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WBraun
climber
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Sep 23, 2017 - 11:13am PT
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"Man did not weave the web of life - he is merely a strand in it" ... Chief Seattle
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Sep 23, 2017 - 12:33pm PT
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you seem to like to play the fool...
and you probably haven't read Turing (his papers that is), so you have little but hearsay to go on in making your arguments.
Nice, thoughtful arguments without assumption.
Curiosity reacts. It does not have an experience, it has no mind, no awareness. It reacts in the same way my thermostat reacts without thought or experience.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 23, 2017 - 01:28pm PT
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I don't know, is Max Tegmark another one of these so-called "celebrity" scientists? lol
A Conversation w Max Tegmark...
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-future-of-intelligence
A personal thought for the end...
It's not either or, it is both: a mechanistic nature AND a future we create for ourselves. We have ability (thus freedom) to choose and ability (thus freedom) to make decisions "nested" in a causal determinate, mechanistic nature. That is the latest science.
Either Max or Sam, or both together, might have made this point - let alone emphasized it. Oh well, next time perhaps. :)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 23, 2017 - 03:48pm PT
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PLOS looks a little like a racket. For example you can publish in an open access medical journal for $2,900, regardless of page length. But maybe not.
I suspect there is some truth in this article, for medical studies are all over the place, with conclusions that conflict. Not true in mathematics, however, for most papers. Admittedly some are too intricate and involved for readers to ascertain with certainty the results. The reader must rely upon a referee or two for these papers, and sometimes those experts skim an article if it has a prominent author. However, math is not really a data intensive science.
Distinctions between awareness and consciousness, particularly those that posit the existence of the former in a pure condition and state that the latter arises due to brain processes from the former are mostly Eastern religious/meditative perspectives. That's not to say they are not correct, but they arise frequently from spiritual musings and experiences. That makes it difficult to reconcile them with science.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 23, 2017 - 05:00pm PT
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you do realize that the citation is to an "Essay" the definition of which is provided if you float your cursor over that word on the linked page:
"Essay Essays are opinion pieces on a topic of broad interest to a general medical audience."
and this is an essay in PLOS Medicine, I don't think the author intended the essay to apply to all fields of research, and that impression is supported in his concluding paragraph: "Experiences from biases detected in other neighboring fields would also be useful to draw upon."
but certainly provocative for this thread...
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Sep 23, 2017 - 05:05pm PT
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That "bots" are indistinguishable from humans on social media is one "test" of the ToM,
Since human beings have evolved to recognize other minds in face to face encounters, not on social media, the fact that (some?) people are easily fooled in that context doesn't suprise me. I really don't see how that's a very convincing "test" of the ToM. In fact, in this statement, you say the bots are "indistinguishable" but in an earlier post you say other bots are better at disitingushing them. So maybe they are not so "indistinguishable" after all?
I can't see much difference between your argument here and saying that since (some) people are fooled by religious leaders into thinking religious dogma is the truth about the world, then we should conclude that science has no more truth than religion.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 23, 2017 - 05:19pm PT
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the irony being that "bots" recognize "bots" but humans can't distinguish them from human.
How is it that people are deceived by so called "phishing" attacks on the internet?
and what happens when computer speech is indistinguishable from human speech? would that change how you interact over the phone?
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/9/12860866/google-deepmind-wavenet-ai-text-to-speech-synthesis
there is a tremendous amount of human interaction that goes on without face-to-face contact, but even that may simulated by computers soon.
My point in the above argument is simply that our ToM is not inclusive of all "mind" phenomena, and to point out that it never was supposed to be, and that concluding that assuming that it is complete theory will lead to erroneous conclusions when answering the question "what is mind?"
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 23, 2017 - 05:30pm PT
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erroneous conclusions when answering the question "what is mind
Yes ..
The gross materialists ultimately can never come to any conclusions of "What is Mind" because they ultimately have no clue to the cause of all causes.
Thus they remain in the inconclusive spinning wheel of the material energy.
But in the hub of that wheel is the answer ......
The gross materialists will say there's no need to for the "cause of all causes".
We'll figure it out in the future they say.
They'll just dissect the frog, the monkey, and the computer and then tell you how the human is made and operates ......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 23, 2017 - 06:58pm PT
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why does there have to be "a cause"?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Sep 23, 2017 - 07:07pm PT
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How is it that people are deceived by so called "phishing" attacks on the internet?
What on earth does fooling people have to do with anything. If you are fooled then logically what was presented to you is untrue. Robots in factories typically do "mindless" work and "mindless work" is called that for a reason.
why does there have to be "a cause"?
It helps if you want an effect.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sep 23, 2017 - 07:36pm PT
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Robots in factories typically do "mindless" work
Typically: an adverb meaning in most cases, or usually. Are you leaving open the door that robots may do work that is not mindless?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Sep 23, 2017 - 08:08pm PT
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I searched for "criticism of the mirror test" and got interesting results.
But although there is much to be skeptical about I am most surprised that the apes who pass the test are said to reach to their own forehead rather than the image of their forehead in the mirror. That shows a kind of understanding that I find more mysterious than the ability to recognize one's self.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Sep 23, 2017 - 08:17pm PT
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I like the idea of a study about studies, but I'm holding out for the study about the studies about the studies.
In the meantime I don't believe nuttin! This should turn out well.
Or maybe I'll just call it mindless and then say that's proof that it's mindless, because in my mind, there must be a mindful reason that I thought that. We humans are just masters of the universe that way.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Sep 23, 2017 - 08:56pm PT
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Typically: an adverb meaning in most cases, or usually. Are you leaving open the door that robots may do work that is not mindless?
Here's a truth: robots do not have minds.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 23, 2017 - 09:19pm PT
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^^^ We have failed to define "mind", so I wouldn't be too confident. What you mean is self-awareness, perhaps. That takes one down that rabbit hole rebounding between awareness and consciousness.
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 23, 2017 - 10:37pm PT
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The gross materialists are 100% conscious but 99% unaware.
How many gross materialists are actually completely aware of their own bodies in real time processing the food within and processing the waste into sh!t for example.
Just see ......
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Sep 24, 2017 - 05:58am PT
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Ever climbed in the PNW?
I first started climbing in Spokane during spring quarter of my senior year at college and most trips I could manage were to the Leavenworth area. A few years later I moved to Salt Lake City where I learned about group representations at University of Utah.
I was an avid boulderer for much of my climbing career. I still do un-roped stuff that could be called bouldering but the days of short hard problems are behind, though brightly remembered
Ever since I first started climbing at Minnehaha, bouldering has been an important part of my climbing, although for me it's mainly been about training, exploration, fun, challenge, adventure, solitude (sometimes, or companionship other times), and yes, even a sort of meditation (I suppose), than it's been about pursuing pure difficulty (take that to mean: I never really bouldered very hard!). When I came to Balcarce (more than twenty years ago), I saw an amazing untapped bouldering potential (perhaps even "world class", espcially if you like roof problems) and Gaby and I decide decided to build a home here. We were the only people (almost certainly, ever) to boulder in the area and for the first few years we had the place entirely to ourselves. After that, some of the kids from nearby Mar del Plata joined in and later on, some top climbers from Buenos Aires began to visit. I was able to get my neighbor's kid, Mariano, interested in climbing (the first true local from Balcarce). Then some of Mariano's friends also began to climb. Recently one of them ("Segu"), who learned to climb maybe seven years ago, in my home gym, put up a V13. Not long ago, two of Argentina's strongest boulderers decided to live in Balcarce, just for the bouldering. Last weekend, one of these kids, Guido, did La Barrosa's second (proposed) V14 (a very hard, short, pure-power roof problem the kids have been working at, off and on, for maybe two or three years). As far as I know, there are only four V14s in Argentina: two in El Chalten and two on La Barrosa.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Sep 24, 2017 - 08:17am PT
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MH2: Awareness does not seem to be monolithic, indivisible, or impossible to analyze in finer detail.
Ed: . . . whether or not our "theory of mind" is a precise enough theory to explain mind. My contention is that it is not . . . .
Ed,
ToM (your URL) indicates ToM is an intuition.
Theory of mind is a theory insofar as the mind is the only thing being directly observed.[1]
Horse pucky. When did observations become theories? (Good lord.)
“In modern science, the term "theory" refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science. Such theories are described in such a way that any scientist in the field is in a position to understand and either provide empirical support ("verify") or empirically contradict ("falsify") it. Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge,[4] in contrast to more common uses of the word "theory" that imply that something is unproven or speculative (which is better characterized by the word 'hypothesis').[5] Scientific theories are distinguished from hypotheses, which are individual empirically testable conjectures, and from scientific laws, which are descriptive accounts of how nature behaves under certain conditions.”
(taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory);
Maybe this is a problem with using Wiki as a source. On the other hand, maybe our problem here is that people are running fast and free with ideas and words.
It’s my experience that theories require a context (scenario, condition, a given environment where phenomena occur), a set of variables whose relationships are stipulated, and outcomes that are predicted (to a greater or lesser extent). Usually there are some statistics that validate.
Intuitions and observations are not, per se, theories if we honor scientific approaches. (Of course, we may not really care about the careful application of the scientific method.)
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Sep 24, 2017 - 08:43am PT
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Hey Werner can you message me please at,, blueblocr @ yahoo 🦆
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