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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Dec 11, 2016 - 08:43pm PT
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Have you noticed that if you do a lengthy post, then try to make a few changes, you lose the bottom part?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 11, 2016 - 11:29pm PT
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you have to be careful using "greater than" and "less than" in your posts as they are interpreted as html tags and stripped out of the STForum server (only a subset of php tags are allowed).
Basically the "alleged" html tag and all the text after it are stripped.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 12, 2016 - 07:32am PT
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Jgill:
Hey, another reader of Thom!
Know anything about “path dependency” and “historical accidents?” (Think of Ashton Crutchner’s movie, The Butterfly Effect.) In my business, we think we see many industry developments / evolutions, as well as technological developments, that have turned on small, apparently insignificant events that could not have been foreseen or predicted. (Kinda like chaos theory, but not really.)
All these theories (highly mathematical) encourage us to see situations more like pure potentialities than linear cause-and-effect probabilities (although I suppose some folks will see potentials as probabilities).
What would an open system of open systems be like?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 12, 2016 - 11:42am PT
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If we were to freeze an experience at each instant (don’t ask me to be precise) and obtain a sequence of snapshots, could we call these slices “elements” of the experience? And if so, could we then begin to speculate on “open sets” of an experience? Could we then do a similar thing to the physical mechanisms of the experience, create a metric, and define open sets there? Then look for a homeomorphism?
In a sense, this what correlative neurophysiology looks for. Nelson Kiang used micro-electrodes to isolate responses from single axons in the auditory nerve. Pure tones of differing frequency and amplitude were played into the ear and the responses of the axons were recorded in the form of spikes per second. By doing enough of these recordings, Kiang built up a picture of the information the auditory nerve carries once the ear has converted sound waves into nerve impulses. In addition to sine-wave tones, clicks can be presented to the ear, but in this early stage of processing in the nervous system nothing surprising happens when this approximation to a discontinuity occurs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Kiang
Further inside the brain, one may find abrupt transitions caused by small perturbations.
One of the most significant observations in the study of place cells during the past two decades is the discovery that place cells participate in multiple independent spatial representations. Under certain experimental conditions, place cells were found to totally alter their firing patterns in response to apparently minor changes in the sensory or motivational inputs to the hippocampus.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19021254
Sensitivity to apparently minor changes had been anticipated by earlier neuroscientists.
Even the simplest bit of behavior requires the integrated action of millions of neurons; the activity of any single neuron can have little influence on the whole, just as the path of an individual molecule of a gas has little influence on the gas pressure. It is questionable whether specific instances of behavior can ever be dealt with in terms of the activity of individual neurons; the complexity is too great. We shall probably have to use a different kind of model, a model which can be explained in principle by individual neuron action but which involves a somewhat different set of concepts and laws of action.
Why the Mind Is in the Head
Warren S. McCulloch
Even single neurons may also behave unpredictably because of smaller-scale events within them.
I think of the subconscious as a chemical soup that’s constantly making new combinations, and interesting combinations of ideas stick together, and eventually percolate up into full consciousness. That’s not too different from a biological population in which individuals fall in love and combine to produce new individuals. My guess is that all this activity takes place at a molecular level - like DNA and information storage in the immune system - not at the cellular level. That’s why the brain is so powerful, because that’s where the real information processing is, at a molecular level. The cellular level, that’s just the front end…
Meta Math! The Quest for Omega
Gregory Chaitin
It seems likely to me that any level of structure within an organism could be a site of information processing, and perhaps even information processing that affects the survival prospects and reproductive success of the organism, which would render that structure’s blueprint susceptible to selective forces in the environment outside the organism.
However, it also seems that none of our studies of however many variables on however many scales with howsoever sophisticated analyses would be good enough for Chalmers.
We have seen that there are systematic reasons why the usual methods of cognitive science and neuroscience fail to account for conscious experience. These are simply the wrong sort of methods: nothing that they give to us can yield an explanation.
Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness
David J. Chalmers
[Published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3):200-219, 1995]
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 12, 2016 - 11:51am PT
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(1) "The central issue dividing the plant neurobiologists from their critics would appear to be this: Do capabilities such as intelligence, pain perception, learning, and memory require the existence of a brain, as the critics contend, or can they be detached from their neurobiological moorings?"
(2) "The question is as much philosophical as it is scientific, since the answer depends on how these terms get defined."
(3) "The proponents of plant intelligence argue that the traditional definitions of these terms are anthropocentric — a clever reply to the charges of anthropomorphism frequently thrown at them."
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant
(4) "Descartes, who believed that only humans possessed self-consciousness, was unable to credit the idea that other animals could suffer from pain. So he dismissed their screams and howls as mere reflexes, as meaningless physiological noise."
...
“What we learned from Darwin is that competence precedes comprehension,” Dennett said when I called to talk to him about plant neurobiology. Upon a foundation of the simplest competences—such as the on-off switch in a computer, or the electrical and chemical signalling of a cell—can be built higher and higher competences until you wind up with something that looks very much like intelligence. “The idea that there is a bright line, with real comprehension and real minds on the far side of the chasm, and animals or plants on the other—that’s an archaic myth.” To say that higher competences such as intelligence, learning, and memory “mean nothing in the absence of brains” is, in Dennett’s view, “cerebrocentric.”
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 12, 2016 - 07:43pm PT
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Yes, Jan, an interesting article on whether evolution can have a purpose. I have now read the article, and was not surprised to find that I had read it before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirens_of_Titan
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Dec 12, 2016 - 08:06pm PT
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Thanks, Ed.
Nice post, Fruit Spirit.
Thinking of Zeno's Paradox, is there anything in the universe that is absolutely still and has no moving parts? I think not. If I write the equation of the path of a projectile, inserting "initial velocity" and other parameters, like air resistance and directional data, is that V(0) really accurate? On a very small time scale the powder must ignite and produce gas pressure to propel the object and this does not happen in an instant. Is there even an "instant" when the whole process is put into play? Or, starting from a hypothetical zero moment, how is motion possible?
This is a little like Zeno's dilemma of an object in motion approaching an end point, each second going half the remaining distance. Turn that around and we have a projectile going from zero to some positive velocity as it begins at zero and launches. What does "begin" mean when there is always motion of some sort as we backtrack?
Deep waters, here, comrades. Is JL correct that everything is in states of flux, down though quantum levels? Would it be possible that an object have absolutely no moving parts no matter how deeply one looks? Would this void the concept of time? If this could happen would space-time be disrupted?
After dinner, drowsy musings . . .
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 12, 2016 - 08:15pm PT
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Would it be possible that an object have absolutely no moving parts no matter how deeply one looks?
Could you re-state this in the context of General Relativity?
;>)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Dec 12, 2016 - 09:24pm PT
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No
;>)
Know anything about “path dependency”
Well, in complex analysis a contour integral depends only upon its end points for its value, provided the integrand is analytic in the area of interest. If it's not analytic, then the value depends upon the path of integration. Not what you're talking about, as I Wikied the expression!
The "butterfly effect" occurs when a system is SDIC - sensitive dependence on initial conditions. I play with this not infrequently as I locate and explore "repulsive fixed points" or singularities of functions in the complex plane. Exp(1/z) has an "essential" singularity at z=0, although for the Re(z)<0 , surprisingly, it's not badly behaved.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 13, 2016 - 07:20am PT
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Jan,
It’s interesting that “interesting articles” these days revolve around or are based upon the core narrative that science provides us. Whether there could is a purpose to evolution *is not discussed* in that article (or in many other articles) from literary or dramatic points of view, from new religious points of view (other than primarily Christian), from mythological points of view (ala, Greek or Roman), from artistic points of view, etc. As wildly speculative as some of the theories are in the NY Times article, it is noteworthy that all potential narratives were, or apparently needed to be, scientifically legitimate to be considered or discussed.
The requirement for explanation seems to overwhelm the very experience of living for moderns. The notion that there must be development in human experience, in the universe, in what and how things are, could just as easily be a myth that we feel compelled to hold dear. The point of view is instrumentally oriented, to progress, to being and getting better, to ways of “saving ourselves” from problems and difficulties that we want to avoid even (if we aren’t able to do so in our own lifetimes). It’s comforting to know that we are a part of a project structurally oriented to getting and being better. It’s what almost all of what therapeutic psychology is oriented to: “we’re broken, but we can fix ourselves; we can improve who and what we are, in all ways possible.”
What makes us think that view of progress is not a myth?
"We need faith and hope in our lives. We cannot seem to live with pain and suffering. Perfection is reachable."
What is Mind? would seem to have much to do with that.
Good post, HFCS.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 13, 2016 - 07:31am PT
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how do you know that "Ed" has feelings, dreams, fears, desires and so forth?
We can look at this question from an epistemological vantage (philosophy of knowing) and just spin around. But knowing – however you define it – that you DO have an inner life is a basic assumption of living in the world, just as there are basic assumptions in physics. I suppose you can argue that point but it doesn’t further the discussion. We simply get bogged down.
Fact is, the commonality of sentience is an essential and primal aspect of all humans, and when a person lacks the internal cues and innate knowing what others are thinking and feeling in general terms, that person is abnormal and is labeled as autistic or other names.
But this is inadequate for several reasons. A person can argue that one, that innate knowing (that Ed has feelings etc.) is based on physical cues and body language, and two, this could possibly be explained in terms of signal theory, that this innate knowing and recognizing could be nothing else but brains relating to each other, sans awareness.
But what makes this whole study so slippery is that sentience, our very awareness of experience, is not observable as a 3rd person external object. Nor can you ever detect or observe sentience through 3rd person means.
The most brilliant machine from a billion years in the future could never detect sentience, only objective functioning. Only sentience can find and interface with sentience itself, though sentient beings might some day build a machine that can replicate sentience and still not have it. To discover the difference you need to probe the AI model to find out why and how. I’ll get to that once I get over this jet lag (just got to Zurich. Going to Cerne soon).
Lastly, we can’t look at sentience ITSELF with convincing metaphorical or figurative language, or frame it in other terms because sentience is not LIKE anything else, or any thing.
I’ll develop these thoughts later when I can think straight, or straighter than now.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 13, 2016 - 08:14am PT
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they don't understand that they're going to have to do this all again, and again, and again
Reminds me it's time to walk our dog.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 13, 2016 - 08:30am PT
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But knowing – however you define it – that you DO have an inner life is a basic assumption of living in the world, just as there are basic assumptions in physics.
we question the basic assumptions of physics everyday... as a part of doing physics...
your entire post is rather flaccid... based on your argument regarding the separation of 1st and 3rd personhood, the answer is that you cannot know that I have "an inner life."
My "inner life" is a suspect as that of the machines I would claim have "an inner life," a notion you find absurd.
However, the only way you know I have an "inner life" is precisely the same way we can say a machine has one, that is through behavioral clues. The difference being that our "theory of mind" requires the other be like us, that is, human. In the past, this meant being of the same local human culture...
Great strides in expanding our view of who has a mind (the acceptance of all humans as "human") has been accomplished relatively recently in human history. But even now there is great resistance to the idea that this be expanded to non-human species, at least in philosophical circles.
As I have said upthread (multiple times) you can define "mind" as being possessed only by humans. Then this topic becomes a literary one.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 13, 2016 - 10:41am PT
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However, the only way you know I have an "inner life" is precisely the same way we can say a machine has one, that is through behavioral clues. The difference being that our "theory of mind" requires the other be like us, that is, human. In the past, this meant being of the same local human culture...
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Not at all, Ed. My "flaccid" answer wasn't one because I have't gone into explaining how "behavioral clues," or 3rd person "evidence" is a dead end for finding out the difference between sentience and signal registration. I don't expect you go give up this view because apparently it is the only vantage that you know or consciously trust. You unconsciously trust awareness throughout, but the task is to get you to see that clearly. I'll start working in that direction, but it might not ever be enough if you are looking for 3rd person physical proof of sentience.
DMT, if you believe that a machine could ever detect sentience in another thing or being, how would it so and what would give it away in terms of physical markers? What's more, what data would it be able to cull from a data processor to imagine or even logically postulate signal registration as opposed to 1st person experience.
The reason I have repeatedly asked - no answer so far - asked about Dennett's Folly ("we only think we have experience"), and what criteria would have to be met to establish experience as genuine - is bore out in the ungraspable nature of awareness, as a phenomenon we cannot objectify in the normal way (measuring). Unless people have grappled with this question directly, they will continue to imagine the day that this "mechanical function" can be imparted or programmed into a machine.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Dec 13, 2016 - 11:14am PT
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your entire post is rather flaccid... based on your argument regarding the separation of 1st and 3rd personhood, the answer is that you cannot know that I have "an inner life."
This statement is predicated on an assumption of certainty regarding what it is to" know." Likewise you could say just as easily we cannot know anything, unless you define knowing as simply an observed repeatability. The assumption that you have an inner life is based on an intuition from personal experience that is again based on a human sensitivity for understanding that has a practical validity. What is lost here is an understanding of the difference between information and knowledge. Without that understanding we descend into circular, solipsistic misunderstanding. Without the "I" there is no knowledge, there is only information.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Dec 13, 2016 - 12:48pm PT
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A Pattern for Prayer
Matthew 6:7-15
In Matthew 6:7, Jesus cautioned against meaningless repetition when talking to the Father. Just two verses later, He left a pattern to help us pray. However, in using this passage, which is known as the Lord’s Prayer, we’re often guilty of the very thing Jesus warned against: Instead of thoughtfully praying each line, we run through the words mindlessly. But if we take time to carefully examine Christ’s words, we’ll find the pattern that can transform our prayer life.
Adoration of the Father (Matt. 6:9). God the Father is the focus of all our prayers. We should never forget what a privilege it is to bend our knees on earth and reach almighty God in heaven.
Submission to His Will (Matt. 6:10). Prayer should reflect a desire to align ourselves with God’s goals and purposes, not to get Him to follow our plans.
Petition God for our needs (Matt. 6:11). We are dependent upon the Lord, and He wants us to come to Him with our requests.
Confession of sins (Matt. 6:12). When we repent and forgive others, we maintain fellowship with God. But if we hold grudges, that fellowship is broken. God loves to answer our prayers when the lines of communication are not disrupted.
Deliverance from evil (Matt. 6:13). Our enemy is too strong for us, but Christ has already won the victory over him.
Jesus ended the prayer where He began—with praise to the Father for His kingdom, power, and glory (Matt. 6:13). Next time you say this prayer, concentrate on each verse. Then, following this pattern will result in a more dynamic and effective prayer life because it will be God-centered.
https://www.intouch.org/read/magazine/daily-devotions/a-pattern-for-prayer
...Mind + Heart = Gratefulness!
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Dec 13, 2016 - 03:56pm PT
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Unless people have grappled with this question directly, they will continue to imagine the day that this "mechanical function" can be imparted or programmed into a machine
By "grapple" I assume you mean hours of philosophical argument. Or do you mean the meditative experience of "open awareness?" Or do you speak of frustrated neuroscientists who can't quite quantify subjective experience?
HBO's Westworld points the way to the future.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 13, 2016 - 05:04pm PT
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Artificial Intelligence and the King Midas Problem...
"Very simple robots with very constrained tasks do not need goals or values at all. Although the Roomba’s designers know you want a clean floor, Roomba doesn’t: it simply executes a procedure that the Roomba’s designers predict will work—most of the time. If your kitten leaves a messy pile on the carpet, Roomba will dutifully smear it all over the living room."
http://futureoflife.org/2016/12/12/artificial-intelligence-king-midas-problem/
"Our experience with Chernobyl suggests it may be unwise to claim that a powerful technology entails no risks. It may also be unwise to claim that a powerful technology will never come to fruition. On September 11, 1933, Lord Rutherford, perhaps the world’s most eminent nuclear physicist, described the prospect of extracting energy from atoms as nothing but “moonshine.” Less than 24 hours later, Leo Szilard invented the neutron-induced nuclear chain reaction; detailed designs for nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons followed a few years later. Surely it is better to anticipate human ingenuity than to underestimate it, better to acknowledge the risks than to deny them. … [T]he risk [of AI] arises from the unpredictability and potential irreversibility of deploying an optimization process more intelligent than the humans who specified its objectives.”
Stuart Russell
...
Jerry Coyne's takedown of Robert Wright...
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/robert-wright-in-the-nyt-evolution-could-have-a-higher-purpose/
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 13, 2016 - 08:11pm PT
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asked about Dennett's Folly ("we only think we have experience")
it is possible that the thing you perceive as "experience" isn't what you are experiencing, a behavior adaptation that conveys a survival advantage... as MikeL referenced way up thread...
you perceive the world as a continuous experience, though you know that you do not have a continuous sensation... for instance, you are staring at the screen reading this post and are totally unaware of two rather large blind spots where the optic nerve attaches to your retina, different in both eyes.
yet you believe that the thing you are seeing is continuous...
the thing you take to be the monolithic mind might be, very different in reality, but your perception pieces it together, smoothing over the gaps and bumps and even giving it capabilities that do not exist...
in that sense, you would only think you have experience... the thing you actually have is different from what you think, just as your vision is different then the continuous scene you appear to see.
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