On 9/2/2014 10:35 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
*From:*[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] *On
Behalf Of *John Clark
*Sent:* Tuesday, September 02, 2014 6:58 AM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: AI Dooms Us
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 2:45 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> Amazing isn’t it. The elegance of self-assembling processes that can do
so much
with so little input.
Yes, very amazing!
> I doubt 1000 lines of computer code is a large enough initial instruction
set even
for a highly self-generating system.
My intuition would say that you're right but my intuition would also say that 750 Meg is
not enough information to make a human baby, and yet we know for a fact that it is. So I
must conclude that our intuition is not very good in matters of this sort.
Point taken, but then a human baby is a plastic template for the individual to emerge
in; a fully formed adult human only develops after decades of experience and learning.
All of that living experience and cultural learning is not contained inside that DNA bundle.
I disagree with your conclusion that epigenetic effects are of minor consequence. For
example a fetus developing in a low stress nourishing environment will during
embryogenesis – or so I am arguing – develop into a different human being than that same
child in an alternate universe where it is exposed to high stress and low nourishment.
The very rapid unfolding sequence of DNA choreographed events that occurs during
embryogenesis will unfold in a different manner in each instance.
The rapidity of unfolding isn't really relevant to the information required. Just think
what you're saying from an information standpoint. At the most simplistic level, stress
(whatever that is for a fetus?) and nourishment are two bits. Realistically it's maybe a
half dozen bits. For those few bits to make a significant difference in the baby can only
happen if those significant differences are already encoded in the DNA and the epigenetic
bits are just "picking out" one from another. Given the vagueness of things like "stress"
it's hard to see how they can be factors distinguishable from random effects like cosmic
rays. Are there more epigenetic effects in Denver and Mexico City?
Time will tell… eventually (and perhaps soon) I believe we will crack this code
operating over the code. That I believe provides life with a key ability to respond – in
a genetic manner to rapidly mutating environments. It is an extra mechanism that works
hand I hand with DNA switching expression on and off… selecting from alternate exressions.
Implying there are alternate expressions already coded in that 750Mb.
>>> The same strand of DNA, depending on the dynamic action of the
large
number of transcription factors
>> A transcription factors is just a protein that binds to specific DNA
sequences. And where did the information come from to know what
sequence of
amino acids will build that very important protein? From the original
750 Meg of
course.
> From that original bundle of genetic code + environmental influences.
>>I don't know what you're talking about.
I am talking about epigenetic environmentally driven processes both acting to control –
to a degree -- which regions of DNA get expressed, and how these regions finally get
transcribed into mRNA, in what is a highly dynamic process occurring within the cell’s
nucleus -- with much snipping and splicing taking place on the underlying original copy
of the DNA being transcribed. Out of this process occurring within the nucleus emerges
the resulting mRNA that ultimately is sent out to the ribosomes (where further front
line editing may be taking place,)
What a protein can do is a function of it's shape, and the shape of a transcription
factor, just like any other protein, is entirely determined by its amino acid sequence,
and that is entirely determined by the Messenger RNA sequence, and that is entirely
determined by the DNA sequence in the genome. Proteins with the same amino acid sequence
always fold up in exactly the same way, at least under all environmental conditions
found inside living cells. Yes if environmental conditions are very extreme, if things
are very hot or the pH is super high or super low the protein can become denatured and
fold up into weird useless shapes, but such conditions are always fatal to life so it's
irrelevant. Under all lifelike conditions proteins always fold up in the exact same way.
> 90% of the living things in a human body DO NOT have human DNA not by
weight of
course but by census
Our primary interest around here is the brain and what the brain does, mind; and I don't
see the relevance bacteria have to that. But if you want to include the genome of E
coli that's fine, there's plenty of unused space on that CD for it.
There are a heck of lot more species inhabiting our guts than just one or two species of
E coli. They perform many services, including it is being discovered working very
closely with our own immune systems to warn their human host of the presence of pathogens.
Yet "bubble boys" that are born with dysfunctional immune systems and are kept in sterile
environments seem perfectly human.
> The kind of flora and fauna we have in our guts in many ways determines
who we
are, what we think and what we desire.
So the key to consciousness and the factor that determines our personal identity lies in
our poo?
If you want to characterize your digestive process by what is defecated out as waste I
think you must not have a good grasp of what the digestive process is all about. It is
our primary interface with the external world. It is the interface where we absorb the
external world into our bodies internal world. It even has its own tiny frontline brain
– the enteric nervous system.
You think that the cravings for sugary foods, that the depression that often occurs in
sugar addicted people when they do not feed their habit is purely human in origin and
that the candida yeast that such persons are often infested with has absolutely no role
in this? There are numerous amazing animal studies that prove that parasite species can
control the behavior of their hosts – even to the extent of making their hosts engage in
behavior that is designed to get them eaten as certain parasitic species do to insects
they have infected (in the Amazon I believe) making the host insects climb to the
exposed tops of the leaves where they become easy prey for birds of the species that is
the next host species in that parasites life cycle.
Just because a thought pops up in the brain does not mean that the mind is the executive
actor at the root of the desire or emotion. Parasites have evolved very sophisticated
chemical signaling that they use to influence their hosts.
> It affects out well-being
So would an inflamed toenail, but I don't think a investigation of that affliction will
bring much enlightenment on the nature of intelligence or consciousness.
Apples and oranges. The internal chemical signaling that parasites engage in to harness
a hosts immune system or affect its mental state is the evolved mechanism by which these
parasitic species have learned to control their hosts. An inflamed toenail is a wound
and the pain is the organisms own nervous system response.
As I said apples and oranges.
> I do not see a single human (or other eukaryote) only in terms of its own
DNA +
epigenetic meta-programming over the DNA base, but also in terms of the
ecosystem
that exists within.
That is where we differ and I think that is your fundamental error, you believe you must
understand everything before you can understand anything, in other words you do what is
becoming increasingly fashionable these days, you reject reductionism in spite of it
having worked so spectacularly well during the last 400 years. I don't.
John K Clark
If you need to saw a piece of lumber don’t use a hammer. Just because one tool –
reductionism has had spectacular success in increasing our understanding (and I am not
denying that it has) does not mean that it is always the appropriate tool to use for the
job.
In understanding the workings of complex multi-actor systems reductionist approach has
not produced spectacular results. A systems approach is required as well – to complement
the understanding of the parts with a different kind of understanding of the dynamic
working of the whole.
A systems approach is not a holistic approach. It's still reduction plus synthesis. I'd
say holism has never produced any results. What people sometimes cite as holistic is
really abstracting the parts of a system in a different way, e.g. thermodynamics just
worked with controllable variables and neglected molecules.
Surely this is important for something like understanding consciousness and self-aware
intelligence.
Yet, on Bruno's theory, consciousness is a binary attribute, all-or-nothing. Intelligence
has degrees and is no doubt relative environment and context, but not consciousness
(Although I disagree with Bruno on this, I think it may be semantic difference since we
seem to agree that there are qualitatively different kinds of consciousness).
Brent
-Chris
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