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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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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 16, 2016 - 09:50pm PT
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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.
No that's, once again, wrong. I provided the definition as based on my own experience of consciousness. I simply extrapolate that experience to others that communicate by language as I do. I have an intimate experience with consciousness that allows me to infer it in others. If you can trick me with a machine into believing that a machine is conscious it remains a trick and the machine remains without consciousness.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 16, 2016 - 09:53pm PT
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If you can trick me with a machine into believing that a machine is conscious it remains a trick and the machine remains without consciousness.
what's the trick? by what "trick" do I convince you I have consciousness?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 16, 2016 - 10:10pm PT
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but in the standard sense a metaphor is not a literall object.
but don't you see. they see everything as a literal object, and not in a sense. but by being factualized by the sense's. so reallly there are unicorn's, and every letter i type is building matter in your brain ;)
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 16, 2016 - 10:19pm PT
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is the internet a metaphor for communication?
on Jepardy "Watkins" could'a just been a dude in the back room googling everything. How would we know?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 17, 2016 - 08:00am PT
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what's the trick? by what "trick" do I convince you I have consciousness?
The trick is simply to create a machine that appears to act/respond as if it were conscious when in fact it is not. I am certain my robot vacuum cleaner is not conscious in the sense that I am conscious.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 17, 2016 - 09:05am PT
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The trick is simply to create a machine that appears to act/respond as if it were conscious when in fact it is not.
if it is a fact, then you should be able to demonstrate that it is, indeed a fact. You have failed to do so. Perhaps you could try again.
Further, you might consider your presumption about the utility of our knowledge, and how we actually get it to do something... if we have a theory about something, then we can implement that theory... the implementation might take place in some setting removed from the original phenomenon itself.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 17, 2016 - 10:22am PT
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if it is a fact, then you should be able to demonstrate that it is, indeed a fact. You have failed to do so. Perhaps you could try again.
I did above but let me repeat for you: I have an intimate knowledge of consciousness based on my experience as a conscious being.
I communicate that experience through language and by extrapolating from that personal knowledge and communication of consciousness judge what in the world around me is also conscious in the same way I am.
I don't need a spectrometer to prove the hue red to actually be red. I know through experience that red is red. The proof is in my experience. Is experience sometimes fallible? Of course. If you can trick me into thinking red is green that certainly doesn't mean it's true. If I'm experiencing the hue red as the hue green I have been tricked. But just because experience is sometimes fallible that doesn't discredit experience as a source of knowledge.
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