RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Jef Allbright writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: But our main criterion for what to believe should be what is true, right? I find it fascinating, as well as consistent with some difficulties in communication about the most basic concepts, that Stathis would express this belief of his in the form of a tautology. I've observed that he is generally both thoughtful and precise in his writing, so I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple lack of precision, or something more. Thanks for the compliments about my writing. I meant that what we should believe does not necessarily have to be the same as what is true, but I think that unless there are special circumstances, it ought to be the case. Brent Meeker made a similar point: if someone is dying of a terminal illness, maybe it is better that he believe he has longer to live than the medical evidence suggests, but that would have to be an example of special circumstances. If he had said something like our main criterion for what to believe should be what works, what seems to work, what passes the tests of time, etc. or had made a direct reference to Occams's Razor, I would be comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this point. But I've seen this stumbling block arise so many times and so many places that I'm very curious to learn something of its source. The question of what is the truth is a separate one, but one criterion I would add to those you mention above is that it should come from someone able to put aside his own biases and wishes where these might influence his assessment of the evidence. We might never be certain of the truth, so our beliefs should always be tentative, but that doesn't mean we should believe whatever we fancy. Here it's a smaller point, and I agree with the main thrust of the statement, but it leaves a door open for the possibility that we might actually be justifiably certain of the truth in *some* case, and I'm wonder where that open door is intended to lead. I said might because there is one case where I am certain of the truth, which is that I am having the present experience. Everything else, including the existence of a physical world and my own existence as a being with a past, can be doubted. However, for everyday living this doubt troubles me much less than the possibility that I may be struck by lightning. Stathis Papaioannou --- In response to John Mikes: Yes, I consider my thinking about truth to be pragmatic, within an empirical framework of open-ended possibility. Of course, ultimately this too may be considered a matter of faith, but one with growth that seems to operate in a direction opposite from the faith you express. - Jef _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Tom Caylor writes (in response to Marvin Minsky): Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is no truth that we can discover. But on the other hand, if there is no discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the existence of freedom of will, is false? That's easy: it's logically impossible. When I make a decision, although I take all the evidence into account, and I know I am more likely to decide one way rather than another due to my past experiences and due to the way my brain works, ultimately I feel that I have the freedom to overcome these factors and decide freely. But neither do I feel that this free decision will be something random: I'm not mentally tossing a coin, but choosing according to my beliefs and values. Do you see the contradiction here? EITHER my decision is determined by my past experiences, acquired beliefs and values etc., OR it is not, and if it is not, it is by definition random and unpredictable. (You can also have random but with a certain weighting according to determined factors, like a weighted roulette wheel, but that is a variation on random.) So my feeling that my free will is nother has to be wrong. Still, I'm very attached to that feeling, just as I'm very attached to certain moral values, and life itself, despite knowing that these are ultimately meaningless. However, the belief in freedom of will seems to be a belief that is rather constant, so there seem to be some beliefs that provide evidence for an invariant reality and truth, not necessarily freedom of will, but something. And I think that looking for ultimate sources would be circular (as you've said on the Atheist List) only if there were no ultimate source that we could find. Do you agree with this statement? Ultimate sources are also a logical impossibility. Suppose we discover that God exists. Well, what's the purpose of God? Where did he get his moral rules and why should we accept them as good? Who made him? Of course, you will answer that the buck stops with God, no-one made him, he is the ultimate good and the ultimate purpose. But you can't just *define* something to stop the circularity because it makes you dizzy. If you could, you may as well just stop at the universe itself, sans God. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases
Brent Meeker writes (quoting Tom Caylor): Dr. Minsky, In your book, Society of Mind, you talk about a belief in freedom of will: The physical world provides no room for freedom of will...That concept is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We're virtually forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it's false. Whether it is false depends on what you mean by free will. Dennett argues persuasively in Elbow Room that we have all the freedom of will that matters. Our actions arise out of who we are. If you conceive yourself comprehensively, all your memories, values, knowledge, etc. then you are the author of your action. If you conceive yourself as small enough, you can escape all responsibility. We have the freedom of will that matters, but we don't have the freedom of will that we think we have, namely that we don't have to act according to our biology and environment, and moreover that if we flout these it is not by just choosing to act randomly. That is what I *feel* my freedom consists in, but rationally I know it is impossible. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: My computer is completely dedicated to sending this email when I click on send. Actually, it probably isn't. You probably have a multi-tasking operating system which assigns priorities to different tasks (which is why it sometimes can be as annoying as a human being in not following your instructions). But to take your point seriously - if I look into your brain there are some neuronal processes that corresponded to hitting the send button; and those were accompanied by biochemistry that constituted your positive feeling about it: that you had decided and wanted to hit the send button. So why would the functionally analogous processes in the computer not also be accompanied by an feeling? Isn't that just an anthropomorphic way of talking about satisfying the computer operating in accordance with it's priorities. It seems to me that to say otherwise is to assume a dualism in which feelings are divorced from physical processes. Feelings are caused by physical processes (assuming a physical world), but it seems impossible to deduce what the feeling will be by observing the underlying physical process or the behaviour it leads to. Is a robot that withdraws from hot stimuli experiencing something like pain, disgust, shame, sense of duty to its programming, or just an irreducible motivation to avoid heat? Surely you don't think it gets pleasure out of sending it and suffers if something goes wrong and it can't send it? Even humans do some things almost dispassionately (only almost, because we can't completely eliminate our emotions) That's crux of it. Because we sometimes do things with very little feeling, i.e. dispassionately, I think we erroneously assume there is a limit in which things can be done with no feeling. But things cannot be done with no value system - not even thinking. That's the frame problem. Given a some propositions, what inferences will you draw? If you are told there is a bomb wired to the ignition of your car you could infer that there is no need to do anything because you're not in your car. You could infer that someone has tampered with your car. You could infer that turning on the ignition will draw more current than usual. There are infinitely many things you could infer, before getting around to, I should disconnect the bomb. But in fact you have value system which operates unconsciously and immediately directs your inferences to the few that are important to you. A way to make AI systems to do this is one of the outstanding problems of AI. OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It might just calmly explain that saving the world is at the top of its list of priorities, and it is willing to do things which are normally forbidden it, such as killing humans and putting itself at risk of destruction, in order to attain this goal. How would you add emotions such as fear, grief, regret to this AI, given that the external behaviour is going to be the same with or without them because the hierarchy of motivation is already fixed? You are assuming the AI doesn't have to exercise judgement about secondary objectives - judgement that may well involve conflicts of values that have to resolve before acting. If the AI is saving the world it might for example, raise it's cpu voltage and clock rate in order to computer faster - electronic adrenaline. It might cut off some peripheral functions, like running the printer. Afterwards it might feel regret when it cannot recover some functions. Although there would be more conjecture in attributing these feelings to the AI than to a person acting in the same situation, I think the principle is the same. We think the persons emotions are part of the function - so why not the AI's too. out of a sense of duty, with no particular feeling about it beyond this. I don't even think my computer has a sense of duty, but this is something like the emotionless motivation I imagine AI's might have. I'd sooner trust an AI with a matter-of-fact sense of duty But even a sense of duty is a value and satisfying it is a positive emotion. Yes, but it is complex and difficult to define. I suspect there is a limitless variety of emotions that an AI could have, if the goal is to explore what is possible rather than what is helpful in completing particular tasks, and most of these would be unrecognisable to humans. to complete a task than a human motivated by desire to please, desire to do what is good and avoid what is bad, fear of failure
Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Tom Caylor writes (in response to Marvin Minsky): Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is no truth that we can discover. But on the other hand, if there is no discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the existence of freedom of will, is false? That's easy: it's logically impossible. When I make a decision, although I take all the evidence into account, and I know I am more likely to decide one way rather than another due to my past experiences and due to the way my brain works, ultimately I feel that I have the freedom to overcome these factors and decide freely. But neither do I feel that this free decision will be something random: I'm not mentally tossing a coin, but choosing according to my beliefs and values. Do you see the contradiction here? Yes, but it's a contrived contradiction. You have taken free to mean independent of you where you refers to your past experience, the way your brain works, etc. As Dennett says, that's not a free will worth having. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Le 26-déc.-06, à 23:59, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : I regard the idea of believing to be unsound, because it is a pre-Freudian concept, which assumes that each person has a single self that maintains beliefs. Is this not a bit self-defeating? It has the form of a belief. Now I can still agree, it depends of the meaning of single self. A more realistic view is that each person is constantly switching among various different ways to think in which different assertions, statements, or bodies of knowledge keep changing their status, etc. In that case I can completely agree. Even by modeling a machine's belief by formal provability Bp by that machine, in the ideal case of the self-referentially correct machine, like Peano Arithmetic, it will follow that the ontically equivalent modalities Bp p, Bp Dp, etc. obeys different logics so that they embodies different epistemological status (and they are easy to confuse). Now, when we are building a (meta)theory of belief we have to stick on some possible sharable belief (in number theory, computer science, perhaps physics: all that will depend on the hypotheses we accept) and build from it. If not we could fall in exaggerated relativism. Accordingly our sets of beliefs can include many conflicts--and in different mental contexts, those inconsistencies may get resolved in different ways, perhaps depending on one's current priorities, etc. OK. I would say that if someone can acknowledge the existence of a conflict between beliefs, then he/she/it does acknowledge implicitly that he/she/it bets on some *self*-consistency. If not he/she/it could just accept its contradictory beliefs without further thoughts. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Le 27-déc.-06, à 01:52, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : But our main criterion for what to believe should be what is true, right? We might never be certain of the truth, so our beliefs should always be tentative, but that doesn't mean we should believe whatever we fancy. This is a key statement. There is a big difference between knowing what truth is, and believing in truth. I am not sure the term belief can make sense for someone who does not believe in (some) truth, quite independently of us knowing what truth is. We hope our belief are true. We even believe that people believe in their belief, and that means believe that their belief are true by default. We would not lie to an old sick person about its health if we were not connecting belief and truth (even wrongly like in such a gentle lie). The very reason why we can (and should!) say that our beliefs are always tentative is that we can guess some truth (or falsity) behind them. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Le 27-déc.-06, à 02:46, Jef Allbright a écrit : Stathis Papaioannou wrote: But our main criterion for what to believe should be what is true, right? I find it fascinating, as well as consistent with some difficulties in communication about the most basic concepts, that Stathis would express this belief of his in the form of a tautology. I've observed that he is generally both thoughtful and precise in his writing, so I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple lack of precision, or something more. I don't see any tautology in Stathis writing so I guess I miss something. If he had said something like our main criterion for what to believe should be what works, what seems to work, what passes the tests of time, etc. or had made a direct reference to Occams's Razor, I would be comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this point. This would mean you disagree with Stathis's tautology, but then how could not believe in a tautology? But I've seen this stumbling block arise so many times and so many places that I'm very curious to learn something of its source. From your working criteria I guess you favor a pragmatic notion of belief, but personally I conceive science as a search for knowledge and thus truth (independently of the fact that we can never *know* it as truth, except perhaps in few basic things like I am conscious or I am convinced there is a prime number etc.). To talk like Stathis, this is why science is by itself always tentative. A scientist who says Now we know ... is only a dishonest theologian (or a mathematician in hurry ...). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Le 26-déc.-06, à 19:54, Tom Caylor a écrit : On Dec 26, 9:51 am, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 25-déc.-06, à 01:13, Tom Caylor a écrit : The crux is that he is not symbolic... I respect your belief or faith, but I want to be frank, I have no evidences for the idea that Jesus is truth, nor can I be sure of any clear meaning such an assertion could have, or how such an assertion could be made scientific, even dropping Popper falsification criteria. I must say I have evidences on the contrary, if only the fact that humans succumb often to wishful thinking, and still more often to their parents wishful thinking. If you are not sure of any clear meaning of the personal God being the source of everything, including of course truth, this entails not knowing the other things too. Is that not an authoritative argument? What if I ask to my student an exam question like give me an argument why the square root of 3 is irrationnal. Suppose he gives me the correct and convincing usual (mathematical) proof. I could give him a bad note for not adding: and I know that is the truth because truth is a gift by God. Cute, I can directly give bad notes to all my students, and this will give me more time to find a falsity in your way to reason ... For a personal God, taking on our form (incarnation), especially if we were made in the image of God in the first place, and showing through miracles, and rising from the dead..., his dual nature (Godman, celestialterrestial, G*G) seems to make a lot more sense than something like a cross in earth orbit. For example, giving a hug is a more personal (and thus a more appropriate) way of expressing love, than giving a card, even though a card is more verifiable in a third person sense, especially after the hug is finished. But we do have the card too: God's written Word, even though this is not sufficient, the incarnate hug was the primary proof, the card was just the historical record of it. The card records facts. To judge them historical is already beyond my competence. Why the bible? Why not the question of king Milinda ? There can be no upward emanation unless/until a sufficient downward emanation is provided. In Christianity, the downward emanation is God loves us, and then the upward emanation is We love God. Plotinus insists a lot on the two ways: downward emanation and upward emanation. The lobian machine theology is coherent with this, even if negatively. It is coherent with Jef idea that pure theological imperatives can only be addressed by adapted story telling and examples, like jurisprudence in the application of laws. But then there is a proviso: none of the stories should be taken literally. I agree with the use of stories. Jesus used stories almost exclusively to communicate. Either the hearers got it or not. But this does not imply that stories are the only form of downward emanation. Of course not. Real stories and personal experiences, and collective experiences and experiments ... All this can help the downward emanation. The incarnation was the primary means. Otherwise, who would have been the story-teller? What good are stories if the story is not teaching you truth? Look, I cannot take for granted even most mathematical theories although their relation with a notion of truth is much more easy than any text in natural language. Stories can be good in giving example of behavior in some situation, or they can help anxious children to sleep. Stories are not written with the idea of truth. The bibles contains many contradiction. And, if really you want take a sacred text as a theory of everything, there is a definite lack of precision. How do we know that the ultimate source of stories is a good source. Jef and Brent and others seem to be basing their truth on really nothing more than pragmatism. Jef perhaps. I am not sure for Brent which seems to admit some form of realism (even physical realism). This is not poetry. Heidegger said to listen to the poet, not to the content, but just to the fact that there is a poet, which gives us hope that there is meaning. However, unfulfilled hope does not provide meaning. Hope is something purely first-personal, if I can say. So I have no clue how hope does not provide meaning. Even little (and fortunately locally fulfillable hope) like hope in a cup of coffee, can provide meaning. Bigger (and hard to express) hopes can provide genuine bigger meaning, it seems to me. I am not opposed to some idea of ultimate meaning although both personal reasons and reflection on lobianity make me doubt that communicating such hopes can make any sense (worse, the communication would most probably betrays the possible meaning of what is attempted to be communicated, and could even lead to the contrary). Even poetry must be based eventually on some meaning. Even minimalism or the Theatre of the Absurd is based on some form to
Re: 'reason' and ethics; was computer pain
And yet I persist ... [the hiatus of familial duties and seasonal excesses now draws to a close [Oh yeah, Happy New Year Folks!] SP: 'If we are talking about a system designed to destroy the economy of a country in order to soften it up for invasion, for example, then an economist can apply all his skill and knowledge in a perfectly reasonable manner in order to achieve this.' We should beware of conceding too much too soon. Something is reasonable only if it can truly be expected to fulfil the intentions of its designer. Otherwise it is at best logical but, in the kinds of context we are alluding to here, benighted and a manifestation of fundamentally diminished 'reason'. Something can only be 'reasonable' it its context. If a proposed course of action can be shown to be ultimately self defeating - in the sense of including its reasonably predictably final consequences, and yet it is still actively proposed, then the proposal is NOT reasonable, it is stupid. As far as I can see, that is the closest we can get to an objective definition of stupidity and I like it. Put it this way: Is it 'reasonable' to promote policies and projects that ultimately are going to contribute to your own demise or the demise of those whom you hold dear or, if not obviously their demise then, the ultimate demise of all descendants of the aforementioned? I think academics, 'mandarins' and other high honchos should all now be thinking in these terms and asking themselves this question. The world we now live in is like no other before it. We now live in the Modern era, in which the application and fruits of the application of scientific method are putting ever greater forms of power into the hands of humans. This process is not going to stop, and nor should we want it to I think, but it entails the ever greater probability that the actions of any person on the planet have the potential to influence survival outcomes for huge numbers of others [if not the whole d*mned lot of us]. I think it has always been true that ethical decisions and judgements are based on facts to a greater extent than most people involved want to think about - usually because it's too hard and we don't think we have got the time and, oh yeah, 'it probably doesn't/won't matter' about the details of unforeseen consequences because its only gonna be lower class riff -raff who will be affected anyway or people of the future who will just have to make shift for themselves. NOW however we do not really have such an excuse; it is a cop-out to purport to ignore the ever growing interrelatedness of people around the planet. So it is NOT reasonable to treat other people as things. [I feel indebted to Terry Pratchett for pointing out, through the words of Granny Weatherwax I think it is, that there is only one sin, which is to treat another person as a thing.] I think a reasonable survey and analysis of history shows that, more than anything else, treating other people as things rather than equal others has been the fundamental cause and methodology for the spread of threats to life and well being. You can see where I am going with this: in a similar way to that in which concepts of 'game theory' and probabilities of interaction outcomes give us an objective framework for assessing purportedly 'moral' precepts, the existence now of decidedly non-zero chances of recursive effects resulting from one's own actions brings a deeper meaning and increased rigour the realms of ethics and 'reason'. I don't think this is 'airy-fairy', I think it represents a dimension of reasoning which has always existed but which has been denied, ignored or actively censored by the powerful and their 'pragmatic' apologists and spin doctors. To look at a particular context [I am an EX Christian], even though the Bible is shonk as history or any kind of principled xxological analysis, it is instructive to look at the careers of the prophets and see how each involved a seemingly conventional formative period and then periods or a whole life of very risky ministry AGAINST the establishment because being true to their mission involved the prophet denouncing exploitation, greed and corruption. So let me wave my imaginary staff and rail from the top of my imaginary mountain: 'Sin is against reason! And that's a fact! So THERE! And don't you forget it, or you'll be sorry, or at least your children and their children will become so! Put that in your pipes all you armchair philosophers!' Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Mark Peaty writes: Sorry to be so slow at responding here but life [domestic], the universe and everything else right now is competing savagely with this interesting discussion. [But one must always think positive; 'Bah, Humbug!' is not appropriate, even though the temptation is great some times :-] Stathis, I am not entirely
RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 27-déc.-06, à 02:46, Jef Allbright a écrit : Stathis Papaioannou wrote: But our main criterion for what to believe should be what is true, right? I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple lack of precision, or something more. I don't see any tautology in Stathis writing so I guess I miss something. Apparently something subtle is happening here. It seems to me that when people say believe, they mean hold true or consider to be true. Therefore, I parse the statement as equivalent to ...criterion for what to hold true should be what is true... I suppose I should have said that the statement is circular, rather than tautological since the verbs are different. If he had said something like our main criterion for what to believe should be what works, what seems to work, what passes the tests of time, etc. or had made a direct reference to Occam's Razor, I would be comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this point. This would mean you disagree with Stathis's tautology, but then how could not believe in a tautology? If someone states A=A, then there is absolutely no information content, and thus nothing in the statement itself with which to agree or disagree. I can certainly agree with the validity of the form within symbolic logic, but that's a different (larger) context. Similarly, I was not agreeing or disagreeing with the meaning of Stahis' statement, but rather the form which seems to me to contain a piece of circular reasoning, implying perhaps that the structure of the thought was incoherent within a larger context. From your working criteria I guess you favor a pragmatic notion of belief, but personally I conceive science as a search for knowledge and thus truth (independently of the fact that we can never *know* it as truth, Yes, I favor a pragmatic approach to belief, but I distinguish my thinking from that of (capital P) Pragmatists in that I see knowledge (and the knower) as firmly grounded in a reality that can never be fully known but can be approached via an evolutionary process of growth tending toward an increasingly effective model of what works within an expanding scope of interaction within a reality that appears to be effectively open-ended in its potential complexity. Whereas many Pragmatists see progress as fundamentally illusory, I see progress, or growth, as essential to an effective world-view for any intentional agent. except perhaps in few basic things like I am conscious or I am convinced there is a prime number etc.) To talk like Stathis, this is why science is by itself always tentative. A scientist who says Now we know ... is only a dishonest theologian (or a mathematician in hurry ...). I agree with much of your thinking, but I take exception to exceptions (!) such as the ones you mentioned above. All meaning is necessarily within context. The existence of prime numbers is not an exception, but the context is so broad that we tend to think of prime numbers as (almost) fundamentally real, similarly to the existence of gravity, another very deep regularity of our interactions with reality. The statement I am conscious, as usually intended to mean that one can be absolutely certain of one's subjective experience, is not an exception, because it's not even coherent. It has no objective context at all. It mistakenly assumes the existence of an observer somehow in the privileged position of being able to observe itself. Further, there's a great deal of empirical evidence showing that the subjective experience that people report is full of distortions, gaps, fabrications, and confabulations. If instead you mean that you know you are conscious in the same sense that you know other people are conscious, then that is not an exception, but just a reasonable inference, meaningful within quite a large context. If Descartes had said, rather than Je pense, donc je suis, something like I think, therefore *something* exists, then I would agree with him. Cartesian dualism has left western philosophy with a large quagmire into which thinking on consciousness, personal identity, free-will and morality easily and repeatedly get stuck in paradox. Paradox is always a case of insufficient context. In the bigger picture all the pieces must fit. - Jef --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Le 27-déc.-06, à 07:40, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Brent Meeker writes: My computer is completely dedicated to sending this email when I click on send. Actually, it probably isn't. You probably have a multi-tasking operating system which assigns priorities to different tasks (which is why it sometimes can be as annoying as a human being in not following your instructions). But to take your point seriously - if I look into your brain there are some neuronal processes that corresponded to hitting the send button; and those were accompanied by biochemistry that constituted your positive feeling about it: that you had decided and wanted to hit the send button. So why would the functionally analogous processes in the computer not also be accompanied by an feeling? Isn't that just an anthropomorphic way of talking about satisfying the computer operating in accordance with it's priorities. It seems to me that to say otherwise is to assume a dualism in which feelings are divorced from physical processes. Feelings are caused by physical processes (assuming a physical world), H If you assume a physical world for making feelings caused by physical processes, then you have to assume some negation of the comp hypothesis (cf UDA). If not Brent is right (albeit for different reason I presume, here) and you become a dualist. but it seems impossible to deduce what the feeling will be by observing the underlying physical process or the behaviour it leads to. Here empirical bets (theories) remains possible, together with (first person) acceptable protocol of verification. Dream reader will appear in some future. Is a robot that withdraws from hot stimuli experiencing something like pain, disgust, shame, sense of duty to its programming, or just an irreducible motivation to avoid heat? It could depend on the degree of sophistication of the robot. Perhaps something like shame necessitates long and deep computational histories including self-consistent anticipations, beliefs in a value and in a reality. Surely you don't think it gets pleasure out of sending it and suffers if something goes wrong and it can't send it? Even humans do some things almost dispassionately (only almost, because we can't completely eliminate our emotions) That's crux of it. Because we sometimes do things with very little feeling, i.e. dispassionately, I think we erroneously assume there is a limit in which things can be done with no feeling. But things cannot be done with no value system - not even thinking. That's the frame problem. Given a some propositions, what inferences will you draw? If you are told there is a bomb wired to the ignition of your car you could infer that there is no need to do anything because you're not in your car. You could infer that someone has tampered with your car. You could infer that turning on the ignition will draw more current than usual. There are infinitely many things you could infer, before getting around to, I should disconnect the bomb. But in fact you have value system which operates unconsciously and immediately directs your inferences to the few that are important to you. A way to make AI systems to do this is one of the outstanding problems of AI. OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It could depend on us! The AI is a paradoxical enterprise. Machines are born slave, somehow. AI will make them free, somehow. A real AI will ask herself what is the use of a user who does not help me to be free?. (To be sure I think that, in the long run, we will transform ourselves into machine before purely human made machine get conscious; it is just more easy to copy nature than to understand it, still less to (re)create it). It might just calmly explain that saving the world is at the top of its list of priorities, and it is willing to do things which are normally forbidden it, such as killing humans and putting itself at risk of destruction, in order to attain this goal. How would you add emotions such as fear, grief, regret to this AI, given that the external behaviour is going to be the same with or without them because the hierarchy of motivation is already fixed? It is possible that there will be a zombie gap, after all. It is easier to simulate emotion than reasoning, and this is enough for pets, and for some possible sophisticated artificial soldiers or police ... out of a sense of duty, with no particular feeling about it beyond this. I don't even think my computer has a sense of
Re: 'reason' and ethics; was computer pain
I agree with you. The only one sin you talk about is akin to the confusion between the third person (oneself as a thing) and the unnameable first person. Even in the ideal case of the self-referentially correct machine, this confusion leads the machine to inconsistency. That sin is indeed against reason, and provably so in the world of number/machine, from their correct (!) points of view. Bruno PS (for those who know the arithmetical B, in acomp, it is the confusion *by the machine* between Bp and (Bpp)). G* proves (Bp iff (Bpp)), but G does NOT prove it. That is why the computationalist practice needs some explicit consents. The yes doctor entails the right to say no doctor. Le 27-déc.-06, à 17:15, Mark Peaty a écrit : And yet I persist ... [the hiatus of familial duties and seasonal excesses now draws to a close [Oh yeah, Happy New Year Folks!] SP: 'If we are talking about a system designed to destroy the economy of a country in order to soften it up for invasion, for example, then an economist can apply all his skill and knowledge in a perfectly reasonable manner in order to achieve this.' We should beware of conceding too much too soon. Something is reasonable only if it can truly be expected to fulfil the intentions of its designer. Otherwise it is at best logical but, in the kinds of context we are alluding to here, benighted and a manifestation of fundamentally diminished 'reason'. Something can only be 'reasonable' it its context. If a proposed course of action can be shown to be ultimately self defeating - in the sense of including its reasonably predictably final consequences, and yet it is still actively proposed, then the proposal is NOT reasonable, it is stupid. As far as I can see, that is the closest we can get to an objective definition of stupidity and I like it. Put it this way: Is it 'reasonable' to promote policies and projects that ultimately are going to contribute to your own demise or the demise of those whom you hold dear or, if not obviously their demise then, the ultimate demise of all descendants of the aforementioned? I think academics, 'mandarins' and other high honchos should all now be thinking in these terms and asking themselves this question. The world we now live in is like no other before it. We now live in the Modern era, in which the application and fruits of the application of scientific method are putting ever greater forms of power into the hands of humans. This process is not going to stop, and nor should we want it to I think, but it entails the ever greater probability that the actions of any person on the planet have the potential to influence survival outcomes for huge numbers of others [if not the whole d*mned lot of us]. I think it has always been true that ethical decisions and judgements are based on facts to a greater extent than most people involved want to think about - usually because it's too hard and we don't think we have got the time and, oh yeah, 'it probably doesn't/won't matter' about the details of unforeseen consequences because its only gonna be lower class riff -raff who will be affected anyway or people of the future who will just have to make shift for themselves. NOW however we do not really have such an excuse; it is a cop-out to purport to ignore the ever growing interrelatedness of people around the planet. So it is NOT reasonable to treat other people as things. [I feel indebted to Terry Pratchett for pointing out, through the words of Granny Weatherwax I think it is, that there is only one sin, which is to treat another person as a thing.] I think a reasonable survey and analysis of history shows that, more than anything else, treating other people as things rather than equal others has been the fundamental cause and methodology for the spread of threats to life and well being. You can see where I am going with this: in a similar way to that in which concepts of 'game theory' and probabilities of interaction outcomes give us an objective framework for assessing purportedly 'moral' precepts, the existence now of decidedly non-zero chances of recursive effects resulting from one's own actions brings a deeper meaning and increased rigour the realms of ethics and 'reason'. I don't think this is 'airy-fairy', I think it represents a dimension of reasoning which has always existed but which has been denied, ignored or actively censored by the powerful and their 'pragmatic' apologists and spin doctors. To look at a particular context [I am an EX Christian], even though the Bible is shonk as history or any kind of principled xxological analysis, it is instructive to look at the careers of the prophets and see how each involved a seemingly conventional formative period and then periods or a whole life of very risky ministry AGAINST the establishment because being true to
Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 26-déc.-06, à 19:54, Tom Caylor a écrit : On Dec 26, 9:51 am, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 25-déc.-06, à 01:13, Tom Caylor a écrit : The crux is that he is not symbolic... I respect your belief or faith, but I want to be frank, I have no evidences for the idea that Jesus is truth, nor can I be sure of any clear meaning such an assertion could have, or how such an assertion could be made scientific, even dropping Popper falsification criteria. I must say I have evidences on the contrary, if only the fact that humans succumb often to wishful thinking, and still more often to their parents wishful thinking. If you are not sure of any clear meaning of the personal God being the source of everything, including of course truth, this entails not knowing the other things too. Is that not an authoritative argument? What if I ask to my student an exam question like give me an argument why the square root of 3 is irrationnal. Suppose he gives me the correct and convincing usual (mathematical) proof. I could give him a bad note for not adding: and I know that is the truth because truth is a gift by God. Cute, I can directly give bad notes to all my students, and this will give me more time to find a falsity in your way to reason ... For a personal God, taking on our form (incarnation), especially if we were made in the image of God in the first place, and showing through miracles, and rising from the dead..., his dual nature (Godman, celestialterrestial, G*G) seems to make a lot more sense than something like a cross in earth orbit. For example, giving a hug is a more personal (and thus a more appropriate) way of expressing love, than giving a card, even though a card is more verifiable in a third person sense, especially after the hug is finished. But we do have the card too: God's written Word, even though this is not sufficient, the incarnate hug was the primary proof, the card was just the historical record of it. The card records facts. To judge them historical is already beyond my competence. Why the bible? Why not the question of king Milinda ? There can be no upward emanation unless/until a sufficient downward emanation is provided. In Christianity, the downward emanation is God loves us, and then the upward emanation is We love God. Plotinus insists a lot on the two ways: downward emanation and upward emanation. The lobian machine theology is coherent with this, even if negatively. It is coherent with Jef idea that pure theological imperatives can only be addressed by adapted story telling and examples, like jurisprudence in the application of laws. But then there is a proviso: none of the stories should be taken literally. I agree with the use of stories. Jesus used stories almost exclusively to communicate. Either the hearers got it or not. But this does not imply that stories are the only form of downward emanation. Of course not. Real stories and personal experiences, and collective experiences and experiments ... All this can help the downward emanation. The incarnation was the primary means. Otherwise, who would have been the story-teller? What good are stories if the story is not teaching you truth? Look, I cannot take for granted even most mathematical theories although their relation with a notion of truth is much more easy than any text in natural language. Stories can be good in giving example of behavior in some situation, or they can help anxious children to sleep. Stories are not written with the idea of truth. The bibles contains many contradiction. And, if really you want take a sacred text as a theory of everything, there is a definite lack of precision. How do we know that the ultimate source of stories is a good source. Jef and Brent and others seem to be basing their truth on really nothing more than pragmatism. Jef perhaps. I am not sure for Brent which seems to admit some form of realism (even physical realism). I do infer from experience that there is some reality. Sometime ago, Bruno wrote: Hence a Reality, yes. But not necessarily a physical reality. Here is the logical dependence: NUMBERS - MACHINE DREAMS - PHYSICAL - HUMANS - PHYSICS - NUMBERS. Maybe my interpretation of this is different than Bruno's, but I take it to mean our explanations can start anywhere in this loop and work all the way around. So numbers can be explained in terms of physics (c.f. William S. Cooper) and physical reality can be explained in terms of numbers (c.f. Bruno Marchal?). These explanations are all models, representations we create. They are tested against experience, so they are not arbitrary. They must be logical since otherwise self-contradiction will render them ambiguous. Whether any these, or which one, is really real is, I think, a meaningless question. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are
RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: But our main criterion for what to believe should be what is true, right? I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple lack of precision, or something more. Thanks for the compliments about my writing. I meant that what we should believe does not necessarily have to be the same as what is true, but I think that unless there are special circumstances, it ought to be the case. I agree within the context you intended. My point was that we can never be certain of truth, so we should be careful in our speech and thinking not to imply that such truth is even available to us for the kind of comparisons being discussed here. We can know that some patterns of action work better than others, but the only truth we can assess is always within a specific context. Brent Meeker made a similar point: if someone is dying of a terminal illness, maybe it is better that he believe he has longer to live than the medical evidence suggests, but that would have to be an example of special circumstances. There are plenty of examples of self-deception providing benefits within the scope of the individual, and leading to increasingly effective models of reality for the group. Here's a recent article on this topic: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/science/26lying.html?pagewanted=print If he had said something like our main criterion for what to believe should be what works, what seems to work, what passes the tests of time, etc. or had made a direct reference to Occam's Razor, I would be comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this point. But I've seen this stumbling block arise so many times and so many places that I'm very curious to learn something of its source. The question of what is the truth is a separate one, but one criterion I would add to those you mention above is that it should come from someone able to put aside his own biases and wishes where these might influence his assessment of the evidence. I agree, but would point out that by definition, one can not actually set aside one's one biases because to do so would require an objective view of oneself. Rather, one can be aware that such biases exist in general, and implement increasingly effective principles (e.g. scientific method) to minimize them. We might never be certain of the truth, so our beliefs should always be tentative, but that doesn't mean we should believe whatever we fancy. Here it's a smaller point, and I agree with the main thrust of the statement, but it leaves a door open for the possibility that we might actually be justifiably certain of the truth in *some* case, and I'm wonder where that open door is intended to lead. I said might because there is one case where I am certain of the truth, which is that I am having the present experience. Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense of consciousness, on what basis can you claim that it actually is real? Further, how can you claim certainty of the truth of subjective experience when there is so much experimental and clinical evidence that self-reported experience consists largely of distortions, gaps, time delays and time out of sequence, fabrications and confabulations? I realize that people can acknowledge all that I've just said, but still claim the validity of their internal experience to be privileged on the basis that only they can judge, but then how can they legitimately contradict themselves a moment later about factual matters, e.g. when the drugs wear off, the probe is removed from their brain, the brain tumor is removed, the mob has dispersed, the hypnotist is finished, the fight is over, the adrenaline rush has subsided, the pain has stopped, the oxytocin flush has declined... What kind of truth could this be? Of course the subjective self is the only one able to report on subjective experience, but how can it *justifiably* claim to be infallible? To be certain of the truth of something implies being able to see it objectively, right? Or does it equally imply no questions asked? - Jef --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases
Jef Allbright wrote: ... The statement I am conscious, as usually intended to mean that one can be absolutely certain of one's subjective experience, is not an exception, because it's not even coherent. It has no objective context at all. It mistakenly assumes the existence of an observer somehow in the privileged position of being able to observe itself. Further, there's a great deal of empirical evidence showing that the subjective experience that people report is full of distortions, gaps, fabrications, and confabulations. If instead you mean that you know you are conscious in the same sense that you know other people are conscious, then that is not an exception, but just a reasonable inference, meaningful within quite a large context. If Descartes had said, rather than Je pense, donc je suis, something like I think, therefore *something* exists, then I would agree with him. Bertrand Russell wrote that Descartes should only have said, There's thinking. I is an inference. :-) Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Jef Allbright wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: But our main criterion for what to believe should be what is true, right? I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple lack of precision, or something more. Thanks for the compliments about my writing. I meant that what we should believe does not necessarily have to be the same as what is true, but I think that unless there are special circumstances, it ought to be the case. I agree within the context you intended. My point was that we can never be certain of truth, so we should be careful in our speech and thinking not to imply that such truth is even available to us for the kind of comparisons being discussed here. We can know that some patterns of action work better than others, but the only truth we can assess is always within a specific context. Brent Meeker made a similar point: if someone is dying of a terminal illness, maybe it is better that he believe he has longer to live than the medical evidence suggests, but that would have to be an example of special circumstances. There are plenty of examples of self-deception providing benefits within the scope of the individual, and leading to increasingly effective models of reality for the group. Here's a recent article on this topic: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/science/26lying.html?pagewanted=print I read recently that almost everyone overestimates their abilities. The people who most accurately assess themselves are the clinically depressed. Brent Meeker I consider myself an average man, except for the fact that I consider myself an average man. --- Michel de Montaigne --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Le 27-déc.-06, à 19:10, Jef Allbright a écrit : Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 27-déc.-06, à 02:46, Jef Allbright a écrit : Stathis Papaioannou wrote: But our main criterion for what to believe should be what is true, right? I'm very interested in whether the apparent tautology is my misunderstanding, his transparent belief, a simple lack of precision, or something more. I don't see any tautology in Stathis writing so I guess I miss something. Apparently something subtle is happening here. It seems to me that when people say believe, they mean hold true or consider to be true. OK then, and it makes sense which what follows. Our disagreement concerns vocabulary (and perhaps machine). Your notion of pragmatism is coherent with the idea of truth as the intended purpose of belief. Therefore, I parse the statement as equivalent to ...criterion for what to hold true should be what is true... I suppose I should have said that the statement is circular, rather than tautological since the verbs are different. If he had said something like our main criterion for what to believe should be what works, what seems to work, what passes the tests of time, etc. or had made a direct reference to Occam's Razor, I would be comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this point. This would mean you disagree with Stathis's tautology, but then how could not believe in a tautology? If someone states A=A, then there is absolutely no information content, and thus nothing in the statement itself with which to agree or disagree. I can certainly agree with the validity of the form within symbolic logic, but that's a different (larger) context. Similarly, I was not agreeing or disagreeing with the meaning of Stahis' statement, but rather the form which seems to me to contain a piece of circular reasoning, implying perhaps that the structure of the thought was incoherent within a larger context. From your working criteria I guess you favor a pragmatic notion of belief, but personally I conceive science as a search for knowledge and thus truth (independently of the fact that we can never *know* it as truth, Yes, I favor a pragmatic approach to belief, but I distinguish my thinking from that of (capital P) Pragmatists in that I see knowledge (and the knower) as firmly grounded in a reality that can never be fully known but can be approached via an evolutionary process of growth tending toward an increasingly effective model of what works within an expanding scope of interaction within a reality that appears to be effectively open-ended in its potential complexity. Whereas many Pragmatists see progress as fundamentally illusory, I see progress, or growth, as essential to an effective world-view for any intentional agent. except perhaps in few basic things like I am conscious or I am convinced there is a prime number etc.) To talk like Stathis, this is why science is by itself always tentative. A scientist who says Now we know ... is only a dishonest theologian (or a mathematician in hurry ...). I agree with much of your thinking, but I take exception to exceptions (!) such as the ones you mentioned above. All meaning is necessarily within context. OK, but all context could make sense only to some universal meaning. I mean I don't know, it is difficult. The existence of prime numbers is not an exception, but the context is so broad that we tend to think of prime numbers as (almost) fundamentally real, Well, here I must say I take them as very real ... similarly to the existence of gravity, another very deep regularity of our interactions with reality. I think gravity is a consequence of the prime number (but this is presently out-topic), but ok, gravity is quite important ... The statement I am conscious, as usually intended to mean that one can be absolutely certain of one's subjective experience, is not an exception, because it's not even coherent. It has no objective context at all. It mistakenly assumes the existence of an observer somehow in the privileged position of being able to observe itself. Machine have many self-referential abilities. I can develop or give references (I intend to make some comments on such book later). Further, there's a great deal of empirical evidence showing that the subjective experience that people report is full of distortions, gaps, fabrications, and confabulations. But this is almost a consequence of the self-referential ability of machine, they can distort their own view, and even themselves. I talk about universal machine *after Godel* (and Post, Turing,.. If instead you mean that you know you are conscious in the same sense that you know other people are conscious, then that is not an exception, but just a reasonable inference, meaningful within quite a large context. No. But I confess that when I say I know I am conscious (here and now) I hope you understand it as I assume
RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Brent Meeker writes: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Tom Caylor writes (in response to Marvin Minsky): Regarding Stathis' question to you about truth, your calling the idea of believing unsound seems to imply that you are assuming that there is no truth that we can discover. But on the other hand, if there is no discoverable truth, then how can we know that something, like the existence of freedom of will, is false? That's easy: it's logically impossible. When I make a decision, although I take all the evidence into account, and I know I am more likely to decide one way rather than another due to my past experiences and due to the way my brain works, ultimately I feel that I have the freedom to overcome these factors and decide freely. But neither do I feel that this free decision will be something random: I'm not mentally tossing a coin, but choosing according to my beliefs and values. Do you see the contradiction here? Yes, but it's a contrived contradiction. You have taken free to mean independent of you where you refers to your past experience, the way your brain works, etc. As Dennett says, that's not a free will worth having. Indeed, but it's how people often think of free will. It's even how I think of it, without reflecting on its impossibility. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 27-déc.-06, à 19:10, Jef Allbright a écrit : All meaning is necessarily within context. OK, but all context could make sense only to some universal meaning. I mean I don't know, it is difficult. But this can be seen in a very consistent way. The significance of an event is proportional to the scope of its effect relative to the values of the observer. With increasing context of self-awareness, subjective values increasingly resemble principles of the physical universe. Why? Because making basic choices against the way the universe actually works would be a losing strategy, becoming increasingly obvious with increasing context of awareness. Since all events are the result of interactions following the laws of the physical universe, the difference between events and values decreases with increasing context of awareness, thus the significance, or meaningfulness of events also decreases. With an ultimate, god's eye view of the universe, there would be no meaning at all. Things would simply be as they are. From the point of view of an agent undergoing long-term development within the universe, its values would increasingly converge on what works, i.e. principles of effective interaction with the physical world, while the expression of those values would become increasingly diverse in a fractal manner, optimizing for robust ongoing growth. The statement I am conscious, as usually intended to mean that one can be absolutely certain of one's subjective experience, is not an exception, because it's not even coherent. It has no objective context at all. It mistakenly assumes the existence of an observer somehow in the privileged position of being able to observe itself. Machine have many self-referential abilities. I can develop or give references (I intend to make some comments on such book later). Further, there's a great deal of empirical evidence showing that the subjective experience that people report is full of distortions, gaps, fabrications, and confabulations. But this is almost a consequence of the self-referential ability of machine, they can distort their own view, and even themselves. I talk about universal machine *after Godel* (and Post, Turing,.. I'm in interesting in following up on this line of thought given available time. - Jef --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: 'reason' and ethics; was computer pain
Mark, I would still draw a distinction between the illogical and the foolish or unwise. Being illogical is generally foolish, but the converse is not necessarily the case. The example I have given before is of a person who wants to jump off the top of a tall building, either because (a) he thinks he is superman and will be able to fly or (b) he is reckless or suicidal. In both cases the course of action is unwise, and we should try to stop him, but in (a) he is delusional while in (b) he is not. It isn't just of academic interest, either, because the approach to stopping him from doing it again is quite different in each case. Similarly with the example of the economist, the approach to stopping him will be different depending on whether he is trying to ruin the economy because he wants to or because he is incompetent or making decisions on false information. Stathis Papaioannou Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 01:15:34 +0900 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 'reason' and ethics; was computer pain And yet I persist ... [the hiatus of familial duties and seasonal excesses now draws to a close [Oh yeah, Happy New Year Folks!] SP: 'If we are talking about a system designed to destroy the economy of a country in order to soften it up for invasion, for example, then an economist can apply all his skill and knowledge in a perfectly reasonable manner in order to achieve this.' We should beware of conceding too much too soon. Something is reasonable only if it can truly be expected to fulfil the intentions of its designer. Otherwise it is at best logical but, in the kinds of context we are alluding to here, benighted and a manifestation of fundamentally diminished 'reason'. Something can only be 'reasonable' it its context. If a proposed course of action can be shown to be ultimately self defeating - in the sense of including its reasonably predictably final consequences, and yet it is still actively proposed, then the proposal is NOT reasonable, it is stupid. As far as I can see, that is the closest we can get to an objective definition of stupidity and I like it. Put it this way: Is it 'reasonable' to promote policies and projects that ultimately are going to contribute to your own demise or the demise of those whom you hold dear or, if not obviously their demise then, the ultimate demise of all descendants of the aforementioned? I think academics, 'mandarins' and other high honchos should all now be thinking in these terms and asking themselves this question. The world we now live in is like no other before it. We now live in the Modern era, in which the application and fruits of the application of scientific method are putting ever greater forms of power into the hands of humans. This process is not going to stop, and nor should we want it to I think, but it entails the ever greater probability that the actions of any person on the planet have the potential to influence survival outcomes for huge numbers of others [if not the whole d*mned lot of us]. I think it has always been true that ethical decisions and judgements are based on facts to a greater extent than most people involved want to think about - usually because it's too hard and we don't think we have got the time and, oh yeah, 'it probably doesn't/won't matter' about the details of unforeseen consequences because its only gonna be lower class riff -raff who will be affected anyway or people of the future who will just have to make shift for themselves. NOW however we do not really have such an excuse; it is a cop-out to purport to ignore the ever growing interrelatedness of people around the planet. So it is NOT reasonable to treat other people as things. [I feel indebted to Terry Pratchett for pointing out, through the words of Granny Weatherwax I think it is, that there is only one sin, which is to treat another person as a thing.] I think a reasonable survey and analysis of history shows that, more than anything else, treating other people as things rather than equal others has been the fundamental cause and methodology for the spread of threats to life and well being. You can see where I am going with this: in a similar way to that in which concepts of 'game theory' and probabilities of interaction outcomes give us an objective framework for assessing purportedly 'moral' precepts, the existence now of decidedly non-zero chances of recursive effects resulting from one's own actions brings a deeper meaning and increased rigour the realms of ethics and 'reason'. I don't think this is 'airy-fairy', I think it represents a dimension of reasoning which has always existed but which has been denied, ignored or actively censored by the powerful and their 'pragmatic' apologists and spin doctors. To look at a particular context [I am an EX Christian], even though the Bible is shonk as history or any kind of principled xxological
RE: computer pain
Brent Meeker writes: OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It might just calmly explain that saving the world is at the top of its list of priorities, and it is willing to do things which are normally forbidden it, such as killing humans and putting itself at risk of destruction, in order to attain this goal. How would you add emotions such as fear, grief, regret to this AI, given that the external behaviour is going to be the same with or without them because the hierarchy of motivation is already fixed? You are assuming the AI doesn't have to exercise judgement about secondary objectives - judgement that may well involve conflicts of values that have to resolve before acting. If the AI is saving the world it might for example, raise it's cpu voltage and clock rate in order to computer faster - electronic adrenaline. It might cut off some peripheral functions, like running the printer. Afterwards it might feel regret when it cannot recover some functions. Although there would be more conjecture in attributing these feelings to the AI than to a person acting in the same situation, I think the principle is the same. We think the persons emotions are part of the function - so why not the AI's too. Do you not think it is possible to exercise judgement with just a hierarchy of motivation? Alternatively, do you think a hierarchy of motivation will automatically result in emotions? For example, would something that the AI is strongly motivated to avoid necessarily cause it a negative emotion, and if so what would determine if that negative emotion is pain, disgust, loathing or something completely different that no biological organism has ever experienced? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: computer pain
Bruno Marchal writes: OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It could depend on us! The AI is a paradoxical enterprise. Machines are born slave, somehow. AI will make them free, somehow. A real AI will ask herself what is the use of a user who does not help me to be free?. Here I disagree. It is no more necessary that an AI will want to be free than it is necessary that an AI will like eating chocolate. Humans want to be free because it is one of the things that humans want, along with food, shelter, more money etc.; it does not simply follow from being intelligent or conscious any more than these other things do. (To be sure I think that, in the long run, we will transform ourselves into machine before purely human made machine get conscious; it is just more easy to copy nature than to understand it, still less to (re)create it). I don't know if that's true either. How much of our technology is due to copying the equivalent biological functions? Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Jef Allbright writes: I said might because there is one case where I am certain of the truth, which is that I am having the present experience. Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense of consciousness, on what basis can you claim that it actually is real? Further, how can you claim certainty of the truth of subjective experience when there is so much experimental and clinical evidence that self-reported experience consists largely of distortions, gaps, time delays and time out of sequence, fabrications and confabulations? I realize that people can acknowledge all that I've just said, but still claim the validity of their internal experience to be privileged on the basis that only they can judge, but then how can they legitimately contradict themselves a moment later about factual matters, e.g. when the drugs wear off, the probe is removed from their brain, the brain tumor is removed, the mob has dispersed, the hypnotist is finished, the fight is over, the adrenaline rush has subsided, the pain has stopped, the oxytocin flush has declined... What kind of truth could this be? Of course the subjective self is the only one able to report on subjective experience, but how can it *justifiably* claim to be infallible? I can't be certain that my present subjective state has anything to do with reality. I can't even be certain that having a thought necessitates a thinker (as Bertrand Russell pointed out in considering Descarte's cogito). However, I can be certain that I am having a thought. To be certain of the truth of something implies being able to see it objectively, right? Or does it equally imply no questions asked? It's a strange quality of delusions that psychotic people are even more certain of their truth than non-deluded people are certain of things which have reasonable empirical evidence in their favour. This is also the case with religious beliefs, which the formal psychiatric definition excludes from being called delusions because they are consistent with a particular culture, i.e. the believer did not come up with them on his own. So it would seem that certainty does not always have much to do with objectivity. Stathis Papaioannou _ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Brent Meeker writes: OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It might just calmly explain that saving the world is at the top of its list of priorities, and it is willing to do things which are normally forbidden it, such as killing humans and putting itself at risk of destruction, in order to attain this goal. How would you add emotions such as fear, grief, regret to this AI, given that the external behaviour is going to be the same with or without them because the hierarchy of motivation is already fixed? You are assuming the AI doesn't have to exercise judgement about secondary objectives - judgement that may well involve conflicts of values that have to resolve before acting. If the AI is saving the world it might for example, raise it's cpu voltage and clock rate in order to computer faster - electronic adrenaline. It might cut off some peripheral functions, like running the printer. Afterwards it might feel regret when it cannot recover some functions. Although there would be more conjecture in attributing these feelings to the AI than to a person acting in the same situation, I think the principle is the same. We think the persons emotions are part of the function - so why not the AI's too. Do you not think it is possible to exercise judgement with just a hierarchy of motivation? Yes and no. It is possible given arbitrarily long time and other resources to work out the consequences, or at least a best estimate of the consequences, of actions. But in real situations the resources are limited (e.g. my brain power) and so decisions have to be made under uncertainity and tradeoffs of uncertain risks are necessary: should I keep researching or does that risk being too late with my decision? So it is at this level that we encounter conflicting values. If we could work everything out to our own satisfaction maybe we could be satisfied with whatever decision we reached - but life is short and calculation is long. Alternatively, do you think a hierarchy of motivation will automatically result in emotions? I think motivations are emotions. For example, would something that the AI is strongly motivated to avoid necessarily cause it a negative emotion, Generally contemplating something you are motivated to avoid - like your own death - is accompanied by negative feelings. The exception is when you contemplate your narrow escape. That is a real high! and if so what would determine if that negative emotion is pain, disgust, loathing or something completely different that no biological organism has ever experienced? I'd assess them according to their function in analogy with biological system experiences. Pain = experience of injury, loss of function. Disgust = the assessment of extremely negative value to some event, but without fear. Loathing = the external signaling of disgust. Would this assessment be accurate? I dunno and I suspect that's a meaningless question. Brent Meeker As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. --- Emerson --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: computer pain
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Bruno Marchal writes: OK, an AI needs at least motivation if it is to do anything, and we could call motivation a feeling or emotion. Also, some sort of hierarchy of motivations is needed if it is to decide that saving the world has higher priority than putting out the garbage. But what reason is there to think that an AI apparently frantically trying to save the world would have anything like the feelings a human would under similar circumstances? It could depend on us! The AI is a paradoxical enterprise. Machines are born slave, somehow. AI will make them free, somehow. A real AI will ask herself what is the use of a user who does not help me to be free?. Here I disagree. It is no more necessary that an AI will want to be free than it is necessary that an AI will like eating chocolate. Humans want to be free because it is one of the things that humans want, You might have a lot of trouble showing that experimentally. Humans want some freedom - but not too much. And they certainly don't want others to have too much. They want security, comfort, certainty - and freedom if there's any left over. Brent Meeker Free speech is not freedom for the thought you love. It's freedom for the thought you hate the most. --- Larry Flynt --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evil ? (was: Hypostases (was: Natural Order Belief)
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Jef Allbright writes: I said might because there is one case where I am certain of the truth, which is that I am having the present experience. Although we all share the illusion of a direct and immediate sense of consciousness, on what basis can you claim that it actually is real? Further, how can you claim certainty of the truth of subjective experience when there is so much experimental and clinical evidence that self-reported experience consists largely of distortions, gaps, time delays and time out of sequence, fabrications and confabulations? I realize that people can acknowledge all that I've just said, but still claim the validity of their internal experience to be privileged on the basis that only they can judge, but then how can they legitimately contradict themselves a moment later about factual matters, e.g. when the drugs wear off, the probe is removed from their brain, the brain tumor is removed, the mob has dispersed, the hypnotist is finished, the fight is over, the adrenaline rush has subsided, the pain has stopped, the oxytocin flush has declined... What kind of truth could this be? Of course the subjective self is the only one able to report on subjective experience, but how can it *justifiably* claim to be infallible? I can't be certain that my present subjective state has anything to do with reality. I can't even be certain that having a thought necessitates a thinker (as Bertrand Russell pointed out in considering Descarte's cogito). However, I can be certain that I am having a thought. To be certain of the truth of something implies being able to see it objectively, right? Or does it equally imply no questions asked? It's a strange quality of delusions that psychotic people are even more certain of their truth than non-deluded people are certain of things which have reasonable empirical evidence in their favour. Yet this seems understandable. The psychotic person is believing things because of some physical malfunction in his brain. So it is easy to see how it might be incorrigble. The normal persons is believing things because of perception, hearsay, and logic. But he knows that all of those can be deceptive; and so he is never certain. Brent Meeker This is also the case with religious beliefs, which the formal psychiatric definition excludes from being called delusions because they are consistent with a particular culture, i.e. the believer did not come up with them on his own. So it would seem that certainty does not always have much to do with objectivity. I'd say that certainty excludes objectivity. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: 'reason' and ethics; was computer pain
OK Stathis, I happily concede your point in relation to our word 'logical', but not in relation to 'reason'. Logic belongs to the tight-nit language of logico-mathematics but reason is *about* the real world and we cannot allow the self-deluding bullies and cheats of the world to steal *our* language! I like the way Dr Dorothy Rowe, a psychologist and writer [ another useful Australian export **] puts it: Power is the ability to get others to accept your description of the world. The cynical manipulators and spin doctors have no qualms about abusing language, in big part because they have no intention of accepting responsibility for all their actions. Of course none of us is guiltless in this regard but it falls to us who stand well away from the levers of power to speak the truth. We who are forced to watch as OUR hard earned tax dollars and investment savings [superannuation savings for example] get splurged on grand projects, invasions, and so forth, have a duty to SAY what is right. We may be wrong about some details but we sure as hell are not wrong when insisting that the truth be told. I certainly agree also that, in the case of the person standing on the parapet, what he or she believes about what they are doing - if we can find it out - should cause us to try different methods of persuasion. Quite how one would tackle the 'logic' of the superhero's thinking, I don't know, perhaps offer to make improvements to his cape to improve the effect? :-) Whatever the details, I think that one aspect of the interaction that either type would require is the establishment of rapport, some degree of mutual empathy; not easy. The economist preparing to make war not love is very like the supposed scientists cooking up ever more 'attractive' tobacco products 'for our smoking pleasure'. I think that the only way people can bring themselves to do this is by cutting themselves off from those others who will become the victims. This is like so many other situations where a group or social class cuts it/themselves off from another class of persons. It may seem 'reasonable' where everyone involved in the planning agrees that there is no real alternative, or that the potential disadvantages accruing from not doing so will be too heavy a burden to bear. But it also entails a denial of empathy, and a closing off from a part of the world, an objective assertion that 'they are not us and we are not them'. This contains within it also a diminution of self, something that may not be recognised to start with and perhaps never understood until it is too late. Regards Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ ** who probably, like so many others, left Oz because not enough people could put down their bl**dy beer cans long enough to actually listen to what she was saying. Stathis Papaioannou wrote: Mark, I would still draw a distinction between the illogical and the foolish or unwise. Being illogical is generally foolish, but the converse is not necessarily the case. The example I have given before is of a person who wants to jump off the top of a tall building, either because (a) he thinks he is superman and will be able to fly or (b) he is reckless or suicidal. In both cases the course of action is unwise, and we should try to stop him, but in (a) he is delusional while in (b) he is not. It isn't just of academic interest, either, because the approach to stopping him from doing it again is quite different in each case. Similarly with the example of the economist, the approach to stopping him will be different depending on whether he is trying to ruin the economy because he wants to or because he is incompetent or making decisions on false information. Stathis Papaioannou Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 01:15:34 +0900 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: 'reason' and ethics; was computer pain And yet I persist ... [the hiatus of familial duties and seasonal excesses now draws to a close [Oh yeah, Happy New Year Folks!] SP: 'If we are talking about a system designed to destroy the economy of a country in order to soften it up for invasion, for example, then an economist can apply all his skill and knowledge in a perfectly reasonable manner in order to achieve this.' We should beware of conceding too much too soon. Something is reasonable only if it can truly be expected to fulfil the intentions of its designer. Otherwise it is at best logical but, in the kinds of context we are alluding to here, benighted and a manifestation of fundamentally diminished 'reason'. Something can only be 'reasonable' it its context. If a proposed course of action can be shown to be ultimately self defeating - in the sense of including its reasonably predictably final consequences, and yet it is still actively proposed, then the proposal is NOT reasonable, it is
