The Hard Problem of Gravity

Gate2501 said:
No, I think they are trying to express that you would need to make a switch(or series of switches) out of those atoms, in order to control the system.
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Just by dint of existing and interacting atoms and their constituents perform logical operations. This is a basic scientific fact and I would love to see Pixy try to assert his way outta this one...
 
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PixyMisa said:
What about analog computers?
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That was the question. I don't know... the people you're arguing with seemed to think this somehow nullified the points you made in the prior post. What do you think?

Edit: Seems you're working on addressing it... that's all I ask.

ETA: Oh, as another note... I was also curious about the analog processing that goes on in the brain and how you would relate this to your points about discontinuous switches, and how this relates to your general points.
 
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yy2bggggs said:
ETA: Oh, as another note... I was also curious about the analog processing that goes on in the brain and how you would relate this to your points about discontinuous switches, and how this relates to your general points.
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Its interesting to note that scientists developing quantum computers are attempting to exploit the fact that such systems are inherently digital and analogue.
 
yy2bggggs said:
That was the question. I don't know... the people you're arguing with seemed to think this somehow nullified the points you made in the prior post. What do you think?
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I don't know why they'd think that. An analog computer models one physical process with another physical process that is easier to examine. A slide rule is an analog computer. It does not, in and of itself, process information.

There are hybrid computers that use switched analog processes for computation that certainly do process information, but they are not purely analog.

ETA: Oh, as another note... I was also curious about the analog processing that goes on in the brain and how you would relate this to your points about discontinuous switches, and how this relates to your general points.
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The brain isn't an analog computer. It's a switch network, a digital computer.

Digital computers can process problems in the analog space (which is ultimately quantised and hence digital anyway...) but an analog computer is something different and quite specific.
 
AkuManiMani said:
I think that the problem arises when individuals confuse the descriptive language for the actual object(s) of that description. Simply writing out a formal description of an entity, whether in text or machine code, is not the same as producing the thing IAOI -- especially when such a description is incomplete or flawed.

Even in the instance of phenomena that are relatively well understood [like gravity] a formal simulation of said phenomenon is not an example of the real thing. The only way to reproduce an example of a TIOAI would be to use one's formal knowledge to physically produce it and not just virtually simulate it.
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If the thing in question were tangible, then you would be correct.

However, there is no evidence that consciousness is a tangible thing. Everything we know suggests it is the result of relations among relations between tangible things.

That is an entire two levels of abstraction away from tangible things. Even if the relations among tangible things were different than the relations among simulated tangible things (they aren't, other than by virtue of what they relate), the relations between relations are always equivalent.

At least, if you buy into that whole mathematics thing.

Of course, if you disagree, you can always go down to the local coroner's office and ask them to open up a corpse's head for you -- when you find the "consciousness" let us know.


AkuManiMani said:
In the case of consciousness, there is a severe paucity of formal description, and those that are provided are largely ad hoc shots in the dark. How can one seriously, and with a strait face, claim that they have reproduced it from such a flimsy basis?
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lol. What there is a "paucity" of are descriptions that suit you -- which is no surprise since you are an HPC proponent.

On the other hand, there are formal descriptions that suit other people just fine. More than half the participants on this thread, just to name a few.

AkuManiMani said:
If it took you so much time and effort just to describe something as rudimentary as on/off, what in blue blazes makes you think that you have a sufficient definition of the very basis of your conscious experience?
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To put it simply, because I have not encountered a human behavior -- including my own subjective experience -- that seems like it couldn't be explained according to such simple definitions.
 
FYI, I never claimed the brain was an analog computer. But:
PixyMisa said:
The brain isn't an analog computer. It's a switch network, a digital computer.
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Are you sure?

neurochemistryWP

The brain uses both analog and digital computation. It's obvious, as well, that neurochemistry can dramatically affect behavior--I offer the goal seeking behavior of addicts to drugs with neurochemical effects as an example.

Edit: Okay, so you are classifying hybrid computers as "digital". Fine. But even so, they use analog computations.

Also, the "ultimately digital anyway" applies to all physical processes, so it makes the disclaimer of discontinuity a bit hard to use as a criteria for anything physical if you consider this as counting.
 
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yy2bggggs said:
FYI, I never claimed the brain was an analog computer. But:

Are you sure?
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Yep.

The brain uses both analog and digital computation. It's obvious, as well, that neurochemistry can dramatically affect behavior--I offer the goal seeking behavior of addicts to drugs with neurochemical effects as an example.
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Neurochemicals are the mechanism of the switches in the brain. Drugs that modify the brain behaviour do so by modifying the switching characteristics of the neurons. That's still a digital computer. It's not a binary computer, but it's digital.
 
rocketdodger said:
If the thing in question were tangible, then you would be correct.

However, there is no evidence that consciousness is a tangible thing. Everything we know suggests it is the result of relations among relations between tangible things.

That is an entire two levels of abstraction away from tangible things. Even if the relations among tangible things were different than the relations among simulated tangible things (they aren't, other than by virtue of what they relate), the relations between relations are always equivalent.

At least, if you buy into that whole mathematics thing.

Of course, if you disagree, you can always go down to the local coroner's office and ask them to open up a corpse's head for you -- when you find the "consciousness" let us know.
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Clearly, a dead body doesn't have the property of being conscious any more than a sleeping or comatose body. Why in the world would a researcher go open up a corpse to 'look for' consciousness? Don't be daft.

Merely because we haven't fully determined the physical basis for consciousness does not make it any less real. Your experience and every memory are products of consciousness. Simply declaring that consciousness is mathematically describable and then picking some arbitrary system to declare conscious is not an explanation.

Gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak/strong forces, are all real phenomena, and were so for eons before humans evolved the tools and capacities to recognize and describe them as such. What you're essentially doing is declaring that you've recreated actual gravity in a computer without any knowledge of the physics of it.

This isn't a discussion about whether or not consciousness is mathematically describable. I don't think anyone here is disputing that. The fact of the matter is: YOU JUST DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO IT SO STOP PRETENDING THAT YOU DO.

rocketdodger said:
lol. What there is a "paucity" of are descriptions that suit you -- which is no surprise since you are an HPC proponent.

On the other hand, there are formal descriptions that suit other people just fine. More than half the participants on this thread, just to name a few.
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I hereby declare consciousness to be a function of pi. All objects that express this function are conscious. Don't like this definition? Prove me wrong :rolleyes:


rocketdodger said:
To put it simply, because I have not encountered a human behavior -- including my own subjective experience -- that seems like it couldn't be explained according to such simple definitions.
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You're not getting it. Every process is reducible to "such simple definitions". The point is to figure out the exact physical nature of the process in question [in this case consciousness] and its going to take a heck of a lot more than some computer programmers pulling arbitrary definitions outta their behinds to accomplish this.
 
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yy2bggggs said:
Edit: Okay, so you are classifying hybrid computers as "digital". Fine. But even so, they use analog computations.
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I'm still thinking about hybrid computers. That's a special case, and an interesting one.

On the subject of the brain again: It's a pulse-coded digital switch network. Modern computers are typically level-coded or edge-coded digital switch networks. Neither neurons nor transistors are perfectly binary; they're a bit sloppy. But they are digital switches.

Also, the "ultimately digital anyway" applies to all physical processes, so it makes the disclaimer of discontinuity a bit hard to use as a criteria for anything physical if you consider this as counting.
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Ultimately, yes. Practically, no.

For an end-user, the transistors in a CPU are binary.
For a CPU designer, they're annoying little analog buggers. It's part of his job to wash the analog behaviour out.
And a quantum physicist would view them differently again.
 
AkuManiMani said:
Whats the simplest architecture the GW model would allow for in which a modular system could still be said to have conscious capacity?
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AFAIK this is not so much the direction of GWT research and modelling. The basic idea of GWT is popular because at a theoretical level it works. Instead of their being a recipient of consciousness, an experiencer, which everyone knows doesn't work, there is just global access. In an array of parallel distributed modules all processing information, the information in the one that "shouts loudest" becomes conscious.

Thus GWT avoids some aspects of the HPC, those relating to selfhood especially. And it is not in contradiction with Strong AI, though it wouldn't to me agree with Pixy's notion of self-referencing being needed for consciousness.

Nick
 
yy2bggggs said:
I'm not sure what "practically" means here. How would you go about the task of determining whether or not something is practically analog?
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Count the number of possible states of the functional components.

That wasn't what I was addressing, though; I was just saying that the quantised nature of, um, nature doesn't make analog systems digital for practical purposes.
 
Nick227 said:
AFAIK this is not so much the direction of GWT research and modelling. The basic idea of GWT is popular because at a theoretical level it works. Instead of their being a recipient of consciousness, an experiencer, which everyone knows doesn't work, there is just global access. In an array of parallel distributed modules all processing information, the information in the one that "shouts loudest" becomes conscious.
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Of course there is no global access, and neurons can't shout. Apart from that, it's a fine theory.

Thus GWT avoids some aspects of the HPC, those relating to selfhood especially. And it is not in contradiction with Strong AI, though it wouldn't to me agree with Pixy's notion of self-referencing being needed for consciousness.
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Read Hofstadter.
 
AkuManiMani said:
Dude. You ARE ware that this is a public forum and that potentially any English literate person can read whats been posted, right? Its clear to anyone who can read that I and others have exhaustively provided a definition of consciousness and explained why yours is not sufficient. Simply asserting we haven't doesn't make you correct; it just shows you to be a self-deluded liar.
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Actually, the fact that this is a public forum means that everyone remembers that the last time you were asked, by me, for such a definition you said there wasn't any :

AkuManiMani said:
I've stated over and over and over and over again that there is currently no sufficient operational definition of consciousness. I've also stated, just as often, that scientific efforts would be well spent working toward such a definition and suggested possible avenues of investigation. At this point in time, consciousness is about as defined as gravity was before Newton. We know it is a real phenomenon; we just don't have a sufficient operational definition or solid explanation of it.
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Who's the liar, now ?
 
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