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Thread: Scientists to prove life after death

  1. #1
    Information Architect Subway's Avatar
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    Scientists to prove life after death

    At the daily research of something interesting for my AI & robots weblog ( http://www.rogotworld.com/blog.php ), I found something very interesting(quoting my blog):

    Scientists probing the paranormal said on Wednesday they hoped to set up a major experiment in Britain trying to find out once and for all whether the mind can step outside the body at the brink of death. The proposed study would involve interviewing people who had survived cardiac arrest to see if they had had an out of body experience while on the operating table.

    Basically they will place different objects above the patients, that can't be seen by them if in the body. If they have a real out of body experience and can see the objects, then it's proven that the mind is not bound to the human body. The same experiment was done before, but can't be used as scientific prove because the EEG had some small problems and because there was a very small but reflective clock above the patient, read about it on this page and this wired article tells you more about the new experiment.

    So what has this to do with AI and robots? Because if our mind is not bound to the physical body, then our neuronal network is not the main source of our intelligence and an AI needs to do more then just mimic our brain to be like us. There are many theories how non-neuronal intelligence can function, one of the best known theories came from Roger Penrose and takes quantum effects into account. Read more about it in this article. I personaly hope that they prove a mind out of the body, but at the same time it would make the development of a strong AI very hard or even impossible.
    I just wonder why they not did that years ago after those thousands of documented NDE cases.

    Fredi
    Last edited by Subway; 09-11-2003 at 10:10 AM.
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  2. #2
    Running Plodding & Limping SpockBert's Avatar
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    I've seen experiments like that before, think it was on the discovery channel or something.

    They had this guy whose job was investigating sleep patterns, anyway he happened to come across this woman who claimed not only to have had numerous out of body experiences thoughout her life but had them as often as most people had dreams. So it wasn't from near death experiences/operations that sort of thing, she claimed to often have them at night while she slept, as it had happened to her since she was a small child, she considered it quite normal.

    Anyway the sleep expert, devised an experiment where he got her to lie down and sleep with all electrodes and all sorts of stuff wired up to her. High above her bed some 12 feet up, there was a shelf, on top of this shelf there was card with like a 6 digit number on it.

    After several attempts where she didn't have any out of body experiences, she did in one attempt correctly identify the number.

    The odds of her guessing that number are astronomical.

    Makes you think don't it?

  3. #3
    Information Architect Subway's Avatar
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    Thx for the short description of one of the links I have posted.

    Fredi
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  4. #4
    Running Plodding & Limping SpockBert's Avatar
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    whoops

    didn't even look at the links

    oh well...bollox to it...last time i type out something that long

  5. #5
    Information Architect Subway's Avatar
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    No more long posts? Damn it!

    Anyway, one more (of them damn links):

    http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence02.html

    Some near-death experiencers have seen events while outside of their bodies which have been corroborated by witnesses (called "veridical" events). Although such evidence does not constitute scientific evidence, it certainly qualifies as powerful circumstantial evidence, the kind of evidence often upheld in courts of law. The following are excerpts of NDE accounts demonstrating that experiencers see real events while outside of their bodies.
    Fredi
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  6. #6
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    There are some links in here or something...

    http://www.flashkit.com/board/showth...ighlight=death

  7. #7
    Information Architect Subway's Avatar
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    Originally posted by gSOLO_01
    There are some links in here or something...

    http://www.flashkit.com/board/showth...ighlight=death
    That was an April fool. (A good one)

    Fredi
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  8. #8
    An Inconvenient Serving Size hurricaneone's Avatar
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    Does having an out-of-body experience (whether while asleep or almost dead) prove that life after death, as a real state, actually exists?
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    I Mastered Dead Technology TallGuyLittleCar's Avatar
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    what would be the use of an AI that is like us? I would rather have an AI that evolves solutions to problems faster than we can.
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  10. #10
    Information Architect Subway's Avatar
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    Originally posted by hurricaneone
    Does having an out-of-body experience (whether while asleep or almost dead) prove that life after death, as a real state, actually exists?
    Yes. But maybe god kills you some minutes later.

    Fredi
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  11. #11
    Information Architect Subway's Avatar
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    Originally posted by TallGuyLittleCar
    what would be the use of an AI that is like us? I would rather have an AI that evolves solutions to problems faster than we can.
    The problem is that some of the things we can do, are very special and scientists have no idea how tro recreate it in software. (The non-computional problem)

    Thinking is not just logic and calculation and massive parralel computing, it's more.

    Just let a computer prove that natural numbers are invinite. Impossible, but we are very sure that they are. I think Gödel or Bohr has proven that many mathematical formulas can't be proven, but our mind knows that they are true.

    They need real thinking AI's for things our mind would need thousands of years to analyze it.

    Fredi
    Last edited by Subway; 09-11-2003 at 11:27 AM.
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  12. #12
    An Inconvenient Serving Size hurricaneone's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Subway
    Yes. But maybe god kills you some minutes later.

    Fredi
    Still, if you are killed (by who or whatever doesn't really matter I guess) during your out-of-body experience, you still don't get to come back and let us all know what's on the 'other side'

    As for AI, I read this the other day, about Singularity, and it blew my mind. I've been considering it's implications ever since.

    Check it out, even if you don't read it all, the first part is excellent.

    http://sysopmind.com/tmol-faq/orientation.html#why
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    FK's official coffee addict gasbag15's Avatar
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    Originally posted by hurricaneone
    Does having an out-of-body experience (whether while asleep or almost dead) prove that life after death, as a real state, actually exists?
    Well I suppose during cardiac arrest, the patient is scientifically/medically dead, still who knows. I guess we're all dying to find out :P

  14. #14
    Information Architect Subway's Avatar
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    Originally posted by gasbag15
    Well I suppose during cardiac arrest, the patient is scientifically/medically dead, still who knows. I guess we're all dying to find out :P
    There is no blood flow, no brain waves and this for hours. Your body can't be more dead.

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  15. #15
    Information Architect Subway's Avatar
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    Originally posted by hurricaneone
    As for AI, I read this the other day, about Singularity, and it blew my mind. I've been considering it's implications ever since.
    I actually read a book about it. Thx anyway. Have to go now.

    Fredi
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  16. #16
    An Inconvenient Serving Size hurricaneone's Avatar
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    Originally posted by gasbag15
    Well I suppose during cardiac arrest, the patient is scientifically/medically dead...
    I think that compared to what is likely to come, our current medicine is one step out of the Middle Ages, so although saying 'scientifically/medically dead' is as good as we know now - it's as far as we can see today - there is quite potentially a lot more to being 'on the edge of dead' than we can possibly consider.
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  17. #17
    I Mastered Dead Technology TallGuyLittleCar's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Subway
    [B]The problem is that some of the things we can do, are very special and scientists have no idea how tro recreate it in software. (The non-computional problem)
    you didn't answer my question. Why do we need an AI to do it? When we can.

    Thinking is not just logic and calculation and massive parralel computing, it's more.
    AI as defined by Drexler and Minsky is not just thinking. And can you prove that thinking is not more than logic and calculation?

    They need real thinking AI's for things our mind would need thousands of years to analyze it.
    Such as? many of the things we have problems with are due to a lack of data.
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  18. #18
    Information Architect Subway's Avatar
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    Originally posted by TallGuyLittleCar
    AI as defined by Drexler and Minsky is not just thinking. And can you prove that thinking is not more than logic and calculation?
    http://cognet.mit.edu/posters/TUCSON3/Yasue.html

    http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Sut..._Fodor_00.html

    http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines.../loglimit.html

    To anyone infected with the idea that the human mind is unlimited in its capacity to answer questions, a tour of 20th-century mathematics must be rather disturbing. In 1931 Kurt Gödel set forth his incompleteness theorem, which established that no system of deductive inference can answer all questions about numbers. A few years later Alan M. Turing proved an equivalent assertion about computer programs, which states that there is no systematic way to determine whether a given program will ever halt when processing a set of data. More recently, Gregory J. Chaitin of IBM has found arithmetic propositions whose truth can never be established by following any deductive rules.
    http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/v-Ch.14.html

    I suppose this is because so much of science is done that way these days; you simulate physical activity computationally. People don't realize that something can be noncomputational and yet perfectly scientific, perfectly mathematically describable. The fact that I'm coming into all this from a mathematical background makes it easier for me to appreciate that there are things that aren't computational but are perfectly good mathematics.



    When I say "noncomputational" I don't mean random. Nor do I mean incomprehensible. There are very clear-cut things that are noncomputational and are known in mathematics. The most famous example is Hilbert's tenth problem, which has to do with solving algebraic equations in integers. You're given a family of algebraic equations and you're asked, "Can you solve them in whole numbers? That is, do the equations have integer solutions?" That question — yes or no, for any particular example — is not one a computer could answer in any finite amount of time. There's a famous theorem, due to Yuri Matiyasevich, which proves that there's no computational way of answering this question in general. In particular cases, you might be able to give an answer by means of some algorithmic procedure. However, given any such algorithmic procedure, which you know doesn't give you wrong answers, you can always come up with an algebraic equation that will defeat that procedure but where you know that the equation actually has no integer solutions.



    Whatever understandings are available to human beings, there are — in relation particularly to Hilbert's tenth problem — things that can't be encapsulated in computational form. You could imagine a toy universe that evolved in some way according to Hilbert's tenth problem. This evolution could be completely deterministic yet not computable. In this toy model, the future would be mathematically fixed; however, a computer could not tell you what this future is. I'm not saying that this is the way the laws of physics work at some level. But the example shows you that there's an issue. I'm sure the real universe is much more subtle than that.
    http://members.cruzio.com/~devarco/info.htm

    Physicist and mathematician, Roger Penrose, has championed the idea of quantum consciousness in his two most recent works, The Emporer's New Mind and Shadows of the Mind. Penrose suggests that there is something going on in the brain that is beyond what we now know in physics, something of a noncomputational character. He proposes that through a type of quantum superposition, the microtubules, long tubes only a few nanometers in diameter which inhabit the neurons of the brain, actually process information in non-linear ways that are well beyond what a digital computer could ever duplicate. In other words, computers could never mimic the brain's neurostructure.
    http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu.../Lecture12.htm

    ...

    Fredi
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  19. #19
    Information Architect Subway's Avatar
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    Originally posted by TallGuyLittleCar
    Such as? many of the things we have problems with are due to a lack of data.
    Yeah, one of the missing data could be us. Just think about a software development cycle. You code a tool. Then you get input from humans that test or use that tool, then you do the next version based on that input. If you now have a strong AI, then you could release version 1.0 software that has all the features and usability of a version 10, 20, 30 software.

    Fredi
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  20. #20
    Under the influence bvgroote's Avatar
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    I think the intellectual capacity of my brain has been reached by reading this thread

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