Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 10:37am PT
|
John, you said that the line between machine registration and awareness is fuzzy. Of course if we accept that we live in two contiguous or overlapping worlds, objective and subjective, the issue is only fuzzy per the objective POV. In the subjective realm we actually live in, only a lunatic could ever deny the distinction and call it fuzzy.
That is, if we were to look strictly at brain function, the patterns arsing from instinctual or automatic reactions and conscious acts might be fuzzy - though I doubt it. Most instinctive functions (like our body adjusting blood pressure according to immediate needs) are carried out by the reptilian part of our "triune brain."
However in the subjective world, the difference between machine registration and conscious being or action are about as profound as you can get. Namely, the machine has no internal subjective life at all. No conscious experience. And we do. Simple as that.
So when you delve into the subjective realm seeking the difference, we immediately grasp that having experience and not having same is not merely profound, it basically is the entire plot.
And Contractor, you said: In those terms or by those peramiters, I agree, AI is an implausible concept- but not by law of nature or physical limitations. It's implausible because we are not mentally equipped to correlate the merger of chance and time in a galactic sense.
Not sure what you mean but I'd love to hear more about it. And when you say, "not by the law of nature and physical limitation," are you not implying that the physical "produces" awareness? That's the Hard Problem, demonstrating same, and so far as I'm concerned it's a trick question and a kind of sucker's bet because in strictly physical descriptive terms, the most objective descriptors can ever point to is a zombie - an input-processing-output machine that might look and sound like a sentient being, but which has no internal life whatsoever. It's a kind of riddle, expecting the objective to somehow causally "explain" the existence of the subjective by way of only measuring the objective, by way of a supposedly "observer independent" mode. Some see the problem here. Others don't.
If you are fascinated by the really far out stuff coming from the science camp, check out this one: https://m.theepochtimes.com/uplift/a-new-theory-of-consciousness-the-mind-exists-as-a-field-connected-to-the-brain_2325840.html
To my way of thinking there are interesting things to consider there but it feels off on two counts: First, the guy's still fishing around for a mechanism, and second, the whole idea of considering mind as "separate from" everything else is a non-starter, and almost certainly came from the philosophical belief that measuring and predictions proves that a purely objective reality exists separate from mind. the guy's simply flopped the equation, so to speak.
The whole campaign for stand-alone, independently existing objects and phenomenon needs to be looked at closely, IMO.
As mentioned earlier, there is every reason for us to hope for a classical explanation for mind, but we need only look at the very non-classical stuff encountered in Quantum Mechanics to understand that when the objective world is looked at in depth, classical descriptors all but evaporate. Expecting the subjective world to be different, to be explained and understood in causal terms not found in the objective world, is perhaps wishful thinking. Add to that using a supposedly "observer independent" mode of inquiry, it seems unlikely one would ever "find" an observer or the phenomenon of observation IN the electrochemical stirrings of the brain, using a mode that by definition leaves OUT observation and observers.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 12:27pm PT
|
Dr. Dirk K.F. Meijer, a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, hypothesizes that consciousness resides in a field surrounding the brain
Pharmacologist moonlighting as a quantum physicist.
JL: Of course if we accept that we live in two contiguous or overlapping worlds, objective and subjective, the issue is only fuzzy per the objective POV. In the subjective realm we actually live in, only a lunatic could ever deny the distinction and call it fuzzy
"Awareness" as a mystical phenomenon is a little hard for me to accept. So we will disagree on the issue.
Process Philosophy so Teilhard de Chardin, Bergson . . .
OK, I think I see where you are coming from. Chardin with his "Omega Point" and "noosphere" and Bergson with his concept of time as a sort of philosophical "duration", a kind of human experience. Interesting historical figures. Bergson saw his career decline after arguing "time" with Einstein in a public forum.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 01:41pm PT
|
"Awareness" as a mystical phenomenon is a little hard for me to accept. So we will disagree on the issue.
--
Funny how you keep recruiting "mystical" terms for your own inner phenomenon. Does "mystical" apply to anything that was not "caused" by a more fundamental, physical mechanism. Is the weak attraction "mystical?"
It seems soon as you step outside your comfort zone, you quickly scamper back, throw up your hands and start slinging mystical and religious terms around. Is this not covering an abiding hope that a classical explanation will once be found to explain or chart out or quantify everything, once the data is in?
What lies beyond the data?
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 03:23pm PT
|
What lies beyond the data?
Probably more data.
It sounds mystical when one speculates about a "field of consciousness" that we tap into as humans. But there's nothing wrong with "mystical" - it's just a term to use in the context of mind. I would be tempted to use the word regrading "fields" in physics if scientists had not come up with ways to illuminate their features. Still, no one knows what they are even though they can be manipulated. And waves propagating across these fields at greater than light speed? Weird and wonderful. Ed can correct me.
|
|
NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 03:52pm PT
|
So we ask: What's the difference between a sentient human and a syntactic engine? The same as between you and the dishwasher when washing the dishes. What’s the consequence? That any apocalyptic vision of AI can be disregarded.
This reminds me of how people tried to distinguish humans from animals: "Well, we communicate"; "we use tools"; "we have feelings." "we have deeper yearnings and desires, we write poetry." These anthro-centric views fit in nicely with those evolutionary charts that show humans as the pinnacle of evolutionary processes.
I think there is nothing that fundamentally distinguishes us from all other animals, other than degrees of ability in different areas. I suspect we are pretty clueless about what spinner dolphins might consider art. Just because we are not aware of how much we are unaware of, does not mean that we are unique in the small areas of which we have awareness.
A Frankensteinian analogy for AIs coming alive seems an idea born from a literary mind more than a scientific/engineering mind. To me, AI in a broad sense is a progression of increasing abilities, which at some point will surpass the abilities of humans. It has already happened in games like Chess and Go. It will happen with driving in the next decade. Piece by piece, the things that we humans cling to as sacred and special and unique will fall to machines that do it better. "Well we are more artistic." I expect there will be a backlash when computers paint photo-realistically and in any style from Pollock to Picasso and Van Gogh and Matisse with any degrees and variations between, and with new styles that we don't have good reference labels for. We will have people painting like toddlers trying to prove it is "human" because it is not so good.
Another analogy comes to mind: the purists of "analog" sound versus the scientific/engineering advances that bring digitally encoded audio files. Plenty of audiophiles like to wax poetic about the special "warm" quality of analog sound, how much fundamentally better it is, etc.... And yet, when you encode information at least 2x the sampling frequency that our fleshy sensors (e.g. basilar membrane) can detect, the difference is indistinguishable and audiophiles can't pass a double-blind test to back up their b.s. What will be special and different about human intelligence and consciousness when we can build machines that generate indistinguishable output?
In the end, the last thing to fall will be our egos as we strive to find ways that we are special, different, worthy of surviving.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 04:05pm PT
|
What lies beyond the data?
Probably more data.
Where do reckon it came from or was caused by?
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 04:08pm PT
|
As mentioned earlier, there is every reason for us to hope for a classical explanation for mind, but we need only look at the very non-classical stuff encountered in Quantum Mechanics to understand that when the objective world is looked at in depth, classical descriptors all but evaporate. Expecting the subjective world to be different, to be explained and understood in causal terms not found in the objective world, is perhaps wishful thinking. Add to that using a supposedly "observer independent" mode of inquiry, it seems unlikely one would ever "find" an observer or the phenomenon of observation IN the electrochemical stirrings of the brain, using a mode that by definition leaves OUT observation and observers.
I think you've muddled this one again, confusing your description of the "objective world" with the "objective world" itself.
Causality is alive and well in the quantum domain.
|
|
NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 04:16pm PT
|
Probably more data... where did it come from?
A very simple model, a math formula that many high school kids can understand, can yield infinite variations within patterns of recurring themes. This concrete example lends credence to the idea that some simple natural processes, over a great many iterations, can yield what many consider to be evidence of divine creation:
[Click to View YouTube Video]
The one point that I get most stuck on for the "where did it all come from?" question is where physicists seem to be investing a lot of effort. That first moment of passing from nothing to something is a discontinuity that my brain can't conceive of humans being able to solve scientifically. We will just be asymptotically approaching something infinitely small, and we'll never get there. Maybe someday there will be explicit understanding of what existed prior to the Big Bang, what conditions led to the Big Bang, and maybe such a thing can be recreated as we become the God creators of new universes. That seems pretty fanciful in a physical sense, but maybe not as fanciful in a virtual/information theory sense. But even so, the question would still be there, which universe came first, and how did it start, and what existed before it? It's an infinite rabbit hole.
But it's nice to stop and smell the roses and appreciate the ride.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 05:55pm PT
|
This was fun...
"Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov
One more...
Neat-o!
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 08:08pm PT
|
Where do reckon it came from or was caused by?
Those hundred monkeys typing Shakespeare got bored and turned to manufacturing data? I challenge you to disprove this.
This concrete example lends credence to the idea that some simple natural processes, over a great many iterations, can yield what many consider to be evidence of divine creation
Oh boy. Here we go again.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Oct 28, 2017 - 09:12pm PT
|
And waves propagating across these fields at greater than light speed? Weird and wonderful. Ed can correct me.
waves can travel faster than the speed of light, but cannot, in so doing, impart any information.
I'd say that's perfect...
|
|
i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
|
|
|
Oct 29, 2017 - 07:44am PT
|
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Oct 29, 2017 - 09:46am PT
|
Causality is alive and well in the quantum domain.
Classical causality? You're reaching here, Ed.
Also, you keep harking back to the objective-world-that-is-really-there theme.
How about the subjective world in which arise the ideas about what is there?
My sense of it is your belief is that we only have the impression of a subjective world, but what it REALLY is, is the objective world, or output of the same. We only "think" we have a subjective life, "reality" itself being physical.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Oct 30, 2017 - 07:31am PT
|
HFCS, what do you suppose Asimov meant by 'intelligence?'
Hey Dingus, good question.
Not easily answered or covered short of an essay, chapter or course as I’m sure you know. In above quote from wiki, “intellect” not “intelligence” is cited, but they are related words, both deriving from the Latin, legere, to gather.
“Intelligence” as you know is one of those tricky words, often highly problematic, across the general public, right? arguably containing many capacities (“to gather”), not just one or a few, and many modes of expression. Have you seen that chimp video (experiment re chimp intelligence, intellect, memory) yet (it’s at youtube, of course, lol) where chimps sequence numbers from a monitor that shame us humans? Amazing. That seems to me like a dimension, one dimension, of “intellect” or “intelligence” in chimpanzee. How does one explain that, lol! Then of course there is the octopus “intellect” most of us have come to appreciate as well, in addition to the chimp and human ones and all the other ones.
Here's one. I bet you've seen it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPiDHXtM0VA
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Regarding Asimov, Sagan and Minsky and their respective “intellects”, I can imagine a context where Asimov is considering Sagan’s ability, say, to tap into diverse systems of knowledge in mind-brain (of course revealed in large part by science in addition to general life experience) re how things work (incl world, solar system, cosmos at large, life and living things; also history evolutionary and human, Sagan was HUGE on that), drawing ideas and insights from these (systems) and then harnessing them in some creative useful way - formulating plans (eg, formulating a plan to explore the solar system incl moon and mars, lol); solving problems, eg, the problem of nuclear proliferation between states (after imagining nuclear armageddon and nuclear winter); writing science documentaries (Cosmos) or entertaining sci-fi novels (eg, Contact).
(I learned, or relearned, from above wiki entry on Asimov that he penned some 500 books, many fictional and entertaining, that’s a pretty prolific “intellect” by some yardstick right there, seems to me).
Clearly intelligence like intellect could be an entire course in itself. No doubt you have some terrific ideas and insights into this subject yourself . Maybe you’d like to discuss further? I do believe this amazing phenomenon was evolved (over millions of generations and based in brain architecture), not ensouled (in any traditional theistic sense). That is my science background speaking.
FWIW, I guess I quoted that snip because I was surprised in the moment that Carl Sagan was referenced in the Wiki entry for Asimov.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Oct 30, 2017 - 07:57am PT
|
Causality is alive and well in the quantum domain.
Nice to see. So succinctly stated.
(It's about time.)
...
Classical causality?
lol
Case in point. You are so out of touch. Can you not just accept it: science is not your thing. Writing, among other things, eg climbing and story telling, etc are your thing. Give us more climbing story books!
Leave science and perhaps Jewish or Asian genius to solve the Hard Problem. ;)
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Oct 30, 2017 - 08:00am PT
|
Presently, once again, the woo is thick as molasses on that OTHER thread. Imo. I believe Kurt Andersen is 100% right about America in his recent Atlantic piece. Unfortunately.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/
As BASE pointed out time and again, time and again, time and again, Carl Sagan (Demon Haunted World) warned about this condition developing or persisting or worsening some 30 years ago.
But please don't get me wrong: I DO understand that humanity carries a very heavy load. Life is not easy. Life is suffering. It's not just the buddhists who have realized this.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Oct 30, 2017 - 08:04am PT
|
AI can't accomplish powerful thinking problems.
No one ever claimed that.
Both you and HFCS do NOT have a complete understanding of consciousness nor sentience nor intelligence.
Your mechanistic understanding of these is very defective and incomplete.
This why you guys google so much and copy past here.
You really don't know and are using pure theory and a lot of guessing masqueraded as science.
Powerful thinking does NOT = intelligence
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Oct 30, 2017 - 08:15am PT
|
Even one growing blade of grass has intelligence .....
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2017 - 12:41am PT
|
Very interesting since I'm reading Wright's book right now.
Thanks for posting.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!