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Aaronson spends far too little time using the real cannons he's leveling at Penrose. He is attempting to down a tree by focusing snipping roots individually ins
by ABCLAW 9y ago
Aaronson spends far too little time using the real cannons he's leveling at Penrose. He is attempting to down a tree by focusing snipping roots individually instead of just pushing the rotting trunk over.
Penrose's argument is hollow. We understand the biophysics behind how the brain works. They aren't complicated at the level of detail you need to understand how the system works. We understand how neurons interact with each other. The evidence is consistent not only with our well settled understanding of chemical and biological systems, but also increasingly consistent with our development of information systems at scale.
The real gap is whether or not the totality of 'consciousness' is really just neural interactions at scale + starting state data, but the more we learn, the more that mystery vanishes. We understand the low-level perceptor->analysis models much better now, and we can map perceptor inputs at scale to outcomes in model tuning. In short, the consciousness of the gaps is rapidly losing his hiding spots.
Penrose's argument is taken seriously because we have collectively created a tremendous philosophical and institutional infrastructure around the idea of free will and the theory he attacks strongly implies there is some level of determinism in our cognitive systems. Since he is irreproachable on a personal or intellectual peerage level, he is a fantastic champion of this counter-cultural perspective.
However, if we apply even the barest of epistemological tools to the issue, we rapidly recognize that even if Penrose is correct, the chance of his position being accurate is so remote and so unverifiable so as to be useless.
But the existence of a counter-argument against the deterministic mind itself, absent of its validity, is itself useful. It allows us to collectively hem and haw before changing our views and institutions to fit our understanding of how people work. Which means Penrose's argument is not going away anytime soon.
- sgt101 9y agoHello >However, if we apply even the barest of epistemological tools to the issue, we rapidly recognize that even if Penrose is correct, the chance of his position being accurate is so remote and so unverifiable so as to be useless. You are saying that if he is right then it's probably not accurate? >But the existence of a counter-argument against the deterministic mind itself, absent of its validity, is itself useful. It allows us to collectively hem and haw before changing our views and institutions to fit our understanding of how people work. Which means Penrose's argument is not going away anytime soon. if the mind is deterministic how can we change our views - how can the position be useful? Things are, and you will, or will not.
- barrkel 9y ago"if the mind is deterministic how can we change our views " If a ball is objectively blue how can it become yellow? By changing state. Determinism doesn't imply immutability.
- sgt101 9y agoNo, but it implies a lack of choice. The ball doesn't decide to become yellow. It becomes yellow.
- psyc 9y agoIs choice more like a process, or more like a surprise inscrutable bolt out of the blue? We aren't talking about what it feels like from the inside. We're talking about what it is.
- barrkel 9y agof(x) = x > 0 ? 1 : 2 If you give this function a positive integer, it chooses returns 1; otherwise it chooses to return 2. This is what I think choice is. g = () => f1 = (x) => x > 0 ? 1 : 2 f2 = (x) => x > 0 ? 10 : 20 f = f1 return (x) => if x > 100 f = f2 f(x) f = g() This is a function that can change its mind, and choose different results when it's given different input. I see this as isomorphic with what you call choice, and I believe that any distinction you see is in your imagination. You don't know what the algorithm feels like on the inside; for all you know, a machine executing these instructions feels like it's got free will. You can't prove otherwise.
- sgt101 9y agoHello, I think what I regards as choice and free will includes autonomy - which is the ability to decide to pursue and, by implication, create goals. I think that there is type 1 autonomy where an entity is free to undertake goals according to "choice" of the sort that I believe you are outlining above. Essentially a type 1 autonoma can create and modify plans like the code you have written down above. A type 2 autonoma can decide to do, or not do things. It can write the code you have written, if it decides to go on a functional programming course.... To me this is the difference between the weather and a sentient entity. I think of computer programs in the same category as I think of the weather, but I see sentient entities in a different category. I don't exclude machines from this category now, but I see all the machines that I have had experience of a part of category 1. How a machine could be described that fits into category 2 eludes me - and everyone else I think.
- goatlover 9y agoFree will is an entirely different issue. Consciousness is about subjective experience, and why any physical system would have it. Determinism is completely irrelevant.
- aninhumer 9y agoI don't think they're entirely different. Free will is often discussed without being defined very well. What does it mean for something to be a "choice" rather than just something that happens in the universe? A lot of people talk about non-determinism solving the problem, but randomness doesn't seem much more like a "choice" to me than determinism. We wouldn't say that a dice "chose" to land on six (even a quantum one). And so to me, the only meaningful way to identify a "choice", is the conscious experience of making that choice. As far as we know, a rock does not experience choosing to fall, nor does a dice experience choosing to land on six. But when I move my arm, I do experience choosing to do so.
- ABCLAW 9y agoNo it isn't. At the very least, it may be distinguishable for clarity, but clearly they are joined at the hip. If you accept that the biophysical system is deterministic, then the subjective experience is a deterministic, objective physical occurrence. That is unless you're proposing that there is a another system which mediates between them the distinction doesn't really exist. This 'interceptor' system must non-deterministic and outside the boundaries of the biochemical system that itself mediates free will and changes the outcome of the physical system itself. That's what Penrose says. He says there's some kind of quantum stuff happening on another level we don't understand that's changing your brain chemistry in some near-purposive manner because he can't reconcile the physics with how he feels about what his brain does. This is despite the fact that we understand the brain chemistry and aren't confused about how it works. The likelier answer is that he just doesn't like the fact that his world class "self-directed thinking" is just the neural perception of patterns he didn't put into motion.