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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 17, 2017 - 04:44pm PT
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Here you go, Byron:
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
by Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955)
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 17, 2017 - 06:01pm PT
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That's probably better than anything my meat brain could come up with.
That means you're just mechanical.
Dig into your soul and you'll fly and float with ease ........
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Byran
climber
Half Dome Village
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Apr 17, 2017 - 06:41pm PT
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Let me try to explain my argument in a bit more detail...
Ever since I was a kid I've really enjoyed monster movies and horror comics. Like many young boys I used to try to come up with drawings for all kinds of original and terrifying monsters. However I quickly became aware of just how impossible it is to come up with a monster design that's truly original. An alien from another galaxy should be totally different from any creature here on earth, but how does one imagine something that is so unlike anything we've ever seen? Any monster I could imagine turned out to be a mash-up or modification of some other creature or design I had already been exposed to. Like I could draw something with 6 eyes instead of two, and maybe a bunch of tentacles around it's mouth, but really my "new" monster was always just a combination of different pre-existing attributes - eyes, tentacles, ect...
And it seems like the most innovative designs in this regard are actually a total rip-off of nature, rather than anything resembling human imagination. Take Ridley Scott's "Alien" franchise which is brilliant and includes some of my all-time favorite films. The xenomorphs have acidic blood (like ants) which they can also spit at their enemies to blind them (like cobras). Their reproductive cycle requires they lay an embryo inside another organism (like wasps) which then eats its host from the inside out. It has a long pointed tail it can skewer things with (like a scorpion). They don't have eyes but can navigate by electrical impulses (like some fish). They have tongues with "jaws" that can grab prey and pull it into its mouth (like some worms). What makes the xenomorphs seem so original is that the creators plundered the animal kingdom looking for the strangest organisms and behaviors that are totally weird and scary. Nature is a far larger repository for innovative designs than the human mind could ever dream up. And really, the human mind isn't actually capable of creating anything unless it has something to start with. There is no way to "imagine" a color that you've never seen before, just like it's impossible to imagine a monster that isn't just made up of parts you're already familiar with.
So in response to the poem by Wallace Stevens, I would say that this is a recombination of preexisting words and concepts. The words themselves have evolved from earlier words, and even if a new word was coined in the poem it would still be just a new combination of preexisting letters and sounds. The poem appears to follow some conventions of rhyming and line poetry. And probably even the meaning and ideas contained in it have been influenced by the modern art movement or something. I dunno, I'm not an art historian and I'm totally unfamiliar with Wallace Stevens so I'm not the one to do an analysis of his work or sources of inspiration. But what in that poem do you think has been created out of whole cloth? I know that the sequence of words in that poem and the meaning expressed by them is unique and had never before been expressed, but that's just another way of saying it's a novel recombination of existing data.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Apr 17, 2017 - 07:11pm PT
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I think creativity is more than just novel. I think it's the unexpected combination that makes it unique. It isn't just a matter of perusing data banks by discursive words or symbolic pattern recognition, it's putting the two together that's creative. It's the brief and magical use of both the conscious and unconscious mind simultaneously - and spontaneously.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 17, 2017 - 07:28pm PT
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Data is static
Life is unborn dynamic sentient variegatedness with no beginning and end ever .......
(This post is never approved by the insentient material human robots and their stoopid AI insentient machines)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Apr 17, 2017 - 07:47pm PT
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But I guess as far as what is getting automated today--software can write music that musicians can't tell was automatically generated; bots are writing for the AP news service, mainly finance and sports, and an average reader wouldn't know; they are designing and composing photographs without human intervention; working as psychologists and therapists (not bullshitting here); they are beginning to write fiction; it's like, damn, what's left
That a machine can be created to imitate human actions that a human being might be fooled into believing is a human production, in fact, requires human intervention to produce, so that ultimately the product of any machine created by humanity is, in fact, just that: created by humanity. Soft ware doesn't create music. Humanity creates music by imposing conditions on software that direct it to certain activity of which the machine "knows" nothing. Science has truly lost its way if it believes otherwise.
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Byran
climber
Half Dome Village
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Apr 17, 2017 - 07:49pm PT
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Waaay out of your depth there, Brian. Some postmodernist poetry has no center and Harlem Renaissance poetry resembles jazz riffs. Not every poem has tidy heroic couplets or iambic pentameter. It has connotative and denotative significance, though. But that is not neatly defined.
Literature lightweights in the house. Umm, you're missing the point. Any sort of literary convention or even the subversion of traditional conventions, it's all still a convention used to express some meaning. All human thought and expression is built upon a preexisting foundation of language, concepts, and memes. Reread my post.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 17, 2017 - 07:58pm PT
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B said: " But what in that poem do you think has been created out of whole cloth?"
You're looking at the poem as though it were a monster outfit, an eternal object, an article of sense data. An output of a recombining brain. As mentioned, to our discursive minds, there is ONLY recombinations of the parts that are already extant in memory, right? Where would something absolutely new come from? Would that not make the new acausal?
Consider this:
All you can get hold of with your mechanical brain per that poem is a series of black dots on the page. "Poetry" happens when consciousness meets those black dots, and you start interpreting from there. The poem doesn't exist as some stand alone object which has all of it's literary properties, which in fact we give it in the nuances and quality of our reading. The poem is only a bunch of black dots.
Another thing is that for all those out there applying "thinking' and "creativiey" to sentactic engines (data processors with no 1st person subjectivity), why not ask another poetry generator if they like the Emperor of Ice Cream - or not.
You can't input the collective human knowledge about poetry into the machine and have the sentactic engine render it's "own" opinion because even among professionals, opinions vary greatly. At best you could input the opinions or opinion of one or a few experts and give a simulated output opinion of THEIR opinion.
The man mentioned that many poems don't even have a center. Another way of saying that is that the well a poem is drawn from is not necessarily a linear pool of cognitive data that we can mechanically sample as hip hop artists do in remixes. Feelings, sensations, intuitions, transcendental stuff, experiences of all kinds are decidedly NOT rational and contribute greatly in all art.
You also said: All human thought and expression is built upon a preexisting foundation of language, concepts, and memes.
You've just described a linear, determined machine, using a computer model to arrive at your proclamation. How about the poetry exercise of transcribing what you are feeling and sensing and intuiting as you write it, as it bubbles up. Since you can't "step in the same stream twice," you are not drawing on anything preexisting.
This is an endlessly fascinating subject for some of us...
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Byran
climber
Half Dome Village
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Apr 17, 2017 - 08:51pm PT
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Largo, I think we're in agreement that there are purely mental objects, for example, the concept of "justice", which cannot be said to exist like a solid object in the physical world. But while "justice" might exist only in the mind, the concept itself is formed out of variety of physical experience. It's really just a category, and you lump certain experiences and even other mental concepts into that bucket, while other things get tossed in the "injustice" bucket, or maybe neither bucket (obviously it's not a binary thing). This is why terms like justice and love are so hard to define, because when you reach for a definition you end up grasping an example instead. Because all these mental concepts are only a matrix of examples, various experiences you've had that share some emotional similarity. Maybe "bucket" was the wrong word to use, because in this case if you take everything out of the bucket you would have nothing left, not even an empty bucket. The emotion that ties these different experiences together couldn't be conceived without those experiences. How could you possibly know what justice is if you've never experienced injustice? Or know love without ever feeling love?
You also speak of "data processors with no 1st person subjectivity". But how do you know that electronic data processors have no subjectivity? What reasoning could you apply which doesn't also doubt the first person experience of all other humans and animals - or know that you're not the only conscious being in the whole universe?
If we're to keep our feet planted in reality, we've got to accept that consciousness evolved gradually more complex as organisms developed more complex nervous systems. Why shouldn't we expect the same from computer processors? I often wonder if maybe when you plug 2+2= into a calculator there isn't some first-person thought that happens. Obviously the calculator wouldn't have emotions, or desires, or a sense of self, or any of that, but for small fraction of a second maybe it actually thinks of the answer. Just a little blip of momentary consciousness incomparably different from our own. It's an endlessly fascinating subject for sure, thanks for your response.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 17, 2017 - 09:28pm PT
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Duck: It shows you're not in control of your minds on this subject matter.
Does everything have to be spelled out for you? Could I have made it any clearer with a brief paragraph from Babson? Can you read?
There’s nothing wrong with “intelligence.” It’s everywhere one looks.
Pay attention. Cohen, March, and Olsen (1972) said that decision making is associative, non-rational, and backwards. It is not directive, comprehensive, or objective. This simulated proof comes from the simplest of computer programs (published in 1972). Anyone who has every worked in an organization (supposedly with keen objective decision makers) is likely to attest what goes on is “nuts.”
So, what kind of world is it whereby people elevate and proclaim rationality and objectivity?
The kind where it is not practiced.
What does that mean? It means we are, in one form or another, living in delusion. We’re not arguing about net present value or even what decisions are, but we’re saying that most everything that we argue here or in organized society is empty, unintentional, and darned near chaotic.
What would or could “mind” be in that situation? (What and who do you think you are for writing anything cogent?)
And most people think I’M out in left field? Get a grip. Look around. You’re essentially all crazy.
Me? I don’t know. (At least I have doubts.)
You? You seem to be absolutely clear about something that very few people can get a handle on: reality.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 17, 2017 - 09:29pm PT
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Byran, try answering your own question by examining the difference between processing and thinking. What does a human have that a processor does not have, beyond feelings, sensations, etc.
And in the model I use, consciousness and awareness are not the same things. Consciousness is where awareness meets brain, and probably more. As mentioned, awareness is fundamentally the same across much of the animal world. We have a much richer consciousness than a rabbit, for instance, because of the bandwidth of our brains.
What makes all of this tricky is that you are working with both dedicated mechanical functioning and awareness within one integrated system. Consciousness is unity.
An external vantage will render you an objective machine sans observer. From that POV there seems little difference between consciousness and machine registration, which is all inputs and output with only blind processing in between. Blind (unconscious) processing DOES happen in us humans, for the vast majority of our experience. But that only tells part of the story, IME.
And nice rant, Mike.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 17, 2017 - 09:38pm PT
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There’s nothing wrong with “intelligence.” It’s everywhere one looks.
Who said there is anything wrong with intelligence?
Sure wasn't me.
You're ranting into thin air now .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 17, 2017 - 09:42pm PT
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Bryan: . . . how do you know that electronic data processors have no subjectivity? What reasoning could you apply which doesn't also doubt the first person experience of all other humans and animals - or know that you're not the only conscious being in the whole universe?
Some people are missing at least one point in the conversation.
If machines have subjectivity . . . then fine. What would that matter?
The point is whether you have subjectivity.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 17, 2017 - 10:00pm PT
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you are not drawing on anything preexisting.
But there is a source for everything in existence whether you can visualize it, consciously or not.
The source is always there.
We are not the ultimate source.
Therefore the preexisting actually holds true ultimately ......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 18, 2017 - 06:24am PT
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Largo: "Poetry" happens when consciousness meets those black dots, and you start interpreting from there.
Actually, a veritable cavalcade of subconscious processes occur between those two and also support the ongoing process of 'interpreting' and experiencing poetry. In other words, interpreted poetry doesn't 'leap' off those black dots fully formed, but rather is the supported by a whirlwind of hierarchal and highly distributed processing without which no interpreting or subjective experiencing would be taking place at all.
The general lack of accounting for the role of the subconscious is a serious weakness of this entire 15k conversation. Its dismissal by omission is an almost Victorian oversight given the predominant role of the subconscious as intermediary between meat and mind.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Apr 18, 2017 - 07:52am PT
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But how do you know that electronic data processors have no subjectivity? What reasoning could you apply which doesn't also doubt the first person experience of all other humans and animals - or know that you're not the only conscious being in the whole universe?
The problem here is that in our practical experience awareness/consciousness is exclusive to living entities. If you declare consciousness possible in inanimate nonliving matter then you declare consciousness itself as separate from some kind of particular machine source, consciousness becomes like light or some other physical structure existing as independent product from a variety of sources. And this only opens the door to the monstrous woo that science finds so despicable. Why not say that the universe itself is a conscious/aware entity and what would that entity be if not God? Without getting buried in semantics, if humanity creates a machine that is aware in the same sense a living being is aware the implications will be beyond, take us beyond science’s purview. Careful what you wish for.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Apr 18, 2017 - 08:16am PT
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"The general lack of accounting for the role of the subconscious is a serious weakness of this entire 15k conversation. Its dismissal by omission is an... oversight given the predominant role of the subconscious as intermediary between meat and mind."
Yes, that's one. Here's two more.
(2) The general lack of accounting for the role of Evolutionary Psychology is a serious weakness of this entire 15k conversation. Its dismissal by omission IS a GLARING oversight given the predominant role of Evolved Emotions and Feelings as integral to meat and mind.
(3) The general lack of accounting for the role of circuitry (complex and diverse) is a serious weakness of this entire 15k conversation. Its dismissal by omission is an ENORMOUS oversight given its predominant role of (complex and diverse) functionality integral to meat and mind.
And yet this is completely understandable. Because... (a) Mind brain science is still a fledging discipline; (b) a good portion of contributors here (no doubt resulting from simple inexperience) do not approach the subject from a systems engineering perspective at all - that is the basic requirement - but rather from a woo, semi-religious, anti-scientific, math or physics perspective.
...
Woo supreme?
http://erisfit.com/qualia-brain-health/#prettyPhoto/0/
Buy right now!
http://neurohacker.com/shop/ref/7/?campaign=sidebar
"Qualia was designed to provide immediate, noticeable uplift of your subjective experience within 20 minutes..."
lol
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 18, 2017 - 08:57am PT
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And yet this is completely understandable. Because... (a) Mind brain science is still a fledging discipline; (b) a good portion of contributors here (no doubt resulting from simple inexperience) do not approach the subject from a systems engineering perspective at all - that is the basic requirement - but rather from a woo, semi-religious, anti-scientific, math or physics perspective.
--------
The challenge of maintaining this perspective, IMO, is that mind, so far as we can tell, is not an object, nor yet an output (data/action). Rather a process arising from the conflagration or objective brain function and awareness. You can isolate out strands of this triad - objective functioning, awareness, and consciousness - and while the division is essential for study, we are dealing with a unified whole.
Fruity is siding with objective functioning, the function that generates the stuff of experience (thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories), narrow focusing on systems engineering aspects. No harm in that. And this kind of work will reveal much per the generation of our conscious content.
However there is a problem here, and it's twofold: First, if consciousness is looked at from a systems engineering vantage alone, it's liking looking at the pitchings of guitar strings solely in terms of E, A, so to speak, excluding the other four strings. This raises a couple other issues. The function of the other four strings will tend to get conflated with the E and A articles - whereby ALL you have to know to understand consciousness is E and A (or systems engineering), and that everything else is shuck and jive derived from religious doctrine and reflecting an age when folks were ignorant and superstitious.
Not so much ...
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Apr 18, 2017 - 09:08am PT
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Largo, your argument is getting tired, and a little silly. It is like saying a leaf is not a tree.
Show me on example of a brain dead person who can think.
Where did his mind go? Duh. It went when his brain was damaged. A functioning mind correlates directly to a functioning brain.
There are so many zillions of concrete, measurable instances of this. It happens every day at any reasonably large hospital.
The mind is the brain. The brain is the mind. Of course you need to toss in a number of hormones and neurotransmitters, but it is medically clear that the mind, or consciousness if you prefer, resides in the brain.
This is so simple. Werner will blow a fuse over the above statement, but I ask any of you: Have you known anyone who was injured and suffered brain damage through stroke or accident? Function correlates with brain health. I've seen it several times.
If you have a brain tumor, are you going to pray it out, or are you going to go to a neurosurgeon?
This is just a shady way of calling out the soul, or spirit.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Apr 18, 2017 - 09:13am PT
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I have a neighbor who is Chinese. She has an A.I. background, but decided to get a master's degree in English Literature. She is a big reader.
Once she was over here and mentioned that Chinese is a far more descriptive language than English.
There is a theory that the language you speak can actually impact how your mind functions. Do you guys think in English? I usually do, but many ideas just pop into my head. In the background, I was thinking.
I think that it is an interesting topic, and I will bring it up the next time we have them over.
This is a really cool wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language
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