6 ms·
It’s impossible to see the world as it is, argues a neuroscientist [video]
- RikNieu 7y agoVery interesting. Reminds me a lot of The Idea of the World by Bernardo Kastrup, who also argues that the basic building blocks of existence is consciousness, and that idealism is a better model for the all.
- throwaway35784 7y agoCan you define consciousness in a material way? Is it an energy or a feedback system? Can it be observed or quantified?
- RikNieu 7y agoCan you define material properties without consciousness observation? How would you quantify with out observation? Not only empirically but personally?
- throwaway35784 7y agoI can't observe a bacterium without a microscope and I can describe all the material properties of a microscope. I know a microscope exists. I can see it.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoI think any system that responds as if it is modeling another system is conscious. But there are levels of consciousness, what differentiates “higher consciousness” is maybe the question you’re getting at. That unfortunately is an largely ascientific question. Like “what’s a good map of Seattle?” there is no such thing as a map of Seattle, so there’s nothing for science to study. Seattle exists for sure. Some maps will help you meet different ends in Seattle. But there is no such thing as an objective map. List n things a map gets right, and I will tell you n things it gets wrong. But if you want a starting place, you could temporarily accept, e.g., Timothy Leary’s map of consciousnesses. That one is quite materially grounded. Within that orientation you can do all kinds of science and learn many things about consciousness.
- throwaway35784 7y agoYou pointed me to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-circuit_model_of_consciousness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-circuit_model_of_consc... Very interesting. I'm finding patterns in explorations of consciousness. The first four levels Leary describes could be Freud's id. The next 4 contain his super ego. Compared to id = Dąbrowski's first level and super ego = 5th level. Like you said these are all maps of consciousness. Psychological models that describe the actual physicality of a material mind. I suppose I'm trying to determine how to physically recreate the material that will lead to a new consciousness. We can't recreate Seattle from maps of Seattle to continue your analogy. Is it possible to recreate consciousness from our maps of consciousness? It seems like that is what we have been trying to do in our pursuit of AI, when we know no more about what consciousness is than we know what Seattle is.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoThere are no roads where you are going. But I can offer you some pointers: Consciousness requires sensation and action. Without action animals don’t learn to perceive anything at all. If I were trying to make a conscious artificial being the first thing I would do would be to sign them up for a fast paced online FPS and teach them to play. Next give them emotions (0 dimensional precepts). Any time your codebase starts to feel big, delete most of it. Your end goal will be maybe 1000 lines total. Use matrices.
- pmoriarty 7y agoWe don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. Anais Nin
- muthdra 7y agoThat's a sentence-long review of 12 Angry Men.
- ta1234567890 7y agoThis whole idea is called autopoiesis, it's in the book The Tree of Knowledge by Maturana and Varela. Those guys "scientifically proved it", to whatever extent science can prove something like that.
- ismail 7y agoCould you provide more of an explanation and details/resources?
- nudq 7y agoThe guy has been doing the TED circuit for ages. I once looked closer at his claims and his supposed proof by simulation and came to agree with the more negative takes at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11588698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11588698
- ffwd 7y agoI think the devil is in the details when it comes to this argument. Some philosophy speculation ahead. 1) It's unclear which parts of our perception reflects the real world and which don't, and also how to measure how accurate they are. We obviously see objects as much more than what the photons representing them that hit our retina tells us. The brain creates all kinds of backstory and assumptions based on its model of the world, however, I would argue that the basic shapes we see are accurate. So basically the geometry/shape of a face, of a chair, of <pick any object> is real, while the extended cultural, practical and personal associations the brain attaches to those are "not real" (or rather, we see a chair as a utility we can sit on, so we see both the shape of a chair but also potential uses for it, so it becomes an extended model of ourselves+chair, but that doesn't mean the shape isn't real). Also even though we can change our extended model of objects, we don't normally change our base perception, e.g. a chair always looks the same shape even though we may see different uses for it in different contexts. I would argue we really see the shape of the chair. This then leads to difficulty knowing how to define what is real/accurate and what isn't. 2) It's unclear whether the extended models we have are reflective of the real world or not, and if so how much. Just because I see a chair as a utility I can sit on, doesn't mean that it doesn't reflect reality. In fact you could say the model reflects a more abstract truth about how my body fits into a chair, so it becomes a more encompassing truth about bodies+chairs. Hell you could even include that it includes some information about how my muscles tire and need rest and so on. 3) I think the basic idea is true and interesting. We clearly do not see the world like a camera does, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it doesn't reflect reality at all. I haven't looked at this authors papers, but I saw an interview where he mentioned some statistical measurement of how organisms who saw the world as it actually was had a lower survival rate than those who do, and I'd be curious on how sound that argument is. The devil is in the details again and it sounds to me like such an argument could be interpreted several ways.
- throwaway35784 7y agoThat fits with my observations matching the decreasing propensity to procreate with IQ. At some point we become literally too smart for our own good.
- 7y ago
- keiferski 7y agoThe limitations of empirical knowledge have been known for... a few thousand years now. It is a little disconcerting that (some) neuroscientists appear to be completely ignorant of basic philosophical problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology
- voldacar 7y agoI came here to say the same thing. It's very amusing seeing modern scientists try to speak about things like this while totally unaware of the historical conversations that preceded them
- chubot 7y agoI feel like anyone drawing a line from deep learning to general AI also has this problem. And that appears to be a large part of Silicon Valley. While I wasn't entirely convinced by a lot of arguments in the philosophy of mind as an undergrad 20 years ago, it definitely addresses problems "in the zeitgiest" now, e.g. with self-driving cars, etc. And the conversation there is of a higher level than I see now. I think taking a tiny bit of undergrad psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science, would help a lot of people think more clearly about AI. I didn't necessarily think that was true when I took it, but with hindsight I think there is a big hole in the conversation. Gary Marcus is an AI practitioner with a psychology background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Marcus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Marcus he has a decidely different perspective that I think is a lot more grounded and reasoned: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00631 https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00631 Also related: https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm
- voldacar 7y agoAgreed 100%. The media's conflation of "artificial intelligence" with neural networks is particularly irritating. It would definitely be good for more "AI"-interested tech people to grapple with Searle, Nagel, Chalmers, even if you don't fully buy all their arguments.
- anon1253 7y agoKant? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself
- blotter_paper 7y agoWhatabout Plato? Lao Tzo?
- pesmhey 7y agoHow Can Mirrors Be Real If Our Eyes Aren't Real
- z3t4 7y agoCameras have to filter out infrared.
- meroes 7y agoDiscussions about perception and reality are always good, even if this article seems a little tame compared to what philosophers have argued about for centuries. But it's nice to see such a discussion coming from scientists, and not just philosophers. Physicists have especially given new life to these ideas though. You can go down an existential wormhole if you want to, where the implications of spacetime readily suggest the passage of time itself is an illusion (brief intro of one idea: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/04/03/the-reality-of-time/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/04/03/the-rea...). One implication of a timeless universe (there are many labels/forms: Laplace's Demon, eternalism, block universe) is that there are no privileged moments in time. So why do we find ourselves localized and perceiving this coordinate in the 4D spacetime block and not any other? Conceivably, in an infinte universe which ends in maximum entropy, there are many more observers where entropy is higher than it is now or was near the big bang. (Assuming observers can't form in the extreme densities of the initial singularity, there is an infinite time in comparison for Botlzmann brains to fluctuate into existence in the high entropy, low density "future" - ours in an in between point, but infinitely tiny when compared to an eternal heat death). About the only solution from physicists to avoid such Boltzmann brain problems is to invoke the multiverse (where some verses recollapse and can never form observers). Disclaimer: only a layman but I believe what I've said is an accurate synopsis of the debate
- erikpukinskis 7y ago> why do we find ourselves localized and perceiving this coordinate in the 4D spacetime block and not any other? Well we started out perceiving a 0-dimensional universe and 4 dimensions is as far as we’ve gotten! We’re certainly at work on the next one.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoTautology. Every person sees the world through their own way. Therefore there is no way to see it as it truly is. The sum of the parts can never equal the whole, no matter how much effort is done to reduce bias. Worthless to discuss further.
- scottmcdot 7y agoAny good reads/books on this?
- sporkologist 7y agoWe see things in the optimal way for us to navigate the world we evolved in. "As it is" has no meaning outside our perceptual affordances.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoWhat evidence is there to suggest evolution has resulted in optimal perception?
- sporkologist 7y agoMy use of 'optimal' is more of 'sufficient to keep reproducing given current conditions' than anything. If you're suggesting that evolution isn't the right vehicle for this process, then we'll have to disagree.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoAh, the 'sufficient' definition of 'optimal' ;) Yeah, sure, I can agree with that. Evolution does appear to be the most likely candidate, yes.