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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 8, 2017 - 02:44pm PT
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Dingus McGee said: Been there, done that...
Please, Dingus. You're groping around and yanking meditation quotes out of context and flubbing the entire subjective realm betrays a flim flam approach to all of this.
Note that absence of any honest questions to Mike per all he said. We understand your are seeking to understand so it's no fault to ask honest questions about what you're hoping to understand. Trying to bluff understanding is makes an otherwise intelligent person feel like a poser.
Per free will, the problem I'm seeing here is that most people here are using a computer metaphor to try and understand how human decision making happens. Especially the decisions made during the early phase of a new or creative adventure, when the brain cannot provide ready made outputs.
Remember that consciousness is the melding of a mechanical brain and awareness which itself is not beholden to any outcome or any choice. When the brain serves up data per whatever our attention is focused on, that data is available not only to awareness, but to the full panoply of selves that have ideas about everything, so ideas come flying in from many angles. So the creative process is a mix and match job of juggling auto generated first tier outputs with reflection along with our peanut gallery of selves and preferences chiming is as needed and unbidden. Awareness allows us to hit the pause button as the unconscious grinds through the options.
When this process really separates itself from a determined (but perhaps unpredictable computer or machine model) is during the revision process. As a writer, I know that it's all about the revisions, which is where a given piece is slowly but surely realized. Or not. The difference between a first draft and a final draft is often significant.
Computer modeling will also only deal with what is largely cognitive data, facts and figures, whereas humans can draw on feelings, sensations, musings, memories, and so forth, which can shape the other data in unique ways.
When you look carefully at the underlying issues with what most people are calling determinism, what they are usually beholden to is an output that can be causally understood in classical terms, as a computation, whereby the brain made the decision "all by itself," with the conscious agent only as a meaningless bystander who "only thinks he is making a decision." This is all wrapped up with the "Genesis Theory," a preverbal conviction that everything (decisions in this regards) HAS to have been created and issue from some identifiable thing, object, thought, etc., all of which are presumed to be determined. If a decision was actually free it violates the Genesis Theory leaving us to ask, well then where did the decision come from since everything comes from somewhere? The "comes from" part is the classical sticking point because to our discursive minds, the only thing that came from nothing at all was everything, viva the big ass bang, though even that is debatable given that "nothing" is rippling with potentiality.
And John, my QM friends are quick to point out that they can make fantastically accurate predictions about what atomic level stuff (most have abandoned particle modes in favor of quantum field theory) will do, but they are clueless about what that stuff IS. In fact it is highly debatable if it is even "there" in the classical sense of the term, as in the "ball" being over "there."
This leads to interesting takes on the classical theory and especially the Genesis Theory, when the "what" something comes from is not stuff in the way our discursive minds insist it must be.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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...consciousness is the melding of a mechanical brain and awareness...
Wow, now we're finally starting to get somewhere 18+k posts later.
"Melding" - please elaborate.
...the full panoply of selves...
Again, please elaborate.
...as the unconscious grinds...
Real progress! The subconscious at work absent conscious awareness and subjective experience. What mind-boggling implications...
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Remember that consciousness is the melding of a mechanical brain and awareness which itself is not beholden to any outcome or any choice
I would say awareness is an outcome of brain activity, for I see no other possibility - which doesn't mean there is none.
I hope you are assembling this material for a book on the subject. (seriously, not meant as sarcasm).
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I've been thinking more and more about the way words affect our understanding of this subject -- the subject of mind and consciousness and awareness and stuff. I'll bet that if we probed deep enough, we would find that all of us have internalized somewhat different meanings of these terms. I know for sure that I have changed my mind from one day to the next. I posted a week ago or so a definition of consciousness that I just thought up that minute, and, upon reflection, am back to my old view. But what I realized in that little turn was that we are missing some words that would help distinguish the shades of meaning that we are trying to argue for. I would call them nodes as a software guy.
For instance, this post was mainly prompted by healyje's mention of the subconscious in his post praising Largo. I realized that just the existence of the word "subconscious" made my earlier definition of consciousness as clearly incorrect. My thought at the time was for a more inclusive definition, because I was looking for a name to associate with that most fundamental aspect that evolved in life; the ability to respond to the outside world -- the ability to respond to light is maybe the most fundamental of this kind of behavior. But clearly, all of that low-level responding to light sh#t is like assembly language in a computer metaphor. Consciousness is something on a higher level (DUH!).
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WBraun
climber
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eeyonkee -- "I've been thinking ...."
Obvious isn't it ..... :-)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Moose,
“Imagine we program a computer/robot to be able to make decisions.”
I think you summed up much of the issue re choice, decision making, will (how much is constrained v how much is free), randomness, agency, competence, etc in your earlier post. Great post.
Computers make decisions; they decide based on their inputs and programming. All of it is mechanistic/deterministic in terms of an underlying ruleset. Randomness else probabilities or stochastics plays a role too.
The nervous systems of living things, and their bodies too, are, at base, subject to the very same rules and dynamics although of course at levels much more complex - and mesmerizing - due to construction by evolutionary means as opposed to construction by engineering means.
I do think more of the public would be in agreement with your post and this overall scientific model if more of it had experience across the physical and life sciences including interdisciplinary systems, control, information, communications engineering. Maybe somehow in 100 years, eh?
I try to remember that just 150 years ago, much of the public couldn’t read or write and a main mode of transportation was horseback. We’ve come a long ways in a mere six generations. So much to be thankful for. I guess.
...
I heard Douglas Murray say something a few months back that has stuck with me a long time now. Basically it's that Big Ideas, like darwinian evolution (let alone any automata model of biology), take a long time to seep through society and a long time to work out their consequences. He also made the point that because of this, just about everything idea wise and ideology wise is up in the air right now engendering in a lot of us a lot of uncertainty, confusion, doubt, anxiety, and so forth in ways previous generations never had to deal with, for example in regards to ability to predict the future. Rather unsettling but it seems to explain a lot.
Like Dawkins, though, I am glad I was born in an age where so much knowledge and discovery is accessible and so much opportunity and freedom (to do stuff) is at our fingertips.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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A hundred and fifty years ago a new result in mathematics might appear in Nature. Then came the big math journals, then came the specialty math journals since abstract math has become so specialized.
just about everything idea wise and ideology wise is up in the air right now engendering in a lot of us a lot of uncertainty, confusion, doubt, anxiety, and so forth in ways previous generations never had to deal with
MikeL displays and discusses this pretty well.
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WBraun
climber
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We’ve come a long ways in a mere six generations.
No, we haven't, mostly backward into puffed up polished weak cavemen ......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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perhaps relevant to the "free will" discussion, consider:
blindsight
"Blindsight challenges the common belief that perceptions must enter consciousness to affect our behavior;[3] it shows that our behavior can be guided by sensory information of which we have no conscious awareness.[3]"
If we have no conscious awareness, what then of "free will"?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Here's my take on the "free will" stuff. In pure mathematics there is a fairly precise distinction between "computable" and "random". Turing used this in his seminal work. However, there is no general consensus about what an infinite "random sequence" should be. When it comes to algorithms, we can distinguish between a deterministic algorithm and a non-deterministic algorithm. So my question for the physicists is this: do there exist processes that are random? These are processes that are not expressible as a function of the past (compatible with definitions of "random sequence" in pure mathematics). If such a process can exist then there can be processes that are algorithmic but not deterministic, because these additional algorithms can depend on a random input.
In general, I would ask that anyone who claims to "know": about "free will" should be able to distinguish clearly among " predictable", "determined", "algorithmic: and "random". Is there Anyone out there capable of doing this in a "Bourbaki" kind of precision? If not, maybe we should just say "we don't know yet" when it comes to this.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Ditto for awareness.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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...in a "Bourbaki" kind of precision?
how many people on this forum know what this refers to? 6?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Bourbaki: Famous psychotic math professor with multiple personality syndrome. Stay clear!
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Largo,
Largo,
Trying to bluff understanding is[sic] makes an otherwise intelligent person[?] feel like a poser.
you would know
Let's talk about posers? I have heard how you plagiarized a photo and rewrote the story of the street person and posted it on another thread of ST.
Such action is disgusting, but after all, you are the little man behind the curtain.
I have been to emptiness enough times to know there is no way to tell others of these highly undifferentiated experiences without coming across as somewhat incoherent in a manner like you recently posted. Hence I use the wording, Been there, done that ... as I normally have no need to tell these unrelatable experiences.
It is the style of your defense on this forum, which is that you rant how you have the experience [like a religious fanatic would], while those without such (e.g. emptiness experience) are disqualified, as knowing & competent by your standards. Bluffing? When challenged I can lay out some credentials. Mr. Pot I do lack the credentials of the proverbial kettle.
Having the experience of emptiness is almost trite and it makes me not one iota any wiser than others. It is something not to cherish.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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That's the spirit, Moose!
"
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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I hope you are assembling this material for a book on the subject.
I believe that a young fresh talent is developing a new picture that will overturn previous understanding of these issues. The working title is, "Uh-Oh!"
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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So my question for the physicists is this: do there exist processes that are random?
There are processes that we describe as random, radioactive decay is one of them, but whether or not they are "truly random" is a question to be answered by experiment, and our finite ability to make those measurements places some uncertainty on the observations.
I could go into a detailed example if there is some interest.
Quantum mechanics is wholly based on "randomness" in the sense that the states we imagine in the Hilbert Space description of a system are not directly accessible to observation, these so called "amplitudes" are complex vectors in this space, and we do not observe complex numbers as a result of the outcome of experiment.
The "intensity" of the states can be observed, e.g. if we have an amplitude described by the wave function ψ we observe ψ*ψ. By the rules of QM if we have a system described by two states we add the amplitudes ψ₁+ψ₂ and observe |ψ₁+ψ₂| which is ψ₁*ψ₁+ψ₁*ψ₂+ψ₂*ψ₁+ψ₂*ψ₂ the cross terms do not cancel. When viewed as a "probability" the various intensity values are interpreted as the probability that the system ends up in a particular state, but that all such states are possible.
This is mixing the notions of randomness and probability, Garrett Birkhoff wrote (in Lattice Theory p197) that "Everyone talks about probability, but nobody can say what it is, to the satisfaction of others." He differs to Kolmogorov's slim volume (Foundations of Probability).
You can see this discussion spiraling out of control, with no chance that anyone would attempt anymore more of a response than their opinion (I wouldn't expect, for instance, that our grammar-monitor would read Birkhoff, though very readable and even witty, if one can follow the mathematics).
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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healyje: "Melding" - please elaborate.
Melding is welding—not brazing. (We could go on with these metaphors.)
I’m finishing up a design for a steel sculpture I just got approval for from my HOA to build and install in my front courtyard. It will be an abstract tree about 9.5’ X 13’ X 11’ in size, about 550# in weight. I’ll be floating five 4’ X 7’ perforated steel panels 5.5’ - 9.5’ up off the ground in a staggered formation. I initially overdesigned with large tubular steel, but now aesthetic considerations are encouraging me to downsize the tubes that hold the panels airborne. The panels weigh about 50lbs each, and they are held out from the trunk of the “tree” about 6 feet by hollow steel tubes (HSS). I tried to take rare 50 mph wind gusts into account, as the panels would be likely to flap.
How big do the “branches” need to be (size and thickness)? I found my way to “EngineersEdge.com” and to the formula for various beam-support configurations (https://www.engineersedge.com/beam_calc_menu.shtml); and to the HSS technical brochure describing sectional properties from the Steel Tube Institute (https://steeltubeinstitute.org/hss/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/06/v3-astm-dimensions-section-properties.pdf);. I couldn’t quite put all of the concepts and data together with the right formula.
I called an engineer who I used to climb and bike a lot with about my question. He’s a smart guy who left high tech for photography in Colorado. Initially I tried to describe as best I could what I was intending to do structurally in the sculpture’s design and what problems I saw. After about 5 minutes of detailed and exasperated explanation to him, he said to me:
“Mike, the further and more detailed you get into your question, the less you’re really going to know. What we [as engineers] do is over-design stuff for ‘just in case’ scenarios. Once we come up with our best estimates for requirements, them we double or triple them. Do I need a .5 volt switch? I’ll probably make it 1.0 volt because I don’t know if the computer is going to be hit by lightning or some strange thing is going to happen.”
I thought to myself: gosh, Doug, really? Is it truly a question of “extraordinary events,” or is it that you really don’t know what the thing really is, how it really performs, or the environmental conditions it really exists in?
(Anyway, he’s going to look at the data I sent him and get back to me. I suppose this is “Ignorant 101” problems for any engineer, huh?)
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Doug, really? Is it truly a question of “extraordinary events,” or is it that you really don’t know what the thing really is, how it really performs, or the environmental conditions it really exists in?
Titanic, Hindenburg, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Bhopal, Challenger, Oroville, etc. Predicting reality is no less a challenge than defining it so you might consider cutting Doug some slack (and I would have thought any post-modernist worth their salt would have been right in sync with him on this).
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