On Friday, February 22, 2013 7:45:58 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: > > On 2/22/2013 3:06 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > On Friday, February 22, 2013 4:54:05 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: >> >> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com>wrote: >> >> >> What to you think with, your elbow? >>>> >>> >>> > my point was that you have a double standard about which brain >>> activities represent nothing but evolutionary driven illusions >>> >> >> Illusions? Evolutionary drive is what made you the man you are today. And >> interpreting a 1D signal from the eye as 3D space is as valid a >> interpretation as any other, and apparently Evolution has determined that >> particular interpretation gets the most genes into the next generation. >> Thus you are good at 3D visualization because your ancestors were good at >> it too. You come from a long line of winners, most animals never manage to >> reproduce but every single one of your ancestors did. >> > > A successful evolutionary outcome doesn't have anything to do with the > veracity of the content of a signal. If someone has a delusion that their > ancestors are sacred turnip people and it causes them to plant turnips and > survive a famine, that doesn't mean that their belief is not a delusion. > There seems to be this theme with your positions which fanatically > exaggerates the importance of winning, and how winning justifies whatever > distortions of the truth are required > > > On the contrary, John is saying that evolution must align perception at > least roughly with reality because misalignment is likely to go badly - > like when the turnip people keep planting turnips because their ancestor > said so even though the turnip beetle keeps decimating their crops. >
It doesn't matter. As long as the turnip people survive to reproduce while everyone else in their niche die of hunger, then they are the heirs of that niche forever. If the next selection event is a turnip beetle, it will be some members of the turnip clan who liked to supplement their turnips with barley who survive - not someone from outside the clan (because they are all dead). Again it makes no difference at all whether the barley people know about crop rotation or soil aeration, nutrition, biology, etc. All that matters is that they had the barley when the turnips went south. If they have it because they believe that Odin commands it, then that will be the adaptation which is passed on to the next selection event. The suggestion that "evolution must align perception at least roughly with reality" is interesting because it directly contradicts the model of qualia as a solipsistic simulation. This is supposed to be the reason why we don't perceive 'reality' as it is - probabilistic quantum computations. The relation between "reality", "computation", and "perception" here are misconceived because only two of the three make sense together any way you slice it. If you have computation and reality, there is no point of perception. If you have perception and computation, there is no need for reality. If you have perception and reality there is no need for a brain which computes. Only my way makes sense - where perception is the parent of both computation and realism, which exist as protocols for discerning and presenting public perceptions. > ...but then when it comes to science and math, there seems to be a > different standard. > > >> > and which ones represent an independent and absolute truth. >>> >> >> Huh? 2+2=4 is as close to a absolute truth as I can think of, what double >> standard are you talking about? >> > > What's 2+2=4 other than an electrical reaction in your brain? > > > It's an abstraction from pairs of things and the operation of putting them > together. > How do you know it's not electrical reactions in the brain? Why isn't is just an evolutionary adaptation which cause your people to survive better with an illusion of abstract pairing operations. Think of math like you think of consciousness or the self - a convenient illusion that happens to have survival benefits. Notice the double standard again - when thinking of the utility of perception for survival, you grant the benefit of the doubt, enthusiastically, to the alignment of perception with reality. When perception is not directed toward evolutionary concerns however, and reveals instead the anthropological universals of spiritual and artistic interest, then suddenly the assumption of reality alignment disappears in a puff of smoke. Now perception is simply whatever happens to have washed up in some idiots superstition, and became, you know, an enduring pillar of civilization in every era and every location. > > >> Evolution is like history, it could have been different, a very small >> change in the distant past could cause gargantuan changes in the present, >> is that what you mean? >> > > No, I don't know why you're going over evolution101 with me. > > >> >> > A signal is a sign. >>> >> >> I can't argue with that. >> >> > A sign means that it has to be interpreted by someone or some thing. >>> >> >> Yes and in this case the brain is doing the interpretation, and >> electronic cochlear implants can create a sequence of impulses that the >> brain interprets as sound, and we're well on the way of doing the same >> thing with 3D vision. >> > > We don't really know that the brain is doing an interpretation, so much as > a complex notification. > > > Notification to what...your immortal soul? > No, to the sub-personal receivers who are represented by our neurons. > The interpretation may not be local to the brain, but to the lifetime of > the personal experience associated with the brain. > > > How does a lifetime of experience exist in the present, and how does it > read notes? > It's not the lifetime that exists in the present, it's the present which insists through the lifetime. > > Why would one part of the brain receive and encode information from the > outside world only for another part of the brain to decode the same > information for some artificial inner world? > > > Because by seeing what happens in the inner world one my anticipate what > will happen in the real world. > But what does that have to do with decoding anything? I could understand a compression algorithm, sure. By all means compress the data into a zip file and then decode it into a database, run heuristics and Bayesian regressions on it, etc, great. Now you have an instruction set which is culled from this real world data and your body can be employed to execute behaviors. Now where is the part where sight and sound and feeling magically start condensing on the data? Where is the evolutionary benefit of qualia of a hominid looking for food that is so much more complex than our immune system looking for pathogens? There is no plausible justification for an inner world in which anything happens to anyone. Facts are facts, data is data. You either have it or you don't, and if you don't, you can certainly guess without inventing color and orgasms and chocolate chip cookies. > > If the brain can interpret the outside world as code, surely it would > remain as code - invisible, intangible, precisely transmitted information > states. > > > Sure, at least up until it needs to coded into bodily reactions: motion, > hormone release,... > Why would that make a difference? A machine can move an arm up and down without perceiving what up or down seems like. Hormones can be released by chemical and optical detections without being formatted into any kind of experience. > > > >> >> > Our experience of 3D images is not useful to the brain in any way. >>> >> >> The 3D visualization of space would be very useful indeed if it's the >> most efficient way to figure out how to jump out of the way when a saber >> toothed tiger lunges at you on the African savanna. >> > > But it could not be any more efficient than no presentation at all. > Absolutely, clearly, and unarguably: not possible. > > > But there would have to be an inner presentation in order to plan for > avoiding or killing a saber tooth tiger. > Why? Does there have to be an inner picture of a computer game being drawn inside of the CPU for an AI player to avoid being killed by you? I don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand. How could it be more obvious? Watson doesn't need to see Alex Trebek to answer questions. Your iPod doesn't need to hear music to store your playlist. There is no connection between the practical utility of information and any kind of quality of experience. > And while there is generally no conscious presentation in reactions to > sudden threats the brain still knows which way to jump in three dimensions. > The three dimensions don't need to be internalized in any way other than a data space of coordinates. It just wastes resources to have some ridiculous theatrical presentation on top of that. > > > >> >> > The electronic sequences need not be interpreted at all because they >>> are already neurological signals. >>> >> >> That statement is nuts. To a animal without genes for interpretation a >> neurological signal is just a neurological signal and there would be no >> reason to move when a predator starts to run at it >> > > The reason would be the that they received a neurological to move - just > like a computer does. IF TIGER = 1 THEN RUN. You really are not seeing that > your legs are cut off here. > > > Do you not see you are simply assuming what you are required to argue - > that intelligent action can exist without consciousness. > No, we don't even have to touch consciousness. My point is proved at the level of geometry. Math doesn't need geometry to perform geometric computations. The geometry is a superfluous sense of the data which adds nothing from a computational perspective. We know that geometric action exists without geometry, so how can you say that consciousness would be any more tightly bound to mathematics than geometry is? Craig > Brent > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. 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