Steve Smith sasmyth at swcp.com, Sat Sep 10 11:00:22 EDT 2022:
This suggests to me that the very fundament of what I believe is
"consciousness" is self-other dualistic? Is there something unique
about (our familiar form of) consciousness that requires the self-other
duality?
I agree with your orientation. But I reject the idea that we're unique in our
self-other reflectivity. It seems like even pond scum engage in something like
mimicry. Similar to what you aim at for question 2, the thing being made is a
reflection of the thing making, and vice versa. So a paramecium following a
gradient makes the gradient and vice versa. This looks like primitive mimicry
to me.
The only difference between us and pond scum is the complexity of our internal
machinery. I.e. pond scum *does* create a kind of science and mathematics
(SAM). It's just that their SAM is obviously a mirror/dual to their internal
machinery. What Wolpert's asking/asserting is: Our SAM is a reflection of our
machinery. So the limitations of our SAM are directly caused by our structure.
But, of course, like you and Dave have said, some of that structure isn't
internal. It's transpersonal, cultural. And that culture has a historicity,
momentum, inertia, caused partly by the built environment, including normative
behaviors/ideas.
So a largely cultural tool like SAM has no choice but to reflect/mimic both our internal
machinery and the "nest" we've built. Counterfactually, what alternative SAMs
could we have built if we or our nest were different?
2. Restricting attention to what are, in some sense, the most
universal of humanity's achievements, the most graphic demonstrations
of our cognitive abilities:
Why were we able to construct present-day science and mathematics,
but no other species ever did? Why are we uniquely able to decipher
some features of the Cosmic Baker's hands by scrutinizing the
breadcrumbs that They scattered about the universe? Why do we have
that cognitive ability despite its fitness costs? Was it some subtle
requirement of the ecological niche in which we were formed — a niche
that at first glance appears rather pedestrian, and certainly does
not overtly select for the ability to construct something like
quantum chronodynamics? Or is our ability a spandrel, to use Gould
and Lewontin’s famous phrase — an evolutionary byproduct of some
other trait? Or is it just a cosmic fluke?
The fitness payout vs the fitness cost, I would claim *is* tool
creation/use... both physical artifacts (e.g. neolithic cutting tools)
and mental constructs (models and logic, no matter how limited) which
could be *shared* (communicated).
I really like the idea that the tool and the context are the same thing ... or
perhaps 2 abstracted aspects of the same thing. But your identity (fitness *is*
tool creation) sweeps a lot of detail under the rug. Some fitness moves very
fast (like many generations of gut biome within an 80 year life span) and some
fitness moves very slow (geology astronomy). A tool like SAM emerges much
slower than a tool like an arrow[head]. Even a single theorem/proof within SAM
develops more slowly than a single arrow[head].
So, abstractly, it's reasonable to pair fitness-scopes with tool-scopes. But that sort of
strict partial order (again cf List's levels paper) is prolly a fiction. I'd claim that
inter-level (cross-trophic) interaction is the rule, not the exception. But in the
context of Wolpert's question, what *could* it look like? It seems to hearken back to
Langton's "Life as it could be".
3. Are we really sure that no other species ever constructed some
equivalent of present-day SAM? Are we really sure that no other apes
— or cetaceans or cephalopods — have achieved some equivalent of our
SAM, but an equiva- lent that we are too limited to perceive?
As with the human archaelogical record, we only have recognizeable (to
our sensibilities) artifacts and preserved (if from another era) or
transported (if from another locale) to apprehend/interpret. Our own
Richard Lowenberg has spent some time studying/co-creating with Koko
<http://www.richardlowenberg.com/blog/koko-the-gorilla>... his stories
expand my idea of interspecies "communication" in a way that may be
responsive (if only mildly) to this question. I don't know if our
current understanding of the Cetacean or Cephalopod world hints strongly
one way or another, but I'd not be surprised if either/both were to be
"dreaming" in something like SAM as they go about what sometimes seems
like mundane business (singing songs that travel halfway around the
world in one case while changing colors and
flowing/dancing/fiddling-with-stuff in the other).
Well, I think both you and Wolpert are barking up the wrong tree, here. I think other species *do* create SAM analogs. Wolpert
hides his error within "some equivalent of". What could "equivalent" possibly mean, here? And why hedge it
with "some"? It's neither "dreaming" nor "equivalent". There is a family of possible SAMs. But
question 4 gets at this nicely. But I'm going to snip your response to Q4 because it only confirms the question, w/o trying to
answer it.
5. Ancillary abilities or no, are we unavoidably limited to enlarging
and en- riching the SAM that was produced by our species with the few
cognitive abilities we were born with? Is it impossible for us to
concoct wholly new types of cognitive abilities — computational
powers that are wholly novel in kind — which in turn could provide us
wholly new kinds of SAM, kinds of SAM that would concern aspects of
physical reality currently beyond our ken?
"Hypercomputation" in this context would be but one example? Not just
computing the extra-computable, or effing the ineffable but
qualitatively new structures that transcend that which we all consider
to be the limits to our conceptual universe? This is an area where I
am hopeful for CT becoming the language that allows us (maybe not me,
but many people) to express the fullness of what our limited conceptions
can express so that we *can* recognize where they might be lacking or
where a meta-construct can be laid atop?
Well, here is where I think your response to Q2 applies more than this response. There
should be punctuated catastrophes where the current SAM crumbles, some parts of which may
be used in a new SAM. The idea that we are (and will continue to become) cyborgs
indicates to me that No, we are not unavoidably limited to building off our current SAM.
Maybe we have to go extinct and a new species has to arise for our SAM to be completely
deconstructed. But I expect it to happen. I guess it all depends on what we mean by
"we".
6. Is possible for one species, at one level of the sequence of
{computers run- ning simulations of computers that are running
simulations of ...}, to itself simulate a computer that is higher up
in the sequence that it is?
This might be argumentative or arbitrarily constraining? You (Glen)
stated early on that many examples of "hypercomputation" have been
debunked. If the very (f)act of human consciousness (individual and
collective) does not *gesture* toward hypercomputation, then I don't
know what else would. I accept that creating controlled (physical or
thought) experiments in this domain is slippery. I look forward to
seeing what comes "next"... Before Kurt Godel flipped the world of
math/philosophy, I don't think Russel/Whitehead (or much anyone else)
had a hint that there was something beyond the "boundaries" of knowledge
they had circumscribed around themselves?
What Wolpert's referring to, I think, is even more general than Goedel's rather specific argument.
So, while hypercomputation might breach Church-Turing, it doesn't solve the philosophical problem
as posed by Tarski's "indefinability of truth". Again, I think List's discussion of
indexicality matters, here. Perhaps we can rephrase Wolpert's question as "can traces of an
indexical graph do more than *approach* the non-indexical graph of graphs?" Do we have
something like the parallelism theorem (that any parallel process can be fully simulated by a
sequential process given extendable time).
I'm reminded of doing calculus with the hyperreals. Packing infinities into a single
symbol feels, to me, like "higher up in the sequence".
7. Is the very form of the SAM that we humans have created severely
con- strained? So constrained as to suggest that the cognitive
abilities of us hu- mans — those who created that SAM — is also
severely constrained?
this is where I become more interested in the abstractions of "what is
life?" "what is intelligence?" "what is consciousness"... because at the
very least those questions look to hop over the limits of "mere
extrapolation" from what we are most familiar with. the very terms
life/intelligence/consciousness may likely be the epitome of those
constraints? Deacon's "Teleodynamics" feels to me to be one of those
terms that might help us peek around the edge of the constraints we
already have (mostly) given over to?
Hm. I haven't spent any time with teleodynamics. But it smacks of Stanley's
myth of the objective. I'll take a look. Thanks.
8. Is this restriction to finite sequences somehow a necessary
feature of any complete formulation of physical reality? Or does it
instead reflect a lim- itation of how we humans can formalize any
aspect of reality, i.e., is it a limitation of our brains?
It does seem to be a limitation of our primary modes of conception of
"what means reality". Wheeler's Participatory Anthropic Principle
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler#Participatory_Anthropic_Principle>
rears it's pretty head about this time?
I don't mean to be a broken record. But I think the focus on "finite sequences" could be
teased apart by explicitly discussing indexicality. It's less about "teleodynamics",
objectives, purpose, etc. and more about whether one walks the graph like some kind of control
pointer or tries to (parallel) grok the whole graph (of graphs).
Similar to nonstandard calculus, clumping whole graphs into nodes of a higher
order graph (like is done when trying to de-cycle a cyclic graph into a dag -
or perhaps ways to handle metagraphs) seems to be jumping up in the sequence.
Where this can be isomorphically formal (as in nonstandard calculus), it seems
like we already do what Wolpert is asking for. (I might even channel a skeptic
like Marcus and say Wolpert's questions are nothing but neurotic obsession.)
9. In standard formulations of mathematics, a mathematical proof is a
finite sequence of “well-formed sentences”, each of which is itself a
finite string of symbols. All of mathematics is a set of such proofs.
How would our per- ception of reality differ if, rather than just
finite sequences of finite symbol strings, the mathematics underlying
our conception of reality was expanded to involve infinite sequences,
i.e., proofs which do not reach their conclu- sion in finite time?
Phrased concretely, how would our cognitive abilities change if our
brains could implement, or at least encompass, super-Turing
abilities, sometimes called “hyper-computation” (e.g., as proposed in
com- puters that are on rockets moving arbitrarily close to the speed
of light [1])? Going further, as we currently conceive of
mathematics, it is possible to em- body all of its theorems, even
those with infinitely long proofs, in a single countably infinite
sequence: the successive digits of Chaitin’s omega [69]. (This is a
consequence of the Church — Turing thesis.) How would mathe- matics
differ from our current conception of it if it were actually an
uncount- ably infinite collection of such countably infinite
sequences rather than just one, a collection which could not be
combined to form a single, countably infinite sequence? Could we ever
tell the difference? Could a being with super-Turing capabilities
tell the difference, even if the Church — Turing thesis is true, and
even if we cannot tell the difference?
Godel Numbering/Church-Turing seem to constrain this ideation pretty
solidly. Even though I'm a big fan of Digital Physics ala
Fredkin/Tofolli/Margoulis I think their formulation only reinforces
this constraint? I'd like to say that I understand Tononi's IIT
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory>well enough
to judge whether it offers an "end run" around this or not. More cud to
gurge and rechew...
I'm also left reflecting on a very strange series of events around
Penrose where he asserted to me in private correspondence in 1985 that
"the key to consciousness was in the infinities of a-periodic
tilings". This was in response to a simulation I built with Stuart
Hameroff in 1984
<https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/cellular-automata-in-cytoskeletal-lattices>
demonstrating how information processing might occur on the surface of
microtubulin structures (Cytoskeletal Membrane) which were only *mildly*
non-traditional CA geomotry/topology (sqewed hexagonal local geometry on
a 13 unit diameter/3-off helical lattice). He went on *later* (see
Emperor's New Mind) to invoke Quantum effects, but in 1985 he seemed
quite adamant that the magic dust of complexity-cum consciousness was in
aperiodic tilings. I dismissed this as "one-trick-pony-ism". I was
young and naive and arrogant.... now I'm old. I wish I had engaged. As
you probably know he and Hameroff climbed into the same bed later
<https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/#PenrHameQuanGravMicr>.
I JUST found this strangely formulated (but recent) tangent to the MT
aspect of the topic:
https://www.texaspowerfulsmart.com/tunneling-microscopy/mt-automata-holographyhameroff-watt-smith.html
https://www.texaspowerfulsmart.com/tunneling-microscopy/the-microtrabecular-lattice-mtl.html
I don't know if any of this offers a possible "end run" around the
finiteness-problem.
Wow ... just .... wow. How you got from the overly reductive representation of
reality with finite sequences from finite alphabets to MT facilitated light
transduction is boggling! ... but maybe in a good way. I *do* think there's
something to be said about a- and quasi-periodicity in relation to
purpose-objective optimizing (including for things like light transmission
and/or path integrals). And it may well relate to my dead horse of cyclic
graphs, which definitely targets non-finiteness.
A more specific question is why Wolpert relies on *standard* mathematics? It's
almost like he's committing an equivocation fallacy, starting with standard
math and then adding things that *have been* added in nonstandard formulations.
Prestidigitation? Prestilinguation?
10. Is it a lucky coincidence that all of mathematical and physical
reality can be formulated in terms of our current cognitive
abilities, including, in par- ticular, the most sophisticated
cognitive prosthesis we currently possess: human language? Or is it
just that, tautologically, we cannot conceive of any aspects of
mathematical and physical reality that cannot be formulated in terms
of our cognitive capabilities?
REminds me of the bad joke I can never tell right which starts with a
traveler asking a local how to get to a spot on the other side of a
natural barrier (river, mountain range, canyon, etc.) and after the
local tries to pick a route he can describe to the traveler in language
the traveler can understand without having "been there" he gives up and
says "well, you just can't get there from here!" which we agree is
patently not true. I get this feeling whilst speaking with (familiars
of) convincing "mystics" of the caliber of the Dalai Lama or Thich Nat
Hahn (RIP)... I feel like these folks have traveled these realms and
if only I had already been into those realms myself, could I understand
some of their more nuanced descriptions?
That's an interesting take. My take was more banal ... like when I watch my cat try to come *down*
a ladder. I'm thinking "of course, the idiot tries to come down forward. That's how cats
work." I can imagine some hypercognitive alien from another galaxy looking at, say, our
Standard Model of physics and thinking "of course that's what these morons would come up with.
[sigh]"
11. Are there cognitive constructs of some sort, as fundamental as
the very idea of questions and answers, that are necessary for
understanding physical re- ality, and that are forever beyond our
ability to even imagine due to the limitations of our brains, just as
the notion of a question is forever beyond a paramecium?
I suspect the answer is in the analogy here... If we believe that the
paramecium (or something of similar caliber) made the long climb of
becoming a complex multicellular multi-organ complex capable of abstract
language and logic and SAM through a torturous series of intermediate
evolutionary steps (mutation as well as mashup), then perhaps the "magic
dust" is (also?) in emergence? Or if we defer to Bohm or
Penrose/Hameroff or even our beloved Pearce, then the magic dust is also
quantum? I know I'm just kicking the can down the road and under the
rug here. Just maundering speculatively.
Well, I think Wolpert's gone astray, here, in suggesting that a paramecium
can't grok question/answer. But his main question is valid for reduction. And
reduction, like everything else is healthy in moderation. Are there missing
pieces to our very foundation that we could add that would immediately expand
our modeling abilities? I'm reminded of my discussion with Jon of Tonk,
introduction, and elimination. The logics without things like introduction are
comparatively impoverished. And graduating from classical logics to
paraconsistent ones blows your mind. So Wolpert's idea that there may be some
fundamental lego block that, once we find it, there's no going back.
p.s. Sorry for breaking the threading. My home machine removes messages from
the IMAP server and stores them in the cloud. I *could*, if I had the energy,
access that on this laptop and preserve the threading. But I'm being lazy
because I have to jump in the truck and continue driving.
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