It is getting a bit late and was planning to respond more on this. The nonlinear aspect to consciousness may well relevant. In fact consciousness may have a lot to do with it with respect to chaos theory.
More later LC On Monday, February 19, 2018 at 2:27:37 PM UTC-6, cdemorsella wrote: > > > > On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 3:56 AM, Lawrence Crowell > <[email protected] <javascript:>> wrote: > On Sunday, February 18, 2018 at 10:00:24 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: > > > > On 2/18/2018 6:26 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote: > > Computers such as AlphaGo have complex algorithms for taking the rules of > a game like chess and running through long Markov chains of game events to > increase their data base for playing the game. There is not really anything > about "knowing something" going on here. There is a lot of hype over AI > these days, but I suspect a lot of this is meant to beguile people. I do > suspect in time we will interact with AI as if it were intelligent and > conscious. The really big changer though I think will be the neural-cyber > interlink that will put brains as the primary internet nodes. > > > Why would you suppose that when electronics have a signal speed ten > million times faster than neurons? Presently neurons have an advantage in > connection density and power dissipation; but I see no reason they can hold > that advantage. > > Brent > > > I think it may come down to computers that obey the Church-Turing thesis, > which is finite and bounded. Hofstadter's book *Godel Escher Bach* has a > chapter Bloop, Floop, Gloop where the Bloop means bounded loop or a halting > program on a Turing machine. Biology however is not Bloop, but is rather a > web of processors that are more Floop, or free loop. The busy beaver > algorithm is such a case, which grows in complexity with each step. The > computation of many fractals is this as well, where the Mandelbrot set with > each iteration on a certain scale needs refinement to another floating > point precision and thus grows in huge complexity. These of course in > practice halting because the programmer puts in by hand a stop. These are > recursively enumerable, and their complement in a set theoretic sense are > Godel loops or Gloop. For machines to have properties at least parallel to > conscious behavior we really have to be running in at least Floop and maybe > into Gloop. > > LC > > Not sure if this has been touched on in this thread but it seems to me > that the emergent phenomenon of both self-awareness and consciousness > depend on information hiding in some fundamental way. Both our self > awareness and our conscious minds, which from our incomplete perspective > seem to be innate and ever present (at least when we are awake) are > themselves the emergent outcomes of a vast amount of neural networked > activities that is exquisitely hidden from us. We are unaware of the > Genesis of our own awareness. > > Evidence from MRI scans supports this conclusion that before we are aware > of being aware of some objectively measurable external event, or before we > experience having a thought, that the almost one hundred billion neurons > crammed into our highly folded cortexual pizza pie stuffed inside our > skulls have been very busy and chatty indeed. As the MRI scans indicate. > > We are aware of being aware and we experience conscious existence, but the > process by which both our conscious experience and our own awareness of > being arises within our minds is largely hidden from us. > I think it is a fair and reasonable question to ask: Is information hiding > a necessary an integral aspect of processes through which self-awareness > and consciousness arise? > > In computer science the rather recent emergence of deep mind neural > networks that are characterized by having many layers, of which only the > input layer and output layer of neurons are directly measurable, while > conversely the many other layers that are arrayed in the stack between them > remain hidden offers some intriguing parallels that also seem to indicate a > critical role for information hiding. The Google deep mind machine learned > neural networks for image processing, for example, have 10 to 30 (or by now > perhaps even more) stacked layers of artificial neurons, most of which are > hidden. > > Because of the non-linearity of the processes in play within these > artificial deep stacks of layered artificial neurons it is difficult to > really know in any definitive manner exactly what is going on. The outcomes > from experimenting on the statistically trained (or in the vernacular, > machine learned) models, by for example tweaking training parameters to > experimentally see how doing so effects the resulting outcomes and by > also subsequently forensically analyzing any generated logs & other > telemetry are often surprisingly beautiful dreamscapes that are not > reducible to a series of algorithmic steps applied by the many hidden > layers to whatever input signals that have been fed to the input layer of > neurons. > > It seems to me that the emergence of consciousness & self awareness as > well is exquisitely nonlinear in nature. And that this outcome > characterized by being non-linear, itself depends on information hiding in > order to be able to operate. Each successive layer in the stack is mostly > unaware of the vast array of activities occurring on the layers beneath > it... or above it for that matter. > > Would consciousness or self awareness even be possible without introducing > information hiding in the deep stack through which these phenomena emerge? > Personally I do not think we could be conscious or self aware without the > multiple degrees of non-linearity introduced into the sensorial signal + > triggered memory recall processing stream by the fire wall of information > hiding. > > It is by hiding away, by far most of the processing stack from us that we > experience this seemingly magical state of being. We emerge in a non linear > manner from a hidden world that we are (for the most part) blithely unaware > of. > > The fact that a very similar kind of process seems to be taking place in > these stacked layers of artificial neurons most of which are hidden > supports this thesis. > > Is information hiding in fact, necessary to the emergence of > self-awareness & consciousness? > > This is the question I pose. > > -Chris > > > > e 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 [email protected] <javascript:>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <javascript:>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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