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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 13, 2016 - 04:50pm PT
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Religion might already be an epigenetic condition...
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jul 13, 2016 - 05:00pm PT
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What we need is a good, epigenetics-level defense.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 13, 2016 - 05:51pm PT
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eeyonkee, couldn't quite understand. Is there something specific you had in mind. In general the whole design pattern deal and things such as the golden ratio and fractals are sourced from nature and they've typically held up as you go up or down in scale and across disciplines (others here could speak to how valid such claims are in their fields).
In genetics we're learning about how nature uses / implements such 'design patterns', see this article on Homeotic Genes and Body Patterns.
I believe material science and biomimetics are also heavily vested in many of these notions.
P.S. Landscape architecture also had a hand in the popularization of some of these ideas as well, most recognizably in recent years via Ian McHarg, but going back several centuries in EU estate / palace design.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 13, 2016 - 06:28pm PT
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Religion might already be an epigenetic condition...
Ha! Maybe so, insofar as it allows for an escape from the bonds of a genetic code as well as evolution.
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cintune
climber
Colorado School of Mimes
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Jul 13, 2016 - 07:37pm PT
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...such as the golden ratio and fractals are sourced from nature and they've typically held up as you go up or down in scale and across disciplines (others here could speak to how valid such claims are in their fields).
FWIW, fractal patterns do not appear at the subatomic level. I was told this by a geologist who uses fractal modeling to prospect for hard-rock gold deposits, among other things:
http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/books/37/
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 13, 2016 - 07:56pm PT
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Have been boning up on AI for a writing project and while there are dazzling advances in data processing, claims that a sentient machine are possible and even inevitable in the near future feel like intellectual con jobs. Mostly because of the false assumptions and associations, that one thing follows another for unstated reasons.
To wit: "Whereas Turing had posited a humanlike intelligence, Vinge, Moravec, and Kurzweil were thinking bigger: when a computer became capable of independently devising ways to achieve goals, it would very likely be capable of introspection—and thus able to modify its software and make itself more intelligent. In short order, such a computer would be able to design its own hardware.
As Kurzweil described it, this would begin a beautiful new era. Such machines would have the insight and patience (measured in picoseconds) to solve the outstanding problems of nanotechnology and spaceflight; they would improve the human condition and let us upload our consciousness into an immortal digital form. Intelligence would spread throughout the cosmos."
From the above, "It would very likely be capable of introspection," is a statement begging the question - Why would it be "very likely?" Why would one ever equate sentience with data processing? What is there about sentience - in technical terms - that suggests a connection to machine recognition/registration?
As one man said, "Extrapolating from the state of AI today to suggest that superintelligence is looming is comparable to seeing more efficient internal combustion engines appearing and jumping to the conclusion that warp drives are just around the corner."
This thinking perhaps issues from the belief that through looking at data processing we are in some way looking at sentience, though there is nothing in the literature to make any such connection. I wonder why folks were ever led to believe there was a connection there. No one I have read so far in the Strong AI camp have ever supplied a reason, nor yet have given any definition of what sentience is, what they would be programming. Such obvious questions ...
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 13, 2016 - 08:01pm PT
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Why would one ever equate sentience with data processing?
Why does this question matter to you?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jul 13, 2016 - 08:30pm PT
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. . . and since awareness itself is not an external object (though some, amazingly, claim it is, sans evidence), it is useless in the pursuit of mind-independent "reality."
Actually, the distinction mentioned way back in the thread is that one can be aware of a threat and act instinctively to avoid it without being conscious of the threat.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 13, 2016 - 08:32pm PT
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...claims that a sentient machine are possible and even inevitable in the near future are intellectual con jobs.
I've spent some of the last six thousand posts trying to disabuse you of the notion and now all of a sudden it's a frigging epiphany? Crikey. And, to be honest, that has little bearing on this conversation which is why several of us tried repeatedly to get you to stop using that strawman.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 13, 2016 - 09:02pm PT
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Why would one ever equate sentience with data processing?
Why does this question matter to you?
I have found it instructional to study other perspectives, and to weigh the data to get some idea how intelligent people arrive at their conclusions. And in studying people who work with data and content, I have noticed that they often equate data and content with being aware or conscious of said data/content, without providing any direct link why they think so, other than considering awareness and sentience as a function or quantitative task which in unstated ways is itself another piece of data.
I also read lines from those who posit awareness as an external objective process, while providing no data or evidence in support of it. So the question matters to me because I am curious and seek any knowledge available per the subject and the question: what is mind?
I am also curious about statements like: There is no reason to believe that consciousness in no more than another brain function or process. And especially why anyone would believe that even if this were true, there is no more to know beyond a causal "explanation" per objective functioning.
I m also curious why people would believe that a causal "explanation" per mind would in and of itself be the definitive answer to what mind IS, or why anyone would believe that mind and brain are exactly the same "things." Or why a mind-independent inquiry could possibly inform us per the particulars of mind.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 13, 2016 - 09:26pm PT
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Jgill:
I’ve seen you question distinctions regarding awareness and consciousness now a few times, and it seems to be going nowhere. Here is a response that may make no sense at all to you, but as PSP has requested, it comes from some contemplative masters (Longchenpa). You might consider the writing technical, but try to remember that it is meant more to be expressive rather than definitive. Indeed, there are no “things” that the expressions refer to.
Being liberated (a buddha)--and that being’s very awareness of being a buddha--is a single all-encompassing unity. That is, it includes a field of awareness of itself that a person who is being aware, without any acknowledgement of a separate identity.
This occurs when a witness to an event is not separate from the very field of awareness (viz., primal awareness, the awareness of the now). The "now" is the central issue. That very seeing sees nothing but sameness, smoothness, an evenness of undifferentiated perception—a perception before the intellect can categorize, label, filter, and project. Not unlike the pixilation of a computer screen behind the lines and colors of visuals or text that you might be viewing right now, instead all that one sees is . . . spaciousness. There is nothing in particular that is distinct. What is seen is a unified field of energy.
When one sees the display of perception in such a way that it includes what one has conceived of oneself as just another part of the display, then the “I” is seen as a fiction, an artifact, a construction. When there is no more “I” that is held to be something substantive, then everything is “just living,” . . . or *This*, . . . there are just spontaneous images showing up from God knows where or how.
Things just are happening, to include that which you thought was “you.” It’s like watching a movie.
Like I said, this writing might seems technical, but it’s not. It’s just an expression. There are no “things” that any of this points to—or anywhere else for that matter.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 13, 2016 - 09:36pm PT
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Mind, awareness, consciousness, subconsciousness, unconsciousness. From my perspective 'mind' is the small, gleaming, above-water tip of a very large iceberg below the surface. We are extremely attached to our conscious 'minds' and tend to give remarkably short shrift to what goes on subconsciously to enable our minds. In some ways it's a lot like spending a life driving without ever seeing or acknowledging the engine of a car and thinking it's your foot that's doing all the work.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 13, 2016 - 10:48pm PT
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Why would one ever equate sentience with data processing?
because "sentience" is not very rigorously described... given that, it is relatively easy to stretch the meaning to include something that could be construed as "data processing."
By the way, the computer mimics humans in various algorithms, the original "computers" were people performing sequential computations in an algorithmic scheme... it was realized that this could be "automated," those first machines supplanted the original "computers," people, and were able to perform the algorithmic computations at a higher speed with more accuracy.
What is odd is that you don't know that... why someone would propose a "data processing" model for human thought is a question with a trivial answer: because humans do a lot of data processing, both consciously and unconsciously. It is a very natural idea to pursue to see just where it ends.
It doesn't address your questions regarding experience, however, you question can't be answered on the terms you demand. You cannot even be sure of your own experiences, the only thing you have of them are your memories... the only way you can describe them is indirectly in the "third person" and you cannot even be sure that anyone else "experiences" the way you do.
You have no argument that demonstrates that machines could not possess sentience, or mind, or introspection, or any of that.
You have an opinion based on your experience. And your main argument is that someone cannot show you that it is true.
But you have not shown that it is false.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 13, 2016 - 10:54pm PT
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A Space Pioneer, 79, Is Ready to Track Juno for NASA
By KENNETH CHANGJULY 3, 2016
'Electronic computers were still rare and expensive, so engineers — invariably men back then — handed off the equations they needed to have solved to a computer, almost always a female employee. Ms. Finley computed, first at Convair, an aeronautics company in Pomona, Calif., then at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“You just wrote across the top a step-by-step breakdown of how to use the numbers and then down the other side were the numbers you were going to have to try,” Ms. Finley recalled. “You just went across, plugging in and clanking away. And then at the end, you gave them the piece of paper with all the answers on it.”'
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 14, 2016 - 05:56am PT
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You have no argument that demonstrates that machines could not possess sentience, or mind, or introspection, or any of that.
Better:
You have no argument that demonstrates that machines could posses sentience or mind or introspection or any of that.... and that's your job.
Extraordinary claims require blah blah blah.
Mind remains a mystery and imposing a computer model on it because it can compute more rapidly than a human is like telling us an abacus made complex enough will suddenly come to know itself.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jul 14, 2016 - 06:15am PT
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healyje: From my perspective 'mind' is the small, gleaming, above-water tip of a very large iceberg below the surface. We are extremely attached to our conscious 'minds' and tend to give remarkably short shrift to what goes on subconsciously to enable our minds.
Yes, sure, you bet. That’s one interpretation, your interpretation, perhaps a good one. It has a ring of truth to it.
(What would you have if you took the “my,” “perspective,” “we,” “our” out of the writing? What would “seeing” be?)
Ed: . . . the computer mimics humans in various algorithms . . . .
It certainly seems to.
My wife’s nephews draw little stick figure images of their mother with crayons. The images represent their mother to them. They are meaningful approximation that they point to and say, “that’s mommy.” Is that not mommy to them?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 14, 2016 - 07:11am PT
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I have noticed that they often equate data and content with being aware or conscious of said data/content
Who are these people who equate data and content with being aware or conscious of said data/content?
I suspect you are oversimplifying their perspective.
the question matters to me because I am curious and seek any knowledge available per the subject and the question: what is mind?
How about considering the role of the operating system in a conventional computer? Do you know what functions it performs? Does it run diagnostics on the various subsystems of the computer? Is introspection a unique property of the human conscious mind? Could an operating system run diagnostics on its own functions?
From your many posts on this thread I have reason to suspect your curiosity.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 14, 2016 - 08:29am PT
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What would you have if you took the “my,” “perspective,” “we,” “our” out of the writing? What would “seeing” be?
certainly a different perspective, but why does human language (all human language?) have pronouns that differentiate "I" from "them"?
The most ancient artifact we have from pre-history is spoken language. I would seem to suggest that the concept of the dualism has existed long enough to have been incorporated into language, representing a consensus view of much greater proportion than just the relatively modern, western prospective.
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