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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 15, 2015 - 03:09pm PT
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Akashic Records ...
That's a thread-killer if there ever was one.
. . . computation is at the very heart of awareness, perception, thought whenever and wherever consciousness functions (Ward)
The word "computation" for me means a conscious process is put in play, rather than neuronal activity:
Computation is any type of calculation that follows a well-defined model understood and expressed as, for example, an algorithm, or a protocol (wiki)
A calculation is a deliberate process that transforms one or more inputs into one or more results, with variable change. The term is used in a variety of senses, from the very definite arithmetical calculation of using an algorithm, to the vague heuristics of calculating a strategy in a competition . . . (wiki)
Guess it depends on your definition.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 15, 2015 - 07:40pm PT
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The word "computation" for me means a conscious process is put in play, rather than neuronal activity
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/science/its-my-nervous-system-thats-lazy.html
The human nervous system ensures that the body reserves its energy and expends as few calories as possible with every movement. Now, a new study reports that the nervous system performs this optimization in real time.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(15)00958-6
Humans Can Continuously Optimize Energetic Cost during Walking
Jessica C. Selinger, Shawn M. O’Connor, Jeremy D. Wong, J. Maxwell Donelan
Summary
People prefer to move in ways that minimize their energetic cost [ 1–9 ]. For example, people tend to walk at a speed that minimizes energy use per unit distance [ 5–8 ] and, for that speed, they select a step frequency that makes walking less costly [ 3, 4, 6, 10–12 ]. Although aspects of this preference appear to be established over both evolutionary [ 9, 13–15 ] and developmental [ 16 ] timescales, it remains unclear whether people can also optimize energetic cost in real time. Here we show that during walking, people readily adapt established motor programs to minimize energy use. To accomplish this, we used robotic exoskeletons to shift people’s energetically optimal step frequency to frequencies higher and lower than normally preferred. In response, we found that subjects adapted their step frequency to converge on the new energetic optima within minutes and in response to relatively small savings in cost (less than 5%). When transiently perturbed from their new optimal gait, subjects relied on an updated prediction to rapidly re-converge within seconds. Our collective findings indicate that energetic cost is not just an outcome of movement, but also plays a central role in continuously shaping it.
people solve an optimization problem they aren't aware of solving... or even that there's a "problem"
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 15, 2015 - 10:03pm PT
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Non-conscious computation. Biological computers.
Fruity was correct: we are nothing but machines.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 16, 2015 - 05:15am PT
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jgill, you know there is a difference between (1) "we are machines" and (2) "we are nothing but machines".
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Ay Aye
Social climber
MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts
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Sep 16, 2015 - 06:35am PT
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Hey, I resemble that remark, whoop whoop!!
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Sep 16, 2015 - 12:35pm PT
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Picky, picky . . .
OK, we are machines.
And years of Zensitting puts into play an optimization process that allows us to experience That which has no Physical Extent.
Things are beginning to come together here.
;>)
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 16, 2015 - 01:28pm PT
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we are machines.
NO !!!
We are the driver of our machine (gross and subtle material body) that the foolish modern scientists "Think and speculate" is the "I" due to complete ignorance.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 17, 2015 - 10:30am PT
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We are machines.
You could say that we and our societies are machines, holograms, psychic prisons, political systems, organisms, brains, cultures, etc. All are metaphors.
Metaphors are ok, but let’s not forget that metaphors are not literal.
The internet may be the digital superhighway, and that may tell you something or imply something insightful to you, but neither are the “things” or the “thatness” (suchness, tattva) of what it is that you think you are pointing at.
Metaphors work because they put two unlike things together, and in doing so transfer properties of one onto the other. (Think Venn diagrams.) The combination of the two things (the metaphor) automatically generates a cognitive tension, and that tends to generate excitement (emotion), which appears to spur creativity. Metaphors permeate language, and they are often used in domains that are very poorly mapped (where creativity flourishes).
The thing is *not* to take metaphors too concretely. They are never “the thing” (suchness, thatness).
Metaphors are meant to be played with. Be child-like in most everything.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Sep 17, 2015 - 11:36am PT
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Nice post, Mike.
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 18, 2015 - 05:06pm PT
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The principal element of creation is the mind.
But the soul is never created and exists eternally.
When the individual soul is synced to the Supreme Super Soul's mind then life is correctly situated.
Until then one remains in bondage to the three modes of the material energy:
Ignorance
Passion
Goodness
Only in Pure goodness (transcending the mode of goodness) will one be free from material defects of the dual nature of ones materially conditioned infected mind and be free from the cycle of birth death disease and old age .......
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Sep 20, 2015 - 04:06pm PT
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Metaphors work because they put two unlike things together, and in doing so transfer properties of one onto the other. (Think Venn diagrams.) (MikeL)
Venn diagrams?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Sep 20, 2015 - 04:33pm PT
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Yes,yes...diagramme le Venn
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 21, 2015 - 09:50am PT
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Jgill: Venn diagrams?
Each circle would represent the complete list of attributes of a concept or domain. (Forget that can’t really be fully articulated.) Where the circles intersect would indicate the attributes that would be shared between the base and the target domain / concept. However, the logic for the mapping is somewhat non-Boolean (see, Zadeh’s work on “fuzzy logic”), so seemingly inappropriate attributes can get mapped from a base domain to a target domain.
At one of my conferences on a business issue, I might see a cartooned poster of a man in rolled-up shirt sleeves planting a flag at the top of a mountain peak. The metaphor says that some facet of business is like climbing. Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s perhaps enlightening in some ways, but there are many places where the metaphor is misleading or even dangerous.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Sep 21, 2015 - 11:59am PT
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OK. I've used Venn diagrams in math of course, but I've never thought of them used in this way.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 22, 2015 - 11:06am PT
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The Non-Reductive aspect of “Mind”
One of our most intuitive, natural born insights is that the quality of our personal experience is closely associated with our biology. Run out of water on a big wall, say, and you’ll know, without a shadow of doubt, when your body is denied the basics, you will sell your mother’s soul to get them NOW.
For a number of psychological reasons - some having to do object constancy and the fact that we all came from, or were “made” by our parents - we naturally believe that our biology influences if not largely creates our experience. Again, drink a few beers or hit your thumb with a hammer to know this belief has legs.
And so as we grow up, the line, the qualitative difference between experience and our bodies get blurred. Most of us eventually come to believe that the agency, the “I,” the me with the name and the memory, experiencing the people, places, things and phenomenon (our personal “content”) of the world is a real entity, and that our subjective content is “ours.” We also come to believe that in a fundamental way, content is who we are – especially regarding what we can do, in terms of aptitude and capacity.
A person experiencing excellent capacity with the piano IS a musician, and the girl who can bend the soccer ball into the net from 40 meters out IS the center forward. Or we objectify what we do and declare THAT is what and who we are. A human doer doing (fill in the blank). What else “are” we but what we do and what content (people, places, things and phenomenon) passes through our consciousness?
But what happens when we slow down, shut up, and stop trying to label or evaluate our experience – including all the objects "out there” – and spend a few hours being with our experience, for the moment letting go, so far as we can, of all our appraisals, dogma, Gods, beliefs, convictions, points of view, perspectives, and so forth?
The first thing we might notice is that we have a private inner life that is special – NOT meaning we are superior to this or that, but rather this inner life, this subjectivity, is particular to a specific person or thing. We have our own special way of perceiving, and special features of our thinking. In other words, we have certain qualities etc. we believe that make us who we are, and that we as subjects have a discrete and direct experiential life in which those qualities play out, and a deeply and specifically personal sense of the texture, tone and content of that experience.
In brief, in addition to our bodies (our biology), we have a specific SUBJECTIVE reality that permeates every aspect of being you or being me. And that reality is subjectively and directly known ONLY to me. I can put words to aspects of my subjective experience, and outside agencies can to some degree measure (test) what I do and the way I process information, but my discrete subjective experience describes a psychological law: the experiential process and reality of an individual’s subjective life is directly knowable only to the subject. We might be able to measure certain objective functions like heart beat and temperature and various other biological markers, but the actual subjective world of any individual, their true real-time experience, is directly known and experienced only by the host or subject him/herself.
More later...
JL
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 29, 2015 - 01:44pm PT
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(Ugh.) There are theories offered in that writing, Cintune, and they are all highly speculative. There are many others available, too . . . perhaps an unlimited number.
Evolution may not always proceed in what would seem to be a logical and orderly fashion. Oddities may emerge, with essentially no explanation that we can imagine.
What do you get with an imagination imaging what could be imagined? That is what consciousness could be.
It’s been suggested by some Masters is that Reality IS consciousness discovering itself. What that might be could be similar to what a dream is for you. In a dream, everything is One, connected, seemingly not quite completely or accurately describable, fluid, spontaneous, open-ended, not quite concrete . . . with all sorts of operating theories available for speculation.
Perhaps we’re in the wrong thread. Here we are bordering on “Science vs. Religion.” (Hey, wait a minute. . . isn’t that a deja vu?)
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