6 ideas
| 3979 | The Turing Machine is the best idea yet about how the mind works [Fodor on Turing] |
| Full Idea: Alan Turing had (in his theory of the 'Turing Machine') what I suppose is the best thought about how the mind works that anyone has had so far. | |
| From: comment on Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence [1950]) by Jerry A. Fodor - Jerry A. Fodor on himself p.296 | |
| A reaction: I am not convinced, because I don't think rationality is possible without consciousness. The brain may bypass the representations used by a computer. |
| 5321 | In 50 years computers will successfully imitate humans with a 70% success rate [Turing] |
| Full Idea: In about fifty years' time it will be possible to program computers to play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70% chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. | |
| From: Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence [1950], p.57), quoted by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §5.9 | |
| A reaction: This is the famous prophecy called 'The Turing Test'. The current state (2004) seems to be that the figure of 70% is very near, but no one sees much prospect of advancing much further in the next 100 years. Dennett sees jokes as a big problem. |
| 20579 | Modern totalitarianism results from lack of social ties or shared goals [Arendt, by Oksala] |
| Full Idea: Arendt claims that modern totalitarianism's primary condition is an atomised mass society: isolated individuals who have no strong ties to communities and who are indifferent to shared political goals. | |
| From: report of Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism [1968]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: I think the lack of ties simply describes large modern cities. Not sure about the lack of shared goals. Hitler and Stalin rode on the back of apparent shared goals. Working classes strike me as sharing more goals than middle classes. |
| 20580 | The ideal subject for dictators is not a fanatic, but someone who can't distinguish true from false [Arendt, by Oksala] |
| Full Idea: The ideal subject of totalitarianism is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but anyone who has lost the ability to make distinctions between fact and fiction and between true and false. | |
| From: report of Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism [1968]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: We are currently living with an apparent attempt by Donald Trump to become a totalitarian President of the U.S.A., by constantly disseminating lies, and labelling all of his critics as 'fake news'. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |