On Wednesday, February 25, 2026 at 1:23:40 AM UTC Brent Meeker wrote:
On 2/24/2026 4:26 AM, Alastair wrote:
This story illustrates the problem with the ill-defined boundary of
applicability of 'vague' terms like 'thought' (and 'information processing'
as applied to brains) - neural restructuring perhaps including
weaker-synapse pruning during sleep is likely to have played a key role in
enabling Poincare's brain to reframe the problem, and maybe that was all
that was needed to make the final step macro-consciously at the bus stop; I
am not sure I would call this sleep episode 'thought' (the same applies to
any other non-dream sleeping brain activity)
Who said anything about sleep or dreaming. Poincare' didn't say he had
dreamed about the problem. He said he hadn't thought about it.
The issue is whether any necessary brain activity constituted 'thought' -
if it included non-dreaming sleep obviously he wouldn't have been aware of
it. (Dreaming almost certainly doesn't apply here.)
The very fact that you don't know this famous story, which every
mathematician not only knows but has experienced the same, makes me think
you have never done any mathematics.
Irrelevant to the reasoning, which only requires some credibility in the
story that you have helpfully summarised. (Some maths was included in my
physics degree course but not the history of it.)
but 'information processing' at the micro-level (say massively parallel
neurotransmitter activity) might just be defensible as a rough description
of the neural restructuring and other relevant micro-events. I don't know
how a substantially higher level information processing model will help
even if it were possible - back to precisifying the terms used again.
Perhaps the basic question hinges on whether appropriately organised brain
activity that constitutes 'thought' was necessary to reframe or prepare the
problem for solving, at some stage during the prior weeks.
"Hinges on"? How could it be otherwise. His brain solved a problem
subconsciously that he had consciously failed to solve. Of course it
re-framed or manipulated the problem in some way. But it did NOT "prepare
the problem for solving". The solution, complete, came to him in that
instant.
One can think of the 'preparation of the problem for solving' in terms of
assembling the neural patterns in such a way that the solution could 'click
into place' in one subjective instant. The final stages of that assembling
could have occurred the previous night ('sleeping on the problem'), or from
subconsciously performing that assembling, which may or may not be deemed
'thinking' (and of course there could have been many insufficient or
unrecognizable assemblings in the past, never destined for conscious
awareness).
Alastair
On Monday, February 23, 2026 at 10:54:46 PM UTC Brent Meeker wrote:
That's why I referred to *information processing* as a broader term
subsuming conscious thought. I assume you are familiar with Poincare's
account of how a the solution to a mathematical problem suddenly came to
him as he was about to step onto a bus, even though he hadn't thought about
it (consciously) for weeks.
Brent
On 2/23/2026 12:08 AM, Alastair wrote:
Just to clarify, my 'extended' version of physicalism isn't intended to
replace the standard version, which accepts the existence of elementary
particles, the Big Bang etc (QM is a more complicated and partly unsettled
issue). It just focusses on certain forms of brain activity corresponding
to thoughts.
If meaning is given by common use, then 'thought' - not a technical term -
is confined to awake humans (and perhaps their dreams, and conceivably also
a few other creatures) . . . for now. Meanings can change over time.
Alastair
On Saturday, February 21, 2026 at 10:46:21 PM UTC Brent Meeker wrote:
A lot of biological information isn't even instantiated in neuronal
activity, it's in one's "gut" metaphorically speaking.
I seems to me that a common mistake in idealism is to take consciousness as
the whole of thought. Yet we know that (c.f. Poincare') most thought is
unconscious information processing.
Brent
On 2/21/2026 2:16 AM, Alastair wrote:
Most of this is fascinating, insightful and deep - from what I can
understand of Parts I to IV. (I am wondering: did you have more than
cosmetic help from AI?)
I would also be interested to know your definition of 'information' (as
bitstrings or equivalent? or as their chosen interpretation? or something
else?). Semantic imprecision can be a barrier to adequate understanding and
agreement in these (and many other) kinds of situation, so good definitions
are important.
My own preferred version of physicalism has thought events as mass neural
events and so can include ideas, concepts etc, including thoughts in and
about a language, any of which could in theory be correct or incorrect (the
physical laws underpinning those events operate correctly regardless). It
would not appear to fall foul of any of the criticisms in part I of the
article if these are framed outside the context of information as being
ontologically primary; ie from this point of view physicalism is
self-consistent, in this version of it at least, and so contradicts the
assertion that ontologically primary information is the only
self-consistent position available.
We may well have already detected electrical signals corresponding to
thoughts and could even one day decode them, if we can for example
individualise them to key neurons or assemblies and then bulk-analyse them
across macro-time; but I don't understand sufficiently to say whether or
not this this would refute the idea that information is ontologically
primary - this brings us back to the definition of information used, and
perhaps also to that of 'computational structures'.
Alastair
On Sunday, February 15, 2026 at 8:52:30 AM UTC Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Hello everyone,
I’m sharing the continuation of The Sapiens Attractor.
If you’re interested in the deeper structure behind the idea, you can read
it here:
https://allcolor.medium.com/the-sapiens-attractor-maximal-informational-realism-and-the-god-loop-26393e34fa46
Hope you’ll enjoy it.
Best,
Quentin
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy
Batty/Rutger Hauer)
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