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A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

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Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#211

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

heyjamesknight wrote: post #53
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, but you’re putting “pencilness” onto the collection of heterogeneous matter, same with any other level of analysis. Consciousness isn’t debatable by the thing doing it, it’s an irrepressible fact of existence to the conscious thing. Science needs a falsifiable hypothesis for the “why” of the material->consciousness transition, and constructing such a hypothesis is difficult for a lot of reasons. Saying “it…

Agreed, I was just commenting that one can measure "penciliness". I see a lot of pedantic arguments against measurement by proxy, as if every single measurement we do wasn't by proxy.

Actually yeah I see your point. I’ll concede on that.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#212

Post by koakuma-chan »

ianburrell wrote: post #210
koakuma-chan wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I’m being ignorant, but let’s say you measured a qubit and it collapsed to a certain state. Now, hypothetically, if you rewind the time and re-measure it, would it collapse to a different state? I think it wouldn’t, and in this sense it is deterministic.

You would see a different state. Quantum mechanics is random. It is possible that there is hidden state that determines the outcome, but there is Bell's Theorem that limits local hidden state and it has been tested by experiment.

I define deterministic as only having one possible outcome, predictable or not.

Here is a proof that quantum mechanics is deterministic:

Let there be a time `t`.

Let there be a qubit `q`.

At the time of `t`, we measured the qubit `q`, and the qubit `q` collapsed to the state of `a`.

At the time of `t`, we measured the qubit `q`, and the qubit `q` collapsed to the state of `b`.

`a` equals `b`.

Quantum mechanics is deterministic.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#213

Post by MichaelZuo »

wruza wrote: post #192
h0l0cube wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could probably s/LLM/human/ in your comment. Essentially all intelligent life is a pachinko machine that takes a bunch of sensory inputs, bounces electricity around a number of neurons, and eventually lands them as actions, which further affect sensory inputs. In between there may be thoughts in there, like 'I've no more to say', or 'Shut your mouth before they figure you out'. The question is, how is it that hum…

It’s survival in reality. Bullshit doesn’t survive (at least on the lower levels of existense, corporate and cultural bs easily does) and that’s why people are so angry at it. We hate absurdity because using absurd results yields failures and loses time or resources that were important to stay fed and warm. People also can lose your time or resources (first line support, women’s shopping, etc) and the reaction is the…

Well in some ways it does, some insect species use various strategies to fool other insect species, such as a special type of caterpillar that does so against ant colonies, to live at their expense.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#214

Post by vidarh »

teekert wrote: post #171
vidarh wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in fact my ability to draw from memory places I've seen is, if anything, from experience, substantially above average. However, when I draw from memory, my drawings do tend to be more stylized. I can "imagine" what a building looks like, but I can't see it. Even our language makes this hard to describe, and the reason why I didn't realise that this isn't how other people do it, because most of our language for r…

You have probably heard this before but this is really bizarre and fascinating to someone like me who writes difficult words correctly because I see them (visualize the word) in my head and judge if they look right. It is like it all has to be visual for it to make any sense. As a molecular biologist I often deal with minute quantities of substances in small containers, but I just picture them there, the molecules, w…

I write a lot, including a couple of novels, and I realised as I found out about aphantasia that it explains a lot about what I read and write, and what I like. E.g. I skim or even entirely skip sections that focus on how something looks, unless it is beautifully written. I care about the language and the ideas much more than about any visual description, because I don't get much value from the visual description. I could, if I wanted to, sketch out a picture of things I've read a description of. E.g. I remember drawing some scenes from Lord of the Rings when I read it for the first time as a child, but I don't get the visual part of the satisfaction of those descriptions until I've drawn them.

But with some works - like Tolkien's, I will still enjoy the descriptions because the language itself is beautiful.

Just to make this weirder: I remember many things by appearance. E.g. I can find my place in a paper I've read years ago by what the page looks like. But I can't see it.

I do however see things when I'm dreaming, and I have one solitary experience I think of seeing things awake, during meditation. I say "I think", because there is the possibility that I fell asleep even though I don't believe I did, and the imagery was far clearer than during my dreams.

But I also can't recall images from my dreams while awake, and usually don't remember dreams at all past the first 30 seconds or so awake.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#215

Post by vidarh »

jarkami wrote: post #196
vidarh wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in fact my ability to draw from memory places I've seen is, if anything, from experience, substantially above average. However, when I draw from memory, my drawings do tend to be more stylized. I can "imagine" what a building looks like, but I can't see it. Even our language makes this hard to describe, and the reason why I didn't realise that this isn't how other people do it, because most of our language for r…

I am largely in the same boat -- I've taken to telling people that I think very well spatially (that is my primary method of thought) but not at all visually. I am much better than most people seem to be when it comes to tasks involving space, direction, and so on -- basically abstractions of reality, not images of it. But if you want me to actually visualize an apple in my head? Yeah, I can't do that at all. Not eve…

Yeah, I also sometimes describe it as spatial thinking. I'm pretty sure that the extent to which I can draw from memory is down to having spent quite a lot of time drawing as a child and getting good at drawing from spatial recollection.

E.g. if I draw a fantasy drawing, it will be closer to impressionism in style, the same way as if I draw something in front of me. It'll be messy. If I draw from memory, the lines are clear, and stylized.

The clearest example of that was an art class at school where we were asked to draw our shoes first from memory and then while looking at it, and both were highly detailed, but without any conscious decision, the line-work was entirely different.

Same as you when it comes to the "ball rolling" scenario. It "has" the properties people add to it, but if they're not affecting the behaviour, they're just verbal labels attached to an abstract concept - I'll remember them, but they won't change anything about the "imagined" scenario.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#216

Post by marcus_holmes »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #110
anon291 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One's observations of one's own agency is really the only thing one can be assured of. And this is where these arguments that seek to reduce intelligence to purely mechanistic processes breaks down. For sure, everything the article is saying is true, and indeed, the system could be classified as intelligent, but this is a wholly different question from 'agency' or 'free will'. Even exceptionally dumb people have free…

> Even exceptionally dumb people have free will “Free will” does not exist because the world is deterministic. In other words, if you have made a decision, you couldn’t have made any other decision, so there wasn’t any choice in the first place. A persons IQ has nothing to do with this.

I always get stuck with this. That yes, I could not have made any other decision, but that decision is still mine to make.

It's like being able to predict what someone is going to do, because you know them and how they think, and what decision they will make when presented with the choice, doesn't stop that from being their choice.

The universe may be deterministic, but my personality is still my personality. It is encoded into the chemical make-up of my brain, and so that complex chemistry behaves in ways that align with my personality. My personality is shaped by my previous experience, but it's still my personality. I still choose, even though the universe can predict all of my choices, because the thing I do the choosing with is part of the process.

And this seems very like the argument about intelligence and instinct. If I respond in a certain way to an event, is it because I am intelligent and "thinking" about my response, or is it instinctual and coded into my meat to respond this way? How would I tell the difference?

Same with free will, how would I tell the difference between a choice I freely made and one I didn't?

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#217

Post by phito »

timewizard wrote: post #136
giorgioz wrote: post #35

I've been thinking as well that from some perspective a human being isn't actually a single life but rather itself a multitude of separate tiny-life forms that cooperate to survive (the cells). The voice in our head is the emerging consciouness that act as a captain, it's useful for the captain to think of itself as one being. Now this said, I feel the article is jumping a bit too much on the Animism hippie bandwagon…

You perceive one voice and give it a position of authority. What if it isn't? What if it's many voices and they compete for control?

This is 100% my experience. There are different captains, but since they share the same memory, there's an illusion that they are one. When you look into who is in the driver seat now at different times, it is clear that there are multiple drivers. Which one is driving now depends on the context and state of my brain.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#218

Post by andoando »

szvsw wrote: post #67
andoando wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused, a spreadsheet running the code for what a neural network does, sure. But a traditional computer program isn't just excel.

Any matrix multiplication can be trivially unwrapped into a bunch of for loops with basic arithmetic. In fact, that is exactly what any GPU kernel ultimately does in some sense. What differentiates a “traditional computer program” from a single matmul? How about a bunch of matmuls? How about a bunch of matmuls with some non-linear arithmetic thrown in between them? And if we are adding in sampling from a distribution…

What you seem to be saying is that the machinary your traditional computer program executes on is capable of executing intelligence.

What I said is thst a traditional computer program (say Excel) is not intelligent in itself, as it cannot, itself, without further input from a human, adapt.

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#219

Post by ianburrell »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #212
ianburrell wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would see a different state. Quantum mechanics is random. It is possible that there is hidden state that determines the outcome, but there is Bell's Theorem that limits local hidden state and it has been tested by experiment.

I define deterministic as only having one possible outcome, predictable or not. Here is a proof that quantum mechanics is deterministic: Let there be a time `t`. Let there be a qubit `q`. At the time of `t`, we measured the qubit `q`, and the qubit `q` collapsed to the state of `a`. At the time of `t`, we measured the qubit `q`, and the qubit `q` collapsed to the state of `b`. `a` equals `b`. Quantum mechanics is det…

I think you just assumed the result. With quantum mechanics, a and b will be different if could rollback time. Or if made the same measurement with the exact same state.

Quantum mechanics is indeterminate and probabilistic. Some of the most brilliant physicists like von Neumann and Bell, who won the Nobel Prize for this work, have proved it. Unless you have something that will win the Nobel Prize, your intuition is wrong.

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_indeterminacy

Re: A new proposal for how mind emerges from matter

#220

Post by energy123 »

naasking wrote: post #159
energy123 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the discussion is not about intelligence, human or otherwise.

The article mentions intelligence a lot actually. It's also conjecture that consciousness and intelligence are unrelated. Qualia could be functional, and emerge naturally from the development of ever more sophisticated intelligence.

> It's also conjecture that consciousness and intelligence are unrelated.

That's true. We shouldn't casually conflate the two but also shouldn't make the assumption that they're independent.

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