A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness • Hacker News Board

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#131

Post by opless » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:17 PM UTC

xelxebar wrote: post #120

opless wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, can you explain what a ' Yudkowsian self-optimizer ' is? I've googled it and the only page that it comes up with is this one! :-)

Looks like I mispelled the name. I was simply referring informally to Eliezer Yudkowsky and the LessWrong-style thoughts on optimization processes. You can read the initial idea here[0]. If you haven't heard of LessWrong before, then you have hit the motherload of all rabbit holes! That site is definitely worth the dive. [0]: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HFTn3bAT6uXSNwv4m/optimizati...

Thanks!

I know about lesswrong, and you’re not wrong

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#132

Post by corin_ » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #130

corin_ wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does our not fully (or even close to fully) understanding how the brain works mean conscious vs subconscious is unscientific? Is all mental health research unscientific based on the same logic? My understanding is that it's conclusive that some of our brain's processes we feel we are controlling (conscious thinking), while others happen in the background without us realising. The fact that we don't understand eve…

You're making a common mistake, that of equating "scientific" with "good". Science is a particular method for learning about the world, not a marker of moral worth. I don't want to get too far into the epistemological weeds here, but there are plenty of other, perfectly valid ways to understand the world, many of which are used and studied in academia. The easiest examples to point to are philosophy and mathematics.…

I may well be misunderstanding a definition of science, but no I wasn't confusing it with "good".

I don't know what the best definition of science is, but here's the first one Google suggests:

> "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."

Can you explain what excludes the studying of human behaviour or mental health from how you define "science"?

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#133

Post by dandare » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

As a software developer I imagine the brain not as some separated layers but as a huge collection of routines/procedures, for this or that (including procedure for understanding numbers), interconnected with a spaghetti code of links. Many of these processes specialise in making decisions and calling other processes. One specialised procedure is called the consciousness, it is blind to the rest of the processes and it is tricked into believing that it does all the calculations while it merely reads the results from other processes.

Also, I highly recommend the book The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#134

Post by dunefox » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #118

User23 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me think of this silliness I saw today: https://mobile.twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/12892831187305... I recommend first watching it with you eyes closed and after that seeing how you can manipulate your perception. It was easy to hear “brain needle” with my eyes closed.

I am not a native english speaker... didn't work for me. With closed eyes I heard something like brain-needle :D and while reading both words shown, I still heard "brain-needle".

Exactly my experience, too. I simply cannot hear either of the words shown.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#135

Post by kebman » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

agustif wrote: post #102

ghego1 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are experiments which show that the brain calculates the answers and "presents" the answers later on to the consciousness. This made me think of an async process

Promise.all()

When you've been working on Node.js for too long. xD

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#136

Post by EamonnMR » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

asab wrote: post #6

I have also seen this example, where a man blinded by strokes still avoids obstacles and recognizes emotions, without any conscious awareness[1]. Is this the same phenomenon? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23blin.html

Never forget the possibility of a conversion disorder: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#137

Post by pessimizer » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #133

As a software developer I imagine the brain not as some separated layers but as a huge collection of routines/procedures, for this or that (including procedure for understanding numbers), interconnected with a spaghetti code of links. Many of these processes specialise in making decisions and calling other processes. One specialised procedure is called the consciousness, it is blind to the rest of the processes and i…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenalism

Read Patricia Churchland instead:)

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#138

Post by Lambdanaut » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #133

As a software developer I imagine the brain not as some separated layers but as a huge collection of routines/procedures, for this or that (including procedure for understanding numbers), interconnected with a spaghetti code of links. Many of these processes specialise in making decisions and calling other processes. One specialised procedure is called the consciousness, it is blind to the rest of the processes and i…

The consciousness procedure also has links out to the other procedures. It calls them with inputs based on what they send it. It' a co-recursive system.

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#139

Post by mistermann » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

eddytrex_ wrote: post #26

the8472 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill Is it? I thought the brain has specialized parts for identifying faces (hence prosopagnosia) which makes this more of an automatism than higher reasoning.

Yeah, I remember learn that in this playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyGKBDfnk-iAQx4Kw9JeV... very cool

This looks great, do you have any other similar lectures bookmarked?

Re: A man who can read letters but not numbers exposes roots of consciousness

#140

Post by hrgiger » Sun, Aug 02, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

Can you relate this with color blindless? Most of time I could swear I could see that green,orange and red different but somehow my brain refuses to identify them.