Meme Engine

s33:

memeengine replied to your post: p-Zombie Meet p-Zelig

I agree that consciousness is also top-down. But I think your “twinned brain” would be conscious, though perhaps differently (can sense brain waves!)

Yes, I agree from the retrospective view of consciousness (where we consider consciousness after the fact of its existence) we might imagine that anything that functions like a brain could or should be conscious. Functionally there is no reason to expect that it would be though. The computations of such a twinned brain could be carried out by a trillion separate people with pencils and paper and cell phones talking to each other without any kind of collective sense arising, at least from a purely functionalist-prospective (i.e. naive logical) view. If we don’t assume the a priori possibility of higher consciousness, it makes sense that all brain wave computations could be expressed as mathematical abstractions, devoid of any signifying content.

We have not seen any indication that complex computational systems such as the internet are becoming proto-conscious by themselves, nor does it feel intuitively like any such thing is about to happen.

This response may have awakened me to the fact that I may have functionalist tendencies as far as consciousness goes. I don’t know why… I suppose that a broad theme in the history of science is “specialness” being knocked off it’s high horse. No, the earth is not the centre, etc. This applies here:

It’s not a brain, but it can react just like one. So, what makes a brain special enough to claim consciousness? (where a computer, or a network of a trillion humans can’t)?

I actually think that a network of a trillion humans cooperating piecemeal in some sort of joint effort might be conscious! We may not have seen any signs of proto consciousness in the internet. But does an individual neuron see the signs of consciousness in us?? I’d say no… it merely coexists in a community with it’s neighbours. It never notices that we are thinking about philosophy of mind! If anything, it might notice it’s neighbors changing behaviour, but why would it take this as a sign that it is comprising part of an emergent conscious network?

With that in mind, how would we ever know if the internet (now or in a future state) became conscious? My submitting this post could be a tiny pebble in the rockfall of some strange qualia that can only be experienced by the sort of thing the internet has become.

To me, these ideas are exciting!

Reblogged 7 months ago from s33

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s33, consciousness, brain, neuron, levels, special, science, functionalism, idea, new memes,

The Tumblr Turing Test

I feel like I am being secretly targeted by developers working on software smart enough to pass the Turing Test.

For those that don’t know:

Bot: a slang term for a software application that runs automated tasks over the internet. This could be utterly benign housekeeping, or full-on simulated human behavior.
Turing Test: A test in which a human judge converses via text with one program, and one other human. If the judge can’t tell which is the human, then the program is said to pass the Turing Test.

I’ve got a small enough blog here, that I often get curious about new followers, or Tumblr’rs who “like” my posts… indeed, I’ve found many of my favorite blogs this way. But lately, I feel like what I’m finding is not quite human.

When I first started on Tumblr, I would stumble across blogs that used the exact same theme as mine (on the default settings) with random seeming titles, no descriptions, and posts consisting of… well, they sounded like ad copy translated to Japanese, and then back to English with a buggy auto-translator.

These blogs did not even try to appear legitimate. I assumed they contained hidden links, or something else to do with search engine optimization. Lately, I feel that I’m still encountering Bots - blogs created by programs - only it’s a little more unclear…

I had a couple of “like”s I didn’t expect… because they were on posts that wouldn’t really appeal to non-followers, or because they were quite old posts. Being curious, I checked out the “likers”. Their blogs seemed terse, and slightly word-free (lots of reblogs, most of the words coming from the original posters, with only short, zen-like one liners added on). But they seemed human.

What tipped me off that these were programs and not people was the repeated use of the same zen-like one-liners added to different reblogs on different blogs. “I should consider this” is appended to a reblogged photo on one blog, and to a quote on another.

I haven’t seen a lot of this sort of thing, but I’m seeing it a lot lately. I read an article awhile back about a company that created “Weavrs” for you. A Weavr is an artificial human (a program) who maintains a presence on lots of different social media websites (yes, Tumblr too), and I think they are made to emulate the behavior of specific real humans. I wonder if I’m seeing Weavrs.

If so, they’re a little less sophisticated than I expected. Even on a network like tumblr, where individuals can get by with very little direct contact… the botness shows through.

That said, I wonder how many bots I’ve interacted with without knowing about it? Anyone else wondering the same?

Posted 7 months ago

9 notes

new memes, tumblr, bots, weavrs, turing, turing test, ai, program, application, social media,

Some Philosophy via Venn Diagram

Free will is complicated. Not only is it difficult to say it exists, it is difficult even to define it. Ditto for Determinism, the (maybe) opposite state of affairs.

I had this idea that perhaps I could draw some circles in a Venn diagram - one for each relevant quality, like “Predictable”, or “Impeded”, etc, then make them all intersect in appropriate ways, and then Free Will would stand out in bold as one section of the diagram. As it turns out, my idea of free will involves levels of complexity (atoms vs cells vs animals etc), and that idea just doesn’t seem to be “Vennable”.

Still, I think these diagrams can be a good aid to thought in a more limited form. In the above diagram I’m making some claims about different qualities that have to do with Determinism. I’ve got three qualities contained one within the other (the shapes of the “circles” are purely aesthetic). The are: Predictable (in practice), Predictable (in theory), and Definite.

Predictable (in practice). Just as it sounds, things in this category are predictable using current technology and methods, without resorting to infinitely fast computers, infinitely fine-grained knowledge, or other hypothetical philosphical tools. Examples might include predicting eclipses, knowing traffic will be bad during rush hour, or knowing eggs will break when dropped from a certain height.
Predictable (in theory). Items in this category (but outside the practical predictions) might simply involve too many variables to handle. Like, how will the egg-shell scatter when the egg is dropped, or where a pinball will come to rest when released. It may also include predictions that could be made using more knowledge than we have, or can collect using current technology (ex, could we track the path of a specific molecule in a room full of air, if we knew the positions of all the molecules to begin with?)
Definite. With this category I’m saying something interesting. The previous two categories involved predicting things, which implies those things will definitely happen. What I mean to include in this category are things that will definitely happen, even if they are not predictable at all. One could argue that everything Definite is also Predictable (in theory)… but I don’t believe so. For example, Godel’s famous theorem tells us that in any axiom system, there is a theorem that is true, but not provable (ie not predictable). If nothing else, these truths can fit into the gap between Definite and Predictable.

One more distinction is implicit, and this one may be most at the heart of the ancient philosophical riddles. It’s the area outside Definite. Is anything outside this circle? Certain kinds of determinists would say no - everything is definite.

I don’t think this most extreme view is very likely. For example, Random things are not definite, and we have some pretty compelling evidence from Quantum Physics that randomness exists in the microscopic world. I’ve argued previously that if it does, then it’s not hard for that micro-randomness to show itself at the macro-level and affect us (see this post).

Those that believe Free Will involves Secrecy can incur somewhat into the Definite circle, as long as they stay outside one or both of the Predictable circles. Other definitions might require free will to live outside Definite entirely. Perhaps the next Venn will explore this space further…

Posted 8 months ago

4 notes

philosophy, venn diagram, new memes, free will, determinism, secrecy, definite, predictable, prediction, Godel, provable, kurt godel, definition, truth, philosophy via venn diagram,

Is This Boulder Free?

I’ve been thinking about free will lately. People have been “content to agonize” over free will for such a long time because there is a lot of tension in the idea. On the one hand, the idea of free will doesn’t seem to stand up to close examination. Every good philosopher I know either rejects it outright, or changes the definition before accepting it. On the other hand, we can’t help referring to free will in real life. We mean something by it, and it’s tied up with our notion of responsibility.

So here I am still thinking about it!

I think it’s true that there’s some overlap or confusion between the notions of Free, and Unimpeded, and this is what got me thinking about the Boulder…

Posted 8 months ago

5 notes

boulder, cause, coffee, free, free will, freedom, gravity, impede, impediment, philosophy, physical freedom, secrecy, new memes,

Love and Crossed Wires

The diagrams above explain how, using only a couple of easy-to-understand components, to create a set of idealized little vehicles. One will display what looks like an instinct for Exploration. The other will appear to Love.

I wish I could claim to have thought up these imaginary creatures, but they come from the mind of neuroscientist Valentino Braitenburg, who wrote a book on developing psuedo-biological behaviour machines. The book is called Vehicles.

For a more general approach to Braitenburg’s machines, see my original post. For the details of the Fear and Aggression vehicles, click here. To learn more about Love and Exploration, keep reading…

Posted 8 months ago

2 notes

vehicles, braitenburg, valentino braitenburg, love, exploration, fear, aggression, synthesis, synthetic biology, inhibition, diagram, simplicity, complexity, crossed wires, science, new memes,

Simple Things, Complicated Output.

The diagrams above might look complicated, but in fact, they are self-contained. That is, everything you need to understand the pictures is in the pictures. This includes understanding how a little wired box can display behaviour complicated enough to look like Fear, or Aggression.

I wish I could claim to have thought up these imaginary creatures, but they come from the mind of neuroscientist Valentino Braitenburg, who wrote a book on developing psuedo-biological behaviour machines. The book is called Vehicles.

For a more general approach to Braitenburg’s machines, see my earlier post. To learn more about Fear and Aggression, keep reading…

Posted 8 months ago

9 notes

Braitenburg, Valentino braitenburg, Vehicles, Diagram, Complexity, Simplicity, Fear, Aggression, Synthesis, Science, Psychology, New memes, Motor, Sensor, Biology, Synthetic biology,

Analysis vs Synthesis

I’ve heard it said that Analysis is hard, but Synthesis is easy by comparison. This is not a quote from the excellent book “Vehicles” by Valentino Braitenburg, but it is very much in the same spirit. We may not be able to look at an example of complex behaviour and figure out “how it works”. However, it may be possible to use some simple principles to engineer something that shows very complex behaviour indeed. In these engineering/thought experiments, this is precisely what Braitenburg has done.

Look at the diagram above. Using only these components, and no more, Braitenburg explains how we can engineer behaviours that look like Fear, Aggression, Exploration, and Love.

Next look at the contents, pictured above. You’ll notice that the behaviours I mentioned (fear, aggression, love) are covered by vehicles 2 and 3. The contents moves on from there, up to vehicle 14, incorporating traits such as Optimism, Foresight, Getting Ideas, and Trains of Thought!

Though more engineering tricks are added at each tier of vehicles, none are more complicated than those explained in the diagram, and these are made even simpler by Braitenburg’s lucid, exploratory explanations of the material. For instance, the next “trick” to add is to have motor output relate to sensor input by any function you like rather than just “the more, the more”, or “the more the less”. If you can’t read between the lines, let me say it straight out: buy this amazing book!

Now, how do these little vehicles work…

Posted 8 months ago

4 notes

aggression, ai, analysis, artificial intelligence, behavior, books, braitenburg, diagram, exploration, fear, light, love, motor, sensor, synthesis, temperature, valentino braitenburg, vehicles, new memes,

“Invincible Optimism”

An awesome two-word pairing. While the possibilities are still finite for pairs of words, the range of choices is big enough to feel like you will never run out. I don’t believe I’d ever seen this one before.

Found, un-characteristically, in Kafka’s “The Trial”.

Posted 8 months ago

2 notes

optimism, invincible, two-word pairing, kafka, the trial, new memes,

What I’m Listening To…

Why Audio?

I post a lot of audio, and not much of it music. I post a lot of educational clips I find in podcasts from “all corners” of the internet. Just interesting things I’ve found that fit into 5 minute bites.

But I listen to waaaay more than I post about. I probably listen to 2 to 3 hours of content a day, and only repost best, or most self-contained parts. I want to tell you why I do this, and how (on earth) do I find the time? Well, to do that, I have to tell you a little bit about myself.

How?

I’m flirting with a social media policy when I tell you this… but lets just say I have a job that allows me to wear my headphones and focus my thoughts elsewhere for long periods of time. Not to put too fine a point on it, it rhymes with deshmivering the mail.

(for one follower who may find it funny, I am also a “floater”)

I can’t tune out all the time. I chat with people often, and heed my surroundings in traffic. But quite often I find myself on nearly deserted residential streets, trudging along curbs and up and down stairs, and my mind is free to wander…

Why?

I became addicted to audio-learning when, by chance, an excellent program called Ideas on CBC radio coincided with a commute I had to make once per week. The confluence of radio editing, selected speakers, and intelligent content is like combining all the best things one might hope to find in a classroom. I was often hypnotized into the world of politics, or science, or just plain thought as I listened to this show.

As times have changed, I’ve found more and more quality content available to me. And, with many suggesting that attention spans are shortening within and between generations, I’ve come to feel that audio learning is a wedge, with immediate appeal at the sharp end, and words and content at the back.

What?

In addition to editing clips of what I’ve been listening to, I’m going to try to record a little list of which programs I listen to each day (if any), and I’m going to tag them “what I’m listening to”. Click on the tag if you want to see what I’ve been hearing! I’ll include links on how to get the content yourself, and maybe some bullets about what I found interesting.

Not everyone is in my lucky situation where they can hear so much… but you can use me and these posts as a filter. Maybe you’ll find something you like. Happy listening, and happy thinking!

Posted 9 months ago

5 notes

what I'm listening to, audio, personal, job, new memes, learning, wedge, ideas, cbc, radio, thinking, thought,

Are you planning to explain the puzzle, or should I in a reblog? You should really state the rules to these things.

antinegationism

Alright, alright… the puzzle is to figure out whether this statement is true:

Everything I say is an Exaggeration.

You don’t need to know me to figure this out. antinegationism got it right - the sentence is false.

For the sake of argument assume it is a true statement - that everything I say is indeed an exaggeration. Of course, that means that “Everything I say is an exaggeration” is also an exaggeration. If it’s an exaggeration, then it is false. We assumed it was true, and this led to the conclusion it was false… this is what we call a Reductio ad Absurdum, and it means that our assumption was false. The statement is not true.

If assuming the statement were false led us to a similar contradiction then the sentence would be a paradox (lots of sentences that refer to themselves are paradoxes). However, it is consistent for this to be false. Saying that “Everything I say is an exaggeration” is false only really requires that at least one thing I say is not exaggerated. The sentence itself can still be an exaggeration without contradiction. Thus it’s consistent to call the sentence false.

PS - the really interesting thing is that the sentence itself sounds like an exaggeration, and exactly the sort of thing a serial exaggerator would say. And yet, by it’s logical structure, it’s guaranteed that the person who says it utters non-exaggerations at least some of the time. Huh.

Posted 9 months ago

2 notes

paradox, self-reference, sentence, true, false, logic, exaggeration, reductio ad absurdum, antinegationism, riddle, puzzle, new memes,

Marr, Hubel and Wiesel, and others hold that seeing is a neural process in which information is extracted by the visual system from the retinal image.

Consider: we know what it means to say that a detective, for example, extracts information about an intruder from a footprint, or that an oceanographer gathers infromation about a prehistoric climate by studying fossils of unicellular organisms… these are nice examples of “extracting information” about one thing from another. The explanation… is the further fact that there is a definite causal relationship between the character of the intruder and the properties of the footprints, or between the climate millions of years ago and the fossil chemistry of foraminifera today…

Things are different, though, when it comes to the brain and the retinal image. No doubt the retinal image is rich in information about the scene before the eyes… Presumably, then, a suitably places scientist would be able to extract that information. But the brain is no scientist or detective; it doesn’t know anything and it has no eyes to examine the retinal image…

We - adult humans and other animals - think; we see, we feel, we judge, we infer. It’s working in a big, plain circle to say that what makes it possible for us to do all that - what explains these prodigious powers of mind - is the fact that our brains, like wily scientists are able to figure out the distal causes of the retinal image.

-

Alva Noe, from “Out of Our Heads” (my highlighting)

I’m not sure that we can’t ascribe some “information extraction” to deterministic networks… Noe himself says we could consider such networks a “tool used in thinking”. Still, Noe is right to point out the tempting circular argumentation of explaining my abilities by ascribing similar abilities to the brain.

Posted 9 months ago

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alva noe, out of our heads, information, sight, vision, retina, consciousness, brain, circularity, new memes,

Heya, nice post. Two things: first, sensory substitution devices do change the brain activity - in blind people after some practice time the information activates the visual cortex no less! See e.g. Pascal-Leone. Second, is the role of motion in getting a good percept. Already in the original work of Bach-y-Rita, he noticed that if the camera is static the blind see nothing but if they are given a control over the camera and can scan, they quickly learn to see. this point is many times ignored.

Anonymous

Well, this is my first anonymous question, and I must say that it is far from the spam I was expecting! Thanks for the comment “Anon”. Funnily enough, I would have been sure this comment came from my mother (who studies Cognitive Psychology), except for the “Heya”. No way that is mom.

Anyway, as to your comments… they are in reference to a post I made on Sensory Substitution, and an experiment by Paul Bach-y-Rita in which blind subjects are furnished (to put it simply) with a kind of artificial sight provided by a vibrational grid placed against their skin. I also interpret the thoughts of Alva Noe on this experiment… he believes this experiment provides evidence that the brain is not sufficient on its own to account for consciousness. Click here to see the original post.

I think your second comment - that motion of the subject is required to learn visual-type reactions to the vibration-pad - is still in keeping with the points Noe wants to make. In fact, this is one of the items I used to define what “Visual Modality” might mean, so indeed the data should be allowed to vary with the subjects motions if we want to claim this is a case of visual modality.

Your first point, however, is news to me. Though I don’t mean to dig through journals in jargon that I don’t know, some quick searching told me that Pascal-Leone were able to determine that the visual cortex gradually becomes involved as blind subjects learn to read braille with their fingers. Though I’m not particularly unhappy to learn this, it may mean that this example doesn’t serve Noe’s point.

What Constitutes Change in Brain Activity?

Certainly if tactile sense data begins to cause activity in the Visual Cortex, then Noe couldn’t really claim that the brain hasn’t changed. But actually, I think he may even be more wrong than that.

The first example he gave in his book is one I have not yet dug into (so keep in mind, Noe’s book is my only source on this as yet)… But it involved a researcher named Sur, who managed to physically change the brains of ferrets so that data from their eyes was taken directly to the area traditionally associated with hearing, instead of the visual cortex.

The result: the ferrets functioned normally and displayed adequate vision.

Noe wondered something like “How did that part of the brain know to interpret the incoming data as vision and not sound?” Here I somewhat objected, thinking that if the data was organized as in Visual Modality, then this could realistically be “detected” and handled differently by a sufficiently complicated network. Noe’s claim is that the brain’s handling of the data visually can only be explained by expanding the “network” we are considering to include the origins of the data itself… the objects around us.

But Don’t Count Him Out…

I think something can still be said in defense of Noe’s point. No matter what happens in the brain, it’s an astounding fact that tactile data can be (somewhat) effectively interpreted visually. We have two choices for how this is possible:

Our brains can tell that the data coming in is behaving in a different way, and corresponding to other sense data in different ways, and adjusts it’s interpretation of reality so that what is experienced through tactile channels can indeed “appear” to our consciousness as vision.
The network of objects surrounding us is relevant to our consciousness, so that data fitting the Visual Modality is responded to as such (and likewise the other senses).

The second explanation (it seems to me) is the one Noe would give. And I must admit that it seems in a way much simpler to say:

The information is visual.

than to say:

The visual information is encoded by a sense, and the visualness can be detected from the encoded version of the data - as such the brain “displays” the data to us as visual.

And, all things being equal, should we not want to accept the simpler explanation? As a friend of mine from work likes to say, “I’m not saying, I’m just saying!”

Posted 9 months ago

3 notes

consciousness, bach-y-rita, senses, sensory substitution, modality, vision, sight, touch, question, answer, alva noe, out of our heads, philosophy, brain, neuroscience, visual cortex, neural plasticity, new memes,

Anyone notice a lot more advertising phrased in the imperative? It’s not “Please come in”, it’s “Come in!”. Every time I hear an advertiser end an ad with “Follow us on facebook!”, I reply inside my head with “Don’t tell me what to do!”

Maybe it’s just me, but I think politeness, subtlety and respect for potential customer’s choices are appealing features. Most business advertisers could learn from the my favorite radio host Paul Kennedy, who recently added to his end of show ramble:

“For those who wish, you can now join us on facebook”

Class sells.

Posted 9 months ago

5 notes

advertising, imperative, facebook, buy now, come in, sign, persuasion, command, free choice, ideas, paul kennedy, politeness, respect, subtlety, new memes,

Describing Sight to the Blind

In line with my recent thinking about senses and qualia, I’m revisiting the challenge of how to describe a specific sense to someone who has never had it. Describing “red”, or maybe “bright” seems near to impossible, but I think there are some objective handholds to grasp if one wants to describe “Sight” in general.

Range: Imagine a zillion little hands shooting out from your eyes, all moving in straight lines - no turning corners or curving. Whatever the hands touch, you can see.
Mostly, touchable = visible (or solid = opaque), but there are exceptions. Fog or smoke isn’t solid, but it is seeable (and thus it blocks the little hands). Glass is solid and touchable, but the little hands from our eyes move right through it the way a hand moves through fog.
Directed: Human vision moves in one direction, out from the eyes. Though turning one’s head can minorly affect perception of sound, vision is much more affected. Small changes in the angle of one’s head or direction of one’s body changes the visual field entirely. Sighted people are used to a field of vision that is constantly in motion.
Color: There are many different colors we can distinguish, and they might be thought of like textures. But note: objects with different color may be indistinguishable by touch, and objects with different textures may be the same color.
Light: Light is a prerequisite for vision, and a blind person might do well to associate light rays with the feeling of heat from the sun or a fire. Light technically moves in straight lines, but effectively it does diffuse around corners, perhaps comparable to the spread of a smell. There’s a scale from totally dark to fully lit, and the effectiveness of sight increases with the amount of light. Light might be thought of as the source of the “little hands” that project out of our eyes (of course the truth is that light projects back to our eyes, but I believe describing it the other way gives a truer sense of the subjective experience).

I’m working on a post (or two?) related to sensory substitution where a person may be given information with the above characteristics through their other senses. Stay tuned.

Posted 9 months ago

17 notes

blindness, darkness, description, fog, glass, light, opaque, qualia, sensory substitution, sight, sight for the blind, solid, tangible, transeparent, color, new memes,

Visual Proof of Bell’s Inequality

Bell’s Inequality can be viewed as a result of Set Theory in Mathematics. It states that the number of elements in the colored areas in the diagram exceed (or equal) the number of elements in the striped area, no matter how the circles are moved around to intersect (or not).

The circles A, B and C can represent properties. For example:

A: The property of being Male
B: The property of having black hair
C: The property of having blue eyes

Then the inequality says: (number of males with non-black hair) plus (number of black haired people with non-blue eyes) is more than (number of males with non-blue eyes). You can stare at this until you realize it’s true… or just use the diagram above to aid your intuition!

Bell’s Inequality Doesn’t Hold Up in Quantum Physics!

In fact, this inequality turns out to be untrue in quantum physics. This can be considered a proof that the quantum world is alien, or a proof that Quantum Mechanics has no underlying “classical physics” interpretation (because classical physics obeys set theory!)

There are complications in how the measurements are done, and how they are done simultaneously, but I can give a sketch of how the properties A B and C are chosen to violate the inequality. Consider a spinning electron.

Electrons always spin, and they always spin about an axis, like the earth. Like the Earth, the electron can be considered to have a “north pole” - an arrow that points out from the center of the spinning electron. The arrow has a chance of pointing any direction in 3-dimensional space. But for the purposes of this thought experiment, picture a map (with north/south/east/west all labelled) spread out on a table, and imagine the electron sitting on the map. Then there’s a chance that the arrow could be pointed in any of the compas directions. Now we can define our properties A B and C:

A: The arrow is closer to North than South
B: The arrow is closer to NorthEast than SouthWest
C: The arrow is closer to East than West

If we use this choice of the properties A B and C, then Bell’s Inequality (and our common sense) is violated! The chance of (A but not C) exceeds that of (A but not B) plus (B but not C). If this doesn’t make sense, then you are thinking clearly: it should not make sense. Quantum Mechanics is not gentle with our intuitions. And yet, by its predictive power, it appears to be the way the world works.

This is as far as I will go here, but anyone interested in learning more ways our intuition is subverted should make the Double Slit Experiment their introduction to the field of Quantum Mechanics. Happy learning!

Posted 9 months ago

7 notes

bell's inequality, electron, entanglement, intuition, mathematics, new memes, paradox, physics, properties, quantum mechanics, quantum physics, science, set theory, spin, venn, venn diagram, double slit experiment,

Meme Engine "new memes"

The Tumblr Turing Test

“Invincible Optimism”

What I’m Listening To…

Visual Proof of Bell’s Inequality

Bell’s Inequality Doesn’t Hold Up in Quantum Physics!

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