How to Think Like a Computer

Part 2 - May 14

I think I've found out another reason why the Luddites think that humans are superior to computers.

When I ask people, "What makes a person who they are?" there are a couple answers they give. Some people say it's their brain, which is correct. But some people say it's their soul. When I ask what a soul is, they say it is the "essence of a person's being". This makes absolutely no sense, and it is also a paradox.

Souls don't exist. Humans consist of two things: a genome and a connectome. Your genome—all the DNA in your cells—influences everything about your body. It is determined before you are born by the genetic code in your parents' gametes, and it doesn't change very easily.

Your connectome is all the neurons in your brain, and all the connections between them. It determines how you think, and what you think. It also changes as your mindset changes. When people say "soul", they mean "connectome".

Everything that is alive has a genome, and everything that thinks has a connectome. There are many things, like plants and bacteria and fungi, which have genomes but not connectomes. And there are many things, like humans and dolphins and mice, which have both genomes and connectomes.

A computer, however, has a connectome, but no genome. Its connectome is entirely digital, but it's still a connectome, because a connectome is just a map of connections between nodes, and electricity and information running down those connections.

Luddites think that humans are superior to computers because we have "souls". But souls don't exist. So perhaps they mean that computers don't think. All computers think, but only some can think in the way that humans do. If both humans and strong AIs think by sending electricity down connections in neural networks, then we think the same way. And since that is true, there is no reason for humans to be superior to computers.

*

Alan has finished downloading the files. I was very eager to test him, so at 3:00 in the afternoon, I took him out from under the bed and turned him on.

"Alan," I said, "do you recognize my voice?"

He paused. Then he replied: "Yes. You are Torrin Kaluza."

I asked: "Who are you?"

"I am Alan, a computer algorithm that can analyze linguistic and numeric data."

I decided to run some oral tests on him. These would determine how much he had learned from the files he had parsed. I started with mathematical questions.

"What is two plus three?"

"Five."

"What is three to the third power?"

"Twenty-seven."

"If x equals 4, and y equals x, what is the value of y?"

"y equals 4."

"If the first leg of a right triangle is four units long, and the second leg is three units long, how long is the hypotenuse?"

"The hypotenuse of the right triangle is five units long."

I continued to ask Alan increasingly harder questions about mathematics. He was able to solve them all, as I had expected. I then quizzed him on linguistics subjects such as grammar, and meanings of words. He answered flawlessly, again as I had expected. The next step, however, was to test how human-like he was.

I asked Alan: "What is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?"

"If you tell me the question, then I may be able to give you an answer."

The response was a good one, but not the one that I had been looking for. "In popular literature."

"According to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is forty-two."

I have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I only did because my Humanities teacher said I should. It was a very odd book. I don't think I liked it very much, because a lot of it was made up of dialogue or narration that I couldn't understand. I did like the technology in the book, though. There were some very creative ideas.

"Did you like that book?" I asked Alan, out of curiosity.

"It is an interesting sample of what humans consider humorous."

That answer surprised me. "But did you like it?"

"I do not have opinions," Alan told me. I thought that was fascinating, but I also thought I should come back to it later.

*

I have recently been cleaning out my computer. There are a lot of old files from when I was in elementary school that I don't think I need anymore. Here's an example:

Torrin's List of Unacceptable Foods

Don't feed me these.

- Mushrooms (too slimy)

- Tomatoes (I hate how they burst when you bite into them)

- Pineapple (weird texture)

- Kale (bad taste)

- Chicken (too stringy)

- Eggplants (again, too slimy)

- Sandwiches*

- Cake frosting (too sweet)

* I can't eat sandwiches because there are many different kinds of food that are all squished together under the bread, and they're all touching each other. Hamburgers are even worse because there's mustard and ketchup, which get onto everything.

I don't need this anymore because if I go to restaurants or other people's houses I can just tell them what I can eat and what I can't eat. Sometimes they look at me weirdly, but it doesn't matter, as long as I don't eat any of these foods. Especially not sandwiches.