If you think about it, computers just get better and better the longer their around. Today, they come with almost twice as much memory, more options, and more complex activities. What will the computers of the future be like? After seeing a few movies like AI, I really go to thinking that maybe you could program a machine to have feelings.
This may sound really far fetched, but computers are kind of like the human body. Everything does something, and has a specific purpose. Although computers don't "feel" things now, or atleast to our knowledge, there is a possibility that in the future there will be a big advancement.
It leads me to the question...are we machines? I recently read in a book that there is a theory someone made us, just like we have made computers. It does make sense. We are like machines. Complex machines. Every organ in our body acts like a part of a computer. Everything has a purpose. Our brains give out messages to parts of our body, just like parts of a computer.
Although we are hundreds of thousands of years away from being able to create AI's, there is a lot of evidence supporting this theory.
Another question that arrises is, who created us? Did we really come from another planet? Were we dropped off by aliens?

This is just a theory of course, but let's say that LONG LONG ago, "beings" that looked a little like us came along. (okay they didn't just come along but you get it) and they eventually evolved and built computers like the ones we have now, but eventually evolved to be machines like on AI. After years and years they figured out ways to have computers reproduce on their own, and have parts, like veins, organs and what not. We also could, with a special technology and program fugured out ways to make ourselves better, live in civilizations, and everything.
THen, like most creatures we got lazy and started building computers to do the work for us. It seems like a never ending circle, except that each time another "machine" is created it's better than the last, but I'm not talking about induviduals here, i'm talking whole species. "Human" is just a machine type. We could actually just be extremely advanced robots.
(androids....whatever)

My dad and i (he's like a genius or something) talked about this excessively once and theorized that this might be true. Look at the Egyptians, look at the way they were advanced for their time. If they hadn't died out by natural causes, then who knows how advanced humans would be......think about it.

God

Yes?

II


.. there is a theory someone made us, just like we have made computers. Except that we didn’t make computers, or rather we have never designed a computer. If we were that clever then cavemen could have designed a computer, but clearly they didn’t. Computers evolved and are still evolving as you have noticed. The human role is that of a catalyst.


.. we are hundreds of thousands of years away from being able to create AI's, there is a lot of evidence supporting this theory.Try decades. Computer technology is evolving at an exponential rate.


Another question that arrises is, who created us? But we evolved just like computers are evolving.

How about the universe being the big machine and we are vermin living on it.
Of course we are machines as well. Machines with brains are animachines(tm).

as a linguistics B.A. and an info sci grad student, i'd have to say that 'yes' we are machines; biological ones of course. language is computational...simply put, we use a finite number of sounds and symbols to create yet another set of finite expressions, which in turn can be combined to express a seemingly infinite number of ideas/sentences. the chemicals in our mind are programmable and programmed, for instance, in the case of post-traumatic stress or depression or even drug abuse, where the cells are altered and we behave differently according to these changes. what about emotions? they may be multi-layered and comples, but there are only a few of them at our disposal. our body is programmable, our muscles can adapt to repetitive movements and react in certain ways...look at athletes.

most things in life are computational, combinatorial, etc. it's quite astounding when you think about it!

god created us

Originally posted by edgar
god created us
The religion forum is in philosophy not technology.

Mind.. me… mouse… Keyboard.. Surfboard .. CAR…. machine… Where do I stop and the machine start… I can become part of almost all machines.. I don’t need my limbs, just my senses. I could drive a car with just the neurons in my bum… So I could lose all my limbs and more yet still function with full intelligence.. Are my legs and arms machines, I can do without them… Is the steering wheel me or the tires on the road… It just atoms playing with atoms.

Where do I end and you start.????

Well look at us like this. Lets say you program in a universe and program some evolving algorithms. This is possible even now on a simple scale. I've made a room where two "beings" can interact and have ther individual "thoughts".
Now on a more complex scale than that, imagine we are mearly part of some guys computer program. The earth is digital, the stars are digital, animals are digital, the very fundamentals of our physical universe and the maths that runs it is an algorithm or two written by some nerd. Only there is no way we can find out, because we ourselves are part of this program. This means literally "God" is just some computer nerd.

Are we machines?

biologically, yes

What if we are a simulation program in a super computer. Are we still machines, knowing that we could be a very sophisticated self evolving program inside a giant natural computer?

May be the computer evolved first.... :D

One could argue that the universe is a massive algorithm and we are just its computations.

After I read the book - A new kind of science, I too agree....

.and big-bang is the rebooting.:D

And an equals sign comes right before the big crunch.... should such a thing exist. Otherwise it could come before false vacume quantum tunneling. (complex)

You're all fucking crazy lunatics, sry but there's no other way to describe it

Depends entirely upon how you want to define "machine". I can't see the point of stupid questions like this. If you think about it it's pretty simple. We're a heap of chemicals. We're completely bound to causality like everything else. The stuff that makes you is essentially the same as the machine. It's energy. The real difference is the way that the energy is patterned. The sum of it all, you know?

"Are we machines? "

I wish

Posted by Chris
Except that we didn’t make computers, or rather we have never designed a computer. If we were that clever then cavemen could have designed a computer, but clearly they didn’t. Computers evolved and are still evolving as you have noticed. The human role is that of a catalyst.

Cavemen could have designed computers, if they had been educated and had the materials. No one man could have done it by him self, of course, but humans have built up a wealth of knowledge needed over some time. I would like to think that we are that clever!

We are biological survival machines for genes - the fudemental repeating unit. We are very much machines, just a bit more high tech and down a different path than PC's!

PCs ha! Yet, for whom? I could possibly argue that every time I shut down my computer I'm destroying an entire universe, and that restarting it is creating the universe again. Your arguing as to if we are computers, well all religion aside, what is your definition of computer? "A programmable electronic device that can store, retrieve, and process data" Well in such a case we would change electronic to biological, but programmable? We are "programmed" by our society, by other "computers" if you will. So as to our creation? You decide that one on your own. I for one shall never consider myself a computer, or a chip in a computer. I, dear friends, am a human no evidence as to our being computers will derive me from this, if you wish to call yourself a computer then so be it.
What about animals then? Are they the accesories with someone's giant pc that we all man?

so what now,are computer gonna kil us now since we will become "inferior"

Abdiel,


I for one shall never consider myself a computer, or a chip in a computer.And of course not, the comparison is absurd.


I, dear friends, am a human no evidence as to our being computers will derive me from this, if you wish to call yourself a computer then so be it.But then what does it mean to be human? Have you examined your brain recently? Not so easy huh? Do you know how it works and how it functions? Perhaps not, otherwise you would not dismiss the comparison with a computer so easily. But no, your brain is not similar to a computer; your brain works quite differently.

Did you know you have around 200 billion neurons in your brain and each neuron has around 1000 connections to other neurons? And here we can begin a comparison with computers. Each neuron fires at around 200 times each second. It is interesting that a computer also usually operates at a fixed frequency. The neuron takes the signals from all the incoming connections and processes them and may or may not produce its own signal; sounds awfully similar to the gate logic inside a modern microprocessor doesn’t it?

So from this we can see that your brain is nothing like a computer, but each neuron is incredibly similar. You are less like a single computer than you are like the entire internet compressed to a size that fits inside your skull. You have a massively parallel processing network inside your head, consisting of 200 billion tiny processors.

The only other difference between you and a more conventional machine is that your processing substrate is composed primarily of carbon and conventional processors use silicon composites.

So are you a machine? Most definitely, but with a complexity level that man has yet to achieve in the form of modern computers. At a modest estimate we would need around 10,000 x 2GHz microprocessors operating in a tightly linked massively parallel configuration to equal your own processing power. So there are a few years yet before you should feel like an inferior machine.

Originally posted by ll_3473052
I really go to thinking that maybe you could program a machine to have feelings.

Why would we want to do it? For us, feelings work as goal generators + they are used as kind of indexes by our memory system. Our machines can (and should) get golas from us (not from "their" feelings) and their memory should also work differently - making associations based on real similarity of concepts. Our feelings are not dynamic enough and that sometimes makes our memory system to overlook important links between various concepts.

Originally posted by ll_3473052

are we machines?

To me, the answer is yes. You need to clearly define us, clearly define machines and then ask yourself again.

Originally posted by ll_3473052
who created us? Did we really come from another planet? Were we dropped off by aliens?
I do not know, but I can tell you that "AI" systems are being created by another "AI" system(s) or by "I" system(s). The "I" systems are being created by a way which has nothing to do with goal oriented activities (no thinking, no intelligence behind). As I mentioned on my page about God (http://www.mageo.com/home/GEORGE_71/research/god/index.html), a small set of very simple rules can cause elements to go from a random order to an incredible and balanced complexity.

Posted by CrisBut we evolved just like computers are evolving.
Yes, but they would not have evolved without us. I know this doesn't imply that we could not have evolved on our own, but it make you wonder.