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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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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 16, 2016 - 12:21pm PT
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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.
No John, I was saying YOU are tying to vet this group SANS DATA, trying to quantify their credentials in order to evaluate the project before knowing what it is, screaming about conspiracies and kooks and quacks. Can you really blame people from wanting to steer clear of any of this?
Their project is experiential. You directly have the experience and vet THAT. One of the main reasons they have avoided cooking up a bunch of written material is knowing people would vet the written material in instead of the experience.
The principal of this adventure is to explore the subject as object-independent, including written objects. You can see that even the notion of going there causes people to cry foul. The old saw to "shut up and stop calculating" has always been a great challenge for all of us, especially for someone like me who loves to evaluate.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 16, 2016 - 01:34pm PT
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An idea I came across in the NY Times book review… I think.
Imagine an object in nature say a tree.
There are really two trees: the science tree and the tree of immediate sensory experience.
The science tree is without color and instead reflects wavelengths. The science tree is made of molecules and atoms and electrons and mostly space. The science tree makes no sound as the wind moves its leaves but only vibrations. The science tree has a cellular biology of great complexity.
The tree of immediate sensory experience is big and green and beautiful but these experiences are illusory mind stuff and not the “hard” factual /stuff of the science tree, its scientific reality.
So…. imagine a scientist confined to a structure the interior of which is completely achromatic, a world of grays, and this scientist has never visited the outside world and knows only this gray environment. Now imagine this scientist is a great expert in color and the wavelengths of colors but has never seen a color. One day this scientist walks out the door into a garden filled with a variety of blooming flowers. What has the scientist learned beyond the effect color might have on the mind?
how do you know that I have "self-consciousness"?
This becomes an epistemological question: how does anyone “know” anything?
I don’t “know” you have self consciousness but I assume that’s the case by virtue of my own self consciousness which is my fundamental experience. I communicate that experience through language as you do and so my assumption is you are likely conscious. If on the other hand you are a non-conscious machine then I have been fooled but you ,however, remain non-conscious.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 16, 2016 - 04:27pm PT
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Imagine an object in nature say a tree.
I'm imagining the Tree of Knowledge.
Is that an object in nature?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 16, 2016 - 05:10pm PT
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No, it's a metaphor, metaphors being a great mystery to the world of science.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 16, 2016 - 06:44pm PT
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No, it's a metaphor
You imply that man and his metaphors and imagination are not objects in nature.
The Tree of Knowledge has many forms but it can be seen.
oilpainting by Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (1562–1638)
entitled “De zondeval” [Fall into sin]
originated in 1592 in Haarlem
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 16, 2016 - 07:48pm PT
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If on the other hand you are a non-conscious machine then I have been fooled but you ,however, remain non-conscious.
interesting about the conclusion that you are a "fool" if a machine convinces you it is conscious.
If you are fooled by a "non-conscious machine" wouldn't the possibility exist that the machine "has consciousness?"
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 16, 2016 - 08:11pm PT
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Sycorax:
I don’t see that conformity is the same thing as class mobility. (Maybe I’m missing some understanding.)
All I meant to say is that conformity was a concern in the past by critics, which to me suggests that it existed to a certain significant extent, rather than that it existed monolithically throughout society. I should expect that the literati would almost always take a liberal and contrary stand socially against “the machine” of institutional forces that keep societies together.
Today, we seem to be much more fragmented individuals and in societies with almost innumerable subcultures. That, it seems to me, enables people like PSP and Jgill to make conflicting observations about the strength and pervasiveness of social movements.
I also said that people's perceived identities could well be central to whatever “mind” might be.
(Thanks for the correction and contribution.)
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 16, 2016 - 08:27pm PT
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MH2: 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.
Really? I thought they could do that through pattern recognition in AI once the programmer defined what a pattern was that could be scanned. I understood the whole trick was to adequately describe a pattern.
However, I don’t remember that is what we thought the brain was doing cognitively. We thought that the brain was involved equally in projecting patterns as much as it was registering them empirically. Between the two, there was extrapolating. After an initial success or two, the pattern was stored as a “hit,” and from thereon, there was very little active observation going on.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 16, 2016 - 09:14pm PT
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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 (MikeL)
I appreciate you sharing your expertise, MikeL. Interesting post.
Can you really blame people from wanting to steer clear of any of this?
Their project is experiential. You directly have the experience and vet THAT (JL)
OK, I guess I see your point. If the scientists/philosophers/psychologists involved don't want it made public knowledge that they are affiliated with the Meta Mind Project who am I to force the issue? They have their reasons.
If you google omaha vipassana you will be surprised at all the options for meditation practice (PSP)
Thought I would see what you might come up with there, Paul. Good show!
;>)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 16, 2016 - 09:27pm PT
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You imply that man and his metaphors and imagination are not objects in nature.
A metaphor is not in and of itself an object in nature but rather a construct of the mind, a comparison of sorts. Of course this depends on the definition of terms such as object and nature, but in the standard sense a metaphor is not a literall object.
If you are fooled by a "non-conscious machine" wouldn't the possibility exist that the machine "has consciousness?"
Anything is possible but the notion that a lie accepted is a validation of that lie as truth is a plain fallacy. Hard to believe science would accept such an absurdity.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 16, 2016 - 09:41pm PT
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Anything is possible but the notion that a lie accepted is a validation of that lie as truth is a plain fallacy. Hard to believe science would accept such an absurdity.
interesting statement, but not unexpected. You have defined the "lie" as a machine with consciousness... it is you assertion, not science's.
Yet that is all you have, you cannot tell if I am conscious, you accept the possibility that a machine could "fool" you into thinking it had consciousness, when, by your definition, machines cannot have consciousness... you convey to me the possibility because I'm human, yet you have, by you own admission, no definition of consciousness.
So you are convinced that something you have provided no definition of, no description of, and have no idea of what it is, could not possibly be an attribute of a machine.
You are free, of course, to believe anything you want to.
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