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Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

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Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#81

Post by chmsky00 »

sayonaraman wrote: post #7

I think "consciousness" is such a fuzzy term that talking about is at best premature when we are still trying to understand more fundamental things which underlie cognition, such as how human (or mice) memory works, or how the "cognitive maps" which drive spatial navigation generalize to navigation in abstract "concept spaces", how these "concepts" are represented, or how networks of neurons communicate and synchroni…

You ignore all the dumb ideas that came before Feynman. Falsify a theory specifically. Hand waving it away with gatekeeping weak.

IMO Biology explains consciousness fine. Reinforcement of sensory data given repeat exposure leaves agency memory.

I think “higher abstraction” is such a flimsy term as to be meaningless.

Nothing is more or less abstract. It’s just the abstract it needs to be to “exist”. Humans are the abstract they need to be to exist on Earth.

This idea there’s layers of abstraction and meaning beyond what we can know literally is just a neural implant from years of having tribal elders dictating we fetishize a small set of bad ideas ad naseum, we conjure alternatives in order to escape.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#83

Post by jcims »

mach1ne wrote: post #59
throwdecro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you could argue a certain types of self-modifying or monitoring code has an awareness of itself. Having a representation of itself doesn't mean it has an awareness of itself.

Isn't that precisely what it means? You are aware of something, thus you can take it and its aspects into consideration in your calculations. You have a representation of yourself - same thing. Of course your representation may not be completely accurate, but what perception would be.

Vegans entered the chat

(sorry) This would mean, at a minimum, that every biological entity down to single cell organisms are conscious. They could be, I don't know.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#85

Post by mensetmanusman »

meowkit wrote: post #29
systemsignal wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But life probably wouldn’t exist if entropy wasn’t increasing Life exists because it increases the entropy in the universe

> Life exists because it increases the entropy in the universe This is an concise idea I sit on quite often. Is this a commonly known idea? Among scientists/engineers/philosopher types? Would appreciate other thoughts.

Yes, we taught this during course 3 thermo @ MIT. The mystery is how the hell the universe started at such low entropy.

We can predict the final total maximum entropy of the visible universe, we are about half way there. Life produces entropy, but not as ’efficiently’ as exploding stars.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#86

Post by mensetmanusman »

mannykannot wrote: post #40
mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

“ Well, it must minimize the uncertainty of the states that it’s in. I have to actively resist the second law of thermodynamics, so I don’t dissipate into all kinds of states. “ People often make this rhetorical mistake when speaking about the second law. Entropy is increasing full steam ahead, and what looks like a small bit of order is revealed to be hiding ‘the man behind the curtain’ i.e. a massive increase in en…

Seth's invocation of entropy is nowhere near as egregious as it is in the case of those creationists who claim that evolution would be a violation of the 2nd. law of thermodynamics, but I feel it is, ultimately, an argument that goes nowhere. His point is that living organisms are, temporarily, islands of relative order in a universe that is generally less so, which is both a fact and consonant with the 2nd. law. As…

Humans define order. Entropy increasing is just like a falling water fall. If you zoom in on some region of chaos and say look at this pattern (like in cellular automata), you have defined that to be meaningful order. Every state in the statistical ensemble has equal likelihood of occurring, there just happen to be a small subset of interest to human minds.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#87

Post by a9h74j »

gradschoolfail wrote: post #54
a9h74j wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I could be mistaken, but I once heard that the spirit of that question (angels on the head of the pin) was less about realism than countability -- i.e. more like asking about the countablility of the Real Numbers in an interval, or something of that sort. One way or another I took it as a much more generous description.

Interesting, do you have a citation? The Wikipedia page mentions nothing like that.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_t...

'Countability' is too precise a term for the meaning or context. The article as I read it makes the core point I wanted to express: a derisive reference to scholarship of the time period as obcessed with "angels on pinheads" is probably ungenerous.

If you know of JMG one statement of his was roughly this: Every school-child (of that time period) used to know that an 'eternal being' was outside of time, not a being [within time] that would "live forever."

That is, 'eternal' apparently had a precise sense [then] which most are now ignorant of. Again, I could be wrong.

It is hard for me to look down on curiousity about "what could be outside of time" when it remains a popular science question -- i.e., where did the big bang happen?, etc

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#88

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

jtsiskin wrote: post #46
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entropy is a not instilled by a creator, but a natural consequence of math. If the number of states labelled ordered is substantially smaller than the number of states labelled disordered and a system moves essentially randomly between states, it is far more likely that it will spend most of its time in a disordered state. Entropy is just the universe settling into a state that cannot be meaningfully differentiated f…

…but why assume a system moves essentially randomly between states?

1. Occam's razor

2. got any other ideas? (remember, we're talking about large scale, statistical systems)

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#89

Post by MaxBarraclough »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #21
sayonaraman wrote: post #7

I think "consciousness" is such a fuzzy term that talking about is at best premature when we are still trying to understand more fundamental things which underlie cognition, such as how human (or mice) memory works, or how the "cognitive maps" which drive spatial navigation generalize to navigation in abstract "concept spaces", how these "concepts" are represented, or how networks of neurons communicate and synchroni…

I’m not sure it’s fuzzy. Hard to describe with words, sure, but not fuzzy. I have a high degree of certainty when someone else is talking about their own consciousness and when they’re not. For example, when an optometrist or neurologist talks about “sight” they’re talking about the biochemical mechanisms that allow us to see. When I read Plato say “I see therefor I am” it was clear to me he was describing the metaph…

> Consciousness belongs to the mystics today, by default, because science can not claim it.

Science doesn't yet have an answer, but that doesn't grant the mystics any credibility. There is no 'by default' when we don't know. I'm reminded of a Dawkins quote:

Lecturer: Scientists answer questions of 'how'. If your question is 'why', I refer you to the theologians.

Dawkins: Why the theologians? Why not the gardeners?

(Trivia: If I recall correctly, Dawkins didn't actually give this response, he thought it up far too late.)

> There isn’t something we can hold and point to saying “this, this is what the mystics call a soul.”

That isn't a game-over, though.

The same goes for information processing, but we're fairly confident in what we call a 'computer'.

You can't hold a center-of-gravity, but we're able to reason about those pretty clearly.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#90

Post by figure8 »

jtsiskin wrote: post #46
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entropy is a not instilled by a creator, but a natural consequence of math. If the number of states labelled ordered is substantially smaller than the number of states labelled disordered and a system moves essentially randomly between states, it is far more likely that it will spend most of its time in a disordered state. Entropy is just the universe settling into a state that cannot be meaningfully differentiated f…

…but why assume a system moves essentially randomly between states?

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