On 9/12/22 9:47 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote:
Steve Smith sasmyth at swcp.com, Sat Sep 10 11:00:22 EDT 2022:
This suggests to me that the very fundament of what I believe is
"consciousness" is self-other dualistic? Is there something unique
about (our familiar form of) consciousness that requires the
self-other duality?
I agree with your orientation. But I reject the idea that we're unique
in our self-other reflectivity. It seems like even pond scum engage in
something like mimicry.
I will easily (eagerly) concede this point, replacing "we are unique" to
"this is what we often/pervasively take to be the basis of our uniqueness".
Similar to what you aim at for question 2, the thing being made is a
reflection of the thing making, and vice versa. So a paramecium
following a gradient makes the gradient and vice versa. This looks
like primitive mimicry to me.
Yes, this feels to be the dependent co-arising of Buddhist/Vedic thought
that continues to capture me more and more at every (re)exposure to it.
The only difference between us and pond scum is the complexity of our
internal machinery. I.e. pond scum *does* create a kind of science and
mathematics (SAM).
Agreed...
It's just that their SAM is obviously a mirror/dual to their internal
machinery. What Wolpert's asking/asserting is: Our SAM is a reflection
of our machinery. So the limitations of our SAM are directly caused by
our structure. But, of course, like you and Dave have said, some of
that structure isn't internal. It's transpersonal, cultural. And that
culture has a historicity, momentum, inertia, caused partly by the
built environment, including normative behaviors/ideas.
So a largely cultural tool like SAM has no choice but to reflect/mimic
both our internal machinery and the "nest" we've built.
Counterfactually, what alternative SAMs could we have built if we or
our nest were different?
I offer Robert Forward's (working physicist who also wrote SciFi)
"Dragon's Egg"
<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/263466.Dragon_s_Egg>as a
contemplation of this kind of emergence convolved with Edwin Abbot
Abbot's Flatland on the surface of a Neutron star, unfolding on a
timescale that has a human space-expedition observing "life" emerging
from "matter" (Creatura from Pleroma to quote Bateson) in realtime, and
then developing a culture (and SAM) that ultimately transcended that of
the space-faring future-humans. Not quite *literature* but still an
amazing contemplation/framing of these ideas IMO.
2. Restricting attention to what are, in some sense, the most
universal of humanity's achievements, the most graphic
demonstrations of our cognitive abilities:
Why were we able to construct present-day science and mathematics,
but no other species ever did? Why are we uniquely able to decipher
some features of the Cosmic Baker's hands by scrutinizing the
breadcrumbs that They scattered about the universe? Why do we have
that cognitive ability despite its fitness costs? Was it some
subtle requirement of the ecological niche in which we were formed
— a niche that at first glance appears rather pedestrian, and
certainly does not overtly select for the ability to construct
something like quantum chronodynamics? Or is our ability a
spandrel, to use Gould and Lewontin’s famous phrase — an
evolutionary byproduct of some other trait? Or is it just a cosmic
fluke?
The fitness payout vs the fitness cost, I would claim *is* tool
creation/use... both physical artifacts (e.g. neolithic cutting
tools) and mental constructs (models and logic, no matter how
limited) which could be *shared* (communicated).
I really like the idea that the tool and the context are the same
thing ... or perhaps 2 abstracted aspects of the same thing. But your
identity (fitness *is* tool creation) sweeps a lot of detail under the
rug.
What else are we going to sweep under a rug if not details <grin>?
Some fitness moves very fast (like many generations of gut biome
within an 80 year life span) and some fitness moves very slow (geology
astronomy). A tool like SAM emerges much slower than a tool like an
arrow[head]. Even a single theorem/proof within SAM develops more
slowly than a single arrow[head].
So, abstractly, it's reasonable to pair fitness-scopes with
tool-scopes. But that sort of strict partial order (again cf List's
levels paper) is prolly a fiction. I'd claim that inter-level
(cross-trophic) interaction is the rule, not the exception. But in the
context of Wolpert's question, what *could* it look like? It seems to
hearken back to Langton's "Life as it could be".
I'm behind in my reading here so must just acknowledge this and hope to
hold it in abeyance in my head long enough to catch up. (or fades
gracefully for you to remind us again, some more, forever until we "get
it"?)
3. Are we really sure that no other species ever constructed some
equivalent of present-day SAM? Are we really sure that no other
apes — or cetaceans or cephalopods — have achieved some equivalent
of our SAM, but an equiva- lent that we are too limited to perceive?
As with the human archaelogical record, we only have recognizeable
(to our sensibilities) artifacts and preserved (if from another era)
or transported (if from another locale) to apprehend/interpret. Our
own Richard Lowenberg has spent some time studying/co-creating with
Koko <http://www.richardlowenberg.com/blog/koko-the-gorilla>... his
stories expand my idea of interspecies "communication" in a way that
may be responsive (if only mildly) to this question. I don't know if
our current understanding of the Cetacean or Cephalopod world hints
strongly one way or another, but I'd not be surprised if either/both
were to be "dreaming" in something like SAM as they go about what
sometimes seems like mundane business (singing songs that travel
halfway around the world in one case while changing colors and
flowing/dancing/fiddling-with-stuff in the other).
Well, I think both you and Wolpert are barking up the wrong tree,
here. I think other species *do* create SAM analogs. Wolpert hides his
error within "some equivalent of". What could "equivalent" possibly
mean, here? And why hedge it with "some"? It's neither "dreaming" nor
"equivalent". There is a family of possible SAMs. But question 4 gets
at this nicely. But I'm going to snip your response to Q4 because it
only confirms the question, w/o trying to answer it.
I will agree as best I can articulate my agreement. "equivalent" or
"dreaming" are the weasel words we have/resort-to when finding we cannot
leave our own "self" perspective enough to say otherwise. I think the
universality you are gesturing toward (or stating bluntly) is the grail,
but for the moment my expressions are caught in my
not-nearly-objective-enough perspective as the "self" that I currently
am (whatever that means and implies).
5. Ancillary abilities or no, are we unavoidably limited to
enlarging and en- riching the SAM that was produced by our species
with the few cognitive abilities we were born with? Is it
impossible for us to concoct wholly new types of cognitive
abilities — computational powers that are wholly novel in kind —
which in turn could provide us wholly new kinds of SAM, kinds of
SAM that would concern aspects of physical reality currently beyond
our ken?
"Hypercomputation" in this context would be but one example? Not just
computing the extra-computable, or effing the ineffable but
qualitatively new structures that transcend that which we all
consider to be the limits to our conceptual universe? This is an
area where I am hopeful for CT becoming the language that allows us
(maybe not me, but many people) to express the fullness of what our
limited conceptions can express so that we *can* recognize where they
might be lacking or where a meta-construct can be laid atop?
Well, here is where I think your response to Q2 applies more than this
response. There should be punctuated catastrophes where the current
SAM crumbles, some parts of which may be used in a new SAM. The idea
that we are (and will continue to become) cyborgs indicates to me that
No, we are not unavoidably limited to building off our current SAM.
Maybe we have to go extinct and a new species has to arise for our SAM
to be completely deconstructed. But I expect it to happen. I guess it
all depends on what we mean by "we".
I especially, acutely, appreciate your return to the
definition/boundaries of self. I think we first crashed together on
this when I invoked the old saw of "enlightened self interest" and you
(at the time, as I remember it) insisted that "self" is an illusion.
This started me on the path I am still on which is believing that
"scoping of self" is a pervasive theme in these considerations.
"enlightened' is the usual suspect/inspected word, with perhaps
"interest" coming second, but "self" may be where the richest ore is.
6. Is possible for one species, at one level of the sequence of
{computers run- ning simulations of computers that are running
simulations of ...}, to itself simulate a computer that is higher
up in the sequence that it is?
This might be argumentative or arbitrarily constraining? You (Glen)
stated early on that many examples of "hypercomputation" have been
debunked. If the very (f)act of human consciousness (individual and
collective) does not *gesture* toward hypercomputation, then I don't
know what else would. I accept that creating controlled (physical or
thought) experiments in this domain is slippery. I look forward to
seeing what comes "next"... Before Kurt Godel flipped the world of
math/philosophy, I don't think Russel/Whitehead (or much anyone else)
had a hint that there was something beyond the "boundaries" of
knowledge they had circumscribed around themselves?
What Wolpert's referring to, I think, is even more general than
Goedel's rather specific argument. So, while hypercomputation might
breach Church-Turing, it doesn't solve the philosophical problem as
posed by Tarski's "indefinability of truth". Again, I think List's
discussion of indexicality matters, here. Perhaps we can rephrase
Wolpert's question as "can traces of an indexical graph do more than
*approach* the non-indexical graph of graphs?" Do we have something
like the parallelism theorem (that any parallel process can be fully
simulated by a sequential process given extendable time).
More reading (of List) to (maybe) catch up (a little)...
I'm reminded of doing calculus with the hyperreals. Packing infinities
into a single symbol feels, to me, like "higher up in the sequence".
Oh my, the hyperreals! I *think* I know what you are gesturing toward,
but am hopelessly without traction. I will defer invoking hypercomplex
numbers as a lame distraction.
7. Is the very form of the SAM that we humans have created severely
con- strained? So constrained as to suggest that the cognitive
abilities of us hu- mans — those who created that SAM — is also
severely constrained?
this is where I become more interested in the abstractions of "what
is life?" "what is intelligence?" "what is consciousness"... because
at the very least those questions look to hop over the limits of
"mere extrapolation" from what we are most familiar with. the very
terms life/intelligence/consciousness may likely be the epitome of
those constraints? Deacon's "Teleodynamics" feels to me to be one
of those terms that might help us peek around the edge of the
constraints we already have (mostly) given over to?
Hm. I haven't spent any time with teleodynamics. But it smacks of
Stanley's myth of the objective. I'll take a look. Thanks.
I think there is something *very* subtle going on in question of
teleology and I think that Deacon sneaks up on it well with
Teleodynamics... in the idiom of the Princess Bride "I don't think that
word means what you think it means" applies to all uses of
"teleology"? I take teleology and specifically his teleodynamics to
be a recursive observation about "the illusion of purpose or final
cause". "Life" and "Consciousness" act *as if* they have a purpose.
This also references the illusion I find in Stephen's stuck-bit about
bidirectional path tracing. We find the answer to the posed question
by starting at a family of answers and working back to the middle where
it meets the forward chain from *the question*...
8. Is this restriction to finite sequences somehow a necessary
feature of any complete formulation of physical reality? Or does it
instead reflect a lim- itation of how we humans can formalize any
aspect of reality, i.e., is it a limitation of our brains?
It does seem to be a limitation of our primary modes of conception of
"what means reality". Wheeler's Participatory Anthropic Principle
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler#Participatory_Anthropic_Principle>
rears it's pretty head about this time?
I don't mean to be a broken record. But I think the focus on "finite
sequences" could be teased apart by explicitly discussing
indexicality. It's less about "teleodynamics", objectives, purpose,
etc. and more about whether one walks the graph like some kind of
control pointer or tries to (parallel) grok the whole graph (of graphs).
Similar to nonstandard calculus, clumping whole graphs into nodes of a
higher order graph (like is done when trying to de-cycle a cyclic
graph into a dag - or perhaps ways to handle metagraphs) seems to be
jumping up in the sequence. Where this can be isomorphically formal
(as in nonstandard calculus), it seems like we already do what Wolpert
is asking for. (I might even channel a skeptic like Marcus and say
Wolpert's questions are nothing but neurotic obsession.)
I will have to defer again to being behind in my reading (thinking in
this case)... I haven't parsed your terms "jumping up in the sequence"
carefully enough to know what to think. My intuition is that you are
(as most always) "on to something" but I'm definitely scrambling.
Codifying it in terms of graphs is promising to me, however.
9. In standard formulations of mathematics, a mathematical proof is
a finite sequence of “well-formed sentences”, each of which is
itself a finite string of symbols. All of mathematics is a set of
such proofs. How would our per- ception of reality differ if,
rather than just finite sequences of finite symbol strings, the
mathematics underlying our conception of reality was expanded to
involve infinite sequences, i.e., proofs which do not reach their
conclu- sion in finite time? Phrased concretely, how would our
cognitive abilities change if our brains could implement, or at
least encompass, super-Turing abilities, sometimes called
“hyper-computation” (e.g., as proposed in com- puters that are on
rockets moving arbitrarily close to the speed of light [1])? Going
further, as we currently conceive of mathematics, it is possible to
em- body all of its theorems, even those with infinitely long
proofs, in a single countably infinite sequence: the successive
digits of Chaitin’s omega [69]. (This is a consequence of the
Church — Turing thesis.) How would mathe- matics differ from our
current conception of it if it were actually an uncount- ably
infinite collection of such countably infinite sequences rather
than just one, a collection which could not be combined to form a
single, countably infinite sequence? Could we ever tell the
difference? Could a being with super-Turing capabilities tell the
difference, even if the Church — Turing thesis is true, and even if
we cannot tell the difference?
Godel Numbering/Church-Turing seem to constrain this ideation pretty
solidly. Even though I'm a big fan of Digital Physics ala
Fredkin/Tofolli/Margoulis I think their formulation only reinforces
this constraint? I'd like to say that I understand Tononi's IIT
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory>well
enough to judge whether it offers an "end run" around this or not.
More cud to gurge and rechew...
I'm also left reflecting on a very strange series of events around
Penrose where he asserted to me in private correspondence in 1985
that "the key to consciousness was in the infinities of a-periodic
tilings". This was in response to a simulation I built with Stuart
Hameroff in 1984
<https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/cellular-automata-in-cytoskeletal-lattices>
demonstrating how information processing might occur on the surface
of microtubulin structures (Cytoskeletal Membrane) which were only
*mildly* non-traditional CA geomotry/topology (sqewed hexagonal local
geometry on a 13 unit diameter/3-off helical lattice). He went on
*later* (see Emperor's New Mind) to invoke Quantum effects, but in
1985 he seemed quite adamant that the magic dust of complexity-cum
consciousness was in aperiodic tilings. I dismissed this as
"one-trick-pony-ism". I was young and naive and arrogant.... now
I'm old. I wish I had engaged. As you probably know he and Hameroff
climbed into the same bed later
<https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/#PenrHameQuanGravMicr>.
I JUST found this strangely formulated (but recent) tangent to the MT
aspect of the topic:
https://www.texaspowerfulsmart.com/tunneling-microscopy/mt-automata-holographyhameroff-watt-smith.html
https://www.texaspowerfulsmart.com/tunneling-microscopy/the-microtrabecular-lattice-mtl.html
I don't know if any of this offers a possible "end run" around the
finiteness-problem.
Wow ... just .... wow. How you got from the overly reductive
representation of reality with finite sequences from finite alphabets
to MT facilitated light transduction is boggling! ... but maybe in a
good way. I *do* think there's something to be said about a- and
quasi-periodicity in relation to purpose-objective optimizing
(including for things like light transmission and/or path integrals).
And it may well relate to my dead horse of cyclic graphs, which
definitely targets non-finiteness.
I got there through what to me feels like a series of historic
coincidences and a faulty but long memory (artifact of diachronicity
over episodicity?). I was *barely* aware of quasi-periodic tilings
(Penrose only at the time). I dismissed his offering at the time as
his ego expressing itself into my budding pursuit of some deep truths,
but hindsight points out how "everything is relevant" even if *my*
current consciousness is too lame to recognize it at any given point.
I also think there is something afoot with the Orchestrated Objective
Reduction (further along the chain of implication than MT-facilitated
light transduction) that is relevant to the larger question that
Wolpert's 12 point at?
A more specific question is why Wolpert relies on *standard*
mathematics? It's almost like he's committing an equivocation fallacy,
starting with standard math and then adding things that *have been*
added in nonstandard formulations. Prestidigitation? Prestilinguation?
I'm not sure of what the boundaries of *standard* you apply here... I've
probably just not listened closely enough (to you, or to all of the
Maths I've been exposed to along the way).
10. Is it a lucky coincidence that all of mathematical and physical
reality can be formulated in terms of our current cognitive
abilities, including, in par- ticular, the most sophisticated
cognitive prosthesis we currently possess: human language? Or is it
just that, tautologically, we cannot conceive of any aspects of
mathematical and physical reality that cannot be formulated in
terms of our cognitive capabilities?
REminds me of the bad joke I can never tell right which starts with a
traveler asking a local how to get to a spot on the other side of a
natural barrier (river, mountain range, canyon, etc.) and after the
local tries to pick a route he can describe to the traveler in
language the traveler can understand without having "been there" he
gives up and says "well, you just can't get there from here!" which
we agree is patently not true. I get this feeling whilst speaking
with (familiars of) convincing "mystics" of the caliber of the Dalai
Lama or Thich Nat Hahn (RIP)... I feel like these folks have
traveled these realms and if only I had already been into those
realms myself, could I understand some of their more nuanced
descriptions?
That's an interesting take. My take was more banal ... like when I
watch my cat try to come *down* a ladder. I'm thinking "of course, the
idiot tries to come down forward. That's how cats work." I can imagine
some hypercognitive alien from another galaxy looking at, say, our
Standard Model of physics and thinking "of course that's what these
morons would come up with. [sigh]"
I have a new kitten and puppy in the house. It is effing amazing how
capable the kitten (5 months to the puppy's 4 months) is in nearly every
way (navigation, locomotion, bathroom habits, human emotional
manipulation, etc). The puppy is learning to come down the
metal-spiral staircase (in the manner you say a cat comes down a
ladder). I am so lame that I come down many staircases (nod to JennyQ
and DaveW and the canonical Dutch Staircase) as if it is a ladder. The
puppy emulates the kitten, though with great (and appropriate) distrust
in his own footpad traction and center of gravity and momentum vector,
etc. The kitten goes up/down/sideways, jumps from 7 feet to the floor
without a slip or a care... her phase-space awareness exceeds the
puppy's and perhaps always will? And that was all packed into her
genome and gestation... how?
11. Are there cognitive constructs of some sort, as fundamental as
the very idea of questions and answers, that are necessary for
understanding physical re- ality, and that are forever beyond our
ability to even imagine due to the limitations of our brains, just
as the notion of a question is forever beyond a paramecium?
I suspect the answer is in the analogy here... If we believe that
the paramecium (or something of similar caliber) made the long climb
of becoming a complex multicellular multi-organ complex capable of
abstract language and logic and SAM through a torturous series of
intermediate evolutionary steps (mutation as well as mashup), then
perhaps the "magic dust" is (also?) in emergence? Or if we defer to
Bohm or Penrose/Hameroff or even our beloved Pearce, then the magic
dust is also quantum? I know I'm just kicking the can down the road
and under the rug here. Just maundering speculatively.
Well, I think Wolpert's gone astray, here, in suggesting that a
paramecium can't grok question/answer. But his main question is valid
for reduction. And reduction, like everything else is healthy in
moderation. Are there missing pieces to our very foundation that we
could add that would immediately expand our modeling abilities? I'm
reminded of my discussion with Jon of Tonk, introduction, and
elimination. The logics without things like introduction are
comparatively impoverished. And graduating from classical logics to
paraconsistent ones blows your mind. So Wolpert's idea that there may
be some fundamental lego block that, once we find it, there's no going
back.
More reading and thinking and revisiting. I've woefully failed to
follow your and Jon's discussions of (Prior's) Tonk, being distracted
along the way with the Card Game and the Musical sense of the term and
their separate etymologies. "Logics without introduction" leaves me
with grok-blok. I suppose it is obvious? More reading and
revisiting. "Why does head hurt when Hulk try to think?"
p.s. Sorry for breaking the threading. My home machine removes
messages from the IMAP server and stores them in the cloud. I *could*,
if I had the energy, access that on this laptop and preserve the
threading. But I'm being lazy because I have to jump in the truck and
continue driving.
said to the worst thread-bending, thread-breaking, thread-tangling
creature on the list... and the implications of the
laptop/home-machine/cloud, truck/driving have me imagining you having
written this from a backwoods pub on the Olympic Penensula or at the
foot of Shasta with a Sasquatch reading over your shoulder from his
perch in a tree.
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