Re: bruno list
On 07.08.2011 01:24 Stathis Papaioannou said the following: On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 2:54 AM, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: Let us forget for a moment machines and take for example some other biological creatures, for example even insects. How would you characterize the behaviour of insects? Is it intelligent or not? Yes, I would say that insects have a limited intelligence. Why not? And I imagine they also have a limited consciousness. I am reading now Jeffrey A. Gray, Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem. This book is about consciousness experiences but not about intelligence. Please note the author is a famous neuroscientist, so the book is not about philosophy of consciousness but rather of experimental results. Hence I would say that it is wrong to tie consciousness with intelligence (it is unconsciousness that seems to be intelligent). The author starts with a simple fact that the world that we experience is constructed by our brains. Here it is unlikely that for example insects perceive a visual three-dimensional world like we, the brain of insects seem to be too small. It is also unclear if insects experience pain (and other feelings). So it is unclear to me what a kind of limited consciousness insects could have. Some quotes from the book are at http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2011/08/consciousness-creeping-up-on-the-hard-problem.html I have divided them into three sections: 1) The World is Inside the Head, 2) Perception, Qualia and Hard Problem, 3) Illusions of the Will (Rex gonna like it). Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simulated Brains
On 07.08.2011 05:12 Craig Weinberg said the following: On Aug 6, 9:35 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/6/2011 4:59 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: The language doesn't matter. You can see that a person is in pain by their response to being burned, even if they have not developed language yet. Interesting. Now Craig *can* infer qualia from behavior. We can always infer qualia. It doesn't mean our inference is correct. In this case I'm pointing out that the inference doesn't require a learned language. My point is that math is not nature, but nurture. If it were otherwise, I would expect the effects of alcohol intoxication or smaller brain cortex to make an animal more logical rather than more emotional. Emotion is more primitive than symbolic logic. Please note that according to experimental results (see the book mentioned in my previous message), pain comes after the event. For example when you touch a hotplate, you take your hand back not because of the pain. The action actually happens unconsciously, conscious pain comes afterward. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: bruno list
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Aug 6, 7:40 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: When you are online you don't analyse the biochemical make-up of you interlocutor, but you still come to a conclusion as to whether they are intelligent or not. If in doubt you can always ask a series of questions: I'm sure you are confident in your ability to tell the difference between a person and a bot. But there may come a time when it is impossible in general to tell the difference, Why does that matter though? What does being able to tell the difference between a bot and a person have to do with a bot feeling like a person? That, as I keep saying, is the question. Assume that the bot can behave like a person but lacks consciousness. Then it would be possible to replace parts of your brain with non-conscious components that function otherwise normally, which would lead to you lacking some important aspect aspect of consciousness but being unaware of it. This is absurd, but it is a corollary of the claim that it is possible to separate consciousness from function. Therefore, the claim that it is possible to separate consciousness from function is shown to be false. If you don't accept this then you allow what you have already admitted is an absurdity. and then we will have human level AI (soon after we will have superhuman AI and soon after that the human race may be supplanted, but that's a separate question). The human race has already been supplanted by a superhuman AI. It's called law and finance. They are not entities and not intelligent, let alone intelligent in the way humans are. I don't understand what all of this debate over how intelligence seems from the outside has to do with how it is experienced from the inside. Here's a thought experiment for the anti-zombie. If I study randomness and learn to impersonate machine randomness perfectly, have I become a machine? Have I lost sentience? Why not? Intelligence can fake non-intelligence, but non-intelligence can't fake intelligence. But intelligence can fake intelligence using non-intelligence. A computer isn't faking intelligence, it's just spinning a quantitative instruction set through semiconductors. It's only us who think it's intelligent. In fact it is intelligent, as a long polymer molecule is intelligent, but it is not conscious as an animal is conscious. It seems that you are conflating intelligence with consciousness. Intelligence is what is observed, while consciousness relates to the internal experience. A zombie is intelligent but not conscious. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On 06 Aug 2011, at 23:14, benjayk wrote: Frankly I am a bit tired of this debate (to some extent debating in general), so I will not respond in detail any time soon (if at all). Don't take it as total disinterest, I found our exchange very interesting, I am just not in the mood at the moment to discuss complex topics at length. There is no problem, Ben. I hope you will not mind if I comment your post. Bruno Marchal wrote: Then computer science provides a theory of consciousness, and explains how consciousness emerges from numbers, How can consciousness be shown to emerge from numbers when it is already assumed at the start? In science we assume at some meta-level what we try to explain at some level. We have to assume the existence of the moon to try theories about its origin. It's a bit like assuming A, and because B-A is true if A is true, we can claim for any B that B is the reason that A true. This confirms you are confusing two levels. The level of deduction in a theory, and the level of implication in formal logic. Consciousness is simply a given. Every explanation of it will just express what it is and will not determine its origin, as its origin would need to be independent of it / prior to it, but could never be known to be prior to it, as this would already require consciousness. In the comp theory it can be explained why machine takes consciousness as a given, and that from their first person points of view, they are completely correct about this. Yet, consciousness is not assumed as something primitive in the TOE itself. You can define it by the number's first person belief in some reality, like you can explain the belief in matter by a sort of border of that belief. From this the math explains the qualia and the quanta as completely as any possible theory can ever explain (perhaps not correctly, because comp might be false, but then comp is refutable/scientific). The only question is what systems are able to express that consciousness exists, And the comp answer is machine, or number, or universal numbers, or Löbian universal numbers. and what place consciousness has in those systems. And the comp answer is monumental. Universal number consciousness is at the origin of the laws of physics, even if it looks like a selection/projection inan richer arithmetical reality. This really needs to be understood by yourself. I guess it makes no sense without understanding, because it *is* counterintuitive. We might come back on this once you are in the mood again. Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: And in that sense, comp provides, I think, the first coherent picture of almost everything, from God (oops!) to qualia, quanta included, and this by assuming only seven arithmetical axioms. I tend to agree. But it's coherent picture of everything includes the possibility of infinitely many more powerful theories. Theoretically it may be possible to represent every such theory with arithmetic - but then we can represent every arithmetical statement with just one symbol and an encoding scheme, still we wouldn't call . a theory of everything. So it's not THE theory of everything, but *a* theory of everything. Not really. Once you assume comp, the numbers (or equivalent) are enough, and very simple (despite mysterious). They are enough, but they are not the only way to make a theory of everything. As you say, we can use everything as powerful as numbers, so there is an infinity of different formulations of theories of everything. For any theory, you have infinities of equivalent formulations. This is not a defect. What is amazing is that they can be very different (like cellular automata, LISP, addition+multiplication on natural numbers, quantum topology, billiard balls, etc. I agree. It's just that in my view the fact that they can be very different makes them ultimately different theories, only theories about the same thing. And proving the same things, with equivalent explanation. Different theories may explain the same thing, but in practice, they may vary in their efficiency to explain it, so it makes sense to treat them as different theories. But the goal here is a conceptual understanding, not direct practical application. In theory, even one symbol can represent every statement in any language, That does not make sense for me. (or it is trivia). but still it's not as powerful as the language it represents. Similarily if you use just natural numbers as a TOE, you won't be able to directly express important concepts like dimensionality. Why? If you prove this, I abandon comp immediately. From comp you can derive the whole of physics, and this should be easy to understand if you get the UDA1-7. Comp remains incomplete on God, consciousness and souls, and can explain why, but physics, including
Re: bruno list
On 06 Aug 2011, at 23:33, meekerdb wrote: On 8/6/2011 1:25 PM, John Mikes wrote: On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 2:30 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/6/2011 8:35 AM, John Mikes wrote: Stasthis, let me barge in with one fundamental - not dispersing my reply into those (many and long) details: As I read your comments/replies (and I agree with your position within the limits I want to expose here), I have the feeling that you agree with the rest of the combatants in considering 'the brain', our idea about 'intelligence' and 'consciousness' as complete and total. I argue that it is not. Upon historic reminiscence all such inventory about these (and many more) concepts has been growing by addition and by phasing out imaginary 'content' as we 'learn', - an ongoing process that does not seem to have reached the ultimate end/completion. So you are right in considering whatever we new yesterday (my substitution for today) but not including what we may know tomorrow. Drawing conclusions upon incomplete inventory does not seem acceptable. Regards John Mikes If we wait until we know everything, we'll never draw any conclusion; which is OK for science. But for engineering we need to make decisions. Brent Brent: this is fine, we just should not mix up engineering with science: My science is the agnostic decision that we CANNOT know everything and feel comfortably in it. Also in my past engineering I made decisions but never pretended them to be scientific results. Thanks for the remark John That's why I sometimes return to my engineering viewpoint. It is easy to speculate that some overarching everything construct includes us and our world as an infinitesimal part. I suspect a confusion with tegmark's kind of mathematicalism. Comp gives us (us = the UMs and LUMs) the big role in the emergence of physics; not an infinitesimal role at all. That may satisfy some religious need for explanation; but it doesn't help answer any engineering questions - such as How do I make an intelligent Mars Rover? And if I do will it be conscious? And if it is will it be ethical to send it to Mars? There is no problem to come back on earth, especially during summer holiday. Science is modest: all it says is that IF the Mars Rover is conscious, THEN physics has to be derived from a self-reference modality. If such a physics makes the electron weighting one ton, you can conclude that the Mars Rover is not conscious. It might take some times before we get the existence and mass of the electron from addition and multiplication, but we already know how to proceed (time is needed to solve the related and genuine diophantine equations). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: bruno list
On 07 Aug 2011, at 01:24, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 2:54 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: Let us forget for a moment machines and take for example some other biological creatures, for example even insects. How would you characterize the behaviour of insects? Is it intelligent or not? Yes, I would say that insects have a limited intelligence. Why not? And I imagine they also have a limited consciousness. That's my personal feeling too. Recently I have updated the arachnid an octopus in the Löbian (self-conscious) class of entity. I came to that possible conclusion by looking at video like this, and then making some experiment with spider myself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iND8ucDiDSQ It is not the move the spider, but its apparent induction that there is a spider behind the mirror, and its apparent shock discovering there is none. Take this with some grain on salt, but in matter of consciousness I prefer to attribute too much than not enough. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simulated Brains
On 06 Aug 2011, at 22:00, Stephen P. King wrote to Craig Weinberg: Craig: Natural numbers are an invention of an entity that thinks, Bruno: The existence of numbers, with the laws of addition and multiplication, entails the existence of universal numbers. They can introspect themselves and discover, for themselves, the numbers and their laws. They can even discover themselves in there, and this on a variety of levels. Craig: I don't think that you can say that they do that without a mathematician being there to watch and understand, or a silicon chip to prove it. What numbers help you discover is the logic behind sense and the sense behind logic, but they don't necessarily reveal a logic independent of sense. (That may be my main point right there). Stephen: I think that you are both wrong! Numbers as independent primitives can do nothing without the schemata of ordering and relations that even allows the notion of introspection and discovery to be meaningful. I said numbers *with the laws of addition and multiplication*. You can define the order x y by Ez(not(z = 0) (x + z = y)). In fact with addition and multiplication, you have the dreams and their coherence property leading to physics. OTOH, requiring the physical presence of a mathematician is missing the point that the relationships upon which 'introspection' and 'discovery' supervene are not limited some just some particular kinds of things. You are missing the true part of functionalism. OK. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simulated Brains
On Aug 7, 2:44 am, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: On 07.08.2011 05:12 Craig Weinberg said the following: We can always infer qualia. It doesn't mean our inference is correct. In this case I'm pointing out that the inference doesn't require a learned language. My point is that math is not nature, but nurture. If it were otherwise, I would expect the effects of alcohol intoxication or smaller brain cortex to make an animal more logical rather than more emotional. Emotion is more primitive than symbolic logic. Please note that according to experimental results (see the book mentioned in my previous message), pain comes after the event. For example when you touch a hotplate, you take your hand back not because of the pain. The action actually happens unconsciously, conscious pain comes afterward. The pain comes to 'us' after the event. That's not to say that the cells of your burned finger are not in pain already. Cellular pain may not be the same experience of course as a trillion cell human being's version of it. We have to ramp up the significance of the sensation. Cells die all the time, so their damage may not feel as 'expensive' to us who, all things considered, consider our own fingers pretty highly. As far as the book, it looks good at the beginning but then seems like it creeps back down away from the hard problem. Most of what you have quoted I agree with and have considered often. Here's my answers to his qualia questions: p. 66 “We would need to know of qualia (in terms that link up effectively with the rest of natural science): 1) What are they? Qualia are the sensorimotive set complements to electromagnetic behavior in matter. This requires a shift in our understanding about electromagnetism, but does not require change to any calculations or experimental results. All that is required is the reinterpretation of the idea of an electromagnetic 'field' in space to be a sensitivity 'range' between material phenomena. 2) How does the brain produce them? It doesn't. The brain is made of them...on the inside. The brain is as much produced by qualia as qualia is produced by the brain. How the elaboration of the human brain produces specifically human qualia is a different story. I call that effect 'cumulative entanglement' or significance. Sort of Energy + Time - Entropy. What Fibonacci feels like. 3) Why does the brain produce them (given that it can perform so many complex operations, even to the level of intentionality, without them)? Everything has qualia. The human brain has human qualia because that is it's purpose - to human body to create and experience significance. 4) What do they do? They are sensorimotive. They inform and inspire. They crystallize meaning. 5) How did they evolve? Significance is retained over time through the propagation of pattern within the interior of matter. 6) What survival value do they confer? That question reveals the bias of our time. What value does survival confer to the universe? Qualia is the reason that we see a living organism that is doomed to suffer and die as an improvement over the silent void of asteroid rubble. Significance. 7) Is it only brains that can produce them?” Nope. p. 40 “Given, that there is a scientific story that goes seamlessly from sensory input to behavioural output without reference to consciousness then, when we try to add conscious experience back into the story, we can’t find anything for it to do. Consciousness, it seems, has no casual powers, it stands outside the casual chain.” Another one that shows how backward we are willing to bend for the sake of the 3p occidental worldview. Just because we aren't conscious of everything that our brain is doing doesn't mean that nothing is aware of it. Human consciousness is an entity on the scale of the human body. It's natural default PRIF (Perceptual Relativity Inertial Frame) is within a range of around 0.1 Hz to 24 hours and from around . 5 cm to 100m (approximating of course). When you start looking beyond or beneath those thresholds, you are no longer looking at consciousness, but rather subconscious awareness. Consciousness is slow. It doesn't mean that it can't alter subconscious behaviors over time if it wants to. It's a two way street. If we tell ourselves that it doesn't matter if the stove is hot because we have a job as a cook, then gradually, along with our heat receptors getting desensitized, our conscious familiarity will override the initial reflexes and we build a tolerance that changes the behavior of the brain. Free will is not an illusion - that truly would have no purpose whatsoever - it's just big and slow because we are a trillion cell animal with a crazy complicated brain. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
Re: bruno list
On Aug 7, 7:42 am, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Aug 6, 7:40 pm, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: When you are online you don't analyse the biochemical make-up of you interlocutor, but you still come to a conclusion as to whether they are intelligent or not. If in doubt you can always ask a series of questions: I'm sure you are confident in your ability to tell the difference between a person and a bot. But there may come a time when it is impossible in general to tell the difference, Why does that matter though? What does being able to tell the difference between a bot and a person have to do with a bot feeling like a person? That, as I keep saying, is the question. Assume that the bot can behave like a person but lacks consciousness. No. You have it backwards from the start. There is no such thing as 'behaving like a person'. There is only a person interpreting something's behavior as being like a person. There is no power emanating from a thing that makes it person-like. If you understand this you will know because you will see that the whole question is a red herring. If you don't see that, you do not understand what I'm saying. Then it would be possible to replace parts of your brain with non-conscious components that function otherwise normally, which would lead to you lacking some important aspect aspect of consciousness but being unaware of it. This is absurd, but it is a corollary of the claim that it is possible to separate consciousness from function. Therefore, the claim that it is possible to separate consciousness from function is shown to be false. If you don't accept this then you allow what you have already admitted is an absurdity. It's a strawman of consciousness that is employed in circular thinking. You assume that consciousness is a behavior from the beginning and then use that fallacy to prove that behavior can't be separated from consciousness. Consciousness drives behavior and vice versa, but each extends beyond the limits of the other. and then we will have human level AI (soon after we will have superhuman AI and soon after that the human race may be supplanted, but that's a separate question). The human race has already been supplanted by a superhuman AI. It's called law and finance. They are not entities and not intelligent, let alone intelligent in the way humans are. What make you think that law and finance are any less intelligent than a contemporary AI program? I don't understand what all of this debate over how intelligence seems from the outside has to do with how it is experienced from the inside. Here's a thought experiment for the anti-zombie. If I study randomness and learn to impersonate machine randomness perfectly, have I become a machine? Have I lost sentience? Why not? Intelligence can fake non-intelligence, but non-intelligence can't fake intelligence. But intelligence can fake intelligence using non-intelligence. A computer isn't faking intelligence, it's just spinning a quantitative instruction set through semiconductors. It's only us who think it's intelligent. In fact it is intelligent, as a long polymer molecule is intelligent, but it is not conscious as an animal is conscious. It seems that you are conflating intelligence with consciousness. Intelligence is what is observed, while consciousness relates to the internal experience. A zombie is intelligent but not conscious. When you say that intelligence can 'fake' non-intelligence, you imply an internal experience (faking is not an external phenomenon). Intelligence is a broad, informal term. It can mean subjectivity, intersubjectivity, or objective behavior, although I would say not truly objective but intersubjectively imagined as objective. I agree that consciousness or awareness is different from any of those definitions of intelligence which would actually be categories of awareness. I would not say that a zombie is intelligent. Intelligence implies understanding, which is internal. What a computer or a zombie has is intelliform mechanism. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Aug 2011, at 23:14, benjayk wrote: Frankly I am a bit tired of this debate (to some extent debating in general), so I will not respond in detail any time soon (if at all). Don't take it as total disinterest, I found our exchange very interesting, I am just not in the mood at the moment to discuss complex topics at length. There is no problem, Ben. I hope you will not mind if I comment your post. Of course not, I am interested in your comments. I just wanted to make clear why I responded briefly. Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Then computer science provides a theory of consciousness, and explains how consciousness emerges from numbers, How can consciousness be shown to emerge from numbers when it is already assumed at the start? In science we assume at some meta-level what we try to explain at some level. We have to assume the existence of the moon to try theories about its origin. That's true, but I think this is a different case. The moon seems to have a past, so it makes sense to say it emerged from its constituent parts. In the past, it was already there as a possibility. But consciousness as such has no past, so what would it mean that it emerges from numbers? Emerging is something taking place within time. Otherwise we are just saying we can deduce it from a theory, but this in and of itself doesn't mean that what is derived is prior to what it is derived from. To the contrary, what we call numbers just emerges after consciousness has been there for quite a while. You might argue that they were there before, but I don't see any evidence for it. What the numbers describe was there before, this is certainly true (or you could say there were implicitly there). Bruno Marchal wrote: It's a bit like assuming A, and because B-A is true if A is true, we can claim for any B that B is the reason that A true. This confirms you are confusing two levels. The level of deduction in a theory, and the level of implication in formal logic. I am not saying it's the same. I just don't see that because we can formally deduce A from B, this mean that A in reality emerges from B. Bruno Marchal wrote: Consciousness is simply a given. Every explanation of it will just express what it is and will not determine its origin, as its origin would need to be independent of it / prior to it, but could never be known to be prior to it, as this would already require consciousness. In the comp theory it can be explained why machine takes consciousness as a given, and that from their first person points of view, they are completely correct about this. OK. Bruno Marchal wrote: Yet, consciousness is not assumed as something primitive in the TOE itself. But this doesn't really matter, as we already assume that it's primitive, because we use it before we can even formulate anything. You can't just ignore what you already know, by not making your assumptions explicit in your theory. Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: And in that sense, comp provides, I think, the first coherent picture of almost everything, from God (oops!) to qualia, quanta included, and this by assuming only seven arithmetical axioms. I tend to agree. But it's coherent picture of everything includes the possibility of infinitely many more powerful theories. Theoretically it may be possible to represent every such theory with arithmetic - but then we can represent every arithmetical statement with just one symbol and an encoding scheme, still we wouldn't call . a theory of everything. So it's not THE theory of everything, but *a* theory of everything. Not really. Once you assume comp, the numbers (or equivalent) are enough, and very simple (despite mysterious). They are enough, but they are not the only way to make a theory of everything. As you say, we can use everything as powerful as numbers, so there is an infinity of different formulations of theories of everything. For any theory, you have infinities of equivalent formulations. This is not a defect. What is amazing is that they can be very different (like cellular automata, LISP, addition+multiplication on natural numbers, quantum topology, billiard balls, etc. I agree. It's just that in my view the fact that they can be very different makes them ultimately different theories, only theories about the same thing. And proving the same things, with equivalent explanation. Sure, we can write indistinguishable programs (to the user) with different programming languages as well. Still they are different programming languages, and they are only equivalent with respect to what they can compute, not at all practically. Bruno Marchal wrote: Different theories may explain the same thing, but in practice, they may vary in their efficiency to explain it, so it
Re: Simulated Brains
On 07.08.2011 14:51 Craig Weinberg said the following: On Aug 7, 2:44 am, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: On 07.08.2011 05:12 Craig Weinberg said the following: We can always infer qualia. It doesn't mean our inference is correct. In this case I'm pointing out that the inference doesn't require a learned language. My point is that math is not nature, but nurture. If it were otherwise, I would expect the effects of alcohol intoxication or smaller brain cortex to make an animal more logical rather than more emotional. Emotion is more primitive than symbolic logic. Please note that according to experimental results (see the book mentioned in my previous message), pain comes after the event. For example when you touch a hotplate, you take your hand back not because of the pain. The action actually happens unconsciously, conscious pain comes afterward. The pain comes to 'us' after the event. That's not to say that the cells of your burned finger are not in pain already. Cellular pain may not be the same experience of course as a trillion cell human being's version of it. We have to ramp up the significance of the sensation. Cells die all the time, so their damage may not feel as 'expensive' to us who, all things considered, consider our own fingers pretty highly. Whether individual cells can experience pain is, I guess, an open question. It seems that there are no experimental results to this end. What I meant was that the action to remove the hand is done unconsciously. I am not sure that pain in cells is the reason, in my view rather sensor neurons give signals to the brain and then it causes the action. All this however happens unconsciously and pain as we feel it comes after the action. As far as the book, it looks good at the beginning but then seems like it creeps back down away from the hard problem. Most of what you The book considers experimental results and the Hard Problem is formulated in the context of experimental research. The book actually offers no solution, its goal rather to show the problem. To this end, the authors first tries to employ normal scientific knowledge as long as he can. This is why I like it. Yet, the book states pretty clear that the Hard Problem (Qualia) is right now incompatible with contemporary scientific knowledge. have quoted I agree with and have considered often. Here's my answers to his qualia questions: ... Thanks. The problem is that you use your own language to model the world and it seems to be far away from that I get used to, hence no comments from my side here. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simulated Brains
On Aug 7, 10:31 am, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: On 07.08.2011 14:51 Craig Weinberg said the following: The pain comes to 'us' after the event. That's not to say that the cells of your burned finger are not in pain already. Cellular pain may not be the same experience of course as a trillion cell human being's version of it. We have to ramp up the significance of the sensation. Cells die all the time, so their damage may not feel as 'expensive' to us who, all things considered, consider our own fingers pretty highly. Whether individual cells can experience pain is, I guess, an open question. It seems that there are no experimental results to this end. Are we not composed of individual cells? If groups of cells can experience pain, it seems at least as likely that the pain experience is in some way an aggregate of fractional pain experiences rather than emerging spontaneously out of a complete absence of awareness, especially when there is no biological advantage for any kind of experience to exist at all. What I meant was that the action to remove the hand is done unconsciously. I am not sure that pain in cells is the reason, in my view rather sensor neurons give signals to the brain and then it causes the action. All this however happens unconsciously and pain as we feel it comes after the action. I understand the neuro-mechanical view, I just think that it's a prejudiced interpretation of the data. The signal that the sensor neurons give to the brain are none other than pain. Sure, it may get amplified as the brain experiences it, as it invited cognitive associations and memories, rattles around in the executive processing senate, etc., but there is no reason to assume that the primary input of the sense organ is anything less than sense itself. What is a 'signal' made of? On the outside it's orderly changes we can observe occurring in matter, on the inside, in our own case, we can experience changes in what we feel and think. They are the same phenomenon, only seen from two different (opposite) perspectives. The experience of pain spread through the tissues of the body like a crowd wave, including the nervous system, which is a kind of expressway for politicizing the experiences of the body and through the body. As far as the book, it looks good at the beginning but then seems like it creeps back down away from the hard problem. Most of what you The book considers experimental results and the Hard Problem is formulated in the context of experimental research. The book actually offers no solution, its goal rather to show the problem. To this end, the authors first tries to employ normal scientific knowledge as long as he can. This is why I like it. Yet, the book states pretty clear that the Hard Problem (Qualia) is right now incompatible with contemporary scientific knowledge. That's why I like it too. I see my ideas as picking up where he leaves off, and I think that it possibly may solve the problem by showing it in a new light, stripped of it's original assumptions. have quoted I agree with and have considered often. Here's my answers to his qualia questions: ... Thanks. The problem is that you use your own language to model the world and it seems to be far away from that I get used to, hence no comments from my side here. It may be a problem for others, but I think that it is the truth nevertheless. I don't think that the truth has to fit into what people have gotten used to. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: bruno list
On 07.08.2011 14:14 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 07 Aug 2011, at 01:24, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 2:54 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: Let us forget for a moment machines and take for example some other biological creatures, for example even insects. How would you characterize the behaviour of insects? Is it intelligent or not? Yes, I would say that insects have a limited intelligence. Why not? And I imagine they also have a limited consciousness. That's my personal feeling too. Recently I have updated the arachnid an octopus in the Löbian (self-conscious) class of entity. I came to that possible conclusion by looking at video like this, and then making some experiment with spider myself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iND8ucDiDSQ It is not the move the spider, but its apparent induction that there is a spider behind the mirror, and its apparent shock discovering there is none. Take this with some grain on salt, but in matter of consciousness I prefer to attribute too much than not enough. On the other hand you can take some Khepera robots for example http://youtu.be/t4elmvcMpBQ and then to use a mirror as well. It would be an interesting experiment as well. The question here what it could mean, limited consciousness in the case of a spider. Jeffrey Gray foresees a role for consciousness as a general purpose comparator system for late error detection. This presumably give us an opportunity to reprogram ourselves by means of conscious experience. Spiders on the other hand seem to be hardwired, so it is unclear what an advantage conscious experience could give them. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simulated Brains
On 07.08.2011 17:12 Craig Weinberg said the following: On Aug 7, 10:31 am, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: On 07.08.2011 14:51 Craig Weinberg said the following: The pain comes to 'us' after the event. That's not to say that the cells of your burned finger are not in pain already. Cellular pain may not be the same experience of course as a trillion cell human being's version of it. We have to ramp up the significance of the sensation. Cells die all the time, so their damage may not feel as 'expensive' to us who, all things considered, consider our own fingers pretty highly. Whether individual cells can experience pain is, I guess, an open question. It seems that there are no experimental results to this end. Are we not composed of individual cells? If groups of cells can experience pain, it seems at least as likely that the pain experience is in some way an aggregate of fractional pain experiences rather than emerging spontaneously out of a complete absence of awareness, especially when there is no biological advantage for any kind of experience to exist at all. It seems that pain is some brain function, see for example http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/651/ I have just searched in Google people that do not experience pain and this was the first link. What I meant was that the action to remove the hand is done unconsciously. I am not sure that pain in cells is the reason, in my view rather sensor neurons give signals to the brain and then it causes the action. All this however happens unconsciously and pain as we feel it comes after the action. I understand the neuro-mechanical view, I just think that it's a prejudiced interpretation of the data. The signal that the sensor neurons give to the brain are none other than pain. Sure, it may get amplified as the brain experiences it, as it invited cognitive associations and memories, rattles around in the executive processing senate, etc., but there is no reason to assume that the primary input of the sense organ is anything less than sense itself. What is a 'signal' made of? On the outside it's orderly changes we can observe occurring in matter, on the inside, in our own case, we can experience changes in what we feel and think. They are the same phenomenon, only seen from two different (opposite) perspectives. The experience of pain spread through the tissues of the body like a crowd wave, including the nervous system, which is a kind of expressway for politicizing the experiences of the body and through the body. A signal from neuron has electrical nature (see neuron spikes). Experiments show that brain operates at about 10 ms and this could be a typical reaction time. Pain (and consciousness experience in general) requires however say 200 ms. So, as I have said, first the action is made unconsciously and only after that comes pain. Hence pain could not be the cause for the action. As far as the book, it looks good at the beginning but then seems like it creeps back down away from the hard problem. Most of what you The book considers experimental results and the Hard Problem is formulated in the context of experimental research. The book actually offers no solution, its goal rather to show the problem. To this end, the authors first tries to employ normal scientific knowledge as long as he can. This is why I like it. Yet, the book states pretty clear that the Hard Problem (Qualia) is right now incompatible with contemporary scientific knowledge. That's why I like it too. I see my ideas as picking up where he leaves off, and I think that it possibly may solve the problem by showing it in a new light, stripped of it's original assumptions. have quoted I agree with and have considered often. Here's my answers to his qualia questions: ... Thanks. The problem is that you use your own language to model the world and it seems to be far away from that I get used to, hence no comments from my side here. It may be a problem for others, but I think that it is the truth nevertheless. I don't think that the truth has to fit into what people have gotten used to. Sure, I completely agree. I have not meant that your theory is wrong. I just wanted to say that when you sell your theory to other people, it might be good to start talking their language. Well, sales is a hard problem on its own. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
On 07 Aug 2011, at 15:50, benjayk wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Aug 2011, at 23:14, benjayk wrote: Frankly I am a bit tired of this debate (to some extent debating in general), so I will not respond in detail any time soon (if at all). Don't take it as total disinterest, I found our exchange very interesting, I am just not in the mood at the moment to discuss complex topics at length. There is no problem, Ben. I hope you will not mind if I comment your post. Of course not, I am interested in your comments. I just wanted to make clear why I responded briefly. OK. Thanks for letting me know. I have to brief also, because I am overwhelmed by summer work. I enjoy very much your attempt to understand what I try to convey. Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Then computer science provides a theory of consciousness, and explains how consciousness emerges from numbers, How can consciousness be shown to emerge from numbers when it is already assumed at the start? In science we assume at some meta-level what we try to explain at some level. We have to assume the existence of the moon to try theories about its origin. That's true, but I think this is a different case. The moon seems to have a past, so it makes sense to say it emerged from its constituent parts. In the past, it was already there as a possibility. OK, I should say that it emerges arithmetically. I thought you did already understand that time is not primitive at all. More on this below. But consciousness as such has no past, so what would it mean that it emerges from numbers? Emerging is something taking place within time. Otherwise we are just saying we can deduce it from a theory, but this in and of itself doesn't mean that what is derived is prior to what it is derived from. To the contrary, what we call numbers just emerges after consciousness has been there for quite a while. You might argue that they were there before, but I don't see any evidence for it. What the numbers describe was there before, this is certainly true (or you could say there were implicitly there). OK. That would be a real disagreement. I just assume that the arithmetical relations are true independently of anything. For example I consider the truth of Goldbach conjecture as already settled in Platonia. Either it is true that all even number bigger than 2 are the sum of two primes, or that this is not true, and this independently on any consideration on time, spaces, humans, etc. Humans can easily verify this for little even numbers: 4 = 2+2, 6 = 3+3, 8 = 3+5, etc. But we don't have found a proof of this, despite many people have searched for it. I can see that the expression of such a statement needs humans or some thinking entity, but I don't see how the fact itself would depend on anything (but the definitions). Bruno Marchal wrote: It's a bit like assuming A, and because B-A is true if A is true, we can claim for any B that B is the reason that A true. This confirms you are confusing two levels. The level of deduction in a theory, and the level of implication in formal logic. I am not saying it's the same. I just don't see that because we can formally deduce A from B, this mean that A in reality emerges from B. What I say is more subtle. I will make an attempt to be clearer below. Bruno Marchal wrote: Consciousness is simply a given. Every explanation of it will just express what it is and will not determine its origin, as its origin would need to be independent of it / prior to it, but could never be known to be prior to it, as this would already require consciousness. In the comp theory it can be explained why machine takes consciousness as a given, and that from their first person points of view, they are completely correct about this. OK. Bruno Marchal wrote: Yet, consciousness is not assumed as something primitive in the TOE itself. But this doesn't really matter, as we already assume that it's primitive, because we use it before we can even formulate anything. We already assumed it exists, sure. But why would that imply that it exists primitively? It exist fundamentally: in the sense that once you have all the true arithmetical relation, consciousness exists. So, consciousness is not something which appears or emerges in time or space, but it is not primitive in the sense that its existence is a logical consequence of arithmetical truth (provably so when we assume comp and accept some definition). Sometimes I sketch this in the following manner. The arrows are logico- arithmetical deduction: NUMBERS = CONSCIOUSNESS = PHYSICAL REALITY = HUMANS = HUMANS' NUMBERS You can't just ignore what you already know, by not making your assumptions explicit in your theory. It is just not an assumption in the theory, but a derived existence. With comp, consciousness is implicit in the arithmetical truth.
Re: Simulated Brains
On 07 Aug 2011, at 16:31, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.08.2011 14:51 Craig Weinberg said the following: On Aug 7, 2:44 am, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: On 07.08.2011 05:12 Craig Weinberg said the following: We can always infer qualia. It doesn't mean our inference is correct. In this case I'm pointing out that the inference doesn't require a learned language. My point is that math is not nature, but nurture. If it were otherwise, I would expect the effects of alcohol intoxication or smaller brain cortex to make an animal more logical rather than more emotional. Emotion is more primitive than symbolic logic. Please note that according to experimental results (see the book mentioned in my previous message), pain comes after the event. For example when you touch a hotplate, you take your hand back not because of the pain. The action actually happens unconsciously, conscious pain comes afterward. The pain comes to 'us' after the event. That's not to say that the cells of your burned finger are not in pain already. Cellular pain may not be the same experience of course as a trillion cell human being's version of it. We have to ramp up the significance of the sensation. Cells die all the time, so their damage may not feel as 'expensive' to us who, all things considered, consider our own fingers pretty highly. Whether individual cells can experience pain is, I guess, an open question. It seems that there are no experimental results to this end. What I meant was that the action to remove the hand is done unconsciously. I am not sure that pain in cells is the reason, in my view rather sensor neurons give signals to the brain and then it causes the action. All this however happens unconsciously and pain as we feel it comes after the action. As far as the book, it looks good at the beginning but then seems like it creeps back down away from the hard problem. Most of what you The book considers experimental results and the Hard Problem is formulated in the context of experimental research. The book actually offers no solution, its goal rather to show the problem. To this end, the authors first tries to employ normal scientific knowledge as long as he can. This is why I like it. Yet, the book states pretty clear that the Hard Problem (Qualia) is right now incompatible with contemporary scientific knowledge. There is no scientific way to put a frontier between scientific knowledge and scientific beliefs. I am glad that the author sees there is a problem between qualia and what I would call only the current scientific naturalistic beliefs. The incompatibility is between mechanism and materialism. Bruno have quoted I agree with and have considered often. Here's my answers to his qualia questions: ... Thanks. The problem is that you use your own language to model the world and it seems to be far away from that I get used to, hence no comments from my side here. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: bruno list
On 07 Aug 2011, at 17:25, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.08.2011 14:14 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 07 Aug 2011, at 01:24, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 2:54 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: Let us forget for a moment machines and take for example some other biological creatures, for example even insects. How would you characterize the behaviour of insects? Is it intelligent or not? Yes, I would say that insects have a limited intelligence. Why not? And I imagine they also have a limited consciousness. That's my personal feeling too. Recently I have updated the arachnid an octopus in the Löbian (self-conscious) class of entity. I came to that possible conclusion by looking at video like this, and then making some experiment with spider myself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iND8ucDiDSQ It is not the move the spider, but its apparent induction that there is a spider behind the mirror, and its apparent shock discovering there is none. Take this with some grain on salt, but in matter of consciousness I prefer to attribute too much than not enough. On the other hand you can take some Khepera robots for example http://youtu.be/t4elmvcMpBQ and then to use a mirror as well. It would be an interesting experiment as well. The question here what it could mean, limited consciousness in the case of a spider. Why limited consciousness? For me the big departure is between RA consciousness and PA consciousness. PA is RA (addition and multiplication, mainly) + the induction axioms (it become very *clever*). When I say that I think that jumping spiders are Löbian, I mean that I think they are as much conscious than us. But they have a lower memory, lower motivation, they are severely constrained by a very little brain, which makes them far less intelligent (in the sense of Stathis), but I think they are as conscious as us: they distinguishes themselves from other creature to which they have a cognitive empathy. For a long time I thought only the mammals can do that, then I have enlarged this to the homeotherm animals (which regulate the temperature of the body and happens to dream), and then I have enlarged this recently to the octopus and the spiders. In a sense, our own consciousness might be more limited, because it is full of sophisticated, futile and less futile, human complexity. The brain seems to be more a filter of (platonic) consciousness than a consciousness producer, and bigger brain might filter more than less. technically this points is still hard to settle out. Jeffrey Gray foresees a role for consciousness as a general purpose comparator system for late error detection. It is a good idea. This presumably give us an opportunity to reprogram ourselves by means of conscious experience. This might be related with the ideal G/G* case. I think that consciousness brings semantics (model, unprovability) and that it speeds the machine relatively to its most probable computation/ universal machines. Spiders on the other hand seem to be hardwired, So we are. Our software admits much more loops, but the spider might have the loop more which distinguish them from the insect, which I think are universal but not Löbian (they have almost the trivial unlimited consciousness. They cannot reflect it and thus are almost non universal sort of robots, unlike the spiders and cats, they have not the opportunity to think something like I should go there. They can only go there). so it is unclear what an advantage conscious experience could give them. To better escape from the trap of a predator, To capture a prey more quickly than another spider, To mate more efficiently than another spider. I am not talking about spider in general. I am agnostic. Only about the jumping spiders. Consciousness is a key for the moving living systems, to anticipate the way the decor will move relatively to them. Self-consciousness accelerates this exponentially. The difference between the spider and us, is the place in the exponential. Insects might be said Löbian on a larger non individual scale, like we can't exclude the plants. But spiders might be like cat and dogs, and primate and humans, always ameliorating their strategies. Slowly, or less slowly. With the insects and plants, the amelioration is basically only darwinian, not individual. Of course I might be deluded on those spiders, but they surprise me a lot! Some month ago, I would have thought that arachnid were not much more, cognitively speaking, than insects or worms. Insect's consciousness is really God's consciousness through a window. With Löbian entity Gods delegates a bit more of its will. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To
Re: Simulated Brains
On 8/6/2011 11:44 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.08.2011 05:12 Craig Weinberg said the following: On Aug 6, 9:35 pm, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 8/6/2011 4:59 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: The language doesn't matter. You can see that a person is in pain by their response to being burned, even if they have not developed language yet. Interesting. Now Craig *can* infer qualia from behavior. We can always infer qualia. It doesn't mean our inference is correct. In this case I'm pointing out that the inference doesn't require a learned language. My point is that math is not nature, but nurture. If it were otherwise, I would expect the effects of alcohol intoxication or smaller brain cortex to make an animal more logical rather than more emotional. Emotion is more primitive than symbolic logic. Please note that according to experimental results (see the book mentioned in my previous message), pain comes after the event. For example when you touch a hotplate, you take your hand back not because of the pain. The action actually happens unconsciously, conscious pain comes afterward. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru Which invites the question, was it pain before you were conscious of it? Would it have been pain if you'd never become conscious of it? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: bruno list
On 07.08.2011 19:23 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 07 Aug 2011, at 17:25, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... The question here what it could mean, limited consciousness in the case of a spider. Why limited consciousness? For me the big departure is between RA consciousness and PA consciousness. PA is RA (addition and multiplication, mainly) + the induction axioms (it become very *clever*). When I say that I think that jumping spiders are Löbian, I mean that I think they are as much conscious than us. But they have a lower memory, lower motivation, they are severely constrained by a very little brain, which makes them far less intelligent (in the sense of Stathis), but I think they are as conscious as us: they distinguishes themselves from other creature to which they have a cognitive empathy. For a long time I thought only the mammals can do that, then I have enlarged this to the homeotherm animals (which regulate the temperature of the body and happens to dream), and then I have enlarged this recently to the octopus and the spiders. In a sense, our own consciousness might be more limited, because it is full of sophisticated, futile and less futile, human complexity. The brain seems to be more a filter of (platonic) consciousness than a consciousness producer, and bigger brain might filter more than less. technically this points is still hard to settle out. My question was more about what kind of consciousness experiences a spider has. Let us start with a vision. Does a spider experience a 3D world like we? (well even without colors, say greyscale but still a 3D world) Then does a spider has emotions, pain, etc.? Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simulated Brains
On 07.08.2011 19:58 meekerdb said the following: On 8/6/2011 11:44 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Please note that according to experimental results (see the book mentioned in my previous message), pain comes after the event. For example when you touch a hotplate, you take your hand back not because of the pain. The action actually happens unconsciously, conscious pain comes afterward. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru Which invites the question, was it pain before you were conscious of it? Would it have been pain if you'd never become conscious of it? I would say just a series of neuron spikes, what else? I mean that in the skin there is some receptor that when it is hot excites some neuron. That neuron excites some other neurons and eventually your muscle move your hand. You see it differently? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simulated Brains
Brent, Sorry, I have not understood your question correctly - I thought it was something like what was before pain. My unconsciousness has answered your question faster as it has interpreted it correctly for my consciousness. The answer to your question in my view that without consciousness there would be no pain. Evgenii On 07.08.2011 20:07 Evgenii Rudnyi said the following: On 07.08.2011 19:58 meekerdb said the following: On 8/6/2011 11:44 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Please note that according to experimental results (see the book mentioned in my previous message), pain comes after the event. For example when you touch a hotplate, you take your hand back not because of the pain. The action actually happens unconsciously, conscious pain comes afterward. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru Which invites the question, was it pain before you were conscious of it? Would it have been pain if you'd never become conscious of it? I would say just a series of neuron spikes, what else? I mean that in the skin there is some receptor that when it is hot excites some neuron. That neuron excites some other neurons and eventually your muscle move your hand. You see it differently? Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: bruno list
On 8/7/2011 4:42 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: That, as I keep saying, is the question. Assume that the bot can behave like a person but lacks consciousness. Then it would be possible to replace parts of your brain with non-conscious components that function otherwise normally, which would lead to you lacking some important aspect aspect of consciousness but being unaware of it. Put that way it seems absurd. But what about lacking consciousness but *acting as if you were unaware* of it? The philosophical zombie says he's conscious and has an internal narration and imagines and dreams...but does he? Can we say that he must? If he says he doesn't, can we be sure he's lying? Even though I think functionalism is right, I think consciousness may be very different depending on how the internal functions are implemented. I go back to the example of having an inner narration in language (which most of us didn't have before age 4). I think Julian Jaynes was right to suppose that this was an evolutionary accident in co-opting the perceptual mechanism of language. In a sense all thought may be perception; it's just that some of it is perception of internal states. Brent This is absurd, but it is a corollary of the claim that it is possible to separate consciousness from function. Therefore, the claim that it is possible to separate consciousness from function is shown to be false. If you don't accept this then you allow what you have already admitted is an absurdity. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: bruno list
On 8/7/2011 5:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That's why I sometimes return to my engineering viewpoint. It is easy to speculate that some overarching everything construct includes us and our world as an infinitesimal part. I suspect a confusion with tegmark's kind of mathematicalism. Comp gives us (us = the UMs and LUMs) the big role in the emergence of physics; not an infinitesimal role at all. Isn't that the measure (aka white rabbit) problem. Can you show that the UD does not generate inifinitely many Newtonian worlds? or chaotic worlds? Do you have to rely on anthropic selection? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: bruno list
On 07 Aug 2011, at 20:02, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.08.2011 19:23 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 07 Aug 2011, at 17:25, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... The question here what it could mean, limited consciousness in the case of a spider. Why limited consciousness? For me the big departure is between RA consciousness and PA consciousness. PA is RA (addition and multiplication, mainly) + the induction axioms (it become very *clever*). When I say that I think that jumping spiders are Löbian, I mean that I think they are as much conscious than us. But they have a lower memory, lower motivation, they are severely constrained by a very little brain, which makes them far less intelligent (in the sense of Stathis), but I think they are as conscious as us: they distinguishes themselves from other creature to which they have a cognitive empathy. For a long time I thought only the mammals can do that, then I have enlarged this to the homeotherm animals (which regulate the temperature of the body and happens to dream), and then I have enlarged this recently to the octopus and the spiders. In a sense, our own consciousness might be more limited, because it is full of sophisticated, futile and less futile, human complexity. The brain seems to be more a filter of (platonic) consciousness than a consciousness producer, and bigger brain might filter more than less. technically this points is still hard to settle out. My question was more about what kind of consciousness experiences a spider has. Let us start with a vision. Does a spider experience a 3D world like we? (well even without colors, say greyscale but still a 3D world) Then does a spider has emotions, pain, etc.? Jumping spiders have a larger spectrum of color than us, according to some scientists. Thay have a pretty good binocular vision system, but with a narrower view angle. But, well like most spiders, they have 8 eight eyes. the six supplementary eyaes seems good at detecting moves all around them, so I figure out they might have a pretty good sense of 3D. They certainly have emotions, which is the most basic mental experience in most living form, and pain, and thirst and appetite, and sexual desire, satisfaction and fears. No doubt that they have a rather different perception than human, and different qualia, but basically, I would say that it is like us, minus some troubles (like how will I pay the taxes), but with the corresponding one, like its has been for some time I didn't see any edible pray (not with words, of course). Yes. I would bet they are pretty self-conscious like us. They don't have language, and they probably have no way to learn from the discovery made by others. They progress in technics is still Darwinian, but in their individual life, they learn (unlike insects). I think and speculate, from what I read and see (not as an expert in arthropods, for sure). I will certainly dig on this and let you know if that theory will weight up or down. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: bruno list
On 07 Aug 2011, at 20:39, meekerdb wrote: On 8/7/2011 5:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: That's why I sometimes return to my engineering viewpoint. It is easy to speculate that some overarching everything construct includes us and our world as an infinitesimal part. I suspect a confusion with tegmark's kind of mathematicalism. Comp gives us (us = the UMs and LUMs) the big role in the emergence of physics; not an infinitesimal role at all. Isn't that the measure (aka white rabbit) problem. Can you show that the UD does not generate inifinitely many Newtonian worlds? or chaotic worlds? Do you have to rely on anthropic selection? We don't have to rely on anthropic selection, but we do have to rely on relative universal machine-tropic selection. That is why we need the machine's points of view (the arithmetical hypostases). You are selected by your most consistent extensions, like with the WM duplications. The UD *does* generate infinitely many Newtonian worlds, but the machine's points of view, based on self-reference, introduce a quantization, and if comp is really true, it should introduce some phase and the negative probabilities leading to normal quasi- classical worlds, in a way similar to Everett+Gleason+Feynman. The fact that p - BDp is a theorem, for p sigma_1, in the material hypostases formally confirms the existence of that phase. Does that phase really make the White Rabbits as rare as they seem to be in our neighborhoods remains to be worked out (or passed to the next generation). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
Dear benjamin if this is your name (benjayk?) if the unsigned text is yours, of course: I believe this post is not 'joining' the chorus of the debate. Or is it? Benjayk wrote: *Consciousness is simply a given* OK, if you just disclose ANYTHING about it as you formulate that 'given'. Your(?) logic seems alright that if it is 'originated' upon numbers then the * 'consciousness-based' *numbers are a consequence of a consequence (or prerequisite to a prerequisite). I am not decrying the 'origin' of consciousness, rather its entire concept - what it may contain, include, act with, by, for, result in, - or else we may not even know about today.. Then I may stipulate about an origin for it. * ---EXISTS?---* as WHAT? I volunteered on many discussion lists a defining generalization:* response to relations, * (originally: *to information*, which turned out to be a loose cannon). In such general view it is not restricted to animates, in-animates, physical objects, ideas, or more, since the 'relations' are quite ubiquitous even beyond the limited circle of our knowledge. In such sense:* it exists*, indeed. Not (according to me) in *THOSE *systems, but everywhere. John M (PS please excuse me if I pond on open doors in a discussion the ~100 long posts of which I barely studied. I wanted to keep out and just could not control my mouse. JM) On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 5:14 PM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.comwrote: Frankly I am a bit tired of this debate (to some extent debating in general), so I will not respond in detail any time soon (if at all). Don't take it as total disinterest, I found our exchange very interesting, I am just not in the mood at the moment to discuss complex topics at length. Bruno Marchal wrote: Then computer science provides a theory of consciousness, and explains how consciousness emerges from numbers, How can consciousness be shown to emerge from numbers when it is already assumed at the start? It's a bit like assuming A, and because B-A is true if A is true, we can claim for any B that B is the reason that A true. Consciousness is simply a given. Every explanation of it will just express what it is and will not determine its origin, as its origin would need to be independent of it / prior to it, but could never be known to be prior to it, as this would already require consciousness. The only question is what systems are able to express that consciousness exists, and what place consciousness has in those systems. Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: And in that sense, comp provides, I think, the first coherent picture of almost everything, from God (oops!) to qualia, quanta included, and this by assuming only seven arithmetical axioms. I tend to agree. But it's coherent picture of everything includes the possibility of infinitely many more powerful theories. Theoretically it may be possible to represent every such theory with arithmetic - but then we can represent every arithmetical statement with just one symbol and an encoding scheme, still we wouldn't call . a theory of everything. So it's not THE theory of everything, but *a* theory of everything. Not really. Once you assume comp, the numbers (or equivalent) are enough, and very simple (despite mysterious). They are enough, but they are not the only way to make a theory of everything. As you say, we can use everything as powerful as numbers, so there is an infinity of different formulations of theories of everything. For any theory, you have infinities of equivalent formulations. This is not a defect. What is amazing is that they can be very different (like cellular automata, LISP, addition+multiplication on natural numbers, quantum topology, billiard balls, etc. I agree. It's just that in my view the fact that they can be very different makes them ultimately different theories, only theories about the same thing. Different theories may explain the same thing, but in practice, they may vary in their efficiency to explain it, so it makes sense to treat them as different theories. In theory, even one symbol can represent every statement in any language, but still it's not as powerful as the language it represents. Similarily if you use just natural numbers as a TOE, you won't be able to directly express important concepts like dimensionality. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Mathematical-closure-of-consciousness-and-computation-tp31771136p32209984.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at
Re: Simulated Brains
On Aug 7, 11:47 am, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: On 07.08.2011 17:12 Craig Weinberg said the following: It seems that pain is some brain function, see for example http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/651/ I have just searched in Google people that do not experience pain and this was the first link. It's saying that the amplification of pain is a molecular function: It seems there are a whole series of *proteins that detect* various types of damage, be it hot, cold, pressure, etc. These seem to be integrated together by this *SCN9A, which seems to be an amplifier* that takes these small initial tissue damage signals and turns them into a much larger sodium impulse and a nerve can fire. What WE feel as pain are what our brain cells feel from other neurons when they are functioning properly. This genetic mutation affects the neuron's ability to amplify the pain, not the ability for the other cells of the body to feel the micro-pain that they might feel when repairing themselves from damage, and the proteins of the cell that detect that damage... which suggests that awareness is operating robustly at the molecular level. I understand the neuro-mechanical view, I just think that it's a prejudiced interpretation of the data. The signal that the sensor neurons give to the brain are none other than pain. Sure, it may get amplified as the brain experiences it, as it invited cognitive associations and memories, rattles around in the executive processing senate, etc., but there is no reason to assume that the primary input of the sense organ is anything less than sense itself. What is a 'signal' made of? On the outside it's orderly changes we can observe occurring in matter, on the inside, in our own case, we can experience changes in what we feel and think. They are the same phenomenon, only seen from two different (opposite) perspectives. The experience of pain spread through the tissues of the body like a crowd wave, including the nervous system, which is a kind of expressway for politicizing the experiences of the body and through the body. A signal from neuron has electrical nature (see neuron spikes). Experiments show that brain operates at about 10 ms and this could be a typical reaction time. Pain (and consciousness experience in general) requires however say 200 ms. So, as I have said, first the action is made unconsciously and only after that comes pain. Hence pain could not be the cause for the action. The experience of pain at the organism level is not the cause of the action. It is the local sense of pain that, as you note, still eventually arrives at the brain after the fact. Had there been no original experience of pain, then there would be nothing to arrive at the conscious areas after 200ms. The action is reflex, so it bypasses the areas of the brain which we experience as 'us' and directly responds, only letting us know why later on. It may help to think of 'signals' as an analytical abstraction rather than a concrete event. There are no 'signals' only feelings and thoughts which look like electrochemical changes from a third person perspective. It's not like there are sparks flying up the spinal chord - that's just a fanciful way of understanding it. Neurons and proteins are simply doing different things in a specific orderly pattern. The pattern is what spikes, not the actual genes and cells. I realize this is not the accepted current interpretation, but I think that it is the more accurate one. I have not meant that your theory is wrong. I just wanted to say that when you sell your theory to other people, it might be good to start talking their language. Well, sales is a hard problem on its own. I'm ambivalent about selling my theory to other people. They can have it for free if they want. If I had wanted to speak their language I probably would never have developed the theory in the first place. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Math Question
On Aug 1, 2:29 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Bruno Stephen, Isn't there a concept of imprecision in absolute physical measurement and drift in cosmological constants? Are atoms and molecules all infinitesimally different in size or are they absolutely the same size? Certainly individual cells of the same type vary in all of their measurements, do they not? If so, that would seem to suggest my view - that arithmetic is an approximation of feeling, and not the other way around. Cosmos is a feeling of order, or of wanting to manifest order, but it is not primitively precise. Make sense? Biological processes then, could be conceived as a 'levelling up' of molecular arithmetic having been formally actualized, a more significant challenge is attempted on top of the completed molecular canvas - with more elasticity and unpredictibility, and a host of newer, richer feelings which expand upon the molecular range, becoming at once more tangible and concrete, more real, and more unreal and abstract. The increased potential for unreality in the subjective interiority of the cells is what creates the perspective necessary to conceive of the molecular world as objectively real by contrast. The nervous system does the same trick one level higher. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Then computer science provides a theory of consciousness, and explains how consciousness emerges from numbers, How can consciousness be shown to emerge from numbers when it is already assumed at the start? In science we assume at some meta-level what we try to explain at some level. We have to assume the existence of the moon to try theories about its origin. That's true, but I think this is a different case. The moon seems to have a past, so it makes sense to say it emerged from its constituent parts. In the past, it was already there as a possibility. OK, I should say that it emerges arithmetically. I thought you did already understand that time is not primitive at all. More on this below. Yeah, the problem is that consciousness emerging from arithmetics means just that we manage to point to its existence within the theory. We have no reason to suppose this expresses something more fundamental, that is, that consciousness literally emerges from arithmetics. Honestly, I don't even know how to interpret this literally. Bruno Marchal wrote: But consciousness as such has no past, so what would it mean that it emerges from numbers? Emerging is something taking place within time. Otherwise we are just saying we can deduce it from a theory, but this in and of itself doesn't mean that what is derived is prior to what it is derived from. To the contrary, what we call numbers just emerges after consciousness has been there for quite a while. You might argue that they were there before, but I don't see any evidence for it. What the numbers describe was there before, this is certainly true (or you could say there were implicitly there). OK. That would be a real disagreement. I just assume that the arithmetical relations are true independently of anything. For example I consider the truth of Goldbach conjecture as already settled in Platonia. Either it is true that all even number bigger than 2 are the sum of two primes, or that this is not true, and this independently on any consideration on time, spaces, humans, etc. Humans can easily verify this for little even numbers: 4 = 2+2, 6 = 3+3, 8 = 3+5, etc. But we don't have found a proof of this, despite many people have searched for it. I can see that the expression of such a statement needs humans or some thinking entity, but I don't see how the fact itself would depend on anything (but the definitions). My point is subtle, I wouldn't necessarily completly disagree with what you said. The problem is that in some sense everything is already there in some form, so in this sense 1+1=2 and 2+2=4 is independently, primarily true, but so is everything else. Consciousness is required for any meaning to exist, and ultimately is equivalent to it (IMO), so we derive from the meaning in numbers that meaning exist. It's true, but ultimately trivial. Either everything is independently true, which doesn't really seem to be the case, or things are generally interdependent. 1+1=2 is just true because 2+2=4 and I can just be conscious because 1+1=2, but 1+1=2 is just true because I am conscious, and 1+1=2 is true because my mouse pad is blue, etc... This view makes sense to me, because it is so simple. One particular statement true statement is true, only because every particular statement true statement is true, and because what is true is true. In this sense every statement is true because of every other statement. If we derive something, we just explain how we become aware of the truth (of a statement). There is no objective hierarchy of emergence (but apparently necessarily a subjective progression, we will first understand some things and later some other things). That's why it makes little sense to me to say consciousness as such arises out of numbers. Subjectively we first need consciousness to make sense of numbers. But certainly understanding of numbers can lead us to become more conscious. Bruno Marchal wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Yet, consciousness is not assumed as something primitive in the TOE itself. But this doesn't really matter, as we already assume that it's primitive, because we use it before we can even formulate anything. We already assumed it exists, sure. But why would that imply that it exists primitively? It exist fundamentally: in the sense that once you have all the true arithmetical relation, consciousness exists. So, consciousness is not something which appears or emerges in time or space, but it is not primitive in the sense that its existence is a logical consequence of arithmetical truth (provably so when we assume comp and accept some definition). Sometimes I sketch this in the following manner. The arrows are logico- arithmetical deduction: NUMBERS = CONSCIOUSNESS = PHYSICAL REALITY = HUMANS = HUMANS' NUMBERS I accept this deduction.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
John Mikes wrote: Dear benjamin if this is your name (benjayk?) Yep. John Mikes wrote: I believe this post is not 'joining' the chorus of the debate. Or is it? Benjayk wrote: *Consciousness is simply a given* OK, if you just disclose ANYTHING about it as you formulate that 'given'. Your(?) logic seems alright that if it is 'originated' upon numbers then the * 'consciousness-based' *numbers are a consequence of a consequence (or prerequisite to a prerequisite). I am not decrying the 'origin' of consciousness, rather its entire concept - what it may contain, include, act with, by, for, result in, - or else we may not even know about today.. Then I may stipulate about an origin for it. Sorry, I can't follow you... You do not accept the concept of consciousness and then want an origin for it? John Mikes wrote: * ---EXISTS?---* as WHAT? I volunteered on many discussion lists a defining generalization:* response to relations, * (originally: *to information*, which turned out to be a loose cannon). In such general view it is not restricted to animates, in-animates, physical objects, ideas, or more, since the 'relations' are quite ubiquitous even beyond the limited circle of our knowledge. In such sense:* it exists*, indeed. Not (according to me) in *THOSE *systems, but everywhere. ??? benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Mathematical-closure-of-consciousness-and-computation-tp31771136p32213960.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: bruno list
On 07.08.2011 20:54 Bruno Marchal said the following: On 07 Aug 2011, at 20:02, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... My question was more about what kind of consciousness experiences a spider has. Let us start with a vision. Does a spider experience a 3D world like we? (well even without colors, say greyscale but still a 3D world) Then does a spider has emotions, pain, etc.? Jumping spiders have a larger spectrum of color than us, according to some scientists. Thay have a pretty good binocular vision system, but with a narrower view angle. But, well like most spiders, they have 8 eight eyes. the six supplementary eyaes seems good at detecting moves all around them, so I figure out they might have a pretty good sense of 3D. They certainly have emotions, which is the most basic mental experience in most living form, and pain, and thirst and appetite, and sexual desire, satisfaction and fears. No doubt that they have a rather different perception than human, and different qualia, but basically, I would say that it is like us, minus some troubles (like how will I pay the taxes), but with the corresponding one, like its has been for some time I didn't see any edible pray (not with words, of course). Yes. I would bet they are pretty self-conscious like us. They don't have language, and they probably have no way to learn from the discovery made by others. They progress in technics is still Darwinian, but in their individual life, they learn (unlike insects). I think and speculate, from what I read and see (not as an expert in arthropods, for sure). I will certainly dig on this and let you know if that theory will weight up or down. Who knows, I am not an expert in this area. It would be good to see what experiments pro and contra are available. As for a visual system in a human brain, it is pretty complex. Say signals from retina go in parallel to two different visual subsystems, visual perception subsystem and visual action subsystem. If I understood correctly these subsystems take a considerable amount of a human brain. Hence I wonder how it goes in the brain of a spider. Is a perception visual subsystem there at all? 8 eyes are not necessarily enough to form a consciousness 3D experience. To this end, one seems to need a good brain. Also a quote from Dario Floreano and Claudio Mattiussi, Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence: Theories, Methods, and Technologies, 2008, Chapter 6 Behavioral Systems, section 6.5 Robots as Biological Models. Robots can also be used as models to investigate biological questions and test hypothesis. As we mentioned in the historical introduction to this chapter, robots have been gradually replacing computers as the preferred tool and metaphor in embodied cognitive science. Robots are becoming increasingly accepted also among experimental biologists and neurosciences as tools to validate their models. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simulated Brains
On 07.08.2011 21:26 Craig Weinberg said the following: On Aug 7, 11:47 am, Evgenii Rudnyiuse...@rudnyi.ru wrote: On 07.08.2011 17:12 Craig Weinberg said the following: It seems that pain is some brain function, see for example http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/651/ I have just searched in Google people that do not experience pain and this was the first link. It's saying that the amplification of pain is a molecular function: It seems there are a whole series of *proteins that detect* various types of damage, be it hot, cold, pressure, etc. These seem to be integrated together by this *SCN9A, which seems to be an amplifier* that takes these small initial tissue damage signals and turns them into a much larger sodium impulse and a nerve can fire. What WE feel as pain are what our brain cells feel from other neurons when they are functioning properly. This genetic mutation affects the neuron's ability to amplify the pain, not the ability for the other cells of the body to feel the micro-pain that they might feel when repairing themselves from damage, and the proteins of the cell that detect that damage... which suggests that awareness is operating robustly at the molecular level. Thanks, I have to read it more carefully. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: COMP refutation paper - finally out
benjayk wrote: *Sorry, I can't follow you... You do not accept the concept of consciousness **and then want an origin for it?* I see you did not follow me... I asked for some identification to that mystical noumenon we are talking about exactly* to make it acceptable for discussion*. T H E N - I F it turns out to BE acceptable, we may well contemplate an origination for it - if???... Better followable now? Sorry for not having been clearer. BTW I never said that I do not accept the term consciousness - if it is identified in a way that makes sens (to me). I even worked on it (1992) to apply the word to something *more general* than e.g. awareness or similar 'human' peculiarities. This is how I first formulated my ID for it:*Acknowledgement of and response to information *. During these 2 decades I attempted to clear the words into newer terms of advanced meaning (changing to and extending them beyond our limits of knowledge in my agnosticism like 'relations' etc.) John M On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 4:01 PM, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.comwrote: John Mikes wrote: Dear benjamin if this is your name (benjayk?) Yep. John Mikes wrote: I believe this post is not 'joining' the chorus of the debate. Or is it? Benjayk wrote: *Consciousness is simply a given* OK, if you just disclose ANYTHING about it as you formulate that 'given'. Your(?) logic seems alright that if it is 'originated' upon numbers then the * 'consciousness-based' *numbers are a consequence of a consequence (or prerequisite to a prerequisite). I am not decrying the 'origin' of consciousness, rather its entire concept - what it may contain, include, act with, by, for, result in, - or else we may not even know about today.. Then I may stipulate about an origin for it. Sorry, I can't follow you... You do not accept the concept of consciousness and then want an origin for it? John Mikes wrote: * ---EXISTS?---* as WHAT? I volunteered on many discussion lists a defining generalization:* response to relations, * (originally: *to information*, which turned out to be a loose cannon). In such general view it is not restricted to animates, in-animates, physical objects, ideas, or more, since the 'relations' are quite ubiquitous even beyond the limited circle of our knowledge. In such sense:* it exists*, indeed. Not (according to me) in *THOSE *systems, but everywhere. ??? benjayk -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Mathematical-closure-of-consciousness-and-computation-tp31771136p32213960.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simulated Brains
On 8/7/2011 11:07 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.08.2011 19:58 meekerdb said the following: On 8/6/2011 11:44 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... Please note that according to experimental results (see the book mentioned in my previous message), pain comes after the event. For example when you touch a hotplate, you take your hand back not because of the pain. The action actually happens unconsciously, conscious pain comes afterward. Evgenii http://blog.rudnyi.ru Which invites the question, was it pain before you were conscious of it? Would it have been pain if you'd never become conscious of it? I would say just a series of neuron spikes, what else? I mean that in the skin there is some receptor that when it is hot excites some neuron. That neuron excites some other neurons and eventually your muscle move your hand. You see it differently? No, but some neuron excites some other neuron is all that happens later in your brain too. So where does it become pain? Is it when those neurons in your brain connect the afferent signal with the language modes for pain or with memories of injuries or with a vocal cry? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
SINGULARITY SUMMIT 2011, Melbourne Australia
‘THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY’ SINGULARITY SUMMIT 2011 AUGUST 20-21 RMIT UNIVERSITY Melbourne http://summit.singinst.org.au/ This August, leading scientists, inventors and philosophers will gather in Melbourne to discuss the upcoming ‘intelligence explosion’ that many now refer to as ‘The Singularity’- a technological breakthrough that promises to eclipse previous computing developments with the creation of super-human machines. If present trends are to continue, computers will have more advanced and powerful ‘brains’ than humans within 25 years; the result will be a further explosion of computer power and other technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and health technology beyond our current ability to predict. The ‘Singularity Summit’ - a part of National Science Week - is an unprecedented opportunity to engage with today's leading experts on emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, nanotechnology and brain-computer interfaces - right here in Melbourne. As a pre-summit launch, the Australian premiere of documentary ‘Transcendent Man’ - featuring leading futurist, singularity advocate and recent Time Magazine cover star ‘Ray Kurzweil’ - will be held at Nova Cinemas, Carlton on August 19. The screening will also feature a prerecorded address to Australia from Ray Kurzweil and producer Barry Ptolemy, and a QA session with documentary participants and Internationally renowned Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts - Dr Ben Goertzel, Dr Steve Omohundro and Dr Hugo De Garis. The highly successful 2010 Singularity Summit drew over a hundred local, interstate and international enthusiasts to hear first-rate speakers from a range of fields. The 2011 Summit again offers a stellar line-up, including leading Artificial Intelligence experts Dr Ben Goertzel and Professor Steve Omohundro, popular scientist Dr Lawrence Krauss and renowned philosopher of consciousness Dr David Chalmers. This year’s summit will also feature demonstrations of recent robotics advances by Professor Raymond Jarvis and others. The summit will explore the important ethical and philosophical dimensions of the Singularity - whilst sharing the very latest scientific and technological breakthroughs. There is simply no better way to glimpse the future of these exciting technologies. Besides talks and demonstrations, panels will offer the opportunity to interact with the speakers and to contribute to the conversation about these important issues. Seating is limited, so Secure your tickets for the 2011 Summit Here The conference will be held at Casey Plaza at RMIT. http://summit2011.singinst.org.au/ Speakers and subjects include: David Chalmers Leading Philosopher of Consciousness “The Singularity – A Philosophical Analysis” Lawrence Krauss - Leading physicist and best-selling author of The Physics of Star Trek - “The Future of Life in the Universe” Ben Goertzel - Renowned AI researcher and leader of the OpenCog project – “AI Roadmaps” Steve Omohundro - Renowned AI researcher - “Minds Making Minds: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity” Ray Jarvis – “The Envy of Roboticists - the Future of AI in the Material World” Alan Hájek – “A Plea for the Improbable” Ian Robinson – “Rationality Transhumanism” Kevin B. Korb – “Bayesian Artificial Intelligence” Ben Goertzel Leading AI researcher – “Artificial General Intelligence” James Newton-Thomas Machine Intelligence Engineer – “Advances in Science and Technology” Burkard Polster – The Problem With Probability David Dowe - Artificial Intelligence - “Bayesian/Algorithmic) Information theory, one- and two-part compression, and measures of intelligence” and many more... This conference is brought to you by Humanity+ @ Melbourne (Victoria, Australia). Humanity+ explores how society might use and profit from a variety of creative and innovative thought. Join in an exciting weekend as we explore the surprising future. See you there! Please feel free to pass this on. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Simulated Brains
Interesting article: Residents of the brain: Scientists turn up startling diversity among nerve cells http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/332400/title/Residents_of_the_brain_ No two cells are the same. Zoom in, and the brain’s wrinkly, pinkish- gray exterior becomes a motley collection of billions of cells, each with personalized quirks and idiosyncrasies. New results suggest, for instance, that a population of nerve cells in which individual responses to an electrical poke differ can process more information than a group in which responses are the same. in addition to losing neurons, the brain would lose diversity, a deficit that could usher in even more damage. I would say this tends to support my view that the idea of replacement neurons or normative behavior modeling is likely to be a dead end as far as functionalism is concerned. It's more appropriate to consider your brain a civilization of individual organisms (only some of which are the conscious 'I') rather than a powerful computer executing complicated instructions. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
