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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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fruitless said;
Perhaps it's you who needs to bone up on evolutionary biology? and its modern language of expression. Regarding "design" - also let me add "purpose" for extra credit.
If memory serves, you're also quite eccentric concerning "belief" in science and "truth" in science. So on reflection I'm not that surprised if you don't get "design" in evolution or "purpose" in evolution either.
There is "art" in the languaging of evolutionary science as well.
And what are your city college credentials?
i like your use of "art" for languishing, you might as well throw in "gaming" and "funning" too. That's whats going on here! i think the myrid of words does find resonance with some reverberations at sometime? Maybe not in others, but more likely in ones own chord..
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Well, good luck with that. With the "just do nothing" philos of which you seem so proud, you're mighty lucky to be living in this (temporary) age of modern comfort and accoutrements. Were it another, I could imagine my clan or nation (or even a chimp's, lol) getting whiff of yours just over the horizon and conquering you and yours, taking as spoils your goods (females).
Yeah, you got it all figured out.
I hope in your next life you come back a puffin on the western shores of Norway. Amidst black-backed gulls. Then you'll know the necessity of what it is to fill your day. ;)
Or a Shiite female in some Sunni region of past or future ISIS, lol!
Then you offer up these all or nothing snide remarks.
NOT very scientific!
more like a third grader getting his FEELINGS hurt
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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“Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.” -Einstein
i don't even think you know what this means!
especially since you don't have the credentials of einstein.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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fruity proclaimed;
Hint: Evo is a "blind" process. (Certainly not an (intelligent) design process.) Blind. Without goal or purpose to the process relative to any mind, yes. This is even mentioned in the opening pages of "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins.
But to say any more, I'd be relieving you of YOUR burden. ;)
i think this being your burden. Dawkins opinion ISN"T justifiable!
i think it's worth discussion if ur still around?
Why couldn't evolution be a part of Gods intelligent design? God said that it took Him 6 days to do what is here, THEN. Can you or Dawkins even fathom what entails in one day of Gods life?
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MH2
climber
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Largo,
What you think of as thinking may not be. The thinking we are aware of can handle simple logic or remind us that we have an appointment at 10 am, but it is only a small part of what is going on in our brain.
The brain is constantly processing information that we are not consciously aware of. Tens of millions of neurons respond to a spot of light on the retina or to a simple tone in the ear. When you become aware of the word 'aware' in a post or when you hear the opening bars of Warm Valley, much analysis has already taken place that you were NOT consciously aware of.
The conscious part of the brain would be overwhelmed if it was aware of all the details going on elsewhere. What we call discursive thinking is a tentative output to the vocal cords, or to other options available to the output side of the brain, including memory where we leave scratch notes to ourself.
The brain is ALWAYS thinking. The boss only gets a report when the crew decides it has found something useful to pass along. Just because you don't hear the neurons talking back and forth doesn't mean that they aren't busy.
It is a vastly complicated process to get up out of your chair and walk to the refrigerator. When you do that many millions of neurons are busy keeping you upright and keeping you from banging into a wall, despite changing lighting conditions, muscle tensions, and obstacles in your path. This kind of problem cannot be solved by issuing instructions ahead of time. A computer program would have to account for far too many unknowns if it could not seek information and make adjustments as the job progressed. This is a kind of thinking, or artificial intelligence. This kind of processing is not automatic, in the sense that it must change according to circumstances.
Ideas SEEM to come out of the blue but that is because so many half-ideas, bad ideas, and noise must be filtered out before any suggestion gets passed along to conscious awareness. After all, conscious awareness is prone to making plans about what to do with the body and it must be protected from taking wasteful or dangerous actions.
Your conscious awareness CAN provide direction to the rest of the brain. It is good to think about a problem but you may need to stop thinking and let the lower level employees actually do the job.
Last week I made three tries on a climb at the gym. Each attempt was less successful than the previous one. Today, after a week away and no conscious thinking about the moves, some part of my brain knew what to do and did it.
It is an old observation that advances in motor skills can continue after training has ended.
http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/13/5/580.full
A similar effect may be present in other kinds of mental effort.
However, the above is only a story. It would be very nice to find out HOW subconscious levels of the brain operate on ideas before they appear in consciousness. What form an idea has just before it becomes an idea is a good question. In my own mind I have a sense that subconscious ideas are objects that are moved around and rotated somewhat like children's building blocks. Probably it has something to do with how I spent my early years that, coincidentally, I don't remember now.
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WBraun
climber
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HFCS is a nutcase.
It takes intelligence to design anything period!
Then these fools say there's no intelligent designer when right before everyone's very own eyes the intelligent designer is doing the designing all along.
All these mental speculators have no good brain/s.
The Ford motor car required intelligence to design.
So did Boeing aircraft etc etc,
Stupid gross materialists have no good reason nor logic only runaway out of control mental speculating minds that end on the dead end ......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 5, 2014 - 07:47pm PT
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MH2, what I believe your are driving at is that the brain is constantly PROCESSING INFORMATION. "Thinking" is a different animal, and involves narrow focusing on a theme or idea or notion and generating words and facts and figures. There is intentionality and conscious focus involved to greater or lesser degrees. In no instance, in the history of mankind, has anyone EVER "thought" about a specific thing sans narrow focusing. This quite obviously has little in common with unconscious info processing you mentioned that goes on continually and unnoticed in our minds. The later is what our brains do. The former is what WE do.
And Ward, I have no idea how it is that you can't follow a plain, straightforward explanation and instead come back with these wonky retorts about me moving goal posts.
What I am saying is that "thinking" as we normally understand the term involves us choosing a topic and discursively building a train of thought, a thread, and moving in fits and starts to a development of that original topic of choice. Several of our resident scientists have stated that they can work on a problem, for example, never reaching a conclusion or answer by way of their original train of thought. So they put that thought/problem down and go take out the trash or watch TV or go bouldering and, viola, out or nowhere, the answer to the original thought or problem suddenly pops into consciousness.
What I am saying, dear Ward, is that in the interlude between the original train of thought, that was long before set aside, and the sudden appearance of the answer or insight, might have been filed with thinking, mind wandering, free associating, but it did not involve intentional narrow focused discursive cognition on the original train, and so whatever process that resulted in the sudden insight, out of the blue, can hardly be coined "thinking," because that train was left behind hours if not days before. Put differently, the "answer" or insight was not the process of real time, intentional discursive thought, but popped up from nowhere and very well might not have been unconsciously worked over at all.
Can you follow that ok?
JL
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Last week I made three tries on a climb at the gym. Each attempt was less successful than the previous one. Today, after a week away and no conscious thinking about the moves, some part of my brain knew what to do and did it.
i think maybe this might be along the same lines as Base was describing? And we've all experienced it. But maybe what the Zen moderators are talking about is the "little man" controlling the conversation? We go along in a train of thinking, understanding, figuring things out, then all of a sudden come to a brick wall. And fear there is no solution. Then out of nowhere WaaLaa, an answer! It's not mystical, it's like you said! But with the use of Zen, one can become more in tune with "the little man"? But again, that's oneself being in tune with oneself. Being in tune with the Holy Spirit is much broader!
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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I guess what I consider "thinking" is more along the lines of John's explanation: actively focusing upon a line (train) of thought rather than what seems to occur in one's subconscious or unconscious mind when not pursuing that line of thought. But I know nothing about neuroscience and feel clumsy expressing myself on these topics. I will admit I laugh at what my own subconscious has thrown up as solutions to problems from time to time: Flapdoodle & garbage.
But occasionally there's a jewel among the mental trash, for which I give thanks!
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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These out of the blue insights don't just happen. They involve a lot of previous work. I might spend a year on something and not see it.
5 years later, I'm scratching my nose and Bang. There it is.
Ideas like that aren't very common. I'm not talking about your everyday examination and understanding.
Without wishing to get into a pissing match on what to call it, it seems to me that just beneath the conscious level our minds still churn away.
Sometimes it is good to drop a problem. It can get dense and cluttered. Come back to it later, cut out the clutter, and an idea pops up. This takes intuition.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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But occasionally there's a jewel among the mental trash, for which I give thanks!
Amen!
Philosophizing, isn't it funny though how one man's jewel's, is another man's trash.. Is each man's jewel a product of how far one has dug? Work = Reward.
Or could a jewel come from some other place? Maybe a consciousness outside our own, someway? We are all "working" in our preferred lines of "trade" or "life". And if we take a look at some of history's achieved men, let's take Miles Davis or Einstein for instance. Did they need Zen, or any other type of self help mind control therapy to realize their destinies goals? i don't know maybe they did? My point is; we all are working along the lines from where someone else has left off. AS with Miles, he must have wrote those tunes as a continuation from what he had heard and learned thus far. Same for einstien. His work started where others had left off. This "work" i am declaring to be both physical and mental. And maybe something else?
See what i'm gett'in at? Achievements have a history. And one of us comes around every so often to pronounce it! But the rise to that Pinnacle took a lot of sherpa's. i don't think einstien could have explained gravity in 20AD? And i don't think genetics or biology had any influence to his knowledge of Relativity? He acquired it through his brain. Sure you could say that his train of input learning led to his conclusions. But think for a moment, don't we get a FEELING in our soul of a consensual conscious agreement of truth when we proclaim 2+2=4? From All the people we ever heard that agreed in fact 2+2=4. This combined consensus, along with our own gives verdict to our Truths. Are you with me thus far?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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HFCS is trained as an engineer (along with all his other training) so looking at evolution in terms of engineering analogies is what he does (as I look for physics analogies).
We don't have Dawkins book (though we once did) so I had to substitute a mere textbook today.
From The Evolutionary Biology of Plants by K. J. Niklas on pages 51-52 in the chapter on "Evolutionary Basics"
I've added emphasis in the quote:
Although organisms are not machines, the relation between the number of functional tasks an organism must perform to survive and reproduce and the number of phenotypes that confer the same overall fitness is somewhat similar to the relation between the number of equally efficient designs for an engineered artifact and the number of tasks the artifact must perform. Engineering theory and practice show that as the number of tasks an artifact must perform increases, the number of equally efficient designs also increases (Meredith et al. 1973; Gill, Murray, and Wright 1981,). At the same time, the efficiency with which any task is performed decreases as the number of tasks increases. If these generalizations hold true for organisms, even in part, then as the number of biological tasks an organism must perform increases, the number of adaptive peaks on a fitness landscape will increase, while the heights (relative fitness) of these peaks will decrease. These expectations are intuitive, at least from an engineering perspective, because, on the one hand, each function likely has a specific design specification that maximizes efficiency in performing the task and, on the other hand, reconciliations among conflicting, highly specific design requirements cause each task to be performed less efficiently. Although there is no a priori reason organisms should subscribe to engineering theory and practice, it does seem reasonable to suppose that they are phenotypic rapprochements in the sense that the phenotype has come at some cost in terms of lower efficiency in performing its many biological tasks. If this supposition is true, and if it is also true that every type of organism is a "multifunctional device," then most suffer the same disadvantage to some degree, and so the evolutionary playing field is level for all.
Curiously, there may be an evolutionary advantage to being more biologically complex. Provided the lessons of engineering carry over into biology, the number of adaptive peaks in a fitness landscape will increase while the topography of the landscape becomes less severe as the number of biological functions an organism must reconcile increases. If so, then adaptive walks may become easier as complexity increases, in the sense that differences in the fitness of phenotypes become less pronounced.
I have no problem with the speculation, the book was published in 1997, and so there has been ample time to test the various "ifs" that appear. The idea of a cell as a machine has been the subject of extensive research, including the analysis of the genome in the context of systems biology and network biology.
The various hypotheses that are discussed in the quote are all accessible to not only the systems biology, but also to population genetics.
It would be useful for HFCS to point to the literature that addresses these points and relieve my ignorance of evolution. I'm sure he can refer to many good review papers. Of particular interest to me is the dynamical interactions of a changing environment with the changes in the genotype.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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EdH wrote,
Of particular interest to me is the dynamical interactions of a changing environment with the changes in the genotype.
Translation: the dynamic interactions of a changing environment with changes in genes are of particular interest to me.
Well, with all due respect, that seems to me to be "just" evolutionary science at large. You'll have to be more clear or specific.
.....
Regarding yesterday's exchange concerning "design" and "purpose", etc., I'm still not sure where your hangup is.
Insofar as it concerns darwinian design by natural selection (as opposed to intelligent design by gods or humans or, to put it differently still, purposeful design by engineers, rockclimbers, chefs or watchmakers), I'd recommend the following: (1) The Selfish Gene; (2) The Blind Watchmaker (despite its subtitle); (3) The Extended Phenotype. Richard Dawkins is a leading evolutionary biologist, not "just" an evolutionary science popularizer. Hopefully, these readings and others would provide context for clarification concerning these terms.
Finally, my personal understanding and/or use of darwinian "design" by natural selection or darwinian "purpose" or even darwinian "reason" (to add one more) stems from my background in biology as much as if not more than my background in engineering. Moreover, they are in accordance with the common languaging in the field.
.....
One more thing: The above-quoted passage hardly seems pertinent with respect to addressing the subject of contention (that being darwinian "design" or darwinian "purpose" or "reason"); so once again that leads me to suggest a "popular" book on the subjects (like those cited above) by a popularizer could be useful in your case - not only for clarification but for really enjoyable reading.
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MikeL
Trad climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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FM: ML accused Frank Wilczek, Nobel Winner in Physics, of a lack of critical thinking skills!
(You don't always read very well.)
MH2: The brain is ALWAYS thinking.
Bruce Kay: I presume you all are thoroughly familiar with Danniel Kahnemann?
(Too many "n"s, Bruce.)
It's not easy to reference only Kahneman without also referencing Tversky. The two together came up with most of what Kahneman later mined extensively in his publications. Their ideas are that humans make improper decisions statistically in most instances, which is a curious thing to reference among this group here in this thread. Most people in this thread would seem to honor evolution as a paramount theory that explains life and consciousness, but how that seems to actually occurs (post facto) flies in the face of Kahneman & Tversky's research. Indeed, more people are now arguing that all of those biases and heuristics that K&T documented must somehow be productive and useful in an evolutionary sense. Things like altruism, emotion, love, anger, compassion, close genetically based bias, etc.--although not clearly logical, rational, statistically proper in the short run--seem to be very "useful" in the long run.
Kahneman's recent book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (2011) references similar ideas that I've posted here on this thread using the terms "hot cognition" and "cold cognition." The ideas might help to untangle what MH2, Base, FM, and maybe Largo are talking around. "Thinking" as is generally considered (discursive) seems to be "cold" or "slow" cognition. Intuition, instinct, autonomic processes seem to fall under what's called "hot" or "fast" cognition.
What is most interesting to me about fast / hot and slow / cold cognition is the view it can provide of subjectivity / consciousness. (Jstan, this is for you.) It is possible (and experienced at least by me) that everything of consciousness can be relegated or accessed through hot cognition--that is, through pure intuition without much or even any conscious "thinking" going on. If that were true / possible, then one could experience experience purely as raw experience without content, without subject, and without object. Just being. You could say that one becomes somewhat of a puppet, simply being action without all of the constant discursiveness, evaluation, intention, objective orientation going on that creates dualism between subject (the "I") and an object (the "things" in the world). Just as birds fly over a calm body of water and evince reflections, so may thoughts, feelings, emotions of anything come and go in the mind without the mind grabbing on to them and attaching to them, as it is the very attachment (or aversion) that produces the "I" or self.
Everything that appears is fleeting, impermanent, insubstantial displays of mind. Mind itself is a display. Once you begin to get that, then "you" begin to wonder where the energy and creativity comes from that throws up the infinite endless images that mind reflects. That's when or where Werner's and BB's pointers become fundamental / noteworthy. It's where the conversation about / of God or the Absolute becomes paramount and takes hold.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Yeah, well, I also read Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" and a couple years ago watched his Gifford Lectures presentation, all very clear, and the bulk of what you just posted was a convoluted caricature of his ideas. :(
EDIT: My error: Not Gifford Lectures but some other. Here are two...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgRlrBl-7Yg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzJxAmJmj8w
Note how clearly expressed, how coherent/consistent with the sciences (neuroscience, evolutonary psychology, esp).
btw, here's Largo's lapdog on Kahneman...
Daniel Kahneman, he's a just reflective intellectual gymnastics mental speculator only .....
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1593650&msg=1680476#msg1680476
Expresses the "state of the thread" very well - eh?
Sayonara, jgill. ;)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 6, 2014 - 09:25am PT
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Even if Gomer Fruitcake Pyle distorts and confuses most of the material he presents, some of the source stuff is worth a look. Daniel Kahneman is one of those. His distinction between experiencing and remembering is an interesting study and sources countless meaningful thought experiments.
However because Kahnemen has seemingly approached the psyche from a purely cognitive POV, he fell into the trap of introducing different "selves" as aspects of our psychological makeup that experience past and present, as opposed to a panoply of selves (or sub personalities) that all can experience past and present depending on where we place our attention. All of this material has been worked out in the most fantastic detail by both Voice Dialogue and all that 4th way work which is sort of proto-sufi stuff. Kahneman flubbed it, but his insights about how we judge past and present and how that effects our well being are essential listening. Even Fruitcake's cabana boy, Sam Harris, thinks so.
JL
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WBraun
climber
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Fruitcake unknowingly is an intellectual, academic and spiritual racist ......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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It is not my experience that '"Thinking" always carries the notion of intentionally staying focused on a given subject.'
while thinking does involve a specific, and focussed "object" the process of thinking does not have to be focused, or even "intentional" (in the sense of scrunching up your brow and pushing an idea out). My experience of thinking is more expansive than that, including working in a concentrated manner, then abandoning the thought for a long time only to have a solution "surface" in an apparently random time.
this unfocused thinking "in the background" could be similar to the ability of master chess players to play multiple games simultaneously, which is not done in a manner of producing N copies of the process for the N games being played.
similar to the ability to think out problems while delivering a lecture on some topic, the processes unfolding in parallel, and separately.
my experience with "thinking" seems to be quite a bit different than what Largo presents.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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For sake of more completeness in addition to validity and accuracy regarding Darwinian "design," I looked up the ("mere") textbook, The Evolutionary Biology of Plants, by (Niklas) referenced by EdH.
At one point, it reads...
"...plants with seeds that were poorly designed aerodynamically may have been wind pollinated less frequently than plants with streamlined seeds and so left behind..."
Also, it reads...
"plants are natural machines engineered by natural selection so it's not surprising the properties..."
Now I get this use of "designed" in evolutionary context. Also, the term "engineered" in evolutionary context (othewise in the darwinian sense). The vast bulk of evolutionary biologists would, too. Again, the $64 question is, Does EdH? Or, Why doesn't EdH?
The point's the same: When one understands the basic concepts and is operating out of the right framing of things, then he can see through the mess on the uncleared landscapes, in this case mostly left by simple ignorance (or science illiteracy) and religions (esp Abrahamic religion) and theologies/theisms and "intelligent design" adovocates.
.....
surprised at your lack of respect.
It's across much of the entire spectrum of science, stick around awhile you'll see. And you'll note his lapdog (woof) just called me a racist. but their loving kiss-ass coterie won't ever call them out for their aspersions.
Lapdog wrote, Fruitcake unknowingly is an intellectual, academic and spiritual racist ......
You should be ashamed of yourself. For your record here.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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From the horse's own mouth - Daniel Kahneman on Thinking, Fast and Slow
[Click to View YouTube Video]
To be honest, I wouldn't trust the "Kahneman 1" of MikeL and the "Kahneman 2" of Largo more than I trust any known human fox trying to support it's own case...
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