UFOs, The Singularity Dooms-Day Scenario and why I like Zoam Chomsky [Aaron Sakulich]

Our friend Zoam Chomsky offers counter arguments, with supporting citations, to views expressed here (and elsewhere).

For instance, as a kind of rebuttal to my AI obsession, Zoam brought to bear, in an earlier comment here, John Searles’ view about Artificial Intelligence:

“A consequence of biological naturalism is that if we want to create a conscious being, we will have to duplicate whatever physical processes the brain goes through to cause consciousness. Searle thereby means to contradict what he calls "Strong AI", defined by the assumption that as soon as a certain kind of software is running on a computer, a conscious being is thereby created.

Searle argues that this is impossible, since consciousness is a physical property, like digestion or fire. No matter how good a simulation of digestion you build on the computer, it will not digest anything; no matter how well you simulate fire, nothing will get burnt. By contrast, informational processes are observer-relative: observers pick out certain patterns in the world and consider them information processes, but information processes are not things-in-the-world themselves. Since they do not exist at a physical level, Searle argues, they cannot have causal efficacy and thus cannot cause consciousness. There is no physical law, Searle insists, that can see the equivalence between a personal computer, a series of ping-pong balls and beer cans, and a pipe-and-water system all implementing the same program.”

You can read about John Rogers Searle here, from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searle

My counter to Philosopher Searle and Zoam would come from documentary film-maker James Barrat, who has accumulated the current thinking about AI and The Singularity in his book Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era [Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Griffin, NY, 2013]

Barrat offers too much to input here so I suggest interested persons get the book (from Amazon, where independent book sellers there offer it at good prices) but Barrat offers Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns (about computer evolution) writing that he (Barrat doesn’t think that Kurzweil’s view that The Singularity will bring about paradise but, rather, “... the shortest possible distance between our lives as they are and the end of the human era.” [Page 131]

Barrat open his Chapter Ten: The Singularitarian [Page 148 ff.] with these quotes:

“In contrast with our intellect, computers double their performance every eighteen months. So the danger is real that they could develop intelligence and take over the world.” – Stephen Hawking

“Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.” – Vernor Vinge

Now I could offer reams of counter material buttressing my belief that The Singularity and Artificial Intelligence are topics to conjure with….and I shall input more upcoming.

But for now, let me re-assert that UFOs may be AI constructs or piloted (manned) by AI constructs, either from our future, other dimensions, or, perhaps, alien (extraterrestrial) civilizations/worlds.

UFOs seem to have a fascination with other flying machines (aircraft, missiles) and facilities where such things are housed (airports, like O’Hare and atomic facilities as enumerated by Robert Hastings).

I’ve provided, earlier here, a few UFO episodes where the things seen or encountered seem like machines, with intelligence, rather than vehicles containing humanoid creatures:

The 1979 Robert Taylor encounter in Scotland’s Dechmont Woods and the encounter of Stefan Michalak near Falcon Lake, Manitoba in 1967 et cetera.

Zoam has written about the Michalak event here:

http://www.theironskeptic.com/articles/michalak/michalak.htm

I noted other machine-like encounters earlier here:

http://ufocon.blogspot.com/2016_03_08_archive.html

Our friend Zoam presents viable counter arguments to my views and the UFO communities views about UFOs but one can offer counter arguments to Zoam (and other anti-UFO people).

That’s the nature of debate, intelligent debate, and usurps the blather that generally encompasses ufological dialogue.

So, that’s why I like Zoam. He keeps me (and others) on our toes, and requires us to bolster our viewpoints with actual sustenance in place of inane opinion and wayward nonsense.

RR