14 ms·

Thinking Differently about Thinking: The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark

139 points by oldgun 9y ago

meganibla 9y ago
If the mind extends beyond our heads and into the devices we carry around and therefore into the cloud what about privacy? It seems the distinction still remains between Inga and Otto in other words between the mind in our heads and the mind in our devices because for what’s in our heads we can always choose whether we want to tell others or not but for our devices even if we set our privacy settings we lose control of choice over who to share that information with as soon as we tell the cloud about it
- boukestam 9y ago
  It's not true that you can always choose whether to tell others or not. There are certain drugs that make you more talkative and even consuming too much alcohol makes you unable to control what you tell others. And it likely won't be long until a device is discovered that allows you to see others thoughts.
  - deepnet 9y ago
    There are also some things you cannot know without telling others. For instance finding out the address of MOMA in the first place may require asking someone or googling it. The stronger version is that some interesting ideas can only come about by dialogue between specialists. Sometimes a dilemma for scientists is whether to share and benefit from input but then perhaps give away the key insight to others. Q.v. Wilkes showing Crick Rosalind Franklin's DNA crystallograph. Proper courtesy, accreditation and citation can in some cases avoid this - yet Wilkes told no-one he was working on Fermat's last theorem for many years until he thought he had a solution.
  - meganibla 9y ago
    It is true some can always choose but maybe not everybody can, because people react differently to drugs and alcohol. Psychics can already read minds better than existing primitive devices. But AFAICT the gov does not employ them, at least not at scale, so don’t worry. I don’t believe actual mind reading device will ever exist, the closest will be like a synthetic / robotic AI brain with the same abilities as human psychic. Meaning it’s a synthetic AI not “device“ that you completely control. So if you want to read minds without people’s consent you better use psychics or torture.
- abecedarius 9y ago
  If current mental prostheses develop over the years into full-fledged brain implants or whatever, we can expect to lose the privacy and freedom of thought unless we defend the principle now. My files are my augmented memory.
billysielu 9y ago
I learnt that modal adverts are terrible. Thanks.
osullivj 9y ago
No mention of Wittgenstein, and the argument for the impossibility of a private language. All that material in Philosophical Investigations on how natural language is game like, and an essentially social practice, is highly relevant.
- user51442 9y ago
  Or Heidegger, 'being-in-the-world-with-others' & all that.
  - user51442 9y ago
    Heidegger doesn't seem too far from the mark, judging by Andy Clark's 1997 "Being There": http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/BeingThere.AClark1998.EntireBook.pdf http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/BeingThere.AClark1998.... The title even seems to be a nod to Heidegger's "dasein" (as well as to Woody Allen).
- telesilla 9y ago
  Completely agreed. I write music, and even that is decipherable - not as coherently as words, but it's a fairly direct form of communication of a kind of thought: when people ask "what does it mean" the answer is always "whatever it makes you think about". Same as words, really, or "the brain had ideas of its own about what the world was like" as Clark determines. The contents of this article don't surprise me at all.
some_account 9y ago
This is a good article for educating people that we need machines and implants to be complete beings. Classic illuminati thinking that people will most likely embrace once cute implants are available in white, rounded plastic with names such as memory pod :)
- blackbagboys 9y ago
  Please tell me more about these illuminati thinkers and their strain of thought
  - vinchuco 9y ago
    That would be 'illusory'.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- MaysonL 9y ago
  For an interesting science-fictional take on some consequences and issues with providing people with attached outboard brains (in the context of Asimov's Foundation universe), read Donald Kingsbury's novel Psychohistorical Crisis.
deepnet 9y ago
Does Andy Clark's hypothesis assert that self driving cars' neural networks must necessarily contain the minds of pedestrians ?
- neolefty 9y ago
  Perhaps instead the minds of drivers diffuse into their cars. That's already true for maps. Pedestrians' minds rely on things like Walk signs and sidewalk texturing.
WhompingWindows 9y ago
The important distinction drawn is between the brain, a physical organ that exists within each human, to the mind, which is at this point an interdisciplinary concept which is defined and explored by psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers alike. In general, I find the intermixing of science and philosophy an increasingly common situation for those interested in "the mind." For me, it is hard to reconcile the falsifiable and evidence-based nature of science with the inherently linguistic nature of philosophy. Philosophers have come to this question not due to their knowledge of neurology or psychology, but rather to heap on more theory to the word "mind" itself. My question is: What is the practical use of this theory of mind? How does it "expand" my mind to be reminded that I use tools and props? Since it is clearly not news that all of us use tools and props, is the author's primary insight to claim that these are part of the mind? How does that claim aid society?
- maroonblazer 9y ago
  To my mind (pardon the pun) what he's doing ultimately boils down to the study of personal identity. What does it mean to 'me'? What does it mean to be 'you'? What are those differences really? What makes the 'me' of 10 years ago the same or different from the 'me' of this morning? And of the 'me' 20 years from now? That, to me, is the really interesting question. And Derek Parfit basically answered it.
  - truculation 9y ago
    The way I see it is that my identity is a set of fallible memories which are stored in my brain. If I write some of those memories down in a notebook, journal or diary, have I extended my mind? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see how. If I write about the first house I grew up in, and then forget all about it, can that old notebook recognise the extant building? If I hold the closed notebook in my hand, waft it around a bit, will we recognise the house? For recognition to happen there has to be some matching or prediction of sensory data by memory data. All of which takes place in a fairly small volume and time window, within the brain. Extended body, yes. Extended memory, yes. 'Extended mind', not so much. Not yet.
douglaswlance 9y ago
Mind = software. Pen & Pencil are just environment variables.
VyseofArcadia 9y ago
This article reminds me of a sci-fi series I read a million years ago, The Golden Queen by Dave Wolverton. In the series, some characters had a "mantle," an external mind worn on the head that could either passively impart knowledge to the wearer or actively help them develop a skill. After I read the series I started thinking about notes and books and references as being a sort of external brain that I shouldn't be ashamed of utilizing if I needed to. Or maybe more like the secondary storage to my brain's RAM (long-term memory) and CPU cache (short-term memory.) That isn't to say that I would actually recommend reading the Golden Queen. It was cheesy and campy, but it had a couple of neat ideas and a talking bear.
- EdwardCoffin 9y ago
  A few other SF books with the idea of an external co-brain: - Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingsbury (plays a major role) - Accelerando by Charlie Stross (minor role) - The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge (relatively major roles) edited for formatting
perilunar 9y ago
The "extended mind" seems to me to be an extension of Richard Dawkins' idea of the "extended phenotype".

139 points by oldgun 9y ago

If the mind extends beyond our heads and into the devices we carry around and therefore into the cloud what about privacy? It seems the distinction still remains between Inga and Otto in other words between the mind in our heads and the mind in our devices because for what’s in our heads we can always choose whether we want to tell others or not but for our devices even if we set our privacy settings we lose control of choice over who to share that information with as soon as we tell the cloud about it

boukestam 9y ago
It's not true that you can always choose whether to tell others or not. There are certain drugs that make you more talkative and even consuming too much alcohol makes you unable to control what you tell others. And it likely won't be long until a device is discovered that allows you to see others thoughts.
- deepnet 9y ago
  There are also some things you cannot know without telling others. For instance finding out the address of MOMA in the first place may require asking someone or googling it. The stronger version is that some interesting ideas can only come about by dialogue between specialists. Sometimes a dilemma for scientists is whether to share and benefit from input but then perhaps give away the key insight to others. Q.v. Wilkes showing Crick Rosalind Franklin's DNA crystallograph. Proper courtesy, accreditation and citation can in some cases avoid this - yet Wilkes told no-one he was working on Fermat's last theorem for many years until he thought he had a solution.
- meganibla 9y ago
  It is true some can always choose but maybe not everybody can, because people react differently to drugs and alcohol. Psychics can already read minds better than existing primitive devices. But AFAICT the gov does not employ them, at least not at scale, so don’t worry. I don’t believe actual mind reading device will ever exist, the closest will be like a synthetic / robotic AI brain with the same abilities as human psychic. Meaning it’s a synthetic AI not “device“ that you completely control. So if you want to read minds without people’s consent you better use psychics or torture.
abecedarius 9y ago
If current mental prostheses develop over the years into full-fledged brain implants or whatever, we can expect to lose the privacy and freedom of thought unless we defend the principle now. My files are my augmented memory.

billysielu 9y ago

I learnt that modal adverts are terrible. Thanks.

osullivj 9y ago

No mention of Wittgenstein, and the argument for the impossibility of a private language. All that material in Philosophical Investigations on how natural language is game like, and an essentially social practice, is highly relevant.

user51442 9y ago
Or Heidegger, 'being-in-the-world-with-others' & all that.
- user51442 9y ago
  Heidegger doesn't seem too far from the mark, judging by Andy Clark's 1997 "Being There": http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/BeingThere.AClark1998.EntireBook.pdf http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/BeingThere.AClark1998.... The title even seems to be a nod to Heidegger's "dasein" (as well as to Woody Allen).
telesilla 9y ago
Completely agreed. I write music, and even that is decipherable - not as coherently as words, but it's a fairly direct form of communication of a kind of thought: when people ask "what does it mean" the answer is always "whatever it makes you think about". Same as words, really, or "the brain had ideas of its own about what the world was like" as Clark determines. The contents of this article don't surprise me at all.

some_account 9y ago

This is a good article for educating people that we need machines and implants to be complete beings. Classic illuminati thinking that people will most likely embrace once cute implants are available in white, rounded plastic with names such as memory pod :)

blackbagboys 9y ago
Please tell me more about these illuminati thinkers and their strain of thought
- vinchuco 9y ago
  That would be 'illusory'.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
MaysonL 9y ago
For an interesting science-fictional take on some consequences and issues with providing people with attached outboard brains (in the context of Asimov's Foundation universe), read Donald Kingsbury's novel Psychohistorical Crisis.

deepnet 9y ago

Does Andy Clark's hypothesis assert that self driving cars' neural networks must necessarily contain the minds of pedestrians ?

neolefty 9y ago
Perhaps instead the minds of drivers diffuse into their cars. That's already true for maps. Pedestrians' minds rely on things like Walk signs and sidewalk texturing.

WhompingWindows 9y ago

The important distinction drawn is between the brain, a physical organ that exists within each human, to the mind, which is at this point an interdisciplinary concept which is defined and explored by psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers alike. In general, I find the intermixing of science and philosophy an increasingly common situation for those interested in "the mind." For me, it is hard to reconcile the falsifiable and evidence-based nature of science with the inherently linguistic nature of philosophy. Philosophers have come to this question not due to their knowledge of neurology or psychology, but rather to heap on more theory to the word "mind" itself. My question is: What is the practical use of this theory of mind? How does it "expand" my mind to be reminded that I use tools and props? Since it is clearly not news that all of us use tools and props, is the author's primary insight to claim that these are part of the mind? How does that claim aid society?

maroonblazer 9y ago
To my mind (pardon the pun) what he's doing ultimately boils down to the study of personal identity. What does it mean to 'me'? What does it mean to be 'you'? What are those differences really? What makes the 'me' of 10 years ago the same or different from the 'me' of this morning? And of the 'me' 20 years from now? That, to me, is the really interesting question. And Derek Parfit basically answered it.
- truculation 9y ago
  The way I see it is that my identity is a set of fallible memories which are stored in my brain. If I write some of those memories down in a notebook, journal or diary, have I extended my mind? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see how. If I write about the first house I grew up in, and then forget all about it, can that old notebook recognise the extant building? If I hold the closed notebook in my hand, waft it around a bit, will we recognise the house? For recognition to happen there has to be some matching or prediction of sensory data by memory data. All of which takes place in a fairly small volume and time window, within the brain. Extended body, yes. Extended memory, yes. 'Extended mind', not so much. Not yet.

douglaswlance 9y ago

Mind = software. Pen & Pencil are just environment variables.

VyseofArcadia 9y ago

This article reminds me of a sci-fi series I read a million years ago, The Golden Queen by Dave Wolverton. In the series, some characters had a "mantle," an external mind worn on the head that could either passively impart knowledge to the wearer or actively help them develop a skill. After I read the series I started thinking about notes and books and references as being a sort of external brain that I shouldn't be ashamed of utilizing if I needed to. Or maybe more like the secondary storage to my brain's RAM (long-term memory) and CPU cache (short-term memory.) That isn't to say that I would actually recommend reading the Golden Queen. It was cheesy and campy, but it had a couple of neat ideas and a talking bear.

EdwardCoffin 9y ago
A few other SF books with the idea of an external co-brain: - Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingsbury (plays a major role) - Accelerando by Charlie Stross (minor role) - The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge (relatively major roles) edited for formatting

perilunar 9y ago

The "extended mind" seems to me to be an extension of Richard Dawkins' idea of the "extended phenotype".