The Junk Drawer

Fogdog said:

Maybe I'm hung up on the words you used and therefore can't connect with the idea.

What is a Neural Network? | IBM

Neural networks allow programs to recognize patterns and solve common problems in artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning.

www.ibm.com

Neural networks are nothing like people's minds. We don't yet understand what consciousness is. But we can say what it is not. Consciousness is something very different from what we now call AI and neural networks and such. The two are different. AI is nothing more than a statistical stochastic model based upon how people or other poorly understood systems behave.

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Awareness begins with pattern recognition, and we see things in stars and clouds for a reason.

DIY-HP-LED said:

If awareness and consciousness are an emergent property of neural nets as animal life demonstrates, then it stands to reason that the answer lies in this particular informational architecture, whether implemented biologically or using silicon. You are correct about the current state of the art, but it seems to me if you are looking for consciousness or any kind of simple awareness, algorithms and sequential operations are the wrong place to look. They might be fine for AI but AI is not aware it is a glorified program.

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Your logic begins with an assumption that does not fit the evidence and so I can't go the rest of the way with you. Then it does not "stand to reason".

How does your neural net model explain out of body experiences?

I don't have an explanation for this but there is strong evidence that people's consciousness is not limited to their body.


Dr. Habermas relays several examples of near-death cases with strong evidential support. He also lays out five different lines of verifiable phenomena: reports in the room the patient occupies, reports outside of the room, experiences relayed by blind patients, cases where other living people also experience the NDE, and cases of loved ones already dead who share unique information. After studying hundreds of evidential cases, Habermas contends that the evidence is both plentiful and varied, having the potential to satisfy even the most skeptical of observers. He encourages people to survey the evidence and make up their own minds. “It’s such a momentous possibility that it can lead a person onto a path of discovery and research on their own, going where they think the evidence leads.”

Maybe he's a quack and will soon be discredited but there are examples in my own life that aren't as well documented with evidence that corroborate this guy's work and I'm not willing to discount it without a good alternative evidence based explanation. As you would say, if this is true then blah blah blah. But really. If this is true then all of the work we do using machines that we build will never result in consciousness.

Sativied said:

"I simply know". Not a very satisfactionary or acceptable answer is it. Not sure what you're reading in my post, but what I said is that the free will debate is already more nuanced than absolute vs zero free will. And that it's a good thing it can be reduced to a y/n true/false option else we'd have to break some of the least contented rules of formal logic.

There's no good reason to assume your belief in free will implies I believe either way, nor in the post you quoted. I have no preference for the outcome, I'm neutral and I can produce reasonable valid arguments that go either way. A belief I have not, that's you. Such a level of conviction in indubitably truth most certainly not. Just fallible logically validity.

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As I said free will is a useful conscious delusion and is the root of morals, ethics, logic and reason, a very useful delusion indeed! On one level we are responsible for our choices and outcomes, and this is in line with the principle of causality. We may be moved by emotional or instinctive impulses, but constrained by social norms, education and legal constraints.

Fogdog said:

Your logic begins with an assumption that does not fit the evidence and so I can't go the rest of the way with you. Then it does not "stand to reason".

How does your neural net model explain out of body experiences?

I don't have an explanation for this but there is strong evidence that people's consciousness is not limited to their body.

Gary Habermas on the Scientific Evidence for Near-Death Experiences

Is there strong scientific evidence for near-death experiences? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks with Dr. Gary Habermas about his chapter evaluating the evidence for near-death…

idthefuture.com

Dr. Habermas relays several examples of near-death cases with strong evidential support. He also lays out five different lines of verifiable phenomena: reports in the room the patient occupies, reports outside of the room, experiences relayed by blind patients, cases where other living people also experience the NDE, and cases of loved ones already dead who share unique information. After studying hundreds of evidential cases, Habermas contends that the evidence is both plentiful and varied, having the potential to satisfy even the most skeptical of observers. He encourages people to survey the evidence and make up their own minds. “It’s such a momentous possibility that it can lead a person onto a path of discovery and research on their own, going where they think the evidence leads.”

Maybe he's a quack and will soon be discredited but there are examples in my own life that aren't as well documented with evidence that corroborate this guy's work and I'm not willing to discount it without a good alternative evidence based explanation. As you would say, if this is true then blah blah blah. But really. If this is true then all of the work we do using machines that we build will never result in consciousness.

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As a scientific materialist who believes in natural explanations for phenomena, I can't go there with you... We don't have all the answers, but science does constrain certain possibilities. How many neuronal connections are there in the human brain? Enough to store and process the required information by all accounts without resorting to quantum mechanical or other esoteric explanations.

Fogdog said:

Your logic begins with an assumption that does not fit the evidence and so I can't go the rest of the way with you. Then it does not "stand to reason".

How does your neural net model explain out of body experiences?

I don't have an explanation for this but there is strong evidence that people's consciousness is not limited to their body.

Gary Habermas on the Scientific Evidence for Near-Death Experiences

Is there strong scientific evidence for near-death experiences? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks with Dr. Gary Habermas about his chapter evaluating the evidence for near-death…

idthefuture.com

Dr. Habermas relays several examples of near-death cases with strong evidential support. He also lays out five different lines of verifiable phenomena: reports in the room the patient occupies, reports outside of the room, experiences relayed by blind patients, cases where other living people also experience the NDE, and cases of loved ones already dead who share unique information. After studying hundreds of evidential cases, Habermas contends that the evidence is both plentiful and varied, having the potential to satisfy even the most skeptical of observers. He encourages people to survey the evidence and make up their own minds. “It’s such a momentous possibility that it can lead a person onto a path of discovery and research on their own, going where they think the evidence leads.”

Maybe he's a quack and will soon be discredited but there are examples in my own life that aren't as well documented with evidence that corroborate this guy's work and I'm not willing to discount it without a good alternative evidence based explanation. As you would say, if this is true then blah blah blah. But really. If this is true then all of the work we do using machines that we build will never result in consciousness.

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I’ve heard strange things from reliable people. Though our science has no handle on such experiences, I am also unwilling to discount them and unable to explain them. I am particularly unwilling to hammer their square peg into a religion-shaped hole.

Getting back to free will, perhaps two things can be true at the same time, like light being both a particle and a wave. The default state is the instinctively driven one with little or no free will, the other being mindful and aware of the implications of the choices. Most people most of the time are not very mindful and are manipulated every time they walk into a supermarket. Only by attending more to our experience by being mindful can we avoid the natural propensity, though not entirely.

DIY-HP-LED said:

As a scientific materialist who believes in natural explanations for phenomena, I can't go there with you... We don't have all the answers, but science does constrain certain possibilities. How many neuronal connections are there in the human brain? Enough to store and process the required information by all accounts without resorting to quantum mechanical or other esoteric explanations.

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Actually, good evidence IS presented in that link I provided that people do have out of body experiences. Go ahead and reject it on principle but your argument is every bit of a dead end as my very poor reason for why I reject the idea that free will doesn't exist. I can simply point to moments in my life where I made a decision that was not deterministic. I could very well have chosen otherwise. That is not evidence and is not something I'd expect would convince you or Sativied, it's just something I know.

In your post, you tell me you reject the possibility of that man's well documented observations based upon a belief that all phenomena can be explained by our current state of knowledge. You might be right but then again, there are no explanations that fit the observations given in that link. And so I'll do the same damn thing you do in every damn post you make. IF TRUE, then consciousness is much more than a collection of synapses and neurons. I try not to jump from unproven, unsubstantiated axioms but in this case, I think we are touching on an area that needs better explanation than "I simply believe".

DIY-HP-LED said:

As I said [I believe] free will is a useful conscious delusion and is the root of morals, ethics, logic and reason, a very useful delusion indeed! On one level we are responsible for our choices and outcomes, and this is in line with the principle of causality. We may be moved by emotional or instinctive impulses, but constrained by social norms, education and legal constraints.

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While it doesn't directly translate to western terminology, that's pretty much compatibilism, which is in between hard determinism (everything is causes by preceding events, thus there can't be free will) and Libertarian Free Willies... (people make choices that weren't predestined, controlled by soul or conscious). That's just on the determinism spectrum.

DIY-HP-LED said:

perhaps two things can be true at the same time, like light being both a particle and a wave.

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Two "things" can be true at the same time. Two directly contradiction statements where one negates the other cannot in formal logic. Else unicorns exist and every proposition becomes true. It requires violating the basic rules of logic and enter a quantum theory realm. Fun exercise on LSD perhaps. There's a belief for that too though: dialetheism.

Fogdog said:

Actually, good evidence IS presented in that link I provided that people do have out of body experiences. Go ahead and reject it on principle but your argument is every bit of a dead end as my very poor reason for why I reject the idea that free will doesn't exist. I can simply point to moments in my life where I made a decision that was not deterministic. I could very well have chosen otherwise. That is not evidence and is not something I'd expect would convince you or Sativied, it's just something I know.

In your post, you tell me you reject the possibility of that man's well documented observations based upon a belief that all phenomena can be explained by our current state of knowledge. You might be right but then again, there are no explanations that fit the observations given in that link. And so I'll do the same damn thing you do in every damn post you make. IF TRUE, then consciousness is much more than a collection of synapses and neurons. I try not to jump from unproven, unsubstantiated axioms but in this case, I think we are touching on an area that needs better explanation than "I simply believe".

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Opinions and speculation are no substitute for data and understanding it. I don't outright reject the things stated in the post, but as Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and anecdotes are not considered evidence in this realm. As far as I know the phenomena of human consciousness can be explained by the available data and the theoretical possibilities it holds. As for "psychic" phenomena, prove it by experimentation or repeatable objective observations.

Sativied said:

While it doesn't directly translate to western terminology, that's pretty much compatibilism, which is in between hard determinism (everything is causes by preceding events, thus there can't be free will) and Libertarian Free Willies... (people make choices that weren't predestined, controlled by soul or conscious). That's just on the determinism spectrum.


Two "things" can be true at the same time. Two directly contradiction statements where one negates the other cannot in formal logic. Else unicorns exist and every proposition becomes true. It requires violating the basic rules of logic and enter a quantum theory realm. Fun exercise on LSD perhaps. There's a belief for that too though: dialetheism.

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Unless two parallel states exist, one taking over from the other as instinct and circumstances dictate. We can make logical choices about our immediate circumstances even animals can do it and it is based on approach and avoidance behaviors.

Sativied said:

While it doesn't directly translate to western terminology, that's pretty much compatibilism, which is in between hard determinism (everything is causes by preceding events, thus there can't be free will) and Libertarian Free Willies... (people make choices that weren't predestined, controlled by soul or conscious). That's just on the determinism spectrum.


Two "things" can be true at the same time. Two directly contradiction statements where one negates the other cannot in formal logic. Else unicorns exist and every proposition becomes true. It requires violating the basic rules of logic and enter a quantum theory realm. Fun exercise on LSD perhaps. There's a belief for that too though: dialetheism.

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I prefer to look at the question of awareness and consciousness from a biological and evolutionary perspective and not so much a philosophical one. We developed awareness and later what we call consciousness as a survival tool right from the beginning and approach avoidance behaviors are programmed down to single cells. We must be able to react to novel situations by instinct or by reason and even a cat can reason.

DIY-HP-LED said:

Opinions and speculation are no substitute for data and understanding it. I don't outright reject the things stated in the post, but as Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and anecdotes are not considered evidence in this realm. As far as I know the phenomena of human consciousness can be explained by the available data and the theoretical possibilities it holds. As for "psychic" phenomena, prove it by experimentation or repeatable objective observations.

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"speculation are no substitute for data and understanding it". To paraphrase you : "people's minds are a collection of neural networks and some day computers will hold the same ability to think and create that people do". There is no evidence that is true but that's your assertion. The tech we have today is not up to your expectations.

Fogdog said:

"speculation are no substitute for data and understanding it". To paraphrase you : "people's minds are a collection of neural networks and some day computers will hold the same ability to think and create that people do". There is no evidence that is true but that's your assertion. The tech we have today is not up to your expectations.

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Again, I never said today but I am echoing some expert opinion and speculation in the field. AI need not be conscious though, to be creative or do any of the other things humans are capable of intellectually or even emotionally. We are essentially a collection of neural networks and consciousness is a distributed emergent process. We are a long way from silicon brains based on neural net architecture, if such a thing were even possible, but there are other methods for achieving our ends in this field that have nothing to do with awareness or consciousness in a biological sense. You don't need wetware to do math or to manipulate information or simulate awareness and emotional responses with a Turing machine or a humanoid robot using the same principals. Attempting biological levels of awareness using hardware is a problem several orders of magnitude bigger than the current state of the art.

DIY-HP-LED said:

Again, I never said today but I am echoing some expert opinion and speculation in the field. AI need not be conscious though, to be creative or do any of the other things humans are capable of intellectually or even emotionally. We are essentially a collection of neural networks and consciousness is a distributed emergent process. We are a long way from silicon brains based on neural net architecture, if such a thing were even possible, but there are other methods for achieving our ends in this field that have nothing to do with awareness or consciousness in a biological sense. You don't need wetware to do math or to manipulate information or simulate awareness and emotional responses with a Turing machine or a humanoid robot using the same principals. Attempting biological levels of awareness using hardware is a problem several orders of magnitude bigger than the current state of the art.

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Please provide links that establish the bolded claim to be true.

Fogdog said:

Please provide links that establish the bolded claim to be true.

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That is opinion easily supported by research and a simple google search should provide credible evidence of these assertions. Our brains evolved for instance, and you can clearly see evidence of the brain's evolution, nature often repurposes and builds on existing things. Our reptilian brain might be telling us one thing while our prefrontal cortex mitigates the behavior. We have MRI and PET scanners these days and are getting to know the brain and its operation in humans and animals much better.

Fogdog said:

Please provide links that establish the bolded claim to be true.

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What is a billion between friends?

Fidelity has marked down value of X by 71.5 percent since Musk takeover
Fidelity has marked down the value of its shares in X Holdings Corp., the parent company of the platform formerly known as Twitter, by 71.5 percent since Elon Musk purchased the company in October 2022.

The investment firm cut its valuation of X by about 10.7 percent in November alone, from an estimated $6.3 million at the end of October to just under $5.6 million by the end of the following month, according to a recent filing.

The social media company faced several scandals at the end of the year. Musk faced renewed accusations of antisemitism in November, after he appeared to endorse a post promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Shortly after, left-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters for America published a series of reports saying it had found ads for mainstream brands placed next to pro-Nazi and white nationalist content on X.

As major companies halted their ad spending on the platform, Musk lashed out, telling advertisers to “go f‑‑‑ yourself.”

“If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go f‑‑‑ yourself,” he said at The New York Times DealBook Summit in late November. “Go f‑‑‑ yourself. Is that clear? Hope it is.”

The outburst punctuated a year defined by setbacks and scandals for the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk began the year still reeling from a similar exodus of advertisers following his abrupt takeover of Twitter in October 2022.

While Musk attempted to lure advertisers back to the platform, he also continued to implement controversial changes to X, publicly feuded with watchdog groups monitoring hate speech and antisemitism, and faced heavy scrutiny from the European Union over X’s apparent failure to address violent content and disinformation amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.

DIY-HP-LED said:

Consciousness as an Emergent Phenomenon: A Tale of Different Levels of Description - PMC

One of the biggest queries in cognitive sciences is the emergence of consciousness from matter. Modern neurobiological theories of consciousness propose that conscious experience is the result of interactions between large-scale neuronal networks in ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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do you call that "establish the claim to be true"?

Very low bar.

Fogdog said:

do you call that "establish the claim to be true"?

Very low bar.

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I posted it to show that there are competing theories and some of the more speculative ones involve quantum mechanics. The article offers an overview of the field, and you can place me in the connectionist camp.

Fogdog said:

"speculation are no substitute for data and understanding it". To paraphrase you : "people's minds are a collection of neural networks and some day computers will hold the same ability to think and create that people do". There is no evidence that is true but that's your assertion. The tech we have today is not up to your expectations.

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This.

There may be a science here, but not within our current abilities. Isaac Newton was a great mind, but he had no inkling of vacuum tubes. Perhaps in a few centuries we will be able to build experiments and theory, and perhaps not. Nature always turns out bigger, weirder and more wonderful than even our grandest and most subtle models of it.