is prayer? (Score:5)
What is prayer, anyway?
Well, many books could (and have) been written on this topic, but it's actually very simple: Prayer is communication. You can see this reflected in the English language itself, although it's become archaic: "prithee" is a contraction of "I pray thee."
Now, since we don't normally use the word "pray" anymore when we make requests of each other, "prayer" has come to have a slightly more restricted meaning: Prayer is communication with the Divine.
Well, what does communication require? This is really not that complicated, either. Communication requires two persons who are, well, communicating. So the question "Can computers pray?" really breaks down into two questions (as has already been noted): (1) Does God exist? and (2) Can a computer have personhood?
Question #1 is clearly a religious question, which has been around for centuries, and the mere fact of using computers to pose the question is not particularly interesting.
Question #2 is also not a novel one. Certainly, iMacs don't qualify as even remotely passing any sort of Turing test yet. And the question of personhood and strong AI is already a subject of vigorous debate, here on Slashdot and elsewhere.
Since iMacs are pretty clearly not sentient, the question of whether they are "praying" is simple: NOT! This is exactly the same as setting up a tape player on endless loop, and has exactly the same (non-)implications.
But let's look at this for what it really is: a work of art. Ms. Skeddle is apparantly some sort of artist, and "CyberRosary" is part of an art exhibit. Art is also about communication. What is Skeddle trying to communicate?
Well, based on her interview comments, her point is simple: "Catholic spirituality is empty noise, and consists of people robotically repeating words they don't understand."
Skeddle is a clever artist -- if she simply came out and said that in such a blunt fashion, it wouldn't be news -- it would simply be one more person bitter about a church, and attacking it. But since she uses computers, and tries to pose her "question" in the form of the future of spirituality and technology, she's managed to make her simple rant against the Catholic Church into "News for Nerds."
She's taking very little artistic risk here, as well, as she's "playing to the audience," given the anti-religious, anti-Christian, and especialy anti-Catholic bias of much of both the artistic world (where it's practically considered obligatory to at least tweak Christianity to be considered a "serious" artist) and of the computer world (where "creed-holding Christians are rare", according to the Jargon File).
the problem of those sorts of studies (Score:1)
1) How do you know those "assigned" are heartfelt in their prayers?
2) How do you know those assigned aren't praying for others too?
3) How do you deal with the fact that the patient's friends and family are probably praying for them, yet (perhaps atheist) relatives of other patients may or may not be?
With these and similar complications, it's rather difficult to isolate the effects of prayer (if any) on the patient since we don't know who may be praying for them.
Maybe prayers do help. Maybe they don't. I just don't see us being able to determine this based on studies such as the one you cite, especially since there's really no way to measure prayer.
Re:Score 4, insightful!!!! (Score:2)
howto prove something doesn't exist (Score:1)
It *is* possible to prove something doesn't exist. Anybody familiar with the prove that sqrt(2) cannot exist as a rational number? I'll reproduce it here (cuz it's cool...)
Cool proof? (did i get it right?)
The principle behind it is that, if you have a consistent system, then to prove something cannot exist you just show 2 observations that can't both be true (in this case A/B is both reduced and not reduced).
Normally, this only works well in mathematics. We can't be truly certain of everything science tells us (we can be pretty sure, but not 100%).
However, if you are a religious person, you may accept the Bible as 100% truth. If so, to disprove the existance of God, you only need to find two statements about him in the Bible that cannot both be true.
I know there are truckloads of contradictions in the Bible, but I don't know if any deal with the nature of God. If one exists, the only reasonable conclusions are that either God doesn't exist, the Bible is false, or the rules of logic no longer apply.
If God doesn't exist, that's what we were seeking to show all along.
If the Bible is false, that takes a big chunk out of the basis for God's existance anyway.
The last conclusion I've heard from several slippery fundamentalists regarding God's essence. If it's true, then we're all screwed.
Praying computers (Score:2)
Who knows (Score:1)
Re:This brings up an interesting point (Score:1)
Perhaps. There are more than a few problems with this idea.
Firstly there is the fact that nobody actually has much of an idea of how the brain works to produce the characteristics such as memory, (self) conciousness etc, that it does from the soggy substrate that it is. Simply having a neural net node for each neuron is worthless if you don't know how to connect them together. As someone (on comp.ai I think) once said "I have a computer capable of simulating every neuron in the brain of a fruit fly. If someone can tell me how the neurons in the brain of a fruit fly work, I'll simulate them." Needless to say nobody did, because nobody knows.
There are a lot of fundamental things about the workings of the mind and brain that congnitive science simply hasn't worked out yet. It is entirely possible that they will not be able to work them out at all. Consider: The more you know, the more (and more complex) the neural interconnections in your brain get, it is conceivable that the human brain will be simply too complex for a human brain to comprehend.
That said, I don't see that AI is an impossibility, simply that basing AI on human like brains and neural patterns is probably not the best way of going about it. Sadly I don't have any stunningly better ideas off the top of my head
interesting... (Score:1)
Re:Who moderated this up?? (Score:1)
Since I provided no proof at all, you are supposed to take my statement on faith. However, since I believe weasels can fly, I find it hard to fathom that anyone who really knows what's going on would think otherwise.
9 Billion Names Online Anywhere (Score:1)
Gods? Not likely. =P (Score:2)
After all the programming I've done, and all the hassles I've had in getting the damn things to do even half of what I want them to do, I can say without reservation that computers do not revere us as Gods.
They sure make me wanna use the Stark Fist of Removal© [subgenius.com] on 'em sometimes.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
Re:Who moderated this up?? (Score:1)
a bit dated, but still worth reading (Score:2)
perception and judgement oft exceed thine.
2.Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for chaos and madness await thee at its end.
3.Thou shalt cast all function arguments to the expected type if they are not of that
type already, even when thou art convinced that this is unnecessary, lest they take
cruel vengeance upon thee when thou least expect it.
4.If thy header files fail to declare the return types of thy library functions, thou shalt
declare them thyself with the most meticulous care, lest grievous harm befall thy
program.
5.Thou shalt check the array bounds of all strings (indeed, all arrays), for surely where
thou typest `'foo'' someone someday shall type ``supercalifragilisticexpialidocious''.
6.If a function be advertised to return an error code in the event of difficulties, thou
shalt check for that code, yea, even though the checks triple the size of thy code and
produce aches in thy typing fingers, for if thou thinkest ``it cannot happen to me'',
the gods shall surely punish thee for thy arrogance.
7.Thou shalt study thy libraries and strive not to re-invent them without cause, that
thy code may be short and readable and thy days pleasant and productive.
8.Thou shalt make thy program's purpose and structure clear to thy fellow man by
using the One True Brace Style, even if thou likest it not, for thy creativity is better
used in solving problems than in creating beautiful new impediments to
understanding.
9.Thy external identifiers shall be unique in the first six characters, though this harsh
discipline be irksome and the years of its necessity stretch before thee seemingly
without end, lest thou tear thy hair out and go mad on that fateful day when thou
desirest to make thy program run on an old system.
10.Thou shalt foreswear, renounce, and abjure the vile heresy which claimeth that ``All
the world's a VAX'', and have no commerce with the benighted heathens who cling to
this barbarous belief, that the days of thy program may be long even though the
days of thy current machine be short.
Joseph Campbell... (Score:3)
For most of my life I've been an atheist. I was a mathematics major, now I'm in engineering graduate school, and somehow the concept of God as used by the established religions was something that I just couldn't reconcile with the lack of scientific proof (and even proof to the contrary, such as evolution).
I suspect that many of you out there feel the same way. But please please please let me suggest you read some of Joseph Campbell's work (The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers is an excellent place to start). Campbell's views on what religion really is, and who God really is have pretty much changed my life. I can now call myself a spiritual person, and yet I didn't need to make any leaps of faith or throw out any of my more scientific views.
In fact (maybe as a bonus to many of you out there who actively dislike organized religion), Campbell actually likes to point out why many religion's have the right ideas, but they try and concretize them, and they lose their meaning.
I wish I could communicate my ideas better, and this is neither the time or the place to get into a long discussion of this (maybe another
Just read some Joseph Campbell.
LL
This brings up an interesting point (Score:2)
Also, I believe that her phrase "this CyberRosary has chieved the level of spirtuality as the catholic children" to be a gross simplification of the process of spirtuality.
Please visit FreeDonation.com [freedonation.com] - You can donate Food and Medicine for FREE to Save Children. The donation is fully paid by corporate sponsors. There is no charge to you. You can make one free donation a day. This site is FOR REAL.
The Nine Billion Names of God (Score:1)
The British techs who install the machine are skeptical, but when the program finishes its run they look up at the sky - and see the stars going out, one by one.
Now that's really an excellent piece of literature. Just last week or so I had an in-depth discussion about the very same Clarke story with my father (a serious biblio-freek with a huge library of his own, including a pretty complete take on classic sfi-fi). We came to a conclusion that there is some deep philosophy in those words, indeed.
Ok, this was off-topic, but I just had to add a note because of the deja-vu feeling I got from Roblimo's comment.
______________
Re:Can we mod this up till it's over the silliness (Score:2)
Religion is a way to cheat at sprituality knowing you'll never have any substance but everyone else will think you do.
OTOH, religion is the (practical) exercise of spirituality/faith. Religion without spirituality is meaningless; spirituality without religion is worthless.
I suspect you mean "organized religion", though. In which case, yes, it's one of the ways to do that. There are many others -- but none of them are bad in their own right. They're only bad when used to cheat.
-Billy
Re:iMacs? (Score:1)
Re:Who moderated this up?? (Score:1)
humans at the same spiritual level as computers (Score:2)
In fact her work seems to be prodding people to reflect on this kind of religious practice, "she hopes to inspire visitors to think about their own beliefs". Prayer as recitation or supplication or petitionary is only one small aspect of it.
Do you ever reach find some place without distractions -- a park or your backyard, a place where you are relaxed, comfortable, and restive but not sleepy, and then simply turn your attention to whatever is nice, and let your thoughts drift in and out, neither chasing them or pushing them away? Computers can't do that (and probably never will), but humans can, and that's the realization to take from Skeddle's work.
Re:What is prayer? (Score:1)
"...after all, if one's imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very important any more. "
--
"I was a fool to think I could dream as a normal man."
Re:Praying computers? (Score:1)
1) You believe that humans didn't come up with religion on their own, that they were given it by someone else. Presumably whatever divine being exists out there. Yet you claim that they got it wrong, and that doesn't seem to fit.
2) You don't believe in any divine being. Either that or he/she exists, but didn't tell us. In that case, humans really did figure it all out on their own. Why would humans fail but computers succeed?
Re:Joseph Campbell... (Score:1)
This "completely wrong" and "amazingly stupid" definitely goes for todays speciesism so ok, I'll read something by Joseph Campbell if you read "Animal Liberation" by Peter Singer. Thanks
Re:Joseph Campbell... (Score:1)
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true scienc. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery-even if mixed with fear-that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something which we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primotive forms are accessible to our minds-it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."
Skippy
Can we mod this up till it's over the silliness up (Score:1)
As for the Anti-religious nature of most techies these days. So what? Religion is a way to cheat at sprituality knowing you'll never have any substance but everyone else will think you do.
"Computers should be
Re:If your computer prays..... (Score:1)
Now the Gates was more subtil than any beast of the field which Unix had made
Muwahahahahaa! Reminds me of this [kevino.com]!
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"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Re:Score 4, insightful!!!! (Score:1)
That said, I try to tolerate atheists as much as I tolerate other religions. Religious intolerance is a Bad Thing as far as I am concerned, and thus I guess I shouldn't write what I just wrote, but I'm not perfect.
Re:Praying computers (Score:2)
The problem is that religous people always fail to differentiate faith based on reason, and faith based on dogma.
the whole "You can't prove evolution, I can't prove creation, we are both acting on faith" thing.
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Re:Truckloads of contradictions? (Score:1)
You will certainly find people that will tell you about supposed contradictions of the Bible. Whether you believe these passages are human error, misinterpreted, real contradictions, or unexplainable is your business, not mine. Here are a few examples if you're curious:
http://www.truthbeknown.com/biblecontradictions
http://members.tripod.com/~cygnus6/pageCon.html
http://www.ffrf.org/lfif/contra.html
I remember this study (Score:1)
In most of the rest of the world, even in Iran, science and religion are seperated to a large degree. I've heard a religious bilogist describe it as "I'm a catholic on sunday, a scientist the rest of the week"
Only in america some christians seem to want to mix science and religion, and apply the scientific methods to their religious beliefs. In my view this is as stupid and pointless as sacrificing a sample on the altar of the Shimadzu spectrograph to the spirit of enzyme kinetics.
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Re:I'm a gay christian (Score:1)
-Fran Frisina
==============================
Fran Frisina (franf@hhs.net)
Yes, you can make money on the web!
http://www.zero-productions.com/money
Re:Or how about a deeper question: (Score:1)
==============================
Fran Frisina (franf@hhs.net)
Yes, you can make money on the web!
http://www.zero-productions.com/money
Re:Aww. How sweet. God decided to help 10% of them (Score:1)
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Re:Not quite - a logical fallacy (Score:1)
I think another reply may have covered this, but here's a tidbit from a Critical Reasoning course that Cal State schools require all students to take-quite a good thing actually.
Requiring someone to prove that something does not exist is a logical fallacy, typically called "the burden of proof fallacy". This means that it is faulty resoning to state that your conclusions are valid becuase the cannot be disproved.
Re:Actually his proof is valid. (Score:1)
Because, everything _could_ hva just been created, complete with your memory, All of our science and all of our knowledge, _could_ have been created with the world.
Suppose I have a computer with a memory that doesn't forget things. I'm running this computer, and then I pull the plug. Cut the power. Later, I reinstate the power. The memory didn't forget anything, so (ignoring complications present in modern PCs) the computer continues along as though nothing had changed (my HP48 does this, to an extent).
Now suppose that I got this computer new-minted from the plant, and I go and set every bit in the memory myself, to make it resemble the system above. When I turn it on, it seems to be in the middle of a program, and no tool available within the computer could tell me that it had been first powered up only minutes ago.
(alternatively, go read Strata :-) )
--
Repton.
chuckle (Score:1)
LOL.
My
Quux26
Re:Not quite (Score:1)
Aww. How sweet. God decided to help 10% of them. (Score:1)
anyway... I seriously doubt you can alter reality and probabilities by just thinking hard about it. Unless, of course, you are boiling water, because everyone knows water doesn't boil if you stare at it.
Now, wait just a minute... (Score:2)
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Re:Stupid pseudo-philosophy (Score:2)
How can we trust our senses? The best one can say is that our senses are consistent. If we see an object and touch it, the two senses are consistent. But there are many well known illusions, optical illusions being the most obvious, which show our senses to be self contradictory. Therefore we can't trust our senses completely.
In a more formal sense, assume that senses only show us an objective reality. Then our senses tell us that we can induce inconsistent sensations by activating certain parts of the human brain with electrical signals. This is a contradiction, therefore our assumption was false. Senses do not always represent an objective reality.
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SPOILER! (Score:3)
It's standard convention -- as well as just plain common sense and kindness -- to put a "SPOILER ALERT" somewhere in front of said spoiler. I recognize that Roblimo was just tossing off an interesting tangential thought, and perhaps did not thinnk of it as a spoiler, but it was nevertheless. Please be mroe careful in the future.
On a somewhat related note, the guy who had the site about lightsabres (linked a day ago or so on /.) had the spoilers in a font color the same as the background, and directed you to highlight if and only if you wanted the spoilers. Not a bad idea for any of us who have that problem with our personal sites.
Reason vs. Faith (Score:1)
- Discoveries, factfinding are based on unique revelations, not repeatable. A certain knowledge was apparently revealed once, to once person: [insert random prophet type person here]. Your faith is therefor not only in god, but also (primarily) in the reliability of the prophet, and the people who repeated the story. The word 'hearsay' comes to mind. Was he lying? Was he making it up to get attention? Was he mad? Or did [random deity] really reveal [random religious truth] to him?
-In case of headache: [random prophet] is said to have made the headache of [person] go away by perfroming [religious ritual] many thousands of years ago.
Faith in reason:
-Discoveries, 'revelations', REPEATABLE. I capitalise, because any experiment in the scientific method is only valid if it is in principle repeatable. Facts can be checked and double checked by anyone willing and able to repeat the experiment. You are not forced to believe the experimentor on his word, or the publication you read the results in.
-In case of headache: Aspirin gives relief. Not in all cases of headache, but in a sufficiently large percentage of headaches, to have reasonable faith in the possibility that it will relief my headache. Not just today, but any day. Not just for me, but for anyone. It's repeatable, reliable, and we have unraveled the mechanism that makes it work. You don't have to be a chosen one to experience the miracle of headache relief.
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Prayer port? (Score:2)
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Re:If your computer prays..... (Score:2)
Lost our DECtapes
Evolving up
From PDP-8s.
I think that it's
Just writing in ROM.
Are we not men?
We are UNIX.
Are we not men?
U. N. I. X.
...phil
Re:Handmaid's Tale (Score:2)
I also remember that one of the points Atwood was making was the same one this artist is making -- that prayer degenerates into the meaningless repetition of stock phrases, especially in a community which harshly/strictly enforces religious doctrine/dogma.
Oh, and don't forget that the women in the Republic of Gilead could phone in (I think) prayers to be prayed for them.
Re:Stupid pseudo-philosophy (Score:2)
If we reject the validity of our senses, then we must reject with it all of our knowledge, and return to the state of infants. No rational person is willing to do that.
I have to disagree with you here. I think you'll find that many Hindu and Buddhist individuals believe that the ultimate truth is to be able to recognize the illusion. I am hard pressed to call these individuals fools or infantile, since the most compassionate, wise and contented people I have met have been Buddhist monks.
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Re:Wiccan softwares (Score:2)
For example the hex (what most of you think of as a pentagram before it's turned upside down) has many meanings to many different people.
The 5 points can represent the 4 directions of the compass and how the power of the spirit is above them.
It can also represent earth, air, fire, and water with the power of the spirit being above them.
Whether you draw it on the ground or see it in your mind as long as you belive in the symbolism it has the same effect.
LK
Faulty logic everywhere... (Score:2)
Exactly. It works well in mathematics because mathematics and logic are very nearly the same thing. Disproving the existance of a God would not be as easy as providing two conflicting observations, otherwise we would have considered it disproven thousands of years ago! Like I said, God belongs in the category of Supernatural, so any seeming inconsistencies can be waved off as miracles or some such thing. It isn't the territory of science.
We can't be truly certain of everything science tells us (we can be pretty sure, but not 100%). However, if you are a religious person, you may accept the Bible as 100% truth. If so, to disprove the existance of God, you only need to find two statements about him in the Bible that cannot both be true.
Woah, wait just a minute! Who said anything about being a "religious" person, or accepting the Bible as 100% truth? By "God" I am talking about a very abstract concept - some otherworldly consciousness that oversees or directs actions down here on Earth (and possibly elsewhere). This has nothing to do with fundamentalist Christianity. I would consider myself an agnostic on this, for the simple reason that there is no way to really know. If there's no way to know, why take a definate stance?
I know there are truckloads of contradictions in the Bible, but I don't know if any deal with the nature of God. If one exists, the only reasonable conclusions are that either God doesn't exist, the Bible is false, or the rules of logic no longer apply.
It doesn't matter. I don't doubt that there are contradictions, and I don't really care. You need to widen your scope of thinking a little and forget about a polar separation of bible literalists vs. staunch athiests.
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grappler
Re:Praying computers (Score:2)
Some studies have shown that hospital patients who are prayed for will statistically do better than patients who are not prayed for. The patients do not know that they are being prayed for. An additional study would have to be done with iMacs in a loop repeating prayers for hospital patients, and actual people repeating prayers for a different group of hospital patients. The results would be interesting, but I suspect that the computers would lose.
I base this hypothesis solely on my personal experience and thoughts -- which is that a part of me is operating on some non-physical level -- completely seperate from physical reality. Now, I am not religious, but I can attest to the fact that some improbable things have happened because I have "willed" them (sometimes with help) in a prayer-like manner.
Re:Thinking for more than 2 seconds (Score:2)
This is what caused him to posit the "Three Laws of Robotics" used in so many of his science fiction stories...which are, in effect, an artificially-imposed moral structure which made robots into humans' slaves. (It provided an interesting backdrop for, among other things, one slave's struggle for freedom, in The Bicentennial Man. There was also a rather hilarious short story in which the robots at an automated space factory spontaneously developed religion...)
While the Three Laws were an interesting structure, they always slightly annoyed me because the poor computer/robots essentially had their morals imposed upon them by a higher power, rather than having the chance to decide upon them for themselves.
A new e-commerce site for prayer (Score:2)
Re:Praying computers (Score:2)
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"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Re:This brings up an interesting point (Score:2)
1. There are more neurons in your head than computers on the planet. The number and nature of the interconnections are something that technology will not be able to duplicate for quite a while. Then you have to take into consideration the effect of hormones, nutrients and cellular respiration that also affect how the brain functions. Replicating that would be fairly difficult as well. I'm not saying that it is impossible, just impractical. You can already use neural networks for some amazing things. Getting a system up to the computational abilities of the human brain is a lot easier than duplicating all of the functioning of the brain. I seriously doubt that any actual researcher would go the extra light year just so their system can pray.
2. Supposing that there were some way to manufacture an artificial brain, the only way to get it to pray would be the same way you get people to do so. Brainwashing. The only reason that people pray in the first place is because someone told them they had to. Actually it's worse than that, their guardians typically resort to threats, intimidation and physical abuse when their little brainwashee's don't start to behave. That may not work with an artificial system.
I think that the artist made a good point about children. They don't understand what they are saying anymore than a computer, or for that matter, a tape recorder (remember those?). All they know is that this is what you must do whenever you are taken to the place of worship. (Catholics have it relatively easy, they only have to go once or twice a week. Think of the poor Muslim child who is dragged to the mosque 5 times a day.)
I wonder if more people would find the excercise silly if the computers all pointed east and chanted in Arabic. Would you personally have taken as much offense?
High-tech prayer wheels? (Score:2)
Re:Praying computers (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4)
Comment removed (Score:4)
Re:A new e-commerce site for prayer (Score:2)
I mean God's going to check his mental in-box, and he's going to start going through the prayers he's getting and he's going to come acrouse 536,000 identical prayers from the same guy. What's worse it didn't cost the guy anything in terms of time or thought! If I were a god I'd much rather have a single heartfelt prayer then thousands you just cranked out. So if I was a God, I'd be prety anoyed. Even if I didn't smite you right there (Come on, how many of you with you could smite spamers?) I'd probably stop listening to anything you said in the future.(Perhaps He can kill-file people's prayers) And it'll probably be counted against you when you get to the pearly gates. (St.P. : Oh, You're the one who's been bogging down our incoming prayer server...We've got a special fate picked out for you.)
So basicaly if there is a God this is a sure-fire way of geting yourself on His bad side. And if there isn't you'd have been better off runing SETI@home. It's a lose-lose situation.
Re:A new e-commerce site for prayer (Score:2)
Re:interesting... (Score:2)
What's next? Jokes about Jews and blacks?
"interesting... (score:5, funny)
by IgnorantAsshole (asshole@howdoIuseprocmail.com)
(User info)
A Jew, a spic, and a wetback enter a bar and..."
Re:Praying and quantum physics (Score:2)
If you even read a layman's book on quantum physics, you'll be able to see right through most "quantum mechanics proves our point" claims.
What REALLY irks me is when Christians try to use science to justify things.. I mean.. hello? The whole point of Christianity is that you have to believe certain things on FAITH.. What are you doing trying to justify them with science?
Re:As all programmers know.... (Score:2)
Thank you for providing the actual (crappy) data! (Score:2)
I wish the original poster had provided that link. (Come to think of it.. IS that the study he was referring to?) I was about to reply with a "I'll believe it when I see it" message. It's interesting that even the researchers are actually admitting that the difference is statistically insignifant.
Not that mention that I find the whole idea of using a (somewhat arbitrary) weighted score rather suspect.
Re:Do Computers Pray? (Score:2)
I don't see there as being a difference between the two.. I think thought and desires arise from those complex programs.
That sounds a lot like the movie Pi (Score:2)
It goes haywire one day and dumps a bunch of gibberish. It turns out that this 200-some digit number is the Key To All Things, and helps him call out stock trade prices before they show up on the screen, among other things.
The thing that made me think of this is that a certain religious group of Jewish numerologists wanted to get their hands on that number, believing it to be the true name of God.
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grappler
One minister's opinion...yes (Score:2)
Nobody (except Computer Associates' ad agency) seems to believe the current crop is self-aware. On the other hand, nobody seems to doubt that if humanity is still around in five thousand years, AI's will be sentient.
Any sentient being can pray. If computers currently appear to want to pray, I say let them.
I don't want their great-grandkids to come after me for repressing their ancestor's religious rights.
So, computers can pray. They have my permission and blessings. If anybody wants to deny that, I guess we'll just have to start another holy war.
Just remember who the machines are going to side with...
My 2 talents worth
hanzie.
slight correction (Score:2)
But they do still admit the weighting system is crappy and that a 10% difference is small.. So they reccommend further tests.
Not quite (Score:2)
I agree completely that Christianity trying to prove their point on scientfic grounds is an excercise in stupidity and futility. Science is about trusting what you can observe and test for yourself, while Religion is about faith, which has nothing to do with a concept of proof or observations.
However, science does not concern itself with anything supernatural. The Evolution/Creation debate and the question of whether there is a god, many gods, or no god are two totally separate things. In the first issue, science will definately point to evolution - we got here somehow, and we have evidence lying around suggesting how it happened. We're busy piecing it all together. Science has no place in the question of whether there is a god or not. Science can not prove the existance of a god. A miracle could happen tomorrow that would remove all doubt in people's minds of there being a god, but science by definition looks for a natural explanation.
And science most definately cannot disprove the existance of a god. You can't prove He doesn't exist! How would you go about it? It's entirely a matter of personal beliefs in which science offers no insight one way or the other.
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grappler
When it comes to religion, I'm fairly progressive (Score:2)
Doesn't it? I tend to consider myself religious in a reasonably spun out way, and I think that that's exactly what praying is about. Coming to terms with the wierd stuff at the back of your mind that you know is there, and want to influence, but don't understand. Look at the rosary. When you're trying to think about something deeply and properly, there's nothing better than those sort of all physical, repetitious tasks to get the brain moving. Whenever I'm thinking about something, I pace, and chuck a pen up in the air and catch it. It's crazy, I know, but it works. (Grant generalisation oncoming) Religion is all about using whatever means you can to make yourself a better person. (Craig has spoken) You've got to love these spun out debates.
Thinking for more than 2 seconds (Score:2)
...
Okay, I agree that the notion of such a thing (computers being religious) is mildly interesting to consider.. but not for more than about 2 seconds.
Actually, I think it's QUITE thought-provoking to suggest that a cluster of iMacs obviously mindlessly displaying prayers is no different from those young kids who recite prayers without understanding them.
Not to be short-sighted or closed-minded, as I don't usually dismiss all of the future-cyber-robotic warfare movies, but at our current stage in AI development, moral structure for computers is another one of those "sounds interesting" (for 2 seconds) ideas.
Again, I think such things are definitely worth thinking about for more than 2 seconds. A couple of decades ago, I'm sure most people thought modification of the human genome to create mutant superhumans was the realm of comic books (let alone sf novels).. And now we're already at that stage. One of the most dangerous things we can ever do is NOT to think about such things. That's what brings us all the harms of technologies. I think we should think of ALL the moral implications of technology LONG before they arrive.
Proof by contradiction (Score:2)
The entire universe sprang into being an infitesimal amount of time ago by the will of an omnipotent God.
Similarily there is no way to disprove the existence of God in general. There is simply no axiomatic or observational structure that can be trusted. The best one can do is to show that the observable world is completely consistent with scientific theories and therefore there are no mysteries which require explanation by supernatural forces. This is of course a daunting task, which requires a complete explanation of conciousness, among other things.
In the end, as long as there is death there will be believers in God.
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Re:Praying computers (Score:2)
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
Re:My computer prays every night, and it says... (Score:2)
Re:A new e-commerce site for prayer (Score:2)
From: God
To: sysadmin@CyberRosary.com
Subject: Unsolicited mass prayer
DO NOT SPAM ME EVER AGAIN
-g
You are all missing the point.... (Score:3)
Re:Praying computers (Score:2)
As with just about everything associated with Witchcraft, further research, using the appropriate tooling, is needed, and of course YMMV: if you're firmly convinced that it won't work for you then you're absolutely right, it won't, because that's the intent that you're intent on amplifying.
Re:Praying computers? (Score:2)
But I agree entirely that this "sit them round in a circle and have them chant something over and over" approach isn't prayer, it's nothing other than shallow (thanks for the word) mysticism.
For real ingenuity, the shape to arrange them around would be a chalk outline of Bill...
Re:Proof by contradiction (Score:2)
The only way I can prove that the world didn't come into existance an instant ago is prove that I existed more than an instant ago. My conciousness, however, is an instantaneous process. I need to use my memory to construct such a proof.
If I assume that my memory is valid, then I remember instances that my memory has been false. Therefore I can't trust my memory to be valid.
Since my memory is not necessarily valid, and all my observations are suspect, I can't prove that I existed an instant ago. Therefore I can't prove that anything existed an instant ago.
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Re:pentagrams (Score:2)