Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: We have the feeling of control over what we do because we can't predict exactly what we are going to do. No. We have the feeling of control over what we do, period. There is no because. Participation is fundamental private physics. Irreducible. No energy, not substance, no function, form, or data is beneath it. In order to have a feeling of control we must be able to say to ourselves: I have decided to do A but if I want to I could decide to do B instead. It's not that this causes the feeling of control; rather, this *is* the feeling of control. If you can't say this then you feel you have no choice, as happens sometimes in schizophrenia with passivity phenomena and command hallucinations. As I keep trying to explain, this has no bearing on whether our actions are determined or not. There is no logical connection between the two concepts. If you are right, then you can't say that you 'keep trying' to do anything. Your feeling that you keep trying is an illusion. You just don't know what you are going to say, so you imagine that you keep trying. That's what you are telling me. With a straight face. Instead of constructing an argument from logical expectations, I suggest experimenting with an empirical inventory. Why deny that you are actually present? Am I denying that I am actually present (whatever that means)? Am I denying that I am conscious? Am I denying that I am doing what I do because I want to do it, and that if I didn't want to do it I would do something else? Suppose someone demonstrates to you that they can reliably predict every decision you make. You deliberately try to thwart them by making erratic decisions but they still get it right. This might be disturbing for you, but do you think the strong feeling of free will that you have would suddenly disappear? There's no question that the feeling of personal free will is overstated, but that has nothing to do with the ontology of will. We may have to balance the needs and agendas of a trillion sub-persons, and a trillion super-persons, but that doesn't mean that our own personal will doesn't contribute to the overall preference. Why is the personal will so special that physics has to make it the only thing in the universe which isn't real? I can make your brain change just by writing these words, so why can't you change your own brain by thinking? I'm trying to understand your intuition that you have free will. You have been saying, as far as I can tell, that this intuition is proof that you do, in fact, have free will. Further, you have been saying that this intuition is proof that your actions are not determined, since you having free will entails that your actions are not determined. So I wonder what you would say if an omniscient being in a thought experiment demonstrated to you that it could predict your every move. Would your intuition that you have free will remain, or would it suddenly vanish? If the intuition remained would you say on reflection that your intuition was wrong or would you maintain, as the compatibilists like Daniel Dennett do, that you still have free will? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On 20 Feb 2013, at 21:22, meekerdb wrote: On 2/20/2013 8:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 05:28, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 10:53:46 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Wednesday, February 20, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. How do you know the mice are conscious of infra-red light? If it were a machine you would say it wasn't conscious, it just reacted to the light in a way that superficially resembles consciousness. That's because we are obliged to give organisms like us the benefit of the doubt. The opposite is true of machines, where we have seen that their behavior has no basis in any innate sensitivity or agenda of the machine. 1) nobody has seen this (and I am not sure seeing that kind of thing can make sense). We can see behavior which is indicative of different levels of intelligence and we can also observe the structures responsible for computation. For example I know a neuroscientist who, for ethical reasons, won't eat any kind of animal to that has a cerebral cortex. We agree on that. But Craig said that he was able to see that computer are not conscious or that computer cannot be conscious. And I see you answered him as I do here. We can't see an absence of possibility. We might prove it, in some case, but Craig did not. He was begging the question, as he does on this question since the beginning. In fact he *assumes* non-comp, but for some reason he want us to believe that comp is contradictory, but fails to see that all his arguments are based on his assumption of non-comp. Bruno Brent 2) seeing is no proof of existence or inexistence. Nor even ontological evidence. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Thursday, February 21, 2013 12:20:59 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 12:31 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: Just the opposite. I have in mind that no test is necessary for consciousness. Just being conscious ourselves may allow us to infer some things about consciousness. Tests can just as easily be used to exaggerate our bias. There were tests for witches, tests for eugenics. It's very compelling to have some justification to quiet those noisy doubts of conscience. But you do have some test of consciousness in mind since you admit that a machine might fool you into thinking it's conscious. Your intuition is therefore not foolproof here. What means do you use to decide if your intuition is correct? Some level of intuition may be foolproof, but we don't always have access to it from lower, personal ranges of awareness. Generally it is experience through time which reveals which of our thoughts make the most sense. We never decide if our intuition is correct, we always have faith and doubts. In saying that machines aren't conscious, I have no qualms, no axe to grind. I love technology, I have no agenda against machines, I simply observe that there is no possibility that they have awareness on the machine level, and I think that I understand why that is. If anyone really did have any intuition at all of machine intelligence that was independent of wishful thinking, I think that you would see computer scientists quitting AI sometimes because of the ethics of operating on the machines themselves. Why don't we see that? Why isn't there an abolitionist movement for machines? These are not proof, they are clues. You have to reason for yourself about consciousness. There will never be a meaningful test. There are several points here. Firstly, people kill animals and enslave other humans, so if they do believe they are conscious they don't think their consciousness matters. Yes, or more likely they don't care whether their consciousness matters or not. That doesn't mean humans are ignorant of each other's awareness, only that they lack compassion and can justify their actions for personal reasons. Secondly, if machines have the potential to be conscious that does not mean that all machines in fact are conscious. What makes the difference between the two types of machines? Wishful threshold of complexity? Carbon-based life forms have the potential to be conscious but most people don't think plants are conscious, for example. The nature of consciousness and sense is as experiences which 'seem like' or 'likenesses'. While people enslave and kill each other, they less frequently do that to people who they like, or who are like them. The more distant an organism is, the more impersonal it seems. Plants tend to be different in so many significant ways from animals that they appear to us as very alien and impersonal, despite the studies done which show plant empathy and communication. This psychological distance factor is the key to understanding significance (saturation of likeness). Size matters. Speed matters. The further a phenomenon is from our personal range of perceptual relativity, the more it is known to us only through impersonal sensory channels (location, shape, mass, velocity, function, etc). Finally, there is no necessary connection between consciousness and wanting to be treated a particular way. We might look at worker bees with pity but that's just because we aren't bees. Sure, I agree. The only difference with a machine is that it is put together by people who don't know that fully half of the universe is private. Normally that isn't a problem, since the point of a machine is to serve our needs. If we really wanted to have a machine which is conscious, then by definition it could only serve its own needs since consciousness and privacy are the same thing, and privacy is proprietary, not generic. Just as we couldn't expect a person to survive with their body cut up into cubes, we shouldn't expect the functional 'cubes' which symbolize intelligence to add up to a single physical conscious event. Life and consciousness are based on experience, not structure. The structure reveals the relation between one kind of experience and all others on all other levels - but to do that, the revealing is done with a lowest common denominator set of tangible, positional tropes (classical mechanics). Craig You apply this test to animals and to machines and you conclude that the former are conscious and the latter not. I hope the test is not something like is made of organic material, grows and maintains homeostasis, because the objection to that is, there is no reason to assume that these factors are either necessary or sufficient for consciousness. The test is 'does it have experiences
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: How do you know the mice are conscious of infra-red light? If it were a machine you would say it wasn't conscious, it just reacted to the light in a way that superficially resembles consciousness. That's because we are obliged to give organisms like us the benefit of the doubt. The opposite is true of machines, where we have seen that their behavior has no basis in any innate sensitivity or agenda of the machine. But how do you know other people and animals are conscious? Is it just a guess? Could you be wrong about them? Could you be wrong about computers? It seems to me that you have in mind some test for consciousness. You apply this test to animals and to machines and you conclude that the former are conscious and the latter not. I hope the test is not something like is made of organic material, grows and maintains homeostasis, because the objection to that is, there is no reason to assume that these factors are either necessary or sufficient for consciousness. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Wednesday, February 20, 2013 4:49:05 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: How do you know the mice are conscious of infra-red light? If it were a machine you would say it wasn't conscious, it just reacted to the light in a way that superficially resembles consciousness. That's because we are obliged to give organisms like us the benefit of the doubt. The opposite is true of machines, where we have seen that their behavior has no basis in any innate sensitivity or agenda of the machine. But how do you know other people and animals are conscious? Is it just a guess? Could you be wrong about them? Could you be wrong about computers? Sure, but so could you be wrong about my being wrong. It seems to me that you have in mind some test for consciousness. Just the opposite. I have in mind that no test is necessary for consciousness. Just being conscious ourselves may allow us to infer some things about consciousness. Tests can just as easily be used to exaggerate our bias. There were tests for witches, tests for eugenics. It's very compelling to have some justification to quiet those noisy doubts of conscience. In saying that machines aren't conscious, I have no qualms, no axe to grind. I love technology, I have no agenda against machines, I simply observe that there is no possibility that they have awareness on the machine level, and I think that I understand why that is. If anyone really did have any intuition at all of machine intelligence that was independent of wishful thinking, I think that you would see computer scientists quitting AI sometimes because of the ethics of operating on the machines themselves. Why don't we see that? Why isn't there an abolitionist movement for machines? These are not proof, they are clues. You have to reason for yourself about consciousness. There will never be a meaningful test. You apply this test to animals and to machines and you conclude that the former are conscious and the latter not. I hope the test is not something like is made of organic material, grows and maintains homeostasis, because the objection to that is, there is no reason to assume that these factors are either necessary or sufficient for consciousness. The test is 'does it have experiences and participate in the world?' Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Wednesday, February 20, 2013 4:58:49 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 3:37 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: You can't, because it's a chaotic system. If you eschew computers and simulate the stock market by building an entire world with humans and an economy you would get a stock market that functions similarly to the original but not the same as the original, so it would be almost useless for predicting a particular stock movement. A computer simulation can't be expected to be better than a simulation with real humans living in a real world. In other words, you would be simulating *a* stock market, not *the* stock market. How can you explain that we can predict our own decisions? Or better yet, how do we make decisions in the first place? We can't predict our own decisions, since there is always the possibility that we can change our minds. But we are in control of that possibility to some extent. If I bet you $100 that I will post something about tree frogs later today, then I can be sure that I will follow through on that, barring unforeseen events beyond my control. This is where the feeling of free will comes from. Note that this has no bearing on the question of whether our decisions are determined or not: the only requirement for the feeling of freedom is that we not know what we're going to do until we do it. I think that you are confusing freedom with farting. Not knowing what we are going to do is meaningless if we don't have the possibility to freely exercise control over what we do. Why would there be a feeling associated with some process which has no consequences that we could do anything about? The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the inside. But that's the case for everything. Its behaviour is driven by what is going on on the inside as well as what's going on on the outside. Some things are more predictable to us from the behavior we can observe though. Yes, but other things aren't. As per the Wolfram article referenced by Stephen above, this is also the case for some computer programs, such as cellular automata. No-one knows what they're going to do, as in real life you just have to run the program and see what happens. The existence of automated variation doesn't mean that it is the source of intention. I see it as just the opposite. In cellular automata you can see the signature of impersonal emptiness. Monotonous, a-signifying, relentlessly blank. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On 20 Feb 2013, at 05:28, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 10:53:46 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Wednesday, February 20, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. How do you know the mice are conscious of infra-red light? If it were a machine you would say it wasn't conscious, it just reacted to the light in a way that superficially resembles consciousness. That's because we are obliged to give organisms like us the benefit of the doubt. The opposite is true of machines, where we have seen that their behavior has no basis in any innate sensitivity or agenda of the machine. 1) nobody has seen this (and I am not sure seeing that kind of thing can make sense). 2) seeing is no proof of existence or inexistence. Nor even ontological evidence. Bruno Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
Miguel Nicolelis http://www.nicolelislab.net/ You could have all the computer chips ever in the world and you won’t create a consciousness. It must be grand being a hard problem theorist because it's the easiest job in the world bar none, no matter how smart something is you just say yeah but it's not conscious and there is no way anybody can prove you wrong. computers will never replicate the human brain and that the technological Singularity is a bunch of hot air. The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it, Unless you're willing to get on the mystical bullshit train (and even in the 21'st century many are all too willing to get on that broken down old choo choo) then the only conclusion to make is that the neural wiring required to develop human level intelligence CANNOT be impossibly complex because in the entire human genome there are only 3 billion base pairs. There are 4 bases so each base can represent 2 bits and there are 8 bits per byte so that comes out to just 750 meg, and that's enough assembly instructions to make not just a brain and all its wiring but a entire human baby. So the instructions MUST contain wiring instructions such as wire the neurons up this that and the other way and then repeat that procedure 917 billion times. And there is a huge amount of redundancy in the human genome, if you used a file compression program like ZIP on that 750 meg you could easily put the entire thing on half a CD, not a DVD not a Blu ray just a old fashioned vanilla CD. human consciousness (and if you believe in it, the soul) simply can’t be replicated in silicon. That’s because its most important features are the result of unpredictable, non-linear interactions amongst billions of cells Unpredictability and non-linear reactions are a dime a dozen but are more the defining attribute of insanity than intelligence or the feeling of personal identity that persists over decades; and besides, computers have no trouble being unpredictable and non-linear. The first program I ever wrote was to zoom in and look at small parts of the infinite Mandelbrot set in detail, and even though I wrote the program if I wanted to know what the image it would produce next would look like all I could do is wait and see what sort of picture the program would create. You can’t predict whether the stock market will go up or down because you can’t compute it But it would be easy to write a program that goes up and down in such a way that it passes the exact same statistical tests for randomness that the real stock market does. So yes, it would be easier to make a intelligent computer than it would be to make a intelligent computer that also happens to be John K Clark or any other specific individual. the human brain has evolved to take the external world—our surroundings and the tools we use—and create representations of them in our neural pathways. And those neural pathways have started to understand how they work and has devised technology to produce intelligent behavior without biological neurons. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On 2/20/2013 8:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 05:28, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 10:53:46 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Wednesday, February 20, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. How do you know the mice are conscious of infra-red light? If it were a machine you would say it wasn't conscious, it just reacted to the light in a way that superficially resembles consciousness. That's because we are obliged to give organisms like us the benefit of the doubt. The opposite is true of machines, where we have seen that their behavior has no basis in any innate sensitivity or agenda of the machine. 1) nobody has seen this (and I am not sure seeing that kind of thing can make sense). We can see behavior which is indicative of different levels of intelligence and we can also observe the structures responsible for computation. For example I know a neuroscientist who, for ethical reasons, won't eat any kind of animal to that has a cerebral cortex. Brent 2) seeing is no proof of existence or inexistence. Nor even ontological evidence. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Thursday, 21 February 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: We can't predict our own decisions, since there is always the possibility that we can change our minds. But we are in control of that possibility to some extent. If I bet you $100 that I will post something about tree frogs later today, then I can be sure that I will follow through on that, barring unforeseen events beyond my control. Surely you, a free will enthusiast, will admit that you *could* change your mind about that post even though at the moment you are pretty sure you want to win the bet. If you felt you could not change your mind then that would be a weird situation. It can occur with so-called passivity phenomena in schizophrenia, where patients describe feeling controlled by an external force which they are powerless to resist. This is where the feeling of free will comes from. Note that this has no bearing on the question of whether our decisions are determined or not: the only requirement for the feeling of freedom is that we not know what we're going to do until we do it. I think that you are confusing freedom with farting. Not knowing what we are going to do is meaningless if we don't have the possibility to freely exercise control over what we do. Why would there be a feeling associated with some process which has no consequences that we could do anything about? We have the feeling of control over what we do because we can't predict exactly what we are going to do. As I keep trying to explain, this has no bearing on whether our actions are determined or not. There is no logical connection between the two concepts. Suppose someone demonstrates to you that they can reliably predict every decision you make. You deliberately try to thwart them by making erratic decisions but they still get it right. This might be disturbing for you, but do you think the strong feeling of free will that you have would suddenly disappear? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Wednesday, February 20, 2013 11:09:27 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 20 Feb 2013, at 05:28, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 10:53:46 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Wednesday, February 20, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. How do you know the mice are conscious of infra-red light? If it were a machine you would say it wasn't conscious, it just reacted to the light in a way that superficially resembles consciousness. That's because we are obliged to give organisms like us the benefit of the doubt. The opposite is true of machines, where we have seen that their behavior has no basis in any innate sensitivity or agenda of the machine. 1) nobody has seen this (and I am not sure seeing that kind of thing can make sense). I have seen it though. All day long I see computers acting in a way which is clearly insensitive of consequences and devoid of any personal agenda. 2) seeing is no proof of existence or inexistence. Nor even ontological evidence. Believing that is no disproof of it either. Proof really isn't relevant for consciousness. No proof is possible or necessary for our own presence. Awareness is more primitive than proof or belief or truth. Craig Bruno Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 12:31 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Just the opposite. I have in mind that no test is necessary for consciousness. Just being conscious ourselves may allow us to infer some things about consciousness. Tests can just as easily be used to exaggerate our bias. There were tests for witches, tests for eugenics. It's very compelling to have some justification to quiet those noisy doubts of conscience. But you do have some test of consciousness in mind since you admit that a machine might fool you into thinking it's conscious. Your intuition is therefore not foolproof here. What means do you use to decide if your intuition is correct? In saying that machines aren't conscious, I have no qualms, no axe to grind. I love technology, I have no agenda against machines, I simply observe that there is no possibility that they have awareness on the machine level, and I think that I understand why that is. If anyone really did have any intuition at all of machine intelligence that was independent of wishful thinking, I think that you would see computer scientists quitting AI sometimes because of the ethics of operating on the machines themselves. Why don't we see that? Why isn't there an abolitionist movement for machines? These are not proof, they are clues. You have to reason for yourself about consciousness. There will never be a meaningful test. There are several points here. Firstly, people kill animals and enslave other humans, so if they do believe they are conscious they don't think their consciousness matters. Secondly, if machines have the potential to be conscious that does not mean that all machines in fact are conscious. Carbon-based life forms have the potential to be conscious but most people don't think plants are conscious, for example. Finally, there is no necessary connection between consciousness and wanting to be treated a particular way. We might look at worker bees with pity but that's just because we aren't bees. You apply this test to animals and to machines and you conclude that the former are conscious and the latter not. I hope the test is not something like is made of organic material, grows and maintains homeostasis, because the objection to that is, there is no reason to assume that these factors are either necessary or sufficient for consciousness. The test is 'does it have experiences and participate in the world?' But how do you know it has experiences? If it's intuition how do you know in particular cases if you are right? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Wednesday, February 20, 2013 8:15:54 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Thursday, 21 February 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: We can't predict our own decisions, since there is always the possibility that we can change our minds. But we are in control of that possibility to some extent. If I bet you $100 that I will post something about tree frogs later today, then I can be sure that I will follow through on that, barring unforeseen events beyond my control. Surely you, a free will enthusiast, will admit that you *could* change your mind about that post even though at the moment you are pretty sure you want to win the bet. If you felt you could not change your mind then that would be a weird situation. It can occur with so-called passivity phenomena in schizophrenia, where patients describe feeling controlled by an external force which they are powerless to resist. It's not a matter of feeling that I could not change my mind, it is the fact that one can exercise their free will in a multi-dimensional way. We can prioritize. If it is important to me to honor some commitment or obligation, I can go on indefinitely with reasonable confidence that I won't change my mind. Free will also means the freedom to make up your mind. Of course, things can always change, but that doesn't mean that we can't ever make up our minds. This is where the feeling of free will comes from. Note that this has no bearing on the question of whether our decisions are determined or not: the only requirement for the feeling of freedom is that we not know what we're going to do until we do it. I think that you are confusing freedom with farting. Not knowing what we are going to do is meaningless if we don't have the possibility to freely exercise control over what we do. Why would there be a feeling associated with some process which has no consequences that we could do anything about? We have the feeling of control over what we do because we can't predict exactly what we are going to do. No. We have the feeling of control over what we do, period. There is no because. Participation is fundamental private physics. Irreducible. No energy, not substance, no function, form, or data is beneath it. As I keep trying to explain, this has no bearing on whether our actions are determined or not. There is no logical connection between the two concepts. If you are right, then you can't say that you 'keep trying' to do anything. Your feeling that you keep trying is an illusion. You just don't know what you are going to say, so you imagine that you keep trying. That's what you are telling me. With a straight face. Instead of constructing an argument from logical expectations, I suggest experimenting with an empirical inventory. Why deny that you are actually present? Suppose someone demonstrates to you that they can reliably predict every decision you make. You deliberately try to thwart them by making erratic decisions but they still get it right. This might be disturbing for you, but do you think the strong feeling of free will that you have would suddenly disappear? There's no question that the feeling of personal free will is overstated, but that has nothing to do with the ontology of will. We may have to balance the needs and agendas of a trillion sub-persons, and a trillion super-persons, but that doesn't mean that our own personal will doesn't contribute to the overall preference. Why is the personal will so special that physics has to make it the only thing in the universe which isn't real? I can make your brain change just by writing these words, so why can't you change your own brain by thinking? Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Wednesday, February 20, 2013 11:30:49 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote: Miguel Nicolelis http://www.nicolelislab.net/ You could have all the computer chips ever in the world and you won’t create a consciousness. It must be grand being a hard problem theorist because it's the easiest job in the world bar none, no matter how smart something is you just say yeah but it's not conscious and there is no way anybody can prove you wrong. It's not that easy because people don't understand the hard problem and keep trying to pretend that it doesn't exist just because they can't solve it. computers will never replicate the human brain and that the technological Singularity is a bunch of hot air. The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it, Unless you're willing to get on the mystical bullshit train (and even in the 21'st century many are all too willing to get on that broken down old choo choo) then the only conclusion to make is that the neural wiring required to develop human level intelligence CANNOT be impossibly complex because in the entire human genome there are only 3 billion base pairs. There are 4 bases so each base can represent 2 bits and there are 8 bits per byte so that comes out to just 750 meg, and that's enough assembly instructions to make not just a brain and all its wiring but a entire human baby. So the instructions MUST contain wiring instructions such as wire the neurons up this that and the other way and then repeat that procedure 917 billion times. No, it probably doesn't work that way at all. You are looking in the TV set to find which wires make the TV shows. And there is a huge amount of redundancy in the human genome, if you used a file compression program like ZIP on that 750 meg you could easily put the entire thing on half a CD, not a DVD not a Blu ray just a old fashioned vanilla CD. human consciousness (and if you believe in it, the soul) simply can’t be replicated in silicon. That’s because its most important features are the result of unpredictable, non-linear interactions amongst billions of cells Unpredictability and non-linear reactions are a dime a dozen but are more the defining attribute of insanity than intelligence or the feeling of personal identity that persists over decades; and besides, computers have no trouble being unpredictable and non-linear. The first program I ever wrote was to zoom in and look at small parts of the infinite Mandelbrot set in detail, and even though I wrote the program if I wanted to know what the image it would produce next would look like all I could do is wait and see what sort of picture the program would create. I agree with you there, it's not the unpredictability that is the issue. The unpredictability is a symptom of the sentience expressed through the cells. You can’t predict whether the stock market will go up or down because you can’t compute it But it would be easy to write a program that goes up and down in such a way that it passes the exact same statistical tests for randomness that the real stock market does. So yes, it would be easier to make a intelligent computer than it would be to make a intelligent computer that also happens to be John K Clark or any other specific individual. He's just giving a layman's example of how not everything can be reproduced computationally. the human brain has evolved to take the external world—our surroundings and the tools we use—and create representations of them in our neural pathways. And those neural pathways have started to understand how they work and has devised technology to produce intelligent behavior without biological neurons. I think he's wrong there. There are no representations of our experiences in our neural pathways. Pointers maybe. Craig John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On 2/20/2013 9:20 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 12:31 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Just the opposite. I have in mind that no test is necessary for consciousness. Just being conscious ourselves may allow us to infer some things about consciousness. Tests can just as easily be used to exaggerate our bias. There were tests for witches, tests for eugenics. It's very compelling to have some justification to quiet those noisy doubts of conscience. But you do have some test of consciousness in mind since you admit that a machine might fool you into thinking it's conscious. Your intuition is therefore not foolproof here. What means do you use to decide if your intuition is correct? In saying that machines aren't conscious, I have no qualms, no axe to grind. I love technology, I have no agenda against machines, I simply observe that there is no possibility that they have awareness on the machine level, How could no possibility of awareness be observed?? I could understand that no evidence of awareness was observed. But I can't understand the observance of the absence of possibility. and I think that I understand why that is. If anyone really did have any intuition at all of machine intelligence that was independent of wishful thinking, I think that you would see computer scientists quitting AI sometimes because of the ethics of operating on the machines themselves. No, they just wouldn't program the machines to be conscious - and John McCarthy, inventor of LISP and The Father of AI did exactly that; and he cautioned AI researchers against creating conscious robots precisely because of the ethical problem. Why don't we see that? Because you don't look for anything that might contradict your prejudices? Why isn't there an abolitionist movement for machines? These are not proof, they are clues. You have to reason for yourself about consciousness. There will never be a meaningful test. There are several points here. Firstly, people kill animals and enslave other humans, so if they do believe they are conscious they don't think their consciousness matters. Or they think it is advantageous to have smart slaves. Secondly, if machines have the potential to be conscious that does not mean that all machines in fact are conscious. Right. A computer can be programmed to implement any computable function, but we know that most of those programs do not result in intelligent behavior - and as John C. Clark points out, intelligent behavior is the best measure we have of consciousness. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Monday, February 18, 2013 9:30:49 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Yes, I posted it just to show that someone who works closely with both neurology and consciousness professionally comes to the same conclusion that I have. It seems like a handy thing to have when one is accused of being ignorant of science or anti-science. It turns out that its only prejudice that makes these kinds of accusation in this case. As far as the stock market being computable, how would you go about determining, for instance, whether or not I rebalance my 401k and on what day and time? The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the inside. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, February 18, 2013 9:30:49 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Yes, I posted it just to show that someone who works closely with both neurology and consciousness professionally comes to the same conclusion that I have. One of the problems of relying on expert opinions is that, sometimes, it's hard to see clearly what someone is an expert at. I had a look at Nicolelis' lab publication list and there isn't anything there to suggest that they even look into the issue of consciousness. It's a lot of (interesting sounding) work on neural correlates for sensorial and motor activities, as well as applications. A few issues with his position: - Just because the brain has a certain level of complexity, doesn't mean it has to. The brain is restricted by a fixed palette of evolutionary building blocks. It cannot take advantage of, say, sillicon chips. We can build machines that move faster and are simples than any animal, although there's evolutionary pressure for speed. Still, no animals with wheels; - There is no evolutionary pressure for good design; - There is no evolutionary pressure for understandability; It seems like a handy thing to have when one is accused of being ignorant of science or anti-science. It turns out that its only prejudice that makes these kinds of accusation in this case. Ok. As far as the stock market being computable, how would you go about determining, for instance, whether or not I rebalance my 401k and on what day and time? The stock market is a bad comparison, because it is made of brains to begin with. So it's the same problem x10^10. The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the inside. Why isn't a complete description of the brain state sufficient? (disregarding the necessary computational power) Telmo. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 9:02:36 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Monday, February 18, 2013 9:30:49 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Yes, I posted it just to show that someone who works closely with both neurology and consciousness professionally comes to the same conclusion that I have. One of the problems of relying on expert opinions is that, sometimes, it's hard to see clearly what someone is an expert at. I had a look at Nicolelis' lab publication list and there isn't anything there to suggest that they even look into the issue of consciousness. It's a lot of (interesting sounding) work on neural correlates for sensorial and motor activities, as well as applications. A few issues with his position: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. - Just because the brain has a certain level of complexity, doesn't mean it has to. The brain is restricted by a fixed palette of evolutionary building blocks. It cannot take advantage of, say, sillicon chips. We can build machines that move faster and are simples than any animal, although there's evolutionary pressure for speed. Still, no animals with wheels; - There is no evolutionary pressure for good design; - There is no evolutionary pressure for understandability; It seems like a handy thing to have when one is accused of being ignorant of science or anti-science. It turns out that its only prejudice that makes these kinds of accusation in this case. Ok. As far as the stock market being computable, how would you go about determining, for instance, whether or not I rebalance my 401k and on what day and time? The stock market is a bad comparison, because it is made of brains to begin with. So it's the same problem x10^10. The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the inside. Why isn't a complete description of the brain state sufficient? (disregarding the necessary computational power) Because each brain cell is a living organism in its own right. The brain is a stock market of smaller brains. Telmo. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 6:13 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 9:02:36 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, February 18, 2013 9:30:49 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Yes, I posted it just to show that someone who works closely with both neurology and consciousness professionally comes to the same conclusion that I have. One of the problems of relying on expert opinions is that, sometimes, it's hard to see clearly what someone is an expert at. I had a look at Nicolelis' lab publication list and there isn't anything there to suggest that they even look into the issue of consciousness. It's a lot of (interesting sounding) work on neural correlates for sensorial and motor activities, as well as applications. A few issues with his position: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. In that sense, everyone does. - Just because the brain has a certain level of complexity, doesn't mean it has to. The brain is restricted by a fixed palette of evolutionary building blocks. It cannot take advantage of, say, sillicon chips. We can build machines that move faster and are simples than any animal, although there's evolutionary pressure for speed. Still, no animals with wheels; - There is no evolutionary pressure for good design; - There is no evolutionary pressure for understandability; It seems like a handy thing to have when one is accused of being ignorant of science or anti-science. It turns out that its only prejudice that makes these kinds of accusation in this case. Ok. As far as the stock market being computable, how would you go about determining, for instance, whether or not I rebalance my 401k and on what day and time? The stock market is a bad comparison, because it is made of brains to begin with. So it's the same problem x10^10. The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the inside. Why isn't a complete description of the brain state sufficient? (disregarding the necessary computational power) Because each brain cell is a living organism in its own right. The brain is a stock market of smaller brains. Agreed, but is it turtles all the way down? Telmo. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On 2/19/2013 12:26 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 6:13 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 9:02:36 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, February 18, 2013 9:30:49 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Yes, I posted it just to show that someone who works closely with both neurology and consciousness professionally comes to the same conclusion that I have. One of the problems of relying on expert opinions is that, sometimes, it's hard to see clearly what someone is an expert at. I had a look at Nicolelis' lab publication list and there isn't anything there to suggest that they even look into the issue of consciousness. It's a lot of (interesting sounding) work on neural correlates for sensorial and motor activities, as well as applications. A few issues with his position: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. In that sense, everyone does. Hi Craig, Not so fast. Think about what Telmo is saying. When the researcher added the ability to sense in IR to the mouse, that aspect or dimension of sense would have to be integrated into the totality of the Sense of those mice. The dual aspect idea shines here! For any physical system there is at least one representation and for every representation there is at least one object. Given an initial object: Mouse there is a representation of that mouse to that mouse: it's internal Sense of being a mouse in the world. When we add the IR apparatii to the mouse's body, then there is a new representation necesary, no? We no longer have the Mouse minus IR gadget Sense... - Just because the brain has a certain level of complexity, doesn't mean it has to. The brain is restricted by a fixed palette of evolutionary building blocks. It cannot take advantage of, say, sillicon chips. We can build machines that move faster and are simples than any animal, although there's evolutionary pressure for speed. Still, no animals with wheels; - There is no evolutionary pressure for good design; - There is no evolutionary pressure for understandability; It seems like a handy thing to have when one is accused of being ignorant of science or anti-science. It turns out that its only prejudice that makes these kinds of accusation in this case. Ok. As far as the stock market being computable, how would you go about determining, for instance, whether or not I rebalance my 401k and on what day and time? The stock market is a bad comparison, because it is made of brains to begin with. So it's the same problem x10^10. The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the inside. Why isn't a complete description of the brain state sufficient? (disregarding the necessary computational power) Because each brain cell is a living organism in its own right. The brain is a stock market of smaller brains. Agreed, but is it turtles all the way down? Why not, so long as there is another turtle to add to the stack... -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Wednesday, February 20, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. How do you know the mice are conscious of infra-red light? If it were a machine you would say it wasn't conscious, it just reacted to the light in a way that superficially resembles consciousness. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 12:26:24 PM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 6:13 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 9:02:36 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, February 18, 2013 9:30:49 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Yes, I posted it just to show that someone who works closely with both neurology and consciousness professionally comes to the same conclusion that I have. One of the problems of relying on expert opinions is that, sometimes, it's hard to see clearly what someone is an expert at. I had a look at Nicolelis' lab publication list and there isn't anything there to suggest that they even look into the issue of consciousness. It's a lot of (interesting sounding) work on neural correlates for sensorial and motor activities, as well as applications. A few issues with his position: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. In that sense, everyone does. Everyone has a lab where they implant electrodes into the brains of mice? - Just because the brain has a certain level of complexity, doesn't mean it has to. The brain is restricted by a fixed palette of evolutionary building blocks. It cannot take advantage of, say, sillicon chips. We can build machines that move faster and are simples than any animal, although there's evolutionary pressure for speed. Still, no animals with wheels; - There is no evolutionary pressure for good design; - There is no evolutionary pressure for understandability; It seems like a handy thing to have when one is accused of being ignorant of science or anti-science. It turns out that its only prejudice that makes these kinds of accusation in this case. Ok. As far as the stock market being computable, how would you go about determining, for instance, whether or not I rebalance my 401k and on what day and time? The stock market is a bad comparison, because it is made of brains to begin with. So it's the same problem x10^10. The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the inside. Why isn't a complete description of the brain state sufficient? (disregarding the necessary computational power) Because each brain cell is a living organism in its own right. The brain is a stock market of smaller brains. Agreed, but is it turtles all the way down? Sure. Down, in, out, through, ahead, and behind. Telmo. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 10:53:46 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Wednesday, February 20, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. How do you know the mice are conscious of infra-red light? If it were a machine you would say it wasn't conscious, it just reacted to the light in a way that superficially resembles consciousness. That's because we are obliged to give organisms like us the benefit of the doubt. The opposite is true of machines, where we have seen that their behavior has no basis in any innate sensitivity or agenda of the machine. Craig -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 7:58:15 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 2/19/2013 12:26 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 6:13 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 9:02:36 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, February 18, 2013 9:30:49 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Yes, I posted it just to show that someone who works closely with both neurology and consciousness professionally comes to the same conclusion that I have. One of the problems of relying on expert opinions is that, sometimes, it's hard to see clearly what someone is an expert at. I had a look at Nicolelis' lab publication list and there isn't anything there to suggest that they even look into the issue of consciousness. It's a lot of (interesting sounding) work on neural correlates for sensorial and motor activities, as well as applications. A few issues with his position: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. In that sense, everyone does. Hi Craig, Not so fast. Think about what Telmo is saying. When the researcher added the ability to sense in IR to the mouse, that aspect or dimension of sense would have to be integrated into the totality of the Sense of those mice. The dual aspect idea shines here! For any physical system there is at least one representation and for every representation there is at least one object. Given an initial object: Mouse there is a representation of that mouse to that mouse: it's internal Sense of being a mouse in the world. When we add the IR apparatii to the mouse's body, then there is a new representation necesary, no? We no longer have the Mouse minus IR gadget Sense... Not necessarily a new representation. It could just itch in a new place or something. It could have some novelty though, but I think that has to do with then nature of the electrode, not the IR. - Just because the brain has a certain level of complexity, doesn't mean it has to. The brain is restricted by a fixed palette of evolutionary building blocks. It cannot take advantage of, say, sillicon chips. We can build machines that move faster and are simples than any animal, although there's evolutionary pressure for speed. Still, no animals with wheels; - There is no evolutionary pressure for good design; - There is no evolutionary pressure for understandability; It seems like a handy thing to have when one is accused of being ignorant of science or anti-science. It turns out that its only prejudice that makes these kinds of accusation in this case. Ok. As far as the stock market being computable, how would you go about determining, for instance, whether or not I rebalance my 401k and on what day and time? The stock market is a bad comparison, because it is made of brains to begin with. So it's the same problem x10^10. The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the inside. Why isn't a complete description of the brain state sufficient? (disregarding the necessary computational power) Because each brain cell is a living organism in its own right. The brain is a stock market of smaller brains. Agreed, but is it turtles all the way down? Why not, so long as there is another turtle to add to the stack... Exactly. What's the alternative? Different animals all the way down? No animal after turtles? It doesn't really apply to how I think of sense though, since at the absolute level, all distinctions are neutralized and retained at the same time. Where sense becomes so thin and so broad that all experiences in history are united in a single instant, it's not really a turtle. Craig -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 10:48:03 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 12:39 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: As far as the stock market being computable, how would you go about determining, for instance, whether or not I rebalance my 401k and on what day and time? You can't, because it's a chaotic system. If you eschew computers and simulate the stock market by building an entire world with humans and an economy you would get a stock market that functions similarly to the original but not the same as the original, so it would be almost useless for predicting a particular stock movement. A computer simulation can't be expected to be better than a simulation with real humans living in a real world. In other words, you would be simulating *a* stock market, not *the* stock market. How can you explain that we can predict our own decisions? Or better yet, how do we make decisions in the first place? The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the inside. But that's the case for everything. Its behaviour is driven by what is going on on the inside as well as what's going on on the outside. Some things are more predictable to us from the behavior we can observe though. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On 2/19/2013 11:34 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 7:58:15 PM UTC-5, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 2/19/2013 12:26 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 6:13 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 9:02:36 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote: On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 2:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday, February 18, 2013 9:30:49 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Yes, I posted it just to show that someone who works closely with both neurology and consciousness professionally comes to the same conclusion that I have. One of the problems of relying on expert opinions is that, sometimes, it's hard to see clearly what someone is an expert at. I had a look at Nicolelis' lab publication list and there isn't anything there to suggest that they even look into the issue of consciousness. It's a lot of (interesting sounding) work on neural correlates for sensorial and motor activities, as well as applications. A few issues with his position: If he is making mice conscious of infra-red light though, then I would say he works with consciousness. In that sense, everyone does. Hi Craig, Not so fast. Think about what Telmo is saying. When the researcher added the ability to sense in IR to the mouse, that aspect or dimension of sense would have to be integrated into the totality of the Sense of those mice. The dual aspect idea shines here! For any physical system there is at least one representation and for every representation there is at least one object. Given an initial object: Mouse there is a representation of that mouse to that mouse: it's internal Sense of being a mouse in the world. When we add the IR apparatii to the mouse's body, then there is a new representation necesary, no? We no longer have the Mouse minus IR gadget Sense... Not necessarily a new representation. It could just itch in a new place or something. It could have some novelty though, but I think that has to do with then nature of the electrode, not the IR. Right, but consider the experiements where blind humans where rigged up with a camera and an array of electrodes on their stomach or such... I recall reports of some limited success in the transposition of the sensations from the stomach to the general location of the camera, but I am chalking that up to the auto-integrator of the brain. How that works, is interesting... - Just because the brain has a certain level of complexity, doesn't mean it has to. The brain is restricted by a fixed palette of evolutionary building blocks. It cannot take advantage of, say, sillicon chips. We can build machines that move faster and are simples than any animal, although there's evolutionary pressure for speed. Still, no animals with wheels; - There is no evolutionary pressure for good design; - There is no evolutionary pressure for understandability; It seems like a handy thing to have when one is accused of being ignorant of science or anti-science. It turns out that its only prejudice that makes these kinds of accusation in this case. Ok. As far as the stock market being computable, how would you go about determining, for instance, whether or not I rebalance my 401k and on what day and time? The stock market is a bad comparison, because it is made of brains to begin with. So it's the same problem x10^10. The brain has the same issue - you can't tell what it is going to do from the outside, because the behavior on the outside is often driven by the story going on the inside - which cannot be known unless you too are on the inside. Why isn't a complete description of the brain state sufficient? (disregarding the necessary computational power) Because each brain cell is a living organism in its own right. The brain is a stock market of smaller brains. Agreed, but is it turtles all the way down? Why not, so long as there is another turtle to add to the stack... Exactly. What's the alternative? Different animals all the way down? No animal after turtles? It doesn't really apply to how I think of sense though, since at the absolute level, all distinctions are neutralized and retained at the same time. Where sense becomes so thin and so broad that all experiences in history are united in a
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On 2/18/2013 9:30 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/511421/the-brain-is-not-computable/ There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Hi Stathis, I agree with you Stathis, but effective non-computability is just as strong as in principle non-computability. The issue of resource availability cannot be ignored. Stephen Wolfram's article on the intractability of simulating physical systems pretty much nails this argument down: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/physics/85-undecidability/2/text.html -- Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,”
On 2/18/2013 7:51 PM, Stephen P. King wrote: On 2/18/2013 9:30 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/511421/the-brain-is-not-computable/ There is no argument presented in this article. The stock market and brain and indeed most natural systems are chaotic, but that is not the same as being not computable. Hi Stathis, I agree with you Stathis, but effective non-computability is just as strong as in principle non-computability. The issue of resource availability cannot be ignored. Stephen Wolfram's article on the intractability of simulating physical systems pretty much nails this argument down: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/physics/85-undecidability/2/text.html Right, no brain can hope to compute what a sufficiently large electronic computer can. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
