studiot

Too hard for me guv.

How is this not in direct contradiction with Sounds a bit like the biblical denial by Peter to me.

I have underlined the difference between Gees' post and one in another thread where the poster feels they can lay down the law on just about everything and carries on with complete disregard for the insights of others.

So what's all this procedural v symbolic nonsense ?

Do you really think it a good idea to drive other members away ?

I've seen many ways to think in my lifetime. I myself am best described as the observer of my mind/ brain. Virtually since I was born I've been sitting back watching my thoughts and trying to understand them. I can't even get this right, though. My translation fails often because symbolic cognition can’t parse procedural statements correctly. I’m not claiming special knowledge; I’m describing a mismatch between two cognitive systems. I’ve spent my life observing my own mind trying to bridge that gap, and I still fail at it regularly. What is disturbing to myself and others is the way you keep contradicting yourself. I have underlined a persistent contradiction on your part, whereby you keep insisting that there are only two ways to think and then write what is underlined.

Have you been at the tequila ? None of the above is true. Why do you think all those enormous wind farms are offshore just above sea level ? There are no mountains on Shetland, yet it is the windiest place in the UK. There are huge solar farms in the Sahara, with electricity being exported to southern Europe.

ha - you missed one. 😃

I expect this will fall on deaf ears like most of the other things I have told you but I will try anyway. There are more ways to think or forms of thinking that you appear ready to admit. Much of my thoughts are in pictures, not words or procedures. So I can and do picture a whole scene or concept at once, without words or workings though it. If I want them both of these come later. I also expect that there are other ways of thinking; Mozart thought in music for instance, which I can't do. We had a long thread about this a while back, with many contributions. Pity I can't find it at the moment.

This is just hand waving, not 'ontology', whatever that has to do with your example. I am not asking for the maths of this, but you need to substantiate this statement, by stating what allowed states ? These are not positions in the wire. (actually, not even in the wire since free charge resides on the surface of a conductor). Please get your physics ducks in a row if you want to make claims about them.

Copilot doesn't think !

Absolutely not. Unfortunately you seem hell bent on declaring yourself right rather than correctly reading what someone else has said. If you have never heard of the psychological word association test or don't know how it works, then ask don't guess. This doesn't just apply to my words I understand what you are saying here, but you are misunderstanding the model. Electrons have spin whether they are in the motor windings or not. If you chose to use the electron model here, it is not their passage through the windings that is quantised, it is their energy levels in phase space. As I have already told you, they do not jump form point to point in the real world, only from energy levels in phase space. In ordinary space the electron moves smoothly from point to point through the windings according to the intermediate theorem. Yes reality is at least partly granular or quantised; but as far as we know, Nature or reality includes both granular and continuous phenomena. Perhaps you would be happier discussing an example of a continuous phenomenon, say the hydrolysis of methyl iodide. This this continuous process takes place over a time of 10-10 seconds or thereabouts.

I'm sorry my poor typing misled you. Let me correct what I wrote. Look back and read what I wrote properly. I too was talking about cognition. I cannot accept that id a psychologist said dog then tail the neurological response you mention would be identical to if the man had said dog then buttercup. The only way your cognition process could be linear would be if you always followed dog by the same response, whatever else what put to you. This should have read You have yet to understand that I am talking about the questioning technique of word association; that is asking for the first thing that occurs to the listener after each of several disconnected words, which may be spoken or flash cards or flashed on screen. Perhaps, perhaps not. How do you account for the intermediate value theorem ? Are you suggesting that this does not apply to humans when they move through time and space ?

Thank you for that link. +1 I only have a passing interest in this question, but because I listen to others I have come across investigations like this. However I would take issue with a couple of points in its abstract. Firstly analog systems were all that were known for thousands of years. Digital ideas did not precede them. Nevertheless I would not be surprised that Nature takes full advantage of every route available. She seems to repeatedly surprise us in that fashion. Secondly both @cladking and the author seem to confuse digital and binary, seemingly regarding these terms as interchangeable. Binary is a very restricted subset of digital or discrete or granular. Like the authors of so many 'multiple choice' questions doing this runs the risk of missing at least the third choice 'none of these' or 'something else' or 'indeterminate' or 'out of range'. There are very few, if any, systems in the universe that are truly only binary. This very snappy soundbite is worthy of thoughtless journalism. If spoken seriously it is all too challengeable. Certainly so but I didn't introduce any of this stuff. But I do think that on a scientific forum flights of fancy need challenging.

I am sorry you are so set in your ways you seem unable to listen properly to others, because some of what you say makes sense. Look back and read what I wrote properly. I too was talking about cognition. I cannot accept that id a psychologist said dog then tail the neurological response you mention would be identical to if the man had said dog then buttercup. The only way your cognition process could be linear would be if you always followed dog by the same response, whatever else what put to you. Actually there is much debate in scientific circles as what is digital and what is analog and what is something else entirely. There is also evidence that your neural processes are digital. But no one actually knows the answer to this question. Well yes humans (and other animals) do go in for parallel processing. The management of your body requires an incredible number of parallel paths. But well done for recognising that parallel processing is another form of non linearity. You could gain much insight by expanding your focus instead of trying to shoehorn it into one or two preconceived notions.

This is indeed a characteristic of linear structures. But it is also a characteristic on non linear structures. For instance A then B then C then D then E then F then G is linear But A then B then G then F then C then D is non linear. In each case there is a sequence of preceding and following whatevers. Any (computer) program that allows jumping, looping, branching etc is non linear and all the more useful for it.

Yes it can be linear, but it may also be branching or entirely disconnected, both of which are non linear. A fine example of non linearity would be a psychologist's word association Q & A session.

Symbolic thought is not a nonlinear physical process; it’s a type and means of representation. Harnad’s point appears to be that symbolic systems must be grounded in nonsymbolic systems (icons and categorical detectors). That’s exactly the distinction I’m drawing between procedural and symbolic cognition. If symbolic thought is not non linear are you then saying it must be linear ? In what way must it be linear ?

Good question I too would like an answer to that. Are you seriously suggesting that a speaker has to prove every utterance ? Particularly my kiwifruit lovers for whom, by definition kiwifruit are delicious. Or are you suggesting that kiwifruit are not delicious to some ? Or are you suggesting that my English is incorrect ? Now you have switched sides from analysing an utterance or statement to analysing the response from the listener. Yes of course the listener is entitled to ask for clarification and may well receive it. Here is another example What colour is a cricket ball ? A cricket ball is red. I don't think that many English speakers would fail to understand this. Yet red is a very general term and no two cricket balls are exactly the same red nor even the same ball after a period of play. And if, as you claim, the speaker is obliged to clarify the 'red' how exactly would you suggest he does that ?

Note you said the facts (plural) here is another quibble. Physicist "Here is a sine wave displayed on my oscilloscope" Electronics Engineer "True or false ? what % distortion is acceptable ?"

Yes a very good question, +1 Clarifying your thinking has greatly improved your proposal. It now highlights the inadequacy of all our present models. But it still needs some tidying up since it muddles up the past, present and future. Here is a simple but not fully resolved situation in fundamental maths. Take the natural number line 1 , 2 , 3 ... It has a beginning but no end. ( I am not going to get involved as to whether it starts at zero or 1) Compared to the integer line -3, -2 , -1 , 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 ... Which has no beginning and no end Further you can pick any point on it and proceed to infinity in either direction So any point can be called 'the origin'. Mathematicians are still arguing about this situation.

I like this analogy. +1 I think it useful to differentiate between truth and fact in the following way. There have been several suggestions along the lines of 'independent verification', however this is subject to the difficult outlined below. I suggest it is useful to think of a fact as a single piece of information. Otherwise we are always subject to issues with verification if we combine multiple statements, where part is 'true' or verified and part is not. Whereas I think we can build up complex statements composed of multiple, even many, individual facts. Since it is World Cup time here is a world cup example. We can build up a complex statement, we believe to be true, such as 'The greatest team ever is XXX', by comparing individual match results from many teams, each of which is a single verifiable fact. We may be mistaken in our belief or others may argue differently, or they may agree. That allows for the situation where, as most have suggested, truth is more complicated than fact. But allows a simple statement to be both a fact and a truth whilst also allowing a complex statement to display both truth and falsehood.

Interesting article from the BBC BBC NewsArtificial intelligence: Yann LeCun works on more flexibl...Leading AI researcher Yan LeCun has a start-up which is developing a more flexible AI system.

How is this anything to do with linear or non linear phenomena ?

Thanks for the quibbles Eise, they just demonstrate my thesis that English is a very versatile language. The speaker is not obliged to be more precise, but may do so if they wish. Again English makes it particularly easy to build out extra conditions to achieve this. However my statements you referred to are correct. I must disagree with you on this one since 'no truth value' includes my statement 'not true'. Yes there are other possibilities for no truth value, but that just emphasises my point that binary logic is only part of the universe and the reality of the issue is very complicated.