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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 24, 2018 - 07:16pm PT
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^^^ Indeed.
But you must mean "less than 5.10" if you're talking about me at this point. LOL
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jun 24, 2018 - 09:19pm PT
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Interpretation would seem to imply that there is more than one interpretation available
And awareness is . . . ?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 24, 2018 - 09:20pm PT
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what is information?
it would seem that prior to 1948 you wouldn't have an answer to suit your argument.
You could stretch it back to 1872.
why is information important to your argument?
"It appears then that a sufficiently complex stochastic process will give a satisfactory representation of a discrete source."
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 24, 2018 - 10:21pm PT
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The disciplic succession of the gross materialists all have a beginning and end.
The disciplic succession of the absolute truth has no beginning nor end.
The mind of the gross materialists cannot fully understand this simple fact because they are prisoners and hostages of their own minds .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 24, 2018 - 11:03pm PT
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With experience comes distinctions. What is not perceived by most can be discriminated by experts. That's the very nature of knowledge. If not, then everyone has equal say--which is fine by me.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 25, 2018 - 06:41am PT
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I think I fit in somewhere between awesome and insignificant.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jun 25, 2018 - 06:56am PT
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Forgive me, I couldn’t resist. On the way to work on the bus I had forgotten the newspaper, so I started doodling and I thought of a little thought experiment to try to convince you that information does not need intention – at least not the kind that you are proposing, MB1. Here goes something like this.
Let’s say we have a collection of very simple organisms that can replicate. Let’s say they reproduce asexually, and are prone to the occasional mutation. Now imagine that they have a relatively narrow tolerance for heat on average, and will generally not survive above a certain range. With me so far?
Now, we introduce long-term heating to the environment. By long-term, I mean, say, hundreds of generations. Now let’s say a simple mutation occurs in some of the individuals over time that provides for a more-temperature-protective outer coating or something. This mutation may have been nothing more than a single A-C-T sequence becoming C-A-T. Let’s say that was enough to change the shape of the outer protein coating. Because of this change, through the generations, those individuals with C-A-T out-produce the A-C-T guys and, eventually C-A-T becomes the prevalent base sequence in the genome – the genome being the collective genes of the whole population of course.
It seems obvious to me that the A-C-T was information in the first place with respect to our starting conditions. But now that information has changed, although C-A-T is still information. Where is the “intentionality” in this change in information? Or are you saying that none of this is information in the first place? I mean, from my perspective this is information with a capital I, since it is code. Here is another way of putting the information conveyed "Build A1 rather than A". Not all information is code.
In rereading this, I would have to say that the eventual prevalence in the genome of C-A-T doesn't have much to do with the main argument, but it does illustrate how evolution works in changing genomes.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 25, 2018 - 08:19am PT
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PSP: The very act of complete immersion in what you are doing (i.e. breathing, doing science, thinking about Dennett, requires you to let go of all other conscious activities in order to be completely immersed/absorbed.
Samadhi.
I’d be careful about using that word “requires,” though. It might make one think that there is an intentional activity in the "sweeping."
One cannot try not to try. Seeing and learning [sic] That can take years and years. There is a subtlety that is hidden in layers. It’s like controlling fear when climbing. “Controlling” doesn’t really happen, imo. One learns tricks / heuristics that seem to work and favors them.
Ditto for controlling attachments and aversions. One just doesn’t give those up. From my view, one sees through them. At first they are substantial, with just a little bit of transparency or translucence to them. Later, the objects can become ghostings. You see them, but they are not really there.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 25, 2018 - 08:29am PT
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jogill: And awareness is . . . ?
A characteristic of the universe.
But at a more conventional, worldly level of experience (which is content or the trappings of artifacts or “things” by way of conceptualizations), you could think about hunger. What’s the awareness of hunger? What is it? (Not how it works.)
It’s probably not my best example, but if you look closely at your own consciousness, there is a background sense of existence that goes before or precludes the consciousness of things.
“What do you mean by sense?” you might ask. I don’t know. What do you mean by the awareness of hunger? (Cells calling out for nourishment?)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 25, 2018 - 09:22am PT
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mb1:
"Genuine information has necessary intentional context."
Warren Weaver:
The word information, in this theory, is used in a special sense that must not be confused with its ordinary usage. In particular, information must not be confused with meaning.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jun 25, 2018 - 11:24am PT
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Hey, thanks btw for that link up-thread, yanqui. I'm a big Dawkins fan, but I'm very much interested in learning about symbiogenesis, which is a hole in my knowledge-base. Here's a reference that is not so confrontational between Neo-Darwinism and symbiogenesis.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-69123-7_14
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jun 25, 2018 - 03:56pm PT
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Ed: I'm just struggling to figure out what the angle subtended by an arc on an ellipse (from the center of the ellipse) is
Almost forgot about this. Sorry. If you found a closed form let me know. Otherwise, a simple BASIC program of ten lines of elementary code gives:
Suppose x²/4 + y²/1 = 1. If for instance arc length = s = 2.0, starting from the x-axis, then r ≈ 1.36. Derived from an expression dr/ds=1/F(r) where F(r) is the integrand in the (parametric) contour length formula.
At my age, however, mistakes are possible.
Back to evolutionary studies, guys. Way beyond me.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jun 25, 2018 - 04:12pm PT
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Hey, thanks for the opening, Mr. Gill. Don't mind if I do!
Okay so yanqui's link up-thread, was, I dunno, bugging me, and I really was kinda upset with myself for not knowing about the significance of symbiogenesis, outside of the common knowledge that mitochondria are a great example of the phenomenon. So, a little bit of internet search came up with this, which, resonates with me based on my understanding.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4547300/
Rather than agents of revolution bent on overthrowing evolutionary theory, it is more likely that endosymbiotic relationships offer their greatest explanatory value as model systems for macroevolution. Such systems can tell us a great deal about conflict and control dynamics in ongoing organismal interactions. They provide remarkable examples of enduring evolutionary game-changing mutualistic relationships, and call out for an account of why such relationships persist and become increasingly stable.
However, instead of focusing on “informational” properties of organisms, endosymbiotic systems draw attention to metabolism as a central organizing feature of life. A metabolic perspective focuses explanatorily on biochemical networks rather than genes, on phenotypic interactions rather than informational inheritance, on communities in addition to isolated organisms and lineages, and on major diversifications in the history of life. “Endosymbiotic” views of evolution are therefore valuable for expanding evolutionary explanations, even if they do not constitute a full-blown theoretical alternative to standard evolutionary theory. Think of these evolutionary turns in the thread as necessary foundational theory for the "scientific" explanation for mind. Something that I have learned primarily from participating on this thread is this; Life, is based on programming that I am intimately familiar with. I mean really, think about it, most computer code is based on 0s and 1s. The code of life is based on C-T-G-A. Mind, which Life built, is another matter, altogether. Mind is some combination of neural networking and traditional computer code and...
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jun 25, 2018 - 05:08pm PT
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Life, is based on programming that I am intimately familiar with. I mean really, think about it, most computer code is based on 0s and 1s. The code of life is based on C-T-G-A. Mind, which Life built, is another matter, altogether. Mind is some combination of neural networking and traditional computer code and...
To this point an Ed's just upthread....
All of these examples presume a "context" in which that code is "run." So, they are either very bad analogies or smuggling in the very thing that needs explanation.
"Information" can be construed in a very narrow, mathematical sense, but that is not actually helpful to this discussion for two reasons.
First, that sense of "information" is more like the "data" that was referenced above. But that does not distinguish between "states of affairs" and "information" in the robust sense needed for life and mind.
Second, even if you could account for life in that narrow sense of "information" (which I don't believe is possible), you are still, then, faced with the vast, qualitative divide between "information" in that sense and "information" in the sense of "meaning something to somebody."
The traditional response is, "Well, pile enough complexity together, and you get 'mind' and 'information' in the sense that matters." But, of course, there is NEVER an account of how meaning emerges out of non-meaning, information in one sense transformed into an entirely different sense, non-intentionality turning into intentionality. There's always some step in the argument that amounts to: "And then the magic happens."
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 25, 2018 - 05:12pm PT
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Think of these evolutionary turns in the thread as necessary foundational theory for the "scientific" explanation for mind.
Not even. You will at best end up with an accurate description by which you can make predictions - a very useful tool.
But you haven't "explained" anything. Reasons and meaning are not inherent properties of any objective object or phenomenon.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jun 25, 2018 - 05:49pm PT
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What I think is that both of you really don't get how more complicated things can be built from fundamental building blocks along with some processes and rules. It's super-easy for me since I have been designing software that does just this for a very long time.
Human intention is one of those things, btw. Evolution does not only produce a variety of properties, it produces a variety of behaviors.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 25, 2018 - 05:53pm PT
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eeyonkee: Think of these evolutionary turns in the thread as necessary foundational theory for the "scientific" explanation for mind.
You’re having a dream.
“What is Mind?” Programming? Really? Are you talking about something that you have an experience of? Describe it.
It might be good if we first agreed what Mind is, which is the topic of the thread.
Mind is information? (Brother, you’ve swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker.) Mind is meaning? (What the heck does that mean?)
When you write something here, see if you can make it connect to the question: What Is Mind?
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jun 25, 2018 - 05:55pm PT
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Pah-leeze, MikeL!!! Sheesh!
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 25, 2018 - 06:56pm PT
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(evolution) produces a variety of behaviors.
No ....
The living entity does.
The living entity itself is Not evolution ......
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