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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 15, 2016 - 07:17am PT
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Marvin Minsky:
"Therefore (so the argument goes) a feeling must be a nonphysical thing that has no causes or consequences. Surely, no such thing could ever be explained!"
And we have also heard it suggested that the opinion of an AI researcher could not be trusted on the nature of consciousness. Apparently another a priori conclusion.
But Minsky identifies a problem we see, here. If you were to say to JL, "Here is a group of neurons which are giving you an experience of feelings," he would say, "No, that is only objective processing, not the subjective feelings themselves."
Since subjectivity is not a physical "thing" it cannot be observed other than by the person experiencing it. If that is your starting point you cannot be convinced otherwise by any evidence another person tries to provide.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 15, 2016 - 09:47am PT
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'Let's get back to those suitcase-words (like intuition or consciousness) that all of us use to encapsulate our jumbled ideas about our minds. We use those words as suitcases in which to contain all sorts of mysteries that we can't yet explain. This in turn leads us to regard these as though they were "things" with no structures to analyze. I think this is what leads so many of us to the dogma of dualism-the idea that 'subjective' matters lie in a realm that experimental science can never reach. Many philosophers, even today, hold the strange idea that there could be a machine that works and behaves just like a brain, yet does not experience consciousness. If that were the case, then this would imply that subjective feelings do not result from the processes that occur inside brains. Therefore (so the argument goes) a feeling must be a nonphysical thing that has no causes or consequences. Surely, no such thing could ever be explained!
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The first problem with Minsky's rambling (above) is that you will find few people who have directly dealt with these challenges who would ever label mind or intuition as a "thing," aka, an external object. The phenomenon that most refer to when using the word mind or consciousness is not an external phenomenon, but internal.
The fact that Minsky conflates internal experience with a physical, external "structure we can analyze" (measure) is of course totally predictable.
The reason that that "subjective matters lie in a realm that experimental science can never reach" is not because they lie separate from brain - nothing is separate from anything or any phenomenon - but rather measuring is not focused on the internal at all, but on the external, while using methods that themselves are geared to provide mind-independent analysis of external physical parts. This slight-of-hand is ALWAYS squared and explained away through conflation of external and internal, with the physicalist siding with what he or she is actually looking at: the external object. And no matter how hard we look, the external never betrays the internal save for a conscious observer's projections.
The other wonky idea here is his use of the world "strange" in referring to the possibility that "a machine that works and behaves just like a brain, yet does not experience consciousness."
I think neuroscience has made it quite clear that objective brain function operates like a super data processing machine, but why would that imply the machine would be conscious of and have a first person sentient experience of said processing? There are many examples of fantastically advanced machines and none of them to our knowledge have self-consciousness. This belief issues from the parts-constitute-the-whole idea. There is nothing more than the parts, and so long as those are properly arrayed, you have it all, right there in the parts.
Another factor that gets muddled here is the real difference of a sensor that merely registers external stimulus and responds according to programming, and a conscious subject who knows it is having an experience (or at least "thinks it knows," or hallucinates knowing, if you go with Dennett's Folly).
The difference between these two modes lies on a sliding scale and moving toward the later, towards being increasingly conscious, is the aim of all subjective adventures.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 15, 2016 - 10:46am PT
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Hey this might be useful/insightful: Compare the flow, content and tenor here...
(1) http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1593650
to the flow, content and tenor here...
(2) http://meaningoflife.tv/videos/35345?in=26:53&out=30:58
The subjects are mainly mind, consciousness, subjective experience and belief.
I think a comparison is super revealing. :)
...
eeyonkee, those are great books, I have several of them.
cintune, thanks for info on the crow and magpies (to add to the wonder and your cool story, I had a similar experience with a young crow that landed on our second story deck - maybe his very strange behavior that hour was due to something similar? - and in youth I raised a couple of magpies to adulthood feeding them dog food to the day they flew off).
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 15, 2016 - 12:43pm PT
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Ward and Jgill seem to suggest that there’s no time like the present. The past is always old, tired, and for the most part, irrelevant. In the current period, we know better. In an ultimate sense, they are right. It’s always now, even the past and the future is now.
It is also claimed by Ward that millennials aren’t interested in old, “exotic” ideas, practices, and beliefs. Proof of that claim apparently lies in an examination of the Beatles. In our modern times, meditation is good for relieving stress in a world gone mad, and it would seem to be useless for every other reason (reflection notwithstanding).
It was Wittgenstein who claimed that no culture could provide any real insight into itself. Either time or distance had to be established to be able to see a culture somewhat clearly. Detachment is a cure for most everything. (A Buddhist notion, that.)
Since 1983, I’ve been teaching business and corporate strategy to undergraduates, MBAs, and EMBAs—which also means that I’ve been teaching Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials for a few decades.
One thing that naive subjects and novices don’t understand about business strategy is that it doesn’t make much sense to forget the past in preference the future. (And hey, what happened to the Present?) More experienced execs have some understanding of the notion.
In order to know where one is going, one has to know where one is at. To know where one is at requires that one knows where one has been.
Undergrads and MBAs are quick to want to make broad dramatic strategy shifts from what the firm is doing to what the MBAs think a firm should be doing. “Just change,” and everything will be better.
What naive subjects and novices don’t understand is that firms have made irreversible resource commitments, they have developed attitudes and beliefs ossified through success, and they have developed practices that have become routine and comfortable.
Making changes is a tricky affair. One needs to understand how things got to where they have. Wanting to ignore or throw out those things that might have been successful in the past for something that is new (untried, unknown, uncertain). Rather, it makes more sense if firms find ways to incorporate “and” into their strategies. They need to add-to what worked in the past with something new—rather than throw out everything they did well in the past. To sum, firms are held hostage by their pasts—they are the results of their administrative heritages. Everything requires a balance and a tension, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Throw nothing out.
To argue that “that was then, and this is now” is an uninformed and myopic view of a Pollyanna. We are all the results of our pasts individually and collectively. It’s a form of karma. Were it not for religion, stone age men, ancient civilizations, old moral codes and practices, etc., we could not be who and what we are. Historical residue could be found physically and subjectively, in genetics, culture, law, the humanities, and science.
As for millennials, they present an enigma for business leaders and managers today. Most organizations don’t understand them, and even with initiatives to learn about them fail. I’ve seen it at Cisco Systems, Intel, Apple, Boeing, and Microsoft in the past 5 years. Amazon seems to get them, as does Google. But those relationships and understandings appear to be a stumbling work-in-process. As a teacher in business schools, I found them mysterious for the first few years (starting around 2005). I can report, as Wittgenstein said, they don’t really understand themselves, either. All they know is what they want. Like every previous generation, their parents don’t get them, and they will not get the next generation coming up. I can also report that my limited experience working as a consultant in the FPMT (a 160- unit dharma center across the world) that there are young people trying to learn who and what they are and using meditation, as much as any boomer is (George Harrison and Hare Krishna, withstanding.)
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jstan
climber
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Jun 15, 2016 - 01:04pm PT
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Ed: would a machine know whether or not it had a mind?
This led me to ask "How do we know things?"
If machines were to imitate us, they would know they have a mind only if they found in themselves those things one gets from having a mind.
Which even we can't do. We still don't have a clue as to what "mind" is. Out of ego we merely assume we do.
Hopefully machines will be able to get over the hurdle presently stopping us.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 15, 2016 - 02:18pm PT
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If machines were to imitate us, they would know they have a mind only if they found in themselves those things one gets from having a mind.
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What happens when you let go of your attachments to the things just mentioned? This is what the Meta Brain project set out to explore - object-independent consciousness. Note that I said "explore," not provide some object, material or measurement to prove anything.
Trying to know mind provides a kind of mental gordion knot when an observer tries to objectify the 'thing' which observes. The notion a machine can somehow achieve a third-person view of itself implies an omniscient vantage existing outside of the machine itself. Or maybe you daisy chain two machines together so they can observe each other. So long as both machines are mechanically selfsame, viola, you have an actual eye in the sky.
Fun stuff to contemplate...
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jun 15, 2016 - 03:29pm PT
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As for millennials, they present an enigma for business leaders and managers today. Most organizations don’t understand them, and even with initiatives to learn about them fail.
They must not be trying very hard. Here is an excellent resource by the coiner of the term "millennial" :
https://www.lifecourse.com
A few years ago I was a frequent contributor to the forum over at Lifecourse and even got into a bit of a eye-opening back-and-forth with Neil Howe himself, the author of Millennials Rising. (An excellent book by the way. ) I was trying to provoke him into further clarifications on some of his positions. He did not rise to that bait.Lol.
There are many very interesting aspects to the Strauss-Howe generational theory. The theory itself is very Hegelian-like ( I've always maintained) and clearly relies on a wealth of historical research and insight, whatever the ultimate verdict is on its validity, especially as regards the historical methodology employed to uncover and delineate the archetypes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_theory
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Interesting report recently from Science Daily:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160614083354.htm
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 15, 2016 - 04:15pm PT
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Ward:
I think companies *are* trying very hard. They can read the demographic writing on the wall as well as anyone else can. Furthermore, they can see that talent will be in very short supply very soon.
In deference to your position, I think the issue is that firms don’t want to do what Millennials want them to do at an organizational and at personally individual levels.
. . . and just between you and me and this thread, just because some academic said that things were this way or that, doesn’t mean that they can do anything about any of it. I are one of those, and I have been flummoxed time and time again in consulting engagements where “knowing how things work” meant almost nothing at all. It’s humbling *and* instructive--for me, a win-win.
:-)
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jun 15, 2016 - 04:46pm PT
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Yes MikeL, I'm sure what you say and have experienced is correct .I was simply responding to the assertion that Millennials are enigmatic in any kind of way that might present obstacles to getting on with them, as regards understanding the origins of their collective characteristics. If these companies are insincere about gaining such knowledge well then that's another subject and perhaps one of your specialties in understanding. Furthermore, as you seem to suggest ,these firms are both insincere and "trying very hard". In any case such schizoidal approaches do very little to advance the relevant understanding of Millennials, or anything else for that matter.
I happen to believe there existed much greater gulfs between the GI generation and their offspring Boomers. Especially when one seriously considers the crusading counter cultural mentality of boomers, much of it advanced by unbridled hedonism just at the dawn of the consumer era. Boomers were even more extreme than most generations in revolt.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 15, 2016 - 04:48pm PT
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Ward and Jgill seem to suggest that there’s no time like the present. The past is always old, tired, and for the most part, irrelevant (MikeL)
I think you misinterpret what we say. Whenever a novel movement sparks a surge of interest in America, that surge peaks at some point, then subsides. Afterwards there will be people drawn to the movement, but not nearly as many as were attracted at its peak. This is a very simple observation and should not trigger an emotional response.
One needs to understand how things got to where they have.
I think professional historians require a minimum fifty year period to begin to adequately assess these effects. Kerwin could elaborate on this.
This is what the Meta Brain project set out to explore - object-independent consciousness (JL)
OK, here we go again. Now it's "Meta Brain" rather than "Meta Mind". I'll google that and see what comes up. This is the most mysterious project I've heard of in some time. The managers must visit ashrams and swear those willing participants to secrecy. 3,000 responses, unrevealed and oral. I am impressed.
EDIT: Success! Here it is:
Meta Brain Project
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Jun 15, 2016 - 05:06pm PT
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This is a very simple observation and should not trigger an emotional response.
Yes I thought I was very clear in establishing a more or less disinterested historical tone to my post and I thought the responses were a bit labile and defensive, but not unexpectedly so.
Characterizing my summation as "fringe" was a kicker, I must say. Lol. Oh yeah.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jun 15, 2016 - 05:31pm PT
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"Buddhism discussed strictly as a cultural phenomenon in recent years I have considered to be somewhat of a relic of the 60s. Ditto for all the eastern philosophies, Hinduism, Hare Krishna, etc.. (Ward)
To be a relic would indicate the 60's was the heyday of buddhism in the US. But really the 60's was just the start for Zen and Buddhism. A few teachers came from japan, korea, Tibet and southeast asia in the 1960's and started to teach and developed centers In LA, San Francisco, NY, Boston, Boulder. From these original seeds many satellite centers and many new American teachers have developed. The whole mindfulness movement came from the Insight meditation center in Barre Mass started by three American Buddhist students who trained in southeast asia in the late 60's early 70's and then started teaching in the US. There are insight meditation groups meeting every where.
IMO The hare Krishna's and the Guru oriented Vedanta style doesn't seem as popular and my guess it is based more on a belief/cultural system which educated westerners find less attractive. Jgill that SF PBS radio station KQED has 4.2 million listeners' /week. You should check out the archived interview with Jack Kornfield it was well done.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 15, 2016 - 06:23pm PT
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It was Wittgenstein who claimed that no culture could provide any real insight into itself. Either time or distance had to be established to be able to see a culture somewhat clearly.
Apply this to the question, "What is 'Mind'?"
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 15, 2016 - 06:36pm PT
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John, I had every intention of posting a link about Meta Mind or Meta Brain or whatever they call it but the program is a start up and the proprietary material does not belong to me. When I sought permission to use it, I felt obliged to say that even mention of the project had people labeling them as quacks and numbskulls from ashrans and all the other silly projections and quite naturally the guy passed.
The thing about this material is that people's projections are so fulsome and misguided that merely mentioning something other than straight up measuring of external objects get otherwise sane people talking crazy and accusing people they don't know and methods they have never experienced as kooks and frauds and fill in the blank.
It is exactly for this reason that tenured folk are keeping this on the low-down till there is something worthwhile to report. Attempts to prematurely vet the project, sans data, simply provides an insight into your own biases, since you are doing so with no participation from others.
These people are like those who say nothing before a big climb and write and talk about it only after the fact, when there is something to report. Entering discussion a priori only begs all the crackpot accusations, and so far as they can, they have chosen to avoid that challenge. It is not constructive to their aims.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 15, 2016 - 07:13pm PT
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The thing about this material is that people's projections are so fulsome and misguided that merely mentioning something other than straight up measuring of external objects get otherwise sane people talking crazy and accusing people they don't know and methods they have never experienced as kooks and frauds and fill in the blank.
Take some deep breaths.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 15, 2016 - 08:27pm PT
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There are many examples of fantastically advanced machines and none of them to our knowledge have self-consciousness.
I've asked this before...
how do you know that I have "self-consciousness"?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 15, 2016 - 09:35pm PT
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It is exactly for this reason that tenured folk are keeping this on the low-down till there is something worthwhile to report. Attempts to prematurely vet the project, sans data, simply provides an insight into your own biases, since you are doing so with no participation from others (JL)
Huh. I thought you implied there was to be no data. Nothing written. That's pretty impressive when 3,000 subjects are sought. If you would just mention one, just one of these "tenured folk" I would promise not to bring the subject up again. Unless this is a complete conspiracy I don't see this as revealing anything other than an academically qualified person is on board. I will not attempt to contact this person, only look up his credentials. Nothing more. Is that too much to ask?
Was that link I put up correct? I gather it was not, and that anything I find on the internet is a false lead. Too much like a conspiracy theory.
The whole mindfulness movement came from the Insight meditation center in Barre Mass started by three American Buddhist students who trained in southeast asia in the late 60's early 70's and then started teaching in the US. There are insight meditation groups meeting every where (PSP)
I think you are a little too close to the subject and I am a little too far from it for an agreement. I'd be willing to bet that 90 percent of the inhabitants of Omaha wouldn't know what you are talking about. When I watch or read the news in all its forms rarely do I see something about this topic. It's not anywhere close to mainstream, whereas during the 1960s it was not an unpopular subject.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jun 15, 2016 - 10:24pm PT
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JGill "I think you are a little too close to the subject and I am a little too far from it for an agreement. I'd be willing to bet that 90 percent of the inhabitants of Omaha wouldn't know what you are talking about. When I watch or read the news in all its forms rarely do I see something about this topic. It's not anywhere close to mainstream, whereas during the 1960s it was not an unpopular subject."
Yes you are probably correct; I am usually disappointed with available practice groups when I travel. Although;
In the 60's it was pop culture and there was very little if any real buddhist teaching available; the 60's and the LSD did act as a catalyst for people to seek out the practice. One reason ZM Seung Sahn came to the US was because he saw the hippie movement was looking for freedom. He saw their energy for wanting change. He said the hippies had outside freedom but no inside freedom because they held their opinions too tightly. So he came to teach.
If you google omaha vipassana you will be surprised at all the options for meditation practice.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 16, 2016 - 09:25am PT
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Jgill and PSP:
I think there is plenty of evidence that show we are living in an increasingly fragmented social world.
From a business and marketing point of view, mass marketing can hardly be fruitfully applied anymore in most any area. P&G, perhaps the premier consumer marketing exemplar, started to investigate niche marketing and niche channels (distribution and media) starting around 1986 or so. Most regular people don’t know much about it still. Determining what niches there are, how deep those niches are, their financial resources available for purchasing, their needs, etc. are realms that take considerable talent and resources to tap and develop. At times they are economically significant (e.g., NASCAR), and at other times they are economically weak (Supertopo?).
My students undertake big strategy analyses on companies of their choice, and most of the time they are surprised to find how little information there is on buyers’ profiles, needs, and purchasing behaviors online because market research companies don’t make data readily available. (They’re selling it.)
Conformity (and mass marketing) not only used to be pervasive, it also used to be socially favored. (See some of Sinclair Lewis’s novels {Babbit, Main Street, Arrowsmith} that purportedly described social conformity in the 1920s; or look at Veblen’s “The Theory of the Leisure Class” {1899} which criticized the emerging Middle Class for it soullessness.) Conformity has become an unfavorable social value, with individuality now almost supremely elevated.
(I was once out with a few of my students at a popular upscale bar downtown in Seattle, and a foreign national who had been living in Seattle for 9 years told me that “if you’re not unique enough for Seattle, you move to Portland.” I don’t know if that’s insightful, but it had the ring of truth to it for me after living there for 2 years.)
Of course the internet and its various organizational enterprising participants (e.g., companies like “1-Click”) are all about finding things out about people and their social groups. As Tim Cook has said: “anytime you find something free on the internet, you are not the consumer: you are the product.”
Hence, what Jgill senses and what PSP senses may be different social strata of which they are parts, neither of which is very large nor very small. To know more we’d need to consult statistical abstracts and the most recent census of the U.S.
BTW, social fragmentation in the U.S. and elsewhere has also been blamed for the confused state of politics these days, where one can be conservative on one issue yet liberal on seeming consonant issues.
In a conventional sense, this post is a comment relevant to “What is Mind.” Mind is who and what we are. On one level, what and who we are appears confusing, non-monolithic, fragmented, and impossible to describe even socially and psychologically in the everyday world. Some of us who have spiritual leanings may see different identities than what appears to be social or psychological (a form of “spiritual materialism”). And a few of us, perhaps like PSP, see very little can be ascribed to “an identity” at all.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 16, 2016 - 11:10am PT
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There are many examples of fantastically advanced machines and none of them to our knowledge have self-consciousness.
Machines are not biological. They do not need to find food in the natural world, escape predators, find a mate and reproduce.
What we call subjective feelings and consciousness may have long been important to animals in the struggle to survive, or they may be features that happened to develop as life on earth diversified and nervous systems adapted to new niches.
Human-type intelligence and consciousness may prove maladaptive. We show potential to destroy ourselves in a short time compared to the 2 billion year span of life on the planet.
Why would one want a self-conscious machine? What use would it have, and could we even turn it to our purposes without moral and ethical questions? Do we need a machine that could enthuse over the taste of chocolate?
I've heard a computer scientist compare the brain to existence proofs in mathematics. We know that the brain can identify objects presented to the eyes. Therefore it is theoretically possible for a computer to identify objects from images of them. That does not tell us how to make a computer do image recognition, however.
"An existence theorem is purely theoretical if the proof given of it doesn't also indicate a construction of whatever kind of object the existence of which is asserted."
from Wikipedia
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