newnumber6 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
newnumber6) wrote2004-04-14 08:13 am
newnumber6) wrote2004-04-14 08:13 am
Meme Sheepage
Okay, ask me three questions in a comment, yadda yadda yadda, I'll answer as truthfully as I can if I choose to answer at all (no, I'm not giving out my address or phone number. ;))
No holds barred! Except that I can choose not to answer something. ;)
No holds barred! Except that I can choose not to answer something. ;)
no subject
2. Have you ever asked a girl out?
3. What is your favourite style for your hair, like do you want it really short, medium, quite long and have you or will you ever have it said style?
Ask Me Three Questions and I'll tell you three lies...
1) Have you ever been in love? Well, it depends on your definition of love. I'm fairly generous with my terms, allowing even what many would consider infatuation to count as 'love'. Essentially, if I ever mentally told myself 'I think I'm in love with her', I count it. In that case, yes, many times. I can't even remember all of them. I can remember some of them quite clearly, classmates that I was friends or friendly with but could never reveal my true feelings, ones who barely were aware of me (as anything other than a classmate). Hell, I've been in love a few times with people who were entirely fictional, tv, book, or comic characters. (In the case of TV characters I even had the distinction to be aware that I was in love with the character, not the actress).
If you mean 'in love' as in a mutually loving relationship with someone, where I loved someone and I knew they loved me back... no, I don't believe so.
2) Have you ever asked a girl out? Not terribly a surprise to anyone, but no, not as such. Never asked a girl out, to go out, like as something which could be construed as a date. I've tried several times, but the words just wouldn't come, I'd freeze up. I have asked girls on various friend-related business, with no real dating expectation involved. Wait, does in my head count? Cause in my head, I've asked about a billion times. ;)
3) What is your favourite style for your hair, like do you want it really short, medium, quite long and have you or will you ever have it said style? My hair? I'm not terribly picky about it. I think generally I like the look when it's long, past a certain length. However, I don't mind it when it's short either, and it's often less of a bother (faster to clean and it doesn't get in my eyes when I'm reading). The in between stage really drives me nuts though when I just think it looks awful on me. So, either my vanity or my want of no irritation (or want to look respectable to get a job) wins out and I cut it short, or my laziness does and I let it grow long enough to where I like it.
no subject
What's your favorite historical time period? (historical. As opposed to non-historical time periods. Whatever the hell those are.)
(and the wonderfully generic...)
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Alternate Worlds, alternate lives...
Really, there are so many. Many I've plotted out in my head (and really, some I've actually typed out in a sort of ego-boosting-writing). The Marvel Universe is a good one, or perhaps even better the New Universe. However, I don't suspect I'd be lucky enough to be 'with powers'. Really though, the one I think of most often, the one I imagine myself working my way through, is Planescape from AD&D. Since it encompasses the whole multiverse, there's a 'quest to get home' aspect to being stuck there. I think I'd have a fair chance of surviving and perhaps having something interesting to do to add some excitement to my life.
To be perfectly logical about if, if I can assume I can do the 'walking through shadows' trick, then definately the Chronicles of Amber is the way to go, but that's cheating since it allows me access to any world I want. ;)
2)What's your favorite historical time period? (historical. As opposed to non-historical time periods. Whatever the hell those are.) Drat, I much prefer the non-historical ones! Hrm... my favorite to hear about is probably Ancient Egypt, with Ancient Greece and Rome coming in close seconds or thirds. If I had to choose one to be born into, probably somewhere medieval, or maybe just before the Dark Ages so I can try and forestall it and bring in a technological revolution. ;)
3)Where do you see yourself in five years? I don't know.
Most realistically, probably nowhere, at least nowhere significant. Puttering about in a nothing job, living in a small but comfortable apartment, and still online most of the chance I get. I don't really expect any improvement in my life. Much of what could happen depends on other factors beyond my control. By that time, I could have given up on society and taken up my goal of just walking across the country, possibly repeatedly. There's a not-insignificant chance I could even be dead. I don't know, I generally don't think about it too much.
These possibilities might look somewhat grim at first glance, but really, I gave up on hope as dangerous to me a long time ago, so I tend to, except occasionally in flights of fancy ('Wouldn't it be cool if I won the lottery!) to consider the future only in that light.
no subject
2) If you could travel anywhere in the world, but with the provision that you had to stay there for at least a year, and there was no guarantee that your needs would be met while there (so you would be left to your own devices as far as making money, feeding yourself, securing housing, etc.), where would it be?
3) Will computers ever achieve true sentience, or are they just limited to realistic simulations of intelligence?
Mind over Matter, Matter over Mind. Never mind, it's no matter.
Hrm. I have to admit I'm not terribly into pre-20th century works. Most of the stuff I've read there are of course in the SF category. Some of the works of HG Wells, probably, or Frankenstein. They're probably up there for sheer entertainment.
However, I think I'll give the nod to Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbott, which really opened my eyes to thinking of higher dimensional space. A lot of times I find myself considering things from the perspective of someone in a world with more or less than 3 spatial dimensions. Wow, that sounds intellectually pretentious. But, ah well. ;)
2) If you could travel anywhere in the world, but with the provision that you had to stay there for at least a year, and there was no guarantee that your needs would be met while there (so you would be left to your own devices as far as making money, feeding yourself, securing housing, etc.), where would it be?
Well, I'd probably cheat and say 'Toronto'. Since then there wouldn't be much worries, and I'm not particularly anxious to go anywhere.
If forced to choose someplace that's else, I'd probably choose Vancouver. I could possibly make a go of it, and if I couldn't, at least the weather's fairly nice.
3) Will computers ever achieve true sentience, or are they just limited to realistic simulations of intelligence?
Well, it's a many-parted question, depending on how you view it. To answer what I believe the thrust of it, I certainly believe 'true AI sentience' is possible. I don't believe there's anything particularly special about the brain that can't be replicated, eventually. This _may_ not be possible through just standard extrapolation and boosting of current computer systems; it might require an entirely new paradigm, a new system starting from the ground up, but I think it can be done (without the somewhat 'cheap' way of making it out of strictly biological components).
The more philosophical aspect of it is whether a sufficiently advanced simulation of intelligence counts as true sentience. That is, if a computer is, for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from a human intelligence, but when you break it down, all it's doing is say, following a hugely complicated state diagram (if XYZABG hold, respond in this way:), is that the same as a human sentience in which we feel we have a higher 'level' of thought, where the thoughts exist, as is... I don't know, but I think it is the same.
A sufficiently advanced simulation of true sentience _is_ true sentience, IMHO. The state-diagram representation of how the computer makes its decisions is not the mind, any more than the neurons firing in response to input in our brains is itself a mind. The mind is an abstract entity, bound to but divorced from the physicality. If that makes any sense.
Now, whether we'll actually develop truly sentient computers before we destroy ourselves, I'm not sure (of course there could be other alien races who have already developed them, or could develop them even if we don't, so I think the chances are high it will happen at some point if it hasn't already).