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WBraun
climber
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Mar 31, 2017 - 08:44am PT
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The proof is already there, open up your shut door .......
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 31, 2017 - 09:21am PT
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DMT: I'm the first to admit I don't know.
A great sign of an aware being.
eeyonkee: Harari (Homo Deus) . . . characterizes emotions and feelings as highly evolved biological algorithms.
You’ve mentioned this now twice. I would say that “algorithm” is a bit of a vague term. You could just as well use the word “heuristic” and say the same thing IME. Both an algorithm and heuristic are short-cuts, tricks, models, abstractions that “work,” but we may not understand WHY they work. That, for me, is the issue that continually hides from observation. Is it just the way the universe is structured, or is there some metaphysical explanation that dictates why that particular equation (algorithm, expression, model) seems to “fit” with observed behavior. (Alas, we are left with another interpretation.)
If you’re interested in emotions and feelings, you might be interested in what some people in cognitive science have to say about them. There might be more up-to-date work done that I’m not aware of, but I would suggest the following works that focus on what emotions are and how they fit into current views of cognition.
Prinz, 2004, “Gut Reactions: a perceptual theory of emotions”
Eckman, 2007, “Emotions Revealed.”
Barsalou, 1999, “Perceptual Symbol Systems” Brain & Behavioral Science, 22:4, 577-660. (This is a very good article.)
These people will point to new ideas about cognition called “grounded cognition” or “embodied cognition,” which say that all concepts and feelings arise from the body’s interactions with the environment—rather than concepts coming simply and only from internal thinking. (These ideas about grounded cognition have tended to kill-off the traditional idea that the brain is a computer accessing data files.) Folks in grounded cognition have argued that concepts (after being established initially through bodily experiences) are simulators that are run and manipulated. Such a view of simulation (mental models) hence helps to explain how it is that we can think of some experience or concept and *feel* the experience as if we were in it for real. If anyone has every put themselves through visualization exercises in preparation for a competition or challenging experience (like a sharpshooter who visualizes hitting the target, or a climber getting ready to tackle a difficult route), they are likely to report that their body (muscles, nerves, feelings) goes through the same experiences as if they were actually going through the actual experience in the physical world.
Mind training through visualization is also what many meditators can attend to (tantra). Mind is apparently more powerful than the body, but it is the body that trains the mind. Smile and you will feel better.
There is something else that comes through the research that is equally important from my way of thinking. Research on emotions / feelings, cognition, and perception is tending to suggest that there is not one highly integrated system that’s running the entire shooting match called, “being.” There are separate systems that interact with one another (subjective, objective), and the interactions among the systems lead to a lack of total integration. Hence, we are combinations of conflicting complexes, some of which are autonomous, automatic, unconscious, unknown, conscious, self-reflective, and so on—some of which are cultural, institutional, or social. So, what any one is or is not cannot be said. “What we are” appears to be highly dynamic, multi-dimensional, unique, and unpredictable. We are not complicated; we are complex, non-linear expressions of a multitude of different systems and communities objectively and subjectively.
At least that’s what I get out of the conversations.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Mar 31, 2017 - 10:11am PT
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If you are present in the moment in continuous awareness your alive and in reality, enjoy! God put in everything here for us!
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Mar 31, 2017 - 11:57am PT
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playing with your poodle
Poodle? Poodle?
Pure bred Border Collie. ( btw notice the little mini alluvial fan a few feet to Chip's right)
Capable of precise herding of livestock, including humans.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kbLE72rMgcU
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mar 31, 2017 - 01:17pm PT
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Perhaps it will be a little like The Matrix. When they want to learn something, they just load up a disk, and in seconds, know how to pilot a helicopter or know Kung Fu. Think about it: Anything that you want to know. If that were possible, it would totally change human society and our trajectory through time.
I dunno. This is science fiction at the moment, but if Elon Musk is going to spend a ton of money on it, I presume that he must have some insight that I do not.
Or perhaps he is just pulling a Trump, and dazzling us with bullsh#t.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Mar 31, 2017 - 01:45pm PT
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Both an algorithm and heuristic are short-cuts, tricks, models, abstractions that “work,” but we may not understand WHY they work
My only real experience with algorithms and heuristics is in math and computers, and those I have encountered or used are pretty well understood. They are designed in that way. You are talking in larger generalities, especially regarding physical theories and models. Nice comments.
Ed might have something to say about those in physics. And the Wizard might have insight into those used in noetics.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 31, 2017 - 02:50pm PT
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Prinz, 2004, “Gut Reactions: a perceptual theory of emotions”
My own sense of humor is well rewarded from following this thread.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 31, 2017 - 02:56pm PT
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the DNA/RNA has info in it which is acted upon...
it's an instruction set
it also happens to be how/what you are...
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The problems with this - or the limitations - are A), it's build entirely on an old behavioralist model per inputs and outputs (what you DO), and B) it tries to define "what you are" purely in terms of the reductive-causal functions believed to drive a person's actions.
Unless one knew better, we'd think you were describing, say, the play of quarks in a bottle, as opposed all the stuff you left out of your descriptions that define us as humans: awareness, consciousness, experience, and most of all, our sense of being in the world.
In short, Ed, you have made ontological valuations ("what you are") based entirely on physical descriptions, implying there is nothing of value beyond the later - as though a physical description and summery of behavior perfectly and entirely describes who your daughter "is," in all of her conscious humanity.
The illusion here is that all that ontological fluff is the questionable additive or artifact of the physical (note the accent on imagined determined causative factors), when in fact the only life you know always takes place in your first person dimension.
Dingus asked a question I want to get to but have to work till 6. Maybe later. It's a good one.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Mar 31, 2017 - 05:34pm PT
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jgill's latest creation of eyes inside the meat brain is truly haunting. I downloaded it so I can look at it some more. I'm curious though as to whether that came out of his unconscious or emerged from a mathematical formula?
And love those videos of border collies. Why would anyone want to communicate with a robot when they could have a border collie instead?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 31, 2017 - 06:16pm PT
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Well, a robot could have the advantage that you could turn it off when going on vacation.
Our daughter's dog has rejoined her. In Toronto. It was shocking to find how empty our house was without her small noises to get attention or food treats, the little feet padding across the floor in your direction when you were detected in the kitchen.
She's had a lively week in Toronto. She's nearly run all the squirrels off of our block, she's already made some 'enemy dogs', and she's getting a lot of attention on the TTC. I brought her to auditions the other day and she put everyone right at ease. Then she asked if she could audition for the part so we gave her a shot (she didn't get the part).
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Mar 31, 2017 - 08:30pm PT
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I'm curious though as to whether that came out of his unconscious or emerged from a mathematical formula?
Nothing is consciously planned, Jan. I experiment with exotic formulae and sometimes name the outcomes.
Shroud of Turin
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Another interesting piece.
Math before art, yet a lot of the art is very evocative and seems straight out of the unconscious.
The mind as microcosm of the mathematical universe?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Largo: . . . that means the brain gave an order for the sheer pleasure of ignoring it.
There’s something delightful about this idea.
“Who’s on first? What’s on second?” (Abbot and Costello) Mobius strips. (Wolfram; Godel, Escher, & Bach) “What are your attitudes about your attitudes?” (my professor in organizational behavior) Mises en abyme. (Many a postmodernist) “A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” (Winston Churchill) “If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.” (Tom Peters)
Ain’t it fun?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jgill: Nothing is consciously planned, Jan. I experiment with exotic formulae and sometimes name the outcomes.
You might be interested in the research by David Galenson’s, “Old Masters and Young Geniuses” (2007). He’s an economist at U of Chicago.
From Amazon’s page on the book:
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“When in their lives do great artists produce their greatest art? Do they strive for creative perfection throughout decades of painstaking and frustrating experimentation, or do they achieve it confidently and decisively, through meticulous planning that yields masterpieces early in their lives?”
“By examining the careers not only of great painters but also of important sculptors, poets, novelists, and movie directors, Old Masters and Young Geniuses offers a profound new understanding of artistic creativity. Using a wide range of evidence, David Galenson demonstrates that there are two fundamentally different approaches to innovation, and that each is associated with a distinct pattern of discovery over a lifetime.”
“Experimental innovators work by trial and error, and arrive at their major contributions gradually, late in life. In contrast, conceptual innovators make sudden breakthroughs by formulating new ideas, usually at an early age. Galenson shows why such artists as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Jackson Pollock, Virginia Woolf, Robert Frost, and Alfred Hitchcock were experimental old masters, and why Vermeer, van Gogh, Picasso, Herman Melville, James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, and Orson Welles were conceptual young geniuses. He also explains how this changes our understanding of art and its past.”
“Experimental innovators seek, and conceptual innovators find. By illuminating the differences between them, this pioneering book provides vivid new insights into the mysterious processes of human creativity.”
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(He's got a theory; but he does have *some* empirical data. It’s not a bad read.)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Thanks for the reference, Mike. I am definitely an experimental innovator in everything that I do. Of course my experients were more bold when I was young.
Part of it of course, is the luck of timing. The first to experiment with something new, however cautiously, gets the reputation of being an innovator.
Then there are the differences in academic fields. A historian slowly builds up his references until he or she can prove a new conclusion.
Physics rewards conceptual breakthroughs. A physicist almost never has one after the age of 30.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Math before art, yet a lot of the art is very evocative and seems straight out of the unconscious
Who knows? It might be that my subconscious puts forth mathematical examples for me to try. As I said, I hardly ever have a clue as to what these things will look like, and it's fascinating to sit here watching them slowly materialize on the screen in front of me. The formulae that I employ are algorithms that I am almost certain have never been used before as they come out of obscure research that is virtually my exclusive domain.
I was surprised a few months ago when a famous mathematician on researchgate who dabbles in math art cited some of my stuff. I had never thought of what I was doing as really an art form.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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jgill-
Definitely what you are doing is an art form! What's so interesting to me is that it hits such a cord in my unconscious. The only other equally evocative art for the unconscious is Indo-Tibetan. I think of that as the Baroque form and yours as the Zen form. No one has to explain the symbolism of yours, it just grabs a person.
A person trying to depict consciousness emerging from the brain couldn't have done a better job of it than your depiction, yet yours came out of a mathematical formula. Very intriguing. If nothing else it demonstrates that you have a good sense of imagination in naming your subject once it emerges from the math. But it seems more than that.
It reminds me of one of the Chinese theories of the I Ching that says the reason it is able to tell the future (assuming one believes that) is that the energy with which the person throws the dice or the chopsticks reflects their mental state and therefore so will the readings. Perhaps your math reflects your inner state and therefore so does the artwork.
Hopefully this isn't too much woo for you!
Meanwhile, it seems like this could be the thing that you become noted for. The end work of a methodical innovator.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Thanks, Jan.
;>)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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A person trying to depict consciousness emerging from the brain
I wonder if that might be behind this:
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