Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> perfectly aware that studies on how the brain thinks have shown 
>> "awareness" as a post hock attempt to invent justification for an action,
> 
> Which isn't at odds with the supposition that there's something 
> supernatural involved in helping people make "free will" choices. 
> Perhaps the supernatural part is what starts the chain of events.
> 
Uh.. I have a razor, if you want to shave that beard... Seriously, that 
makes no bloody sense. Why have a supernatural event that does nothing 
but push a button, which sends data through a million separate machines, 
and multiple levels of filters, all so the end machine can tell itself, 
"I picked an apple, instead of an orange, because I haven't had one in a 
while", when the real explanation was, "it was closer", or worse, as at 
least one experiment showed was possible, "even though I absolutely 
despise apples, I decided to try them again, because some guy tricked me 
into thinking I **had** ordered one, and the only logical explanation I 
could come up with for doing that was my personal choice." They did that 
one for real. People, who flat out stated they didn't like certain 
things, rearranged their own perception of events, to justify having 
ordered them anyway, because they where presented with "apparent" 
evidence that they had ordered the item. And, even more crazy, their new 
expectation that they had done in intentionally colored their reaction 
to eating the thing **positively**.

In any case. What would be the point of such a supernatural button 
pusher? It doesn't guide the decisions, it can't prevent the machine 
from being intentionally derailed by someone else, and it doesn't have 
any way to predict what the final, post hock, resolution of all the 
steps are going to be. It would be like playing a video game, where 10 
billion things happen, as you watch, without you being able to control 
*any* of them, every time you clicked 'enter'. The supernatural world 
must be damned boring... lol

>> Sentience is a deterministic machine, 
> 
> I don't think you know that either. :-)  Certainly there's room for 
> quantum effects, even if you leave out the supernatural.
> 
I think the later can be discounted pretty well. The former.. is a bit 
iffy, and some people take it in completely ridiculous directions.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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