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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2015 - 08:25am PT
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beyond in it's orbit yes
more interesting is using the moons of the planets, first Jupiter and it's inner moon Io, to measure the speed of light.
The distance between the Earth and Jupiter changes throughout the year, so the time it takes the light to travel from Jupiter to Earth changes also (if you presume the speed-of-light to be constant).
By using the orbital period of Io as a clock (also assuming that the period of the clock is constant, or at least predictable), Rømer could predict the time at which he would see Io emerge from behind Jupiter. That time changes during the year as the Earth-Jupiter distance changes. Rømer determined the time it took light to traverse the distance of the Earth's orbit diameter (the largest part of the Earth-Jupiter distance change) to be 22 minutes. This was in 1676.
Pertinent to this recent discussion, Rømer did not have "direct" experience of the moon Io, or of Jupiter, or anything else off the surface of the Earth... only a few have had the experience of being on another solar system body, the Moon. Whether or not we decide to travel to Mars, it is probably more than a decade away.
Galileo, whose observations of the moon's of Jupiter "generalized" the idea of a helio-centric solar system for which he was tried in the Papal courts. The Vatican's case was two-fold, first that the view was contrary to what was written in the Bible (which Galileo thought he was free to interpret as parable) but the science case was interesting.
The science case rested on the estimate of the size of stars assuming a view of the "heavens" we currently have, that they are distant and fill space. These estimates, by computing parallax, would have star sized much larger than our own Sun. That was apparently considered to be an absurd conclusion.
Interestingly, our direct experience of the Sun, and our total ignorance of how the Sun found the energy to emit it's light upon which we are totally dependent, seemed to make the idea that there were bigger stars hard to believe.
We have no direct experience of objects very far away from our own solar system, just what we can see through our instruments. Spacecraft have flown to various bodies in the solar system and have explored various aspects of these, reporting back their experiences, which include measurements.
Voyager 1 has crossed over into interstellar space, away from the singular influence of the Sun. It still reports back what it is experiencing. It runs out of energy in about 10 years and will cease the ability to report back.
It's adventure has revealed many interesting aspects of the solar system previously unknown. Its direct experience has been an important addition to our understanding. It continues to act, now completely autonomously.
What is experience?
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Jul 15, 2015 - 09:23am PT
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Pleased to see the progress that you/we perfect mental speculators are making, and damn those imperfect mental speculators! with their imperfect mental speculations! :-) keep up the good self belief!
We don't have mental speculators, we have survivor bias. We hold beliefs that survivors hold. Praise self!
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 15, 2015 - 11:23am PT
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It's adventure has revealed many interesting aspects of the solar system previously unknown. Its direct experience has been an important addition to our understanding. It continues to act, now completely autonomously.
What is experience?
Depending on the definition of experience a space craft of a mechanical nature is not experiencing anything as it is simply an extension of human sensory apparatus and it is the humans in charge who are doing the experiencing. A machine lacks the understanding, realization and finally satisfaction that are the essence of sentient experience... don't you think?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jul 15, 2015 - 11:50am PT
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Ed: What is experience?
Whatever it is, it’s pretty cool.
Go get ‘em New Horizons. (Research makes one think about all sorts of things. It’s all God, anyway . . . machine, planet, or earthly observer.)
It IS pretty cool, Ed.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 15, 2015 - 09:54pm PT
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What is experience?
What would you say the NPS video cam experienced while focused on The HalfDome rockfall today?
Do you think HD experienced anything?
How about the trees and shrubs that were crushed?
What about the rats and ants that surely died? Think their relatives have any experience to share?
Now the crux, do you think Cheif Tis Sa Ack had a HD experience today?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2015 - 10:15pm PT
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"... humans in charge who are doing the experiencing. A machine lacks the understanding, realization and finally satisfaction that are the essence of sentient experience... don't you think?"
no, humans aren't in charge in any way... the machine is out there, responding to the terrain, the humans speculated on the map... and the humans can't be in charge since they're 4.5 hours away, one way, 9 hours round trip for communications... the spacecraft is responding to the situation it finds itself in, with no human in charge.
The spacecraft has to decide how to photograph Pluto, run the science experiments, and all that... humans can't help.... also, how to find Earth, point the antenna, establish communications, maneuver, prioritize the data download, etc, etc...
since you (nor anyone else here) can even define sentience except to say it is something that humans have, you really don't know if the spacecraft is having that experience or not... I actually think it is aware of itself, but perhaps not in the same way we are aware of ourselves... and it isn't something magical, though perhaps wondrous.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Jul 15, 2015 - 10:17pm PT
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'Pluto's Thoughts'
Oh Pluto she rides,
Along with all of us,
Among world's afar,
Around a star,
Spiraling we go,
Through our milky pathway,
Loftily held by our,
supermassive singularity,
In her loving embrace,
I suspect it's the home,
To many like minds,
In Andromeda's path,
So tell me what God thinks,
Or that of a droid,
I'll be more akin to ashes,
And not likely avoid,
To exist in this place,
Like a cinder once bright,
Once more into the breach,
Infected with light,
Or like Schroedinger's Cat,
Observed only by self,
Devoid of all light,
Or preserved on a shelf,
I'm one sweet Pluto ride,
So long sweet sister dwarf,
Until Pluto's demise,
I'll be long gone by then,
As inanimate as self,
And as thoughtless as ice.
-bushman
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 15, 2015 - 10:40pm PT
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no, humans aren't in charge in any way... the machine is out there, responding to the terrain, the humans speculated on the map... and the humans can't be in charge since they're 4.5 hours away, one way, 9 hours round trip for communications... the spacecraft is responding to the situation it finds itself in, with no human in charge.
Human beings built launched and programed this machine to perform the way it has performed to think otherwise is perhaps to drift into the realm of romantic imagination. Simply put, without human sentience that machine would not exist.
As for defining sentience, it is difficult, but like pornography one knows it when they see it.
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jstan
climber
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Jul 15, 2015 - 10:41pm PT
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I saw a report that New Horizons was 72 seconds late in reaching Pluto. What portion of the travel time to Pluto was this. Seventy two seconds is 24 millionths of one percent of 3464 days. NASA takes its orbital calculations pretty seriously.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 15, 2015 - 10:47pm PT
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Human beings built launched and programed this machine to perform the way it has performed to think otherwise is perhaps to drift into the realm of romantic imagination. Simply put, without human sentience that machine would not exist.
but humans were "built" too...and somehow that doesn't seem to be a factor in these discussions...just not built by humans...
and it's not clear that human sentience has anything to do with building a spacecraft...so your last surmise is questionable.
oh, and for programming behavior? good night...
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 16, 2015 - 08:01am PT
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I'm teaching a writer's symposium in Aspen but soon as I get back to the crib on Sat. I look forward to digging into this stuff.
In the meantime, a few questions for Ed: If we can't objectify sentience as a third person phenomenon, recognizable (and verified) "out there," what does that mean to you?
And if we COULD objectify and "prove" sentience by dint of external factor/behavior, what would THAT prove to you?
Lastly, how would you describe the difference between objective and subjective?
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 16, 2015 - 08:22am PT
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up from my body's diurnal program... but I have a meeting soon...
You have to love the need for philosophical foundations, but at Richard Feynman's urging, I have to say, I'll just "eat the steak."
[Click to View YouTube Video]
The "revelation" I seek has nothing to do with whether or not it is philosophically sound to provide a model of human mind/sentience/consciousness... what I am interested in is understanding this particular animal behavior in the broader context of evolution, and of life on the planet, from a physical standpoint.
I totally understand that many of you participating in this discussion think it is so difficult to do that anyone doing must be a "silly rabbit," that there has to be (or there is) more than "just the physical universe." But my interests are to simply accept the constraint that there is nothing more than "the physical universe" and see how far that goes, and what the difficulties are in explaining various phenomenon.
It's not everyone's cup of tea, for sure.
I'm not looking for a proof... I am seeking understanding.
The brain, which is 2% of a human's body mass consumes 20% of the energy requirements... that is a huge statement. Evolution is ultimately about energy, an individual needs it to grow to maturity and reproduce. Organisms do not "waste" energy on trivial stuff, the energy wasting attributes are bred out of the species in what most humans consider a very harsh manner...
What humans get for the very expensive organ is an interesting question. I happen to be interested in that question from a purely physical point of view.
As for the behaviors we associate with "mind/consciousness/sentience," well, I consider them behaviors... and pulling that thread is something of interest to me. But I don't require that there be some philosophical statement to the effect that "it is possible to achieve such understanding" or "it is obviously impossible to achieve such understanding." Poking around a "problem" one might start to find some faint path to follow and make a little progress... that's how science goes.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 16, 2015 - 09:01am PT
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I totally understand that many of you participating in this discussion think it is so difficult to do that anyone doing must be a "silly rabbit," that there has to be (or there is) more than "just the physical universe." But my interests are to simply accept the constraint that there is nothing more than "the physical universe" and see how far that goes, and what the difficulties are in explaining various phenomenon.
If you're just going to eat the steak then what's the need for understanding?
The art of ship building is not in the wood. Ships do not occur by nature.
It's not that there is more than the physical universe it's that the physical universe is just more than you might "presently" imagine.
Machines such as the space craft in question are but extensions of our senses. How can they be anything else?
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Jul 16, 2015 - 09:34am PT
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The question of man being a machine created by another's hand was what intrigued me most about Ed's earlier post.
Whether by god's or man's or evolution's own hand matters not so much as for our appreciation of the work. And that depends on our opinion of man's overall score as well. Animal, farmer, hunter, murderer, warmonger, despot, shaman, prophet, doctor, builder, architect, mathematician, scientist, astronomer, artist, writer, poet, philosopher, adventurer, pilot, astronaut, consumer, comuter, computer, polluter, and students all, we of our species hold ourselves in high regard and some esteem.
What of our biological and mental mechanism, created by whomever or whatever, is not of interest to aliens or time travelers from our future to study and proclaim, "Homo Sapiens, such a well programmed machine, interesting."?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 16, 2015 - 10:20am PT
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What of our biological and mental mechanism, created by whomever or whatever, is not of interest to aliens or time travelers from our future to study and proclaim, "Homo Sapiens, such a well programmed machine, interesting."?
You might also ask what the machines would say.
http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 16, 2015 - 10:20am PT
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Dopey philosophers . . . I do like the sound of that.
;>)
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jul 16, 2015 - 10:28am PT
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Machines such as the space craft in question are but extensions of our senses. how can they be anything else?
Some distinctions might be in order at this stage. Whereas the above statement is largely true of spacecraft-- in fact true of technology in general: technology being an extension of either our senses, our abstract computational nervous system, or our other bodily functions (the wheel is an example of the general rotary motion of the feet walking forward).
From what I understand, New Horizon has been designed , as it were, to make many more "autonomous" decisions than any craft to date. This is of course directly due to the vast distances involved; but also reflective of the independent direction in which AI is progressing.
Metaphorically speaking New Horizon represents our technological young adult who has grown up and moved the furthest away from home for the first time and encountering the need to make its own decisions and stand on its own two...antennae . In a totally novel environment.
We have created New Horizon and it is completely our emissary, despite making many decisions independent of our real time input.
If it can be said that the offspring of parents are reflective of those parents, and that the offspring represents nothing more than the upbringing--the stored programming--of the parents-- then NH is that. But then there are those subset of autonomous actions that we cannot entirely predict-- actions this machine, and earlier spacecraft, must make on their own, based upon the environment that it encounters. At this stage it is a sort of dumb autonomy, but autonomy nonetheless. And its resultant actions were and are unique.
This AI aspect of NH, driven by insurmountable necessity, is the more important unheralded incremental advance that I can see in this event and similar landings on nearby planets--not so much anything we might learn about Pluto itself and that region of our solar system, stunning as that might prove to be.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jul 16, 2015 - 10:40am PT
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I think DMT could be on to something when thinking of man's love of machines as a reproductive urge. So much neater and cleaner than actual live humans. So men reproduce machines and women reproduce babies, fair enough. Together they manage to use up the earth's resources at an alarming rate. Then, just as old men in most societies dream of being taken care of in old age by their grown children, men now dream of their flying machines taking them to another planet to colonize after they have destroyed this one. Interesting line of thought.
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