On Consciousness

[Mr. Scott]

Here's the chess position Penrose showed in his Google Tech Talk that is unfriendly to computational analysis, while our non-computational brains can easily see the solution, therefore linking it to other non-computational phenomena like Penrose Tiles and QM. In other words, we "understand" the position, while the computer cannot. I like Penrose, but I think he's mistaken.

White to play and force a draw:

In context: "Conscious Understanding: What is its Physical Basis?" (0:16:25)

 

[Zeuzzz]

So, a mechanical version of a human brain would be conscious because its parts are "connected" with the same astronomical crucibles as our brains? It's a rhetorical question intended to show the irrelevancy of the cosmic connection.

In my opinion you need to invert that perspective. It makes more sense to me saying it this way:

So, a mechanical version of consciousness would be the human brain because its parts are "connected" with the same astronomical crucibles as our brains.

The testable physical scientific difference between either? Nothing. Both the same. It's a matter of perspective. Which is what psychedelics are great at doing, but not a necessary step, just their ability to quickly and suddenly make people challenge deeply wired assumptions is half the reason why I have brought them up before.

So this brings us back to quantum physics and the leeway it give for such idea to be taken seriously, where other areas of physics seem contrary to this perspective. Call it entanglement, non locality, superposition, what ever. These are conscious phenomenon.

Lets ask Erwin Schrodinger.

"Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology — we are quite unable to imagine the contrary... "

"The Oneness of Mind", as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber

 

[Aepervius]

Good question.

I sure don't know.

Almost certainly "nothing" due to decoherence.

 

[Aepervius]

- Albert Einstein, quoted in: Einstein's God - Albert Einstein's Quest as a Scientist and as a Jew to Replace a Forsaken God (1997)

"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one Primitive susperstition. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."

(note from Aepervius from the original JPG photo of the letter primitiv Aberglaube - I know about this because of the recent article in slashdot where I already corrected a few people -I won't comment on the rest , but if the translation is as liberal as this that does not bode well)

PS: citation is not even primaire, as the original is in a letter to gutkind.

ETA: or maybe I am not looking at the correct one. The paragraph read "Das Wort Gott ist nichts für mich als Ausdruck und produkt menschliescher Schwächen, und Die bible eine SAmmlungen von (????) doch (****) primitiven legende"

Later he describe all regligiona s primitive Susperstition.


Nonetheless I still hold that i want to see the original quote rather what somebody quoted from a book.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Please comment on the rest, I would very much like to get it right next time.

 

[Aepervius]

I was actually mistaken it was from a letter to gutkind, but your is a letter to guy. Forget what i said above, I was definitively in error about the quote.

 

[Pulvinar]

Here's the chess position Penrose showed in his Google Tech Talk that is unfriendly to computational analysis, while our non-computational brains can easily see the solution, therefore linking it to other non-computational phenomena like Penrose Tiles and QM. In other words, we "understand" the position, while the computer cannot. I like Penrose, but I think he's mistaken.

White to play and force a draw:

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/6736509bccc624307.jpg[/qimg]

In context: "Conscious Understanding: What is its Physical Basis?" (0:16:25)

My chess is rusty, but I think I see the solution-- not just to the chess problem, but how a machine could solve it.

Analyzing the individual pieces I see that white is down by 2 rooks and a pawn, but can immediately take one of black's rooks. This still leaves white at a disadvantage, except that I notice that the row of pawns are forming a fence which either side may maintain, and that only white's bishop and the kings are able to get through it. By "plugging" the "hole" in the fence with his king, white can chase after black's king while black can do nothing to attack. I haven't analyzed the rest of the endgame but I'm guessing this is the key.

As far as a machine solving this, there's nothing I've done here that wasn't done using generalized pattern recognition: using associative memory to "search" for patterns of similar problems and then plugging in their analogous components to extract the sub-solution.

A dedicated chess-playing machine doesn't do this, nor does it have knowledge of such concepts as fences. A general problem-solving machine likely would.

Interestingly, a human who was an expert chess player yet had only lived in the middle of a jungle and had never seen a fence might not be able to solve it.

 

[steenkh]

Analyzing the individual pieces I see that white is down by 2 rooks and a pawn, but can immediately take one of black's rooks. This still leaves white at a disadvantage, except that I notice that the row of pawns are forming a fence which either side may maintain, and that only white's bishop and the kings are able to get through it. By "plugging" the "hole" in the fence with his king, white can chase after black's king while black can do nothing to attack. I haven't analyzed the rest of the endgame but I'm guessing this is the key.

No, that is not the solution, I think. The idea is to force a draw, not resolve a draw.

But I completely fail to see why a machine cannot arrive at the same solution as I can. After all, I am a biological machine, and I have been trained in chess. A computer algorithm might fail at this, but who cares about algorithms? A computer that is trained just like a human, to identify situations that can lead to a draw, would find it just like I can. Computers have already been trained to identify lots of stuff for which there is no algorithm.

 

[quarky]

Almost certainly "nothing" due to decoherence.

Well, the reason I posted the link was to point out that the entanglement happens on a scale (energy wise) that we didn't know was possible.

I forget where I saw it; probably here; but there was another experiment that suggested entanglement on a molecular level. Apologies for memory failure and vaguenss on that; perhaps someone can link to which I mention.

Like Zeuzzz, some of my opinions on the nature of consciousness stem from experiments in altering the hell out of it, and taking notes.

Not to sound snobby, but I generally don't like to even discuss such matters with people who haven't had similar experiences.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Therein lies our cache 22 situation.

The law and culture has made even talking about these things not acceptable and akin to woo or evil, even if scientists see's it as a largely morally neutral area and/or in fact a potential interesting area of research that the law just gets in the way of open scientific enquiry.

Speaking to someone about expanded consciousness, either due to life experience or psychedelics, to someone who has never done them is like trying to explain music to a deaf person. Sometimes I even feel it's an unfair thing to do ... either unfair or just pointless.

Culture and ideology are not your friend.

Good science ignores cultural bias and transcends the law and dominant paradigm of the time. Hopefully in the future the experiences and views of scientists and mathematicians that have actually experimented with consciousness will be taken into account and held in higher regard in the scientific literature than those who have never.

Annoyingly for many the 'hippies' may have been right all along

 

[Mr. Scott]

Speaking to someone about expanded consciousness, either due to life experience or psychedelics, to someone who has never done them is like trying to explain music to a deaf person.
Annoyingly for many the 'hippies' may have been right all along

I was a hippie and took psychedelics and studied and practiced expanded consciousness, meditation, etc., and still think consciousness is data processing. I know exactly what you are trying to explain. I'm in the enlightened stage you haven't yet reached beyond all that stuff you think is so salient.

Awaiting your "no true Scotsman^WP" response.

 

[Zeuzzz]

I was a hippie and took psychedelics and studied and practiced expanded consciousness, meditation, etc., and still think consciousness is data processing. I know exactly what you are trying to explain. I'm in the enlightened stage you haven't yet reached beyond all that stuff you think is so salient.

Awaiting your "no true Scotsman^WP" response.

I have no qualms with you trying to model people as machines. It seems the computer minded thing to do, even if not the biological thing to do.

The general rule is what works for you intellectually, use. If you then try to generalize to most people then consciousness seems more like a fluid than logical number crunching machine, it always seeks the gravity of the most familiar. We addict not only drugs and habits but behavior patterns and ideological ways of thinking.

"People are not machines, but in all situations where they are given the opportunity, they will act like machines." --Ludwig von Bertalanffy^WP, founder of general systems theory

 

[PixyMisa]

"People are not machines, but in all situations where they are given the opportunity, they will act like machines." --Ludwig von Bertalanffy^WP, founder of general systems theory

Read Oliver Sacks. The data is conclusive: People, and in particular, brains, are machines. Just as a finely engineered car could be working by magic, but when it breaks down and starts leaking oil and belching smoke, its mechanical nature becomes obvious, so too does the brain's nature become clear when it breaks down.

 

[Zeuzzz]

I was a hippie and took psychedelics and studied and practiced expanded consciousness, meditation, etc.

And what did you deduce from these experiences?

If you read up on them first I should point out that reading is not seeing. Those that read too much do not see, even when they lift their eyes from their books. They read, but they also attempt to read nature. You have too look at see nature, not read it. Same with psychedelics. If you analyze it too much and don't just go with the flow you are intellectualizing some that is inherently hard to intellectualize and defeating the main point.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Read Oliver Sacks. The data is conclusive: People, and in particular, brains, are machines. Just as a finely engineered car could be working by magic, but when it breaks down and starts leaking oil and belching smoke, its mechanical nature becomes obvious, so too does the brain's nature become clear when it breaks down.

When someones brain dies, yeah. Kind of sucks.

When a cars mechanics dies, you just get it repaired or get a new one.

I have read Oliver Sachs. As I said before. He gave a well thought out neuroscientists view on the matter, which was very interesting in all, from beginning to end. Muscophilia is his best.

 

[Zeuzzz]

"The way to over come the print bias is free hand drawing. Train your eye and go into nature, train the eye to see and you will cease to read the world."

- Aldus Huxley, a Cambridge educated scholar.

 

[PixyMisa]

When someones brain dies, yeah. Kind of sucks.

What? No. When the machinery of the brain breaks down. That's Sacks' life work.

 

[PixyMisa]

"The way to over come the print bias is free hand drawing. Train your eye and go into nature, train the eye to see and you will cease to read the world."

- Aldus Huxley, a Cambridge educated scholar.

"Your post makes no sense, so here's a picture of a rabbit with a pancake on its head."

- The Internet

 

[Zeuzzz]

Is that your way of saying does not compute?

 

[PixyMisa]

Is that your way of saying does not compute?

It's my way of saying that your post is irrelevant at best.