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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jul 15, 2017 - 08:10am PT
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Nice article you linked, Tim. I know very little about your area, but I learned of the existence of the American Institute of Mathematics by reading this. It was created about the time I retired.
I got a kick out of the fact that Vogan called representation theory the fertilizer of the mathematical garden. What did I learn how to do when I wrote my doctoral thesis? Make fertilizer! He may be responding a bit to the (what some thought was undue) attention that the project received in the media. He always had an offbeat wit and sense of humor, evident in most of his writings and, according to my advisor, was criticized early on by some other professional mathematicians for this.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jul 15, 2017 - 08:26am PT
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oh, like Mars Curiosity
From the article:
"The rover considers all the paths it could take to get to the designated endpoint for the drive and chooses the best one."
"We could see the area before the dip, and we told the rover where to drive on that part. We could see the ground on the other side, where we designated a point for the rover to end the drive, but Curiosity figured out for herself how to drive the uncharted part in between."
Edit to add: I suppose you might be able to let Curiosity just wander around the planet, doing a discrete approximation of continuously picking out the safest line of travel, but I doubt the results would be optimal for investigators' aims back on earth.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jul 15, 2017 - 08:51am PT
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Crickets from Camp Woo.
It occurred to me to break out into a round of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" in honor of the hypothetical researchers and technicians who might be able to achieve what MH2 is talking about, but then I thought this might be a little too sexist. Praise the women in science and technology, we need more of them! I get a little tired of the man's club.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2017 - 09:06am PT
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Edit to add: I suppose you might be able to let Curiosity just wander around the planet, doing a discrete approximation of continuously picking out the safest line of travel, but I doubt the results would be optimal for investigators' aims back on earth.
it's interesting that we wouldn't provide an adaptive algorithm for Curiosity to roam about in the best way it understands to find the things that are defined as science mission priorities.
Right now we provide that guidance from the ground, where the collaboration is highly skewed to the science input. NASA likes this, and even requires it, since it has a huge investment in "human space flight" arguing you need the flexibility of human "boots on the ground" to do "real" exploration. Actually, NASA is very equally sensitive about "rogue astronauts" improvising on the missions.
As MH2 had mentioned far above regarding the algorithms contained in dragon fly nervous systems, when you have to optimize for flight, weight matters. And so it is for Curiosity, the weight of including a more capable computer to allow for more autonomy. This is rendered unnecessary because there is no "real time" imperative to defining the objectives, and the Earth based computation resources far exceed what could be landed on Mars. However, the light-travel-time makes autonomous navigation a necessity for any reasonably efficient mission, the rover has to rove and can't wait for input from Earth.
It doesn't change when Curiosity is replaced by humans, and it is probably the case that even less capable remote sensing is available in human missions because of the priority placed on crew survivability. Weight matters...
All this is to say that, in my opinion, the greatest technologies coming out of the unmanned exploration is the creation of autonomous machines that can take over much of the on site control as possible, freeing up telecom bandwidth and ground crews to do more science. Those technologies have many many applications back here on Earth. But perhaps further discussion should be moved from this thread to the "machines take over" thread.
It's not even clear that we loose out on art...
...we know it when we see it.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jul 15, 2017 - 09:32am PT
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it's interesting that we wouldn't provide an adaptive algorithm for Curiosity to roam about in the best way it understands to find the things that are defined as science mission priorities.
I think Largo has a point about this. Defining mission priorities could end up being something like "a task where the endpoint or destination or final product has to be sorted out as you go, with no existing maps, no distance known, no idea how the task will flesh itself out into the product." Do you think people can write down a short list of priorities that will work in every case, no matter what they find? There might be some advantage to making Curiosity more autonomous, I don't know, I don't work on the project. It may be the case that most of what Curiosity finds is pretty boring, and letting it run on autopilot is just fine. But what if it finds something unexpected, surprising, unanticipated? Something totally unknown. Should Curiosity find, say life (this seems less and less likely as time goes). should we just let the preprogrammed mission priorities blindly run what happens after that?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 15, 2017 - 09:36am PT
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...we know it when we see it.
If you believe a machine understands, comprehends, is aware that it is making art through aesthetic judgements, you are a man of greater faith than anyone else on this thread.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2017 - 09:51am PT
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I think you miss the point of autonomous, and hint that you think humans would do better. In many cases, adaptive machine algorithms find solutions because they are not as biased as humans frequently are, and that they generally don't have the limitation of biological computation (they don't get tired or suffer from lack of food).
Our ideas of what constitutes "evidence for life" do not spring, fully formed, from our foaming thoughts onto a conch shell. The criteria for life are hammered out in the often dusty pages of the scientific literature, and now in the rather prosaic internet postings. Any person walking around on the surface of Mars has with them the sum total of all that work, and the yammering of mission control in their headset telling them what to do.
Since little of the "infrastructure" of our mind is available for us to examine, we emphasize the importance of the stuff that is open to examination, and exalt it often to the exclusion of those things we have more in common with Curiosity, and even with dragon flies. This is not a "romantic" dismissal of human accomplishment, it is a recognition of the debt that accomplishment owes to the process which created the opportunity to accomplish.
These adaptive algorithms pay homage to our understanding of things like "awareness" and even "sentience" and "thought." They cannot be anything but, we are like those ancient Roman seafarers who cling to the view of the shore in these discussions, and construct a map of the world unaware of the greatness of what lies beyond. What is mind? we probably aren't going to figure that our if we just sit around measuring our breathing.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 15, 2017 - 09:59am PT
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Good grief!!
A human being is unlimited because it comes from the unlimited.
A machine is ultimately always limited.
You people are so far gone inside your minds you've become completely lost ....
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 15, 2017 - 10:07am PT
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This is not a "romantic" dismissal of human accomplishment, it is a recognition of the debt that accomplishment owes to the process which created the opportunity to accomplish.
Oh come on, the whole crows are smart too thing and the whole notion of the easy transference of awareness to the complexity of wires and silicon is straight out of the romantic playbook. Human intuition and basic human biases are necessary parts of the expereince of human life and have been just as much of a help as a hindrance historically.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2017 - 10:08am PT
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I haven't ever said that it is easy.
so as a challenge, perhaps you could do more than state that this is "straight out of the romantic playbook"
what is that "playbook"
you make this claim (often an accusation) but have never backed it up with anything more than indignant statements. Largo has done better supporting his contentions...
you got anything, Paul?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jul 15, 2017 - 10:24am PT
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you think humans would do better
Who do you think writes the algorithms and builds the machines? The machines we have now are (more or less) good at performing a specific task operating in a clearly defined system of rules with a clearly defined goal. In some cases they are "better" than human beings in this framework and in other cases they are still much "worse". The goals, the rules, the algorithms, the hardware, the basic design, the production from raw materials, everything important (except running the program) is organized, planned created and done by human beings (of course we depend on other machines in the process, like trucks for delivery, etc.). I think you have this mixed up. Machines are just running programs to do things people tell them to. I don't "think" humans "would do" better, but I think letting a machine make decisions about some unexpected, high stakes encounter based on rules, goals and algorithms written by human beings (the programmers) that couldn't take into account the unexpected contingency, is insanity.
I get the impression you wrote an algorithm yesterday and built a machine to run it, and now you want to let that machine tell you what to do for all time. Even if you get all tingly about letting computers make the decisions, don't you think tomorrow's programmers and hardware developers might come up with better machines?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 15, 2017 - 10:31am PT
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"The rover considers all the paths it could take to get to the DESIGNATED ENDPOINT for the drive and chooses the best one."
You must have missed that line, Ed. With a designated endpoint the rover can postulate a route as a calculation and adjust accordingly, said "adjustements" being carried out according to programming. The computer is mechanically executing a function.
What is the difference between what the rover does, and the process you go through when you go to Yosemite and look for a good photo, and after considering all options, take said shot? Does Ed take the photo, or you're brain. Ed, by the way, INCLUDES your brain. But in this example, your brain does NOT include Ed, the observer. How do you think you're brain would do without Ed along? How might the photos be different if Zombie Ed took one and you took one? What are the differences between Zombie Ed and you?
The extremes that people will go to try and "explain" how a machine can do everything that a sentient person can do, are so wonky and desperate that after a while, I have to stop looking at the plea and start looking at the person. My sense of it is there is a certain demographic that simply doesn't understand any other language but computations. To this mind set, all knowledge, all knowing, is secured and vouchsafed exclusively through computations. All other modes of operation "only think" they are contributing to the lives we lead, when the real and true and conclusive story is told by calculations and only calculations, which are carried out by determined mechanisms. This, I believe, is the fallout from looking only at mechanical functioning, or mechanical processing (evolution) as opposed to the dynamic interplay of awareness and brain, as it manifests in unified consciousness.
This is what you are doing, Dingus. You are looking at evolution and seeing an evolved brain that in your mind "does all the work" in our lives. In fact the brain is an option generator to which you attribute awareness in a mechanistic way, I'm guessing as an output, or as brain artifact.
Now take yourself out of the mechanistic mode for a second and consider a time when you were going full steam ahead in auto-pilot mode, became aware of it, and told yourself, "Slow down, Dingis. You're being impulsive."
As I mentioned before, it is crucial for everyone studying mind to reckon the differences between machine registration and the awareness at play in a sentience human being - namely, yourself. If you are considering them selfsame, you are looking at the machine, not at your own conscious process - which always exists on a sliding scale between fully automatic, time bound and determined, to fully detached, timeless, and non-determined in regards to having to go with the immediate or even protracted choices your brain gives you.
The options that our brain provides are in a sense determined. But what we choose to do with those options is not merely mechanistic outputs owing to consciousness acting as a kind of conductor per the orchestra of the brain.
In a sense, the way we consciously arrive at anything is a little like writing a song. A song played in the key of C major, for example, revolves around the seven notes of the C major scale – C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. That means the fundamental notes making up the song's melody, chords, and bassline are all derived from that group of notes. And so any song in C major is in a sense "determined" by the resources just mentioned. The song writer doesn't make up notes or keys or chords, but he or she also has the option of playing in one of seven major and minor keys, 14 keys total, 12 notes per octave. The human ear can hear a maximum of 10 octaves. So these are the musical resources that "determine" what a song writer has to work with.
Consciousness probably has a lot more potential material to work with in terms of what the brain can geyser up, but like the songwriter, a proscribed and determined number of options nevertheless allows for an seemingly limitless array of songs to written.
It's through the agency of consciousness that brain (determined) and awareness (can "create" no content) accomplish what neither can do on their own. If you look only in one realm (brain or awareness), you can only find the determined and timebound in brain, and the undetermined and timeless in awareness. To understand how the unified system works, you have to look at consciousness. True, you can posit consciousness as a strictly evolved, deterministic mechanism, but you will never understand the actual process of how Jimi Hendrix wrote "Cry of Love."
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2017 - 10:41am PT
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...“In certain kinds of positions, the computer sees so deeply that it plays like God,” Kasparov said...
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jul 15, 2017 - 10:56am PT
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Did I just hear some mention the word "woo" again?
Getting back to a lighter subject. I thought Fructose's post about the memory skills of chimpanzees was outrageously cool. It's nice to see that animal behavioral scientists are finally finding some interesting things to report. Ever since I was a small kid, I realized animal behavior was fascinating. For some reason, it seems to have taken scientists a long time to come around to that point of view. Perhaps a reflection of some kind of bias, due to their scientific training?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jul 15, 2017 - 11:48am PT
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t seems to have taken scientists a long time to come around to that point of view. Perhaps a reflection of some kind of bias, due to their scientific training?
There was a scientist, early on in the history of the biological sciences, obsessed with observations of animal behavior, and by doing so collected a wealth of data , especially during his world tour on a ship called The Beagle.
In fact , at the time I don't think he was a trained scientist in our sense of the term, and certainly had never set foot within a laboratory or become very familiar with experimentation. He was merely an observer who much later painstakingly stitched together a theory based upon those observations and the observations of others.
It's been said that observation is the mistress of science.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 15, 2017 - 12:30pm PT
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what is that "playbook?"
Actually this discussion has occurred before, but the notion of humanity and humanity’s conscious awareness as something of insignificance in its relation to nature, that nature is a source of virtue that is, in fact, corrupted by human awareness and its resultant activity, that human achievement is but the happenstance of evolutionary processes and will eventually vanish as impotent and inconsequential and this, therefore, reflects the meaninglessness of our achievements, that the cockroaches will survive in a triumph of what really counts in evolutionary processes, that all we can do is to come closer to a natural state as this is the natural and therefore appropriate state of humanity, a state which has been lost to the corruption inherent in our civilization, these are notions that might as well been written by Rousseau or who knows maybe crows or dolphins. No doubt Rousseau precedes the understanding of evolutionary processes, but he would have been happy aboard the Beagle.
Tell me how such ideas vary from the biblical account of paradise lost in which humanity violates its natural state for the sake of knowing and as a result brings a state of ruined nature and sin into the world?
The romantic proclivities of the world of science are fascinating to contemplate.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2017 - 01:18pm PT
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Run on sentence.
I am in awe of consciousness, and have been since the start of my scientific career, it is an amazing natural phenomenon, and like all those things in nature, a result of natural processes.
What is not to be awed by?
As for the significance or importance of that, we decide ourselves, nature is mute on it. The uniqueness of it is an open scientific question. By mass, the very stuff we are made out of is a tiny fraction of what the universe is made out of. That suggests that there may be something bigger out there to be awed by.
At times I have mused over the impossibility that humans, even given their apparently amazing intellect, will be able to use what they know to avoid the inevitable consequences of increasing human (and human related) populations. On the one hand we see the need for the commonwealth, on the other the "need" for individual liberty.
Who would tell us whether or not to procreate?
I am not at all optimistic regarding the outcome. But what is further from the romantic notion than an intelligent species who can so precisely use its science to see into the future cannot avoid it, that future cast by nature.
Corruption is yet another human social construction, we have no contract with nature, we neither corrupt it nor it us.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 15, 2017 - 01:45pm PT
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As for the significance or importance of that, we decide ourselves, nature is mute on it.
If consciousness is, as you say, a natural phenomenon then how is nature mute on “it.” Isn’t our voice the voice of nature? Isn’t our consciousness a manifestation of nature?
By mass, the very stuff we are made out of is a tiny fraction of what the universe is made out of. That suggests that there may be something bigger out there to be awed by.
How does mass outweigh rarity with regard to importance. What is more rarer in this solar system than awareness? The galaxy? The universe?
Who would tell us whether or not to procreate?
What?
I am not at all optimistic regarding the outcome. But what is further from the romantic notion than an intelligent species who can so precisely use its science to see into the future cannot avoid it, that future cast by nature.
What is more romantic than the declaration of our certain insignificance before the prodigious space of the universe.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jul 15, 2017 - 02:15pm PT
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Actually this discussion has occurred before, but the notion of humanity and humanity’s conscious awareness as something of insignificance in its relation to nature, that nature is a source of virtue that is, in fact, corrupted by human awareness and its resultant activity, that human achievement is but the happenstance of evolutionary processes and will eventually vanish as impotent and inconsequential and this, therefore, reflects the meaninglessness of our achievements, that the cockroaches will survive in a triumph of what really counts in evolutionary processes, that all we can do is to come closer to a natural state as this is the natural and therefore appropriate state of humanity, a state which has been lost to the corruption inherent in our civilization, these are notions that might as well been written by Rousseau or who knows maybe crows or dolphins. No doubt Rousseau precedes the understanding of evolutionary processes, but he would have been happy aboard the Beagle.
OOOOkay. Where to begin here?
Maybe I'll start with the low hanging fruit:
No doubt Rousseau precedes the understanding of evolutionary processes, but he would have been happy aboard the Beagle.
There is no evidence that Rousseau precedes anything other than Rousseau.I think the nearest he ever got to expressing uniquely prescient ideas, which could be construed as having anything to do with
biology, were his unfeeling disavowals of fatherhood as to his numerous illegitimate children, which he was very pleasantly content to witness languishing in appalling poverty. As far as the Beagle was concerned not a chance. Our Swiss philosopher/writer would have spent the entire day vomiting at the mere sight of a sea vessel; nay, at the mere mention. And , if the reports about the unfortunately wayward condition of his urethra were true, the crew of any ship would have been advised to keel-haul him the moment he approached the poop deck.
but the notion of humanity and humanity’s conscious awareness as something of insignificance in its relation to nature
I'm not the one to directly tackle that one since I do not hold that view. If you are of the opinion that this negative idea of insignificance is central, or dominant, in contemporary philosophies, then your task is to show and convince those of us holding that such a view is merely a personal predilection of individuals and not the province, or key tenets, of any given methodology such as science.
nature is a source of virtue that is, in fact, corrupted by human awareness and its resultant activity,
This appears to me to be a criticism of elements of the environmental movement. Your choice of words is slightly unfortunate on the face of it. For instance, individuals who may hold that nature contains a species of "virtue" independent of man do not necessarily aver that such a view is corrupted by human awareness in and of itself; but rather a highly particular canon of awareness-- and its resultant sphere of activity. In other words, it is not general human awareness per se that operates as the boogeyman but rather the other guys awareness.
that human achievement is but the happenstance of evolutionary processes
Well if you've gots another credible happenstance candidate, other than 4000 gods floating on the Ganges, then I'm all ears.
that all we can do is to come closer to a natural state as this is the natural and therefore appropriate state of humanity, a state which has been lost to the corruption inherent in our civilization,
I can't help but think the main body of ideas expressed in the above quote is a bit of a medley (reminds me of a friend who doesn't like Mexican food because "things are all mixed together"). However I detect a kernel of reasoning, if a bit outdated, that seeks to put humans back at the focal center of creation, however inadvisable under current circumstances.
There.Thats done. I'm exhausted. Time for a nap.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jul 15, 2017 - 02:29pm PT
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Who do you think wrote the human's
Very deep DMT, but I really don't know what you mean. The definition of algorithm from Meriam-Webster:
"a procedure for solving a mathematical problem (as of finding the greatest common divisor) in a finite number of steps that frequently involves repetition of an operation; broadly : a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end especially by a computer: a search algorithm"
Algorithms are human inventions. If what you mean is that these human inventions we call algorithms have also been used successfully to model some behavior of living organisms, I'll grant you that. Especially if you can show me some specific algorithms that do a good job of modeling that behavior. I have no problem with that. In that case, you'll be writing those algorithms, you nitty. In terms of how the behavior developed like that, or how the brain works in implementing the behavior, those are different questions. Asking who wrote the algorithms in some abstract sense seems like the most vulgar kind of anthropomorphism I can think of. What do you think; nature is some kind of computer programmer that writes software? What use could such a statement have in a scientific theory?
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