TheVat

A mention of externalism, among other theories of mind, in a New Yorker book review from about four years ago, caught my attention recently. It relates somewhat to the seminal (for this thread) Aeon paper by Epstein, in regard to models of cognition that do not use the information processor metaphor. https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/do-we-have-minds-of-our-own Manzotti, who has become famous for appearing in panels and lecture halls with his favorite prop, an apple, counts himself among the “externalists,” a group of thinkers that includes David Chalmers and the English philosopher and neuroscientist Andy Clark. The externalists believe that consciousness does not exist solely in the brain or in the nervous system but depends, to various degrees, on objects outside the body—such as an apple. According to Manzotti’s version of externalism, spread-mind theory, which Parks is rather taken with, consciousness resides in the interaction between the body of the perceiver and what that perceiver is perceiving: when we look at an apple, we do not merely experience a representation of the apple inside our mind; we are, in some sense, identical with the apple. As Parks puts it, “Simply, the world is what you see. That is conscious experience.” Like Koch’s panpsychism, spread-mind theory attempts to recuperate the centrality of consciousness within the restrictions of materialism. Manzotti contends that we got off to a bad start, scientifically, back in the seventeenth century, when all mental phenomena were relegated to the subjective realm. This introduced the false dichotomy of subject and object and imagined humans as the sole perceiving agents in a universe of inert matter. The article looks at Tim Parks book, “Out of My Head: On the Trail of Consciousness," and may be of interest here. Parks explores several theories which depart from the computational model of mind. I also found a good summary piece on these issues in MIT Technology Review.... https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/08/25/1030861/is-human-brain-computer/ Has a nice pro and con exchange on the legitimacy of the IP model of mind.

The study of alignments of random points in a plane seeks to discover subsets of points that occupy an approximately straight line within a larger set of points that are randomly placed in a planar region. Studies have shown that such near-alignments occur by chance with greater frequency than one might intuitively expect.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignments_of_random_points

I have heard the US military has fairly robust Faraday shielding on its systems. Probably also the case with Big Tech - server farms, etc. At the residential level, there's the sealed metal box as a basic Faraday Cage (with padding so that the protected device is not in contact with the metal exterior). In a last-minute situation where you know an attack is coming, you can toss stuff like backup drives in the microwave (probably would be a good idea to chop off the plug and power cord so it doesn't conduct a powerful EMP into the interior). Also seems like a metal trash can with a snug-fitting lid would work, if you had bulkier electronics (again, padded). I am also wondering if a box type FC would benefit from a grounding wire. The trash can, I guess, one could just set on soil for a crude grounding? As far as empirical testing of my crude residential solutions, I expect the standard test of a FC would be to put a cellphone in there then call it.

It was sort of a joke regarding the way Republicans who appear non-committed will still back Trump after they've complained bitterly about his shortcomings. But maybe they will surprise me and dump him for real this time. For sure, demographics like suburban women seem poised to divorce him.

What is this rare cryptozoological phenomenon you speak of?

Agree that, as @iNow observed, Gorsuch will backpedal on his 2012 ruling. No doubt he will assert that Trump's conduct was in no way an insurrection and therefore Section 3 would not be applicable. Hell, the only time Section 3 worked was for a couple years during Reconstruction, and by 1874 the South had managed to elect dozens of representatives who had been prominent rebels. They should call Section 3 the Swiss Cheese Clause.

Maybe Nikki will pick up some primary wins after all. 😄

Thanks for zoom session report. So much to chew on there. Marcus has always struck me as a voice of reason in confronting some of the breathless claims for AI. Like his observations on what AI theorists call factuality, as deep learning programs can maintain no world model from which to build the kind of understanding that conscious beings do. Without world models, you are left with only syntax, and it's back to the old Chinese Room. And the problems of symbol grounding are something that cognitive scientists/linguists like Chomsky can really help sharpen our view of. Rich models of the world, innate pathways for meaning and semantics, deep structures that allow an instinctive grasp of a world out there...this is Chomsky territory. (and Chomsky is still exploring at age 95, still showing up for symposia and interviews, he's an amazing guy) There are places for both GOFAI and machine learning to shake hands in solving such problems. I would hope everyone here can keep focus on the many issues of AI, rather than on personalities. Leave the past burns behind.

Yep. Good essay. And comments from you. There is no morally tenable position that involves victimized groups claiming a basis to victimize another group. One would hope that functional adults could at some point own up to the Nakba and ensuing ghettoization. The process where people in a nation develop some historical self-awareness can happen, though it's often slow. In the US, for example, a huge majority now understand the American Nakba of indigenous people, and that the European settlers were culpable in acts of genocide and dispossession. At some point, we were able to shift from viewing Native Americans solely as terrorists to viewing them as brutally murdered and displaced peoples trying to keep some shred of their former lives, lands, and cultures. As with so many such situations, land is key. And displacement often is run on the principle that my people can make better use of that land than you do, we are better, more civilized, and some ancient text proves it!

I went back and read the Chomsky interview, at an MIT symposium about ten years ago, where he talks about cognitive science and AI. I think he has a lot to say to this thread. I will try to find a PW free screenshot if possible. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/noam-chomsky-on-where-artificial-intelligence-went-wrong/261637/ Ah! Found a nice clean archive screenshot.... https://archive.is/2023.10.18-114835/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/noam-chomsky-on-where-artificial-intelligence-went-wrong/261637/ This interview uncovers an important ongoing debate in the philosophy of science, as to how best to get at the deeper workings of things. I don't think you will regret reading it.

Hmmm, let me see, uh...North Dakota, South Dakota, aaannd Baja Dakota!

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-quantum-physicists-flipped-time-and-how-they-didnt-20230127/ Physicists have coaxed particles of light into undergoing opposite transformations simultaneously, like a human turning into a werewolf as the werewolf turns into a human. In carefully engineered circuits, the photons act as if time were flowing in a quantum combination of forward and backward. “For the first time ever, we kind of have a time-traveling machine going in both directions,” said Sonja Franke-Arnold, a quantum physicist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland who was not involved in the research. Regrettably for science fiction fans, the devices have nothing in common with a 1982 DeLorean. Throughout the experiments, which were conducted by two independent teams in China and Austria, laboratory clocks continued to tick steadily forward. Only the photons flitting through the circuitry experienced temporal shenanigans. And even for the photons, researchers debate whether the flipping of time’s arrow is real or simulated....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruskal's_tree_theorem Really large number.

It is if people use it that way. Using an upper case G is using it that way. You are wasting our time. And I sense Dimreepr is itching to post the Jehovah scene from Life of Brian.

God, as a monotheistic being, is capitalized for the same reason Allah is. It's being used as a proper name. If I refer to a "god" that could be any from a vast range of supernatural entities, and so it's a common noun. Grark, the god of rotten cashews. The god of small things. Children of a lesser god.

One of the more sad and horrible war stories I've heard, and that's saying something. It's the kind of story that sends me back to my core opinion on human aggression: you cannot trust humans with anything more lethal than a stick.

Buddhism does not posit a soul. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/20/buddhism-animals-souls-religion

Various errors, most notably your failure to take account of water vapor flux and its amplifier effect on CO2 as a GHG, as well as albedo change, CH4 effects, methane hydrates, and other feedback mechanisms, and research going back to Tyndall and Arrhenius, all suggest your knowledge of atmospheric physics is minimal. For this reason I suspect several posters here are simply passing by your posts. This is not a "religion" thing, but your straw man is duly noted. Net warming also occurs when there is overcast. Better check your work.

Well of course. That's why dualism remains the dominant philosophical position of most of humanity. The phenomenal aspect of existence, qualia, points us to a sense of self. Some kinds of dreaming or traumatic conditions, like ones where we leave our bodies, naturally lead to the notion of a soul or "astral body." I have had a couple such experiences myself, and am aware of both the dualistic mystical explanations and the neurological ones. I lean towards the latter, while remaining agnostic on the former. On litterbugs, I remain firm in the advocacy of public flogging. It's an offense I find less easy to understand than murder. 🙂 Swap God for a janitor, rot in a jar of dog paws! (one of my favorite palindromes)

These movies are evidence that people are imaginative and some imaginative people become screenwriters. Regarding soul, this seems to be a prescientific concept from the ancient world when the nature of living things was not understood. When a person stopped breathing, ancient people saw that final breath as some essence leaving the body because it provided a simple explanation to them of life as some animating force.

True. What I meant is that IIT has been a sort of centerpiece for a lot of recent discussion and debate on how the mind works. Just today I was browsing Vox and noticed yet another article on IIT. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/12/15/24001424/consciousness-complexity-neuroscience-mental-health There are some strong rival theories out there, the one of Changeux and Dehaene comes to mind, often called the Global Neuronal Workspace. It's a model that may be useful in understanding consciousness as an emergent process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehaene–Changeux_model

Even church potlucks? I love what the Lutherans do with macaroni dishes. Never mind the need for prompt angioplasty right after eating them. No, really, I agree. However, human social structures being what they are, I suspect that the old Abrahamics will slowly evolve and morph and strain out garbage in a long and painful process. But I remain an optimist that the long arc will bend towards compassion and consciousness raising and away from a giant angry bearded guy who will toss you in a flaming pit run by his former employee if you touch your johnson.

All consciousness chats on a science forum tend to arrive at Tononi. -- Vat's Law 🙂

I think people have a craving for metaphysics, whether philosophically grounded or based in a spiritual framework. Children tend to be indoctrinated in the religious forms, and those that reject that (or grow up in secular oriented households) sometimes gravitate towards options like the paranormal, UFO lore, panpsychism, meditation, the matrix, fringe physics etc. For many, psychological growth and maturation means losing one's parents as wise, protective beings that create a moral order and home, and then trying to fill that void with a supreme being operating on a universal scale which also offers protection, comfort, and a moral order. Some religions appeal to people with prepackaged answers and emotional comforts. Others more austere, like Zen, leave it up to you to work towards some illumination. And yes, some sects offer intolerance and harsh judgments of others - the hell with them.

It wasn't. I appreciate that you have sympathy for the plight of Palestinians.