Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Do Philosophy

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 241 posts

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#151

Post by twinings »

lst wrote: post #142
rms wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean that evolutionary theory is becoming more refined over time. This makes the case for science, not the theistic God of the Hebrews.

I mean that there are two different things which can be confused easily: evolution and adaption/assimilation/conformation. Many things that seem to confirm evolution could in fact be of the second group cited above.

I have heard this evolution versus adaption/assimilation/conformation argument before, from a very religious person. Their idea is that evolution may be happening on a small and limited scale, but no further than that. They don't want to think about the more long-term and general implications of the theory. That is - if small adaptations can occur over a few years, what might happen over millions of years?

Assuming the earth is only 6,000 years old there isn't enough time for animals to evolve. All that can be seen are some minor "adaptations".

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#152

Post by earthboundkid »

krispykreme wrote: post #147

PG, you ought to read Chuang Tzu and then revise your essay accordingly. Not only was his work relevant to the topic, but also he started before Aristotle and affected a greater fraction of humanity. Until then you better rename your essay "How to do 3 Greeks + 1 Austrian". Parochial.

"昔者莊周夢為胡 蝶，栩栩然胡蝶 也，自喻適志與 ！不知周也。俄 然覺，則蘧蘧然 周也。不知周之 夢為胡蝶與，胡 蝶之夢為周與？ 周與胡蝶，則必 有分矣。此之謂 物化。"

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#153

Post by janm »

Interesting. Sounds a lot like Christopher Alexeander's "Nature of Order" work. Specifically, trying to answer the question: "What makes something good?"

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#154

Post by euccastro »

Metaesthesia (1/3)

[This was meant as a reply to a comment about soul, but I drifted too bad to claim it's really a reply to anything.]

The word 'soul' has a lot of baggage I don't care for, but I need some word that expresses the concept of 'feeling', 'perception', 'consciousness' in me. Not my ability to perceive this or that, to feel this or that, but the quality of experiencing stuff at all. Just to get rid of some of the implications of the words above, I could call this feeling of self autoesthesia, or, for an even more pretentious neologism, metaesthesia. I'll conjure a ridiculous, but convenient, word for the act of exercising metaesthesia: metafeeling.

Note that in the paragraph above I have talked about myself rather than about humans as a species. This is for several crucial reasons. To confront the thorny one first: quite honestly, I haven't established yet that any of you guys have this.

No offense; most of you folks look convincing enough, especially when I only have myself to compare to. In any event, I have to say most of you other people are quite alright phenomenons to perceive. I hope we can still continue this discussion in civilized terms[1].

But I'm trying to be rigorous here (heh..), and for all I know, you could all be replicants, NPCs, or hallucinations. I can only metafeel my own stuff!

Another reason why I didn't speak of 'us' is, who are us? What is not us? As soon as I go happily assuming metaesthesia in other stuff, I have no good reason to limit myself to humans, animals, living beings, computational systems, complex systems, material things, or whatever else, if anything, is there.

Do my cells metafeel? Do the mitochondria within them? Do cities, societies? Does the world as a whole, does the universe as a whole have a definite consciousness that metafeels itself?

[I had to split this. Search in page for "Metaesthesia (2/3)"]

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#155

Post by euccastro »

Metaesthesia (2/3)

[This follows from anoter post in this page. Search for Metaesthesia (1/3) if interested.]

In the interest of agility, I'll go one level deeper into insanity and present the rest of my drivel as an interview with myself:

How can things metafeel if they don't have nervous systems, or any mechanism for reacting to their environments?

Well, they can have very peaceful feelings. I know where you're coming from: I can relate my feelings to the flow of information through my nervous system. I can see how different conditions that alter the quality of that flow alter the quality of my feelings similarly. Extrapolating, I'd say that feeling emerges somehow from complex order.

Ha! Typical nervous system chauvinism.

(sigh) What's a neural network to do?

No, really. Why are my metafeelings bound to my physical body? If everything metafeels, why don't I metafeel everything? Why this fragmentation?

I imagine there is some I that emerges from the interactions of my body with other entities. My matter, my actions serve that consciousness too, although I am a less significant part of it. Just as most of my cells are replaced often (and thus, I presume, their tiny consciousnesses are born and die), while my perceived self stays mostly constant.

So what if half my brain was transplanted to other body?

I hope you'll go on the other half.

No, seriously: after some initial weirdness and confusion, it will be business as usual. The other body will be a different person. A very affine person, to be sure. Maybe like someone you've spent all your life with and told all your secrets to, probably someone you'll care a lot about. But I bet you can get something similar without surgery, if you were willing to go all the way to get that level of intimacy with someone. It's scary and it wouldn't be easy to know yourself well enough, nor it would be easy for the other person to understand you well enough, but I bet some approximation is possible by good old interpersonal communication means.

So what about the converse? Could it be possible to merge consciousnesses by merging nervous systems?

I bet. That would be an even more interesting experiment. For maybe different degrees of metaesthetical merging, you could link brains temporarily or permanently, and you could do it with more or less bandwidth.

[Continued in Metaesthesia (3/3), which search for.]

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#156

Post by euccastro »

Metaesthesia (3/3)

[This is a multi-part post. Read it before I'm killed from the site! :P Search for Metaesthesia to find the other parts.]

Bandwidth?

Yeah. If you have a connection as dense (or more) as your hemispheres have with each other, you can get some pretty strong integration, to the point the two selves dissolve into a new one. With a narrower link, like the one you have with your feet, each brain will still metafeel mostly autonomously, with a small window of empathy and ultra fast communication to the other end.

How would brains make sense of each other, if the wiring in each of us is unique?

Just as we make sense of the world in general: by rewiring until it 'works'. It would take some time until each brain makes sense of the other, and in the case of hardcore brain mergers, it would take some more time until some supra-consciousness emerges from both.

For low bandwidth-- if this technology became casual enough, conventional wirings could emerge. As we try more peer brains, our own brains pick patterns and get better at negotiating this kind of stuff. I don't rule out computer assisted training either. This would allow good old neural rigging.

In the case of high-bandwidth brain merges, would the emerging new consciousness replace both original consciousnesses?

I think it depends mainly on bandwidth. Time and plasticity of the brain also matter. If you merge brains in unborn children, I'm pretty sure they'll grow to have an unified consciousness. The older the subjects are, the longer it will take, in principle, to dissolve the old selves. But we have to assume that there is some medical way to stimulate and assist brain rewiring. It's part of the required technology, lest both brains go nuts before they can integrate.

But do you see both the original selves and the supra-self coexisting at some point?

The rewiring takes time. It doesn't just click and voila, you're merged. It's more of a cross-fade.

Do they metafeel each other?

Yes, but not necessarily in any meaningful way. Most of the time it will feel like a terrible LSD trip.

If my city metafeels, why doesn't it talk to me?

Why don't I talk to my mythocondria?

I bet you do.

That was uncalled for.

Let's continue this in private, shall we?

Sure, my email is in my profile.

[And thus, there is no Metaesthesia (4/x).]

 -  -  -
[1] And seriously, folks, if this was all that important to you, metaesthesia.com would be taken.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#157

Post by rms »

euccastro wrote: post #156

Metaesthesia (3/3) [This is a multi-part post. Read it before I'm killed from the site! :P Search for Metaesthesia to find the other parts.] Bandwidth? Yeah. If you have a connection as dense (or more) as your hemispheres have with each other, you can get some pretty strong integration, to the point the two selves dissolve into a new one. With a narrower link, like the one you have with your feet, each brain will sti…

Do you think stars metafeel? The universe as a whole?

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#158

Post by the900 »

ingenium wrote: post #149
euccastro wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's your take on consciousness, and how/whether we differ from computers?

Basically, consciousness is nothing special and we don't differ from computer at all in that we're simply a more complex computer than anything we've created thus far.

Can you offer defense of that position please?

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#159

Post by ingenium »

the900 wrote: post #158
ingenium wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, consciousness is nothing special and we don't differ from computer at all in that we're simply a more complex computer than anything we've created thus far.

Can you offer defense of that position please?

The brain is composed of neurons. Each neuron either fires or it doesn't, just like on or off in a computer. This is determined by chemical reactions in and outside the cell. A powerful enough computer can simulate this down to the atomic level, it's just physics. Just because the computers we build don't function the same as the brain doesn't mean that the brain isn't a computer. Some attempts at AI have taken this approach, and while they generally work, we don't yet have the processing power to scale it.

When a certain stimulus happens, the effects it has on the brain, which include thoughts, is predictable and computable by doing the physics. We just have this illusion of "free will" and making choices. Our personalities are simply the result of how our brain's wiring developed from our environmental stimuli.

This also brings to light an important topic in philosophy of science: determinism. Is the world deterministic or not? If it's not, then physics and the sciences simply don't work. If the world is deterministic, which all evidence we have says that it is, then free will cannot exist. It's just easier and more comforting for people to pretend we have free will.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#160

Post by lst »

twinings wrote: post #151
lst wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that there are two different things which can be confused easily: evolution and adaption/assimilation/conformation. Many things that seem to confirm evolution could in fact be of the second group cited above.

I have heard this evolution versus adaption/assimilation/conformation argument before, from a very religious person. Their idea is that evolution may be happening on a small and limited scale, but no further than that. They don't want to think about the more long-term and general implications of the theory. That is - if small adaptations can occur over a few years, what might happen over millions of years? Assuming t…

Religion apart, only a fundamentalistic person would say that the earth is only 6,000 years old.

The problem is not earth, but animals. The real problem is that 'millions of years' period. Anybody can make up a nice theory involving 'millions of years'. But how do you prove it? You can't. That's the real question and real problem with the evolution theory. It's only a theory which nobody can prove. (But a time machine would certainly help :)

Post reply on HN