Smeagol/Gollum at the end of The Two Towers had more soul than any human I’ve ever met.

But that can only be true if you never met the late Reverend James Brown.

you can hardly use Zemeckis as any sort of evidence… unless you want to point to him as an example of bad movie making.

Smeagol/Gollum at the end of The Two Towers had more soul than any human I’ve ever met.

Even at his best, I don’t think John Searle has adequately shown that the human mind cannot be duplicated with advanced technology.

The point being that what our minds render effortless, requires the most effort, energy, and memory for our computers to do.

Or we could go on and on and on with examples of “what our computers render effortless, requires the most effort, energy, and memory for our brains to do.” I dunno about you, but I tend to turn to a calculator to do any advanced mathematics.

I’ve heard of the Turing Test. It still doesn’t come close to the human mind, however. See, for a computer to closely mimic the human mind, it requires nearly all of its energy and memory. While the human mind, both young and old, it is effortless. We take much for granted as far as what we can do, because we have it with us all day long, every second of our lives.

I love the reviews of the recent movie, Beowulf. The reviewer from the New York Times said it best:

To be honest, I don’t yet see the point of performance capture, particularly given how ugly it renders realistic-looking human forms. Although the human faces and especially the eyes in “Beowulf” look somewhat less creepy than they did in “The Polar Express,” Mr. Zemeckis’s first experiment with performance capture, they still have neither the spark of true life nor that of an artist’s unfettered imagination. The face of Mr. Hopkins’s king resembles the actor’s in broad outline, in the shape and curve of his physiognomy. But it has none of the minute trembling and shuddering that define and enliven — actually animate — the discrete spaces separating the nose, eyes and mouth. You see the cladding but not the soul.

The point being that what our minds render effortless, requires the most effort, energy, and memory for our computers to do.

Probably not in our lifetime, agreed, but I also remember being told that machines would never be able to recognize human language or ambulate like a biped. Have you met Asimo yet?

How can you be sure? The increase in storage capacity and computing speed in my adult lifetime alone has been just staggering. At least in terms of memory, we may already be there.

Yeah, our computers today are quite fascinating and quite fast, but they are not even close to the same league as our minds. What a truly wondrous creation is the mind of a human being! No, in terms of memory, we’re not even close to creating something as quick as our minds. Think, for example, how quickly you can recall a vision of your favorite moment, full color, embellished by your imagination. You do that in microseconds! Look at the quickness of a baseball player, as another example. He learns to look at the pitcher’s hand, as quick as it is, and he knows exactly where the pitch will be if he catches it right. His decisions happen in milliseconds.

There is much about our lives that is quite mundane and normal, and slow. However, our minds are quick, and deep. We’re not even close to designing something as fantastic and amazing as the human mind.

Since when did God stop man from doing anything he chose to do?

The Tower of Babel