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Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

horses.extension.org

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Re: Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

#21
post #15

I've been pondering for a while a question that is exceedingly unlikely to ever be answered within my lifetime, because as a prerequisite it assumes a framework strong enough to answer several very hard questions in philosophy, neuroscience, and information theory. And that question is: Is it possible even in principle for a conscious entity to have an instinctual understanding and awareness of every low-level detail…

I’ve thought about this. Or at least something like that. When reading dune there’s a class of women who can control their biochemistry in such a way that they can eg prolong lifespan, or anything else within the realm of feasible biochemistry. Here I was like: how does the nervous system function in that way? How could signals from the mind control the behavior of molecules? The mind cannot itself feel pain, similar…

> Although maybe a better question: why don’t we have a dedicated organ that can sample blood with laboratory like precision and make anomalies available to the conscious mind beyond whatever faculties we currently have?

Because random mutations and selective pressure has never lead to such a trait that persists in a population.

Re: Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

#22
post #16

I've been pondering for a while a question that is exceedingly unlikely to ever be answered within my lifetime, because as a prerequisite it assumes a framework strong enough to answer several very hard questions in philosophy, neuroscience, and information theory. And that question is: Is it possible even in principle for a conscious entity to have an instinctual understanding and awareness of every low-level detail…

> "A horse is an extremely sophisticated biological machine, but it has no idea what makes itself tick." To my ears, a lot of detail is hidden in "knowing what makes itself tick". The limit of human Umwelt, cognitive closure, is an arena I find fascinating. Modern people tend to identify understanding with mechanistic explanations. Veins, glycogen, immune states, hoof pumps. These are interesting and satisfying to us…

Indeed, specification of what "understanding" even is is one of the hard problems that would have to be solved before answering such a question! Nobody disagrees, for instance, that an LLM has no understanding, awareness, or even access to the underlying numerical weights of its neural network, but still there is much debate whether it understands anything at all, even subjects that it is clearly superhuman at performing in. Perhaps "understanding" will only have a meaningful definition to us if it is tied with conscious awareness, but that's hardly better.

Another very relevant Borges story is "On Exactitude in Science." If we could precisely model every physical law and even the precise distribution of matter in the universe, but this model conveyed to us no intuition or usefulness on a human level, can it even be called understanding? Instead we seek teleological anthropomorphic explanations in everything, and it's baked into how we discuss things. "Big cats developed powerful muscles to run fast and catch prey," "our immune system exists to keep us from getting sick," "rooks are worth more than knights," "the universe favors states with the highest possible entropy," "de Rham cohomology detects topological holes."

Re: Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

#23

I've been pondering for a while a question that is exceedingly unlikely to ever be answered within my lifetime, because as a prerequisite it assumes a framework strong enough to answer several very hard questions in philosophy, neuroscience, and information theory. And that question is: Is it possible even in principle for a conscious entity to have an instinctual understanding and awareness of every low-level detail…

There is a Sci-Fi novel about fancy forest frogs, which possess that ability down to the biomolecular level. And a human researcher stranded on their world, being modifyied by them, to help her survive and adapt to the toxic environment.

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

(QVACK! °oO0°·.)

Re: Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

#24
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve thought about this. Or at least something like that. When reading dune there’s a class of women who can control their biochemistry in such a way that they can eg prolong lifespan, or anything else within the realm of feasible biochemistry. Here I was like: how does the nervous system function in that way? How could signals from the mind control the behavior of molecules? The mind cannot itself feel pain, similar…

> why don’t we have a dedicated organ that can sample blood with laboratory like precision and make anomalies available to the conscious mind beyond whatever faculties we currently have? "My triglycerides are at 220 mg/dL" is not a useful signal to a hominid banging rocks together. Instead, what we got was the budget version, keyed for resolution rather than understanding: thirst (osmolality of plasma fluid), suffoca…

> suffocation (blood acidity induced by excess CO2)

Which, being the budget option, has a failure scenario: When low oxygen occurs without high CO2, people feel fine... until it's too late and they fall over, unconscious.

This can occur in enclosed spaces like caves where some other gas-mix has excluded the oxygen, or when someone hyperventilates before holding their breath.

> This chemoreceptor patent-proposal is kicking my ass. Hundley won't let me down until it's done. Hardly worth filing for, in my opinion. Who wants to smell the difference between xenon and radon?

-- Complaining Versalife employee, Deus Ex (2000)

Re: Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the systems that complex biological systems rely on, evolved long before the brain, some of them go back to before there were nervous systems at all. Truth is that it's all a hodge-podge of layers of complexity built on-top and sideways. In tech terms we would call it enormous technical debt.

We're all vibe coded :(

Imagine what it's like to debug this biological mess that God vibecoded out of boredom.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37029912

Re: Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

#26
post #20

What about when the horse is sleeping?

I guess when the horse lays down the pumping force from the heart is enough to pump the blood back. Much less gravity to work against

horses sleep in a standing position.

(https://www.petmd.com/horse/do-horses-sleep-standing)

Re: Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

#27

I've been pondering for a while a question that is exceedingly unlikely to ever be answered within my lifetime, because as a prerequisite it assumes a framework strong enough to answer several very hard questions in philosophy, neuroscience, and information theory. And that question is: Is it possible even in principle for a conscious entity to have an instinctual understanding and awareness of every low-level detail…

I think considering yourself as a consciousness inhabiting a body, maybe in a way similar to the aliens in The War of the Worlds, is a false premise. Consciousness is one control system, but there are many, and your mind relies not just on the brain but the entire body.

So when you say being aware of every detail of your design, that hinges on awareness in the realm of critical thinking - but all the while, parts of your body are absolutely aware and in control of every little detail. I'd even say, these "subsystems" send a notification to your consciousness if anything is outside normal operational parameters, which makes total sense: Surfacing only details that require immediate attention is a good strategy to control complex systems, and one that we apply to many superficial constructions as well.

Another fun aspect of this is that when you try to suffocate yourself by holding your breath for too long, you'll pass out. Why does that happen? Because your body switches off your rogue consciousness in an attempt to stay alive - because staying alive overrules your subjective experience.

Re: Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

#29

I've been pondering for a while a question that is exceedingly unlikely to ever be answered within my lifetime, because as a prerequisite it assumes a framework strong enough to answer several very hard questions in philosophy, neuroscience, and information theory. And that question is: Is it possible even in principle for a conscious entity to have an instinctual understanding and awareness of every low-level detail…

It's difficult to say anything about experiential/first-person consciousness as we don't know what it is. Some say it doesn't exist and everybody is a p-zombie. That aside...

As you mention, there's a problem where if you want to know yourself fully - including observability of your mind - you need to be aware of the thing that is aware, and aware of the thing that is aware of the thing that is aware, etc, down to infinite regress.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's impossible. It would suggest that such a being works by moving along a set of fixed point. Suppose x is the state of the physical mind (whether that's a brain, a set of chips, or something else). Suppose f(x) returns the updated state after this mind takes into account what it knows (i.e. f(first-order aware) = first- and second-order aware). Then if the mind-state always changes so that x is a fixed point of f, then the mind already knows all there is to know about itself.

So the question, on the mind side, is whether there exists a sufficiently generally intelligent type of mind for which moving along fixed points is computationally easy. I don't know. It could be possible, it could be impossible. Finding fixed points is hard in general, though.

There's also the problem of sensors, which may seem simpler but hides a similar difficulty. What happens if whatever thing that measures blood sugar fails? Or if the immune system goes auto-immune due to an immune cell defect that makes it report benign cells as foreign? Then you need an integrity sensor for the sensors - then you need an integrity sensor for the integrity sensor... At least this fixed-point problem for sensors should be easier than the one for general minds.

The consciousness:complexity ratio would probably express itself in that a mind of a certain complexity with the fixed-point-of-f constraint would be less intelligent on average than a mind of the same complexity without such a constraint.

Re: Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)

#30

I've been pondering for a while a question that is exceedingly unlikely to ever be answered within my lifetime, because as a prerequisite it assumes a framework strong enough to answer several very hard questions in philosophy, neuroscience, and information theory. And that question is: Is it possible even in principle for a conscious entity to have an instinctual understanding and awareness of every low-level detail…

Speaking as a horse, I wonder why you think we have any ideas at all. But anyway, ideas are less complex than the systems that they explain, that's the whole point of ideas. We're always progressing to simpler explanations while at the same time discovering that the world has new complexities. (The simplification is winning.)

I'd go into more detail, but I've seen a white gatepost and have to stop now.

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