Re: [agi] CEMI Field
Hi Richard, It says, in effect Hey, the explanation of consciousness is that it is caused by X where X is something that explains absolutely nothing about whatever consciousness is supposed to be. Moreover, the person espousing the theory, you can bet, will not be able to state exactly what they think consciousness actually is... they will just be able to tell you that, whatever it is, their candidate explains it. I know why you are being sceptical - my initial reactions to theories of consciousness are usually the same, because people who propose them usually have ulterior motives (special status of humans, dualism, religion whatever..) I don't think that this scientist has these motives, as he is strictly on the physicalist side. BTW, he also writes a bit about free will, I disagree with him on this notion as I can not see where free will could enter a physicalist picture of reality. (But that is anther controversy ;-) The thing is this: consciousness (the basic phenomenon of awareness) needs explaining, and I believe science can explain it in physicalist way. I could just as easily say that consciousness is explained by ... hair follicles. This Hair Follicle Theory of Consciousness would have the same qualifications to be considered the correct theory. Well no - because, esp. via brain lesions etc, we can fairly definitly locate consciousness _in_ the brain (or the whole brain) - but not _outside_ the brain. So we just have to look _where_ in the brain this happens. We can now endorse modular theories or comprehensive ones, but for this is not very satisfactory: consciousness is being felt as a unity, and I can't quite see how individual neurons firing can lead to a unified feeling: this also goes for synchronous firing, because neuron A does not know that B fires syncronously, so how could it make a difference at the neural level (I hope you know what I mean, I can elaborate). But the EM field is a unity - the field is caused by the summary of _all_ neurons in the brain, and it is also _caused_ by the electric potentials in all neurons. Also, the EM field is perfectly physicalist and does not invoke QM mysteries (a la Hameroff/Penrose which I find bogus and has been quantitatively refuted by Max Tegmark) There are more theories of consciousness of this sort than you can swing a cat at. Go to the Tucson Conference in a few months' time and you will be able to listen to at least fifty of them. Yes I know - and most of them a pure bogus at first sight - but I do not see how this goes for this theory. We have four fources: gravity, weak and strong nuclear force, and em force. I think em is the only force which is a candidate for explaining consciousness. If you do not want to locate consciousness in any of the forces, then what? Of course, you can say it is an emergent property, but this usually just begs the question. I am not yet hooked to the EM-field theory. But it is the most interesting candidate I have seen in a long time. Regards, Günther -- Günther Greindl Department of Philosophy of Science University of Vienna [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/ Blog: http://dao.complexitystudies.org/ Site: http://www.complexitystudies.org - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=89877960-1ebb1b
Re: Singularity Outcomes [WAS Re: [agi] OpenMind, MindPixel founders both commit suicide
Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This whole scenario is filled with unjustified, unexamined assumptions. For example, you suddenly say I foresee a problem when the collective computing power of the network exceeds the collective computing power of the humans that administer it. Humans will no longer be able to keep up with the complexity of the system... Do you mean collective intelligence? Because if you mean collective computing power I cannot see what measure you are using (my laptop has greater computing power than me already, because it can do more arithmetic sums in one second than I have done in my life so far). And either way, this comes right after a great big AND THEN A MIRACLE HAPPENS step ...! You were talking about lots of dumb, specialized agents distributed around the world, and then all of a sudden you start talking as if they could be intelligent. Why should anyone believe they would spontaneously do that? First they are agents, then all of a sudden they are AGIs and they leave us behind: I see no reason to allow that step in the argument. In short, it looks like an even bigger non-sequiteur than before. Yes, I mean collective intelligence. The miracle is that any interface to the large network of simple machines will appear intelligent, in the same way that Google can make a person appear to know a lot more than they do. It is hard to predict what this collective intelligence will do, in the same way as it is hard to predict human behavior by studying individual neurons. I don't know if my outline for an infrastructure for AGI will be built as I designed it, but I believe something like it WILL be built, probably ad-hoc and very complex, because it has economic value. This argument is *exactly* the same as an old, old argument that appeared in science fiction stories back in the early 20th century: some people believed that the telephone network might get one connection too many and suddenly wake up and be intelligent. I do not believe you have any more justification for assuming that a set of dumb computers will suddenly become more than the sum of thir collective dumbness. The brain consists of many dumb neurons that, collectively, make something intelligent. But it is not the mere fact of them being all in the same place at the same time that makes the collective intelligent, it is their organization. Organization is everything. You must demonstrate some reason why the collective net of dumb computers will be intelligent: it is not enough to simply assert that they will, or might, become intelligent. If you had some specific line of reasoning to show that the right organization could be given to them, then I will show you that the same organization will be put into some other set of computers, deliberately, under the control of the factors that I previously described, and that this will happen long before the general network gets that organization. Richard Loosemore - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=89898115-135d06
Re: [agi] CEMI Field
Gunther: we can fairly definitly locate consciousness _in_ the brain (or the whole brain) - but not _outside_ the brain. Except that the brain isn't sentient, itself. And evolutionarily, the brain is a somewhat belated development/ centralisation of a distributed nervous system, no? The brain is essential for consciousness, but does not necessarily contain consciousness? - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=89893750-de88ca
Re: [agi] CEMI Field
Günther Greindl wrote: Hi Richard, It says, in effect Hey, the explanation of consciousness is that it is caused by X where X is something that explains absolutely nothing about whatever consciousness is supposed to be. Moreover, the person espousing the theory, you can bet, will not be able to state exactly what they think consciousness actually is... they will just be able to tell you that, whatever it is, their candidate explains it. I know why you are being sceptical - my initial reactions to theories of consciousness are usually the same, because people who propose them usually have ulterior motives (special status of humans, dualism, religion whatever..) I don't think that this scientist has these motives, as he is strictly on the physicalist side. BTW, he also writes a bit about free will, I disagree with him on this notion as I can not see where free will could enter a physicalist picture of reality. (But that is anther controversy ;-) The thing is this: consciousness (the basic phenomenon of awareness) needs explaining, and I believe science can explain it in physicalist way. I take a very similar position, in some ways. I have actually gone so far as to build a theory that I believe *does* address the questions of what we mean by consciousness, as well as the further question o what it actually is. (I gave this as a poster presentation at the last Tucson conference). My conclusion is a strange one that does admit that there is a thing called consciousness - there is definitely something that needs to be explained - but at the same time I believe it has a kind of unique status, so the physicalist/dualist controversy becomes finessed. My only problem with people like the one you cite is that they often declare that consciousness is X without being clear about what they really think consciousness is. I agree that some of them have ulterior motives, but I would be willing to forgive them that, if only they would start by being clear about what the C-word actually means :-). I am (of course!) pushing my own theory a bit here, because I believe that what happens when you try to really pin down the concept of C is that, in fact, the next question gets answered almost automatically. I could just as easily say that consciousness is explained by ... hair follicles. This Hair Follicle Theory of Consciousness would have the same qualifications to be considered the correct theory. Well no - because, esp. via brain lesions etc, we can fairly definitly locate consciousness _in_ the brain (or the whole brain) - but not _outside_ the brain. So we just have to look _where_ in the brain this happens. We can now endorse modular theories or comprehensive ones, but for this is not very satisfactory: consciousness is being felt as a unity, and I can't quite see how individual neurons firing can lead to a unified feeling: this also goes for synchronous firing, because neuron A does not know that B fires syncronously, so how could it make a difference at the neural level (I hope you know what I mean, I can elaborate). Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean: well put. But the EM field is a unity - the field is caused by the summary of _all_ neurons in the brain, and it is also _caused_ by the electric potentials in all neurons. Also, the EM field is perfectly physicalist and does not invoke QM mysteries (a la Hameroff/Penrose which I find bogus and has been quantitatively refuted by Max Tegmark) There are some problems with simply saying that C is lcoated in the brain: mostly these problems have to do with slippage of the meaning of C from the hard-problem version (the problem of explaining pure subjectivity) to the being awake version. That was certaily the biggest problem at the talks I saw at the Tucson conference: many of the neuroscentists would start their talks with high-minded references to real consciousness (perhaps even say hard problem at some point), but then it would gradually become clear that the actual content of their talk was drifting into a discussion of where in the brain you find correlates of the subject's sense of awareness. In other words, they wanted to know which bits of the brain needed to be firing if the subject was to have explicit knowledge of events ... which is the same as awakeness. All the arguments for localization within the brain seem to fall back into this mode. We could pick one of them at random, I am sure, and analyze it carefully, and find that it either says (a) that hard-problem consciousness is inside the brain because the author thinks so (with no actual reason), or (b) awakeness-consciousness is located inside the brain because the subject is only aware of things when some place is active. The problem, I think, is that when you insist on the author of the idea saying exactly what C is, they cannot be specific enough to get to the point where any concept of physical
Re : [agi] CEMI Field
conciousness is meta-reflexion on reflexion as meta-cognition for cognition if you know where is the reflexion,you know where is conciousness oops...too simple bruno - Message d'origine De : Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] À : agi@v2.listbox.com Envoyé le : Vendredi, 25 Janvier 2008, 16h38mn 36s Objet : Re: [agi] CEMI Field Günther Greindl wrote: Hi Richard, It says, in effect Hey, the explanation of consciousness is that it is caused by X where X is something that explains absolutely nothing about whatever consciousness is supposed to be. Moreover, the person espousing the theory, you can bet, will not be able to state exactly what they think consciousness actually is... they will just be able to tell you that, whatever it is, their candidate explains it. I know why you are being sceptical - my initial reactions to theories of consciousness are usually the same, because people who propose them usually have ulterior motives (special status of humans, dualism, religion whatever..) I don't think that this scientist has these motives, as he is strictly on the physicalist side. BTW, he also writes a bit about free will, I disagree with him on this notion as I can not see where free will could enter a physicalist picture of reality. (But that is anther controversy ;-) The thing is this: consciousness (the basic phenomenon of awareness) needs explaining, and I believe science can explain it in physicalist way. I take a very similar position, in some ways. I have actually gone so far as to build a theory that I believe *does* address the questions of what we mean by consciousness, as well as the further question o what it actually is. (I gave this as a poster presentation at the last Tucson conference). My conclusion is a strange one that does admit that there is a thing called consciousness - there is definitely something that needs to be explained - but at the same time I believe it has a kind of unique status, so the physicalist/dualist controversy becomes finessed. My only problem with people like the one you cite is that they often declare that consciousness is X without being clear about what they really think consciousness is. I agree that some of them have ulterior motives, but I would be willing to forgive them that, if only they would start by being clear about what the C-word actually means :-). I am (of course!) pushing my own theory a bit here, because I believe that what happens when you try to really pin down the concept of C is that, in fact, the next question gets answered almost automatically. I could just as easily say that consciousness is explained by ... hair follicles. This Hair Follicle Theory of Consciousness would have the same qualifications to be considered the correct theory. Well no - because, esp. via brain lesions etc, we can fairly definitly locate consciousness _in_ the brain (or the whole brain) - but not _outside_ the brain. So we just have to look _where_ in the brain this happens. We can now endorse modular theories or comprehensive ones, but for this is not very satisfactory: consciousness is being felt as a unity, and I can't quite see how individual neurons firing can lead to a unified feeling: this also goes for synchronous firing, because neuron A does not know that B fires syncronously, so how could it make a difference at the neural level (I hope you know what I mean, I can elaborate). Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean: well put. But the EM field is a unity - the field is caused by the summary of _all_ neurons in the brain, and it is also _caused_ by the electric potentials in all neurons. Also, the EM field is perfectly physicalist and does not invoke QM mysteries (a la Hameroff/Penrose which I find bogus and has been quantitatively refuted by Max Tegmark) There are some problems with simply saying that C is lcoated in the brain: mostly these problems have to do with slippage of the meaning of C from the hard-problem version (the problem of explaining pure subjectivity) to the being awake version. That was certaily the biggest problem at the talks I saw at the Tucson conference: many of the neuroscentists would start their talks with high-minded references to real consciousness (perhaps even say hard problem at some point), but then it would gradually become clear that the actual content of their talk was drifting into a discussion of where in the brain you find correlates of the subject's sense of awareness. In other words, they wanted to know which bits of the brain needed to be firing if the subject was to have explicit knowledge of events ... which is the same as awakeness. All the arguments for localization within the brain seem to fall back into this mode. We could pick one of them at random, I am sure, and analyze it carefully, and find that it either says (a) that hard-problem consciousness is inside the brain
Re: Singularity Outcomes [WAS Re: [agi] OpenMind, MindPixel founders both commit suicide
--- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This whole scenario is filled with unjustified, unexamined assumptions. For example, you suddenly say I foresee a problem when the collective computing power of the network exceeds the collective computing power of the humans that administer it. Humans will no longer be able to keep up with the complexity of the system... Do you mean collective intelligence? Because if you mean collective computing power I cannot see what measure you are using (my laptop has greater computing power than me already, because it can do more arithmetic sums in one second than I have done in my life so far). And either way, this comes right after a great big AND THEN A MIRACLE HAPPENS step ...! You were talking about lots of dumb, specialized agents distributed around the world, and then all of a sudden you start talking as if they could be intelligent. Why should anyone believe they would spontaneously do that? First they are agents, then all of a sudden they are AGIs and they leave us behind: I see no reason to allow that step in the argument. In short, it looks like an even bigger non-sequiteur than before. Yes, I mean collective intelligence. The miracle is that any interface to the large network of simple machines will appear intelligent, in the same way that Google can make a person appear to know a lot more than they do. It is hard to predict what this collective intelligence will do, in the same way as it is hard to predict human behavior by studying individual neurons. I don't know if my outline for an infrastructure for AGI will be built as I designed it, but I believe something like it WILL be built, probably ad-hoc and very complex, because it has economic value. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=89895239-3ad383
Re: Singularity Outcomes [WAS Re: [agi] OpenMind, MindPixel founders both commit suicide
Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You must demonstrate some reason why the collective net of dumb computers will be intelligent: it is not enough to simply assert that they will, or might, become intelligent. The intelligence comes from an infrastructure that routes messages to the right experts. I know it is hard to imagine because distributed search engines haven't been built yet, but it is similar to the way that Google makes people appear smarter. In my thesis I investigated whether distributed search scales to large networks, and it does. http://cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/thesis.html Your analogy to people appearing smarter because they can use Google simply does not apply to the case you propose. You suggest that a collection of *sub-intelligent* (this is crucial) computer programs can ad up to full intelligence just in virtue of their existence. This is not the same as a collection of *already-intelligent* humans appearing more intelligent because they have access to a lot more information than they did before. [dumb machine] + Google = dumb machine. [smart human] + Google = smarter human. 1) There is every reason to believe that a human intelligence could become smarter as a result of having quick access to an internet knowledgebase. 2) There is absolutely no reason to believe that a bunch of sub-intelligent computers will get up over the threshold and become intelligent, just because they have access to an internet knowledgebase. You have work to do (a lot of work!) to persuade us to accept the idea contained in (2). This is similar to the machine-translation fiasco in the 1960s: they believed that the only thing standing in the way of a full-up translation system was lots of good dictionary lookup. It simply was not true: a dictionary maketh not a mind. As for you last comment that The intelligence comes from an infrastructure that routes messages to the right experts this simply begs the question. If the infrastructure were smart enough to always know how to find the right expert, the infrastructure would BE the intelligence, and the experts hat it finds would just be a bunch of dictionaries or subcomponents. You are implicitly assuming intelligence in that infrastructure, without showing where the intelligence comes from. Certainly you give no reason why we should believe that the infrastructure would spontaneously become intelligent without us doing a lot of work. If we knew how to put the intelligence into that infrastructure we would know how to put it into other places, and then (once again) we are back to the scenario that I discussed, where someone has explicitly figured out how to build an intelligence, and then deliberately chooses what to do with it (i.e., there is no accidental emergence, beyond human control). Richard Loosemore - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=89931136-e22764
Re: Singularity Outcomes [WAS Re: [agi] OpenMind, MindPixel founders both commit suicide
--- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You suggest that a collection of *sub-intelligent* (this is crucial) computer programs can ad up to full intelligence just in virtue of their existence. This is not the same as a collection of *already-intelligent* humans appearing more intelligent because they have access to a lot more information than they did before. [dumb machine] + Google = dumb machine. [smart human] + Google = smarter human. My point of concern is when individual machines (not the whole network) exceed individual brains in intelligence. They can't yet, but they will. Google already knows more than any human, and can retrieve the information faster, but it can't launch a singularity. When your computer can write and debug software faster and more accurately than you can, then you should worry. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=89960966-ec355b
Re: Singularity Outcomes [WAS Re: [agi] OpenMind, MindPixel founders both commit suicide
Matt Mahoney wrote: --- Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You suggest that a collection of *sub-intelligent* (this is crucial) computer programs can ad up to full intelligence just in virtue of their existence. This is not the same as a collection of *already-intelligent* humans appearing more intelligent because they have access to a lot more information than they did before. [dumb machine] + Google = dumb machine. [smart human] + Google = smarter human. My point of concern is when individual machines (not the whole network) exceed individual brains in intelligence. They can't yet, but they will. Google already knows more than any human, and can retrieve the information faster, but it can't launch a singularity. When your computer can write and debug software faster and more accurately than you can, then you should worry. I think this conversation is going nowhere: your above paragraph once again ignores everything I have said up to now. No computer is going to start writing and debugging software faster and more accurately than we can UNLESS we design it to do so, and during the design process we will have ample opportunity to ensre that the machine will never be able to pose a danger of any kind. Richard Loosemore - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=90009288-64a72b
