subject:"Re\: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment"

Hi Bruno Marchal 


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/9/2012 
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content - 
From: Bruno Marchal 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-10-08, 10:19:35
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


Hi Roger,

On 08 Oct 2012, at 16:14, Roger Clough wrote:

 Hi Stathis Papaioannou

 I would put it that mind is superphysical. Beyond spacetime.
 Supernatural as a word carries too much baggage.

With comp, the natural numbers are supernatural enough.

Bruno




 Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
 10/8/2012
 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


 - Receiving the following content -
 From: Stathis Papaioannou
 Receiver: everything-list@googlegroups.com
 Time: 2012-10-08, 03:14:29
 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


 On 08/10/2012, at 3:07 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

 Absolutely not. We know no such thing. Quite the opposite, we know 
 with relative certainty that what we understand of physics provides 
 no possibility of anything other than more physics. There is no 
 hint of any kind that these laws should lead to any such thing as 
 an 'experience' or awareness of any kind. You beg the question 100% 
 and are 100% incapable of seeing that you are doing it.

 Well, if it's not the laws of physics then it's something 
 supernatural, isn't it?


 -- Stathis Papaioannou 

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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

Hi Craig Weinberg  

Consciousness had to arise before language.
Apes are conscious.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/9/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


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From: Craig Weinberg  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-08, 14:23:18 
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 




On Monday, October 8, 2012 1:35:31 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
On 10/8/2012 8:42 AM, John Clark wrote:  
2) Intelligent behavior is NOT associated with subjective experience, in which 
case there is no reason for Evolution to produce consciousness and I have no 
explanation for why I am here, and I have reason to believe that I am the only 
conscious being in the universe. 

There's a third possibility: Intelligent behavior is sometimes associated with 
subjective experience and sometimes not.  Evolution may have produced 
consciousness as a spandrel, an accident of the particular developmental path 
that evolution happened upon.  Or it may be that consciousness is necessarily 
associated with only certain kinds of intelligent behavior, e.g. those related 
to language. 


You are almost right but have it upside down. When someone gets knocked 
unconscious, can they continue to behave intelligently? Can a baby wake up from 
a nap and become conscious before they learn language?  

What would lead us to presume that consciousness itself could supervene on 
intelligence except if we were holding on to a functionalist metaphysics? 

Clearly human intelligence in each individual supervenes on their consciousness 
and clearly supercomputers can't feel any pain or show any signs of fatigue 
that would suggest a state of physical awareness despite their appearances of 
'intelligence'. 

If you flip it over though, you are right. Everything is conscious to some 
extent, but not everything is intelligent in a cognitive sense. The assumption 
of strong AI is that we can take the low hanging fruit of primitive 
consciousness and attach it to the tree tops of anthropological quality 
intelligence and it will grow a new tree into outer space. 

Craig 




Bretn 

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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

Hi Craig Weinberg 


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/9/2012 
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content - 
From: Craig Weinberg 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-10-08, 14:25:15
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment




On Monday, October 8, 2012 2:19:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside environment 
the less conscious you become. Huh?


Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment does 
not control you.

How could you possibly know that, considering that John has accumulated many 
years of stimulation?


Just look at the Conjoined Twins video I posted. Those two people are 
genetically identical, occupy the same body, experience stimulation that is 
very similar, yet they *routinely* disagree.

Craig



Brent

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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

Hi Craig Weinberg  

They can only disagree about experiences that are spoken.

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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

Hi Craig Weinberg  

There are three things:

1) The experiences of each twin, which may be the same or differ (we'll never 
know).

2) What they describe or interpret of their experiences in words.

3) They may the same experience but describe it differently.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/9/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Craig Weinberg  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-08, 16:25:20 
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 




On Monday, October 8, 2012 3:38:42 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
On 10/8/2012 11:25 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:  


On Monday, October 8, 2012 2:19:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:  
On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:  
So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside environment 
the less conscious you become. Huh? 


Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment does 
not control you. 

How could you possibly know that, considering that John has accumulated many 
years of stimulation? 


Just look at the Conjoined Twins video I posted. Those two people are 
genetically identical, occupy the same body, experience stimulation that is 
very similar, yet they *routinely* disagree. 


Similar isn't the same. 


But the behavior varies in similarity while their stimulation does not. Clearly 
they are each controlling their own behavior separately, even though the degree 
to which their stimulation from the outside world does not vary separately. If 
the internal conditions were sufficient to allow their control strategies to 
diverge, then they should not re-synchronize again and again constantly. Each 
difference should build on each other, like two slightly different fractal 
kernels wouldn't weave in and out of perfect synch all the time, they would 
follow completely anomalous paths. The fractals might look like the are 
exploring different patterns (if even that) but it seems like they would not 
keep going back to isomorphic patterns at the same time. 

Craig 

Brent 

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-09 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 10:28 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 There is no assumption that our knowledge of physics is complete; in
 fact if there were that assumption there would be no point in being a
 physicist, would there? As a matter of fact I believe that the basic
 physics of the brain has been understood for a long time and I
 challenge you to point out one thing that has been discovered in
 neuroscience which would surprise a chemist from the middle of last
 century.


 What you are saying is 'nobody thinks physics is complete', followed by
 'everybody knows that the physics of the brain has been complete for a long
 time'.

No, I said there is no *assumption* that our knowledge of physics is
complete. Obviously, it isn't complete, since physics is still an
active field. However, as a matter of scientific fact, there is no
evidence that anything more exotic than organic chemistry is going on
in the brain. There are many, many discoveries in neuroscience every
year but none of them could be described as new physics. New physics
in the brain would, for example, be a discovery that dark matter is
instrumental in nerve conduction. But so far, it's just organic
chemistry.

 This not only supports my point, but it brings up the more important point -
 the blindness of robustly left-hemisphere thinkers to identify their own
 capacity for denial. For me it's like a split brained experiment. I say 'the
 problem is that people think physics is complete' and you say 'no they
 don't. You can't show me any signs that physics of the brain isn't
 complete.' Total disconnect. You'll keep denying it too. Not your fault
 either, apparently, that's just the way a lot of intelligent people are
 wired. I have no idea if it's possible for people to consciously overcome
 that tendency...it would be like glimpsing yourself in the mirror before
 your image actually turned around.

Neuroscience has been a very large, well-funded field for many
decades. Can you point to any experiments at least hinting at new
physics?

 But that is not relevant to this discussion. The question is
 whether the physics of the brain, known or unknown, is computable. If
 it is,


 If the physics of the brain is incomplete, then how could we say whether it
 is computable or not? To me, the color red is physical, so that any
 computation of the brain has to arrive at a computational result that is
 [the experience of seeing red]. I don't think that is remotely possible.

As I have said many, many times in these discussions, I am happy to
assume for the sake of argument that consciousness is *not*
computable. The question being asked is whether the physical movement
of the parts of the brain are computable. That means given a complete
description of initial conditions, an adequate model and sufficient
computing power, is it possible to predict the physical movement of
the parts of the brain? This does *not* mean it is a practical
likelihood, only a theoretical possibility. Indeed, an actual Turing
machine, used in the formal definition of computable, is *not*
physically possible. OK?

If consciousness is not computable, and consciousness affects the
physical movement of the parts of the brain, then the physical
movement of the parts of the brain is not computable. OK? To put this
another way, we would observe neurons (and I guess other cells too, if
consciousness is all pervasive) doing stuff *contrary to the known
laws of physics*. For if neurons only did stuff consistent with what
we know about organic chemistry, and organic chemistry is assumed to
be computable, then the physical movement of the parts of the brain
would be computable too. OK?

 then in theory a computer could be just as intelligent as a
 human. If it isn't, then a computer would always have some deficit
 compared to a human. Maybe it would never be able to play the violin,
 cut your hair or write a book as well as a human.


 The deficiency is that it couldn't feel. It could impersonate a violin
 player, but it would lack character and passion, gravitas, presence. Just
 like whirling CGI graphics of pseudo-metallic transparent reflecty crap.
 It's empty and weightless. Can't you tell? Can't you see that? Again, I
 should not expect everyone to be able to see that. I guess I can only
 understand that I see that and know that you can see a lot of things that I
 can't as well. In your mind there is no reason that we can't eat broken
 glass for breakfast if we install synthetic stomach lining that doesn't know
 the difference between food and glass. Nothing I can say will give you pause
 or question your reasoning, because indeed, the reasoning is internally
 consistent.

Again, I have assumed for the sake of argument that a computer cannot
feel. But if the movement of the parts of the brain is computable, the
computer will be able to behave just like a person, in every respect.
After prolonged interaction with it an observer would guess that it
had feelings even

Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

Hi meekerdb 


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/9/2012 
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content - 
From: meekerdb 
Receiver: everything-list 
Time: 2012-10-08, 17:18:59
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 10/8/2012 2:10 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 


On Monday, October 8, 2012 4:57:08 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
On 10/8/2012 1:25 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 


On Monday, October 8, 2012 3:38:42 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
On 10/8/2012 11:25 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 


On Monday, October 8, 2012 2:19:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 
On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside environment 
the less conscious you become. Huh?


Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment does 
not control you.

How could you possibly know that, considering that John has accumulated many 
years of stimulation?


Just look at the Conjoined Twins video I posted. Those two people are 
genetically identical, occupy the same body, experience stimulation that is 
very similar, yet they *routinely* disagree.


Similar isn't the same.


But the behavior varies in similarity while their stimulation does not. 

Sure it does.  They are not in exactly the same place. 

That's true but irrelevant. If they move to the left two feet so that Brittany 
is in Abby's position, Brittany doesn't become Abby. 

Because they're not in the same place in SPACETIME.


We are talking about two people in the same body who act the same sometimes and 
completely different other times. This is not the result in air pressure 
differences in the room or the angle of incidence on their retina. 


How do you know that?  There are differences and differences can be amplified.  
Even K_40 decays in their brain could trigger different thoughts.




Haven't you heard of chaotic dynamics.  Even perfectly identical systems can 
diverge in behavior due to infinitesimal differences in stimulation.


Sure, but do they then converge again and again?
 



Clearly they are each controlling their own behavior separately, even though 
the degree to which their stimulation from the outside world does not vary 
separately. 

But you don't know that.  You are just looking at the current stimulation.  Yet 
their behavior, even their internal structure, has been molded by different 
stimulations since they were embryos.


I agree, they are different. How do they know how to speak in unison sometimes 
and they argue with each other at other times?


The brain is modular.

Brent

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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-09 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Tuesday, October 9, 2012 6:38:24 AM UTC-4, rclough wrote:

 Hi Craig Weinberg   

 They can only disagree about experiences that are spoken. 


You mean they can only verbally disagree. It is pretty clear that they can 
disagree about their taste in things without having spoken about them. 

Craig

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-09 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 08 Oct 2012, at 19:35, meekerdb wrote:


On 10/8/2012 8:42 AM, John Clark wrote:


2) Intelligent behavior is NOT associated with subjective  
experience, in which case there is no reason for Evolution to  
produce consciousness and I have no explanation for why I am here,  
and I have reason to believe that I am the only conscious being in  
the universe.


There's a third possibility: Intelligent behavior is sometimes  
associated with subjective experience and sometimes not.  Evolution  
may have produced consciousness as a spandrel, an accident of the  
particular developmental path that evolution happened upon.  Or it  
may be that consciousness is necessarily associated with only  
certain kinds of intelligent behavior, e.g. those related to language.


Consciousness is when you bet in your consistency, or in a reality, to  
help yourself.


Consciousness precedes language, but follows perception and sensation.  
It unifies the interpretation of the senses, making the illusion  
possible.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-09 Thread John Clark

On Mon, Oct 8, 2012  Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 Ok, which computers do you think have conscious experiences? Windows
 laptops? Deep Blue? Cable TV boxes?


How the hell should I know if computers have conscious experiences? How the
hell should I know if people have conscious experiences? All I know for
certain is that some things external to me display intelligent behavior and
some things do not, from that point on everything is conjecture and theory;
I happen to think that intelligence is associated with consciousness is a
pretty good theory but I admit it's only a theory and if your theory is
that you're the only conscious being in the universe I can't prove you
wrong.

 Is it a fact that you have conscious experiences?


Yes, however I have no proof of that, or at least none I can share with
anyone else, so I would understand if you don't believe me; however to
believe me but not to believe a computer that made a similar claim just
because you don't care for the elements out of which it is made would be
rank bigotry.

 Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment
 does not control you.


The difference between influence and control is just one of degree not of
kind. Usually lots of things cause us to do what we do, if all of them came
from the outside then its control, if only some of the causes were external
and some were internal, such as memory, then its influence.

 intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a Evolutionary
 advantage. Having difficulty with your reading comprehension?


  but what example or law are you basing this on? Who says this is a fact
 other than you?


It almost seems that you're trying to say that intelligent behavior gives
an organism no advantage over a organism that is stupid, but nobody is that
stupid; so what are you saying?

 Who claims to know that intelligence without consciousness exists?


I give up, who claims to know that intelligence without consciousness
exists?

 The only intelligent behavior I know with certainty that is always
 associated with subjective experience is my own. But I know with certainty
 there are 2 possibilities:
 1) Intelligent behavior is always associated with subjective experience,
 if so then if a computer beats you at any intellectual pursuit then it has
 a subjective experience, assuming of course that you yourself are
 intelligent. And I'll let you pick the particular intellectual pursuit for
 the contest.
 2) Intelligent behavior is NOT associated with subjective experience, in
 which case there is no reason for Evolution to produce consciousness and I
 have no explanation for why I am here, and I have reason to believe that I
 am the only conscious being in the universe.


  I choose 3) The existence of intelligent behavior is contingent upon
 recognition and interpretation by a conscious agent.


That's EXACTLY the same as #1, you're saying that intelligent behavior
without consciousness is impossible, I can't prove it but I suspect you're
probably right. And if we are right then a computer beating you at a
intellectual task is evidence that it is conscious, assuming only that you
yourself are intelligent and conscious.

 Behavior can be misinterpreted by a conscious agent as having a higher
 than actual quality of subjectivity when it doesn't


But that's what I'm asking, what behavior gave you the clue that it would
be a misinterpretation to attribute consciousness to something?

This started with your question Which intelligent behavior do you know
that you can be certain exists without any subjective experience associated
with it? I said there was no behavior to enable us to determine what is
conscious and what is not, all you're basically saying is that conscious
intellectual behavior is intellectual behavior in which consciousness is
involved; and I already knew that, and it is not helpful in figuring out
what is conscious and what is not.

 No being that we know of has become conscious by means of intelligence
 alone.


Other than ourselves we know with certainty of no other being that is
conscious PERIOD. All we can do is observe intelligent behavior and make
guesses from there.

 Every conscious being develops sensorimotor and emotional awareness
 before any cognitive intelligence arises.


How they hell do you know?

 Babies cry before they talk.


Yes, without a doubt babies exhibit crying behavior before talking
behavior, their brains need further development and they need to gain more
knowledge before they can advance from one sort of behavior to another; and
that is perfectly consistent with my belief that emotion is easy but
intelligence is hard.

 You think that every behavior in biology exists purely because of
 evolution


Every biological structure exists purely because of Evolution, however one
of those physical structures, the brain, allows for a far far richer range
of behavior than Evolution can provide, behaviors contingent on
astronomically complex

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-09 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Tuesday, October 9, 2012 10:17:41 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote:



 Consciousness is when you bet in your consistency, or in a reality, to 
 help yourself. 

 Consciousness precedes language, but follows perception and sensation. 


Nice. It can be tricky because perception and sensation can both be seen as 
kinds of awareness and some people use the term consciousness as a synonym 
for awareness. This is not entirely incorrect. It's like saying that cash 
and credit cards are both kind of money and that economics is a synonym for 
money. It can be if you want it to be, it's just a word that we define by 
consensus usage, but if we want to get precise, then I try to have a vague 
taxonomy of sensation  perception  feeling  awareness  consciousness so 
that consciousness is an awareness of awareness. The continuum is 
logarithmic, but not discretely so because of the nature of subjectivity 
ins not discrete but runs the full spectrum from discrete to nebulous.
 

 It unifies the interpretation of the senses, making the illusion possible.


Here it is, Bruno. This is where I can see you saying exactly what I used 
to believe was true, but now I understand it 180 degrees away from the 
*whole* truth.

All that you have to do is drop the assumption that each sense is a 
separate discrete process built up from nothing and see it as a sieve, 
filtering out or receiving particular ranges of non-illusory experience. 
The filtered sensation do not need to be conditioned mechanically or 
mechanically, they aren't objects which need to be assembled. The 
unification of the senses is like the nuclear force - unity is the a priori 
default, it is only the processes of the brain which modulate the 
obstruction of that unity. Sanity does not need to be propped up and 
scripted like a program, it is a familiar attractor (as opposed to strange 
attractor) of any given inertial frame.

The only illusion we have is when our non-illusory capacity to tell the 
difference between conflicting inertial frames of perception, cognition, 
sensation, etc recovers that difference and identifies with one sense frame 
over another, because of a perception of greater sense or significance. 
It's not subject to emulation. It actually has to make more sense to the 
person. The content doesn't matter. You can have a dream that makes no 
cognitive sense at all but without your waking life to compare it to, you 
have no problem accepting that there is a donkey driving you to work. 
Realism is not emergent functionally or assembled digitally from the bottom 
up, it is recovered apocatastatically from the top down.

Craig


 Bruno



 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/





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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-09 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 09 Oct 2012, at 12:34, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Craig Weinberg

Consciousness had to arise before language.
Apes are conscious.


OK.

I think that all animals and plants are conscious, although not on a  
really common scale with most animals.


I think all animals above the octopus, including some spiders, are  
self-conscious.


Today.

Bruno







Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/9/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Craig Weinberg
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-08, 14:23:18
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment




On Monday, October 8, 2012 1:35:31 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:
On 10/8/2012 8:42 AM, John Clark wrote:
2) Intelligent behavior is NOT associated with subjective  
experience, in which case there is no reason for Evolution to  
produce consciousness and I have no explanation for why I am here,  
and I have reason to believe that I am the only conscious being in  
the universe.


There's a third possibility: Intelligent behavior is sometimes  
associated with subjective experience and sometimes not.  Evolution  
may have produced consciousness as a spandrel, an accident of the  
particular developmental path that evolution happened upon.  Or it  
may be that consciousness is necessarily associated with only  
certain kinds of intelligent behavior, e.g. those related to language.



You are almost right but have it upside down. When someone gets  
knocked unconscious, can they continue to behave intelligently? Can  
a baby wake up from a nap and become conscious before they learn  
language?


What would lead us to presume that consciousness itself could  
supervene on intelligence except if we were holding on to a  
functionalist metaphysics?


Clearly human intelligence in each individual supervenes on their  
consciousness and clearly supercomputers can't feel any pain or show  
any signs of fatigue that would suggest a state of physical  
awareness despite their appearances of 'intelligence'.


If you flip it over though, you are right. Everything is conscious  
to some extent, but not everything is intelligent in a cognitive  
sense. The assumption of strong AI is that we can take the low  
hanging fruit of primitive consciousness and attach it to the tree  
tops of anthropological quality intelligence and it will grow a new  
tree into outer space.


Craig




Bretn

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-09 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Tuesday, October 9, 2012 11:21:59 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Mon, Oct 8, 2012  Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:

  Ok, which computers do you think have conscious experiences? Windows 
 laptops? Deep Blue? Cable TV boxes?


 How the hell should I know if computers have conscious experiences? How 
 the hell should I know if people have conscious experiences? 


I  didn't ask which ones you know are conscious, I asked which ones you 
think are conscious. I have no trouble at all saying that zero computers 
are conscious and that all living people have had conscious experiences.
 

 All I know for certain is that some things external to me display 
 intelligent behavior and some things do not, 


Why do you think that you know that? What makes a behavior intelligent? 
Over how long a time period are we talking about? Is a species as a whole 
intelligent? Are ecosystems intelligent? Caves full of growing crystals?
 

 from that point on everything is conjecture and theory; I happen to think 
 that intelligence is associated with consciousness is a pretty good theory 
 but I admit it's only a theory and if your theory is that you're the only 
 conscious being in the universe I can't prove you wrong. 


When did I ever say that I am the only conscious being in the universe?
 


  Is it a fact that you have conscious experiences?


 Yes, however I have no proof of that, or at least none I can share with 
 anyone else, so I would understand if you don't believe me; however to 
 believe me but not to believe a computer that made a similar claim just 
 because you don't care for the elements out of which it is made would be 
 rank bigotry.


It's not bigotry, it's an observation that computers don't do anything 
remotely implying consciousness of any kind. They are literally automatons. 
Their inorganic composition only gives us a way of understanding why it is 
the case that assembling something which can be publicly controlled is 
mutually exclusive from growing something which can be privately 
experienced.
 


  Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment 
 does not control you.


 The difference between influence and control is just one of degree not of 
 kind. 


That's your assumption. I am sympathetic to it to the extent that all 
difference between degrees and kinds are also a difference between degree 
not of kind. I am influenced by traffic lights, but I still have to have 
control of the car I am driving. Control is a continuum. If you say that 
control is subsumed completely by influence, then you are denying that 
there is anything which can be discerned by degree. Control does not 
automatically arise from a lack of influence. A rock will not sing 
showtunes if given a chance.
 

 Usually lots of things cause us to do what we do,


If they caused everything to happen without us, then there would be no us. 
Why would there be?
 

 if all of them came from the outside then its control, if only some of the 
 causes were external and some were internal, such as memory, then its 
 influence.


We are still the ones who evaluate the influences and contribute directly 
to our actions.
 


  intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a Evolutionary 
 advantage. Having difficulty with your reading comprehension?


  but what example or law are you basing this on? Who says this is a fact 
 other than you?


 It almost seems that you're trying to say that intelligent behavior gives 
 an organism no advantage over a organism that is stupid, but nobody is that 
 stupid; so what are you saying?


What does that have to do with this idea of yours that intelligence can 
exist without consciousness? You are trying to dodge the question.
 


  Who claims to know that intelligence without consciousness exists?


 I give up, who claims to know that intelligence without consciousness 
 exists?


You. Very insistently: intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers 
a Evolutionary advantage. Having difficulty with your reading 
comprehension?
 
Having difficulty remembering your edicts?


  The only intelligent behavior I know with certainty that is always 
 associated with subjective experience is my own. But I know with certainty 
 there are 2 possibilities:
 1) Intelligent behavior is always associated with subjective experience, 
 if so then if a computer beats you at any intellectual pursuit then it has 
 a subjective experience, assuming of course that you yourself are 
 intelligent. And I'll let you pick the particular intellectual pursuit for 
 the contest.
 2) Intelligent behavior is NOT associated with subjective experience, in 
 which case there is no reason for Evolution to produce consciousness and I 
 have no explanation for why I am here, and I have reason to believe that I 
 am the only conscious being in the universe.


  I choose 3) The existence of intelligent behavior is contingent upon 
 recognition and interpretation by a conscious agent.

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-08 Thread Quentin Anciaux

2012/10/7 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com

 On Saturday, October 6, 2012 1:56:33 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote:


  I'm openly saying that a high school kid can make a robot that
 behaves sensibly with just a few transistors.


  Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of
 teleology is fully supported from the start.


 We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this universe
 allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know how they do it but
 we know for a fact that it can be done.


 Absolutely not. We know no such thing. Quite the opposite, we know with
 relative certainty that what we understand of physics provides


He did not say that... He is absolutely true, and I agree with him because
*I* am (or he from his POV) the fact he is talking about, I am conscious
therefore it is true that the physical laws of this universe wathever they
are allow for the creation of consciousness, at least they allowed mine. He
didn't say the laws *we know*, he said the physical laws of this universe
allow

Regards,
Quentin


 no possibility of anything other than more physics. There is no hint of
 any kind that these laws should lead to any such thing as an 'experience'
 or awareness of any kind. You beg the question 100% and are 100% incapable
 of seeing that you are doing it.


 So how on Earth does that indicate that a conscious computer is not
 possible? Because it doesn't fart?


 Computers which have been programmed thus far don't have conscious
 experiences. Would you agree that is a fact?

 I sympathize with the promise that someday we could have them, but I
 understand that the capacity to have a conscious experience is inversely
 proportionate to the capacity fro that experience to be controlled from the
 outside. You don't understand that and are not interested in why, so you
 will go on assuming that someday your iPhone will bring you to the airport
 and put its finger up your GI port and call its friends.



  you have erroneously assumed that intelligence is possible without
 sense experience.


 No, I am assuming the exact OPPOSITE! In fact I'm not even assuming, I
 know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a
 Evolutionary advantage,


 Which fact is that? Which intelligent behavior do you know that you can be
 certain exists without any subjective experience associated with it?


  and I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITH consciousness
 confers no additional Evolutionary advantage (and if you disagree with that
 point then you must believe that the Turing Test works for consciousness
 too and not just intelligence).


 Yet you think that consciousness must have evolved. No contradiction
 there? You think that every behavior in biology exists purely because of
 evolution - except consciousness, which you have no explanation for
 whatsoever, yet you know that mine is wrong and that physics will
 eventually get it right.


 And in spite of all this I know for a fact that Evolution DID produce
 consciousness at least once, therefore the only conclusion is that
 consciousness is a byproduct of intellagence.


 A byproduct that does what???



  Adenine and Thymine don't have purpose in seeking to bind with each
 other?


 I don't even know what a question like that means, who's purpose do you
 expect Adenine and Thymine to serve?


 The purpose of their attraction to each other.



  How do you know?


 I know because I have intelligence and Adenine and Thymine do not know
 because they have none, they only have cause and effect.


 Where do you think your intelligence to know this comes from? Surely it is
 the result in large part of Adenine and Thymine's contribution to the
 intelligence of DNA.


  How is it different from our purpose in staying in close proximity to
 places to eat and sleep?


 And to think that some people berated me for anthropomorphizing future
 supercomputers and here you are   anthropomorphizing simple chemicals.


 I'm not saying that molecular purpose has the same depth as human purpose.
 You are saying instead, that purpose arises spontaneously at some level of
 description...some fuzzy area between firing patterns of neurons and
 hereditary patterns of evolution.



  Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware?


 Because then we wouldn't be aware of having this conversation.


 And we are aware of having this conversation because everything is aware,
 except of course for computers.


 The substances that make up the parts of our computers are primitively
 aware, just not aware of the human level mappings and interpretations of
 their activities. Unless you think that your computer is following the
 discussion? Shall we test your theory? Yoo hoo! Computers of the interwebz!
 Is this thing on? What say ye?




 (space intentionally left blank for the supercomputers of the future to
 come back in

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-08 Thread Stathis Papaioannou



On 08/10/2012, at 3:07 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 Absolutely not. We know no such thing. Quite the opposite, we know with 
 relative certainty that what we understand of physics provides no possibility 
 of anything other than more physics. There is no hint of any kind that these 
 laws should lead to any such thing as an 'experience' or awareness of any 
 kind. You beg the question 100% and are 100% incapable of seeing that you are 
 doing it.

Well, if it's not the laws of physics then it's something supernatural, isn't 
it?


-- Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Re: Can computers be conscious ? Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-08 Thread Roger Clough

Hi Bruno Marchal  

True, I may not be able to prove that the computer is not conscious.
For I certainly cannot be sure if another person is conscious. 

For the computer, I can say however, that it would need
a self to be consciousness, a singular unitary entity into
which the many can be experienced as one. 

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/8/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Bruno Marchal  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-07, 10:12:50 
Subject: Re: Can computers be conscious ? Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 


On 07 Oct 2012, at 14:17, Roger Clough wrote: 

 Hi John Clark 
 
 Unless computers can deal with inextended objects such as 
 mind and experience, they cannot be conscious. 
 
 Consciousness is direct experience, computers can only deal in  
 descriptions of experience. 
 
 Everything that a computer does is, to my knowledge, at least 
 in principle publicly available, since it uses publicly available  
 symbols or code. 
 
 Consciousness is direct experience, which cannot be put down in code 
 any more than life can be put down in code. It is personal and not  
 publicly available. 

I agree with this, about consciousness, but how do you know that your  
neighbor is conscious? You can see only his brain or his body, not his  
soul. 
You cannot know that: it is a bet. Why could'n we make that bet for a  
computer. You are just postulating that computer cannot think, but  
that is begging the question. 
Of course it is not the computer-body which is conscious, but the  
(possible) person associated to the computation done by the computer.  
same for the brain: a brain is not conscious. Only person are conscious. 

Bruno 



 
 Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
 10/7/2012 
 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 
 
 
 - Receiving the following content - 
 From: John Clark 
 Receiver: everything-list 
 Time: 2012-10-06, 13:56:30 
 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 
 
 
 On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
 
 
 
 ?I'm openly saying that a high school kid can make a robot that  
 behaves sensibly with just a few transistors.? ? 
 
 
 Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of  
 teleology is fully supported from the start. 
 
 
 We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this  
 universe allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know  
 how they do it but we know for a fact that it can be done. So how on  
 Earth does that indicate that a conscious computer is not possible?  
 Because it doesn't fart?? 
 
 ? 
 you have erroneously assumed that intelligence is possible without  
 sense experience. 
 
 No, I am assuming the exact OPPOSITE! In fact I'm not even assuming,  
 I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness  
 confers a Evolutionary advantage, and I know for a fact that  
 intelligent behavior WITH consciousness confers no additional  
 Evolutionary advantage (and if you disagree with that point then you  
 must believe that the Turing Test works for consciousness too and  
 not just intelligence). And in spite of all this I know for a fact  
 that Evolution DID produce consciousness at least once, therefore  
 the only conclusion is that consciousness is a byproduct of  
 intellagence. 
 
 
 
 Adenine and Thymine don't have purpose in seeking to bind with each  
 other? 
 
 
 I don't even know what a question like that means, who's purpose do  
 you expect Adenine and Thymine to serve? 
 
 
 
 How do you know? 
 
 
 I know because I have intelligence and Adenine and Thymine do not  
 know because they have none, they only have cause and effect. 
 
 
 
 How is it different from our purpose in staying in close proximity  
 to places to eat and sleep? 
 
 
 And to think that some people berated me for anthropomorphizing  
 future supercomputers and here you are ? anthropomorphizing simple  
 chemicals. 
 
 
 
 Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware? 
 
 
 Because then we wouldn't be aware of having this conversation. 
 
 
 And we are aware of having this conversation because everything is  
 aware, except of course for computers. 
 ? 
 
 Robots are something? 
 
 No, they aren't something. 
 
 That is just a little too silly to argue. 
 
 ? 
 
 Everything is awareness 
 
 Are you certain, I thought everything is klogknee, or maybe its  
 everything is 42. 
 
 
 
 evolution requires that something be alive to begin with. 
 
 Evolution requires something that can reproduce itself, there is no  
 universally agreed on definition of life so if you want to say  
 that viruses and RNA strings and crystals and clay patterns and Von  
 Neumann Machines are alive I won't argue with you and will agree  
 that Evolution requires that something be alive to get started. 
 
 ? John K Clark 
 
 
 
 
 
 ? 
 
 
 --  
 You received this message because you

Re: Re: Can computers be conscious ? Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-08 Thread Roger Clough

Hi Richard Ruquist  

I may have given that impression, sorry, but 
a monad can only make what's inside do what it can do.

Human and animal monads can both feel, so they can be conscious.
But a rock is at best unconscious as it cannot feel or think.\

There's no way to tell what faculties a computer has.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/8/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Richard Ruquist  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-07, 11:06:17 
Subject: Re: Can computers be conscious ? Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 


Roger, 

If human consciousness comes from attached monads, as I think you have claimed, 
then why could not these monads attach to sufficiently complex computers 
as well. 
Richard 

On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Roger Clough  wrote: 
 Hi John Clark 
 
 Unless computers can deal with inextended objects such as 
 mind and experience, they cannot be conscious. 
 
 Consciousness is direct experience, computers can only deal in descriptions 
 of experience. 
 
 Everything that a computer does is, to my knowledge, at least 
 in principle publicly available, since it uses publicly available symbols or 
 code. 
 
 Consciousness is direct experience, which cannot be put down in code 
 any more than life can be put down in code. It is personal and not publicly 
 available. 
 
 Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
 10/7/2012 
 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 
 
 
 - Receiving the following content - 
 From: John Clark 
 Receiver: everything-list 
 Time: 2012-10-06, 13:56:30 
 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 
 
 
 On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 
 
 
 
 ?I'm openly saying that a high school kid can make a robot that behaves 
 sensibly with just a few transistors.? ? 
 
 
 Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of teleology is 
 fully supported from the start. 
 
 
 We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this universe 
 allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know how they do it but 
 we know for a fact that it can be done. So how on Earth does that indicate 
 that a conscious computer is not possible? Because it doesn't fart?? 
 
 ? 
 you have erroneously assumed that intelligence is possible without sense 
 experience. 
 
 No, I am assuming the exact OPPOSITE! In fact I'm not even assuming, I know 
 for a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a 
 Evolutionary advantage, and I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITH 
 consciousness confers no additional Evolutionary advantage (and if you 
 disagree with that point then you must believe that the Turing Test works for 
 consciousness too and not just intelligence). And in spite of all this I know 
 for a fact that Evolution DID produce consciousness at least once, therefore 
 the only conclusion is that consciousness is a byproduct of intellagence. 
 
 
 
 Adenine and Thymine don't have purpose in seeking to bind with each other? 
 
 
 I don't even know what a question like that means, who's purpose do you 
 expect Adenine and Thymine to serve? 
 
 
 
 How do you know? 
 
 
 I know because I have intelligence and Adenine and Thymine do not know 
 because they have none, they only have cause and effect. 
 
 
 
 How is it different from our purpose in staying in close proximity to places 
 to eat and sleep? 
 
 
 And to think that some people berated me for anthropomorphizing future 
 supercomputers and here you are ? anthropomorphizing simple chemicals. 
 
 
 
 Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware? 
 
 
 Because then we wouldn't be aware of having this conversation. 
 
 
 And we are aware of having this conversation because everything is aware, 
 except of course for computers. 
 ? 
 
 Robots are something? 
 
 No, they aren't something. 
 
 That is just a little too silly to argue. 
 
 ? 
 
 Everything is awareness 
 
 Are you certain, I thought everything is klogknee, or maybe its everything is 
 42. 
 
 
 
 evolution requires that something be alive to begin with. 
 
 Evolution requires something that can reproduce itself, there is no 
 universally agreed on definition of life so if you want to say that viruses 
 and RNA strings and crystals and clay patterns and Von Neumann Machines are 
 alive I won't argue with you and will agree that Evolution requires that 
 something be alive to get started. 
 
 ? John K Clark 
 
 
 
 
 
 ? 
 
 
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 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
 Everything List group. 
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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-08 Thread Roger Clough

Hi Stathis Papaioannou  

I would put it that mind is superphysical. Beyond spacetime.
Supernatural as a word carries too much baggage.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/8/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Stathis Papaioannou  
Receiver: everything-list@googlegroups.com  
Time: 2012-10-08, 03:14:29 
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 


On 08/10/2012, at 3:07 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote: 

 Absolutely not. We know no such thing. Quite the opposite, we know with 
 relative certainty that what we understand of physics provides no possibility 
 of anything other than more physics. There is no hint of any kind that these 
 laws should lead to any such thing as an 'experience' or awareness of any 
 kind. You beg the question 100% and are 100% incapable of seeing that you are 
 doing it. 

Well, if it's not the laws of physics then it's something supernatural, isn't 
it? 


-- Stathis Papaioannou 

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-08 Thread Bruno Marchal


Hi Roger,

On 08 Oct 2012, at 16:14, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi Stathis Papaioannou

I would put it that mind is superphysical. Beyond spacetime.
Supernatural as a word carries too much baggage.


With comp, the natural numbers are supernatural enough.

Bruno





Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/8/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: Stathis Papaioannou
Receiver: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Time: 2012-10-08, 03:14:29
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 08/10/2012, at 3:07 AM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:

Absolutely not. We know no such thing. Quite the opposite, we know  
with relative certainty that what we understand of physics provides  
no possibility of anything other than more physics. There is no  
hint of any kind that these laws should lead to any such thing as  
an 'experience' or awareness of any kind. You beg the question 100%  
and are 100% incapable of seeing that you are doing it.


Well, if it's not the laws of physics then it's something  
supernatural, isn't it?



-- Stathis Papaioannou 

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment



On Monday, October 8, 2012 3:06:42 AM UTC-4, Quentin Anciaux wrote:



 2012/10/7 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:

 On Saturday, October 6, 2012 1:56:33 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comwrote:


  I'm openly saying that a high school kid can make a robot that 
 behaves sensibly with just a few transistors.


  Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of 
 teleology is fully supported from the start. 


 We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this 
 universe allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know how they 
 do it but we know for a fact that it can be done. 


 Absolutely not. We know no such thing. Quite the opposite, we know with 
 relative certainty that what we understand of physics provides 


 He did not say that... He is absolutely true, and I agree with him because 
 *I* am (or he from his POV) the fact he is talking about, I am conscious 
 therefore it is true that the physical laws of this universe wathever they 
 are allow for the creation of consciousness, at least they allowed mine.


You are agreeing with me:   Only because he lives in a universe in which 
the possibility of teleology is fully supported from the start.

When you and I say the Laws of Physics in this context, we mean physics in 
an open ended way which includes 'whatever it takes' to make consciousness. 
When John Clark says the Laws of Physics, I think that he means the laws 
which he understands as being the constraining principles of 20th century 
Physics, such that any notion of consciousness which cannot be explained in 
the those terms must be nonsense.

He didn't say the laws *we know*, he said the physical laws of this 
 universe allow


I think that he assumes that the laws of physics are set as we understand 
them now and no new interpretations which modify them significantly can 
contradict them.

Craig 


 Regards,
 Quentin



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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment



On Monday, October 8, 2012 3:14:36 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:



 On 08/10/2012, at 3:07 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: 
 wrote: 

  Absolutely not. We know no such thing. Quite the opposite, we know with 
 relative certainty that what we understand of physics provides no 
 possibility of anything other than more physics. There is no hint of any 
 kind that these laws should lead to any such thing as an 'experience' or 
 awareness of any kind. You beg the question 100% and are 100% incapable of 
 seeing that you are doing it. 

 Well, if it's not the laws of physics then it's something supernatural, 
 isn't it? 


Not unless you assume that physics is complete. To me, if we have no idea 
how anything detects anything then we haven't completely understood 
physics. I assume that nothing can be supernatural. There is nothing that 
is not nature. This conversation is nature.

Craig
 



 -- Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-08 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012  Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:

 We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this
 universe allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know how they
 do it but we know for a fact that it can be done.


  Absolutely not. We know no such thing.


We do unless we abandon reason and pretend that the non answers that
religion provides actually explain something, or that your Fart Philosophy
explains something when it says that consciousness exists because
consciousness exists.

 Computers which have been programmed thus far don't have conscious
 experiences. Would you agree that is a fact?


No, I most certainly do NOT agree that it is a fact that computers are not
conscious, nor is it a fact that Craig Weinberg has conscious experiences;
it is only a fact that sometimes both behave intelligently.

  I understand that the capacity to have a conscious experience is
 inversely proportionate to the capacity fro that experience to be
 controlled from the outside.


So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside
environment the less conscious you become. Huh?


  I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness
 confers a Evolutionary advantage


  Which fact is that?


That intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a Evolutionary
advantage. Having difficulty with your reading comprehension?

 Which intelligent behavior do you know that you can be certain exists
 without any subjective experience associated with it?


I am aware of no such behavior. The only intelligent behavior I know with
certainty that is always associated with subjective experience is my own.
But I know with certainty there are 2 possibilities:

1) Intelligent behavior is always associated with subjective experience, if
so then if a computer beats you at any intellectual pursuit then it has a
subjective experience, assuming of course that you yourself are
intelligent. And I'll let you pick the particular intellectual pursuit for
the contest.

2) Intelligent behavior is NOT associated with subjective experience, in
which case there is no reason for Evolution to produce consciousness and I
have no explanation for why I am here, and I have reason to believe that I
am the only conscious being in the universe.

 I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITH consciousness confers
 no additional Evolutionary advantage (and if you disagree with that point
 then you must believe that the Turing Test works for consciousness too and
 not just intelligence).


  Yet you think that consciousness must have evolved.


Yes.

 No contradiction there?


No contradiction there if consciousness is a byproduct of intelligence, a
massive  contradiction if it is not; so massive that human beings could not
be conscious, and yet I am, and perhaps you are too.

 You think that every behavior in biology exists purely because of
 evolution


Yes.

  except consciousness, which you have no explanation for


My explanation is that intelligence produces consciousness, I don't know
exactly how but if Evolution is true then there is a proof that it does.


  I know for a fact that Evolution DID produce consciousness at least
 once, therefore the only conclusion is that consciousness is a byproduct of
 intelligence.


  A byproduct that does what???


A byproduct that produces consciousness. Having difficulty with your
reading comprehension?

  who's purpose do you expect Adenine and Thymine to serve?


  The purpose of their attraction to each other.


That's nice, but I repeat, who's purpose do you expect Adenine and Thymine
to serve?


  Where do you think your intelligence to know this comes from? Surely it
 is the result in large part of Adenine and Thymine's contribution to the
 intelligence of DNA.


If everything (except for some reason computers!) is intelligent, if even
simple molecules are intelligent then the word has no meaning and is
equivalent to nothing is intelligent or everything is klogknee or nothing
is klogknee.

  Robots are something


   No, they aren't something.


  That is just a little too silly to argue.


  You think that a picture of a pipe is a pipe, so you think that a
 machine made of things is also a thing. You are incorrect.


I think that a picture of a pipe is something, you don't and you are not
just incorrect you are silly.

 I don't experience anything other than awareness


So you say. However you won't believe that a computer is conscious
regardless of how brilliantly it behaves or how vehemently it insists that
it is, so why should I believe you when you claim to be conscious?

 space intentionally left blank for the supercomputers of the future to
 come back in time with their super conscious intelligence and join the
 conversation


I don't see the point of that, no matter what they did no matter how
brilliantly or nobly they conversed you'd still insist they were not
conscious because you think that the elements in their brain

Re: Re: Can computers be conscious ? Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-08 Thread Richard Ruquist

Roger,
Monads are everywhere, inside computers
as well as humans, rocks and free space.
Whatever allows monads to connect to physical objects
may be operative for inanimates as well as animates.

So the first step is to identify the connecting mechanism.

For physical consciousness I conjecture the connection
is based on BECs (Bose-Einstein Condensates)
in the monadic mind entangled with BECs in the brain.

It has been demonstrated experimentally
that BECs of disparate substances can still be entangled.
So once a computer is designed with BECs as in the human brain
then it may be capable of consciousness.
Richard


On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:
 Hi Richard Ruquist

 I may have given that impression, sorry, but
 a monad can only make what's inside do what it can do.

 Human and animal monads can both feel, so they can be conscious.
 But a rock is at best unconscious as it cannot feel or think.\

 There's no way to tell what faculties a computer has.

 Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
 10/8/2012
 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


 - Receiving the following content -
 From: Richard Ruquist
 Receiver: everything-list
 Time: 2012-10-07, 11:06:17
 Subject: Re: Can computers be conscious ? Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


 Roger,

 If human consciousness comes from attached monads, as I think you have 
 claimed,
 then why could not these monads attach to sufficiently complex computers
 as well.
 Richard

 On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Roger Clough  wrote:
 Hi John Clark

 Unless computers can deal with inextended objects such as
 mind and experience, they cannot be conscious.

 Consciousness is direct experience, computers can only deal in descriptions 
 of experience.

 Everything that a computer does is, to my knowledge, at least
 in principle publicly available, since it uses publicly available symbols or 
 code.

 Consciousness is direct experience, which cannot be put down in code
 any more than life can be put down in code. It is personal and not publicly 
 available.

 Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
 10/7/2012
 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


 - Receiving the following content -
 From: John Clark
 Receiver: everything-list
 Time: 2012-10-06, 13:56:30
 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


 On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



 ?I'm openly saying that a high school kid can make a robot that behaves 
 sensibly with just a few transistors.? ?


 Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of teleology 
 is fully supported from the start.


 We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this universe 
 allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know how they do it but 
 we know for a fact that it can be done. So how on Earth does that indicate 
 that a conscious computer is not possible? Because it doesn't fart??

 ?
 you have erroneously assumed that intelligence is possible without sense 
 experience.

 No, I am assuming the exact OPPOSITE! In fact I'm not even assuming, I know 
 for a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a 
 Evolutionary advantage, and I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITH 
 consciousness confers no additional Evolutionary advantage (and if you 
 disagree with that point then you must believe that the Turing Test works 
 for consciousness too and not just intelligence). And in spite of all this I 
 know for a fact that Evolution DID produce consciousness at least once, 
 therefore the only conclusion is that consciousness is a byproduct of 
 intellagence.



 Adenine and Thymine don't have purpose in seeking to bind with each other?


 I don't even know what a question like that means, who's purpose do you 
 expect Adenine and Thymine to serve?



 How do you know?


 I know because I have intelligence and Adenine and Thymine do not know 
 because they have none, they only have cause and effect.



 How is it different from our purpose in staying in close proximity to 
 places to eat and sleep?


 And to think that some people berated me for anthropomorphizing future 
 supercomputers and here you are ? anthropomorphizing simple chemicals.



 Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware?


 Because then we wouldn't be aware of having this conversation.


 And we are aware of having this conversation because everything is aware, 
 except of course for computers.
 ?

 Robots are something?

 No, they aren't something.

 That is just a little too silly to argue.

 ?

 Everything is awareness

 Are you certain, I thought everything is klogknee, or maybe its everything 
 is 42.



 evolution requires that something be alive to begin with.

 Evolution requires something that can reproduce itself, there is no 
 universally agreed on definition of life so if you want to say that 
 viruses and RNA strings and crystals and clay patterns and Von Neumann

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment



On Monday, October 8, 2012 11:42:02 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Fri, Oct 5, 2012  Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:

  We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this 
 universe allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know how they 
 do it but we know for a fact that it can be done. 


  Absolutely not. We know no such thing. 


 We do unless we abandon reason and pretend that the non answers that 
 religion provides actually explain something, or that your Fart Philosophy 
 explains something when it says that consciousness exists because 
 consciousness exists. 

  Computers which have been programmed thus far don't have conscious 
 experiences. Would you agree that is a fact?


 No, I most certainly do NOT agree that it is a fact that computers are not 
 conscious, nor is it a fact that Craig Weinberg has conscious experiences; 
 it is only a fact that sometimes both behave intelligently. 


Ok, which computers do you think have conscious experiences? Windows 
laptops? Deep Blue? Cable TV boxes? Is it a fact that you have conscious 
experiences?


   I understand that the capacity to have a conscious experience is 
 inversely proportionate to the capacity fro that experience to be 
 controlled from the outside. 


 So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside 
 environment the less conscious you become. Huh?


Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment 
does not control you.
 

  

  I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness 
 confers a Evolutionary advantage


  Which fact is that? 


 That intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a Evolutionary 
 advantage. Having difficulty with your reading comprehension?  


I heard that you claim that there is such a fact, but what example or law 
are you basing this on? Who says this is a fact other than you? Who claims 
to know that intelligence without consciousness exists?
 


  Which intelligent behavior do you know that you can be certain exists 
 without any subjective experience associated with it?


 I am aware of no such behavior. The only intelligent behavior I know with 
 certainty that is always associated with subjective experience is my own. 
 But I know with certainty there are 2 possibilities:

 1) Intelligent behavior is always associated with subjective experience, 
 if so then if a computer beats you at any intellectual pursuit then it has 
 a subjective experience, assuming of course that you yourself are 
 intelligent. And I'll let you pick the particular intellectual pursuit for 
 the contest. 

 2) Intelligent behavior is NOT associated with subjective experience, in 
 which case there is no reason for Evolution to produce consciousness and I 
 have no explanation for why I am here, and I have reason to believe that I 
 am the only conscious being in the universe.


I choose 

3) The existence of intelligent behavior is contingent upon recognition and 
interpretation by a conscious agent. Behavior can be misinterpreted by a 
conscious agent as having a higher than actual quality of subjectivity when 
it doesn't (puppets, cartoons, interactive movies and computer programs) 
and can be misinterpreted as having a lower than actual quality of 
subjectivity (dropping bombs on foreign cities, thinking people you don't 
like are less than human, etc).


   I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITH consciousness confers 
 no additional Evolutionary advantage (and if you disagree with that point 
 then you must believe that the Turing Test works for consciousness too and 
 not just intelligence). 


  Yet you think that consciousness must have evolved.


 Yes. 

  No contradiction there?


 No contradiction there if consciousness is a byproduct of intelligence, a 
 massive  contradiction if it is not; so massive that human beings could not 
 be conscious, and yet I am, and perhaps you are too.


No being that we know of has become conscious by means of intelligence 
alone. Every conscious being develops sensorimotor and emotional awareness 
before any cognitive intelligence arises. Babies cry before they talk. 
Crying intelligent, as it would be much more intelligent to communicate 
intelligently about what their discomfort is.
 


  You think that every behavior in biology exists purely because of 
 evolution


 Yes.

   except consciousness, which you have no explanation for 


 My explanation is that intelligence produces consciousness, I don't know 
 exactly how but if Evolution is true then there is a proof that it does. 


It's begging the question. You assume the cart pushes the horse, and that 
you don't know how, but that if the cart gets us places then it must be 
proof that it is true.
 

  

  I know for a fact that Evolution DID produce consciousness at least 
 once, therefore the only conclusion is that consciousness is a byproduct of 
 intelligence.


  A byproduct that does what???


 A byproduct

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 10/8/2012 8:42 AM, John Clark wrote:
2) Intelligent behavior is NOT associated with subjective experience, in which case 
there is no reason for Evolution to produce consciousness and I have no explanation for 
why I am here, and I have reason to believe that I am the only conscious being in the 
universe.


There's a third possibility: Intelligent behavior is sometimes associated with subjective 
experience and sometimes not.  Evolution may have produced consciousness as a spandrel, an 
accident of the particular developmental path that evolution happened upon.  Or it may be 
that consciousness is necessarily associated with only certain kinds of intelligent 
behavior, e.g. those related to language.


Bretn

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside 
environment the
less conscious you become. Huh?


Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment does not 
control you.


How could you possibly know that, considering that John has accumulated many years of 
stimulation?


Brent

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment



On Monday, October 8, 2012 1:35:31 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

  On 10/8/2012 8:42 AM, John Clark wrote: 

 2) Intelligent behavior is NOT associated with subjective experience, in 
 which case there is no reason for Evolution to produce consciousness and I 
 have no explanation for why I am here, and I have reason to believe that I 
 am the only conscious being in the universe.


 There's a third possibility: Intelligent behavior is sometimes associated 
 with subjective experience and sometimes not.  Evolution may have produced 
 consciousness as a spandrel, an accident of the particular developmental 
 path that evolution happened upon.  Or it may be that consciousness is 
 necessarily associated with only certain kinds of intelligent behavior, 
 e.g. those related to language.


You are almost right but have it upside down. When someone gets knocked 
unconscious, can they continue to behave intelligently? Can a baby wake up 
from a nap and become conscious before they learn language? 

What would lead us to presume that consciousness itself could supervene on 
intelligence except if we were holding on to a functionalist metaphysics?

Clearly human intelligence in each individual supervenes on their 
consciousness and clearly supercomputers can't feel any pain or show any 
signs of fatigue that would suggest a state of physical awareness despite 
their appearances of 'intelligence'.

If you flip it over though, you are right. Everything is conscious to some 
extent, but not everything is intelligent in a cognitive sense. The 
assumption of strong AI is that we can take the low hanging fruit of 
primitive consciousness and attach it to the tree tops of anthropological 
quality intelligence and it will grow a new tree into outer space.

Craig



 Bretn
  

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment



On Monday, October 8, 2012 2:19:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

  On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

  So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside 
 environment the less conscious you become. Huh?
  

 Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment 
 does not control you.


 How could you possibly know that, considering that John has accumulated 
 many years of stimulation?


Just look at the Conjoined Twins video I posted. Those two people are 
genetically identical, occupy the same body, experience stimulation that is 
very similar, yet they *routinely* disagree.

Craig


 Brent
  

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 10/8/2012 11:25 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Monday, October 8, 2012 2:19:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside 
environment
the less conscious you become. Huh?


Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment 
does not
control you.


How could you possibly know that, considering that John has accumulated 
many years
of stimulation?


Just look at the Conjoined Twins video I posted. Those two people are genetically 
identical, occupy the same body, experience stimulation that is very similar, yet they 
*routinely* disagree.


Similar isn't the same.

Brent

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment



On Monday, October 8, 2012 3:38:42 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

  On 10/8/2012 11:25 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 



 On Monday, October 8, 2012 2:19:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 

  On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

  So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside 
 environment the less conscious you become. Huh?
  

 Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment 
 does not control you.


 How could you possibly know that, considering that John has accumulated 
 many years of stimulation?
  

 Just look at the Conjoined Twins video I posted. Those two people are 
 genetically identical, occupy the same body, experience stimulation that is 
 very similar, yet they *routinely* disagree.
  

 Similar isn't the same.


But the behavior varies in similarity while their stimulation does not. 
Clearly they are each controlling their own behavior separately, even 
though the degree to which their stimulation from the outside world does 
not vary separately. If the internal conditions were sufficient to allow 
their control strategies to diverge, then they should not re-synchronize 
again and again constantly. Each difference should build on each other, 
like two slightly different fractal kernels wouldn't weave in and out of 
perfect synch all the time, they would follow completely anomalous paths. 
The fractals might look like the are exploring different patterns (if even 
that) but it seems like they would not keep going back to isomorphic 
patterns at the same time.

Craig

Brent



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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 10/8/2012 1:25 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Monday, October 8, 2012 3:38:42 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/8/2012 11:25 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Monday, October 8, 2012 2:19:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside
environment the less conscious you become. Huh?


Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside 
environment does
not control you.


How could you possibly know that, considering that John has accumulated 
many
years of stimulation?


Just look at the Conjoined Twins video I posted. Those two people are 
genetically
identical, occupy the same body, experience stimulation that is very 
similar, yet
they *routinely* disagree.


Similar isn't the same.


But the behavior varies in similarity while their stimulation does not.


Sure it does.  They are not in exactly the same place.  Haven't you heard of chaotic 
dynamics.  Even perfectly identical systems can diverge in behavior due to infinitesimal 
differences in stimulation.


Clearly they are each controlling their own behavior separately, even though the degree 
to which their stimulation from the outside world does not vary separately.


But you don't know that.  You are just looking at the current stimulation.  Yet their 
behavior, even their internal structure, has been molded by different stimulations since 
they were embryos.


If the internal conditions were sufficient to allow their control strategies to diverge, 
then they should not re-synchronize again and again constantly. Each difference should 
build on each other, like two slightly different fractal kernels wouldn't weave in and 
out of perfect synch all the time, they would follow completely anomalous paths. The 
fractals might look like the are exploring different patterns (if even that) but it 
seems like they would not keep going back to isomorphic patterns at the same time.


Why not? Seems like is just your intuition.

Brent

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment



On Monday, October 8, 2012 4:57:08 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

  On 10/8/2012 1:25 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 



 On Monday, October 8, 2012 3:38:42 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 

  On 10/8/2012 11:25 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 



 On Monday, October 8, 2012 2:19:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 

  On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

  So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside 
 environment the less conscious you become. Huh?
  

 Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside environment 
 does not control you.


 How could you possibly know that, considering that John has accumulated 
 many years of stimulation?
  

 Just look at the Conjoined Twins video I posted. Those two people are 
 genetically identical, occupy the same body, experience stimulation that is 
 very similar, yet they *routinely* disagree.
  

 Similar isn't the same.
  

 But the behavior varies in similarity while their stimulation does not. 


 Sure it does.  They are not in exactly the same place. 


That's true but irrelevant. If they move to the left two feet so that 
Brittany is in Abby's position, Brittany doesn't become Abby. We are 
talking about two people in the same body who act the same sometimes and 
completely different other times. This is not the result in air pressure 
differences in the room or the angle of incidence on their retina. 
 

 Haven't you heard of chaotic dynamics.  Even perfectly identical systems 
 can diverge in behavior due to infinitesimal differences in stimulation.


Sure, but do they then converge again and again?
 


  Clearly they are each controlling their own behavior separately, even 
 though the degree to which their stimulation from the outside world does 
 not vary separately. 


 But you don't know that.  You are just looking at the current 
 stimulation.  Yet their behavior, even their internal structure, has been 
 molded by different stimulations since they were embryos.


I agree, they are different. How do they know how to speak in unison 
sometimes and they argue with each other at other times?
 


  If the internal conditions were sufficient to allow their control 
 strategies to diverge, then they should not re-synchronize again and again 
 constantly. Each difference should build on each other, like two slightly 
 different fractal kernels wouldn't weave in and out of perfect synch all 
 the time, they would follow completely anomalous paths. The fractals might 
 look like the are exploring different patterns (if even that) but it seems 
 like they would not keep going back to isomorphic patterns at the same time.
  

 Why not? Seems like is just your intuition. 


So is consciousness.

Craig
 


 Brent
  

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 10/8/2012 2:10 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Monday, October 8, 2012 4:57:08 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/8/2012 1:25 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Monday, October 8, 2012 3:38:42 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/8/2012 11:25 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:



On Monday, October 8, 2012 2:19:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the 
outside
environment the less conscious you become. Huh?


Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside 
environment
does not control you.


How could you possibly know that, considering that John has 
accumulated
many years of stimulation?


Just look at the Conjoined Twins video I posted. Those two people are
genetically identical, occupy the same body, experience stimulation 
that is
very similar, yet they *routinely* disagree.


Similar isn't the same.


But the behavior varies in similarity while their stimulation does not.


Sure it does.  They are not in exactly the same place.


That's true but irrelevant. If they move to the left two feet so that Brittany is in 
Abby's position, Brittany doesn't become Abby.


Because they're not in the same place in SPACETIME.

We are talking about two people in the same body who act the same sometimes and 
completely different other times. This is not the result in air pressure differences in 
the room or the angle of incidence on their retina.


How do you know that?  There are differences and differences can be amplified.  Even K_40 
decays in their brain could trigger different thoughts.




Haven't you heard of chaotic dynamics.  Even perfectly identical systems 
can diverge
in behavior due to infinitesimal differences in stimulation.


Sure, but do they then converge again and again?



Clearly they are each controlling their own behavior separately, even 
though the
degree to which their stimulation from the outside world does not vary 
separately.


But you don't know that.  You are just looking at the current stimulation.  
Yet
their behavior, even their internal structure, has been molded by different
stimulations since they were embryos.


I agree, they are different. How do they know how to speak in unison sometimes and they 
argue with each other at other times?


The brain is modular.

Brent

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment



On Monday, October 8, 2012 5:19:03 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

  On 10/8/2012 2:10 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 



 On Monday, October 8, 2012 4:57:08 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 

  On 10/8/2012 1:25 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 



 On Monday, October 8, 2012 3:38:42 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 

  On 10/8/2012 11:25 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 



 On Monday, October 8, 2012 2:19:56 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: 

  On 10/8/2012 10:24 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 

  So the more stimulation you get through your senses of the outside 
 environment the less conscious you become. Huh?
  

 Stimulation that you get thorough your senses of the outside 
 environment does not control you.


 How could you possibly know that, considering that John has accumulated 
 many years of stimulation?
  

 Just look at the Conjoined Twins video I posted. Those two people are 
 genetically identical, occupy the same body, experience stimulation that is 
 very similar, yet they *routinely* disagree.
  

 Similar isn't the same.
  

 But the behavior varies in similarity while their stimulation does not. 


 Sure it does.  They are not in exactly the same place. 


 That's true but irrelevant. If they move to the left two feet so that 
 Brittany is in Abby's position, Brittany doesn't become Abby. 


 Because they're not in the same place in SPACETIME.


That doesn't stop them from thinking and speaking in unison.
 


  We are talking about two people in the same body who act the same 
 sometimes and completely different other times. This is not the result in 
 air pressure differences in the room or the angle of incidence on their 
 retina. 
  

 How do you know that?  There are differences and differences can be 
 amplified.  Even K_40 decays in their brain could trigger different 
 thoughts.


It's absurd. It's like saying that you would become your twin brother for a 
half hour if you got too close to a microwave. Identity is incredibly 
resilient and incredibly flexible. The toy model of identity you are 
operating from does not fit the reality of what you can see with your own 
eyes. They are just who they appear to be. They are not experiencing 
slightly different stimulations which cause them to be in complete 
agreement sometimes and opposition at other times. Look at how they act. 
Each is generating their own opinions and tastes. Could their personalities 
be shaped by their different positions relative to their torso? Sure, but 
that would only make them more utterly separate from each other.
 


   
  
  Haven't you heard of chaotic dynamics.  Even perfectly identical systems 
 can diverge in behavior due to infinitesimal differences in stimulation.
  

 Sure, but do they then converge again and again?


:)
 

  
  
  
  Clearly they are each controlling their own behavior separately, even 
 though the degree to which their stimulation from the outside world does 
 not vary separately. 


 But you don't know that.  You are just looking at the current 
 stimulation.  Yet their behavior, even their internal structure, has been 
 molded by different stimulations since they were embryos.
  

 I agree, they are different. How do they know how to speak in unison 
 sometimes and they argue with each other at other times?
  

 The brain is modular.


That's your intuition. 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-new-phrenology
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10932482 

Even if it were, arguing and and speaking in unison would surely involve 
the same modules or modules which are stimulated in the same way.

Craig


 Brent
  

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-08 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 Well, if it's not the laws of physics then it's something supernatural,
 isn't it?


 Not unless you assume that physics is complete. To me, if we have no idea
 how anything detects anything then we haven't completely understood physics.
 I assume that nothing can be supernatural. There is nothing that is not
 nature. This conversation is nature.

There is no assumption that our knowledge of physics is complete; in
fact if there were that assumption there would be no point in being a
physicist, would there? As a matter of fact I believe that the basic
physics of the brain has been understood for a long time and I
challenge you to point out one thing that has been discovered in
neuroscience which would surprise a chemist from the middle of last
century. But that is not relevant to this discussion. The question is
whether the physics of the brain, known or unknown, is computable. If
it is, then in theory a computer could be just as intelligent as a
human. If it isn't, then a computer would always have some deficit
compared to a human. Maybe it would never be able to play the violin,
cut your hair or write a book as well as a human. This is apparently
what you think, but you have not presented any evidence for this
non-computable physics. It's just an assumption you make.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment



On Monday, October 8, 2012 5:51:56 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

 On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript: 
 wrote: 

  Well, if it's not the laws of physics then it's something supernatural, 
  isn't it? 
  
  
  Not unless you assume that physics is complete. To me, if we have no 
 idea 
  how anything detects anything then we haven't completely understood 
 physics. 
  I assume that nothing can be supernatural. There is nothing that is not 
  nature. This conversation is nature. 

 There is no assumption that our knowledge of physics is complete; in 
 fact if there were that assumption there would be no point in being a 
 physicist, would there? As a matter of fact I believe that the basic 
 physics of the brain has been understood for a long time and I 
 challenge you to point out one thing that has been discovered in 
 neuroscience which would surprise a chemist from the middle of last 
 century. 


What you are saying is 'nobody thinks physics is complete', followed by 
'everybody knows that the physics of the brain has been complete for a long 
time'.

This not only supports my point, but it brings up the more important point 
- the blindness of robustly left-hemisphere thinkers to identify their own 
capacity for denial. For me it's like a split brained experiment. I say 
'the problem is that people think physics is complete' and you say 'no they 
don't. You can't show me any signs that physics of the brain isn't 
complete.' Total disconnect. You'll keep denying it too. Not your fault 
either, apparently, that's just the way a lot of intelligent people are 
wired. I have no idea if it's possible for people to consciously overcome 
that tendency...it would be like glimpsing yourself in the mirror before 
your image actually turned around.
 

 But that is not relevant to this discussion. The question is 
 whether the physics of the brain, known or unknown, is computable. If 
 it is, 


If the physics of the brain is incomplete, then how could we say whether it 
is computable or not? To me, the color red is physical, so that any 
computation of the brain has to arrive at a computational result that is 
[the experience of seeing red]. I don't think that is remotely possible.
 

 then in theory a computer could be just as intelligent as a 
 human. If it isn't, then a computer would always have some deficit 
 compared to a human. Maybe it would never be able to play the violin, 
 cut your hair or write a book as well as a human.


The deficiency is that it couldn't feel. It could impersonate a violin 
player, but it would lack character and passion, gravitas, presence. Just 
like whirling CGI graphics of pseudo-metallic transparent reflecty crap. 
It's empty and weightless. Can't you tell? Can't you see that? Again, I 
should not expect everyone to be able to see that. I guess I can only 
understand that I see that and know that you can see a lot of things that I 
can't as well. In your mind there is no reason that we can't eat broken 
glass for breakfast if we install synthetic stomach lining that doesn't 
know the difference between food and glass. Nothing I can say will give you 
pause or question your reasoning, because indeed, the reasoning is 
internally consistent.
 

 This is apparently 
 what you think, but you have not presented any evidence for this 
 non-computable physics. It's just an assumption you make. 


We are the evidence. Our own consciousness is an assumption that we have no 
choice but to make. The capacity to judge evidence supervenes on the 
assumption of consciousness, of the color red, of self and other, symmetry, 
etc. Evidence is wa down the list of derivative  effects.

Craig



 -- 
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Can computers be conscious ? Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-07 Thread Roger Clough

Hi John Clark  

Unless computers can deal with inextended objects such as 
mind and experience, they cannot be conscious. 

Consciousness is direct experience, computers can only deal in descriptions of 
experience.

Everything that a computer does is, to my knowledge, at least
in principle publicly available, since it uses publicly available symbols or 
code.

Consciousness is direct experience, which cannot be put down in code
any more than life can be put down in code. It is personal and not publicly 
available.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/7/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: John Clark  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-10-06, 13:56:30 
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 


On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote: 



?I'm openly saying that a high school kid can make a robot that behaves 
sensibly with just a few transistors.? ?  


 Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of teleology is 
 fully supported from the start.  


We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this universe allow 
for the creation of consciousness, we may not know how they do it but we know 
for a fact that it can be done. So how on Earth does that indicate that a 
conscious computer is not possible? Because it doesn't fart??  

? 
 you have erroneously assumed that intelligence is possible without sense 
 experience.  

No, I am assuming the exact OPPOSITE! In fact I'm not even assuming, I know for 
a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a Evolutionary 
advantage, and I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITH consciousness 
confers no additional Evolutionary advantage (and if you disagree with that 
point then you must believe that the Turing Test works for consciousness too 
and not just intelligence). And in spite of all this I know for a fact that 
Evolution DID produce consciousness at least once, therefore the only 
conclusion is that consciousness is a byproduct of intellagence. 



 Adenine and Thymine don't have purpose in seeking to bind with each other?  


I don't even know what a question like that means, who's purpose do you expect 
Adenine and Thymine to serve? 



 How do you know?  


I know because I have intelligence and Adenine and Thymine do not know because 
they have none, they only have cause and effect. 



 How is it different from our purpose in staying in close proximity to places 
 to eat and sleep? 


And to think that some people berated me for anthropomorphizing future 
supercomputers and here you are ? anthropomorphizing simple chemicals. 



 Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware? 


Because then we wouldn't be aware of having this conversation. 


And we are aware of having this conversation because everything is aware, 
except of course for computers. 
? 

 Robots are something?  

 No, they aren't something.  

That is just a little too silly to argue.  

? 

 Everything is awareness  

Are you certain, I thought everything is klogknee, or maybe its everything is 
42. 



 evolution requires that something be alive to begin with.  

Evolution requires something that can reproduce itself, there is no universally 
agreed on definition of life so if you want to say that viruses and RNA 
strings and crystals and clay patterns and Von Neumann Machines are alive I 
won't argue with you and will agree that Evolution requires that something be 
alive to get started. 

? John K Clark 





? 


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Re: Can computers be conscious ? Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-07 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 07 Oct 2012, at 14:17, Roger Clough wrote:


Hi John Clark

Unless computers can deal with inextended objects such as
mind and experience, they cannot be conscious.

Consciousness is direct experience, computers can only deal in  
descriptions of experience.


Everything that a computer does is, to my knowledge, at least
in principle publicly available, since it uses publicly available  
symbols or code.


Consciousness is direct experience, which cannot be put down in code
any more than life can be put down in code. It is personal and not  
publicly available.


I agree with this, about consciousness, but how do you know that your  
neighbor is conscious? You can see only his brain or his body, not his  
soul.
You cannot know that: it is a bet. Why could'n we make that bet for a  
computer. You are just postulating that computer cannot think, but  
that is begging the question.
Of course it is not the computer-body which is conscious, but the  
(possible) person associated to the computation done by the computer.  
same for the brain: a brain is not conscious. Only person are conscious.


Bruno





Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
10/7/2012
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


- Receiving the following content -
From: John Clark
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-10-06, 13:56:30
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:



?I'm openly saying that a high school kid can make a robot that  
behaves sensibly with just a few transistors.? ?



Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of  
teleology is fully supported from the start.



We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this  
universe allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know  
how they do it but we know for a fact that it can be done. So how on  
Earth does that indicate that a conscious computer is not possible?  
Because it doesn't fart??


?
you have erroneously assumed that intelligence is possible without  
sense experience.


No, I am assuming the exact OPPOSITE! In fact I'm not even assuming,  
I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness  
confers a Evolutionary advantage, and I know for a fact that  
intelligent behavior WITH consciousness confers no additional  
Evolutionary advantage (and if you disagree with that point then you  
must believe that the Turing Test works for consciousness too and  
not just intelligence). And in spite of all this I know for a fact  
that Evolution DID produce consciousness at least once, therefore  
the only conclusion is that consciousness is a byproduct of  
intellagence.




Adenine and Thymine don't have purpose in seeking to bind with each  
other?



I don't even know what a question like that means, who's purpose do  
you expect Adenine and Thymine to serve?





How do you know?



I know because I have intelligence and Adenine and Thymine do not  
know because they have none, they only have cause and effect.




How is it different from our purpose in staying in close proximity  
to places to eat and sleep?



And to think that some people berated me for anthropomorphizing  
future supercomputers and here you are ? anthropomorphizing simple  
chemicals.





Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware?



Because then we wouldn't be aware of having this conversation.


And we are aware of having this conversation because everything is  
aware, except of course for computers.

?


Robots are something?



No, they aren't something.


That is just a little too silly to argue.

?


Everything is awareness


Are you certain, I thought everything is klogknee, or maybe its  
everything is 42.





evolution requires that something be alive to begin with.


Evolution requires something that can reproduce itself, there is no  
universally agreed on definition of life so if you want to say  
that viruses and RNA strings and crystals and clay patterns and Von  
Neumann Machines are alive I won't argue with you and will agree  
that Evolution requires that something be alive to get started.


? John K Clark





?


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Re: Can computers be conscious ? Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-07 Thread Richard Ruquist

Roger,

If human consciousness comes from attached monads, as I think you have claimed,
then why could not these monads attach to sufficiently complex computers
as well.
Richard

On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:
 Hi John Clark

 Unless computers can deal with inextended objects such as
 mind and experience, they cannot be conscious.

 Consciousness is direct experience, computers can only deal in descriptions 
 of experience.

 Everything that a computer does is, to my knowledge, at least
 in principle publicly available, since it uses publicly available symbols or 
 code.

 Consciousness is direct experience, which cannot be put down in code
 any more than life can be put down in code. It is personal and not publicly 
 available.

 Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net
 10/7/2012
 Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen


 - Receiving the following content -
 From: John Clark
 Receiver: everything-list
 Time: 2012-10-06, 13:56:30
 Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


 On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:



 ?I'm openly saying that a high school kid can make a robot that behaves 
 sensibly with just a few transistors.? ?


 Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of teleology is 
 fully supported from the start.


 We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this universe 
 allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know how they do it but 
 we know for a fact that it can be done. So how on Earth does that indicate 
 that a conscious computer is not possible? Because it doesn't fart??

 ?
 you have erroneously assumed that intelligence is possible without sense 
 experience.

 No, I am assuming the exact OPPOSITE! In fact I'm not even assuming, I know 
 for a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a 
 Evolutionary advantage, and I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITH 
 consciousness confers no additional Evolutionary advantage (and if you 
 disagree with that point then you must believe that the Turing Test works for 
 consciousness too and not just intelligence). And in spite of all this I know 
 for a fact that Evolution DID produce consciousness at least once, therefore 
 the only conclusion is that consciousness is a byproduct of intellagence.



 Adenine and Thymine don't have purpose in seeking to bind with each other?


 I don't even know what a question like that means, who's purpose do you 
 expect Adenine and Thymine to serve?



 How do you know?


 I know because I have intelligence and Adenine and Thymine do not know 
 because they have none, they only have cause and effect.



 How is it different from our purpose in staying in close proximity to places 
 to eat and sleep?


 And to think that some people berated me for anthropomorphizing future 
 supercomputers and here you are ? anthropomorphizing simple chemicals.



 Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware?


 Because then we wouldn't be aware of having this conversation.


 And we are aware of having this conversation because everything is aware, 
 except of course for computers.
 ?

 Robots are something?

 No, they aren't something.

 That is just a little too silly to argue.

 ?

 Everything is awareness

 Are you certain, I thought everything is klogknee, or maybe its everything is 
 42.



 evolution requires that something be alive to begin with.

 Evolution requires something that can reproduce itself, there is no 
 universally agreed on definition of life so if you want to say that viruses 
 and RNA strings and crystals and clay patterns and Von Neumann Machines are 
 alive I won't argue with you and will agree that Evolution requires that 
 something be alive to get started.

 ? John K Clark





 ?


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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-07 Thread Craig Weinberg

On Saturday, October 6, 2012 1:56:33 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:


  I'm openly saying that a high school kid can make a robot that behaves 
 sensibly with just a few transistors.


  Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of 
 teleology is fully supported from the start. 


 We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this universe 
 allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know how they do it but 
 we know for a fact that it can be done. 


Absolutely not. We know no such thing. Quite the opposite, we know with 
relative certainty that what we understand of physics provides no 
possibility of anything other than more physics. There is no hint of any 
kind that these laws should lead to any such thing as an 'experience' or 
awareness of any kind. You beg the question 100% and are 100% incapable of 
seeing that you are doing it.
 

So how on Earth does that indicate that a conscious computer is not 
 possible? Because it doesn't fart?  


Computers which have been programmed thus far don't have conscious 
experiences. Would you agree that is a fact?

I sympathize with the promise that someday we could have them, but I 
understand that the capacity to have a conscious experience is inversely 
proportionate to the capacity fro that experience to be controlled from the 
outside. You don't understand that and are not interested in why, so you 
will go on assuming that someday your iPhone will bring you to the airport 
and put its finger up your GI port and call its friends. 

 

  you have erroneously assumed that intelligence is possible without 
 sense experience. 


 No, I am assuming the exact OPPOSITE! In fact I'm not even assuming, I 
 know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a 
 Evolutionary advantage,


Which fact is that? Which intelligent behavior do you know that you can be 
certain exists without any subjective experience associated with it?
 

 and I know for a fact that intelligent behavior WITH consciousness confers 
 no additional Evolutionary advantage (and if you disagree with that point 
 then you must believe that the Turing Test works for consciousness too and 
 not just intelligence). 


Yet you think that consciousness must have evolved. No contradiction there? 
You think that every behavior in biology exists purely because of evolution 
- except consciousness, which you have no explanation for whatsoever, yet 
you know that mine is wrong and that physics will eventually get it right.
 

 And in spite of all this I know for a fact that Evolution DID produce 
 consciousness at least once, therefore the only conclusion is that 
 consciousness is a byproduct of intellagence.


A byproduct that does what???
 


  Adenine and Thymine don't have purpose in seeking to bind with each 
 other? 


 I don't even know what a question like that means, who's purpose do you 
 expect Adenine and Thymine to serve?


The purpose of their attraction to each other.
 


  How do you know? 


 I know because I have intelligence and Adenine and Thymine do not know 
 because they have none, they only have cause and effect.


Where do you think your intelligence to know this comes from? Surely it is 
the result in large part of Adenine and Thymine's contribution to the 
intelligence of DNA.


  How is it different from our purpose in staying in close proximity to 
 places to eat and sleep?


 And to think that some people berated me for anthropomorphizing future 
 supercomputers and here you are   anthropomorphizing simple chemicals.


I'm not saying that molecular purpose has the same depth as human purpose. 
You are saying instead, that purpose arises spontaneously at some level of 
description...some fuzzy area between firing patterns of neurons and 
hereditary patterns of evolution.
 


  Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware?


 Because then we wouldn't be aware of having this conversation.


 And we are aware of having this conversation because everything is aware, 
 except of course for computers.


The substances that make up the parts of our computers are primitively 
aware, just not aware of the human level mappings and interpretations of 
their activities. Unless you think that your computer is following the 
discussion? Shall we test your theory? Yoo hoo! Computers of the interwebz! 
Is this thing on? What say ye?




(space intentionally left blank for the supercomputers of the future to 
come back in time with their super conscious intelligence and join the 
conversation)






 

  Robots are something  


  No, they aren't something. 


 That is just a little too silly to argue. 


You think that a picture of a pipe is a pipe, so you think that a machine 
made of things is also a thing. You are incorrect.
 

  

  Everything is awareness 


 Are you certain, I thought everything is klogknee, or maybe its

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-06 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 05 Oct 2012, at 18:58, John Clark wrote:


On Thu, Oct 4, 2012  Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 To paraphrase Carl, 'First, you have to invent the universe.'

You want to know why there is something rather than nothing and  
Science can't provide a good answer to that, but depending on  
exactly what you mean by nothing it can give some pretty good half  
answers, and at least it can explain why there is a lot rather than  
very little. Religion can't even give half answers, not to anything.


I'm not sure what you mean by Science and Religion, but the comp  
theology does provide the best answer we can hope to the question  
why there is something instead of nothing. It answers also why  
things seem locally dual (with mind/qualia, and matter/quanta). Well  
the details shows it octal instead of dual, but let us not be too  
technical.


Comp explains why we have to postulate something Turing universal. It  
explains why we cannot derive its existence from anything less, so we  
have to at least postulate that. It explains also that matter and  
consciousness are independent of the choice of that universal system--- 
I use elementary arithmetic to fix the thing.


From that Turing universal assumption, the origin of matter is  
conceptually explained by the first person indeterminacy applied to  
all computations, and the distinction between quanta and qualia is a  
simple derivation from the self-reference logics. See Sane2004 for  
more. This is testable.


It is a theology as I define the theology of a machine by the set of  
all true propositions about that machine, including true but  
unprovable proposition by the machine, like those corresponding in  
self-consistency bet, or in the comp technological reincarnation  
possibility.


(Then, the computer science math shows that the big picture is closer  
to Pythagorus, Plato and Plotinus than to Aristotelian metaphysical  
naturalism.)


Bruno





http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-06 Thread John Clark

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:


  I'm openly saying that a high school kid can make a robot that behaves
 sensibly with just a few transistors.


  Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of
 teleology is fully supported from the start.


We know with absolute certainty that the laws of physics in this universe
allow for the creation of consciousness, we may not know how they do it but
we know for a fact that it can be done. So how on Earth does that indicate
that a conscious computer is not possible? Because it doesn't fart?


  you have erroneously assumed that intelligence is possible without sense
 experience.


No, I am assuming the exact OPPOSITE! In fact I'm not even assuming, I know
for a fact that intelligent behavior WITHOUT consciousness confers a
Evolutionary advantage, and I know for a fact that intelligent behavior
WITH consciousness confers no additional Evolutionary advantage (and if you
disagree with that point then you must believe that the Turing Test works
for consciousness too and not just intelligence). And in spite of all this
I know for a fact that Evolution DID produce consciousness at least once,
therefore the only conclusion is that consciousness is a byproduct of
intellagence.

 Adenine and Thymine don't have purpose in seeking to bind with each
 other?


I don't even know what a question like that means, who's purpose do you
expect Adenine and Thymine to serve?

 How do you know?


I know because I have intelligence and Adenine and Thymine do not know
because they have none, they only have cause and effect.

 How is it different from our purpose in staying in close proximity to
 places to eat and sleep?


And to think that some people berated me for anthropomorphizing future
supercomputers and here you are   anthropomorphizing simple chemicals.

 Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware?


 Because then we wouldn't be aware of having this conversation.


And we are aware of having this conversation because everything is aware,
except of course for computers.


  Robots are something


  No, they aren't something.


That is just a little too silly to argue.


  Everything is awareness


Are you certain, I thought everything is klogknee, or maybe its everything
is 42.

 evolution requires that something be alive to begin with.


Evolution requires something that can reproduce itself, there is no
universally agreed on definition of life so if you want to say that
viruses and RNA strings and crystals and clay patterns and Von Neumann
Machines are alive I won't argue with you and will agree that Evolution
requires that something be alive to get started.

  John K Clark

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-05 Thread John Clark

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012  Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 To paraphrase Carl, 'First, you have to invent the universe.'


You want to know why there is something rather than nothing and Science
can't provide a good answer to that, but depending on exactly what you mean
by nothing it can give some pretty good half answers, and at least it can
explain why there is a lot rather than very little. Religion can't even
give half answers, not to anything.


  If you smuggle in teleology into your metaphysics a priori, then you
 have already given evolution the power to behave sensibly.


I'm not doing any smuggling, I'm openly saying that a high school kid can
make a robot that behaves sensibly with just a few transistors.

 This is begging the question since what you are supposed to be proving is
 how teleological systems can come out of mathematical probability alone.


I can't do that and never claimed I could, and you can't do it either.  I'm
saying that conscious systems must be a byproduct of intelligent systems
because otherwise Evolution would have no reason to produce them and they
would not exist on this planet, and yet we know with certainty that they
do; or rather I know with certainty that one does. In mathematics there is
something called a existence proof or non-constructive proof, in it you
don't provide an example but you do prove that a object with certain
properties must exist; I can't say how intelligence makes consciousness but
I have a existence proof that it does.

 Without smuggling teleology in the first place, there is nothing to
 mutate.


Huh? Of course there is something to mutate, genes, and genes are not in
the teleology business, they are not interested in purpose because genes
are not intelligent and only intelligence can get into the teleology
business, but genes are still interested in causes.

 Nothing can make sense or define itself,


Two hydrogen atoms don't need to define themselves nor do they need to make
sense out of things to get together and form a molecule.

 Does your universe come with toy robots built in? Do toy robots appear by
 themselves from quantum foam?


No.


  Everything is not only aware,


Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware.


  everything is awareness.


Robots are something so robots are aware too, but that's not very
interesting because if everything is awareness then awareness is not very
interesting. You might as well say everything is klogknee.

 We are talking about how inert matter or abstract probability becomes
 it's exact opposite - living, sentient agents.


Yes, in other words we are talking about Evolution.

 You seem to have no way to grasp the difference between the menu and the
 meal. There is no such thing as a robot snail.


I've heard it all before, in that analogy and a million like it you keep
insisting that a intelligent human can only play the role of the meal and a
intelligent computer can only play the role of the menu, but your Fart
Philosophy has not provided a single reason to convince me that is in fact
true.

 before anything can have an evolutionary consequence, there already has
 to be something making sense of something by itself


Why? RNA can't make sense out of anything but some RNA chains can reproduce
faster than others, and that gives them a Evolutionary advantage.

  John K Clark

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-05 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 10:13 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

  Are you saying that Darwin has an explanation for the origin of order?

 Yes, mutation and natural selection.


 No. Natural selection is a type of order. Mutation describes a deviation
 from an established order which itself contributes to order.

You could say the order was already there at the beginning of the
Universe but evolution gave it a different form. So where did the
original order come from?

 The cosmology you suggest is something along the lines of Once upon a time,
 there was randomness and emptiness which became living organisms eventually
 because that is inevitably one of the things that can happen.. Sort of like
 saying if you throw enough sand in a bucket, eventually it will play
 football and develop ballet and forget that it was ever sand.

We know that some molecules can self-replicate. We know that these
chemicals can be made from simpler chemicals. Given a solution with
the simpler chemicals, the right conditions and enough time, the
self-replicators will spontaneously form. Once they form, they will
persist and multiply, because that is what self-replicators do. This
could be a very unlikely event but it does not need to occur more than
once. If it is possible to make self-replicators in small spontaneous
steps from sand then eventually the same will occur with sand,
somewhere in the universe.


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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-05 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Friday, October 5, 2012 12:58:14 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Thu, Oct 4, 2012  Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote:

  To paraphrase Carl, 'First, you have to invent the universe.'


 You want to know why there is something rather than nothing and Science 
 can't provide a good answer to that, but depending on exactly what you mean 
 by nothing it can give some pretty good half answers, and at least it can 
 explain why there is a lot rather than very little. Religion can't even 
 give half answers, not to anything. 


Who is advocating religion?
 

  

  If you smuggle in teleology into your metaphysics a priori, then you 
 have already given evolution the power to behave sensibly. 


 I'm not doing any smuggling, I'm openly saying that a high school kid can 
 make a robot that behaves sensibly with just a few transistors.


Only because he lives in a universe in which the possibility of teleology 
is fully supported from the start. 


  This is begging the question since what you are supposed to be proving 
 is how teleological systems can come out of mathematical probability alone.


 I can't do that and never claimed I could, and you can't do it either. 


I don't need to do that because my position is that teleology and evolution 
are two aspects of the same thing: Sense.
 

 I'm saying that conscious systems must be a byproduct of intelligent 
 systems because otherwise Evolution would have no reason to produce them 
 and they would not exist on this planet, 


But you'd be wrong because if those systems weren't conscious to begin 
with, then there wouldn't be anything there to discern intelligence from 
nothingness.
 

 and yet we know with certainty that they do; or rather I know with 
 certainty that one does. In mathematics there is something called a 
 existence proof or non-constructive proof, in it you don't provide an 
 example but you do prove that a object with certain properties must exist; 
 I can't say how intelligence makes consciousness but I have a existence 
 proof that it does. 


No, because you have erroneously assumed that intelligence is possible 
without sense experience. You're wrong about that, which is why you are 
left with promissory functionalism to bridge the gap made by that error.
 


  Without smuggling teleology in the first place, there is nothing to 
 mutate. 


 Huh? Of course there is something to mutate, genes, and genes are not in 
 the teleology business, they are not interested in purpose because genes 
 are not intelligent and only intelligence can get into the teleology 
 business, but genes are still interested in causes.


Adenine and Thymine don't have purpose in seeking to bind with each other? 
How do you know? How is it different from our purpose in staying in close 
proximity to places to eat and sleep?


  Nothing can make sense or define itself, 


 Two hydrogen atoms don't need to define themselves nor do they need to 
 make sense out of things to get together and form a molecule. 


Yes, they do. Everything needs to sense or make sense of something in order 
to be part of the universe in any way.
 


  Does your universe come with toy robots built in? Do toy robots appear 
 by themselves from quantum foam?


 No.
  

  Everything is not only aware, 


 Why is everything aware, why isn't everything not aware.


Because then we wouldn't be aware of having this conversation.
 

  

  everything is awareness. 


 Robots are something so robots are aware too, 


No, they aren't something. They are an assembly of somethings riding on 
borrowed teleology.
 

 but that's not very interesting because if everything is awareness then 
 awareness is not very interesting. You might as well say everything is 
 klogknee. 


Everything is awareness, but it is interesting because each awareness is 
unique, non-unique, and many meta-levels of juxtposition of unique and 
non-unique qualities. Interesting is pretty much the definition of 
awareness. Cosmos is the capacity to be interested. Robots don't have that, 
even though the materials they are made out of are interested in electric 
current, thermodynamic experiences, etc and will pursue them reliably.
 


  We are talking about how inert matter or abstract probability becomes 
 it's exact opposite - living, sentient agents. 


 Yes, in other words we are talking about Evolution.  


No, evolution requires that something be alive to begin with. There is no 
natural selection if things don't die or reproduce.
 


  You seem to have no way to grasp the difference between the menu and the 
 meal. There is no such thing as a robot snail. 


 I've heard it all before, in that analogy and a million like it you keep 
 insisting that a intelligent human can only play the role of the meal and a 
 intelligent computer can only play the role of the menu, but your Fart 
 Philosophy has not provided a single reason to convince me that is in fact 
 true.  


I'm not trying to convince you of

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-04 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Wednesday, October 3, 2012 11:56:59 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

 On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 7:54 AM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript: 
 wrote: 

  1) I understand and respect your argument here 100%. 
  2) I think that I have a better explanation 

 The better explanation is the simpler one. Your explanation adds 
 extra, unnecessary and unsupported by any evidence layers to the one 
 Darwin came up with. 


Are you saying that Darwin has an explanation for the origin of order?

Craig
 


 -- 
 Stathis Papaioannou 


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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-04 Thread John Clark

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

 When you say Random mutation can wire together a small number of cells
 such that if there is a sudden change in the light levels in the
 environment, like a shadow covering it, a snail will retreat into its
 shell, you have assumed sense and awareness to begin with.


I can reproduce the same rudimentary behavior with a few dozen transistors,
or vacuum tubes, or mechanical relays; if you assume that simple snail has
awareness then my machines do too.


  in theory, random mutation can't wire together anything.


Huh?


  Nothing can be wired together in a universe which is devoid of any
 capacity for detections, responses, and their meta-consequences.


I don't know what you're talking about, a toy robot can and does detect
things and makes responses that are determined by what it detects.

 This is already awareness.


If particle X coming into contact with particle Y is awareness then
everything is aware, which is equivalent to nothing is aware. For a concept
to have meaning you need contrast.

 You are already assuming a mechanism in which one thing can have
 something to do with another thing


I'm not assuming machines exist, I know for a fact that they do.

  where there can be a such thing as 'light levels' or other experiences
 of coherent sensation/detection. You are already assuming participatory
 efficacy in the perception event


Photoelectric detectors have existed for a long time and Einstein explained
how they work in 1905, I'm not sure I'd say these machines perceive  the
light but if you want to use that word I won't argue the point.


  the snail will retreat into its shell means that something is able to
 detect the external condition and causally effect the behavior of the cells
 of the snail to the point that they physically contract and move into a
 different position within the shell.


And a high school kid for his science fair project could make a robot snail
that does the exact same thing, and he probably wouldn't even win first
place.

  John K Clark

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-04 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Thursday, October 4, 2012 3:18:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:

  When you say Random mutation can wire together a small number of cells 
 such that if there is a sudden change in the light levels in the 
 environment, like a shadow covering it, a snail will retreat into its 
 shell, you have assumed sense and awareness to begin with.


 I can reproduce the same rudimentary behavior with a few dozen 
 transistors, or vacuum tubes, or mechanical relays; if you assume that 
 simple snail has awareness then my machines do too. 


To paraphrase Carl, 'First, you have to invent the universe.'. If you 
smuggle in teleology into your metaphysics a priori, then you have already 
given evolution the power to behave sensibly. This is begging the question 
since what you are supposed to be proving is how teleological systems can 
come out of mathematical probability alone.
 

  

  in theory, random mutation can't wire together anything. 


 Huh?


Without smuggling teleology in the first place, there is nothing to mutate. 
Nothing can make sense or define itself, have identity, discern 
differences, expect causality, experience states, etc. 

  

  Nothing can be wired together in a universe which is devoid of any 
 capacity for detections, responses, and their meta-consequences. 


 I don't know what you're talking about, a toy robot can and does detect 
 things and makes responses that are determined by what it detects.  


Does your universe come with toy robots built in? Do toy robots appear by 
themselves from quantum foam?
 


  This is already awareness. 


 If particle X coming into contact with particle Y is awareness then 
 everything is aware, which is equivalent to nothing is aware. For a concept 
 to have meaning you need contrast.   


Everything is not only aware, everything is awareness. That means that 
there are different experiences of, not that everything has every 
experience. That is the contrast. Experiences have different scopes and 
intensities, qualities, participation levels. 


  You are already assuming a mechanism in which one thing can have 
 something to do with another thing


 I'm not assuming machines exist, I know for a fact that they do.  


That's even worse. I'm asking how you can say that machines are both stupid 
byproducts of evolution and smart rational minds which are far superior to 
the other kind of machinesand then at the same time insist that biology 
has nothing to do with the difference. Saying that machines exist for a 
fact is like saying that Bugs Bunny exists for a fact. Of course *we* think 
machines exist; we built them. They don't exist on their own though. Not as 
machines. There is an assembly of parts which will continue to act out 
their physical entropy in silent unconsciousness until they fall apart or 
run out of resources, but that's all.


   where there can be a such thing as 'light levels' or other experiences 
 of coherent sensation/detection. You are already assuming participatory 
 efficacy in the perception event 


 Photoelectric detectors have existed for a long time and Einstein 
 explained how they work in 1905, I'm not sure I'd say these machines 
 perceive  the light but if you want to use that word I won't argue the 
 point.


And rocks which warm in the Sun have been around for over 4 billion years. 
So what? We are talking about how inert matter or abstract probability 
becomes it's exact opposite - living, sentient agents. 

  

  the snail will retreat into its shell means that something is able to 
 detect the external condition and causally effect the behavior of the cells 
 of the snail to the point that they physically contract and move into a 
 different position within the shell. 


 And a high school kid for his science fair project could make a robot 
 snail that does the exact same thing, and he probably wouldn't even win 
 first place. 


You seem to have no way to grasp the difference between the menu and the 
meal. There is no such thing as a robot snail. There are robots which 
behave in a way that remind us of a snail, but that isn't what it actually 
is. A plane isn't an artificial bird. A computer isn't an electronic brain. 
A glass of bleach isn't water just because it is a clear liquid.

But that's not even what we are talking about. I am pointing out that 
before anything can have an evolutionary consequence, there already has to 
be something making sense of something by itself - without a programmer or 
engineer forcing some inanimate object to act like something he imagines is 
alive.

Craig
 


   John K Clark


  



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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-04 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:37 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:


 On Wednesday, October 3, 2012 11:56:59 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

 On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 7:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:

  1) I understand and respect your argument here 100%.
  2) I think that I have a better explanation

 The better explanation is the simpler one. Your explanation adds
 extra, unnecessary and unsupported by any evidence layers to the one
 Darwin came up with.


 Are you saying that Darwin has an explanation for the origin of order?

Yes, mutation and natural selection.


-- 
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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-04 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Thursday, October 4, 2012 6:55:47 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

 On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 10:37 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript: 
 wrote: 
  
  
  On Wednesday, October 3, 2012 11:56:59 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: 
  
  On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 7:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com 
 wrote: 
  
   1) I understand and respect your argument here 100%. 
   2) I think that I have a better explanation 
  
  The better explanation is the simpler one. Your explanation adds 
  extra, unnecessary and unsupported by any evidence layers to the one 
  Darwin came up with. 
  
  
  Are you saying that Darwin has an explanation for the origin of order? 

 Yes, mutation and natural selection. 


No. Natural selection is a type of order. Mutation describes a deviation 
from an established order which itself contributes to order.

I am open to the possibility that not everyone is able to grasp this, 
however if you are going to try to convince me that you are seeing 
something that I'm not, then you will be wasting your time. I understand 
exactly what you don't see, but because consciousness is intuitive and 
experiential rather than logical, there is nothing that I can say to make 
you see that your view leaves out the glaringly obvious.

The cosmology you suggest is something along the lines of Once upon a 
time, there was randomness and emptiness which became living organisms 
eventually because that is inevitably one of the things that can happen.. 
Sort of like saying if you throw enough sand in a bucket, eventually it 
will play football and develop ballet and forget that it was ever sand.

Craig



 -- 
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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-03 Thread John Clark

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:


  how can reason be completely different from evolution if reason itself
 is a consequence of nothing but evolution.


Random mutation can wire together a small number of cells such that if
there is a sudden change in the light levels in the environment, like a
shadow covering it, a snail will retreat into its shell. This mutation will
aid in survival so it will enter into the next generation. A further random
mutation might be such that if the shadow does not lead to a attack the
connection between shadow and retreat into your shell will be weakened, and
if it does lead to a attack the connection will be reinforced. This is the
utilization of rudimentary induction, something not seen in the inorganic
world until humans started making computers. Evolution is just random
mutation and natural selection, and induction is not part of any of that,
but it can and has produced something that is. And simple induction is the
first step toward more complex inductions, and then deduction and then
large brains that produce minds that argue about philosophy.

 You say that they are different but you explain nothing of how it is
 possible for evolution to become so different from itself.


Evolution hasn't changed a bit in billions of years, it's still just
mutation and natural selection and it doesn't have a scrap of induction or
deduction or intelligence in it , but it has managed to produced billions
of things that do because in their niche those things pass on their genes
better than things that don't have those properties. And Evolution has
produced at least one thing that's conscious too.

 What does Darwin being right about evolution have to do with you being
 right about biology being unnecessary?


As I've said before, Evolution can't see consciousness only intelligence,
and yet Evolution produced consciousness at least once with me, therefor
consciousness must be a byproduct of intelligence. And we now know for a
fact that biology is not necessary for intelligence so it's not necessary
for consciousness either.

  John K Clark









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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-03 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 02 Oct 2012, at 19:48, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

Any meta-molecular system is going to be complex compared to a
molecular system,

That's what meta means, and a very big thing is larger than a big
thing.

Once a theory is rich enough (like the L machine), it can serve as its
own meta-theory. That's the key of comp.

That's how the comp ontology (numbers and their laws) entails its own
many interpretations, in some precise sense, somehow in the mind of
the many universal numbers.

That sense is akin to how Everett QM seems to justify its statistical
interpretation, which I think partially follows from Gleason Theorem
(the probability measure is entailed somehow by the Hilbert space
structure, for the dimension bigger than three).

If comp is true, and if the Theaetical definition of knowledge is
reasonable, the arithmetical quantum logic (the four material
hypostases)should be constrained enough to have ortholattice semantics
making, similarly to QM, the comp measure (on the sigma_1 sentences,
or 'pieces of computation') unique. Comp lacks its Gleason theorem
to verify this.

Comp entails a relative state interpretation of arithmetic (or of any
other first order specification of a Turing universal system).

Bruno

The inorganic geology of the Earth as a whole is much more complex
than a single cell

Bullshit!! Geology may be large but if we're talking complexity it's
finger painting compared to the smallest cell.

Darwin wasn't trying to explain awareness itself.

That was part of Darwin's genius, picking the right problem to work
on. He knew that explaining awareness was out of reach in his day as
it is in ours so he didn't waste his time trying, he also knew that
explaining the origin of life was out of reach although it's
starting to become so in our day. Darwin figured that the problem of
how a self reproducing organism could diversify into a bewildering
number of species, one of which had a very large brain and opposable
thumbs, might be within reach for a man of sufficient talent in his
day. And He was right.

There is no bridge however from evolution of biological forms and
functions to the origin of experience,

I might not know exactly how that bridge operates but I know that
such a bridge between experience and intelligence MUST exist because
otherwise experience could not have evolved on this planet; and it
has, at least once for certain, and probably billions of times.

It [Evolution] offers no hint of why complex intelligence should
be living organisms and not mineral-based mechanisms.

If you'd read the post that I sent TWICE in the month of September
you'd know that Darwin's theory does explain why that is, but the
post was rather long and it did contain a few big words and so you
didn't read it and prefer to keep asking the same questions over and
over.

Before long one generation of computers will design the next
more advanced generation, and the process will accelerate
exponentially.

Maybe. My guess is that in 50 years, someone will still be saying
the same thing.

Somebody will be saying that in 50 years no doubt about it, but the
someone won't be biological.

If tools couldn't do something that people can't then there would
be no point in them making tools. And water vapor can't smash your
house but water vapor can make a tornado and a tornado can.

But water vapor can't make tools no matter how fast it's moving or
for how long. We can choose to make tools which extend the power of
our intentions

There are reasons that water vapor makes tornadoes and there are
reasons that humans make tools.

Biology doesn't have any cosmic purpose for existing, but there
are reasons.

Are there?

Yes.

Like what?

I've answered this before: Chemistry, a planet with liquid water, a
energy source like the sun, and lots of time. There is no purpose in
any of that because intelligence is in the purpose conferring
business not chemistry or water or energy or time. So there is no
purpose to biology but there are reasons.

John K Clark

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-03 Thread Craig Weinberg

On Wednesday, October 3, 2012 12:35:11 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote:
  

  how can reason be completely different from evolution if reason itself 
 is a consequence of nothing but evolution. 


 Random mutation can wire together a small number of cells such that if 
 there is a sudden change in the light levels in the environment, like a 
 shadow covering it, a snail will retreat into its shell. This mutation will 
 aid in survival so it will enter into the next generation. A further random 
 mutation might be such that if the shadow does not lead to a attack the 
 connection between shadow and retreat into your shell will be weakened, and 
 if it does lead to a attack the connection will be reinforced. This is the 
 utilization of rudimentary induction, something not seen in the inorganic 
 world until humans started making computers. Evolution is just random 
 mutation and natural selection, and induction is not part of any of that, 
 but it can and has produced something that is. And simple induction is the 
 first step toward more complex inductions, and then deduction and then 
 large brains that produce minds that argue about philosophy.


This is actually a good explanation of your position, and it is a 
respectable position that is adequate for engineering purposes. Since, 
however, we are talking about defining awareness itself, consciousness, and 
the difference between biology and inorganic chemistry, I think that we 
have to look more closely at your initial assumptions. As with the case 
with all of these arguments, it is the initial framing of the issue in 
which the real question is overlooked, rather than a broken link in the 
chain of logic.

When you say Random mutation can wire together a small number of cells 
such that if there is a sudden change in the light levels in the 
environment, like a shadow covering it, a snail will retreat into its 
shell, you have assumed sense and awareness to begin with. In theory, 
random mutation can't wire together anything. Nothing can be wired together 
in a universe which is devoid of any capacity for detections, responses, 
and their meta-consequences. This is already awareness. You are already 
assuming a mechanism in which one thing can have something to do with 
another thing - where there can be a such thing as 'light levels' or other 
experiences of coherent sensation/detection. You are already assuming 
participatory efficacy in the perception event - the snail will retreat 
into its shell means that something is able to detect the external 
condition and causally effect the behavior of the cells of the snail to the 
point that they physically contract and move into a different position 
within the shell. This may seem like a trivial detail to go from randomness 
to a single low level biological reflex, but ontologically it already 
crosses a chasm which is infinitely wide. You already have billiard balls 
which are able to tell the difference between Spring and Fall. It is a leap 
which is not supported in my view. 

Once you have sense, it is easy to imagine how sensations might evolve into 
richer sensations, emotions, thoughts, etc, but these evolve from the 
qualities of experience themselves, not from the random selection which 
dictates which hereditary line is most promising. It is the experience 
which becomes more and more conscious and more intelligent through the 
realism of its participants, not from some assumed disembodied logic of its 
spatial-mechanical configuration. They are two very different things. 
Evolution can determine which socks get lost in the dryer and which pairs 
survive, but it is still socks that are the relevant item. Socks don't 
appear just because conditions are right in the dryer

If you can begin to understand that 

1) I understand and respect your argument here 100%.
2) I think that I have a better explanation

then we can continue if you like and I can explain how I think qualitative 
significance progresses in a completely different way than evolution. If 
you don't believe 1)  and intend to go on trying to make your same case 
over and over then I don't want to waste your time and we should stop.

Craig


 

  You say that they are different but you explain nothing of how it is 
 possible for evolution to become so different from itself.


 Evolution hasn't changed a bit in billions of years, it's still just 
 mutation and natural selection and it doesn't have a scrap of induction or 
 deduction or intelligence in it , but it has managed to produced billions 
 of things that do because in their niche those things pass on their genes 
 better than things that don't have those properties. And Evolution has 
 produced at least one thing that's conscious too. 

  What does Darwin being right about evolution have to do with you being 
 right about biology being unnecessary?


 As I've said before, Evolution can't see

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-03 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 7:54 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 1) I understand and respect your argument here 100%.
 2) I think that I have a better explanation

The better explanation is the simpler one. Your explanation adds
extra, unnecessary and unsupported by any evidence layers to the one
Darwin came up with.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-02 Thread John Clark

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012  Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 I don't understand the question because I'm not clear on what these
 differences refers to.


  The differences between evolutionary nature (teleonomy) and rational
 design (teleology) that we are talking about.


For God's sake! (Note: poetic license in use, I don't believe in God) I
wrote a detailed post last month explaining how and why things that evolved
are different from things that are designed by something that is smart and
why Evolution is inferior to design at producing complex objects.
Apparently you didn't see it so I repeated it just a few days ago. If
something I said was unclear I will try to expand on the topic, or if you
disagree with part of it I am prepared to debate you, but don't just keep
asking the same damn question over and over again and pretend you never saw
my answer.

 Any meta-molecular system is going to be complex compared to a molecular
 system,


That's what meta means, and a very big thing is larger than a big thing.

 The inorganic geology of the Earth as a whole is much more complex than a
 single cell


Bullshit!! Geology may be large but if we're talking complexity it's finger
painting compared to the smallest cell.

 Darwin wasn't trying to explain awareness itself.


That was part of Darwin's genius, picking the right problem to work on. He
knew that explaining awareness was out of reach in his day as it is in ours
so he didn't waste his time trying, he also knew that explaining the origin
of life was out of reach although it's starting to become so in our day.
Darwin figured that the problem of how a self reproducing organism could
diversify into a bewildering number of species, one of which had a very
large brain and opposable thumbs, might be within reach for a man of
sufficient talent in his day. And He was right.

 There is no bridge however from evolution of biological forms and
 functions to the origin of experience,


I might not know exactly how that bridge operates but I know that such a
bridge between experience and intelligence MUST exist because otherwise
experience could not have evolved on this planet; and it has, at least once
for certain, and probably billions of times.

 It [Evolution] offers no hint of why complex intelligence should be
 living organisms and not mineral-based mechanisms.


If you'd read the post that I sent TWICE in the month of September you'd
know that Darwin's theory does explain why that is, but the post was rather
long and it did contain a few big words and so you didn't read it and
prefer to keep asking the same questions over and over.

  Before long one generation of computers will design the next more
 advanced generation, and the process will accelerate exponentially.

  Maybe. My guess is that in 50 years, someone will still be saying the
 same thing.


Somebody will be saying that in 50 years no doubt about it, but the someone
won't be biological.

 If tools couldn't do something that people can't then there would be no
 point in them making tools. And water vapor can't smash your house but
 water vapor can make a tornado and a tornado can.


  But water vapor can't make tools no matter how fast it's moving or for
 how long. We can choose to make tools which extend the power of our
 intentions


There are reasons that water vapor makes tornadoes and there are reasons
that humans make tools.

 Biology doesn't have any cosmic purpose for existing, but there are
 reasons.


  Are there?


Yes.

 Like what?


I've answered this before: Chemistry, a planet with liquid water, a energy
source like the sun, and lots of time. There is no purpose in any of that
because intelligence is in the purpose conferring business not chemistry or
water or energy or time. So there is no purpose to biology but there are
reasons.

  John K Clark

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-02 Thread Craig Weinberg

On Tuesday, October 2, 2012 1:48:39 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote:

I don't understand the question because I'm not clear on what these
differences refers to.

The differences between evolutionary nature (teleonomy) and rational
design (teleology) that we are talking about.

For God's sake! (Note: poetic license in use, I don't believe in God) I
wrote a detailed post last month explaining how and why things that evolved
are different from things that are designed by something that is smart and
why Evolution is inferior to design at producing complex objects.
Apparently you didn't see it so I repeated it just a few days ago. If
something I said was unclear I will try to expand on the topic, or if you
disagree with part of it I am prepared to debate you, but don't just keep
asking the same damn question over and over again and pretend you never saw
my answer.

I don't know what answer you are talking about but I am sure that nothing I
have read from you so far has addressed this very specific and clear
question of how can reason be completely different from evolution if reason
itself is a consequence of nothing but evolution. You say that they are
different but you explain nothing of how it is possible for evolution to
become so different from itself.

Any meta-molecular system is going to be complex compared to a molecular
system,

That's what meta means, and a very big thing is larger than a big
thing.

The inorganic geology of the Earth as a whole is much more complex than
a single cell

Bullshit!! Geology may be large but if we're talking complexity it's
finger painting compared to the smallest cell.

http://mepag.nasa.gov/science/2_Complex_Surface_Geology/2_Complex_Surface_Geology_clip_image004.jpg

http://stockpix.com/images/9799.jpg

It depends on what level of description you are looking at. Anything that
an organism does to the Earth would change the Earth in complex ways. If
you look at the entire history of the Earth as a single event and had to
account for every substance and interaction on every layer of the planet
including the layers of the atmosphere, there is really no basis for a
sweeping edict on complexity. Everything is complex at some level of
description.

Darwin wasn't trying to explain awareness itself.

That was part of Darwin's genius, picking the right problem to work on. He
knew that explaining awareness was out of reach in his day as it is in ours
so he didn't waste his time trying,

Or it could be that Darwin was interested in a particular field of natural
science and didn't bear any particular bigotry against all other forms of
understanding.

he also knew that explaining the origin of life was out of reach although
it's starting to become so in our day. Darwin figured that the problem of
how a self reproducing organism could diversify into a bewildering number
of species, one of which had a very large brain and opposable thumbs, might
be within reach for a man of sufficient talent in his day. And He was right.

What does Darwin being right about evolution have to do with you being
right about biology being unnecessary?

There is no bridge however from evolution of biological forms and
functions to the origin of experience,

I might not know exactly how that bridge operates but I know that such a
bridge between experience and intelligence MUST exist because otherwise
experience could not have evolved on this planet; and it has, at least once
for certain, and probably billions of times.

You assume that experience could have evolved from non-experience, but I
understand why evolution has to arise from experience to begin with.
Nothing can evolve from non-experience.

It [Evolution] offers no hint of why complex intelligence should be
living organisms and not mineral-based mechanisms.

If you'd read the post that I sent TWICE in the month of September you'd
know that Darwin's theory does explain why that is, but the post was rather
long and it did contain a few big words and so you didn't read it and
prefer to keep asking the same questions over and over.

There is no point in debating someone who keeps using the tactic of
claiming that they answered questions elsewhere. I don't do that so I don't
pay attention to others when they do that. If you don't want to answer the
question, then don't.

Before long one generation of computers will design the next more
advanced generation, and the process will accelerate exponentially.

Maybe. My guess is that in 50 years, someone will still be saying the
same thing.

Somebody will be saying that in 50 years no doubt about it, but the
someone won't be biological.

If there is something non-biological that is being made to say it, they
still won't know that they are saying it, or indeed what it

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-01 Thread Bruno Marchal



On 01 Oct 2012, at 01:56, Stephen P. King wrote:


On 9/30/2012 7:47 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net 
 wrote:

On 9/30/2012 5:44 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com 


wrote:

Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a  
better
example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually  
need to
eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of  
salt and
iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is  
no reason
why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the  
reality
that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic  
biologically
active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there  
couldn't be
inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily  
invested in
the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or  
impossible, but
that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take  
that rather
odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly  
important data.
Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in  
the air

shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide.

I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an
advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a
gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such
organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by
weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are  
there no

organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation
consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the
evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is
the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better
explanation consistent with Occam's Razor?


Hi Stathis,

Humans are not organisms in Nature? Your statement is only  
true if they
are not. How did this come to happen? Your thesis here requires  
that the
existence of Humans with steel claws and with guns is, somehow,  
outside of

the definition of organisms. How the heck does this happen

Everything that happens in nature is natural, that's one way of
looking at it. But there is a difference between things that develop
through mutation and natural selection and things that are designed.


Hi Stathis,

   What is the real difference? Any argument that we might make  
about things that are designed can easily be turned around and  
used as an argument for Intelligent Design of the universe itself.  
Nature is either an integrated and mutually consistent whole or it  
is not. Things evolve by natural processes or they do not. There  
is no middle ground here unless we are introducing an arbitrary  
preference for a particular definition: i.e. what ever is the  
product of mankind's peculiar processes in the cosmos is designed  
and what ever is not related to the particulars of Mankind's  
peculiarities is not designed. If we do that then we have to have  
a good reason.
   So I am asking you. Why make that distinction? What is the  
difference that makes a difference?


The difference between artificial and natural is artificial.  And thus  
it is natural too, apparently for species which develop big ego and  
develop a feeling of superiority: the Löbian trap, we could say.


Evolution is no more intelligent than universal non Löbian arithmetic,  
humans are no more intelligent than any Löbian machine. The difference  
which makes the difference might be Löbianity: the fact that we can  
know that we are universal (and Löbian). Löbianity arrives with the  
induction axioms, and that is indeed what makes us able to *foreseen*  
possible futures, to feel different from others, to develop selves,  
and self-consciousness, etc.


Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-01 Thread Bruno Marchal

On 01 Oct 2012, at 02:02, meekerdb wrote:

On 9/30/2012 4:28 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:

You aren't seeing my point that if human designers are nothing but
evolved systems, then they must have the same limitations as
evolution itself, unless you can explain why they wouldn't.

More nothing buttery. If people are just atoms they must have the
same limitations as atoms.

Good (ironical) remark.

The whole *is* very often more than the parts. Non Löbian entities can
create/emulate the Löbian entities. That is why we can take a very
simple whole as ontology, be it a tiny arithmetic without induction
axioms, or a differential equation (like SWE), and then interview the
Löbian entities appearing there.

This is what make explanations possible. Many seem to want matter and
consciousness primitive, because they don't accept that we can explain
them from non material and non conscious things. But we can do that,
even if that includes some part necessarily obscure, for logical
reason, as there is an arithmetical blind spot for arithmetical
creatures.

Bruno

Brent

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-01 Thread Stephen P. King


On 10/1/2012 4:02 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:


The whole *is* very often more than the parts. Non Löbian entities can 
create/emulate the Löbian entities. That is why we can take a very 
simple whole as ontology, be it a tiny arithmetic without induction 
axioms, or a differential equation (like SWE), and then interview the 
Löbian entities appearing there.


This is what make explanations possible. Many seem to want matter and 
consciousness primitive, because they don't accept that we can explain 
them from non material and non conscious things. But we can do that, 
even if that includes some part necessarily obscure, for logical 
reason, as there is an arithmetical blind spot for arithmetical creatures.


Bruno


Hi Bruno,

It makes sense for this to be true because if we can interact with 
something, that something can interact with us. If knowledge or 
explanation is a form of interaction, it makes sense that there is a 
symmetrical relation involved. The mutual partial blind spot may be a 
place where something hides.



--
Onward!

Stephen


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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-01 Thread Roger Clough

Hi Stephen P. King  

Numbers did not evolve, they always were.
And always will be.  Only imperfect things need
to evolve (or can).

All necessary truths have always been.
The Pythagorean Theorem would be useful to 
design snowflakes, no ?

Contingency is the world of change, which
is required for evolution. Imperfect things
evolve, they are part of Contingia. 

But perfect things always were.

Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/1/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Stephen P. King  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-09-30, 19:56:20 
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 


On 9/30/2012 7:47 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 
 On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Stephen P. King  wrote: 
 On 9/30/2012 5:44 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 
 
 On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg  
 wrote: 
 
 Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better 
 example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to 
 eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and 
 iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason 
 why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality 
 that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically 
 active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be 
 inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in 
 the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but 
 that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take that rather 
 odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly important data. 
 Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in the air 
 shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide. 
 
 I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an 
 advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a 
 gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such 
 organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by 
 weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are there no 
 organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation 
 consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the 
 evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is 
 the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better 
 explanation consistent with Occam's Razor? 
 
 
 Hi Stathis, 
 
 Humans are not organisms in Nature? Your statement is only true if they 
 are not. How did this come to happen? Your thesis here requires that the 
 existence of Humans with steel claws and with guns is, somehow, outside of 
 the definition of organisms. How the heck does this happen 
 Everything that happens in nature is natural, that's one way of 
 looking at it. But there is a difference between things that develop 
 through mutation and natural selection and things that are designed. 
 
Hi Stathis, 

 What is the real difference? Any argument that we might make about  
things that are designed can easily be turned around and used as an  
argument for Intelligent Design of the universe itself. Nature is  
either an integrated and mutually consistent whole or it is not. Things  
evolve by natural processes or they do not. There is no middle ground  
here unless we are introducing an arbitrary preference for a particular  
definition: i.e. what ever is the product of mankind's peculiar  
processes in the cosmos is designed and what ever is not related to  
the particulars of Mankind's peculiarities is not designed. If we do  
that then we have to have a good reason. 
 So I am asking you. Why make that distinction? What is the  
difference that makes a difference? 

--  
Onward! 

Stephen 


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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-01 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Sunday, September 30, 2012 8:02:55 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote:

  On 9/30/2012 4:28 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: 


 You aren't seeing my point that if human designers are nothing but evolved 
 systems, then they must have the same limitations as evolution itself, 
 unless you can explain why they wouldn't.


 More nothing buttery.  If people are just atoms they must have the same 
 limitations as atoms.


More reductionist ideology. If people are just atoms then atoms must have 
the same power to transcend limitations as people.

Craig


 Brent
  

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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-01 Thread Roger Clough

Hi Stephen P. King  

intelligent design is an oxymoronism. You can't have design without 
intelligence. 
It requires intelligence to form a design, whether by God, by humans or by 
nature. 

So there had to be some sort of intelligence prior to the Big Bang in order for 
the universe
to have design or structure. Fill in the dots.


Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
10/1/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Stephen P. King  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-09-30, 20:29:55 
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 


On 9/30/2012 8:07 PM, meekerdb wrote: 

On 9/30/2012 4:56 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:  
On 9/30/2012 7:47 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:  

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Stephen P. King  wrote:  

On 9/30/2012 5:44 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:  

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg   
wrote:  

Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better  
example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to  
eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and  
iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason  
why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality  
that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically  
active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be  
inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in  
the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but  
that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take that rather  
odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly important data.  
Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in the air  
shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide.  

I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an  
advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a  
gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such  
organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by  
weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are there no  
organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation  
consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the  
evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is  
the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better  
explanation consistent with Occam's Razor?  


Hi Stathis,  

 Humans are not organisms in Nature? Your statement is only true if they  
are not. How did this come to happen? Your thesis here requires that the  
existence of Humans with steel claws and with guns is, somehow, outside of  
the definition of organisms. How the heck does this happen  

Everything that happens in nature is natural, that's one way of  
looking at it. But there is a difference between things that develop  
through mutation and natural selection and things that are designed.  


Hi Stathis,  

What is the real difference? Any argument that we might make about things 
that are designed can easily be turned around and used as an argument for 
Intelligent Design of the universe itself. Nature is either an integrated and 
mutually consistent whole or it is not. Things evolve by natural processes or 
they do not. There is no middle ground here unless we are introducing an 
arbitrary preference for a particular definition: i.e. what ever is the product 
of mankind's peculiar processes in the cosmos is designed and what ever is 
not related to the particulars of Mankind's peculiarities is not designed. If 
we do that then we have to have a good reason.  
So I am asking you. Why make that distinction? What is the difference that 
makes a difference?  



The difference is that human designers have in mind some goal for their design, 
they can start from a clean sheet or modify and existing design, they can 
design, build and test things without making lots of copies. 



How does your new remark answer my question? Are Humans somehow special? 
Are we not part of the integrate whole that is Nature? 


--  
Onward! 

Stephen

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-01 Thread John Clark

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:

The difference is Evolution doesn't understand the concept of one step
 backward 2 steps forward for one thing, I went into considerable more
 detail about this in my last post and also gave you 4 more reasons how and
 why intelligent design is different from random mutation and natural
 selection.


  That is not what I am asking. You are describing ways that they are
 different, not explaining how it is possible for these differences to arise.


I don't understand the question because I'm not clear on what these
differences refers to.


  Blue-green algae survives all over the world since the Pre-Cambrian Era.
 Survival is not complex. Acquire nutrients. Reproduce. The end.


Blue-green algae are astronomically complex compared to inorganic
chemicals, and they are beautifully adapted to fill one niche, but that's
not the only niche in the environment and the others can only be filled by
organisms that are even more complex than Blue-green algae.

 But Evolution found that if it could wire together just a few cells it
 could start to use a few inductive rules;


  This is pure metaphor.


Yes, many, perhaps most, of the most profound ideas in the universe are.

 Evolution doesn't 'find' anything. You are falsely attributing intention
 and analysis to an unconscious process.


It's poetic license, it just never occurred to me that somebody would be so
foolish as to think that I meant that random mutation and natural selection
was conscious and intended to do anything. And because I still think such
misunderstanding is extremely unlikely unless one wants very much to
misunderstand something and because I believe such informal language is
useful in talking about Evolution I intend to continue doing so.

 Evolution = The right things in the right places don't die. Nothing else.


And Darwin's genius was in finding how wonderful things can come from
something as simple as that. This is the last sentence in Darwin's 1859
book The Origin of Species:

 There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having
been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst
this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from
so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have
been, and are being, evolved.”

 In just my last post I did a better job at explaining something than I've
 ever seen you do.


  Congratulations, you have a very high opinion of yourself.


Thanks for the congratulations, and I do think that post was good, very
good, I wish you'd read it.

 I'm not the one saying that biological systems have qualities that
 inorganic systems cannot, you are.


 I'm saying they do not, I'm not saying they cannot.


 We agree then. I only say that there may very well be an important reason
 why they do not which cannot be accessed by existing theory.


There are indeed important reasons but they can be accessed by existing
evolutionary theory and I explained how in a previous post that you
correctly deduced I rather liked.

  if I was designed better I could reason better. Before long computers
 will be designed better.


  By natural people who were designed by natural selection.


Before long one generation of computers will design the next more advanced
generation, and the process will accelerate exponentially.

 You aren't seeing my point that if human designers are nothing but
 evolved systems, then they must have the same limitations as evolution
 itself


That is nuts! If tools couldn't do something that people can't then there
would be no point in them making tools. And water vapor can't smash your
house but water vapor can make a tornado and a tornado can.

 I am saying that there is no reason for biology to exist in your
 worldview.


Biology doesn't have any cosmic purpose for existing, but there are reasons.

 John K Clark

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-10-01 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Monday, October 1, 2012 1:52:29 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:

 On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:

 The difference is Evolution doesn't understand the concept of one step 
 backward 2 steps forward for one thing, I went into considerable more 
 detail about this in my last post and also gave you 4 more reasons how and 
 why intelligent design is different from random mutation and natural 
 selection.  


  That is not what I am asking. You are describing ways that they are 
 different, not explaining how it is possible for these differences to arise.


 I don't understand the question because I'm not clear on what these 
 differences refers to.


The differences between evolutionary nature (teleonomy) and rational design 
(teleology) that we are talking about. It is like you are pointing out that 
the river is water upstream and wine downstream and I'm asking you how do 
you get wine from water (especially wine that defies gravity).
 

  

  Blue-green algae survives all over the world since the Pre-Cambrian 
 Era. Survival is not complex. Acquire nutrients. Reproduce. The end.


 Blue-green algae are astronomically complex compared to inorganic 
 chemicals, and they are beautifully adapted to fill one niche, but that's 
 not the only niche in the environment and the others can only be filled by 
 organisms that are even more complex than Blue-green algae. 


Any meta-molecular system is going to be complex compared to a molecular 
system, but that doesn't make survival a complex task. The inorganic 
geology of the Earth as a whole is much more complex than a single cell and 
it doesn't seem to struggle to 'survive'.


   But Evolution found that if it could wire together just a few cells it 
 could start to use a few inductive rules;


  This is pure metaphor. 


 Yes, many, perhaps most, of the most profound ideas in the universe are.

  Evolution doesn't 'find' anything. You are falsely attributing intention 
 and analysis to an unconscious process. 


 It's poetic license, it just never occurred to me that somebody would be 
 so foolish as to think that I meant that random mutation and natural 
 selection was conscious and intended to do anything. 


I'm ok with that as long as we both are aware that you are using poetic 
license. I think the fact that it is difficult to talk about without 
invoking poetic license reveals the limitations of the model though. If we 
confine ourselves to what we are actually talking about, it becomes clear 
that teleology can't be both completely alien to nature and purely a 
product of nature (teleonomy) at the same time.
 

 And because I still think such misunderstanding is extremely unlikely 
 unless one wants very much to misunderstand something and because I believe 
 such informal language is useful in talking about Evolution I intend to 
 continue doing so.   


I'm ok with that, I just wonder how you justify the necessity.You are 
describing a universe devoid of poetry, but can't describe it without 
resorting to the very form you deny.
 


  Evolution = The right things in the right places don't die. Nothing 
 else. 


 And Darwin's genius was in finding how wonderful things can come from 
 something as simple as that. This is the last sentence in Darwin's 1859 
 book The Origin of Species:

  There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having 
 been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst 
 this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from 
 so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have 
 been, and are being, evolved.” 


I agree, but Darwin wasn't trying to explain awareness itself. If you have 
a raw material which contains the potential for forms, beauty, and wonder 
to begin with, then yes, simple quantitative processes can be seen behind 
their elaboration. There is no bridge however from evolution of biological 
forms and functions to the origin of experience, and certainly there is no 
suggestion of the possibility of equivalence between the experience of an 
evolved organism and the functioning of an assembly of inorganic mechanisms.

 In just my last post I did a better job at explaining something than I've 
 ever seen you do.


  Congratulations, you have a very high opinion of yourself.


Thanks for the congratulations, and I do think that post was good, very 
 good, I wish you'd read it. 


I have nothing against your explanation, it's just doesn't explain 
something that I didn't already know.

  I'm not the one saying that biological systems have qualities that 
 inorganic systems cannot, you are.


 I'm saying they do not, I'm not saying they cannot.


 We agree then. I only say that there may very well be an important reason 
 why they do not which cannot be accessed by existing theory.


There are indeed important reasons but they can be accessed by existing 
 evolutionary theory and

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-30 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

 Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better
 example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to
 eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and
 iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason
 why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality
 that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically
 active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be
 inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in
 the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but
 that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take that rather
 odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly important data.
 Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in the air
 shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide.

I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an
advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a
gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such
organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by
weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are there no
organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation
consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the
evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is
the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better
explanation consistent with Occam's Razor?


-- 
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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-30 Thread Roger Clough


Only life evolves, and steel claws, being made of steel, are not alive,
at least in the ordinary sense (Leibniz believed that everything in
the universe is alive). So what you propose couldn't happen.



Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 
9/30/2012  
Forever is a long time, especially near the end. -Woody Allen 


- Receiving the following content -  
From: Craig Weinberg  
Receiver: everything-list  
Time: 2012-09-29, 11:49:19 
Subject: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment 




On Friday, September 28, 2012 11:36:36 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: 
On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Craig Weinberg  wrote:  
  
  
 On Thursday, September 27, 2012 8:10:37 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:  
  
 On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 8:53 AM, Craig Weinberg   
 wrote:  
  
  But you don't need a living cell to transmit a signal. That is my point.  
  Why  
  have a cell?  
  
 There are cells because that's the way organisms evolved. If there  
 were a way of evolving computer hardware and this was adaptive then  
 there would be organisms with computer hardware. It's not impossible  
 that somewhere in the universe there are naturally evolved organisms  
 utilising batteries, conductors and logic gates.  
  
  
 It's not reasonable to say on one hand that there is no significant  
 difference between solid state electronics and living organisms and on the  
 other to blithely accept that not one of the millions of species on Earth  
 have happened to mutate even a single solid state inorganic appendage. You  
 claim it's not impossible, but the evidence that we have in reality does not  
 support that assumption in the least. To the contrary, living organisms are  
 dependent on organic matter to even survive. As far as I know, we don't even  
 see a single individual organism in the history of the world that  
 predominately eats, drinks, or breathes inorganic matter. You are saying  
 that is, what...coincidence?  

Well, almost every organism predominantly made of, drinks and breathes  
inorganic matter, since water and oxygen are inorganic matter. 

While water and oxygen aren't technically organic matter, they are biological 
precursors. I should have worded it that way. My point is that no living 
organisms breathe or drink matter which is not part of an extremely narrow 
range of elements and compounds. 
  

But  
leaving that obvious fact aside, the other obvious fact is that  
evolution has used organic chemistry to make self-replicators because  
that was the easiest way to do it. Do you imagine that if it were easy  
to evolve steel claws which helped predators catch prey that steel  
claws would not have evolved? What would have prevented their  
evolution, divine intervention?  


You are assuming that there are other options though. Maybe there are, but we 
don't know that for sure yet. If there were, it seems like there would be 
either multiple kinds of biology in the history of the world, or individual 
species which have mutated to exploit the variety of inorganic compounds in the 
universe available. What prevented their evolution is the same thing that 
creates thermodynamic irreversibility out of reversible quantum wave functions. 
The universe is an event, not a machine. When something happens, the whole 
universe is changed, and maybe that change becomes the active arrow of 
qualitative progress. Organic chemistry got there first, therefore that door 
may be closed - unless we, as biological agents, open a new one. 

Craig 

  



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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-30 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 10:39 PM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote:

 Only life evolves, and steel claws, being made of steel, are not alive,
 at least in the ordinary sense (Leibniz believed that everything in
 the universe is alive). So what you propose couldn't happen.

Sea shells are made of calcium carbonate, which is not alive in the
ordinary sense, and yet they evolved and became extremely common.

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Re: Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-30 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Sunday, September 30, 2012 10:55:34 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:

 On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 10:39 PM, Roger Clough 
 rcl...@verizon.netjavascript: 
 wrote: 
  
  Only life evolves, and steel claws, being made of steel, are not alive, 
  at least in the ordinary sense (Leibniz believed that everything in 
  the universe is alive). So what you propose couldn't happen. 

 Sea shells are made of calcium carbonate, which is not alive in the 
 ordinary sense, and yet they evolved and became extremely common. 


But it is the organism which builds the shell, not the shell that builds 
the organism. In theory I don't see why an organism couldn't at least 
produce an iron shell in the same way, but I don't presume that is at all 
correct. The lack of iron shelled organisms would suggest that there is 
some other reason. When you say that it's just because it was easier for 
things to evolve the way they did, I don't see any difference between that 
and what I am saying, which is that biological quality experiences may not 
be so easy or even possible to access without biology as it has actually 
evolved.

Craig
 


 -- 
 Stathis Papaioannou 


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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-30 Thread John Clark

On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote:


  It's not enough to assert that evolutionary designs (teleonomy) and
 rational designs (teleology) are different, I am asking you to explain how
 it is possible for them to be different


The difference is Evolution doesn't understand the concept of one step
backward 2 steps forward for one thing, I went into considerable more
detail about this in my last post and also gave you 4 more reasons how and
why intelligent design is different from random mutation and natural
selection.


  given your assumption that the latter evolved from the former.


The environment is far far too complex to hard wire in all the rules about
the best way for an organism to survive, there are just too many of them.
But Evolution found that if it could wire together just a few cells it
could start to use a few inductive rules; being inductive it didn't always
cause the organism to do the right thing for survival but it succeeded more
that it failed and that was a huge advance. Later more cells got wired
together and you started to get something you could call a brain and more
complex inductive rules could be taken advantage of, and animals that were
really good at this got their genes passed onto the next generation. Sill
later Evolution found a way for these brains to use statistics and rules of
thumb and eventually even deduction. When brains got to this point
Evolution was no longer the only way that complex objects could get built,
there was a much better and faster way.


  you are stating that post biological processes are *very* different from
 everything else in the universe,


Yes.

 and therefore very special


Yes.

 but then denying that there is any relevant difference between biology
 (the sole source of teleology and reason) and *everything else in the
 entire cosmos*.


I don't know if biology exists anyplace other than on the earth, if it
doesn't then 3 billion years ago something happened  on earth that was
different from anything else in the entire cosmos. I don't know if
intelligence and culture exists anywhere other than the earth but if it
doesn't then less that a million years ago something happened to a biped on
this planet that was different from anything else in biology here or
anywhere else. And in the last 50 years its become increasingly clear that
biology will not be the only source of teleology and reason for much longer.

 You haven't explained anything.


In just my last post I did a better job at explaining something than I've
ever seen you do.

 Your ability to think and reason is nothing other than nature's poor
 design.


Yes, if I was designed better I could reason better. Before long computers
will be designed better.

 I'm not the one saying that biological systems have qualities that
 inorganic systems cannot, you are.


I'm saying they do not, I'm not saying they cannot.

 But you are saying that the experiences of the more interesting organisms
 can easily be produced in the pre-evolutionary stupidity of chemistry or
 physics.


Yes, if you put those inorganic parts together in the right way you could
make some very interesting things but Evolution never figured out how to do
it because of the flaws inherent in the process which I explained in
considerable detail in my last post. Human designers don't have those
limitations and will find the job if not easy at least far easier, and they
operate at a enormously faster time scale than Evolution does.


   Then you admit that it would make more sense for human consciousness as
 you conceive of it to be hosted in a skull or knee cap rather than a
 brain.  It just so happens that we showed up in brains.


I can't make any sense out of that, I don't know what you're trying to say,
I hope it's not that consciousness has a position.

 There can be logic without reason or intuition, and there can be
 intuition without logic without reason, but there cannot be reason without
 intuition. Einstein would have agreed with me


Einstein's intuition about physics was usually (but not always) correct ,
your intuition about consciousness is obviously wrong, as obviously wrong
as X is not Y and X is not not Y.

  John K Clark

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

On 9/30/2012 5:44 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote:

Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better
example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to
eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and
iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason
why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality
that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically
active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be
inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in
the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but
that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take that rather
odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly important data.
Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in the air
shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide.

I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an
advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a
gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such
organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by
weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are there no
organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation
consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the
evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is
the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better
explanation consistent with Occam's Razor?

Hi Stathis,

Humans are not organisms in Nature? Your statement is only true if
they are not. How did this come to happen? Your thesis here requires
that the existence of Humans with steel claws
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR1lY2rKh0skXX7mOsXrRsG3dLgp2cVHS9Jkyp-_iQXIZ_UqlOb
and with guns
http://zioneocon.blogspot.com/pal%20a%20young%20gunman.jpgis, somehow,
outside of the definition of organisms. How the heck does this happen

--
Onward!

Stephen

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 9/30/2012 8:39 AM, Roger Clough wrote:

Only life evolves, and steel claws, being made of steel, are not alive,
at least in the ordinary sense (Leibniz believed that everything in
the universe is alive). So what you propose couldn't happen.


The unstated assumption here is that organism are defined by the 
bounding surface of their skin, anything 'outside' of that is being 
assumed to not be part of them. It is not hard to knock down this idea 
as nonsensical!


--
Onward!

Stephen


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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-30 Thread Craig Weinberg



On Sunday, September 30, 2012 1:43:16 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:



 On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Craig Weinberg 
 whats...@gmail.comjavascript:
  wrote:
  

   It's not enough to assert that evolutionary designs (teleonomy) and 
 rational designs (teleology) are different, I am asking you to explain how 
 it is possible for them to be different


 The difference is Evolution doesn't understand the concept of one step 
 backward 2 steps forward for one thing, I went into considerable more 
 detail about this in my last post and also gave you 4 more reasons how and 
 why intelligent design is different from random mutation and natural 
 selection.  


That is not what I am asking. You are describing ways that they are 
different, not explaining how it is possible for these differences to arise.
 

  

  given your assumption that the latter evolved from the former. 


 The environment is far far too complex to hard wire in all the rules about 
 the best way for an organism to survive, there are just too many of them.


Blue-green algae survives all over the world since the Pre-Cambrian Era. 
Survival is not complex. Acquire nutrients. Reproduce. The end.
 

 But Evolution found that if it could wire together just a few cells it 
 could start to use a few inductive rules;


This is pure metaphor. Evolution doesn't 'find' anything. You are falsely 
attributing intention and analysis to an unconscious process. You are going 
back and forth between elevating evolution and nature to Godlike status and 
diminishing it to idiocy.
 

 being inductive it didn't always cause the organism to do the right thing 
 for survival but it succeeded more that it failed and that was a huge 
 advance. Later more cells got wired together and you started to get 
 something you could call a brain and more complex inductive rules could be 
 taken advantage of, and animals that were really good at this got their 
 genes passed onto the next generation. Sill later Evolution found a way for 
 these brains to use statistics and rules of thumb and eventually even 
 deduction. When brains got to this point Evolution was no longer the only 
 way that complex objects could get built, there was a much better and 
 faster way. 


Evolution = The right things in the right places don't die. Nothing else. 
 

  

  you are stating that post biological processes are *very* different 
 from everything else in the universe, 


 Yes.

  and therefore very special


 Yes. 

  but then denying that there is any relevant difference between biology 
 (the sole source of teleology and reason) and *everything else in the 
 entire cosmos*. 


 I don't know if biology exists anyplace other than on the earth, if it 
 doesn't then 3 billion years ago something happened  on earth that was 
 different from anything else in the entire cosmos. I don't know if 
 intelligence and culture exists anywhere other than the earth but if it 
 doesn't then less that a million years ago something happened to a biped on 
 this planet that was different from anything else in biology here or 
 anywhere else. And in the last 50 years its become increasingly clear that 
 biology will not be the only source of teleology and reason for much longer.


I don't see that the fantasy of non-biological teleology has become any 
more realized than it was 50 years ago. Some may find our simulations 
slightly more endearing but I am not impressed that they differ in any way 
other than cosmetics and more extensive application of non-teleological 
processing. There is still no reason to believe that this very unusual 
thing that happened on Earth can be leapfrogged by theoretical assumptions.
 


  You haven't explained anything.


 In just my last post I did a better job at explaining something than I've 
 ever seen you do.


Congratulations, you have a very high opinion of yourself.
 


  Your ability to think and reason is nothing other than nature's poor 
 design. 


 Yes, if I was designed better I could reason better. Before long computers 
 will be designed better. 


By natural people who were designed by natural selection. 


  I'm not the one saying that biological systems have qualities that 
 inorganic systems cannot, you are.


 I'm saying they do not, I'm not saying they cannot.


We agree then. I only say that there may very well be an important reason 
why they do not which cannot be accessed by existing theory.
 


  But you are saying that the experiences of the more interesting 
 organisms can easily be produced in the pre-evolutionary stupidity of 
 chemistry or physics.


 Yes, if you put those inorganic parts together in the right way you could 
 make some very interesting things but Evolution never figured out how to do 
 it because of the flaws 


Evolution never figured out is like brick wall never dreamed of

inherent in the process which I explained in considerable detail in my last 
 post. Human designers don't have those limitations 


You aren't

Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-30 Thread Stathis Papaioannou

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote:
 On 9/30/2012 5:44 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

 On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better
 example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to
 eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and
 iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason
 why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality
 that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically
 active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be
 inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in
 the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but
 that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take that rather
 odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly important data.
 Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in the air
 shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide.

 I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an
 advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a
 gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such
 organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by
 weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are there no
 organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation
 consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the
 evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is
 the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better
 explanation consistent with Occam's Razor?


 Hi Stathis,

 Humans are not organisms in Nature? Your statement is only true if they
 are not. How did this come to happen? Your thesis here requires that the
 existence of Humans with steel claws and with guns is, somehow, outside of
 the definition of organisms. How the heck does this happen

Everything that happens in nature is natural, that's one way of
looking at it. But there is a difference between things that develop
through mutation and natural selection and things that are designed.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment


On 9/30/2012 7:47 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote:

On 9/30/2012 5:44 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com
wrote:

Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better
example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to
eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and
iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason
why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality
that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically
active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be
inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in
the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but
that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take that rather
odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly important data.
Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in the air
shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide.

I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an
advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a
gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such
organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by
weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are there no
organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation
consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the
evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is
the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better
explanation consistent with Occam's Razor?


Hi Stathis,

 Humans are not organisms in Nature? Your statement is only true if they
are not. How did this come to happen? Your thesis here requires that the
existence of Humans with steel claws and with guns is, somehow, outside of
the definition of organisms. How the heck does this happen

Everything that happens in nature is natural, that's one way of
looking at it. But there is a difference between things that develop
through mutation and natural selection and things that are designed.


Hi Stathis,

What is the real difference? Any argument that we might make about 
things that are designed can easily be turned around and used as an 
argument for Intelligent Design of the universe itself. Nature is 
either an integrated and mutually consistent whole or it is not. Things 
evolve by natural processes or they do not. There is no middle ground 
here unless we are introducing an arbitrary preference for a particular 
definition: i.e. what ever is the product of mankind's peculiar 
processes in the cosmos is designed and what ever is not related to 
the particulars of Mankind's peculiarities is not designed. If we do 
that then we have to have a good reason.
So I am asking you. Why make that distinction? What is the 
difference that makes a difference?


--
Onward!

Stephen


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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-30 Thread meekerdb


On 9/30/2012 4:28 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:


You aren't seeing my point that if human designers are nothing but evolved systems, then 
they must have the same limitations as evolution itself, unless you can explain why they 
wouldn't.


More nothing buttery.  If people are just atoms they must have the same 
limitations as atoms.

Brent

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment

2012-09-30 Thread meekerdb


On 9/30/2012 4:56 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:

On 9/30/2012 7:47 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 4:13 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote:

On 9/30/2012 5:44 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com
wrote:

Organisms can utilize inorganic minerals, sure. Salt would be a better
example as we can actually eat it in its pure form and we actually need to
eat it. But that's completely different than a living cell made of salt and
iron that eats sand. The problem is that the theory that there is no reason
why this might not be possible doesn't seem to correspond to the reality
that all we have ever seen is a very narrow category of basic biologically
active substances. It's not that I have a theory that there couldn't be
inorganic life, it is just that the universe seems very heavily invested in
the appearance that such a thing is not merely unlikely or impossible, but
that it is the antithesis of life. My suggestion is that we take that rather
odd but stubbornly consistent hint of a truth as possibly important data.
Failing to do that is like assuming that mixing carbon monoxide in the air
shouldn't be much different than mixing in some carbon dioxide.

I don't really understand what you're saying. It would seem to be an
advantage for an organism to develop something like steel claws or a
gun with chemical explosives and bullets, but there are no such
organisms on Earth. Nature does not abhor inorganic matter since by
weight most living organisms are inorganic matter. So why are there no
organisms with steel claws or guns? The simplest explanation
consistent with the facts is that it was difficult for the
evolutionary process to pull this off. You claim it is because it is
the antithesis of life. Why, when there is an obvious and better
explanation consistent with Occam's Razor?


Hi Stathis,

 Humans are not organisms in Nature? Your statement is only true if they
are not. How did this come to happen? Your thesis here requires that the
existence of Humans with steel claws and with guns is, somehow, outside of
the definition of organisms. How the heck does this happen

Everything that happens in nature is natural, that's one way of
looking at it. But there is a difference between things that develop
through mutation and natural selection and things that are designed.


Hi Stathis,

What is the real difference? Any argument that we might make about things that are 
designed can easily be turned around and used as an argument for Intelligent Design 
of the universe itself. Nature is either an integrated and mutually consistent whole or 
it is not. Things evolve by natural processes or they do not. There is no middle 
ground here unless we are introducing an arbitrary preference for a particular 
definition: i.e. what ever is the product of mankind's peculiar processes in the cosmos 
is designed and what ever is not related to the particulars of Mankind's peculiarities 
is not designed. If we do that then we have to have a good reason.
So I am asking you. Why make that distinction? What is the difference that makes a 
difference?




The difference is that human designers have in mind some goal for their design, they can 
start from a clean sheet or modify and existing design, they can design, build and test 
things without making lots of copies.


Brent
Perfected obsolesence always surpasses the first realization of
a superior concept.
  --- Lawrence Pomeroy, The Grand Prix Car

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Re: Zombieopolis Thought Experiment