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

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

sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 224 posts

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

#191

Post by rini17 »

Symmetry wrote: post #113
dreamcompiler wrote: post #63

The SF novel Blindsight by Peter Watts explores the idea of aliens that are cognizant but not conscious. Fascinating book. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel)

Blindsight was a well crafted book but it sort of underplayed the benefits that consciousness gives us. We're bombarded by a huge number of sensory impressions at any given time. The unconscious parts of our brain do a huge amount of work in processing it and figuring out which bits are important. But without consciousness to synchronize, serialize, and persist it then all that information will just fade away within…

Perhaps the coherently serialized stream of qualia isn't the only possible way to intelligence?

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

#192

Post by bigodbiel »

User23 wrote: post #41
Xenograph wrote: post #16

> In contrast, when shown numbers with embedded faces, the number’s effect apparently swamped that of the face: RFS reported seeing neither; everything looked like spaghetti. Yet an EEG still showed the characteristic N170 spike for registering faces. Somehow, his brain was still processing and identifying a face—a fairly high-level skill—even though his conscious mind was oblivious. This deficit shows high-level cog…

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 cannot hear brainstorm, no matter how hard I focus

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

#193

Post by danielam »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #188
danielam wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. > So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. "Mind" vs. brain. For example, you will never observe the concept "triangularity" or the number 8 or the color "red" in a brain scan. You will see brain activity correlates between what is most likely someone perceiving an instanc…

>Every physical thing is particular. No abstract thing is particular. Therefore, no abstract thing is physical. But abstract things can supervene on the physical. Information, for example, is abstract, but it supervenes on some physical stuff. Granted, information is not identical to any particular instantiation, but the abstract pattern can be manifested by a particular physical instantiation. You're welcome to call…

> But abstract things can supervene on the physical. Information, for example, is abstract, but it supervenes on some physical stuff. Granted, information is not identical to any particular instantiation, but the abstract pattern can be manifested by a particular physical instantiation. You're welcome to call information immaterial if you like, but it presents no metaphysical difficulties for physicalism.

Example? The world "information" is often used in a magical way. Patterns need not be immaterial, and I never argued for that, but I really don't know what you mean by "information". (FWIW, "supervene" is another one of those terms.)

> Why are non-materialists so fucking angry? Incivility doesn't help your cause. If your arguments were good they would stand on their own without embellishment.

Pot to kettle? Looks, there's a history there that maybe you're not privy to. Eliminativists and other materialists have consistency refused to address these fundamental problems while simultaneously ridiculing and dismissing anyone who doesn't agree with them. So you'll have to forgive me for being "uncivil". After a while, it's hard not to conclude that we're dealing with willful ignorance or intellectual dishonesty.

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

#194

Post by hackinthebochs »

danielam wrote: post #193
hackinthebochs wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every physical thing is particular. No abstract thing is particular. Therefore, no abstract thing is physical. But abstract things can supervene on the physical. Information, for example, is abstract, but it supervenes on some physical stuff. Granted, information is not identical to any particular instantiation, but the abstract pattern can be manifested by a particular physical instantiation. You're welcome to call…

> But abstract things can supervene on the physical. Information, for example, is abstract, but it supervenes on some physical stuff. Granted, information is not identical to any particular instantiation, but the abstract pattern can be manifested by a particular physical instantiation. You're welcome to call information immaterial if you like, but it presents no metaphysical difficulties for physicalism. Example? Th…

Information is state or configuration of one system that tells you something about another system. The pixels on your screen contain information about the state of my brain because the particular pattern of lights communicates the thoughts in my head. Information is abstract because it is independent of the medium: the pixels on the screen, pressure waves in the air, marks on paper, etc, can all be used to carry the same information.

Supervene means something is constituted by the configuration of some substance. Or the more common definition: A supervenes on B if there can be no change in A without a corresponding change in B.

>Eliminativists and other materialists have consistency refused to address these fundamental problems

I admit that people have reason to be frustrated with certain materialists, Dennett chief among them. I have my share of frustrations with him as well. But there's this trend I see with non-materialists (online and professionals) showing active disdain for materialism/physicalism that is entirely unhelpful. Ultimately we're all just trying to solve one of the hardest problems of all. Genuine efforts to move the conversation forward should be welcomed. Intractable disagreement just points towards the need for better arguments.

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

#195

Post by comex »

danielam wrote: post #174
montjoy wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come now. > The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. > ... because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination Then likewise Ecology, Geology, Biology and all other sciences that cover syste…

>> The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. > So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. "Mind" vs. brain. For example, you will never observe the concept "triangularity" or the number 8 or the color "red" in a brain scan. You will see brain activity correlates between what is most likely someone perceiving an instanc…

> "Mind" vs. brain. For example, you will never observe the concept "triangularity" or the number 8 or the color "red" in a brain scan.

Nor will you see Shape::TRIANGLE or the number 8 or Color::RED if you put a CPU under a microscope, but computer programs are capable of reasoning about all of them. What's your point?

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

danielam wrote: post #193
hackinthebochs wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every physical thing is particular. No abstract thing is particular. Therefore, no abstract thing is physical. But abstract things can supervene on the physical. Information, for example, is abstract, but it supervenes on some physical stuff. Granted, information is not identical to any particular instantiation, but the abstract pattern can be manifested by a particular physical instantiation. You're welcome to call…

> But abstract things can supervene on the physical. Information, for example, is abstract, but it supervenes on some physical stuff. Granted, information is not identical to any particular instantiation, but the abstract pattern can be manifested by a particular physical instantiation. You're welcome to call information immaterial if you like, but it presents no metaphysical difficulties for physicalism. Example? Th…

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by peter303 »

Letters are phonograms with strong clues about pronunciation. Numerals are pure ideograms with no clue about pronunciation. Modern English is a mix of phonograms and ideograms, with more of the former. Its very likely they trigger different subsystems of the brain. And in this case the ideogram subsystem was defective.

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

#198

Post by whalabi »

Izkata wrote: post #72
whalabi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa. I get the green/brain bit and can kinda tweak my perception to hear both, but needle and storm? When I hear both from the same audio they sound so very different and I can't fathom how they come from the same waves.

This looks like one of the early posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/8jxzee/y... Deep in the comments, someone posted this: > If you slow down the audio/video to about 25% speed, you'll notice that the sound for 'needle' begins a fraction earlier than 'storm'. This is because the 's'-sound (in storm) actually begins in the 'ee'-gap of 'needle'. The 't'-sound of 'storm' atches with the 'dl'-soun…

That's exactly what I was trying to understand, and how I was trying to understand it. Thank you

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

#199

Post by KozmoNau7 »

correnos wrote: post #15
chki wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Empathy’s gotta be one of the most important skills for an experimental social psychologist. Or maybe the exact opposite? I would find it very hard to do research and empathize with the subject of my research at the same time. This has also just made me realized that this problem with empathizing with my research is actually highly problematic when it comes to the research I am actually doing at the moment.

An EMT friend described her take as, you need empathy in order to help people, but you need to be able to switch it off because sometimes what you're about to do is going to hurt them. It's like any of our instinctual responses. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it's in the way.

It's not really switching it off as such, it's more that you have to "long-term empathize" with the person you're helping.

Setting a broken bone or popping a joint back in to place will hurt right now, but the consequences of not doing it will hurt the person a lot more over time. So you do inflict pain on them right in the moment, which is certainly unpleasant to do, but in the hope that the overall pain and discomfort for them will be significantly lessened.

At least that's how a friend of mine (former firefighter) put it.

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

#200

Post by LASR »

collyw wrote: post #164
hackinthebochs wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to come up with something more substantive to say in response, but this is a bad take and it needs to be said. Studies that demonstrate high level brain activity without the corresponding conscious experience are important in that they help to constrain where and how conscious experience is generated. Platitudes about human intelligence have no utility here.

> conscious experience is generated Is there any evidence that it is generated?

As opposed to what? It being “really there” ?
Post reply on HN