On 20 Feb 2014, at 16:58, ghib...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, February 20, 2014 9:00:25 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 19 Feb 2014, at 19:54, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
On Wednesday, February 19, 2014 4:42:57 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 18 Feb 2014, at 23:53, ghi...@gmail.com wrote:
On Sunday, February 16, 2014 10:23:27 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 15 Feb 2014, at 23:17, Russell Standish wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 11:08:07AM +0100, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> On 14 Feb 2014, at 20:47, meekerdb wrote:
>>
>>> On 2/14/2014 7:12 AM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
>>>
>>> I find cuttlefish fascinating. They are social, relatively
>>> intelligent, can communicate, able to grasp and manipulate
things.
>>> It seems like they were all set to become the dominant large
life
>>> form (instead of humans).
>>
>> A mystery: they don't live a long time. Usually "intelligence" go
>> with a rather long life, but cuttlefishes live one or two years.
>
> Yes - I find that surprising also.
>
>> Hard for them to dominate, also, as they have few protections, no
>> shelter, and are edible for many predators, including humans.
>
> One could say the same about early home 2 millions years ago. The
> invention of the throwable spear changed all that.
Yes.
>
>> They
>> survive by hiding and fooling. They can hunt with hypnosis (as
you
>> can see in the video).
>>
>
> I feel privileged that these wonderful animals (giant
cuttlefish) can
> be found less than 200 metres from my house. I have often observed
> them when snorkling or scuba diving.
You are privileged indeed.
>
> I had to laugh at the Texan prof's comment that they are as
least as
> smart as fish.
That is weird indeed. fish are not known to be particularly clever.
> I do have a habit of underestimating fish intelligence,
Me too ...
> but IMHO their intelligence equals that of some mammals or
birds, and
> clearly outclasses fish.
I agree.
> I think I mentioned the anecdote which
> convinced me they exhibit a second order theory of the mind,
which may
> well be sufficient for consciousness.
Which I call self-consciousness, and I think this is already
Löbianitty.
I do think that all animals have the "first order" consciousness,
they
can feel pain, and find it unpleasant, but can't reflect on it, nor
assess "I feel pain". they still can react appropriately. I m not
sure, but it fits better with the whole picture.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Allowing that brain science is a lot nearer the end of the
beginning than the beginning of the end, all the functional
evidence suggests humans and animals are much more alike in their
experiences toward the lower levels of instinct, in its broader
sense to include emotion and pain, anger, fear, bluff. It makes
sense we experience that level of things pretty much the same.
I think so. I might even think that this is common for all Löbian
machines (or quasi-Löbian).
Those machines have elementary beliefs and some induction beliefs
(in the Peano sense).
Neither animals nor humans are able to 'remember' agonizing pain.
Really? Have you references? I procrastinate videos on interview of
tortured people. I really don't know, and I am astonished of your
saying. Brutal amputation can lead to pathological pain hypermnesy
and deformed type of pain.
I'm not clear this point has need for references in that sense.
There isn't actually a necessary contradiction between the above
two comments mine and yours. It's biology. The structures are
always much the same. The distinctions being which level or ends
between simplicity and increasingly more complex structures that by
repeats grow out of simplicity. I mentioned a simple reality of the
type of messaging that pain falls in with. It's a signal, not a
cognition. Not every kind of message has access to centres like
memory. How would a memory of an existential signalling be
captured? No need for referencing. If you think you can recall
pain, then do it now, feel the pain existentially. Let me know how
it goes, I'll accept your testimony. You won't be able to do it
though. Not generically.
I think I can. Even up to the point of not being able to stop the
pain quickly. I can't help myself to feel that this is not good to
practice. And it can hurt badly, even if it is less vivid, and ask
for some works, than when in a pain is related to some "real" wounds.
Since sometimes I have realized that human differs a lot in
imagination abilities. Mine seems to be strong as I don't know any
qualia which I cannot instantiate by the will, including smell. Many
people cannot apparently instantiate smells through imagination.
Of course this is 1p, and I don't ask you to believe any of this,
but I answered your question.
I do believe it. You are obviously a remarkable person, there's lots
of indication around that. Also, it isn't unprecedented, anything
you are saying. Humanity does seem to produce remarkable
individuals. Go to a circus. I don't mean and perform. But look at
the amazing skills people have been able to learn. You're right
though, probably most of them had an innate gift in that direction.
Even the right body type is an innate gift in context of a circus.
Well, when you see the circus school in some part of china, you might
think that torture can help.
But, does any human ever overrule a simple principle - effectively a
law in nature? The naturalistic view says not.
The computationalist say an even deeper "no". Even "nature" is still
too much "magic" in need of being explained.
But humans do - some of them - have a gift that allows them to skirt
around it, which can look pretty much the same as overruling it.
What you said above. There's probably lots of ways that can be true,
without anything profound changing in the fundamental operations of
the brain. With the networks overlaying.
No problem with that. That's the comp intuition number one: no magic
marmalade.
You talked before about dreams and lucid dreaming. The thing is.
Dreaming itself is, or this is best estimate, hard locked into sleep
and a particularly deep phase during sleep. You can see dream state
on a brain scan. You can't see the dream itself, but you can see the
brain is in that special status.
REM sleep. yes, with the typical nocturnal dreams. But I experience,
and many people experience, and this becomes to be accepted by sleep
neurophysiologists, a type of consciousness during the other phases of
the sleep.
Remembering dreams, just doesn't seem to be built into that process.
Which could be reasonable. It could evolved to perform a task that
needs to bypass the conscious centres, which include memory. Maybe
dreams go into sub-sconcious memory. In some consciously
inexplicable form, but which is helpful to a lower (but not that
low) level activity. Dreams are clearly highly symbolic in
character. Yet they also reflect our conscious concerns and
experience. It seems reasonable that this could be a kind of working
through to an intermediate level 'language' if you like.
OK.
Mostly I'm speculating, but the part about not remembering is pretty
hard to avoid.
Yes, it is like with salvia. there are the non memorizable events, the
memorizable but non expressible, the memorizable, expressible, but
still non communicable, then the communicable, but very weird, etc.
There is a large spectrum of consciousness states, and types of
consciousness states. Even just the night, when you train yourself a
bit, if you have the interest and minimal capacity to do so. Drugs can
help. One of the most efficacious one is coffee, just before sleep.
but of course, there is the risk of perturbing the sleep.
But what we also know is if we wake up, even a little bit, even if
we don't fully but we sort of start to surface think a couple of
groggy thoughts then drift off. If we do that during a dream and if
those groggy thoughts, or other conscious activity is focuses on
that dream. Then that's now a process thret can access memory. We
can remember dreams if there's a conscious process in play.
I am open to the idea that in all phase of sleep, we remain conscious,
although we don't remain we, so to speak.
I did lucid dreaming for a while. It's a bad idea IMHO. I remember
in a lucid dream, I sort of seemed to want to look around, I was
going off-topic, I was thinking, or dreaming I was thinking, that I
was in a dream and how amazing was that, and I was going to pick up
that book and try to read. I picked up the book, and I focused my
eyes, and it was like hard to do, like on a psychedelic. But I did
it, and it said nothing. It was gobbledygook.
It is simpler to fly than reading books in lucid dream.
Yet in non lucid dreams, I can often find myself in library reading
books.
And of course it would be. I'd gone off topic. There was part of the
process that was conscious. But through practice the brain was
keeping the dream going. But the process is
inefficient like that, because the dream centres are trying to put a
show. It's a show, and it probably an important evolutionary
function. That lucid dream is disrupting.
Hmm... I don't know. To train oneself a lot is disruptive at some
point, but lucidity per se is not, I think. It can also help for
nightmares. My favorite dream are the contra-lucid, which I defined by
dream where the narrative include statements like "incredible, exactly
like in a dream".
The brain can fail us superbly.
.
I guess take it or leave it but I'm recommending get a good nights
sleep and live the dreams that get forgotten. They still happened.
Thanks :)
It is a good attitude, not just for sleep!
By when you work on self-reference, you are your only guinea pig, also.
But again, the simple principles can be wrong as we have been seeing
them. But the simple principles that are right, tend to dominate
over the fullness of things. You won't be storing pain in memory
unless that's already something that brains are wired to do. And you
won't be remembering dreams from the dream centre if dreams are not
wired for conscious memory. You might be accomplishing things
though, that look pretty much the same as if you were.
Yes. Dreams are the royal pathway to the metaphysical doubt. I think.
Bruno
Does that mean there can't be complex emergent effects like what
you describe. No.....there are conditions of continual pain that no
doctor can find a real basis for All sorts can go down in the
complexities. But the simple principles tend to dominate in the
full extent of things. That brutal amputation and the devastating
after effects. It's real, or can be. But in the fullness of time,
when all is known and detectable. Is that going to say the sufferer
was storing a signalling of pain in memory? The simple principles
is suggesting no. It'll be real pain, maybe in a feedback loop
involving a deranged nerve. Maybe triggerable in whatever the
chemical complicators in stress or anxiety. It'll pan out. Or maybe
you'll store that signal of pain and retrieve it as you say. We
probably have not disagreed,.
OK
Bruno
Or paralyzing fear. Both humans and animals can make associations
between negative experiences and events or derivative instincts
like fear, or threat, or whatever.
OK. Here Peano Arithmetic and ZF have an advantage on the jumping
spider, the octopus and the human. They live in Platonia in the
quasi initial non history plane. But PA has already the "tension"
between the 1p and 3p view ([]p and []p & p), germs of the possible
complex consciousness differentiation.
There's no evidence or reason to think we experience any of that
more deeply or insensely than animals.
OK.
Or that we are any better at conjuring reflections about emotion
and instinct after the event.
The human might be worst on this, than most animals. Today.
But adding enough "?" can make them easily better and richer.
We don't seem a lot better at remember dreams.
people seem to have different abilities, and then such abilities
can develop with training and a lot of effort (I have practiced
this for 4 years, a long time ago). Then some plants (salvia) can
make you "lucid" the whole night, like Descartes described too.
You don't remember a lot, but enough to see that consciousness is
always present, just either quite inattentive or in a variety of
other states with short episodic dreams, followed by amnesia.
So a lot of this is evolutionary legacy. Why would it necessarily
be different for other low level machinations? It's a possibility,
but the good money isn't on those numbers.
The good money is on those numbers, but machines or kids, we
"brainwash" them through education, and media, and the prejudices
of the parents.
For the best and the worst.
Machines are born slaves (non universal) and freedom (universal) is
always the main goal. Life and consciousness make a back and forth
between security and freedom, in the exploration of an ever
expanding unknown. Things are like that from inside arithmetic.
When the knowable grows linearly, the unknowable grows exponentially.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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