22 ms·

This article and the Overcoming Bias post it links to ("Better Babblers") remind me of when I was in high school and was reading stuff like Gödel, Escher, Bach

by mbrock 8y ago

This article and the Overcoming Bias post it links to ("Better Babblers") remind me of when I was in high school and was reading stuff like Gödel, Escher, Bach and Dawkins's The Selfish Gene (the two first books I ordered after mom allowed me to use Amazon) while also learning online about Wittgenstein and statistical text generation (Markov chains). All this led to a kind of crisis of identity because in their own ways all those things point to a deconstruction of the self. That sounds hokey, but to explain briefly: GEB indicates that your self (your consciousness of being someone) is a swirling self-referential symbolic process (a "strange loop"); Dawkins indicates that your self is a kind of evolved meme whose function in nature is to further your family of genetic replicators; Wittgenstein indicates that your self is a habitual user of language where deep meaning is not as important as social function; and Markov chains indicate that your self's use of language can be modeled at least to a rough approximation by extremely simple statistics. So I clearly remember wondering "Am I just a kind of slightly more advanced Markov chain?" I think this is also the unsettling core question of Blade Runner: are we also artificial? I wonder what theologians might say about this question.

OneWordSoln 8y ago
We are created to understand and explore this magnificent creation and as much of its Unfathomable Creator as is possible for a created creature dependent upon time and materiality for our existence. The Creator of dimension, time, space, matter, energy and the subtle mathematical laws that govern their interactions will ALWAYS be beyond our comprehension, but we can understand a bit of It in very small, very abstract slices. Mostly, however, we are here to enjoy this wonderful creation and for that reason we are created as moral creatures with an animalistic body. The most subtle law of the universe, that only we live under, is the Law of Karma. This law dictates that we must use our abilities to learn and choose, via our free will, to self-evolve out of our mammalian capacities of pack warfare and alpha-dominance games (most people naturally live above their reptile potential, that is why there are so few serial killers). This is why all the Great Teachings emphasize compassion towards all our neighbors as the destination for a spirituality that is born of an inward seeking for self-improvement via a connection with our Magnficent Creator. There are many ways for a human being to enjoy this creation, which starts first with our body. There is the physical pleasure of eating and sex; the pleasures of having friends and family, perhaps having children of our own; the pleasures of athletic feats (Alex Honnold WOW!), mental feats (chess, mathematics), creative feats (art, writing, performance), as well as scientific feats that explore the nature of the universe in all its grandeur. Our intrinsic sense of morality is built into us as a feedback mechanism to nudge us away from mammalian competitive strife and towards truly human cooperation, where those that have the means choose to help those that lack, where all oppression -- based upon ethnicity, form of religion (including none at all), sexual preference or identity -- is stamped out in favor of a free society of equals that each enjoy the respect and comfort that this planet provides when generosity and compassion are the rule. Such compassion also requires us to fight oppression in all its forms, both personally and as societies and cultures. This is group compassion that stems from individual morality and the understanding that we are all in this together. The Law of Karma's primary function is to feedback into ourselves the happiness or unhappiness resulting from our treatment of others. This is why so very few ultra-wealthy people are happy: they have built their empires upon the misery of the workers they have used and discarded for the lowest price possible. Note that there was a notable exception I saw crop up a few months ago where a very successful health care company founder gave very large bonuses to his employees in preparation for going full non-profit. He did this out of gratitude and generosity, knowing that his hundreds of millions of dollars was more than he needed and was built upon their backs. That is the essence of the spiritual path. It matters not which form of religion (if any at all) he adheres to. We are measured by our hearts and how we tune our minds to live the truth of selfless positivity over selfish negativity. The misery upon the Earth in 2019 is the direct result of our free will's ability to choose the most horrific path due to Lennon's "Instant Karma" not existing. Karma is much more subtle than that. You can see its results on Trump's face and those of every person aligned with him. Yes, they can have the pleasure of domination of others or wealth and power, but pleasure is NOT happiness. Happiness comes from within. This is a part of the Sufi Message of Love. All human beings must unite to selflessly create "On Earth as it is in Heaven" because each of our free wills are equal and the people who lie, oppress and keep secrets have an advantage over the truthful, meek, and kind people in that they not only have chosen to live unfettered from their consciences (the part of us that is the source of our morality) but take pleasure in the misery they inflict upon others. It is difficult for those not yet on the spiritual path to understand how evil a person can become for the simple fact that until we begin to fight against our own vices we do not know how deep human pathology can grow. We are perfectible just as our software and machines can be made perfect, if we put in the effort and pay attention to the details; don't worry, the universe will test us ;-). Yes, we are all born imperfect, none greater than any other, but we also ALL have the ability to learn and self-evolve from vice into virtue. To reach that perfection, however, we must go within ourselves and beg our Creator for help. That humility and seeking then opens up our potential for only then are we truly living up to our potential to know the bits we can about our Creator and the magnificent tools we, ourselves, are to explore this universe in peace and harmony with each other and the Earth itself. I suggest anyone interested in this Message to look into Coleman Barks' translated poems of Rumi. His UCTV presentation "Rumi and the Play of Poetry" is on Youtube and is excellent. All our problems are caused by a lack of love, and no solution that does not emphasize love as its foundation is only a band-aid. "The Way goes in." --Rumi For those who ask for proof of what I speak, you must experience this truth for yourself by activating your own free will. If you believe that what I say does not exist, you will be correct from your perspective. That doesn't mean you aren't capable of exploring this sphere of creation or that you are not behoven to the Law of Karma; it just means you haven't opened your spiritual eyes, ears and mind to its reality and remain in the realm of scientists that shunned Boltzmann and Einstein for their expansion of our understanding of this universe. It is your free will's decision to accept this Message and try, or to deny it and remain as you are. There is no compulsion in religion and I am commanded to love everyone anyway. That is why I try to speak of the sublime joy I experience in my life as a result of trying. Peace be with you all. We love you. The evil, selfish people are destroying our beloved Earth and inflicting misery on countless human beings.
xenadu02 8y ago
We clearly possess an autopilot and an actual pilot function. Actual piloting (critical thinking, reasoning, creativity) requires more mental effort and is much slower. Perhaps our brains are optimized to have the pilot train the autopilot (so to speak) when necessary, but otherwise leave things to the autopilot? I suppose that's why training, muscle memory, and practice are so important. I don't think any of this is controversial but it does seem a lot more human activity runs on autopilot than we thought.
- jjaredsimpson 8y ago
  I'd like to call attention to describing piloting as feeling slower. It sounds like you have said something objective. But really perception of time is a completely subjective phenomenon as well, constructed from unconscious processes which create conscious experience. People in great fear report time slows down, but also top tier athletes. Thinking hard about something is one particular kind of unified subjective experience.
  - xenadu02 8y ago
    While you are correct that perception of time is subjective, I'm not referencing that phenomenon at all. I'm talking about measuring reaction time or brain imaging studies. For top athletes autopilot kicks in and reacts to the situation, then issues commands to our subconscious body control processes, which then issues nerve impulses to begin movement, all before the pilot (prefrontal cortex?) has even perceived the situation, let alone made any decisions. The autopilot knows how to do this via repeated trailing guided by the pilot function. You can also observe this in brain imaging studies which can show the body reacting before any thought took place. If pressed people will invent a rational justification for their behavior but the brain images prove this is entirely post-hoc most of the time. My theory is this is due to conscious thought being so much slower, but I don't have any proof.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Kanehman's system 1 and system 2.
- 8y ago
KasianFranks 8y ago
Nurture over nature, always. Epigentics/genomics is telling us how we'll really evolve over the next few million years and it will have more to do with environment than our current genome.
taneq 8y ago
> So I clearly remember wondering "Am I just a kind of slightly more advanced Markov chain?" If you listen to small children's babbling, they sound exactly like little Markov chains. As they start to get older, their 'next()' function is informed more and more by semantic connections, reasoning, chains of association etc. until they're talking as people, not just like people.
- mbrock 8y ago
  I'm looking forward to observing this more closely in the near future. :) We tend to think of language as separate from the rest of life, maybe because it's so transportable, but in a way it's strange to imagine an intelligence that only deals in language, and not even the language of "its own species." A baby babbles I guess for fun but also because it's part of the process of playing with the world to learn to cope with it and to become an effective person. So talking, walking, eating, etc, are all part of the same general activity of life, and they all have their own forms of "grammar." The semantic connections and associations go all across embodied life; you can't really use human language without being a person who also sees, moves, eats, loves, etc. Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations starts from the first paragraph by quoting Augustine: > ‘When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires.’ (Augustine, Confessions, 1. 8.) Wittgenstein thinks this is a good example of a misunderstanding of how language and language acquisition works. Then he formulates an understanding of language that focuses less on meaning and signification and more on social activity and speech acts. I have a feeling that I myself am babbling right now, I don't know exactly what my point is and I'm hungry for breakfast...
  - taneq 8y ago
KhoomeiK 8y ago
I came to the "consciousness is an evolutionary advantageous adaptation" conclusion in High School too, and it sorta sent me into a death spiral in terms of academics. When the idea that we're all ultimately just bags of chemicals that are subjectively aware of our existence really kicked in, I completely lost touch with schoolwork and any "purpose" I had felt earlier. Ultimately, I think irrationality plays an important role in thinking about our own existence and it rationalizing everything down to its core isn't necessarily helpful.
- Thiez 8y ago
  The book 'Blindsight' by Peter Watts argues the opposite, that (some degree of) consciousness may have been advantageous in the past, but it has since become a parasite that is holding humanity back; humans would be smarter, faster, and more efficient without it. While the book is science fiction, it does make an interesting case, and some of it is grounded in actual research.
  - kharak 8y ago
    That was one of the most interesting ideas I came across while reading science fiction. The exact reason I like this genre. I still think about it today. Why does intelligence need consciousness? Does it really? Evolution is full of sup-optimal solutions, consciousness may very well belong to this category. Highly recommend the book. Off topic: There was also another book that made it clear to me, that "the stars do not belong to mankind". Something about the spiritual awakening of humankind, leading do another evolutionary tree for our children, while the adults are left to die, knowing they'll never be able to explore the universe. Forgot the name, but still think about this, too. Lastly, the Three Body Problem with it's "Dark Forest" theory. I'm not completely convinced by the idea, but it's thought provoking.
    - swift532 8y ago
      The book you're remembering is Childhood's End.
- mbrock 8y ago
rjf72 8y ago
The reason I think you are not artificial has to do with the fact that you are observing yourself. My actions are undoubtedly being driven primarily by a series of electrical, chemical, and other reactions going off in my mind and throughout my body. Manipulate my brain in various ways and you can manipulate my behavior in various ways. In this regard I'm effectively a glorified automaton. Yet the catch here is that there is something inside here, 'me', observing all of this happen and having the perception of controlling it. When I write a program to generate a random number I find it inconceivable that suddenly some entity poofs into existence observing itself imagining it's deciding on a random number only to inevitably decide on the number that my pseudo-random algorithm had already predetermined given its initial state. And similarly, even if we made vastly more complex systems that could create a passable replication of human behavior - I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within. A religious individual would call this 'me' your soul. I'm more compelled by the simulation hypothesis for reasons beyond the scope of this post. But in either case this is something that will undoubtedly never going to be proven in any way during our lifetimes, if ever. So it's a place where an individual must come to their own conclusion based on very limited information. That a bad decision could have unimaginable consequence here is undoubtedly what drove things such as Pascal's Wager [1]. Though he failed to consider of course that life itself could be a test. Willingness to adopt views one does not genuinely believe for hope of future reward and convenient social graces, is probably not something that would score so well. Quite the burdensome consideration, life is. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager
- pas 8y ago
  Children. Vastly complex. Gain sentience and consciousness over time. No need for a soul. Initial set of the network (DNA, Hox genes, and a million others) and the environment "is all" that is needed for that fire to light up in there. Not always, unfortunately. Severe developmental disorders sometimes prevent the forming of that consciousness.
- comboy 8y ago
  > And similarly, even if we made vastly more complex systems that could create a passable replication of human behavior - I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within. So I code a fleshy looking automaton that it's indistinguishable for you from a human. Every action and communication is 100% convincing. Surely you feel some empathy towards it (since you are not able to tell) and you may even want it not to suffer. Does that change after I tell you what it "really is"? How about other people? I still can't figure out how very smart people who know a lot of science, look at this world and say "here - science", "there - also science", and then there's me. I know how my brain works and that you can manipulate my behavior just by touching it, but apart from it there's also the entity. It's obviously not there but I'm also sure it is. Emergent behavior of complex systems. Is it so hard to believe that we are one? If you want some romance in all this then how about the universe looking at itself. Is it burdensome?
YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
This is, I believe, one of the big reasons why people find it hard to reject religion (another big one being the difficulty of accepting death, of oneself or of loved ones). There's genuine mystery at work here, or so it seems. You need to distinguish consciousness from ego/free will. Consciousness is the fact that there's something rather than nothing, subjectively. That you seem to experience: sights, sounds, sensations, emotions. Under that definition consciousness is something that cannot be fake (no matter what's the nature of the universe; no matter whether you're asleep or awake), simply because you experience things. Ego/free will is a separate concept and is indeed an illusion (or an evolutionary artifact if you like The Selfish Gene). There's a lot of evidence for that, the simplest being that no mainstream physical theory allows us to have made choices any differently than we have (barring true randomness like quantum mechanics predicts; but it's also easy to see that that's not freedom, just plain randomness).
- mbrock 8y ago
  As I see it, the basic fact of ego is something that similarly cannot be fake: my mental life has a nexus called “me” at the center of agency, being a symbol for my own body, my desires and fears, etc. It’s no more an illusion than my cat meowing for food in the morning is an illusion. He’s there, he’s hungry, he wants food, so he meows.
  - comboy 8y ago
    It's less than fake. You can't actually pinpoint it. There is no little you sitting in your head over the dashboard and making decisions. You don't decide when to decide to move your hand. It just comes to you. If we disconnect your hemispheres which one is going to be you? There are books on the topic, I don't have a slightest hope to get the point across, but I think if you ponder it long enough then you can come to the conclusion even on your own. You can call this familiar pattern "myself" but it's not like there's any ego that you can find in there. And what I mean here is not "let go of your self be free and enlightened". It's just that it's all more reasonable from purely rational perspective. There are a lot of patters that you can observe in and around you. You can call them all John Doe, but when you examine these patterns, you can exclude some as something that's "not you", just a thing that happens here. If you keep doing that I don't see how can you extract what you call ego. You could group some selfish behavior patterns and associate them with ego as in when we say somebody has a big ego, but I don't think that's what you mean here.
wetpaws 8y ago
One important thing here is that language is not equal to cognition. It is entirely possible to posess a high order intelligence but learn a concept of language in later years (eg deaf people who learn sign language in 20s). So no, humans are not Markov chains, they are something stranger.
- mschrage 8y ago
  Oliver Sack's excellent book "Seeing Voices" seems to argue something slightly different: "A human being is not mindless or mentally deficient without language, but he is severely restricted in the range of his ideas." To defend the original metaphor: without language, a person might be akin to a Markov chain generated from the relatively small 'corpus' of individual experience. While the 'well socialized' individual can draw on the vast range of human experiences shared in language. They have access to a much larger corpus.
  - Firadeoclus 8y ago
    They may have access to a much larger corpus, but isn't what they actually hear and read also limited to the relatively small corpus of individual experience? I don't want to underplay the density of ideas in language, but I think it's a common mistake to underestimate communication outside of language.
    - robbiep 8y ago
      Communication outside of (spoken) language is still a form of language
      - Firadeoclus 8y ago
        That would be one meaning of the word language. It isn't always used that way.
freeflight 8y ago
> I wonder what theologians might say about this question. Imho many theists are very aware of these alternative interpretations, but due to all of them being rather unsettling and potentially existential-dread inducing, they chose the "Welp, I rather go with the God thing, that's less hassle" route. Nothing wrong with that, we all have a mind of our own that allows us to frame our world view in the way most convenient/understandable to us. But sadly it seems these difference in world view too often prevent us from agreeing on a consensus about how to go about things or even where to go in the first place.
- Veen 8y ago
  I'm not so sure that religious beliefs -- everlasting hellfire, for one -- are all that comforting. If anything, I find the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient God far more unsettling than meaninglessness.
  - lurker458 8y ago
    If you're one of the downtrodden, the belief in heaven and hell exists can be a great comfort. You're a good person (even though you suffer now) and will go to heaven while your oppressors (who now lead the good life) will go to hell.
    - Veen 8y ago
      Yes, but most people know they aren't good, so they carry the burden of guilt plus terror of the afterlife.
rgoulter 8y ago
You might appreciate https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-general-intelligence/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-g... where he compares GPT-2 to a "prediction engine" as per Andy Clark's "Surfing Uncertainty". https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-un... The latter suggests that the brain is a prediction engine; and things we do are just the brain minimising prediction-error for systems at various levels. (SSC is concerned about the dangers of AGI, and sees GPT-2 as imitating what people do).
ajuc 8y ago
> I think this is also the unsettling core question of Blade Runner: are we also artificial? > I wonder what theologians might say about this question. I'm not a theologian, but I was very catholic for first 22 years of my life, and for me the Blade Runner was more about the relation with god than about the question "are we artificial". Basically it was a prometheic/messianic story - Man searches for God to get answers and fight for salvation. And the answer he got was "whatever, I don't care, your life has no meaning and you cannot be saved". And then the Man forgives the God and dies - reversing the Jesus story. It resonated strongly with me, world is much more consistent with incompetent God that doesn't care, than with a loving, caring and omnipotent God. As for "are we artificial" - what does it even mean? My former religion accepted evolution, so the question was "was it God that caused evolution, on is there no God and it was just an accident".
SiempreViernes 8y ago
You are a collection of chemicals wandering around by stocastically seeking the highest entropy state you can achieve, so yes, you are a sort of Markov chain I suppose. But so is a rock, so I would argue it is not an overly illuminating fact. Furthermore I suppose you have this very convincing experience of free will, an experience that seems pretty robust even when facing such facts as the brain is just made of chemicals, so I wouldn't worry about it.
sempron64 8y ago
The author admits that he had a hard time differentiating authenticity of generated text on topics he was not interested in. This probably indicates that he might also have trouble detecting value in those topics even when discussed by a real human. Suggesting that people are not truly reasoning when speaking or do not exhibit general intelligence because they cannot solve assigned math problems was particularly infantile. I think there is just some heavy bias towards formal logic here, devaluing less easily analyzable forms of intelligence. I doubt the school teachers who failed his mathematics exam would have major issues finding at least some of the problems in the generated texts he gave as examples. So asking the question whether humans are "artificial" stems from a place of low empathy, I think.
- bhalperin 8y ago
  *she :)
eli_gottlieb 8y ago
>So I clearly remember wondering "Am I just a kind of slightly more advanced Markov chain?" Oh yes, absolutely. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763416307096 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341...
gubbrora 8y ago
> GEB indicates that your self (your consciousness of being someone) is a swirling self-referential symbolic process It advances the hypothesis. > Dawkins indicates that your self is a kind of evolved meme whose function in nature is to further your family of genetic replicators; I'd say your self is rather a battlefield for such memes.
FutureSpec 8y ago
Wait until you hear about Buddhism -- that'll blow your mind!
randcraw 8y ago
> So I clearly remember wondering "Am I just a kind of slightly more advanced Markov chain?" I think humans employ markov chains (MCs) all the time. (Back in the days of symbolic AI, these became popular as 'frames', AKA case-based reasoning.) But it's clear that human cognition far exceeds the capacity of simple probabilistic devices like MCs, much as context-free grammars exceed finite state machines. Eventually it became clear that too much of intelligence cannot be modeled viably using simple probabilistic mechanisms like MCs or frames (like memory, logic, and learning). I'm hopeful that work like GPT-2 will accomplish the same revelation for the limits inherent in probability-based models via deep nets. As long as AI models fail to model semantics explicitly, they will forever create only narrow savants or general morons.
frogpelt 8y ago
I would say one indication that you are not artificial is that you even ask the question. Questioning is extreme higher-order thinking.

by mbrock 8y ago

OneWordSoln 8y ago

We are created to understand and explore this magnificent creation and as much of its Unfathomable Creator as is possible for a created creature dependent upon time and materiality for our existence. The Creator of dimension, time, space, matter, energy and the subtle mathematical laws that govern their interactions will ALWAYS be beyond our comprehension, but we can understand a bit of It in very small, very abstract slices. Mostly, however, we are here to enjoy this wonderful creation and for that reason we are created as moral creatures with an animalistic body. The most subtle law of the universe, that only we live under, is the Law of Karma. This law dictates that we must use our abilities to learn and choose, via our free will, to self-evolve out of our mammalian capacities of pack warfare and alpha-dominance games (most people naturally live above their reptile potential, that is why there are so few serial killers). This is why all the Great Teachings emphasize compassion towards all our neighbors as the destination for a spirituality that is born of an inward seeking for self-improvement via a connection with our Magnficent Creator. There are many ways for a human being to enjoy this creation, which starts first with our body. There is the physical pleasure of eating and sex; the pleasures of having friends and family, perhaps having children of our own; the pleasures of athletic feats (Alex Honnold WOW!), mental feats (chess, mathematics), creative feats (art, writing, performance), as well as scientific feats that explore the nature of the universe in all its grandeur. Our intrinsic sense of morality is built into us as a feedback mechanism to nudge us away from mammalian competitive strife and towards truly human cooperation, where those that have the means choose to help those that lack, where all oppression -- based upon ethnicity, form of religion (including none at all), sexual preference or identity -- is stamped out in favor of a free society of equals that each enjoy the respect and comfort that this planet provides when generosity and compassion are the rule. Such compassion also requires us to fight oppression in all its forms, both personally and as societies and cultures. This is group compassion that stems from individual morality and the understanding that we are all in this together. The Law of Karma's primary function is to feedback into ourselves the happiness or unhappiness resulting from our treatment of others. This is why so very few ultra-wealthy people are happy: they have built their empires upon the misery of the workers they have used and discarded for the lowest price possible. Note that there was a notable exception I saw crop up a few months ago where a very successful health care company founder gave very large bonuses to his employees in preparation for going full non-profit. He did this out of gratitude and generosity, knowing that his hundreds of millions of dollars was more than he needed and was built upon their backs. That is the essence of the spiritual path. It matters not which form of religion (if any at all) he adheres to. We are measured by our hearts and how we tune our minds to live the truth of selfless positivity over selfish negativity. The misery upon the Earth in 2019 is the direct result of our free will's ability to choose the most horrific path due to Lennon's "Instant Karma" not existing. Karma is much more subtle than that. You can see its results on Trump's face and those of every person aligned with him. Yes, they can have the pleasure of domination of others or wealth and power, but pleasure is NOT happiness. Happiness comes from within. This is a part of the Sufi Message of Love. All human beings must unite to selflessly create "On Earth as it is in Heaven" because each of our free wills are equal and the people who lie, oppress and keep secrets have an advantage over the truthful, meek, and kind people in that they not only have chosen to live unfettered from their consciences (the part of us that is the source of our morality) but take pleasure in the misery they inflict upon others. It is difficult for those not yet on the spiritual path to understand how evil a person can become for the simple fact that until we begin to fight against our own vices we do not know how deep human pathology can grow. We are perfectible just as our software and machines can be made perfect, if we put in the effort and pay attention to the details; don't worry, the universe will test us ;-). Yes, we are all born imperfect, none greater than any other, but we also ALL have the ability to learn and self-evolve from vice into virtue. To reach that perfection, however, we must go within ourselves and beg our Creator for help. That humility and seeking then opens up our potential for only then are we truly living up to our potential to know the bits we can about our Creator and the magnificent tools we, ourselves, are to explore this universe in peace and harmony with each other and the Earth itself. I suggest anyone interested in this Message to look into Coleman Barks' translated poems of Rumi. His UCTV presentation "Rumi and the Play of Poetry" is on Youtube and is excellent. All our problems are caused by a lack of love, and no solution that does not emphasize love as its foundation is only a band-aid. "The Way goes in." --Rumi For those who ask for proof of what I speak, you must experience this truth for yourself by activating your own free will. If you believe that what I say does not exist, you will be correct from your perspective. That doesn't mean you aren't capable of exploring this sphere of creation or that you are not behoven to the Law of Karma; it just means you haven't opened your spiritual eyes, ears and mind to its reality and remain in the realm of scientists that shunned Boltzmann and Einstein for their expansion of our understanding of this universe. It is your free will's decision to accept this Message and try, or to deny it and remain as you are. There is no compulsion in religion and I am commanded to love everyone anyway. That is why I try to speak of the sublime joy I experience in my life as a result of trying. Peace be with you all. We love you. The evil, selfish people are destroying our beloved Earth and inflicting misery on countless human beings.

xenadu02 8y ago

We clearly possess an autopilot and an actual pilot function. Actual piloting (critical thinking, reasoning, creativity) requires more mental effort and is much slower. Perhaps our brains are optimized to have the pilot train the autopilot (so to speak) when necessary, but otherwise leave things to the autopilot? I suppose that's why training, muscle memory, and practice are so important. I don't think any of this is controversial but it does seem a lot more human activity runs on autopilot than we thought.

jjaredsimpson 8y ago
I'd like to call attention to describing piloting as feeling slower. It sounds like you have said something objective. But really perception of time is a completely subjective phenomenon as well, constructed from unconscious processes which create conscious experience. People in great fear report time slows down, but also top tier athletes. Thinking hard about something is one particular kind of unified subjective experience.
- xenadu02 8y ago
  While you are correct that perception of time is subjective, I'm not referencing that phenomenon at all. I'm talking about measuring reaction time or brain imaging studies. For top athletes autopilot kicks in and reacts to the situation, then issues commands to our subconscious body control processes, which then issues nerve impulses to begin movement, all before the pilot (prefrontal cortex?) has even perceived the situation, let alone made any decisions. The autopilot knows how to do this via repeated trailing guided by the pilot function. You can also observe this in brain imaging studies which can show the body reacting before any thought took place. If pressed people will invent a rational justification for their behavior but the brain images prove this is entirely post-hoc most of the time. My theory is this is due to conscious thought being so much slower, but I don't have any proof.
pjc50 8y ago
Kanehman's system 1 and system 2.
8y ago

KasianFranks 8y ago

Nurture over nature, always. Epigentics/genomics is telling us how we'll really evolve over the next few million years and it will have more to do with environment than our current genome.

taneq 8y ago

> So I clearly remember wondering "Am I just a kind of slightly more advanced Markov chain?" If you listen to small children's babbling, they sound exactly like little Markov chains. As they start to get older, their 'next()' function is informed more and more by semantic connections, reasoning, chains of association etc. until they're talking as people, not just like people.

mbrock 8y ago
I'm looking forward to observing this more closely in the near future. :) We tend to think of language as separate from the rest of life, maybe because it's so transportable, but in a way it's strange to imagine an intelligence that only deals in language, and not even the language of "its own species." A baby babbles I guess for fun but also because it's part of the process of playing with the world to learn to cope with it and to become an effective person. So talking, walking, eating, etc, are all part of the same general activity of life, and they all have their own forms of "grammar." The semantic connections and associations go all across embodied life; you can't really use human language without being a person who also sees, moves, eats, loves, etc. Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations starts from the first paragraph by quoting Augustine: > ‘When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires.’ (Augustine, Confessions, 1. 8.) Wittgenstein thinks this is a good example of a misunderstanding of how language and language acquisition works. Then he formulates an understanding of language that focuses less on meaning and signification and more on social activity and speech acts. I have a feeling that I myself am babbling right now, I don't know exactly what my point is and I'm hungry for breakfast...
- taneq 8y ago

KhoomeiK 8y ago

I came to the "consciousness is an evolutionary advantageous adaptation" conclusion in High School too, and it sorta sent me into a death spiral in terms of academics. When the idea that we're all ultimately just bags of chemicals that are subjectively aware of our existence really kicked in, I completely lost touch with schoolwork and any "purpose" I had felt earlier. Ultimately, I think irrationality plays an important role in thinking about our own existence and it rationalizing everything down to its core isn't necessarily helpful.

Thiez 8y ago
The book 'Blindsight' by Peter Watts argues the opposite, that (some degree of) consciousness may have been advantageous in the past, but it has since become a parasite that is holding humanity back; humans would be smarter, faster, and more efficient without it. While the book is science fiction, it does make an interesting case, and some of it is grounded in actual research.
- kharak 8y ago
  That was one of the most interesting ideas I came across while reading science fiction. The exact reason I like this genre. I still think about it today. Why does intelligence need consciousness? Does it really? Evolution is full of sup-optimal solutions, consciousness may very well belong to this category. Highly recommend the book. Off topic: There was also another book that made it clear to me, that "the stars do not belong to mankind". Something about the spiritual awakening of humankind, leading do another evolutionary tree for our children, while the adults are left to die, knowing they'll never be able to explore the universe. Forgot the name, but still think about this, too. Lastly, the Three Body Problem with it's "Dark Forest" theory. I'm not completely convinced by the idea, but it's thought provoking.
  - swift532 8y ago
    The book you're remembering is Childhood's End.
mbrock 8y ago

rjf72 8y ago

The reason I think you are not artificial has to do with the fact that you are observing yourself. My actions are undoubtedly being driven primarily by a series of electrical, chemical, and other reactions going off in my mind and throughout my body. Manipulate my brain in various ways and you can manipulate my behavior in various ways. In this regard I'm effectively a glorified automaton. Yet the catch here is that there is something inside here, 'me', observing all of this happen and having the perception of controlling it. When I write a program to generate a random number I find it inconceivable that suddenly some entity poofs into existence observing itself imagining it's deciding on a random number only to inevitably decide on the number that my pseudo-random algorithm had already predetermined given its initial state. And similarly, even if we made vastly more complex systems that could create a passable replication of human behavior - I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within. A religious individual would call this 'me' your soul. I'm more compelled by the simulation hypothesis for reasons beyond the scope of this post. But in either case this is something that will undoubtedly never going to be proven in any way during our lifetimes, if ever. So it's a place where an individual must come to their own conclusion based on very limited information. That a bad decision could have unimaginable consequence here is undoubtedly what drove things such as Pascal's Wager [1]. Though he failed to consider of course that life itself could be a test. Willingness to adopt views one does not genuinely believe for hope of future reward and convenient social graces, is probably not something that would score so well. Quite the burdensome consideration, life is. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

pas 8y ago
Children. Vastly complex. Gain sentience and consciousness over time. No need for a soul. Initial set of the network (DNA, Hox genes, and a million others) and the environment "is all" that is needed for that fire to light up in there. Not always, unfortunately. Severe developmental disorders sometimes prevent the forming of that consciousness.
comboy 8y ago
> And similarly, even if we made vastly more complex systems that could create a passable replication of human behavior - I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within. So I code a fleshy looking automaton that it's indistinguishable for you from a human. Every action and communication is 100% convincing. Surely you feel some empathy towards it (since you are not able to tell) and you may even want it not to suffer. Does that change after I tell you what it "really is"? How about other people? I still can't figure out how very smart people who know a lot of science, look at this world and say "here - science", "there - also science", and then there's me. I know how my brain works and that you can manipulate my behavior just by touching it, but apart from it there's also the entity. It's obviously not there but I'm also sure it is. Emergent behavior of complex systems. Is it so hard to believe that we are one? If you want some romance in all this then how about the universe looking at itself. Is it burdensome?

YjSe2GMQ 8y ago

This is, I believe, one of the big reasons why people find it hard to reject religion (another big one being the difficulty of accepting death, of oneself or of loved ones). There's genuine mystery at work here, or so it seems. You need to distinguish consciousness from ego/free will. Consciousness is the fact that there's something rather than nothing, subjectively. That you seem to experience: sights, sounds, sensations, emotions. Under that definition consciousness is something that cannot be fake (no matter what's the nature of the universe; no matter whether you're asleep or awake), simply because you experience things. Ego/free will is a separate concept and is indeed an illusion (or an evolutionary artifact if you like The Selfish Gene). There's a lot of evidence for that, the simplest being that no mainstream physical theory allows us to have made choices any differently than we have (barring true randomness like quantum mechanics predicts; but it's also easy to see that that's not freedom, just plain randomness).

mbrock 8y ago
As I see it, the basic fact of ego is something that similarly cannot be fake: my mental life has a nexus called “me” at the center of agency, being a symbol for my own body, my desires and fears, etc. It’s no more an illusion than my cat meowing for food in the morning is an illusion. He’s there, he’s hungry, he wants food, so he meows.
- comboy 8y ago
  It's less than fake. You can't actually pinpoint it. There is no little you sitting in your head over the dashboard and making decisions. You don't decide when to decide to move your hand. It just comes to you. If we disconnect your hemispheres which one is going to be you? There are books on the topic, I don't have a slightest hope to get the point across, but I think if you ponder it long enough then you can come to the conclusion even on your own. You can call this familiar pattern "myself" but it's not like there's any ego that you can find in there. And what I mean here is not "let go of your self be free and enlightened". It's just that it's all more reasonable from purely rational perspective. There are a lot of patters that you can observe in and around you. You can call them all John Doe, but when you examine these patterns, you can exclude some as something that's "not you", just a thing that happens here. If you keep doing that I don't see how can you extract what you call ego. You could group some selfish behavior patterns and associate them with ego as in when we say somebody has a big ego, but I don't think that's what you mean here.

wetpaws 8y ago

One important thing here is that language is not equal to cognition. It is entirely possible to posess a high order intelligence but learn a concept of language in later years (eg deaf people who learn sign language in 20s). So no, humans are not Markov chains, they are something stranger.

mschrage 8y ago
Oliver Sack's excellent book "Seeing Voices" seems to argue something slightly different: "A human being is not mindless or mentally deficient without language, but he is severely restricted in the range of his ideas." To defend the original metaphor: without language, a person might be akin to a Markov chain generated from the relatively small 'corpus' of individual experience. While the 'well socialized' individual can draw on the vast range of human experiences shared in language. They have access to a much larger corpus.
- Firadeoclus 8y ago
  They may have access to a much larger corpus, but isn't what they actually hear and read also limited to the relatively small corpus of individual experience? I don't want to underplay the density of ideas in language, but I think it's a common mistake to underestimate communication outside of language.
  - robbiep 8y ago
    Communication outside of (spoken) language is still a form of language
    - Firadeoclus 8y ago
      That would be one meaning of the word language. It isn't always used that way.

freeflight 8y ago

> I wonder what theologians might say about this question. Imho many theists are very aware of these alternative interpretations, but due to all of them being rather unsettling and potentially existential-dread inducing, they chose the "Welp, I rather go with the God thing, that's less hassle" route. Nothing wrong with that, we all have a mind of our own that allows us to frame our world view in the way most convenient/understandable to us. But sadly it seems these difference in world view too often prevent us from agreeing on a consensus about how to go about things or even where to go in the first place.

Veen 8y ago
I'm not so sure that religious beliefs -- everlasting hellfire, for one -- are all that comforting. If anything, I find the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient God far more unsettling than meaninglessness.
- lurker458 8y ago
  If you're one of the downtrodden, the belief in heaven and hell exists can be a great comfort. You're a good person (even though you suffer now) and will go to heaven while your oppressors (who now lead the good life) will go to hell.
  - Veen 8y ago
    Yes, but most people know they aren't good, so they carry the burden of guilt plus terror of the afterlife.

rgoulter 8y ago

You might appreciate https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-general-intelligence/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-g... where he compares GPT-2 to a "prediction engine" as per Andy Clark's "Surfing Uncertainty". https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-un... The latter suggests that the brain is a prediction engine; and things we do are just the brain minimising prediction-error for systems at various levels. (SSC is concerned about the dangers of AGI, and sees GPT-2 as imitating what people do).

ajuc 8y ago

> I think this is also the unsettling core question of Blade Runner: are we also artificial? > I wonder what theologians might say about this question. I'm not a theologian, but I was very catholic for first 22 years of my life, and for me the Blade Runner was more about the relation with god than about the question "are we artificial". Basically it was a prometheic/messianic story - Man searches for God to get answers and fight for salvation. And the answer he got was "whatever, I don't care, your life has no meaning and you cannot be saved". And then the Man forgives the God and dies - reversing the Jesus story. It resonated strongly with me, world is much more consistent with incompetent God that doesn't care, than with a loving, caring and omnipotent God. As for "are we artificial" - what does it even mean? My former religion accepted evolution, so the question was "was it God that caused evolution, on is there no God and it was just an accident".

SiempreViernes 8y ago

You are a collection of chemicals wandering around by stocastically seeking the highest entropy state you can achieve, so yes, you are a sort of Markov chain I suppose. But so is a rock, so I would argue it is not an overly illuminating fact. Furthermore I suppose you have this very convincing experience of free will, an experience that seems pretty robust even when facing such facts as the brain is just made of chemicals, so I wouldn't worry about it.

sempron64 8y ago

The author admits that he had a hard time differentiating authenticity of generated text on topics he was not interested in. This probably indicates that he might also have trouble detecting value in those topics even when discussed by a real human. Suggesting that people are not truly reasoning when speaking or do not exhibit general intelligence because they cannot solve assigned math problems was particularly infantile. I think there is just some heavy bias towards formal logic here, devaluing less easily analyzable forms of intelligence. I doubt the school teachers who failed his mathematics exam would have major issues finding at least some of the problems in the generated texts he gave as examples. So asking the question whether humans are "artificial" stems from a place of low empathy, I think.

bhalperin 8y ago
*she :)

eli_gottlieb 8y ago

>So I clearly remember wondering "Am I just a kind of slightly more advanced Markov chain?" Oh yes, absolutely. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763416307096 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341...

gubbrora 8y ago

> GEB indicates that your self (your consciousness of being someone) is a swirling self-referential symbolic process It advances the hypothesis. > Dawkins indicates that your self is a kind of evolved meme whose function in nature is to further your family of genetic replicators; I'd say your self is rather a battlefield for such memes.

FutureSpec 8y ago

Wait until you hear about Buddhism -- that'll blow your mind!

randcraw 8y ago

> So I clearly remember wondering "Am I just a kind of slightly more advanced Markov chain?" I think humans employ markov chains (MCs) all the time. (Back in the days of symbolic AI, these became popular as 'frames', AKA case-based reasoning.) But it's clear that human cognition far exceeds the capacity of simple probabilistic devices like MCs, much as context-free grammars exceed finite state machines. Eventually it became clear that too much of intelligence cannot be modeled viably using simple probabilistic mechanisms like MCs or frames (like memory, logic, and learning). I'm hopeful that work like GPT-2 will accomplish the same revelation for the limits inherent in probability-based models via deep nets. As long as AI models fail to model semantics explicitly, they will forever create only narrow savants or general morons.

frogpelt 8y ago

I would say one indication that you are not artificial is that you even ask the question. Questioning is extreme higher-order thinking.