Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 08:04am PT
|
“Imagine you heard all eighty-four thousand teachings of Buddha and then contemplated on them. You would find that ultimately
Whew!
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 08:15am PT
|
LEB = DMT = HFCS = Sully's Banger = MikeL
I read a book like that, once. I learned that it's a bad idea to track a rabbit.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 08:57am PT
|
The only person here that knows him is sexist Bubba. Fruity uses contraction correctly but sexist Bubba does not, so maybe they aren't the same over poster.
Curiouser.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 26, 2017 - 10:12am PT
|
And if the narrative, ungraspable, is your take, fine, I can see through it.
---
First, Dingy, provide a simple, cogent take on your interpretation of what "ungraspable" means regarding Zen.
Second, you "see through it" and apparently "see" something truer.
Tell us what you see.
|
|
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 10:15am PT
|
I just leave a bag with no turd...
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 26, 2017 - 10:52am PT
|
Roger Penrose is a curious thinker, auguring towards John Searle's basic arguments but from a high end math perspective, re: "I think it makes little sense to say that an object (a computer in this case) understands something if it's not even aware of it."
His hopes for strong AI are not optimistic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJjydSLEVlU
Seth Loyd of MIT has some interesting things to say about digital and continuous (analogue) takes on "reality."
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 12:14pm PT
|
Largo,
Tell us what you see.
Sorry, I have no need to tell just where I have been in the well, your take on my spell will settle with me quite well.
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 12:26pm PT
|
MikeL,
good reply to confidence -- step 3.
Largo, I am at step 3.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 01:07pm PT
|
I find this avenue of argument somewhat besides the point, that is, the possibility of "artificial intelligence."
One has to ignore the great strides that have happened in machine intelligence to even raise the question. Even in the direct comparison of human intelligence to machine intelligence, machines hold their own in many areas. While it seems somewhat trivial, or perhaps we could say our intellectual affectations make it trivial, I believe that there are no human games left for which machines are not superior to humans. Not just that they play better, but that the play is more profound, deep and far beyond current human accomplishment.
Machine vision, machine natural language recognition, machine speech are all advancing at an accelerating pace. Machine dexterity, strength and agility are all growing as are their ability to work more and more autonomously.
Machine-human interface via telepresence is an area of both huge potential and peril, peril due to machines' role in warfighting. But we also know search and rescue and other emergency services that greatly benefit from machine-human cooperation.
This will inevitably result in a massive disruption in labor as machines do more and more what humans once did, not that machines do those tasks as completely autonomous agents, but that they are used cooperatively with humans.
Secondly, the term "artificial" seems a bit anachronistic. We usually mean that the intelligence is not the result of evolution as it is for humans and more recently we admit that a generalization can (and should) be made for intelligent biological organisms. Even the Gaia hypothesis, which is decades old, can be viewed as an intelligent system.
As our scientific understanding of intelligence grows, the generalization of what intelligence is, and therefore who/what can be intelligent will expand. This is already happening in biology, I predict it will also happen in engineering (it is in some quarters already happening).
This is why I call it an anachronism, as our "old" idea of intelligence is limited to human intelligence, in fact that term as used until recently is redundant as it was once sufficient to say "intelligence" alone, implying that only humans possessed that attribute. Outside of hypothetical "alien intelligence," which are almost always imagined to be just like humans only different, there existed no other intelligences. Surly an erroneous perception.
As for the "great divide" between digital and analog I hardly see that as being relevant. In electronics the harder design discipline is analog design, where talented individuals are in demand. Since the supply of such individuals is low given the amount of design work required, huge effort was put into digitizing analog signals as rapidly and as accurately as possible. Once this analog stream is converted to a digital stream, normally talented designers can create the myriad of devices required to stoke the electronics enterprise.
But this is not dissimilar to the biological strategies in nervous systems to convert the sensory stream into a manageable mode for processing. Independent of your view of whether or not intelligence is "computational," our sensory capabilities are demonstrably "computational."
As I've said many times in this thread, it is my view that a scientific description of intelligence will be abstract, and it will generalize to other "systems."
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 26, 2017 - 01:19pm PT
|
Ed, "intelligence" has largely been dumped in AI conversations, at least from those who feel human consciousness is not a calculation. Check out this short one from Roger Penrose, math crusher. Years later he focused on "understanding," as opposed to intelligence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcmcB1KUBYc
This one, from Freeman Dyson, is also interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLT6omWrvIw
Searle on much the same thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKwIYsPXLg
---
And Dingus, I have offered no take on your "spell," nor yet have I ever called it a spell. If you decline the invitation to explain yourself to this thread, fair enough. No has has the right nor any pressing need to know your process.
However if you wish to be taken seriously, when you evaluate ANOTHER person's process and declare it as "phoney," an "enchantment," as if said person were victim of a spell but thinks otherwise, you are obliged to describe your take on exactly what that spell is, according to your understanding. Otherwise, you're merely a flame - we can easily see why.
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 01:40pm PT
|
Largo,
water is the ungraspable
and so is my state of mind to you -- let the accusations fly; every word you utter I can rinse away ....with water. I get it at the bottom of the well.
|
|
eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 02:01pm PT
|
Over the last couple of days, I've sat through three of Michael Gazzaniga's 6 podcast lectures, the Gifford lectures, that he did at the University of Edinburgh. Each is a little over an hour, and I don't expect that more than a couple of you will actually view all of the podcasts. But really, do yourself a favor if you are truly interested in the subjects of this thread and sit through just two of them: Lecture 3; The Interpreter and Lecture 4; Free Yet Determined and Constrained.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJKloz2vwlc&t=3790s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGtZek7RPts&t=12s
Here is someone -- a neuroscientist who has spent his working life studying split brain patients -- patients whose left brain has been completely cut off from their right brain in order to control a severe form of epilepsy. It turns out you can survive just fine. You do have some interesting quirks that can be tested, however.
In The Interpreter, he summarizes the findings of these experiments in the context of an overall model of consciousness that seems pretty compelling to me. Through time, they created ever-more ingenious experiments to tease out several fundamental properties about how the brain works.
In Lecture 4, Free Yet Determined and Constrained, he makes a case for free will in much the same way as HFCS has been yelling at me all along about on this thread lately -- that you need to look at responsibility in a higher organizational context. Gazzaniga uses two terms to describe how it might work; Emergence and Downward Causation. I gotta say he makes the best case for a different take on free will for me. He has more gravitas, IMO, on the subjects of consciousness and free will than anybody else that I have come across. Here are a couple of screen shots; the first from The Interpreter, and the second from Free Yet Determined and Constrained that provide summaries of his thinking.
So, I guess I'm crying "Uncle" on the free will be debate with you, HFCS. I'm sure I'll best you next time! I had faulty and/or incomplete information and have had a tough schedule at work and stuff lately:) If I knew that these lectures existed, I'd have been there already. What's funny is that I had only got as far as understanding what Gazzinga was basically saying about how consciousness works as in The Interpreter, and was not aware of his somewhat more speculative, but well-thought out stances on free will.
By the way, I think that there is something worth preserving in the more "hard core" deterministic view of free will. It's the empathy. Whenever I think about defending the deterministic view I think of my brother Mark, who suffers from mental illness. He's the only one of me and my 10 brothers and sisters to be mentally ill. It seems obvious there is something wrong in his decision making process. His decisions in his work and every day life can often be seen as believing in bad intentions from the other guy that were rarely actually true. Of course, you can say that he is mentally ill, so, of course HE isn't responsible for his actions and should not be held accountable. But, it's such a slippery slope, IMO. I mean, Mark isn't bonkers. We siblings get completely exasperated and act as if he should be able to somehow think like the rest most of the time when we deal with him. When I think about it later, I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 03:02pm PT
|
eeyonkee, tfpu.
Hey I've seen them (studied them) already!
But I'll watch the two you linked to again, to refresh.
More later...
PS
If it wasn't already obvious I DO appreciate YOUR interest
in this subject matter. Plainly, even as your post hints to,
it's one that is not for everybody.
Again, one automaton to another, tfpu. Gotta run!
|
|
eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 03:41pm PT
|
I still need to watch lectures 5 and 6. I know his overall stance and I like it; that human social interaction gives a context for responsibility. But I want to understand it better. What I like is this: If I'm going to be "responsible" for one or more of my actions, at a minimum, I need to know what the rules are so I know when I'm being bad or good. (I've known this since early childhood and have tried to be good for goodness' sake.) Outside of a human social context, it's hard to see the relevance of needing to know the rules of behavior in this way. Human social norms are the only meaningful way we know of contextualizing responsibility. Except for our responsibility to our fellow animals and the planet itself, I suppose.
I have one seemingly original thought to add. That when I sketch out, as I often do, all of the major components in decision making, one stands out: long-term memory. It is the recursive one. It is the one that is always changing -- growing second to second, not to mention year to year. Unlike computer memory, biochemical memories have a attachments to feelings and other biochemical algorithms, so it is even more complicated than the computer equivalent. But the basic idea is this; not only do you generate long-term memories all of the time -- they become immediately available for the next thoughts. That's the recursive element. We all develop this ever-growing repository of long-term memories within the context of living in a society of human beings. They are after the fact but we all have similar structures and they all come to play in a greater interaction of humans with one another.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 04:21pm PT
|
"that human social interaction gives a context for responsibility... What I like is this: If I'm going to be "responsible" for one or more of my actions, at a minimum, I need to know what the rules are so I know when I'm being bad or good... Outside of a human social context, it's hard to see the relevance of needing to know the rules of behavior in this way. Human social norms are the only meaningful way we know of contextualizing responsibility.
That is exactly my view as well.
I often think of it in terms of... (1) the social game (its interaction, play action); and (2) being capable (enough), responsible (enough) to know the rules of the social game; and (3) (freely) accepting a kind of social contract at maturity to obey the rules of the gig (social game) and (freely) accepting the responsibilities that go with that.
Basically one idea if not moral of the contract to the social game boils down to: With more capabilities / powers - and freedoms too (lol!) - comes, naturally enough, more responsibilities.
And then ultimately it is up to the group or society (human, baboon, hyena, meerkat, etc) to decide an individual's guilt or responsibility. Pretty subjective, naturally, and also species and societally biased, of course.
So know the rules your group or society (be it meerkat or human) expects of you and (do your best to) live up to them or it's going to see to it that you pay the price (penalty, punishment) - automata and deterministic notwithstanding!
Of course if the meerkat individual (or family) is charming and charismatic enough, they might be able to influence the group, cop a plea, and get away with it!! Again, pretty subjective within the social frame.
This could be construed as the (greater?) burden of being human in human society as opposed to the (lesser?) burden of being baboon in baboon society. But then again, baboons like meerkats have their own rules and likely have their own sense of responsibilities - I would bet - as part of their group or society.
So it looks like were on the same page here. ;)
Downloaded them, will watch tonight on laptop! Got all of em!
...
eeyonkee, if you haven't already heard Metzinger on Harris, might be worth your while. They talk about attachment / identifying (with thought and feeling, eg; how does that happen?) in relation to Metzinger's "self model". That might be a different name for, or else a sibling module to, your Interpreter. I'll know more later. But I got a lot from that Thomas Metzinger Harris exchange. I really like Metzinger's "way of talking" the subject matter, for example.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 26, 2017 - 04:47pm PT
|
dingus, every state of mind is ungraspable from a 3rd person perspective. If you believe otherwise, tell me what Fruity is sensing right now.
But enlighten the group on what you mean by ungraspable, in general terms.
And what part of the process is not a state, nor yet determined content?
Since you brought this stuff up, don't pillar us for wondering what you might mean by these statements, rather be glad that we are curious. Nor harbor fear thoughts like, "I don't need your stinking curiosity," a common dodge. Everyone here is curious, by nature.
And a Fruity sighting? Did he post a photo, so we know he's not the other Dingus shaming us?
Fruity, who art thou?
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 05:24pm PT
|
tell me what Fruity is sensing right now.
See the post above yours.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 06:09pm PT
|
eeyonkee,
You “cry uncle” after you’ve heard / read an argument. (You show us powerpoint slides).
I would suggest that no lecture should move you to anything other than looking for data to confirm or disconfirm those arguments, if they interest you.
Look closely at what’s being sold to you. Where are the data to support it? To what extent have the data been neatly analyzed, conclusions drawn, and discussions ensued?
Although this is likely to raise the ire of Dingus and MH2, anyone who studies failures alone is not studying how things work. They are studying how things fail. The latter has far more degrees of freedom to it. That means there would seem to be many more possible explanations.
EDIT: I just chuckled by imagining the response I would have gotten from my Ph.D. committee had I proposed a theory of how things fail. I would have gotten that "deer in the headlights" look. "WHAT?! What the hell do you think we're doing around here?"
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
|
|
|
Dec 26, 2017 - 06:49pm PT
|
Largo,
But enlighten the group on what you mean by ungraspable, in general terms.
Largo,
I did say water is the ungraspable,
You also ask, Tell us what you see.
The bottom of the well.
Or are you still working on step 1 of MikeL's post of Hitting the Essence in 3 words?
Largo,
However if you wish to be taken seriously, when you evaluate ANOTHER person's process and declare it as "phoney," an "enchantment," as if said person were victim of a spell but thinks otherwise, you are obliged to describe your take on exactly what that spell is, according to your understanding. Otherwise, you're merely a flame - we can easily see why.
Is this an attempt at casting a guilt spell in/on me? Reading comprehension or didn't you read my post relating to phony, entropy & enchantment? I think I covered it.
It seems you are the biggest flame here. Could you knock off the Jackass work of misconstruing or jacking my point of view around to something that is quite different than what I said and then asking me to defend your re-cast of my wording?
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!