...and the thing that I said: "here's a thing that you don't want to do, and don't see the need for, but don't worry because it wont happen often" (then over time it starts happening often.

The former is not conditioning. The latter is.

I remember, it must have been in the late '90s, when Windows added the ability to get "important security updates" via the internet and a lot of people were turning it off. I remember a comment on slashdot about how we would all become conditioned to accept it.

This is just a guess, but maybe the client machines are windows. So maybe there are servers connected to phone lines or medical equipment, but the doctors and EMS are looking at the data on windows machines.

I did. Should I repeat it?

lol. Your counterargument is a tautology because it contains "the sequences "321", "654", and "99" do not ever appear."

It's like if you claim, "A has the property B" then I say, "based on this definition, I don't think A has property B"

Then you say, "if it doesn't have property B, then it's not A"

...okay, but my point is, the definition that I had (from wikipedia) doesn't imply B. So for you to say, "if it doesn't have B, then it's not A" is just circular.

Now, you can point out that the definition I got from wikipedia is different from the one you got from wolfram. That's fine. That's also true. And you can argue that the definition you used does indeed imply B.

But what you cannot do is use B as part of the definition, when that's the thing I'm asking you to demonstrate.

You: all christians are pro-life

Me: I don't see how that's true. Here's the definition of christianity. I don't see how it necessarily implies being against abortion.

You: your """"counterexample"""" (sarcastic quotes to show how smart I am) is obviously wrong because, as you note yourself, that person is pro-choice, therefore, not a christian.

^^^^^ do you see how this exchange inappropriately uses the thing you're being asked to prove, which is that christians are pro-life, as a component of the argument?

Again, it's totally cool if you fine a different definition of christian that explicitly requires they be pro-life. But given that I didn't use that definition, that doesn't make it the slam dunk you imagine.

Is that true? I don't see how that could be true. The sequence 0-9 repeated infinitely is, by definition, a normal number (in that the distribution of digits is uniform)

...and yet nowhere in that sequence does "321" appear ...or "654" ...or "99"

There are an infinite number of combinations of digits that do not appear in that normal number I've just described. So, I don't think your statement is true.

I assume that's true, but it makes me wonder how their scanners are connected to the server.

I mean, if 10,000 people showing up to an event with smartphones overwhelms wireless networks, wont that also kick their scanners off the network?

They'd probably like to have a system where, if a scanner loses its connection, it can still validate tickets. It could store a copy of validated tickets locally, and upload it when the network connection is restored - that would mean a copied ticket would have to make sure they go to a different door/scanner. But it would allow copying.

> If Penrose is right then neural networks implemented on regular computers will never think.

I disagree that that is necessarily an implication, though. As I said before, all that it implies is that computational tech will think differently than humans, in the same way that airplanes fly using different mechanisms from birds.

That doesn't mean it's not possible for a classical computer, running a neural network, to get the same outcome (any more than the observation that birds have feathers means feathers are necessary to flight).

But it does mean that it could be that, yes you can describe what the brain is doing with math ... but you can't copy it with computation.