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From: Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Do you condemn Hamas?
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2024 10:22:37 +0200
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On 6/9/24 04:41, bitrex wrote:
> On 6/8/2024 4:30 PM, john larkin wrote:
>> On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 16:08:51 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 6/8/2024 3:55 PM, john larkin wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 19:30:11 +0200, Jeroen Belleman
>>>> <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 6/8/24 16:45, john larkin wrote:
>>>>>> On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 09:54:42 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
>>>>>> <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 10:43:15 +0200, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 6/8/24 01:37, Cursitor Doom wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Fri, 7 Jun 2024 23:57:54 +0200, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On 6/7/24 23:11, Mike Monett VE3BTI wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> Jeroen Belleman <jeroen@nospam.please> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> On 6/7/24 16:49, john larkin wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>> [...]
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Actually, Hamas makes sense. They send Jews to hell because 
>>>>>>>>>>>>> they
>>>>>>>>>>>>> are heretics, and send Muslims to heaven to be blessed 
>>>>>>>>>>>>> martyrs. So
>>>>>>>>>>>>> for Hamas, killing is always win-win.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Some kind of sense, given that there is neither heaven, nor 
>>>>>>>>>>>> hell.
>>>>>>>>>>>> Religion, islam in particular, is only pernicious brainwashing.
>>>>>>>>>>>> There is no afterlife. There is only this life. Don't waste it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Jeroen Belleman
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Learn how to do soul travel. It is the most important thing 
>>>>>>>>>>> to do
>>>>>>>>>>> this lifetime. It will give you absolute proof there is life 
>>>>>>>>>>> past
>>>>>>>>>>> this one,
>>>>>>>>>>> and that you are immortal.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I don't know what soul travel is, but I'm sure there is no 
>>>>>>>>>> afterlife,
>>>>>>>>>> just as there was no forelife. There is no soul. My existence 
>>>>>>>>>> is the
>>>>>>>>>> result of an uninterrupted sequence of incredibly improbable 
>>>>>>>>>> events,
>>>>>>>>>> going back billions of years into the past, and I will cease 
>>>>>>>>>> to exist,
>>>>>>>>>> never to come back,
>>>>>>>>>> when some essential part of my body fails.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> While I'm certainly not looking forward to dying, I'm not 
>>>>>>>>>> afraid of
>>>>>>>>>> being dead. The need to believe in an afterlife is just 
>>>>>>>>>> another of
>>>>>>>>>> those weird religious ideas.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Jeroen Belleman
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Well, I'm not religious at all but am convinced there's an 
>>>>>>>>> after-life.
>>>>>>>>> And that's not just so I can feel all warm and fuzzy. I 
>>>>>>>>> actually find
>>>>>>>>> the prospect deeply concerning. I'd much rather be like you in 
>>>>>>>>> outlook!
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> How did you come to be convinced of the existence of an afterlife,
>>>>>>>> and what kind of experience do you expect to have?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Jeroen Belleman
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm afraid that's *way* too big and off-topic a subject for 
>>>>>>> expansion on
>>>>>>> this forum!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Designing electronics has obviously suggestions of quantum
>>>>>> consciousness, and even Einstein thought that QM was spooky.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Don't give up on miracles quite yet.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> You have referred to quantum effects in the brain many
>>>>> times. In as far as the brain is a chemical machine, and
>>>>> that chemistry is basically a manifestation of quantum
>>>>> mechanics, I agree. In practice, QM is just a level too
>>>>> deep in the abstraction stack. Somehow I believe that
>>>>> that is not how you see it. Would you elaborate?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> DNA and RNA and other things aren't flat linear molecules as the
>>>> cartoons suggest. They are twisted and tangled into writhing balls. So
>>>> any sequence gets continuously and randomly rubbed against the rest of
>>>> the string. That's a quantum cross-correlation machine.
>>>>
>>>>> Much of technology, electronics in particular, is a miracle,
>>>>> though not in the mystical or religious sense.
>>>>
>>>> I like the Barrie Gilbert essay, "Where do little circuits come from?"
>>>>
>>>> They are all out there in the infinite solution space, and it's hard
>>>> to explore an infinite space serially.
>>>>
>>>> There's nothing mystical about a universe that obviously works.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The "RNA world" hypothesis is that RNA is a very special molecule, the
>>> "killer app" that bootstrapped life.
>>
>> There are lots of people who want that to be true (never mind the
>> details) because they don't want to admit that other things might be
>> true.
>>
>> Nature has a rude habit of doing things that scientists didn't approve
>> of.
>>
> 
> I tend to be of the opinion that actionable scientific theories of 
> either how to get life to bootstrap from non-life in a lab environment, 
> or how to make a machine emulate the significantly human qualities of a 
> mind, will remain frustratingly elusive for the foreseeable future.

I'm with Dijkstra: Asking if a computer can think makes as much sense
as asking whether a submarine can swim.

Jeroen Belleman