In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.

[clintruin@mastodon.social]

@glutto @mattsheffield
For god's sake don't give them any ideas!

‍️ jfc

[clintruin@mastodon.social]

@fishidwardrobe @mattsheffield
️

[clintruin@mastodon.social]

@PeachMcD @distractal @mattsheffield
"So I do consider atheism a form of religion, just not organized as many others are"

Well...yeah. Atheism requires faith. The same faith as the believer, just in opposite form. The believer requires faith to believe, the atheist requires faith there is nothing.

Both are presumptuous, in that none of us know...without having experienced death.

[bit101@mstdn.social]

@mattsheffield I had negative a physical reaction when reading that. Dawkins is a jerk of a person, but a very intelligent jerk. Or so I thought.

[dresstokilt@mastodon.social]

@mattsheffield "You have no mouth to speak with my son, besides, no one can hear when you're screaming in digital."

[pa27@mastodon.social]

@mattsheffield Sigh. Idiotic, self delusional... What a plonker.

[gotofritz@hachyderm.io]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/116500991239336079

@mattsheffield

I thought this was mastodon's usual anti-ai drivel ... but this is hilarious

[illuminatus@mstdn.social]

@radish @mattsheffield

[a_minion@mastodon.social]

@mattsheffield

I had a BBS in the 80's? for the kids to play on. I found a program written in basic that was an "Assistant Sysop". After it was up for a month or so I got a nastygram from a young woman just berating me and that program up one side and down the other. "How could you fool me like that?" I could almost hear her tears. Yes, she believed it was a real person. Which tells me all I need to know to understand what AI is all about.

[drbenway@jorts.horse]

@mattsheffield His ego has denied him a quiet and dignified retirement.

[daveosaurus@mastodon.nz]

@mattsheffield Dawkins is a textbook example of someone who is world-changingly brilliant in his own area of expertise while being embarrassingly clueless in almost everything else. He's become notorious locally for blurting out in support of a small bunch of fringe loonies who burst into print a few years ago proclaiming that science should be for White People Only.

[renardboy@mastodon.social]

@mattsheffield man he's gonna flip tf out when he reaches the stage where he believes ai is a newborn god

[darkuncle@infosec.exchange]

@mattsheffield tell me you don't understand consciousness without telling me you don't understand consciousness

[renardboy@mastodon.social]

@glutto @mattsheffield perhaps that will turn out to be a glorious return of natural selection lmao

[therealpomax@mastodon.social]

@mattsheffield to be fair, that's literally how "normal people" experience this stuff and it's not their fault they have no idea wtf is actually going on, to them it's fucking magic. Having a phd makes no fucking difference there, this guy knows zoology in and out and has no fucking idea how computers work.

[sibshops@mastodon.online]

@mattsheffield Conscience is such a meaningless word. It's something humans invented to put us above animals.

[petitmote@toot.aquilenet.fr]

@mattsheffield obviously, he had to name it Claudia...

[the5thcolumnist@ottawa.place]

@mattsheffield

Did Turing really say if a computer can write something that sounds like it was written by a human then that proves it can think. I think not.

[damonwakes@mastodon.sdf.org]

@mattsheffield
Dawkins: "Though a complex organism appears to be like a watch that can only have been intentionally designed by a watchmaker, it is in fact the result of countless cumulative steps that are individually unremarkable and easily understood."

Also Dawkins: "Ermahgerd, my computer spat out words on command so it's totally thinking for realsies."

[theogrin@chaosfem.tw]

@Lazarou @Kierkegaanks @mattsheffield

"What is consciousness for?"
I would think that as an evolutionary biologist, he should know full well that consciousness isn't for anything. There are religious beliefs which contradict that, and I am fine with folks thinking that consciousness has arisen due to the machinations of a higher power: sometimes I lie awake at night and muse over it, as one does. But Richard Dawkins, as one of the much vaunted New Atheists, should not believe that there is a purpose or a reason behind consciousness. It simply is, and evolution does not act to create it with logic or intent.

Unless he has something he'd like to tell us, of course.

[ETA: Of all the people out there, of course, there's also the fact that an ostensible skeptic should know that the appearance of a thing is not the thing. He is accepting a creation at face value, granting miracles to the seemingly miraculous, forgetting that every burning bush has, so far, had a guy with a lighter nearby.]