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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Oct 11, 2017 - 07:00am PT
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The question of intelligence and its limitations is something science needs to think seriously about because the implications are staggering.
To some extent these kinds of questions show up in math and logic and are sometimes answered, in the sense of what is logically possible (or not). I'm sure many scientists have also thought about this too. It's an interesting and very hard problem and some advances have been made. One thing about some of your claims: it's logically possible that intelligence exists, as you say, in a continuum, say "values" of intelligence could somehow be ranked from less to more but there is no absolute maximum ever obtained however there is some finite, absolute bound (i.e. there is no "infinite intelligence", there is no "maximum intelligence" but there is an "absolute limit" to intelligence). I'm not saying this is an interesting way to think about intelligence I'm just saying it's mathematically possible to have a model that behaves this way.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 11, 2017 - 07:04am PT
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who knew that "three quarks for Muster Mark!" would provide a name for the constituents of baryonic matter... the guy who appropriated it didn't teach English either...
No, but the guy who wrote it did teach English. I wonder if the guy who appropriated it had any idea what it actually means?
Again, a problem with ergo. You love to extrapolate and call it fact.
I'm not calling it fact. I have no idea if there is a "superior" intelligence. I'm just pointing out the available logical assumption (a logical possibility) which I think is uncomfortable to many here
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 11, 2017 - 07:30am PT
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I wonder if the guy who appropriated it had any idea what it actually means?
I am pretty confident that he did.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Oct 11, 2017 - 08:12am PT
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Mh2, I thought it was pretty obvious that the part of the brain one experiences in meditation is the unconscious mind which is busy running the show while the discursive monkey mind skips around on the surface. Most of what goes on in our brain is unconscious which is a surprise to many of those immersed in the discursive world. Psychedelics bring about this same realization because they open up the unconscious and are such a powerful experience, they make a person aware that there is more to the mind than the monkey brain. I believe dreams used to serve this function in the past but modern man gets so little sleep, he doesn't remember most dreams and has fewer of them.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 11, 2017 - 08:53am PT
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The question of intelligence and its limitations is something science needs to think seriously about because the implications are staggering.
I think this is happening, in particular, the recent citation regarding the problems of "seeing" wrongly-scaled objects in a scene compares the performance of humans to AI systems that also recognize scenes. The title of that article leaves no doubt:
Humans, but Not Deep Neural Networks, Often Miss Giant Targets in Scenes
Here the pattern recognition developed in AI systems are optimized "by design" as opposed to the human systems which are legacies of evolutionary development. The human recognition out performs the AI system in terms of "false positives" (seeing something in the scene that isn't there) because of the "inaccuracy" of looking at the scene, that is, using the probability that a toothbrush has a "normal size" rather than something that is an oversized object (with respect to the scene).
The AI system is built using the best science we have regarding pattern recognition, and trained using the best science we have regarding learning. Then the performance is tested against a human "standard."
We learn through all this what "intelligence" is, and what it's limits are, and if that doesn't already stagger you then you're not paying attention.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 11, 2017 - 09:05am PT
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Both intelligence and the human standard have both devolved in this day and age completely contrary to what the modern gross materialist believe .....
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Oct 11, 2017 - 09:18am PT
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Jan, succinctly put.
Werner doesn’t waste words or electrons either. ;-)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 11, 2017 - 09:38am PT
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I am pretty confident that he did.
Not so sure about that. Mark was an important figure in the history of lit. representing in no small part the shift from Medieval to Renaissance thinking and the diminishment of religious authority. Always wondered if Gell-Mann knew what he was doing with that term.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 11, 2017 - 11:03am PT
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PPSP SAID: There are different degrees of the pre-narrative state . It is called concentration style meditation, so different degrees of concentration. Therevadens call it The Jhanas. You really can't do them; they generally do you. And then attempt to make narrative to share your experience if you so choose.
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Spot on IME, except part of doing the immaterial Jhanas is NOT concentrating, which implies efforting to achieve some state, place, knowledge, being state, or whatever. But trying to discern this from a supposed 3rd person "view from nowhere" cannot possibly betray what is at play here - or more accurately, what's not.
If you have to ask, "Why go there," then simply put, that kind of work is not for you. Much at the Jhanas and all the pre-cognitive stuff is talked about that work is a billion miles outside mainstream meditation and you will have to look high and low to find anyone specifically working on that route, though everyone who can "shut up and just observe" works on it in some form. But the narrative is NOT the terrain (or non-terrain), it's what we discursively SAY about the terrain. And unless you traverse onto it, or the Jhanas drag you there, it remains deeply buried in the background, and you get people peering from afar guessing what it is, slapping on labels, insisting that you are misinterpreting terrain they have never encountered.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Oct 11, 2017 - 11:35am PT
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I certainly agree with you that many people love to talk about terrain they have never encountered, but I'm puzzled by this statement. Can you explain a little more please?
Much at the Jhanas and all the pre-cognitive stuff is talked about that work is a billion miles outside mainstream meditation and you will have to look high and low to find anyone specifically working on that route, though everyone who can "shut up and just observe" works on it in some form.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 11, 2017 - 12:30pm PT
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Hi Jan:
This stuff is tricky to describe because it all comes down before descriptions.
Once you start working on what lurks BEHIND the veil, the practice is less about trying to arrive somewhere, then slowly easing out of our normal MO thereby establishing the conditions for the Jhans (just a word) to naturally arise, because that is what's there. Normal meditation is one or another version of working with the veil, so to speak. Learning to stabilize your attention and learning to simply observe, with detachment and acceptance, whatever content arises.
Here, we let go of observing, concentrating, close focusing on things/objects - including thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories/plans, not paying attention or trying to follow along with whatever is happening.
This requires a bunch of subtle internal shifts that are not encountered in regular meditation. In fact they run counter to most meditation practices, IME. The only "terrain" left to inhabit is our "amness." Even saying "I-Amness" is misleading because the I is gone.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 11, 2017 - 12:43pm PT
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Interesting commentaries on the intricacies of meditation. Someday science may map all these phenomena, but perhaps fall short of explaining them. Inner mysteries all of us can contemplate.
(As an aside, and maybe for Andy, I'm looking for a simple graph showing the average decline of dopamine as we age. Maybe a function describing it. Thanx.)
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 11, 2017 - 01:34pm PT
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Someday science may map all these phenomena,
They will not map anything.
If they do then it will not be the phenomena anymore but something static that grew inside their fertile out of control minds.
The gross materialists only know some tiny little temporary inferior phenomena and then arrogantly claim they are advancing.
Even a donkey does and can do that by braying into the wind ......
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 11, 2017 - 02:00pm PT
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Yes, the burro assumes that if it carries the gross materialists horseh!t it will then get some foodstuff.
The same way the gross materialists collects data that's already gone and believes that data will ultimately give him some foodstuffs.
Neither of em even have clue from where the actual foodstuffs ultimately really come from ......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 11, 2017 - 02:28pm PT
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Most of what goes on in our brain is unconscious which is a surprise to many of those immersed in the discursive world.
But would not be a surprise to almost any student of brain science.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 11, 2017 - 02:42pm PT
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Largo:
But trying to discern this from a supposed 3rd person "view from nowhere" cannot possibly betray what is at play here - or more accurately, what's not.
This is priceless.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 11, 2017 - 03:05pm PT
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Yes!
Jim is right.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Oct 11, 2017 - 03:35pm PT
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The power of reflex is a pretty neutral subject or one that a person can brag about. The emotions locked in the unconscious mind, are much more difficult to perceive and understand, particularly when they're negative and go against society's teachings.
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