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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Given humans created computers and program them, I'd say computers think a lot like humans, 100% at this point in their evolution.
The Turing Machine is a human creation but that doesn't mean it's the holy grail of human thought (it doesn't mean it isn't either). When you do long division, add or multiply numbers using the algorithms, stuff like that, then you're definitely thinking like a computer (or the computer is definitely thnking like you, however you want to say). It's just that most of the time when human beings "think" they don't seem to be following algorithms. Maybe we are, unconsciously. Somewhere in our brain are very sophisticated algorithms we don't know about or understand and we follow these unconsciously. It just doesn't seem that way. I recall, when chess playing programs were first being developed, that the designers would talk to skilled chess players and try to get them to explain how they decided to make their moves, to model their programs accordingly. After a while they decided to scrap that approach, because it seemed the way humans played chess was not codifiable.
A little story: I just went to pick up my daughter at piano practice and I should have been engaged with her, but I was so distracted thinking about this thread that I was in, as you might say, another world. When my computer starts to act like that, then I'll take this whole machines think like humans thing more seriously.
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WBraun
climber
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computers think like humans
Not even close.
Only wannabee robotic people think like that.
A human being is so far more dynamic in variegatedness than a stoopid computer.
You gross materialists are creating your own death because you have no life beyond a stoopid machine.
No wonder you all are killing each other all over the planet.
You have no soul and are dead matter with no life (a computer is not life) ......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Just common use of language.
Thanks. We could use more of that.
I sometimes wonder where my inside and the outside meet. It could be the skin, or it could be somewhere deeper. When it comes to people, or even computers, inside and outside may be seen as philosophical distinctions, but I prefer not to get too concerned, not being a philosopher, myself.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2017 - 05:54pm PT
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Dingus, if you dug into the literature it would probably become clear to you (I think) that what you call machine "thinking" is actually just computation.
If you watched your own process doing some creative task, you would see not only computation, of a kind, but another phenomenon altogether contingent upon you being sentient of the process - not merely blindly registering data, but having a conscious awareness and experience of same, and guiding and tracking the brain generated data, toggling the gusher of information, stopping and starting and mulling things over and so forth. Minus the aware experience, you have a zombie, a Turning machine that neither knows it is a machine of is aware of its own process.
A good exercise for any Hard AI geek is to try and describe the difference between the sentient machines promised in the near future, and your own process when and when not doing a task.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2017 - 06:09pm PT
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Wanna be Dr. Frankenstein is another shoptalk term for a Hard AI geek. You know the stereotype: the dufus with the oversized wingtips and white socks and too many pens in his pocket, dreaming of cyber love ... and living forever and ever.
IMO, if there is one fatal error widely seen across the Hard AI spectrum, it's the conflation of simulation and duplication. As many have pointed out, we can simulate some aspects of human processing in terms of tasking, but that in no way makes it "thinking." We can also simulate a five-alarm fire, but nobody is frightened we will burn down the neighborhood in the process.
As mentioned, if you want to directly experience the effect and influence of an observer on your physical processing, simply get an indoor outdoor thermometer, tape the sensor to your index finger and try and raise the temp. Simple biofeedback is a great way to clarify many of these issues that otherwise confound people who naturally confuse processing with conscious activity.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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. . . in my experience with Zen (about 7-10 years), I don’t remember anyone referring to a fully realized “I.”
I would expect that in Zen. That's what I meant about the difference in experiences. When you fully awaken in the dream state the recognition of your "I" is an astounding thing. It's all you are, apparently.
. . . you don’t appear to hesitate to say what and how things are or were in your lucid dreaming. I might have thought that if you’ve had the experience, you’d be a bit hesitant to say who and what you or your consciousness is—at least in that context
And why should I be reluctant to describe my adventures? This is not arcane, mystical information that requires obedient adherence to secret rites and practices. It's right out there for anyone to engage in.
Was it ever your experience that you would see outside of your body in the moment, discoverable things in the awakened state?
Sorry, I don't understand the question.
The most comprehensive look at the "I" and subpersonalities I have found is Hal Stone and the Psychology of Selves. As is usually the case with this stuff, this is slow going, and generally takes years to even get a feel for what is involved
Sounds boring as hell. It took me only a short time to access my inner self. The ease of doing so belies the profundity of the experience. When I first engaged in the activity, I thought, This is the way ancient religions arose. It all made sense.
. . . by simply watching your creative process when tasking - doing a math problem
I'd never solve the problem if I did that!
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Poseidon's Revenge (or whatever Jan wants to call it)
This image is moduli contour based for a certain infinite composition of complex functions that produces an infinite (self-generating) product in the complex plane. The image itself derives from contour integrals extracted from the product. I've developed quite a bit of elementary theory in the subject over the years. But it's a relatively unknown topic.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - May 5, 2017 - 06:53pm PT
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Dingus, a computer doesn't "understand" anything. It is a machine.
Again, do yourself a favor and define to yourself the difference between a syntactic engine (use Vulcan, the most powerful computer in the world, and your own processing. What is the difference.
The problem is you haven't looked into the arguments save from the computer science angle. Here are is a videos and a paper that might make it clear for you. Or at least head you in the right direction.
Again, conflating sentactic engines (processing) and intelligence is a common but fatal error among computer folks.
VID:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6o_7HeowY8
Article:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-minds-are-not-like-computers
This should go some way in making the basic concepts clear on the vast differences between actual intelligence and understanding, and the blind, syntactic processing that a computer does while tasking.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Again, conflating sentactic engines (processing) and intelligence is a common but fatal error among computer folks
And paunchy labcoats and beakerboys as well.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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If I think, hmmm, 2+2=4 did I actually do the math? Nope, not for the most part. I simply memorized the answer. But I can do the math, on my fingers and toes, one digit at a time. So too can computers, 1 digit at a time, base 2 instead of base 10. All human constructs of thinking processes, imprinted in computer circuits.
Yes. Now add 6,678+10,923+422+12,905+77,629. There you probably need the algorithm (more than your fingers and toes). I suppose the computer is better at this than you are. And I can describe precisely the algorithm used, if need be (in terms of 1s and 0s, if you like). But now describe to me the algorithm that determined your answers on this thread. Show me how your responses follow from a chain of 1s and 0s. Harder?
Even in pure math, problems that are very specific and computational, problems like like "prove or disprove the Riemann Conjecture", a problem that can win you a million dollars if you could solve it, seem virtually impossible to translate into computational machine language.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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If I think, hmmm, 2+2=4 did I actually do the math?
I'm not sure what you mean by that question... and I know you don't know how you "do the math" but there are many examples of people able to do it, even though they haven't a clue how...
Ramanujan gave this answer "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God" and attributed his mathematical powers to the goddess Mahalakshmi. He was exceptionally gifted.
Werner might like that answer, but there have been others with profound mathematical ability, and probably this rules out the "hand of God" explanation.
That the human brain has algorithms for doing mathematics, and other things (our spatiotemporal calculations that form the basis of our motion, for instance). These algorithms are the result of evolution, and the results were paid for in blood, as it were, unsuccessful adaptations snuffed out in the "fitness landscape."
The way a computer does it by a relatively simple algorithm, and should be obvious after taking one of sycorax's logic courses... in philosophy (though you might in the mathematics or computer science department). I learned it on my own... without the need of a class.
How does Largo "do math"? I'm sure he can cook up a good story for us.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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(or whatever Jan wants to call it)
Marashino cherries being stabbed by a pointed cake spatula in a bowl of not - yet - set lime jello was my first impression.
Some kind of weird top down cat scan with a scary medical probe was my second impression.
That's one weird fragmented personality if that's a mind, getting the coup de grace from a dagger was my third impression.
I hope that's not jgill's current state was the next one.
Complex and assymmetrical makes for hard to interpret, it seems.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Again, do yourself a favor and define to yourself the difference between a syntactic engine (use Vulcan, the most powerful computer in the world, and your own processing. What is the difference.
That's a fair question. The difference can be simply asserted by indicating that the computer is a machine and the person is a living thing. The computer lacks the experience of a living thing:
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Machine computation or distilled big data sets, or what have you, in and of themselves, could never prove (to some arbitrating galactic council in a universal court of law ) that the machine truly knows what it's like to be a worm or a frog or a human. So when the machine intones the above quote it does so as mere reportage.
A machine could never know the unique experience of a human. It permanently lacks organic requirements, organic origins. It lacks a valid qualifying reference index. Even being programmed by organic entities is of no use to the machines understanding of living experience in this regard.For one thing any given programmer ,or army of programmers , required translation of collective knowledge of organic life experiences into machine language would be inescapably incomplete and appallingly compromised (lol). This would inevitably result in a hopeless accumulation of errors.
This probably brings us back to having to acknowledge the espitemological limitations logically inherent in purely rationalistic determinism.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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In terms of explaining things, saying our mind works by unspecified algorithms that we are unconscious of, doesn't seem to be a big improvement over the hand of God explication.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Meatbags can survive just fine without electricity.
No meat bags cannot. Our tissue carry an electric charge that operates much like flashlight batteries. It is a result of redox reactions and is essential to life.
( This is why it is a good idea to avoid fluoride. Fluoride salts seriously impede redox reactions..Flouride , along with other substances, represent a very messy short-circuit "off" switch for humans and other creatures.A fairly good "discharge quencher". Strong insulating properties.
saying our mind works by unspecified algorithms that we are unconscious of, doesn't seem to be a big improvement over the hand of God explication.
Yes it seems to resemble, at least at this stage, the "faith" of a bona fide religious conviction.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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In terms of explaining things, saying our mind works by unspecified algorithms that we are unconscious of, doesn't seem to be a big improvement over the hand of God explication.
not at all, and the algorithms are probably not "unspecified," the interesting issue is what are those algorithms. When you make an error in a calculation, why does that happen?
The results of the algorithms are available, to some extent, to the conscious, and there are times when we consciously work through algorithms to obtain a result.
Origins of the brain networks for advanced mathematics in expert mathematicians
Marie Amalric and Stanislas Dehaene
Abstract
The origins of human abilities for mathematics are debated: Some theories suggest that they are founded upon evolutionarily ancient brain circuits for number and space and others that they are grounded in language competence. To evaluate what brain systems underlie higher mathematics, we scanned professional mathematicians and mathematically naive subjects of equal academic standing as they evaluated the truth of advanced mathematical and nonmathematical statements. In professional mathematicians only, mathematical statements, whether in algebra, analysis, topology or geometry, activated a reproducible set of bilateral frontal, Intraparietal, and ventrolateral temporal regions. Crucially, these activations spared areas related to language and to general-knowledge semantics. Rather, mathematical judgments were related to an amplification of brain activity at sites that are activated by numbers and formulas in nonmathematicians, with a corresponding reduction in nearby face responses. The evidence suggests that high-level mathematical expertise and basic number sense share common roots in a nonlinguistic brain circuit.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Thanks Ed.
I think Amalric and Stanislas' conclusions are not at all surprising if you think in terms of evolution. We know that several different birds and mammals can count for example, which should have been a good clue.
We know that music enhances mathematical abilities and that certain types of birds like to dance to the rhythm of music (cockatoos dancing to rock appear quite regularly on the internet).
By contrast, Language appeared very recently.
Yet another link between ourselves and the natural world.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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So that article makes me wonder: what parts of the brain light up when a climber tries do a complex pitch or boulder problem? The authors suggest that arithmetic and more advanced math activates areas of the brain that: "coincide with regions previously associated with a “multiple-demand” system active in many effortful problem-solving tasks and dissociable from language-related areas ." Any hypothesis or input from someone who knows about this?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Prolonged Rock Climbing Activity Induces Structural Changes in Cerebellum and Parietal Lobe
Margherita Di Paola, Carlo Caltagirone, and Laura Petrosini
Abstract: This article analyzes whether climbing, a motor activity featured by upward movements by using both feet and hands, generation of new strategies of motor control, maintenance of not stable equilibrium and adoption of long-lasting quadrupedal posture, is able to modify specific brain areas. MRI data of 10 word-class mountain climbers (MC) and 10 age-matched controls, with no climbing experience were acquired. Combining region-of-interest analyses and voxel-based morphometry we investigated cerebellar volumes and correlation between cerebellum and whole cerebral gray matter. In comparison to controls, world-class MC showed significantly larger vermian lobules I-V volumes, with no significant difference in other cerebellar vermian lobules or hemispheres. The cerebellar enlargement was associated with an enlargement of right medial posterior parietal area. The specific features of the motor climbing skills perfectly fit with the plastic anatomical changes we found. The enlargement of the vermian lobules I–V seems to be related to highly dexterous hand movements and to eye-hand coordination in the detection of and correction of visuomotor errors. The concomitant enlargement of the parietal area is related to parallel work in predicting sensory consequences of action to make movement corrections. Motor control and sensory-motor prediction of actions make the difference between survive or not at extreme altitude. Hum Brain Mapp 00:000–000, 2012.
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