Hi Krim, thanks for taking up the points ... Just three I want to respond to ... in the time available.
Good - we needen't get hung up ideas / memes ... as synonyms ... we are talking about they replicate / communicate / evolve and affect our decision-making actions. Causation - I don't have a magic answer, other than the warning to think of it more as "dependent arising" than billiard-balls bouncing off each other .... I'd love to get some serious discussion on this. Libet / Action / Reflection - OK, lots of different sorts of "evidence" we can bring to this. Yes my view may look like GOFAI, and it probably is, but it is tempered with our MoQish / Radical Empiricist view of the things being "automated" and how this many-layered-thing we call "me" actually "causes" things to happen. I'm not throwing GOFAI out with the bathwater ... I'm trying to fix it. All I would say for now, is that in the human processes (even the tennis player returning serve) there is a mix of reflection and acting going on ... its not either or ... just that some of the reflection is so fast it looks like a knee-jerk, thanks to the pre-conditioning. (But that's just a micro-cosm of the fact that all our decision-making is "culturally" conditioned - just that the tennis player's "culture" involves intense training regimes as well as Fox TV and MoQ.Discuss and his local church.) But we should discuss "causation" first. Thanks Ian On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 5:46 PM, Krimel <[email protected]> wrote: > [Ian] > Memes ? Not so much brain activity, as the communication and sharing > of those patterns (of information). They don't have to be understood > or even interpreted to be replicated by communication - think of a > parrot or a computer virus or e-mail spam. > > [Krimel] > I stand correct. Brain activity is one of many way a meme can be formatted. > I might argue that it is the most important. Perhaps the only one the > "matters" but still one of many. > > [Ian] > Causation ? The jury is out anyway, whether you are talking about > brains, memes or Newtonian billiard balls for that matter. The > mechanisms involving memes are pretty straightforward. The only > serious doubt is whether the name "meme" adds much to the name "idea" > - I think it does, for the reason noted, but I often have to debate > that point. > > [Krimel] > It seems to me that what the jury is deliberating is not causation but the > possibility of identifying all or on occasion even to most salient causes. > As for the terminology I was using them as synonyms. > > [Ian] > Half-second-delay ? The Libet effect is grossly mis-represented, > > [Krimel] > I stand corrected again the effect is more like 100-150 millisecond. I > grossly over stated that but I would say emphatically that I have not > mis-represented the impact of the effect itself. Two areas other areas of > research that are also relevant to the issue at had are the Iowa Gambling > studies and the Implicit Attitude Test (IAT). Both are readily Googlable. > > [Ian] > ...if you think about free-will and causation too simply, too > common-sensically. Better if you think about free-will rather as > free-won't, and think of delegation in a multi-layered supervisory > control system, with many sub-routines pre-programmed and ready to go, > waiting for a permissive signal to remove an anticipated back-stop, > then the Libet effect is no mystery. > > [Krimel] > I don't find the effect mysterious but what you are putting toward here > sounds like GOFAI and not Heidegarian AI. Now there is a jury that will be > ordering take-out for a good long while. > > [Ian] > Think of a top-class tennis > player retuning the serve of another top-class tennis player. Think > about the anticipation, reaction and decision-making times involved > and how it is possible ever to return a serve. Ask yourself who is > this who, who is making the decisions, separate from the who who is > acting - there is no homunculus. > > [Krimel] > I think that was my point. In most of our daily activity, not just tennis, > we are called upon to act; not to reflect. > > [Ian] > As Dennett says, you can always > externalise everything if you make yourself small enough - in reality > "you" are spread out over many patterns / systems. I found Daniel > Wegner very good on this, or Adam Zeman, or in fact Libet himself in > the original - much clearer than so much other second hand reporting > of this effect, which I think tends to be motivated by people grasping > at straws, not wanting to believe in free will (and misunderstanding > causation itself, which is the real root problem). > > [Krimel] > I have to admit I only made 3/4 of the way through Libet's book and got > distracted with something else. I don't see a whole lot of folks grabbing at > straws because they don't want to believe in free will. Quite the opposite. > In fact I would say that the function of religion is to help us accommodate > to the myth of control. > > But perhaps you could help bring us all to a better understanding for the > true nature of causation. > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
