Are we machines?

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ll_3473052

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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.
 
II

.. there is a theory someone made us, just like we have made computers.
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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.
Click to expand...
Try decades. Computer technology is evolving at an exponential rate.

Another question that arrises is, who created us?
Click to expand...
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).
 
yes, we are...

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!
 
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.
 
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.
 
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)
 
omg...

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?
 
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