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The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

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Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#321

Post by wruza »

heyjamesknight wrote: post #319
wruza wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we may only be aware of a single thread at any given time We may be not a single mind, but a bunch of minds. It just happens that the mind that “you” are reads this and has written the above comment, cause it’s of that kind (just like “all biological beings in this thread happen to be humans” type of a filter). Other minds can live completely different lives, just inside the same skull. And share emotions and thought…

I fully disagree that the mind can operate without "awareness." We understand neither the how nor why of consciousness. But its not just a parlor trick—consciousness helps us mediate our attention. It's one of the core things missing from our current AI path. Even if the LLMs reach 100% parity on human computational power, we humans are still acting as the ghost-in-the-machine, mediating and directing said computatio…

Consciousness (in this sense) doesn't physically exist cause it's unfalsifiable. Philosophy has a whole p-zombie section on that. I believe that you are mixing this metaphysical awareness with the physical process of mind machinery which is obviously required for a mind to work. Unless you have a deeper idea in mind.

If the latter, why do you think it can not? It's a configuration of particles that will evolve by physical means (under materialism ofc). It shouldn't require anything special like any inanimate object doesn't require anything to continue physically existing, the only difference being just how less complex its reactions are. And even that is subjective and anthropecentric, cause laws of nature don't care more about us than e.g. about a rock, they just work.

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#322

Post by fzeindl »

josefx wrote: post #313
fzeindl wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sensory data is not digitally encoded - it is all continuous data That might be correct but as far as I know the brain has circuits that fire periodically with a certain frequency (what brain waves are about). If such frequencies steer some kind of gate than you do have a kind of digital logic with 1 being where the brain waves cross the zero line.

> If such frequencies steer some kind of gate than you do have a kind of digital logic with 1 being where the brain waves cross the zero line. What makes you think that this is the case? If someone touches you from behind do you immediately fall over dead from sensory overload? Do you react as if you where punched in the gut? Do you look over your shoulder to check who it is? Or do you fail to notice it until they br…

> What makes you think that this is the case? If someone touches you from behind do you immediately fall over dead from sensory overload?

My point was not that reactions/feelings etc are switched by a signal being 1 or 0, just that sort-of-digital signals (line "on" or "off") are possible within the brain.

My idea about the instruction-set I was talking about earlier was not that it immediately switches behaviours on or off, but that it selects the next, slightly different or deeper "brain circuits / loops" to get activated and shift the whole apparatus towards finally acting out a certain behaviour.

But, as you point out, that is all unfounded speculation.

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#323

Post by leflores »

At what speed is the brain processing when a pair of Chinese ping pong masters are playing? All of this requires seeing the ball coming from the opponent, subconsciously calculating its speed, angle, and rotation to decide how to move your body, legs, arms, hands, and even fingers to hit the ball at the desired location, with the desired angle, and at the desired speed. A standard ping pong table is 2.74 meters long, and in high-speed professional games, the ball can traverse this distance in as little as 90–140 milliseconds. This means players have less than a tenth of a second to react. It's not just the immense image-processing speed required but also the mental speed to transform that visual data into precise positioning and movement of hundreds of muscles in less than a second. Ten bits per second? No way.

Re: The unbearable slowness of being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?

#325

Post by heyjamesknight »

wruza wrote: post #321
heyjamesknight wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully disagree that the mind can operate without "awareness." We understand neither the how nor why of consciousness. But its not just a parlor trick—consciousness helps us mediate our attention. It's one of the core things missing from our current AI path. Even if the LLMs reach 100% parity on human computational power, we humans are still acting as the ghost-in-the-machine, mediating and directing said computatio…

Consciousness (in this sense) doesn't physically exist cause it's unfalsifiable. Philosophy has a whole p-zombie section on that. I believe that you are mixing this metaphysical awareness with the physical process of mind machinery which is obviously required for a mind to work. Unless you have a deeper idea in mind. If the latter, why do you think it can not? It's a configuration of particles that will evolve by phy…

Because the attention-selection mechanism exists inside the conscious experience. If you can't account for the conscious experience then you're missing the recursive relevancy realization that allows us to select from the salience landscape and direct our behavior accordingly.

LLMs can handle everything downstream from that beautifully. But until we have some way to hand them a conscious experience, they'll need direction from an entity that has one.

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