On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 5:43 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, May 2, 2013 Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote: > >> > Things like Hebbian learning and artificial models of neurons have >> > explanatory power > > > Yes but Donald Hebb didn't just say "it happens because of emergence", he > explained exactly how these higher level laws worked.
This is a straw man. I never claimed that "it happens because of emergence" is a valid explanation. >> >> if you just wanted to know how to make a AI you could reverse engineer >> >> a human brain, you might not understand why your creation worked but that >> >> wouldn't stop it from working. >> >> > I think it's more feasible to try to reverse-engineer the morphogenetic >> > algorithms encoded in the DNA. > > > I think that would be much much more difficult and also unnecessary. To make > a AI by reverse engineering it would be enough to have a map of how > information flows in the brain, I'd say you would also have to deal with neuroplasticity. The process that makes the brain grow is part of what makes it work. > every detail about the physical structure of > that organ would not be needed to make a electronic analog that behaves in a > intelligent way. And of course your approach would be useless for uploading. Good point. >> > We would still not understand the creation, > > > It doesn't matter it would still work, A few emails ago this wasn't good enough for you. I'm confused. > and because the creation's mind would > operate several hundred million times faster than ours it might understand > much better than we do. > >> > I, for example, love David Lynch's films > > > By far Lynch's best was his first and was perhaps the strangest movie ever > made, his 1977 masterpiece "Eraserhead". My favorite is "Mulholland Drive" but I really like "Eraserhead" too. >> > I believe it is likely that consciousness is the fundamental stuff, > > > If so then it is silly to ask what consciousness is made of or to expect to > see a theory of consciousness. I'm interested in falsifications of this hypothesis. One possibility would be describing the mechanism by which consciousness emerges from brain activity. So far we only have hypothesis of the type "it happens because of emergence". It's silly to have theories on the origin of consciousness, maybe, if it is indeed fundamental, but not theories of consciousness. The proposal that consciousness is the fundamental stuff is, in fact, a theory of consciousness. >> > Evolution provides a compelling explanation for how intelligence >> > originated, > > > Yes. > >> > but it does not provide any explanation for how consciousness >> > originated, > > > So if consciousness is not a byproduct of intelligence then Darwin was > wrong. Why? I don't think he ever claimed consciousness was a byproduct of intelligence and you refuse to produce citations. If he did, evolution would still be in good standing, which is what he is known for anyway. >> > so it is perfectly reasonable to be agnostic on the origin of >> > consciousness while accepting Darwinism. For example, someone might come up >> > with a theory that is more general than evolution and also explains why >> > evolution is a good approximation for a subset of reality > > > You know you're in trouble when you've got to conjurer up new laws of > science that do absolutely nothing but shoehorn reality into your > preexisting ideas. I did no such thing. I made the incidental remark that evolution itself will possibly be eaten by some more general theory at some point. If you consider the MWI, for example, you can start to see how Evolution might not be the complete story. > So there is a pervasive new field in physics that scours > every square inch of space looking for intelligence and when it finds it and > its soft and squishy like a human brain it confers consciousness onto it but > if its hard and metallic like a computer it does not. Pathetic! This sort of > argument would convince nobody who didn't already want to be convinced. I don't understand how this relates to anything I've said. > John K Clark > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
