Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Glen says: I have to admit, this seems like a really difficult multi-objective selection method. Yes, yes, yes! But, to stick with the analogy, it is not in-principle more difficult than distinguishing chemical compounds. Admittedly, Chemistry had quite a head start as a formal science. However, if psychologists had their heads out of the rears, and had put in as much effort over the last 100 years into classifying the ways people interact with the world as chemists had put into classifying the ways chemicals interact with the world, the question wouldn't seem so intimidating. We would have achieved, or be close to, whatever psychology's version of the periodic table is (which I know is itself continuously up for re-conceptualization, but the basic one is still incredibly helpful). As for your more specific question, it is pretty easy to tell believers from fakers... so long as we exclude faker-recursion. That is, it is possible for a human to be a believer faking being a non-believer, etc. If we stick to the original two-option case, it is pretty easy - I submit - because we do it all the time. Specifying exactly how we do it is tricky only because the research hasn't been done. Check out any Daily Show coverage of the presidential debates. One of the best bits so far is the Fox News commentator who, after Romney's speech goes on for quite a while about how great it is that there were so many details, how this will really connect with voters and answer their questions, etc. Then, immediately after Obama's speech he goes off about how the speech included a lot of details, and that is sure to alienate voters. If we only saw the first speech, we might think that the commentator believes details are good, or at least that he believes viewers want details. After seeing the clips next to each other, it is clear that he was merely faking that belief as part of a larger pattern serving some other purpose. What are the varieties of ways in which we make these distinctions? It is a tremendously complicated, but ultimately tractable question. Eric P.S. This problem is of particular interest to one of the topologists on the list - Lee Rudolph - who just had a book on the subject release. I haven't read it yet, but I know it is (among other things) an attempt to apply modern, non-statistical, mathematics to this problem. That would include math that can adequately deal with discrete and non-discrete aspects, etc., which you point out we would need. Lee, can you give a more skilled plug? On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 06:29 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/19/2012 02:54 PM: But Glen, when you talk about the infiltrator, or the person paying lip-service, you are just appealing to a larger pattern of behavior. Aha!! Excellent! So, tell me how to classify the patterns so that one pattern is just lip service and the other is belief! If you do that, then we'll have our objective function. I can develop an algorithm for that and we'll be able to automatically distinguish zombies from actors. Then we can begin building machines that try to satisfy it. Agreeing with your assertion, faking belief looks different than belief... if you can see enough of the person's behavior and/or see a close enough level of detail. The former, again, sounds like memory. The latter is something else. It implies something about scale. We know actions are multi-scale (anatomy, physiology, chemistry, physics). Is there a cut-off below which we need not go? Genes? Chemicals? Or does the multiscalar requirements for measuring belief extend all the way down? a person who believes X and a person faking belief in X are distinguished by observing a wide variety of ways in which the people interact with the world. So, in addition to memory and crossing scales, the measures are also multivalent at any one instant or any one scale. Also, for the record, one of the problems with using moles is that it is very difficult to get people capable of participating in cultural practices of these sorts over extended periods without becoming believers. The practices become normal to you, the group becomes your group, and even if you can still turn them in/report on them/whatever you are supposed to do, you become sympathetic. Uh-oh. This makes it sound like not only is there a multi-scale problem, but there may also be a hybrid requirement. The mole either continuously transitions from non-belief to belief or there's a threshold. I.e. some parts of our classifying predicate will be continuous and some will be discrete. I have to admit, this seems like a really difficult multi-objective selection method. Building a machine that generates belief from a collection of mechanisms, thereby satisfying the criteria, will be exceedingly difficult, at least as difficult as artificial life and intelligence. But this is what we have to do if we're going to continue claiming that beliefs reduce to actions.
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Sarbajit Roy wrote at 09/19/2012 08:21 PM: (aside) In addition to my faith hat, I also have a designer/manufacturer of programmable logic controller hat. I wish more people had those hats. I see lots of silly and useless hats ... I often feel like I live on the outskirts of a permanent fashion show. To design an artificial life form (android / zombie ...) capable of successfully passing among humans in a religious (faith) setting you would probably need tons of memory (or else some channeling reinforcement, probabilistic determinative etc. mechanism) and the ability to dynamically mimic emotions such as boredom, guilt, trust, sin, obedience, lip-service etc. The zombie wouldn't have to bring much knowledge or wisdom to this setting as the more brain dead it is the easier it is for to pass. The trouble is that concepts like knowledge and wisdom are no different from memory as far as I can tell. At least nobody's made the case that they're at all different. On the one hand, people will claim their ... phone ... is smart. Then right after that, they'll call it stupid. I've seen people do the same with their children, politicians, their cars, etc. When put on the spot, everyone cops out with the I can't define it. But I know it when I see it. To which I say: Pffft. 8^P -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
But, if this synthetic task is so difficult, what makes the reductionists believe they're right? If nobody can actually build a belief from a collection of actions, what trickiness or delusion allows them to confidently assert that beliefs are actions? What (premature?) conviction allows you to say that this task is no more difficult, in principle, than distinguishing chemical compounds? Even worse, if the research has NOT been done, then you're making this claim without any scientific evidence. I truly don't understand the conviction. It seems very much like an untested ideology. Re: Lee's book: There are lots of frameworks for dealing with hybrid systems. I'd be interested to see the new approach. ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/20/2012 05:31 AM: Yes, yes, yes! But, to stick with the analogy, it is not in-principle more difficult than distinguishing chemical compounds. Admittedly, Chemistry had quite a head start as a formal science. However, if psychologists had their heads out of the rears, and had put in as much effort over the last 100 years into classifying the ways people interact with the world as chemists had put into classifying the ways chemicals interact with the world, the question wouldn't seem so intimidating. We would have achieved, or be close to, whatever psychology's version of the periodic table is (which I know is itself continuously up for re-conceptualization, but the basic one is still incredibly helpful). As for your more specific question, it is pretty easy to tell believers from fakers... so long as we exclude faker-recursion. That is, it is possible for a human to be a believer faking being a non-believer, etc. If we stick to the original two-option case, it is pretty easy - I submit - because we do it all the time. Specifying exactly how we do it is tricky only because the research hasn't been done. Check out any Daily Show coverage of the presidential debates. One of the best bits so far is the Fox News commentator who, after Romney's speech goes on for quite a while about how great it is that there were so many details, how this will really connect with voters and answer their questions, etc. Then, immediately after Obama's speech he goes off about how the speech included a lot of details, and that is sure to alienate voters. If we only saw the first speech, we might think that the commentator believes details are good, or at least that he believes viewers want details. After seeing the clips next to each other, it is clear that he was merely faking that belief as part of a larger pattern serving some other purpose. What are the varieties of ways in which we make these distinctions? It is a tremendously complicated, but ultimately tractable question. Eric P.S. This problem is of particular interest to one of the topologists on the list - Lee Rudolph - who just had a book on the subject release. I haven't read it yet, but I know it is (among other things) an attempt to apply modern, non-statistical, mathematics to this problem. That would include math that can adequately deal with discrete and non-discrete aspects, etc., which you point out we would need. Lee, can you give a more skilled plug? -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Are you talking about this one? Qualitative Math for the Social Sciences http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780415444828-1 $140 on amazon is still a little much for me. I'll see if any local libraries carry it. glen wrote at 09/20/2012 09:13 AM: Re: Lee's book: There are lots of frameworks for dealing with hybrid systems. I'd be interested to see the new approach. ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/20/2012 05:31 AM: P.S. This problem is of particular interest to one of the topologists on the list - Lee Rudolph - who just had a book on the subject release. I haven't read it yet, but I know it is (among other things) an attempt to apply modern, non-statistical, mathematics to this problem. That would include math that can adequately deal with discrete and non-discrete aspects, etc., which you point out we would need. Lee, can you give a more skilled plug? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
FWIW Glen, you may find that your local library is willing to order any book their patrons desire... Los Alamos (albeit a wealthy county) is very generous about this... I get the impression that county/local libraries are desperate to remain relevant and one method is to make sure their patrons get anything they want. I believe most/all public libraries also have interlibrary loan systems as well, so if anyone in their network has it, then they can get it for you. Are you talking about this one? Qualitative Math for the Social Sciences http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780415444828-1 $140 on amazon is still a little much for me. I'll see if any local libraries carry it. glen wrote at 09/20/2012 09:13 AM: Re: Lee's book: There are lots of frameworks for dealing with hybrid systems. I'd be interested to see the new approach. ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/20/2012 05:31 AM: P.S. This problem is of particular interest to one of the topologists on the list - Lee Rudolph - who just had a book on the subject release. I haven't read it yet, but I know it is (among other things) an attempt to apply modern, non-statistical, mathematics to this problem. That would include math that can adequately deal with discrete and non-discrete aspects, etc., which you point out we would need. Lee, can you give a more skilled plug? FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Yep. I've already broached the subject with my county library. Their criteria center around whether the new thing (book, CD, whatever) would be of use to the average library user. So, most of the stuff I want doesn't qualify. Apparently math isn't very useful to my fellow citizens. ;-) But I may be able to convince one of the universities to buy a copy. I searched the oregon and california university library catalogs and nobody seems to have a copy. Steve Smith wrote at 09/20/2012 02:21 PM: FWIW Glen, you may find that your local library is willing to order any book their patrons desire... Los Alamos (albeit a wealthy county) is very generous about this... I get the impression that county/local libraries are desperate to remain relevant and one method is to make sure their patrons get anything they want. I believe most/all public libraries also have interlibrary loan systems as well, so if anyone in their network has it, then they can get it for you. Are you talking about this one? Qualitative Math for the Social Sciences http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780415444828-1 $140 on amazon is still a little much for me. I'll see if any local libraries carry it. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Glen, I am honestly confused at this point about what you are looking for in your main question. To be experiencing something or reacting to something requires two entities with a relationship between them. How do you separate that table from the experience of that table? Well, one is the table, the other is a particular type of relationship between an organism and the table. Your question strikes me as roughly akin to asking how we distinguish between that table and me standing on the table. In both cases there is a table, but in the latter we are interested in a relationship between me and the table. I don't think Zombies are any particular help in understand the standing on relationship, and I also don't think they are of any particular help in understanding the reacting to relationship. On other notes: 1) Your friend clearly wants to tailgate. We know she does because, she does so when given the opportunity, and she expends effort to continue doing so (i.e., she regulates her speed with the person she is closely following, etc.). Now, I fully agree with you - it is fascinating that her behavior changes when it is pointed out. We could have a great time analyzing that. However, whatever our analysis revealed wouldn't undo the original observation that (until someone points out the behavior) she clearly wants to tailgate. 2) This way of thinking leads to suspicion of the often-assumed-to-be-clear distinction between mental processes labeled with different terms. For example, we might see a person raising a full cup to their mouths and ask them why they were doing it. The person says because I was thirsty. If we further asked them, perhaps posing as a person with poor English skills, what thirsty meant, then they might elaborate to I wanted liquid. But, of course, that answer alone is incoherent. The raising-cup-to-mouth behavior is not just the want of liquid, it is also the belief that raising-cup-to-mouth will result in having-liquid. That is, if we are looking at behavior, there might not be as clear a distinction between want and belief as we have been lead to believe/desire. Does that clarify anything? Eric P.S. In the second note above, we could have gone straight to the belief that drinking would relieve thirst, but given our current example, it seemed better to get the word want involved. On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 11:53 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/18/2012 07:46 AM: Trying to be a sophisticated Nick: Faith doesn't underlies reality, but it underlies all experience. And by experience, I mean it underlies all the way you act and react towards reality. This doesn't give you a theory of everything, but it might give you a theory of everything psychological. I could tolerate that position. But I'm not going to. The whole question of ascribing the potentiality for sane actions to crazy people (be they Muslim or Atheist) hinges on the Cartesian partition. Nick (sophisticated or not) argues against the partition: mind is matter, no more no less. Hence, if faith underlies experience and experience is matter, then either we can separate experience from non-experience or all matter is experience. By accusing Nick of claiming that faith underlies all reality, I am pressing for _his_ technique for separating experience from everything else. Zombies are one rhetorical tool for doing that. -- To return to the zombies... the usual riddle of the Cartesian zombie goes something like this: 1. Imagine a Person who is trying to catch you, perhaps to eat you. You run through the woods, twisting and turning, but your adversary always changes to stay on your trail. Let us all agree from the beginning that said Person stays on your trail BECAUSE he intends to catch and eat you. 2. Now imagine a Zombie who is trying to catch you and eat you. The Zombie makes all the same alterations of course to stay on your trail that the Person would have made in the same situation. But now, let us all agree that the Zombie has no intention. 3. Insert mystery music here. Aha! How would you ever know the difference? If we can imagine a Zombie doing everything it can to stay on your trail, but without wanting to catch you, then we can never know anything about the mind of another. Because I thought of this mystery, I am really smart! But you'll have to take my word on it, because a Zombie could have said all the same things without any smarts. Ooooh, see, I made it a meta-mystery - super clever points achieved! -- Nick's assertion is to declare point 2 a blatant falsity. To be trying to catch you or to want to catch you, is nothing other than to be varying behavior so as to stay on your trail. That is, you can imagine a try-less and want-less thing coming towards you, for as long as you run in a straight line. As soon as you start turning, and the thing chasing you turns as a function of the changes in your trajectory, such that it
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/19/2012 07:05 AM: I am honestly confused at this point about what you are looking for in your main question. Hm. I feel like we've wandered down some semantic rat hole. Let me restate my main question: What is the difference between thought and action? The original question involved faith and crazy people because that's the particular context we were in. But I assert that faith is just a specific type of thought. So, I broadened it to thought. And I also asserted that we ascribe crazy to people when we can't tell a believable story about their motivations. Nick asserted that faith underlies all justification _and_ that belief is action. That lead me to challenge the combination of those by inferring (from those 2 assertions of Nick's) that faith must underlie all reality. So, the question in full context becomes: What specific actions constitute faith? All the rest of the below are distracting tangents, I think. I don't think Zombies are any particular help in understand the standing on relationship, and I also don't think they are of any particular help in understanding the reacting to relationship. I brought up zombies solely in the context of distinguishing between some thing that is an end in itself versus some thing whose purpose is imputed by another thing. They help in that discussion, but not the one you want to have. A zombie is a person who's actions are perfectly predictable from her inputs and initial conditions. An actor is a person who's actions are only approximable from inputs and initial conditions. This relates to belief and intention only in the sense that some of us claim beliefs and intentions (examples of thought) are reducible to actions. All I want is at least one, preferably many, forward and inverse maps from actions to thoughts and from thoughts to actions. I ask for that because I'm a big believer in Feynman's aphorism: What I cannot create, I do not understand. It's all fine and dandy to assert that thoughts are actions, but unless we can synthesize at least one thought from some set of actions, we're just blowing smoke. I don't know how to do it. And frankly, I believe thoughts are not reducible to actions. But I'd love to try if I could get some help from those of us who do believe in the reduction. On other notes: 1) Your friend clearly wants to tailgate. We know she does because, she does so when given the opportunity, and she expends effort to continue doing so (i.e., she regulates her speed with the person she is closely following, etc.). Now, I fully agree with you - it is fascinating that her behavior changes when it is pointed out. We could have a great time analyzing that. However, whatever our analysis revealed wouldn't undo the original observation that (until someone points out the behavior) she clearly wants to tailgate. I disagree. She does NOT want to tailgate. Her want is something else. Her S.O. claims that she tailgates because it frees her up to think about other things. She tailgates because she feels safer following someone else down the road. It limits the number of ways she might get in an accident. In fact, what she does is only considered tailgating when the density of cars on the road is low. When it's high and the space buffer between any two cars is, in general, small, she wouldn't be considered to be tailgating. But I suspect if we measured her distance, it would be about the same as it is in low density traffic. The reason I point that out is because ascriptive words like want, belief, and intention are all inadequate for describing action. They are not actions. They are something more. Merely measuring actions fails to compose a measure for thought (and vice versa). I.e. not only do thoughts not reduce to actions, measures of thoughts do not reduce to measures of actions. They come close, but are not complete. And it's in that incompleteness that I propose actor status ... incompressibility ... lies. 2) This way of thinking leads to suspicion of the often-assumed-to-be-clear distinction between mental processes labeled with different terms. For example, we might see a person raising a full cup to their mouths and ask them why they were doing it. The person says because I was thirsty. If we further asked them, perhaps posing as a person with poor English skills, what thirsty meant, then they might elaborate to I wanted liquid. But, of course, that answer alone is incoherent. The raising-cup-to-mouth behavior is not just the want of liquid, it is also the belief that raising-cup-to-mouth will result in having-liquid. That is, if we are looking at behavior, there might not be as clear a distinction between want and belief as we have been lead to believe/desire. Does that clarify anything? Not to me. What I want is a set of steps, a procedure, for generating a belief (or any thought) from a set of actions. If you said something like:
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Dear Glen You've confused me even more now. So I'll just come to your last para I don't want want to be involved. 8^) I'm trying to simplify the discussion down to an actionable point. Which is why I'll ask again: If faith is a collection of actions, what actions constitute faith? Praxis ?. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Sarbajit Roy wrote at 09/19/2012 08:30 AM: I don't want want to be involved. 8^) I'm trying to simplify the discussion down to an actionable point. Which is why I'll ask again: If faith is a collection of actions, what actions constitute faith? Praxis ?. Heh, you didn't provide enough context for me to guess what you mean by that word. I'm looking for normal actions ... like go to the store or pick your nose or kneel in front of that plastic statue for 12 hours ... play with that snake ... eat this wafer ... stare at that table for 24 hours ... etc. We need a sequence of actions that might actually cause a person to have faith. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Sorry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_(Eastern_Orthodoxy) Orthodox writers use the term praxis to refer to what others, using an English rather than a Greek word, call practice of the faith, especially with regard to ascetic and liturgical life. Praxis is key to Eastern Orthodox understanding because it is the basis of faith and works and the understanding of not separating the two. The importance of praxis, in the sense of action, is indicated in the dictum of Saint Maximus the Confessor: Theology without action is the theology of demons.[3] On 9/19/12, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Sarbajit Roy wrote at 09/19/2012 08:30 AM: I don't want want to be involved. 8^) I'm trying to simplify the discussion down to an actionable point. Which is why I'll ask again: If faith is a collection of actions, what actions constitute faith? Praxis ?. Heh, you didn't provide enough context for me to guess what you mean by that word. I'm looking for normal actions ... like go to the store or pick your nose or kneel in front of that plastic statue for 12 hours ... play with that snake ... eat this wafer ... stare at that table for 24 hours ... etc. We need a sequence of actions that might actually cause a person to have faith. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
We need a sequence of actions that might actually cause a person to have faith. 2 examples. a) way cults work, and b) ways a magnet works. In a (religious) cult, the newbies are first encouraged to join in on simple actions like clapping. This is a psychological device to get them to participate and show that nobody objects to their actions. Then they are encouraged to sing a little bit .. moving onto dancing, chanting, praise be the lording or whatever Pick a magnet, any magnet. Pick a piece of unmagnetic iron. Gently stroke said magnet in the same direction repeatedly over said piece of iron. Note those little (Brainwashed) magnetic dipoles lining up just so ... That's how the faith model and Al-Qaeda works. Sarbajit On 9/19/12, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Praxis ?. Heh, you didn't provide enough context for me to guess what you mean by that word. I'm looking for normal actions ... like go to the store or pick your nose or kneel in front of that plastic statue for 12 hours ... play with that snake ... eat this wafer ... stare at that table for 24 hours ... etc. We need a sequence of actions that might actually cause a person to have faith. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Thanks for the clarity on praxis. That word has too much baggage for me to be comfortable with it. Using it would beg people to talk about stuff unrelated to Nick's assertion. Sarbajit Roy wrote at 09/19/2012 10:46 AM: We need a sequence of actions that might actually cause a person to have faith. 2 examples. a) way cults work, and b) ways a magnet works. In a (religious) cult, the newbies are first encouraged to join in on simple actions like clapping. This is a psychological device to get them to participate and show that nobody objects to their actions. Then they are encouraged to sing a little bit .. moving onto dancing, chanting, praise be the lording or whatever Pick a magnet, any magnet. Pick a piece of unmagnetic iron. Gently stroke said magnet in the same direction repeatedly over said piece of iron. Note those little (Brainwashed) magnetic dipoles lining up just so ... That's how the faith model and Al-Qaeda works. Excellent! Both of these approach what is necessary for Nick to be able to reconcile the 2 assertions that faith underlies all justification and belief is action. They are incomplete in different ways: In (a), there is still a missing piece between the social comfort brought by the increasing participation in various activities versus some belief ascribed to the cult members. I would posit that a mole/infiltrator could participate in a cult quite a long time, dancing, changing, murdering starlets in their homes, etc. _without_ actually believing the doctrines of the cult (much like most Catholics I've met). So, what we need is an idea of how we get to belief from these actions. How do we distinguish lip service or facetious dancing and chanting from the chanting and dancing of the true believers? (b) is inadequate for a different reason, I think. The brainwashing of the molecules is a type of memory, which gets at the previous conversations. Is memory required for belief? I'd tentatively say yes. But I have yet to hear an answer from those who believe that belief is (reducible to) action. If their answer is no, then we'd have to begin discussing whether there is any temporal quality to belief at all. E.g. can one only believe what they're doing at any given instant and the concept of belief is incoherent for discussions of future and past? If their answer is yes, then we have to decide whether memory (of some type) is sufficient for belief. E.g. are there types of memory that do not amount to belief? Like if I know that some person thinks 1+1=3, I can remember that, suspend disbelief, and play along with that equation for awhile without believing it. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Glen said: In [Sarbajit's example of cult indoctrination], there is still a missing piece between the social comfort brought by the increasing participation in various activities versus some belief ascribed to the cult members. I would posit that a mole/infiltrator could participate in a cult quite a long time, dancing, changing, murdering starlets in their homes, etc. _without_ actually believing the doctrines of the cult (much like most Catholics I've met). So, what we need is an idea of how we get to belief from these actions. How do we distinguish lip service or facetious dancing and chanting from the chanting and dancing of the true believers? - But Glen, when you talk about the infiltrator, or the person paying lip-service, you are just appealing to a larger pattern of behavior. Agreeing with your assertion, faking belief looks different than belief... if you can see enough of the person's behavior and/or see a close enough level of detail. We distinguish the two exactly by determining which larger pattern of behavior exists. This is not proposing some radically new way of thinking about psychology... it is proposing that we deal with psychology the same way any other science deals with its special subject matter. Take Chemistry: There are many, many chemicals that look the same to the human eye, and which react the same under many conditions (for example, when a set volume is put on a scale), but which react differently under other conditions (for example, when put in a particular solution). The chemicals are distinguished by observing a variety of ways in which the chemicals interact with the world. Similarly, a person who believes X and a person faking belief in X are distinguished by observing a wide variety of ways in which the people interact with the world. Also, for the record, one of the problems with using moles is that it is very difficult to get people capable of participating in cultural practices of these sorts over extended periods without becoming believers. The practices become normal to you, the group becomes your group, and even if you can still turn them in/report on them/whatever you are supposed to do, you become sympathetic. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/19/2012 02:54 PM: But Glen, when you talk about the infiltrator, or the person paying lip-service, you are just appealing to a larger pattern of behavior. Aha!! Excellent! So, tell me how to classify the patterns so that one pattern is just lip service and the other is belief! If you do that, then we'll have our objective function. I can develop an algorithm for that and we'll be able to automatically distinguish zombies from actors. Then we can begin building machines that try to satisfy it. Agreeing with your assertion, faking belief looks different than belief... if you can see enough of the person's behavior and/or see a close enough level of detail. The former, again, sounds like memory. The latter is something else. It implies something about scale. We know actions are multi-scale (anatomy, physiology, chemistry, physics). Is there a cut-off below which we need not go? Genes? Chemicals? Or does the multiscalar requirements for measuring belief extend all the way down? a person who believes X and a person faking belief in X are distinguished by observing a wide variety of ways in which the people interact with the world. So, in addition to memory and crossing scales, the measures are also multivalent at any one instant or any one scale. Also, for the record, one of the problems with using moles is that it is very difficult to get people capable of participating in cultural practices of these sorts over extended periods without becoming believers. The practices become normal to you, the group becomes your group, and even if you can still turn them in/report on them/whatever you are supposed to do, you become sympathetic. Uh-oh. This makes it sound like not only is there a multi-scale problem, but there may also be a hybrid requirement. The mole either continuously transitions from non-belief to belief or there's a threshold. I.e. some parts of our classifying predicate will be continuous and some will be discrete. I have to admit, this seems like a really difficult multi-objective selection method. Building a machine that generates belief from a collection of mechanisms, thereby satisfying the criteria, will be exceedingly difficult, at least as difficult as artificial life and intelligence. But this is what we have to do if we're going to continue claiming that beliefs reduce to actions. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
On 9/19/12 4:29 PM, glen wrote: I.e. some parts of our classifying predicate will be continuous and some will be discrete. I have to admit, this seems like a really difficult multi-objective selection method. Use tabu search (https://projects.coin-or.org/metslib), encoding the transition rate as binary numbers in the state space. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Glen: (aside) In addition to my faith hat, I also have a designer/manufacturer of programmable logic controller hat. To design an artificial life form (android / zombie ...) capable of successfully passing among humans in a religious (faith) setting you would probably need tons of memory (or else some channeling reinforcement, probabilistic determinative etc. mechanism) and the ability to dynamically mimic emotions such as boredom, guilt, trust, sin, obedience, lip-service etc. The zombie wouldn't have to bring much knowledge or wisdom to this setting as the more brain dead it is the easier it is for to pass. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Robots do lip service quite handily. We value your call. Nick -Original Message- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2012 11:22 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people Glen: (aside) In addition to my faith hat, I also have a designer/manufacturer of programmable logic controller hat. To design an artificial life form (android / zombie ...) capable of successfully passing among humans in a religious (faith) setting you would probably need tons of memory (or else some channeling reinforcement, probabilistic determinative etc. mechanism) and the ability to dynamically mimic emotions such as boredom, guilt, trust, sin, obedience, lip-service etc. The zombie wouldn't have to bring much knowledge or wisdom to this setting as the more brain dead it is the easier it is for to pass. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Apparently its not so simple to achieve The Artificial Life of Synthetic Actors http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.13.8387rep=rep1type=pdf Lots of dynamic collisions and collision detection mechanisms floating about. Just came across this http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2012/06/14/cyber-security-and-the-rise-of-the-silicon-based-life-form/ Silicon-based life forms now make short work of tasks that once took us many man hours to accomplish. In addition to carrying crushing computational loads without complaint, they deliver our communications at the speed of light, transact business on our behalf and help us more efficiently perform the tasks we still perform. We think a lot about the way we interact with them. Few of us, however, think about how silicon-based life forms interact with one another. On 9/20/12, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Robots do lip service quite handily. We value your call. Nick -Original Message- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2012 11:22 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people Glen: (aside) In addition to my faith hat, I also have a designer/manufacturer of programmable logic controller hat. To design an artificial life form (android / zombie ...) capable of successfully passing among humans in a religious (faith) setting you would probably need tons of memory (or else some channeling reinforcement, probabilistic determinative etc. mechanism) and the ability to dynamically mimic emotions such as boredom, guilt, trust, sin, obedience, lip-service etc. The zombie wouldn't have to bring much knowledge or wisdom to this setting as the more brain dead it is the easier it is for to pass. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Trying to be a sophisticated Nick: Faith doesn't underlies reality, but it underlies all experience. And by experience, I mean it underlies all the way you act and react towards reality. This doesn't give you a theory of everything, but it might give you a theory of everything psychological. -- To return to the zombies... the usual riddle of the Cartesian zombie goes something like this: 1. Imagine a Person who is trying to catch you, perhaps to eat you. You run through the woods, twisting and turning, but your adversary always changes to stay on your trail. Let us all agree from the beginning that said Person stays on your trail BECAUSE he intends to catch and eat you. 2. Now imagine a Zombie who is trying to catch you and eat you. The Zombie makes all the same alterations of course to stay on your trail that the Person would have made in the same situation. But now, let us all agree that the Zombie has no intention. 3. Insert mystery music here. Aha! How would you ever know the difference? If we can imagine a Zombie doing everything it can to stay on your trail, but without wanting to catch you, then we can never know anything about the mind of another. Because I thought of this mystery, I am really smart! But you'll have to take my word on it, because a Zombie could have said all the same things without any smarts. Ooooh, see, I made it a meta-mystery - super clever points achieved! -- Nick's assertion is to declare point 2 a blatant falsity. To be trying to catch you or to want to catch you, is nothing other than to be varying behavior so as to stay on your trail. That is, you can imagine a try-less and want-less thing coming towards you, for as long as you run in a straight line. As soon as you start turning, and the thing chasing you turns as a function of the changes in your trajectory, such that it is always moving to intersect you, then you are imagining that the thing is trying to catch you. The creature believes that these alterations of its course will bring it closer to you (than if it didn't alter its course). There is no action-relative-to-the-world, that doesn't entail some degree of belief. Or, to phrase it differently: To alter my course as if that will lead me to catch you, is some degree of faith. Thus, Step 3, should be a person admitting how good they are at misleading you down a philosophical rabbit hole. Note that this way of thinking separates what it is to have belief, want, faith, etc., from an (causal) explanation of that phenomenon. Eric On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 08:18 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Glen Wrote: . In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute faith. If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things. This is a really good question. Nobody has ever asked me to do that before. I am suddenly made aware of why Peirce wrote some of the tortured passages he wrote. I am going to have to think about this. In the meantime, Eric may be able to tell you what an evolved Nick will say. Nick -Original Message- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Monday, September 17, 2012 7:48 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/17/2012 04:03 PM: But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the uncompressible class? Well, even if that's true in principle, as long as there is a predicate to slice them all into two sets: 1) really really hard to compress vs. 2) pretty easy to compress, we still have a fundamental, practical, and measurable difference between say humans and thermostats, respectively. It seems the only way to tell is to test every possible case, as you say in your second paragraph. I don't think it's as much a matter of classifying every possible system into one or the other classes. I can see a nice ivory tower job (or perhaps an employee of the justice dept) for such a taxonomist. But most of us merely want to handle 80% of the cases well. It's OK if I can't determine which class Nick, Doug, or any one individual falls into or even if they spew disinformation to make me mis-classify them. As long as I can get most zombies and actors in the right class. What it comes down to, though, is that, again as you say, you are talking about knowledge, how people model the world
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/18/2012 07:46 AM: Trying to be a sophisticated Nick: Faith doesn't underlies reality, but it underlies all experience. And by experience, I mean it underlies all the way you act and react towards reality. This doesn't give you a theory of everything, but it might give you a theory of everything psychological. I could tolerate that position. But I'm not going to. The whole question of ascribing the potentiality for sane actions to crazy people (be they Muslim or Atheist) hinges on the Cartesian partition. Nick (sophisticated or not) argues against the partition: mind is matter, no more no less. Hence, if faith underlies experience and experience is matter, then either we can separate experience from non-experience or all matter is experience. By accusing Nick of claiming that faith underlies all reality, I am pressing for _his_ technique for separating experience from everything else. Zombies are one rhetorical tool for doing that. -- To return to the zombies... the usual riddle of the Cartesian zombie goes something like this: 1. Imagine a Person who is trying to catch you, perhaps to eat you. You run through the woods, twisting and turning, but your adversary always changes to stay on your trail. Let us all agree from the beginning that said Person stays on your trail BECAUSE he intends to catch and eat you. 2. Now imagine a Zombie who is trying to catch you and eat you. The Zombie makes all the same alterations of course to stay on your trail that the Person would have made in the same situation. But now, let us all agree that the Zombie has no intention. 3. Insert mystery music here. Aha! How would you ever know the difference? If we can imagine a Zombie doing everything it can to stay on your trail, but without wanting to catch you, then we can never know anything about the mind of another. Because I thought of this mystery, I am really smart! But you'll have to take my word on it, because a Zombie could have said all the same things without any smarts. Ooooh, see, I made it a meta-mystery - super clever points achieved! -- Nick's assertion is to declare point 2 a blatant falsity. To be trying to catch you or to want to catch you, is nothing other than to be varying behavior so as to stay on your trail. That is, you can imagine a try-less and want-less thing coming towards you, for as long as you run in a straight line. As soon as you start turning, and the thing chasing you turns as a function of the changes in your trajectory, such that it is always moving to intersect you, then you are imagining that the thing is trying to catch you. I'm with you up to here. However, I do know someone who tailgates other drivers just out of habit ... as soon as you point out that she's following a person, she immediately changes lanes. Of course, I have no idea what that means. The creature believes that these alterations of its course will bring it closer to you (than if it didn't alter its course). You lost me here. The creature is tracking you. If belief is a collection of actions, then the creature does not YET _believe_ it's trying to catch you. It can't believe that until it actually does it ... wait for it ... because belief is action. Now, had you said that belief is a _memory_ of past action, then I might tolerate a claim that the creature believes it's tracking you. But that would mean that belief isn't a collection of actions. It's something else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of action ... perhaps something called state, which is distinguishable from process? -- -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
It's something else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of action ... perhaps something called state, which is distinguishable from process? Well, if we are being literalists, it could be construed as the chemical actions taking place in a brain, or perhaps electrical actions taking place microprocessor (depending on who we are talking about). -Arlo James Barnes FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/18/2012 10:45 AM: It's something else ... perhaps a type of action distinguishable from other types of action ... perhaps something called state, which is distinguishable from process? Well, if we are being literalists, it could be construed as the chemical actions taking place in a brain, or perhaps electrical actions taking place microprocessor (depending on who we are talking about). Yep, any of those actions would be fine, I think. But in order for the zombie to have a belief about something that hasn't happened yet, we need some higher order structure, like memory. So, it's not merely chemical or electrical actions ... it's chemical or electrical actions grouped in a particular way, with particular, higher order properties. We could probably even get away with an artificial chemistry or physics, as long as we could synthesize something analogous to what we normally call belief or intention. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
I hear only Zombies all the time, have you watched too much Resident Evil films? -J. Sent from AndroidNicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote:Robert, I am sure my colleagues will see immediately the fallacy in your argument: that it is a case of an Ad-Zombium argument. Furthermore, it stipulates that Zombies have a mental life, since a mental life would seem to be necessary for pigheadedness, madness, OR solipsism. And since a Cartesian Zombie is defined as something without a mental life, your argument concerns a zero set. So there! Nick PS. Did you mean sophistry? Or Sollipsism. I have to get my insults straight, here. From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Robert Holmes Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2012 3:31 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist) Here's some grounds for denying the non-zombie's account of his zombieness: the non-zombie is mad or pig-headed or over-familiar with solipsism. Or a combination of all three. —R On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Robert, snipSo, there can be no grounds (that I can think off), for denying a non-zombie’s account that he is a zombie. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/15/2012 07:51 AM: the next step in a discussion like this is for someone to ask you what evidence you have that any actual thing has more actor status than a thermostat. My evidence is, like *all* evidence, subject to interpretation. Unlike most people, I don't believe there are such things as facts. ;-) With that preamble, I'll set up my evidence. There seem to be unpredictable processes. Either they are actually unpredictable, or we're just not smart enough to predict them. If the former, we're talking Truth. If the latter, we're talking practicality. Some of these systems are chaotic, some are stochastic. Regardless, they are unpredictable. There are also some processes that are predictable. We can infer laws and then show that those systems (usually) follow them. These laws allow compressed models (analogs[*]) of the referent system, ways of describing those systems that are reasonably accurate. I'll call these systems compressible to indicate that there exists at least one [+] _accurate_ (enough) description of them that's shorter than a fully detailed description (i.e. the referent system itself). Zombies and tools are compressible. (You'll remember that I'm defining tool as an artifact whose purpose has been inscribed/imputed by an actor.) Actors are _incompressible_ in the sense that you can't define a short-cut law that accurately describes what how the system will evolve. We can call the incompressible part free will or general intelligence or soul or whatever we want to call it. That doesn't matter. But what's important is that you cannot get high confidence validation out of a model of such a system _unless_ you implement the incompressible part in all its gory detail. You have to execute it in order to know what it's going to do. (You might recognize this as the halting problem.) Now, what evidence do I have that incompressible systems exist? Well, there's plenty, from the radioactive decay of matter to meteorology. Whether you'd accept any of this evidence depends, I'd say, on whether you [dis]like my rhetoric. [*] All models, in order to do their work, need implementations. So I'm not really talking about the laws, per se. I'm talking about any machines you might use to implement the laws. E.g. not the equations, the computer and program used to implement the equations. E.g. not the indefinite equations in pencil, the definite equations without variables like x and y ... plus your fingers and such to push the pencil. [+] To be more correct, I'd have to say that actors are composite and have at least one component that is incompressible. So, while the whole actor may submit to a compression, at least part of her will not. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the uncompressible class? It seems the only way to tell is to test every possible case, as you say in your second paragraph. What it comes down to, though, is that, again as you say, you are talking about knowledge, how people model the world. But do you [not] believe there is a world if there is nobody to model it? COuld there not be the objective fact of physical laws, even if they are never articulated, or at least not correctly or fully? -Arlo James Barnes FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/17/2012 04:03 PM: But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the uncompressible class? Well, even if that's true in principle, as long as there is a predicate to slice them all into two sets: 1) really really hard to compress vs. 2) pretty easy to compress, we still have a fundamental, practical, and measurable difference between say humans and thermostats, respectively. It seems the only way to tell is to test every possible case, as you say in your second paragraph. I don't think it's as much a matter of classifying every possible system into one or the other classes. I can see a nice ivory tower job (or perhaps an employee of the justice dept) for such a taxonomist. But most of us merely want to handle 80% of the cases well. It's OK if I can't determine which class Nick, Doug, or any one individual falls into or even if they spew disinformation to make me mis-classify them. As long as I can get most zombies and actors in the right class. What it comes down to, though, is that, again as you say, you are talking about knowledge, how people model the world. But do you [not] believe there is a world if there is nobody to model it? Let me rephrase it to avoid the whole conscious observer thing. Is there a super system if all sub-systems are compressible? Yes, absolutely. Just because there exists some part of the universe that can adequately model any given part of the universe does _not_ imply that the universe doesn't exist. The real problem we face if there are no incompressible sub-sytems is one of first cause or ad infinitum. If every detail out there is completely explainable from its initial conditions, then what was the cause of the initial conditions? (We'll find ourselves looking for the one true Actor in patterns in the cosmic background radiation!) But if we posit that, say, empty space is really a dense foam of incompressible systems, then all we need do is look for a way to scale up. COuld there not be the objective fact of physical laws, even if they are never articulated, or at least not correctly or fully? No, not the way I'm using the word law (and based on my own private definition of articulated ;-). An unimplemented law is a thought, which as I said a few posts ago, in this rhetoric anyway, is not real. It's a convenient fiction that helps some of our subsystems maintain control over other of our subsystems. But an implemented law (like a computer program and the machine that executes it) _is_ what's objective. Not only are implementations what is real, they are the _only_ thing that's real. (The word implementation is unfortunate because it implies the existence of an abstract thing that's being implemented. So I really shouldn't use that word ... I should use realization or somesuch that has a higher ontological status.) Note that I started this rhetorical position in response to Nick's assertion that there always exists faith at the bottom of any justification. In order to make my rhetoric interesting, I have to take a hard line and agree with Nick that things like beliefs are simply collections of actions. Hence, all things in the class containing beliefs (including laws) are not really things, at least not in and of themselves. In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute faith. If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things. As usual, the conversation hasn't gone the way I wanted. Dammit. 8D But I'll still hold my final trump card to my chest just in case it takes a turn back in my favor. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Glen Wrote: . In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute faith. If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things. This is a really good question. Nobody has ever asked me to do that before. I am suddenly made aware of why Peirce wrote some of the tortured passages he wrote. I am going to have to think about this. In the meantime, Eric may be able to tell you what an evolved Nick will say. Nick -Original Message- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Monday, September 17, 2012 7:48 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/17/2012 04:03 PM: But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the uncompressible class? Well, even if that's true in principle, as long as there is a predicate to slice them all into two sets: 1) really really hard to compress vs. 2) pretty easy to compress, we still have a fundamental, practical, and measurable difference between say humans and thermostats, respectively. It seems the only way to tell is to test every possible case, as you say in your second paragraph. I don't think it's as much a matter of classifying every possible system into one or the other classes. I can see a nice ivory tower job (or perhaps an employee of the justice dept) for such a taxonomist. But most of us merely want to handle 80% of the cases well. It's OK if I can't determine which class Nick, Doug, or any one individual falls into or even if they spew disinformation to make me mis-classify them. As long as I can get most zombies and actors in the right class. What it comes down to, though, is that, again as you say, you are talking about knowledge, how people model the world. But do you [not] believe there is a world if there is nobody to model it? Let me rephrase it to avoid the whole conscious observer thing. Is there a super system if all sub-systems are compressible? Yes, absolutely. Just because there exists some part of the universe that can adequately model any given part of the universe does _not_ imply that the universe doesn't exist. The real problem we face if there are no incompressible sub-sytems is one of first cause or ad infinitum. If every detail out there is completely explainable from its initial conditions, then what was the cause of the initial conditions? (We'll find ourselves looking for the one true Actor in patterns in the cosmic background radiation!) But if we posit that, say, empty space is really a dense foam of incompressible systems, then all we need do is look for a way to scale up. COuld there not be the objective fact of physical laws, even if they are never articulated, or at least not correctly or fully? No, not the way I'm using the word law (and based on my own private definition of articulated ;-). An unimplemented law is a thought, which as I said a few posts ago, in this rhetoric anyway, is not real. It's a convenient fiction that helps some of our subsystems maintain control over other of our subsystems. But an implemented law (like a computer program and the machine that executes it) _is_ what's objective. Not only are implementations what is real, they are the _only_ thing that's real. (The word implementation is unfortunate because it implies the existence of an abstract thing that's being implemented. So I really shouldn't use that word ... I should use realization or somesuch that has a higher ontological status.) Note that I started this rhetorical position in response to Nick's assertion that there always exists faith at the bottom of any justification. In order to make my rhetoric interesting, I have to take a hard line and agree with Nick that things like beliefs are simply collections of actions. Hence, all things in the class containing beliefs (including laws) are not really things, at least not in and of themselves. In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute faith. If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things. As usual, the conversation hasn't gone the way I wanted. Dammit. 8D But I'll still hold my final trump card to my chest just in case it takes a turn back in my favor. -- glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
I hope an evolved Nick still has eyebrows. I'd miss the eyebrows. On Sep 17, 2012 6:19 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Glen Wrote: ** ** . *In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute faith. If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component of all other things.* ** ** This is a really good question. Nobody has ever asked me to do that before. I am suddenly made aware of why Peirce wrote some of the tortured passages he wrote. I am going to have to think about this. ** ** In the meantime, Eric may be able to tell you what an evolved Nick will say. ** ** Nick -Original Message- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Monday, September 17, 2012 7:48 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people ** ** Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/17/2012 04:03 PM: But what if the compressible class turns out to be the same as the uncompressible class? ** ** Well, even if that's true in principle, as long as there is a predicate to slice them all into two sets: 1) really really hard to compress vs. 2) pretty easy to compress, we still have a fundamental, practical, and measurable difference between say humans and thermostats, respectively.*** * ** ** It seems the only way to tell is to test every possible case, as you *** * say in your second paragraph. ** ** I don't think it's as much a matter of classifying every possible system into one or the other classes. I can see a nice ivory tower job (or perhaps an employee of the justice dept) for such a taxonomist. But most of us merely want to handle 80% of the cases well. It's OK if I can't determine which class Nick, Doug, or any one individual falls into or even if they spew disinformation to make me mis-classify them. As long as I can get most zombies and actors in the right class. ** ** What it comes down to, though, is that, again as you say, you are talking about knowledge, how people model the world. But do you [not] ** ** believe there is a world if there is nobody to model it? ** ** Let me rephrase it to avoid the whole conscious observer thing. Is there a super system if all sub-systems are compressible? Yes, absolutely. Just because there exists some part of the universe that can adequately model any given part of the universe does _not_ imply that the universe doesn't exist. ** ** The real problem we face if there are no incompressible sub-sytems is one of first cause or ad infinitum. If every detail out there is completely explainable from its initial conditions, then what was the cause of the initial conditions? (We'll find ourselves looking for the one true Actor in patterns in the cosmic background radiation!) But if we posit that, say, empty space is really a dense foam of incompressible systems, then all we need do is look for a way to scale up. ** ** COuld there not be the objective fact of physical laws, even if they are never articulated, or at least * *** not correctly or fully? ** ** No, not the way I'm using the word law (and based on my own private definition of articulated ;-). An unimplemented law is a thought, which as I said a few posts ago, in this rhetoric anyway, is not real. It's a convenient fiction that helps some of our subsystems maintain control over other of our subsystems. But an implemented law (like a computer program and the machine that executes it) _is_ what's objective. Not only are implementations what is real, they are the _only_ thing that's real. (The word implementation is unfortunate because it implies the existence of an abstract thing that's being implemented. So I really shouldn't use that word ... I should use realization or somesuch that has a higher ontological status.) ** ** Note that I started this rhetorical position in response to Nick's assertion that there always exists faith at the bottom of any justification. In order to make my rhetoric interesting, I have to take a hard line and agree with Nick that things like beliefs are simply collections of actions. Hence, all things in the class containing beliefs (including laws) are not really things, at least not in and of themselves. In so doing, I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course of the conversation to explain what actions constitute faith. If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's physical theory of everything! Those actions would be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
Robert, You are quite right about the Original Zombie. But I want to continue the conversation about Cartesian Zombies. These are the ones that look like a duck, quack like a duck, walk like a duck, but they aren't ducks. I say I am a [Cartesian] Zombie. [I say you are, also, but that is irrelevant at the moment.] In other words, I do not have consciousness in the way you think non-zombies have consciousness. [You don't either, but that is also irrelevant, at the moment.] Now, perhaps you might be tempted to assert that I AM, TOO, conscious. But be careful, there. Because, if I AM conscious, then where do you stand to say that I am not? The essence, after all, of a Cartesian non-Zombie is that he, and only he, has access to his own mental states, right? So, there can be no grounds (that I can think off), for denying a non-zombie's account that he is a zombie. To put it another way, the test you use to determine that a fake zombie is actually a non-zombie is the same test you would use to determine that a zombie has consciousness. Thus, you can only contract my assertion that I am not a zombie if believe me to be a zombie. By induction from your single case, I conclude that everybody on this list who would deny that I am a Zombie, thinks me a Zombie. [And, by the way, you are all [Cartesian] Zombies, but that is irrelevant to the present discussion.] I have only known a few people on this list who are consistent on this point, and they will now speak up, I hope. They will say, Geez, everything I know about people suggests that Thompson is not a Zombie, but if he says so, he must be. Now oddly enough, my position does not entail that the question, what is it like to be Nick Thompson [or Robert Holmes, for that matter] makes no sense. We are both points in space from which the world is seen. What it is like to BE Robert Holmes is to stand where you are standing and do what you do. And God Knows, I love you for it. (};-)} Nick From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Robert Holmes Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 11:19 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist) You guys clearly know too much about philosophy and not enough about zombies. Your notion that there is a single type of zombie has long been discredited. Here's a handy chart that I hope can inform your discussion. http://www.geekologie.com/image.php?path=/2010/10/05/zombie-chart-full.jpg -R On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Glen, Wow! This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was. Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the background. For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system. It acts in such a way as to maintain a set point. So do I, sometimes. Me and my furnace: we are telic systems. All the best, Nick -Original Message- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ropella Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:49 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist) On 09/14/2012 06:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: For me, consciousness is a point of view, and any telic system has a point of view. Zombies are telic systems, no? That's a great question. I would answer no. Zombies cannot be telic (as I understand that word, of course) because they are enslaved by their context. They are not ends in and of themselves. They are tools whose purpose has been installed in them by some non-zombie actor. FWIW, the Rosenites would disagree with me. They'd claim that a zombie (were such possible) would be an organism closed to efficient cause (agency). From this, they claim such closure allows anticipation, which, in turn, allows final cause (purpose) ... all without any requirement for _consciousness_ ... but with a requirement for reflective self-reference (aka closure). Getting from reflection to consciousness might not be that hard. And I support them in their quest. ;-) But they haven't proven the closure to me. I believe we organisms are only partially closed (to any of the causes). Complete closure, in any of the causes, looks more like death to me. So, there's something missing from their framework ... to the limited extent to which I understand it. Now, we might be able to reverse engineer a tool's purpose from its attributes. And in that sense, a zombie might express a goal or purpose and be called telic ... but that purpose would not be its _own_. Perhaps a tool is telic, but it's not autotelic. And this is where faith and crazy enter. When we can't reverse engineer a person's purpose ... or more accurately
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
Here's some grounds for denying the non-zombie's account of his zombieness: the non-zombie is mad or pig-headed or over-familiar with solipsism. Or a combination of all three. —R On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Robert, snipSo, there can be no grounds (that I can think off), for denying a non-zombie’s account that he is a zombie. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
Robert, I am sure my colleagues will see immediately the fallacy in your argument: that it is a case of an Ad-Zombium argument. Furthermore, it stipulates that Zombies have a mental life, since a mental life would seem to be necessary for pigheadedness, madness, OR solipsism. And since a Cartesian Zombie is defined as something without a mental life, your argument concerns a zero set. So there! Nick PS. Did you mean sophistry? Or Sollipsism. I have to get my insults straight, here. From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Robert Holmes Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2012 3:31 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist) Here's some grounds for denying the non-zombie's account of his zombieness: the non-zombie is mad or pig-headed or over-familiar with solipsism. Or a combination of all three. -R On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Robert, snipSo, there can be no grounds (that I can think off), for denying a non-zombie's account that he is a zombie. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
On 09/14/2012 06:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: For me, consciousness is a point of view, and any telic system has a point of view. Zombies are telic systems, no? That's a great question. I would answer no. Zombies cannot be telic (as I understand that word, of course) because they are enslaved by their context. They are not ends in and of themselves. They are tools whose purpose has been installed in them by some non-zombie actor. FWIW, the Rosenites would disagree with me. They'd claim that a zombie (were such possible) would be an organism closed to efficient cause (agency). From this, they claim such closure allows anticipation, which, in turn, allows final cause (purpose) ... all without any requirement for _consciousness_ ... but with a requirement for reflective self-reference (aka closure). Getting from reflection to consciousness might not be that hard. And I support them in their quest. ;-) But they haven't proven the closure to me. I believe we organisms are only partially closed (to any of the causes). Complete closure, in any of the causes, looks more like death to me. So, there's something missing from their framework ... to the limited extent to which I understand it. Now, we might be able to reverse engineer a tool's purpose from its attributes. And in that sense, a zombie might express a goal or purpose and be called telic ... but that purpose would not be its _own_. Perhaps a tool is telic, but it's not autotelic. And this is where faith and crazy enter. When we can't reverse engineer a person's purpose ... or more accurately ... when we can't empathize ... we can't tell ourselves a story in which context their actions make sense, then they're acting on faith or they're crazy. It is this ability to empathize ... for your neurons to be stimulated similarly to your referent's by observing their behavior ... that presents us with the zombie paradox. On the one hand, telling a believable story turns you into a _machine_, a tool, without personal responsibility or accountability. (My parents made me this way!) But on the other hand, not telling a story makes you alien, crazy, a wart that has to be removed. Interesting people walk that fine line between adequately explaining themselves but leaving just enough craziness and mystery to preserve their identity, to avoid being a zombie. I usually fail and am often accused of being a tool. 8^) Anyway, if you are curious, it's laid out in the conversation with the Devils Advocate on page 16 of the attached. Let me know what you think, if you have time to look at it. I will read it. Thanks. But in case it's not obvious, you must know that I don't take this stuff very seriously. I only think/talk about this stuff to distract me from work. ;-) So, it's unlikely that I'll be able to give it the attention that it and you deserve. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
Glen, Wow! This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was. Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the background. For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system. It acts in such a way as to maintain a set point. So do I, sometimes. Me and my furnace: we are telic systems. All the best, Nick -Original Message- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ropella Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:49 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist) On 09/14/2012 06:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: For me, consciousness is a point of view, and any telic system has a point of view. Zombies are telic systems, no? That's a great question. I would answer no. Zombies cannot be telic (as I understand that word, of course) because they are enslaved by their context. They are not ends in and of themselves. They are tools whose purpose has been installed in them by some non-zombie actor. FWIW, the Rosenites would disagree with me. They'd claim that a zombie (were such possible) would be an organism closed to efficient cause (agency). From this, they claim such closure allows anticipation, which, in turn, allows final cause (purpose) ... all without any requirement for _consciousness_ ... but with a requirement for reflective self-reference (aka closure). Getting from reflection to consciousness might not be that hard. And I support them in their quest. ;-) But they haven't proven the closure to me. I believe we organisms are only partially closed (to any of the causes). Complete closure, in any of the causes, looks more like death to me. So, there's something missing from their framework ... to the limited extent to which I understand it. Now, we might be able to reverse engineer a tool's purpose from its attributes. And in that sense, a zombie might express a goal or purpose and be called telic ... but that purpose would not be its _own_. Perhaps a tool is telic, but it's not autotelic. And this is where faith and crazy enter. When we can't reverse engineer a person's purpose ... or more accurately ... when we can't empathize ... we can't tell ourselves a story in which context their actions make sense, then they're acting on faith or they're crazy. It is this ability to empathize ... for your neurons to be stimulated similarly to your referent's by observing their behavior ... that presents us with the zombie paradox. On the one hand, telling a believable story turns you into a _machine_, a tool, without personal responsibility or accountability. (My parents made me this way!) But on the other hand, not telling a story makes you alien, crazy, a wart that has to be removed. Interesting people walk that fine line between adequately explaining themselves but leaving just enough craziness and mystery to preserve their identity, to avoid being a zombie. I usually fail and am often accused of being a tool. 8^) Anyway, if you are curious, it's laid out in the conversation with the Devils Advocate on page 16 of the attached. Let me know what you think, if you have time to look at it. I will read it. Thanks. But in case it's not obvious, you must know that I don't take this stuff very seriously. I only think/talk about this stuff to distract me from work. ;-) So, it's unlikely that I'll be able to give it the attention that it and you deserve. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
On 09/15/2012 06:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: Wow! This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was. Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the background. For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system. It acts in such a way as to maintain a set point. So do I, sometimes. Me and my furnace: we are telic systems. I disagree about the furnace, obviously. I could argue from the dictionary, but I'll spare you that. ;-) How about if I launch the argument from the concept of stigmergy? Any artifact, however intuitive it's interface, will be [mis-|ab-]used. To boot, its use (proper or not) will produce side effects not intended by the designer. Hence, any artifact like your furnace doesn't _express_ or _have_ a goal or purpose so much as one is ascribed to it by observers. It's this perspective that allows me to enjoy graffiti, even gangster tags, so much more than some people. I even enjoy some forms of vandalism (though I can't bring myself to participate). A more benign form of vandalism are the relatively new unconferences and things like collaborative fiction. Hell, even open-ended nonlinear games like grand theft auto help demonstrate the (absence of) telos in artifacts. No, I maintain that the only objects capable of expressing purpose or tending toward a goal are those with actor status, those identifiable (but non-atomic) units who act as their own agents. Everything else is premature conclusion and wishful thinking on the part of some observer. (Perhaps your furnace is not really a furnace! It just acts that way when you're not around.) -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Glen of course the next step in a discussion like this is for someone to ask you what evidence you have that any actual thing has more actor status than a thermostat. Answering this questions adequately requires 1) taking into account the complexity of what a thermostat accomplishes and 2) not pretending than everything people do is magically undetermined. And... you have to avoid inter-defining show's purpose and has actor status. If they are synonyms, then your claim that the only objects capable of expressing purpose or tending toward a goal are those with actor status doesn't help explain anything. Eric On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 10:29 AM, glen ropella g...@ropella.name wrote: On 09/15/2012 06:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: Wow! This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was. Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the background. For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system. It acts in such a way as to maintain a set point. So do I, sometimes. Me and my furnace: we are telic systems. I disagree about the furnace, obviously. I could argue from the dictionary, but I'll spare you that. ;-) How about if I launch the argument from the concept of stigmergy? Any artifact, however intuitive it's interface, will be [mis-|ab-]used. To boot, its use (proper or not) will produce side effects not intended by the designer. Hence, any artifact like your furnace doesn't _express_ or _have_ a goal or purpose so much as one is ascribed to it by observers. It's this perspective that allows me to enjoy graffiti, even gangster tags, so much more than some people. I even enjoy some forms of vandalism (though I can't bring myself to participate). A more benign form of vandalism are the relatively new unconferences and things like collaborative fiction. Hell, even open-ended nonlinear games like grand theft auto help demonstrate the (absence of) telos in artifacts. No, I maintain that the only objects capable of expressing purpose or tending toward a goal are those with actor status, those identifiable (but non-atomic) units who act as their own agents. Everything else is premature conclusion and wishful thinking on the part of some observer. (Perhaps your furnace is not really a furnace! It just acts that way when you're not around.) -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org Eric Charles Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
You guys clearly know too much about philosophy and not enough about zombies. Your notion that there is a single type of zombie has long been discredited. Here's a handy chart that I hope can inform your discussion. http://www.geekologie.com/image.php?path=/2010/10/05/zombie-chart-full.jpg —R On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Glen, Wow! This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was. Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the background. For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system. It acts in such a way as to maintain a set point. So do I, sometimes. Me and my furnace: we are telic systems. All the best, Nick -Original Message- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ropella Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:49 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist) On 09/14/2012 06:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: For me, consciousness is a point of view, and any telic system has a point of view. Zombies are telic systems, no? That's a great question. I would answer no. Zombies cannot be telic (as I understand that word, of course) because they are enslaved by their context. They are not ends in and of themselves. They are tools whose purpose has been installed in them by some non-zombie actor. FWIW, the Rosenites would disagree with me. They'd claim that a zombie (were such possible) would be an organism closed to efficient cause (agency). From this, they claim such closure allows anticipation, which, in turn, allows final cause (purpose) ... all without any requirement for _consciousness_ ... but with a requirement for reflective self-reference (aka closure). Getting from reflection to consciousness might not be that hard. And I support them in their quest. ;-) But they haven't proven the closure to me. I believe we organisms are only partially closed (to any of the causes). Complete closure, in any of the causes, looks more like death to me. So, there's something missing from their framework ... to the limited extent to which I understand it. Now, we might be able to reverse engineer a tool's purpose from its attributes. And in that sense, a zombie might express a goal or purpose and be called telic ... but that purpose would not be its _own_. Perhaps a tool is telic, but it's not autotelic. And this is where faith and crazy enter. When we can't reverse engineer a person's purpose ... or more accurately ... when we can't empathize ... we can't tell ourselves a story in which context their actions make sense, then they're acting on faith or they're crazy. It is this ability to empathize ... for your neurons to be stimulated similarly to your referent's by observing their behavior ... that presents us with the zombie paradox. On the one hand, telling a believable story turns you into a _machine_, a tool, without personal responsibility or accountability. (My parents made me this way!) But on the other hand, not telling a story makes you alien, crazy, a wart that has to be removed. Interesting people walk that fine line between adequately explaining themselves but leaving just enough craziness and mystery to preserve their identity, to avoid being a zombie. I usually fail and am often accused of being a tool. 8^) Anyway, if you are curious, it's laid out in the conversation with the Devils Advocate on page 16 of the attached. Let me know what you think, if you have time to look at it. I will read it. Thanks. But in case it's not obvious, you must know that I don't take this stuff very seriously. I only think/talk about this stuff to distract me from work. ;-) So, it's unlikely that I'll be able to give it the attention that it and you deserve. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 9:18 AM, Robert Holmes rob...@robertholmes.orgwrote: You guys clearly know too much about philosophy and not enough about zombies. Your notion that there is a single type of zombie has long been discredited. Not to mention the original meaning, which is somebody who was slipped a poison that gives the appearance of death, but can be reversed later after they are dug out of the grave and drugged to become servants - often to be the motive force of a crime so that the schemer can act with impunity due to the zombie scapegoat. It brings another whole level to the discussion about free will. -Arlo James Barnes FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist)
And to tie this into the other discussion: The CDC is looking out for you: http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies/#/page/1 Curt On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 10:18 AM, Robert Holmes rob...@robertholmes.orgwrote: You guys clearly know too much about philosophy and not enough about zombies. Your notion that there is a single type of zombie has long been discredited. Here's a handy chart that I hope can inform your discussion. http://www.geekologie.com/image.php?path=/2010/10/05/zombie-chart-full.jpg —R On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 7:59 AM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Glen, Wow! This Zombie thing is WAY more complicated than I thought it was. Although I haven't read any Kant first hand, I hear him lurking in the background. For me, a thermostat/furnace system is a telic system. It acts in such a way as to maintain a set point. So do I, sometimes. Me and my furnace: we are telic systems. All the best, Nick -Original Message- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ropella Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 9:49 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people (was America and the Middle East: Murder in Libya | The Economist) On 09/14/2012 06:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: For me, consciousness is a point of view, and any telic system has a point of view. Zombies are telic systems, no? That's a great question. I would answer no. Zombies cannot be telic (as I understand that word, of course) because they are enslaved by their context. They are not ends in and of themselves. They are tools whose purpose has been installed in them by some non-zombie actor. FWIW, the Rosenites would disagree with me. They'd claim that a zombie (were such possible) would be an organism closed to efficient cause (agency). From this, they claim such closure allows anticipation, which, in turn, allows final cause (purpose) ... all without any requirement for _consciousness_ ... but with a requirement for reflective self-reference (aka closure). Getting from reflection to consciousness might not be that hard. And I support them in their quest. ;-) But they haven't proven the closure to me. I believe we organisms are only partially closed (to any of the causes). Complete closure, in any of the causes, looks more like death to me. So, there's something missing from their framework ... to the limited extent to which I understand it. Now, we might be able to reverse engineer a tool's purpose from its attributes. And in that sense, a zombie might express a goal or purpose and be called telic ... but that purpose would not be its _own_. Perhaps a tool is telic, but it's not autotelic. And this is where faith and crazy enter. When we can't reverse engineer a person's purpose ... or more accurately ... when we can't empathize ... we can't tell ourselves a story in which context their actions make sense, then they're acting on faith or they're crazy. It is this ability to empathize ... for your neurons to be stimulated similarly to your referent's by observing their behavior ... that presents us with the zombie paradox. On the one hand, telling a believable story turns you into a _machine_, a tool, without personal responsibility or accountability. (My parents made me this way!) But on the other hand, not telling a story makes you alien, crazy, a wart that has to be removed. Interesting people walk that fine line between adequately explaining themselves but leaving just enough craziness and mystery to preserve their identity, to avoid being a zombie. I usually fail and am often accused of being a tool. 8^) Anyway, if you are curious, it's laid out in the conversation with the Devils Advocate on page 16 of the attached. Let me know what you think, if you have time to look at it. I will read it. Thanks. But in case it's not obvious, you must know that I don't take this stuff very seriously. I only think/talk about this stuff to distract me from work. ;-) So, it's unlikely that I'll be able to give it the attention that it and you deserve. -- glen == Hail Eris! FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM
