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Is Religion a Delusion?

10/28/2017

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Read the symptoms outlined by the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mentally Disorders) published by the APA (American Psychiatric Association)
The patient expresses an idea or belief with unusual persistence or force.
That idea appears to have an undue influence on the patient's life, and the way of life is often altered to an inexplicable extent.
Despite his/her profound conviction, there is often a quality of secretiveness or suspicion when the patient is questioned about it.
The individual tends to be humorless and oversensitive, especially about the belief.
There is a quality of centrality: no matter how unlikely it is that these strange things are happening to him/her, the patient accepts them relatively unquestioningly.
An attempt to contradict the belief is likely to arouse an inappropriately strong emotional reaction, often with irritability and hostility.
The belief is, at the least, unlikely, and out of keeping with the patient's social, cultural, and religious background.
The patient is emotionally over-invested in the idea and it overwhelms other elements of their psyche.
The delusion, if acted out, often leads to behaviors which are abnormal and/or out of character, although perhaps understandable in the light of the delusional beliefs.
Individuals who know the patient observe that the belief and behavior are uncharacteristic and alien.
It is a primary disorder.
It is a stable disorder characterized by the presence of delusions to which the patient clings with extraordinary tenacity.
The illness is chronic and frequently lifelong.
The delusions are logically constructed and internally consistent.
The delusions do not interfere with general logical reasoning (although within the delusional system the logic is perverted) and there is usually no general disturbance of behavior. If disturbed behavior does occur, it is directly related to the delusional beliefs.
The individual experiences a heightened sense of self-reference. Events which, to others, are nonsignificant are of enormous significance to him or her, and the atmosphere surrounding the delusions is highly charged. (wikipedia)
Furthermore: "Another difficulty with the diagnosis of delusions is that almost all of these features can be found in "normal" beliefs. Many religious beliefs hold exactly the same features". (wikipedia)


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ARTIFICIAL  INTELLIGENCE

10/7/2017

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Great strides are being made in the development of AI and will, no doubt, soon exceed the capacity of the best Human Brains. They will mimic cognitive functions such as learning and problem solving on a greater scale, and faster, than Humans.
The field was “founded on the claim that human intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. This raises philosophical arguments about the nature of the mind and the ethics of creating artificial beings endowed with human-like intelligence, issues which have been explored by myth, fiction and philosophy since antiquity. Some people also consider AI a danger to humanity if it progresses unabatedly“. (Wikipedia)
Ai research has developed algorithms using incomplete information dealing with probability and economics. Since difficult problems need an enormous amount of resources the way to find more efficient algorithms is an ongoing effort.
Our human brain, although very efficient, is limited by the amount of data it contains. AI capacity has no limits, we just build bigger and bigger memories. It can access enormous amount of data faster than our brains, but there is a difference. When a computer program defeated the human chess champion Garry Kasporov it did so because it had the capacity to search all combinations in further moves of play at light speed. A human brain is much slower because of the difference at which it operates due to the biological structures it employs compared with the material which is used in computers. It does not mean that the computer is more intelligent than humans, AI does not use intuition, it simply calculates all combinations of factors stored in their memories. It can also do calculations in a shorter time, which would have taken human brains years or centuries to do. There is no doubt that we are just at the beginning of the development of AI and it will be an astonishing experience. Progress in computer science, philosophy, psychology, mathematics, neuroscience and linguistics will all play a part.
When contemplating the future of AI most people confuse intelligence with awareness, the hall mark of humans. It is a function of our biological brain which is entirely materially different from our modern computers and therefor cannot be compared.  We do not understand yet how consciousness and awareness is formed in the brain, so we cannot duplicate the process in our current computers. Until we construct a biological artificial brain with a comparable size to contain all the data we now store in conventional computers we don’t have to worry about being replaced by machines.


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    Ben Vande       
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