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ronnie_bonigli
Guest
I haven’t missed anything, you’ve just refused to listen to what I’m saying
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LogisticsBranch
Guest
Science of the Brain: How the Mind Works
*It may seem like the Internet has an overwhelming number of links but it’s really quite simple compared to the human brain, which has roughly 1,000 trillion connections—about the same as the number of leaves on all the trees in a rainforest. *
findingdulcinea.com/guides/Science/Science-of-the-Brain.html/xa_1
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inocente
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Ronnie!
Correcting mistakes is after the fact, a system that makes mistakes can make more mistakes.But there’s a difference between mistakes and bugs. Drink a couple of glasses of wine and we introduce bugs in our system that makes us unsafe to drive. A computer program can have bugs in it but a supervisor program can cancel transactions or reload it if it fails. The program in post #15 isn’t buggy but makes mistakes which it corrects by further evolution. Programs can learn, e.g.
reuters.com/article/2007/07/24/us-babytalk-idUSN2419932120070724
stanfordscientific.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73:a-passion-for-service&catid=42:volume-6-issue-2&Itemid=59
That program is baby steps
and we are far more than computers but we need to compare apples with apples, on a level playing field, with a straight bat, etc.
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inocente
Guest
You, you word-smith, you.
Many would argue that consciousness is a continuum. A flea is less conscious than a dog and a dog less conscious than a human, i.e. after allowing for command-and-control (elephant brains are big in part because there’s a big body to control), what’s left over contributes to consciousness. The inference is that consciousness relies on complexity.
A Turing test for art lovers, who’s this by?
http://www.elephantartgallery.com/media/1084.jpg
“My Football Pitch” by our top selling Royal elephant artist Wanalee in an inspired four colour combination of Burgundy, Turquoise, Saffron and Light Grey colours on HQ PaperMaker white 120gsm handmade mulberry art paper with four pronounced deckled edges. Size approximately 56 x 76cm. Paintings by elephants make great gifts for animal lovers. Asian elephants, especially Thai elephants, are an endangered species and the support you will show for elephant conservation by the purchase of this elephant painting from The Elephant Art Gallery will be greatly appreciated. - elephantartgallery.com/paintings/1084.php
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Spock
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I am very glad to see your participation and your examples.
Many people have Frankenstein-complex, and they don’t want to see a new “competitor”. But they will come, for sure, and it will be wonderful “thing”.
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tonyrey
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Those who explain away the power of reason are cutting their own throat!
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inocente
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tonyrey
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I’m on a different ship.Those who explain away the power of reason are cutting their own throat! Welcome aboard.
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ronnie_bonigli
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I had just said that an inconsistent formal system **does not **correct it’s mistakes. If a human mind were merely an inconsistent formal system it could not be shown where it make an error and come to ***understand ***that it was indeed an error. This is one of the implications that follow from Godel’s Theorem regarding formal systems.Ronnie!
But there’s a difference between mistakes and bugs. Drink a couple of glasses of wine and we introduce bugs in our system that makes us unsafe to drive. A computer program can have bugs in it but a supervisor program can cancel transactions or reload it if it fails. The program in post #15 isn’t buggy but makes mistakes which it corrects by further evolution. Programs can learn, e.g.
reuters.com/article/2007/07/24/us-babytalk-idUSN2419932120070724
stanfordscientific.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73:a-passion-for-service&catid=42:volume-6-issue-2&Itemid=59
That program is baby steps
In addition to Godel’s Theorem showing there is a difference in **kind **and not **degree **between a computer system and a human mind, we can look at John Searle’s “Chinese Room”. That thought experiment shows that any system which is base on symbol manipulation can never understand (there’s that word again) what it’s doing, computers will always be philosophical zombies
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inocente
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Searle is one of those theorists though. He is arguing against traditional AI, but not comparing apples with apples. His mystical “causal powers” can be explained by complexity, that at some point syntactic becomes semantic. Us practical guys ask whether semantics are more than relationships and transforms anyway, is there any ultimate meaning?
Then his idea that mind relies on inherent physical/chemical properties within the brain (not, as I understand it, on the immaterial) is mystical hogwash
. If we surgically start replacing neurons with silicon equivalents, Searle thinks that at some point consciousness is lost. Us practical guys say poppycock, the onus is on him to prove one is formal and the other not.But his scenario is unrealistic anyway. The man in the room would need vast numbers of instructions and time to answer a question. Neither humans nor computers work like that.
A philosophical zombie must necessarily have subjective feelings if it is physically identical to a human. There can be no possible difference - anything that behaves exactly like a human is a human. It doesn’t even seem moral to want to argue otherwise.
The problem for the philosophers and theorists in this field is they are being overtaken by empirical research and technical developments.
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Micawber
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Not sure I understand the interchange about Godel.
Someone above pointed out the problem with the word “arranged” - that this presupposes an “arranger” of matter. I agree; however, it’s opening a proverbial can of worms, as everyone (and of all persuasions) knows.
I should have been clearer about his argument: with billions of years of matter interacting, eventually the happy coincidence eventuated whereby matter was of sufficiently complex; and “complex” in a certain way that made the emergence of consciousness/reason/awareness, etc. possible. So the theory goes anyway. I have lots of problems with this - howevever, I’d rather stay away from arguing this point with my friend. Maybe that’s impossible to avoid however.
Here’s one of the sticking points: if I am to say, “well, reason etc. cannot be the mere function of blind material forces because that would negate any possibility of genuine thought, free will, or capacity to belief that anything is true; including the very theory about the emergence of mind that you’re proposing.”
The problem with that^, however, is that I think he’ll say: reason etc. may be a product of blind forces, but it is not longer subject to them; it has transcended those forces. And is independent of them now.
How would you deal with that^ Does it make sense at all?
Thanks for all the advice!
~cawbs
Someone above pointed out the problem with the word “arranged” - that this presupposes an “arranger” of matter. I agree; however, it’s opening a proverbial can of worms, as everyone (and of all persuasions) knows.
I should have been clearer about his argument: with billions of years of matter interacting, eventually the happy coincidence eventuated whereby matter was of sufficiently complex; and “complex” in a certain way that made the emergence of consciousness/reason/awareness, etc. possible. So the theory goes anyway. I have lots of problems with this - howevever, I’d rather stay away from arguing this point with my friend. Maybe that’s impossible to avoid however.
Here’s one of the sticking points: if I am to say, “well, reason etc. cannot be the mere function of blind material forces because that would negate any possibility of genuine thought, free will, or capacity to belief that anything is true; including the very theory about the emergence of mind that you’re proposing.”
The problem with that^, however, is that I think he’ll say: reason etc. may be a product of blind forces, but it is not longer subject to them; it has transcended those forces. And is independent of them now.
How would you deal with that^ Does it make sense at all?
Thanks for all the advice!
~cawbs
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inocente
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It’s a big mystery as to why the cosmos is the way it is, why it’s reliable and orderly, why there’s matter at all, why complexity arises out of simplicity, why it provides a backdrop for us to exist. And why simplicity comes out of complexity - you are made of trillions upon trillions of atoms yet they are organized into one person who can have simple thoughts.
This is a minefield because if it wasn’t like this then we wouldn’t be here to ask these questions, so there’s a chicken and egg issue. We’re not as God and perhaps it will always be a deep mystery, there’s no obvious reason why He (or blind forces) should have made us to be able to work it out.
But just as it makes no sense trying to explain an eagle in terms of quantum physics, because we know there are several levels of organization in between, we can step through the layers and be convinced the eagle really does consist of atoms after all. For me, same for the mind.
Personal view - God created a physical universe and I have a hard time trying to understand why we aren’t content with that.
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Touchstone
Guest
Spock is correct. You are thoroughly confused regarding the implications of Gödel Incompleteness.
But humans cannot grasp the structure of the formal system any more than fully than a machine can (for the very reason, I suggest, that the mind is a machine, and subject to the same real-world limitations as any other machine). You’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that since humans can wrap their heads around simplistic formal systems, and transcend them, cognitively, “jumping up a frame”, that this is a process humans can deploy to arbitrary position. Manifestly, they cannot, or more precisely, we have no reason to think we can, and plenty of empirical reasons to conclude they cannot, any more than this Mac I’m typing this on can.
Furthermore, it is not a problem in principle (or in practice) for a computing system to “jump up a frame”, just as humans do. This is practical now, and done routinely (!). This is software meta-heuristics.
So, per both mistakes, we come back to parity (or even identity) between mind and machine; humans cannot “jump up” an arbitrary number of frames, any more than a computer can. Computers can “jump up” frames, just like humans can.
If you doubt this, just consider the human mind as computing instance of a Very Large Software Program (VLSP), developed over eons by the impersonal creativity of biology. Now this VLSP is bigger, more intricate and more complex than any human, or group of humans can comprehend, let alone verify as completely consistent. It may be perfectly internally consistent, this VSLP that our minds instantiate, but then again, it may not.
We can’t know, we’ll never know. With this VSLP, it’s simply TOO COMPLEX for a human mind to grasp. Man’s biology is such that his ‘grasping’ power is formidable compared to, say, a hamster, but nevertheless it’s quite humble and limited, pathetic even in the face of large scale complexity.
So, now apply Gödel: what happens? Well, you are in the same boat as any computer (again, I susggest, for the reason that you are computer, a biological “wetware” computer) – you cannot verify the computability or internal consistency of your own internal systems any more than any computer you want to compare yourself to. You can’t know if your own mind is internally consistent.
In this sense, Gödel cuts in exactly the opposite direction from what you suppose. In making explicit (and here, in light of Turing) the implications of formal completeness, we can easily see that the human can’t validate it own axioms. At some point, it must grind to a halt, just like any computer in transcending the current frame’s axioms to prove them outside that frame.
This is big blind spot that Penrose overlooked. A big (and a bit embarrassing, given Penrose’s brilliance in so many other areas) “whoops” that is well known and well documentd by now (see Putnam, for just one solid example of this). He fell for the theist conceit, that the mind is “magic” in the sense that it is not practically bound by scale. We have perfectly NO reason to accept that idea, and everything we see in the real world around us confirms that the human mind is just as limited as any physical computing machine would be, now or in the future.
Just noting, per above, that this is the precise point of your error, here. Humans can “stand outside of” some systems, just as a sophisticated software systems. But a human cannot “stand outside of” any given system, and neither can a sophisticated software system. In both of these respects, minds and machines are in the same circumstance.
No, and that signals a thorough confusion of both what Gödel was on about directly, AND what the ramifications of his insight are. If what you were saying were true, you’d necessarily be able to prove this mathematically, which is one of the neat features of understanding Gödel – when you grasp what he’s saying, it makes your sentence above there manifestly untenable. His whole point is that what you refer to as “kind” is a meaningless, concept. Complexity as a matter of degree will produce this confusion at large scales. It will ‘look mysterious’, and even "different in kind’ in a simplistic way, but that is shown to be unsupportable by just contemplating the implications of the mind as VLSP.
-TS
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Touchstone
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That’s not the case. You’re suggesting that any inconsistency is tantamount to complete inconsistency. If I formalize some rendering of naive set theory, I will have something formally inconsistent – susceptible to paradoxes like Russell’s Paradox or Berry’s Paradox. But those paradoxes do not negate the consistency of the productions that are consistent, non-paradoxical. Axiomatic set theory and ZF and other formalizations that implement axiomatic relief to steer around Russell’s paradox share a huge overlap with the old naive set theory; this is the foundation of basic mathematics.
It’s also worth pointing out that “true” and “false” are problematic terms, here. I understand what you might mean in saying naive set theory is “false” because of Russell’s Paradox, but what is really discovered their is inconsistency. Russell’s Paradox holds that the set of all sets that are not members of themselves is a member of itself IF AND ONLY IF it is NOT a member of itself. Which is “false” there? That R is a “member of itself”, or it is NOT a member of itself?
“False” doesn’t mean anything in that context. It’s just a contradiction produced by the symbolic calculus of set theory being applied.
This does not follow. I can conceive of inconsistent systems where that would be produced as a contradiction, but for others, that will never be produced, and can’t be produced per the rules of the system, even if other consistencies do obtain. That’s the import of Russell’s Paradox. It didn’t invalidate naive set theory as a whole. Far from it. It was a disturbing, fascinating… “hole” in an otherwise highly consistent and useful system that foreshadowed discoveries that Gödel and others would later shed more light on.
Just as a way to show yourself you are mistaken, you might see how you do in taking naive set theory and getting it to produce 1=0.
There’s no reason an inconsistent system wouldn’t or couldn’t be just as corrigible (and possibly much more corrigible if it is not encumbered with the complications of vain emotions, etc.). I think you’ve got a major breakdown happening in your concept of what “inconsistent” entails. It’s not “a complete loss” or “utterly inconsistent”. In formal terms, inconsistent just means “not perfectly and completely consistent”. It’s a logic error to say that if a system is not perfectly consistent, it is not and cannot be consistent at all.
That’s important for you, because for all you can tell, or show, your own mind is formally inconsistent. That means your mistake, understood as such, grants you (and I) back some relief. We can learn and be consistent in some areas even as we are machines that not perfectly consistent. If you are right about the implications of inconsistency, you can’t think, deduce, communicate, or integrate anything at all.
-TS
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ronnie_bonigli
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I’m not sure where you’re coming from with a lot of this, even Russell himself said you can prove anything true in an inconsistent formal system, and then went on to use an example where he “proved” that Russell and the Pope were the same person.
Btw To just ramble on an on and keep telling someone they’re wrong on your authority is kind of a weak argument
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Touchstone
Guest
You’re confusing “an inconsistent formal system” with “any inconsistent formal system”. Not all inconsistent formal systems are alike or have the same productions which is I think the point you are stumbling on, consistently, here. I don’t doubt that a system that “proves” Bertrand to be the Pope is an example of inconsistency. But it doesn’t follow that any inconsistent system can produce that, which seems to be an idea you are holding to.
There’s no authority invoked in anything I’ve posted. You don’t need to rely on any authority claims here to grasp where your understanding broke down. Have to step out for a bit, but will come back and layout a simple formal system that we can see to be both inconsistent (that is, not completely consistent), and which yet cannot just produce any arbitrarily selected proof.
(Again that’s great news, because for all you know and can say, you are an inconsistent system, and even so, have some basis for relying on consistent productions that come from it.)
-TS
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Charlemagne_II
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Touchstone
*everything we see in the real world around us confirms that the human mind **is just as limited *as any physical computing machine would be, now or in the future.
All physical computing machines are the products of human intelligence. They are limited by the fact that their existence depends on the will and intelligence of the human mind. Man is not limited by depending on them for his existence.
Man can pull the plug on himself. Man can pull the plug on the machine. The machine cannot arbitrarily pull the plug on man.
*everything we see in the real world around us confirms that the human mind **is just as limited *as any physical computing machine would be, now or in the future.
All physical computing machines are the products of human intelligence. They are limited by the fact that their existence depends on the will and intelligence of the human mind. Man is not limited by depending on them for his existence.
Man can pull the plug on himself. Man can pull the plug on the machine. The machine cannot arbitrarily pull the plug on man.
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ronnie_bonigli
Guest
I find that when I come across an arrogant person, one who does not know that he is not half as smart as he thinks he is, it is best to just point him in the right direction rather then continue to engage his overblown hubris
here you go, we’ll start with babysteps; math.stackexchange.com/questions/5564/why-an-inconsistent-formal-system-can-prove-everything
or go to wiki; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del’s_incompleteness_theorems
“The corollary also indicates the epistemological relevance of the second incompleteness theorem. It would actually provide no interesting information if a theory T proved its consistency. This is because inconsistent theories prove everything, including their consistency.”
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Charlemagne_II
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bonigli
I find that when I come across an arrogant person, one who does not know that he is not half as smart as he thinks he is, it is best to just point him in the right direction rather then continue to engage his overblown hubris
With Touchstone you will find this not only the best strategy, but the only strategy.
I find that when I come across an arrogant person, one who does not know that he is not half as smart as he thinks he is, it is best to just point him in the right direction rather then continue to engage his overblown hubris
With Touchstone you will find this not only the best strategy, but the only strategy.
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ronnie_bonigli
Guest
more from Bertrand Russell
he had a great demonstration of how inconsistent logic can be used to prove anything, Russell’s example was, “If 1=0, Bertrand Russell is the Pope.” See, Bertrand Russell is one person, and so is the Pope: 1+1. But 1=0, so it’s 1+0, and 1+0=1, therefore there’s only one person present, and it follows that Bertrand Russell and the Pope are the same person. The fact that’s utter nonsense is, well, because it’s inconsistent logic; one is not equal to zero. But the moment you grant that it is, you can prove anything by it."
he had a great demonstration of how inconsistent logic can be used to prove anything, Russell’s example was, “If 1=0, Bertrand Russell is the Pope.” See, Bertrand Russell is one person, and so is the Pope: 1+1. But 1=0, so it’s 1+0, and 1+0=1, therefore there’s only one person present, and it follows that Bertrand Russell and the Pope are the same person. The fact that’s utter nonsense is, well, because it’s inconsistent logic; one is not equal to zero. But the moment you grant that it is, you can prove anything by it."
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