You are psychic...I was going to ask for a bio!.... it is refreshing to find a computer scientist that honestly faces the brute biological reality of messy neuro-cells and their cognitive faculties and really lets it speak its story ... one more complex than mere symbol manipulation ...As an engineer I admit to the same experience... except I am going to build the AGI after the fashion of the experience thus obtained... dilettantry is not an option!... although if you are a multidisciplinary type (as it seems you are....you are necessarily delittantish, for there is no profession for it!
cheers col Quoting David Nyman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Recent dialogues with Russell, plus discovering and finding helpful > previous joining posts, prompts me to post this for reference > purposes. > > I was born in 1950 in Glasgow Scotland of Anglo-Scottish parents, and > come from Hungarian, Middle Eastern, Russian, and Polish ancestry > insofar as I can trace it. Mixed, anyway. > > My formal academic background is also best described as 'mixed', but > early on I always felt a bit inadequate compared to my teachers, who > seemed to just 'know' the 'answers' somehow, because they wrote them > straight on to the blackboard. Myself, I had to 'puzzle' them out by > something like trial and error. Also, their 'explanations' seemed to > lead only to more questions. This exasperated my teachers. One day > (I guess I must have been about 9) I read a book of logic problems > that not only contained the answers, but the author's account of how > he'd reached them. Turns out he'd used trial and error! I remember > it dawned on me like a bolt of lightning: "Everybody thinks like > this!" And thus reassured, I went on in this way. > > There's a corollary to this tale. Many years later, I attended a > seminar where the neuroscientist Karl Pribram was the principal > presenter. I was so stimulated by the dialogue that I 'kidnapped' him > afterwards by giving him a lift to the house where we'd both been > invited to dinner. As he sat wearily in the passenger seat, I rambled > on about this and that, and after a while this led to my 'sharing' my > great 'Everybody thinks like that' insight. "You're wrong." he said, > and sank back into torpor. My heart sank. Then he sighed, and said: > "Only people who can think at all, think like that." > > My professional career spans 35+ years in computer systems development > in the private sector, from machine code and plug-board days, through > assembler and a wide variety of high-level languages. The hands-on > part spanned more than 20 years and I worked originally in commercial > applications development for systems vendors, focusing on elements of > operating systems and failure and recovery methods. I developed early > versions of 'net-change' manufacturing planning and forecasting > systems, and from 1989, was an early participant in the nascent on- > line (originally phone-based) retail financial sector. I became Head > of Systems Architecture and Head of Information Analysis for the first > UK on-line bank, and Head of IT for an on-line retail insurer. These > days, I do part time IT and business consultancy, and dabble in topics > like those on this list. I've now achieved the status I've always > sought: self-employed dilettante. > > I can't recall exactly when my interest in AI and 'mind body' issues > began, but it was re-stimulated by John Searle's ideas as presented in > the 1984 BBC Reith Lectures, which got me furiously thinking and > reading about functionalism and then-current mind-brain theories like > Pribram's Holonomic theory. I reached a vague realisation that > functionalism was incompatible with materialism, which is why I had a > start of recognition when I encountered Bruno's arguments. But I've > really spent the intervening period just 'dilettanting' around the > related areas - philosophy of mind, epistemology, QM, cosmology, > Darwinism, etc. - as my enthusiasm and energy waxes and wanes. > > I've read or skimmed quite a lot of the book list others have > mentioned, but definitely need more rigour on the math and logic > background. The existence of forums like this one has more or less > kept my marriage intact when it might not have survived many further > attempts to 'innocently' subvert ordinary conversations into > 'epistomology' or some such nonsense. > > A few books that have triggered something or other, or that I often > return to: > > The Fabric of Reality (Deutsch) > The Conscious Mind (Chalmers) > Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Bohm) > The End of Time (Barbour) > The Emperor's New Mind (Penrose) > Theory of Nothing (Standish) > Laws of Form (Spencer-Brown) > The Quark and The Jaguar (Gell-Mann) > Godel, Escher Bach (Hofstadter) > The Mind's I (Hofstadter and Dennett) > Consciousness Explained (Dennett) > The Selfish Gene (Dawkins) > The Blank Slate (Pinker) > The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Popper) > The Open Society and Its Enemies (Popper) > The Man who mistook His Wife for a Hat (Sacks) > The Society of Mind (Minsky) > How Children Learn (Holt) > The Act of Creation (Koestler) > The Psychology of Learning Mathematics (Skemp) > Frogs into Princes (Bandler and Grinder) > The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle) > Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Carroll) > Foucault's Pendulum (Eco) > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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