Re: Mindless Creativity?

Mark VandeWettering wrote:
> 
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Sean Pitman wrote:
> > Mark VandeWettering <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL 
> > PROTECTED]>...
> >
> >> It is far from clear that there is any difference between the kind of
> >> process which generates a chicken from a chicken egg and the kind of
> >> process which allows William Shakespeare to write "Hamlet".
> >
> > Oh really?
> 
> Yes, really?
> 
> > Hmmmmm . . .  Do you really think that the chicken egg was
> > as creative it its forming of the chicken as Shakespeare was in his
> > forming of Hamlet?
> 
> If I had thought that, I probably would have said that.  The fact that
> I said something different probably means that I meant something different.
> 
> > For example, a computer can be programmed to do
> > fantastic things, but it is not creative.  Now granted, the terms
> > "intelligence" and "creative" have not yet been absolutely defined and
> > maybe they never will be.  However, they are defined enough for us to
> > know that human intelligence can do things that computers and eggs
> > cannot do.
> 
> Nonsense.
> 
> Not only has it not been shown that human intelligence can do things that
> computers can do, but there are obviously things that computers can do
> which human brains cannot do.
> 
> > Humans can create new things at high levels of functional
> > complexity that we never created before and were not preprogrammed to
> > create automatically.
> 
> How can you tell?  How do you know that you aren't preprogrammed?
> 
> > An egg or a computer program cannot create new
> > things that they were not already programmed to create.
> 
> You obviously haven't any knowledge of the field of genetic programming.
> 

Not only that, he doesn't seem to be aware that a large part of
genetic programming uses randomness in the form of a pseudorandom
number generator, and this is where the "creativity" of genetic
programming comes from.  Genetic programming can *design* computer
algorithms using randomness.  Nothing could be less "pre-programmed"
than a process like this that is largely random.  In fact, genetic
programming is an excellent counter example to his assertion that a
mindless process cannot design anything.


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