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WBraun
climber
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Mar 20, 2017 - 07:16pm PT
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Just look it that dawg !!!
It's a gross materialist mental speculator .....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 20, 2017 - 08:02pm PT
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[Click to View YouTube Video]
An astounding and profound reversal in the usual order of generational business has taken place right under our collective noses so that the old have become stripped of much of their economic and utilitarian value.
what is it about my generation?
we're the Rodney Dangerfield generation?
complain we do...
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Mar 21, 2017 - 11:11am PT
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Hey Mike, I was surprised to find that an obscure theorem of mine from twenty six years ago was a mathematical linchpin in a paper that might overlap with your interests. My result, in pure mathematics, is similar to fixed point theory used in game theory.
Increasing Peer Pressure on any Connected Graph Leads to Consensus
"In this paper, we present a novel generalized frame-
work for expressing peer influence dynamics over time in
a set of connected individuals, or agents. The proposed
framework supports the representation of individual vari-
ability through parametrized accounting for differences
in susceptibility to peer influence and pairwise relation-
ship strengths. Modeling agents’ individual opinions and
behaviors as strategies changing discretely and simulta-
neously, we formally describe the evolution of strategies
in a social network as the composition of continuous
maps. We identify points of convergence and analyze
these points under various conditions."
The "composition of continuous maps" part refers to my theorem. Seeing this paper reminded me that I have seen fixed point theory used in economics as well as game theory. Fixed points occur in physics as well, in renormalization groups(Greek to me). Ed might tell us if they crop up elsewhere in physics.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 21, 2017 - 03:51pm PT
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Wow!
A possible corollary to fixed point theorems: if you watch one place (this thread, for example) long enough, you will see something interesting.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 21, 2017 - 03:59pm PT
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Just look it that dawg !!!
It's a gross materialist mental speculator .....
Don't be too quick to judge.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 22, 2017 - 04:19pm PT
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An astounding and profound reversal in the usual order of generational business has taken place right under our collective noses so that the old have become stripped of much of their economic and utilitarian value. Grandma and grandpa have been converted into sentimental props; or perhaps the mysterious ancient tool found in an old box in the garage which no one can figure out a use for. They share the same fate as the painted portrait in the face of the modern photograph.
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Another thing is that processing, in the digital sense, now has a greater value than actual content. Or at worse, processing is CONSIDERED content.
Case in point. A big company recently asked me to crank out a bunch of creative content for their web site. That content would help brand the company in a new and novel way. Their advertising and promotional machinery would all vector off the new content. I passed because I don't do that kind of work - actually I can't, having never really worked in advertising - but put the guy onto a few other pros who could handle it. As it turned out, they were offering very low fees for the content, while it was discovered that they were paying top dollar to the programmers who ran the site. When pressed about this the bosses considered the programming duties a real job worth real money, but the people who were supposed to crank out the content that would define who the company actually was - they were just day hires doing a job anyone could do. Or so the thinking ran.
In the past, editorial was considered sacred. Now advertising drives editorial in many regards. And the top earners aren't creating anything but code. Go figure...
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Mar 22, 2017 - 04:33pm PT
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Thanks for the heads-up, HFCS! I've been digesting Homo Deus over the last couple of weeks. With respect to this thread, it is interesting that Harari basically says that he and we (as humans) have no idea why mind emerged as it did. Really. Everything would work just fine without it.
Harari would say that we are an interwoven collection of biological algorithms that include an actor late to the party -- the narrative self. The narrative self creates an after-the-fact reason for our actions, and is essentially what we think of as ourselves.
I think that Dawkins would have an answer to this. It's the fact that, as organisms, we live, we reproduce, and we die. If we didn't die, I would assume that we would not need to reproduce. My guess is that we have evolved consciousness -- the kind we associate with being human, because we die. Algorithms contained in materials that don't die would not need consciousness.
You know, I loved Blade Runner.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 22, 2017 - 04:56pm PT
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My guess is that we have evolved consciousness -- the kind we associate with being human, because we die
No, you're just plain guessing of the real reason we so called die (leave the mortal material body).
It proves once again that modern science is ultimately completely clueless to consciousness itself by the mere fact of their mental speculations ........
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Mar 22, 2017 - 05:31pm PT
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WB, what you might not understand is that mental speculation is fun, has been for as long as we have been human.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 22, 2017 - 05:45pm PT
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There is the personality standing at the crossroads pointing to the direction and one only wants to guess which way to go because it's "fun".
They will foolishly use the quote that "all paths lead to the same point" which is the greatest illusion of them all.
In strange countries unknown to the travelers they seek the locals who know.
Modern science only guesses and completely ignores the personality at the crossroads due to the powerful material illusionary energy that bounds them.
Under the spell of the material illusionary energies, they travel endlessly in circles all while masquerading their travels as science because it's fun.
All while misleading each other down the drain of endless mental speculations masqueraded as material only scientific facts ......
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Mar 22, 2017 - 05:56pm PT
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what is it about my generation?
we're the Rodney Dangerfield generation?
complain we do...
I hope I did not give the impression that I was complaining. I was not. In fact I identified the only emotion in play as sadness " a sad outcome".
My comments were merely the product of disinterested observation. Moreover the point I illustrated has been an historical process indigenous to technology -- and that's likely been going on since the invention of tools.
In the very broadest sense the point I was making is yet another example of how technology has this sticky quality of disconnecting man from nature-- often our own natures.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 22, 2017 - 05:59pm PT
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Whoa!
It looks like Werner is closing in on a fixed point theorem.
Largo has kept his focus on, or perhaps he IS the fixed point of this thread.
Very interesting to look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer_fixed-point_theorem
The article speaks of functions mapped back onto themselves. Humans could presumably function as robots with no "awareness" of what they were doing, but simply doing it in stimulus-leads-to-response fashion. Consciousness could be a mapping of our brain's topographic maps of visual, auditory, kinesthetic, memory and other modalities back into a map of the self.
Just kidding.
But it was interesting to see that a map of a country will have a corresponding point in that country, if you lie the map flat on a table anywhere within the country. Let's be more cautious about claiming that the map is not the territory.
Also just kidding.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 22, 2017 - 06:58pm PT
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sycorax ... I thought that was the guy you're talking about and wanted to be sure.
I forgot his real name?
He sent us running for miles all the time to train for track. (blah!!!)
I hated running miles as I was a sprinter, hurdler, and high jump.
We'd run a ways on Alameda de las Pulgas toward Hillsdale High and then head to my friend's house
and wait there until the cross country crew came back and join the end of the line.
Heh heh heh ....
I hated cross country and only did it because "Dasko" made us do it to stay in shape for track & field.
I loved track and field because you just run around in circles on a track and ignore the personality at the crossroads pointing the way to beyond :-)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 22, 2017 - 07:17pm PT
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Content is meaningless without the ability to disseminate and consume that content. You must have i/o (input output) and you must have a processior connected to that i/o. I am unaware of any exception this side of the veil darkly.
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You answered your own question here, Dingus, with "unaware."
Before any content (generated by the brain) can be worked into "meaning" (semantic), the subject must become aware of said content. Otherwise you only have a syntactic engine, like a computer or Turing machine, which shuffles code but which has no sense of meaning or existence, no internal experience, no sense of the difference of how a computer and human being even manage content.
Per Harari, a recent review of his book said this:
At the heart of this spellbinding book is a simple but chilling idea: human nature will be transformed in the 21st century because intelligence is uncoupling from consciousness. We are not going to build machines any time soon that have feelings like we have feelings: that’s consciousness. Robots won’t be falling in love with each other (which doesn’t mean we are incapable of falling in love with robots). But we have already built machines – vast data-processing networks – that can know our feelings better than we know them ourselves: that’s intelligence.
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Note that the reviewer is conflating consciousness with feelings and intelligence with data processing.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 22, 2017 - 08:26pm PT
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Don't be so quick to discount.
After 108 more lifetimes in the foothills, you may even see the answers from beyond this material illusion you are so desperately clinging .......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 22, 2017 - 08:38pm PT
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Maybe. But you can never offer tangible proof of your theories. What's more, you equated it to computers and marketing and complained the programmer makes more money than the marketeer.
Well guess what? No computer, no marketing. No processor, no content.
Actually, Dingus, I was complaining that the person writing the coed that enabled the real content to be presented was being paid more than the person who had to create the content that would, by association, sell the product. The consumer never sees the code, and the programmer does not create it. When the presentational style trumps the content or is confused as same, you end up with garish and overwrought graphics and bullshit visuals that say nothing. Style over substance. Substance is meaning. Sematical values. NOT syntax.
But the way you have it configured, the code creates the content, or the content generated by a computer is selfsame with the content in a conscious human being. Surely you know what the difference is between the two. Or perhaps you have it figured that we are all Turing machines walking around "thinking we are conscious." Even AI folks know the difference, otherwise there wouldn't be these baseless claims about "cresting" sentient machines. You follow me?
And what "theories" are you referring to? And by "tangible proof" aren't you really saying "material proof?"
Is your own experience tangible to you? Is your own sense of being alive and experience of typing a response on this site a real event, or merely imagined? If merely imagined, what would make it real for you? What criteria would it take for your experience to be tangible and authentic? And define the difference between imagining experience in general terms and actually having experience. And I don't mean the difference between imaging wrestling a lion and actually wrestling a lion. That's not the question.
What's more, in the model I follow, conscious content occurs at the confluence of several forces. Remove one and you don't have consciousness. They are all casually interdependent, none more primary than another.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 22, 2017 - 08:48pm PT
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What is the glaring thing you are missing and which is missing in the computer? The most obvious aspect of being conscious in the first place? Is what you are leaving out smoke or a mirror?
And the code runs you mind. It doesn't run your awareness. No mind, no content. Awareness is neither.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 22, 2017 - 09:18pm PT
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Jgill:
Yeah, I do identify with that research. I think the territory is littered with work that presents that general conclusion. (You know me: I’m biased toward that. I’m biased against bias—or something like that.)
Largo: As it turned out, they were offering very low fees for the content, while it was discovered that they were paying top dollar to the programmers who ran the site.
I can’t speak to that. What I can confidently report is an old adage: “content is king.” Plumbing or the architects of plumbing will sooner or later succumb to the value of content. If you can write, script, perform, or portray that which is creatively in-tune with-the-moment. . . you win over those that will provide it to you distributionally. Look at Walt Disney.
I disagree with Ward this time. Technology sooner or later will become a commodity. Not creativity. No matter what, true creativity will always be looked back on and valued for the impetus that it provided to other artists back when. This tends to be what people most admire today. In the past, it might have been mastery (the perfection of a style); today it tends to be that which is conceptually innovative.
(What’s the long game?)
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 22, 2017 - 10:24pm PT
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(What’s the long game?)
Things will become normal again.
Unfortunately, it will take 428,000 more years .......
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