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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Healyje,
Doug is a close friend, and one of the things we recently lamented was being far apart from one another because we miss our conversations. They most always include disagreements which lead to the opening of our minds. (I can’t help but smile here.) Should I suspect that this is not a notion that you’re comfortable with?
We find our conversations are dialogues. We have disagreements, they fester, and one of us comes back to the other and says, “you know, i’ve been thinking about what you said.”
I don’t know what kind of friends that you have. The ones I most hold dear are those who are honest gentle and with me. Would you say you are that, . . . with me?
Be well.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Here's the random number generator Cloudflare uses for generating encryption keys...
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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One accepted measure of randomness: delicate atmospheric changes in values.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Is conscious awareness really what is important about human mind. I think love is greater. If you had to give up one which one would you choose. I'd keep love. Existence without love would be pretty blah.
And it's not just humans that feel love. Many mammals are capable of it. So is conscious awareness the only reflection of the divine when love is perhaps a more more important component of mind?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Dec 10, 2017 - 06:04am PT
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Nice answer, Ed. For anyone who is interested in the problem of generating random numbers and the possible distinction between chaos and "truly" random, the guy from random.org explains it nicely:
https://www.random.org/randomness/
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 10, 2017 - 11:06am PT
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Donald Knuth's Chapter 3 - Random Numbers in volume 2 "Seminumerical Algorithms" of his Art of Computer Programming is probably the most comprehensive discussion of pseudo-random number generation. It is outdated in the sense that large threaded codes on multiple nodes need to coordinate random number generation to insure that correlations aren't introduced in the calculations employing them.
A trivial example (though one that recurs with great frequency) is starting N tasks in parallel with the same random number seed, which results in all tasks providing the identical answers in the end, not the intent of parallelizing the task.
The shear number of random numbers required for large modern computations stress Knuth's offerings, and while a lot of work has been done in this area, no one that I know of has stepped up to the challenge of providing a review on the same order as Knuth's.
If any of you know of one I'd like to know, I'm not totally engaged in this field.
Knuth wrote in the introductory section of the chapter: "The moral of this story is that random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random. Some theory should be used." And he delivers.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 10, 2017 - 04:50pm PT
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What is mind?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 10, 2017 - 06:05pm PT
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What is subconscious mind?
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 10, 2017 - 06:21pm PT
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The gross materialists can't control their minds because their minds are always agitated by the inferior material energies ......
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 10, 2017 - 07:07pm PT
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Just see ^^^^ the gross materialist had a knee-jerk reaction.
Proves he can't control his mind.
His mind IS controlling him ......
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 10, 2017 - 07:58pm PT
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I hope you get reincarnated as Jim Brennan and not as dung beetle ......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 11, 2017 - 07:25pm PT
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...inferior material energies...
God if that hasn't been dogging my climbing since day one - I'm not worthy...
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Dec 12, 2017 - 04:17am PT
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What is mind?
There have been various psychological studies that consider people's common sense "experience" of randomness and it tends to be very confused. When asked to write down or recognize randomness, untrained people do a poor job. With training they can do better. I imagine you wouldn't want just anyone to use their common sense idea of randomness to encrypt your bank account and credit cards.
The untrained mind is confused about randomness, but something about this subject can be (and has been) learned.
What is mind? The mind is something that can learn about the world.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 12, 2017 - 07:21am PT
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What is Mind
This month's Dec Sc Am has an article, I Feel Your Pain, p 60 -63 has an article on the three types of empathy.
1. Emotional empathy -- sharing another's feelings and matching that person's behavior states is a biological response found in many different found in many different species that evolved in the context of prenatal care and group living.
2. Cognitive empathy, also called perspective taking or theory of mind is the capacity to think about and understand another one's feelings.
3. The empathetic concern, or compassion, adds the motivation to do something about another's feelings.
Emotional empathy can be sometimes disturbing in that it allows one to empathize as if the situation is solely us vs. them. Todays Alabama election may hinge on women's empathy to understand their man as for how they got [miss?]treated and for the how men are getting mistreated by women accusers as they do see that treatment as the status quo. In other words, they empathize with their man rather than with other mistreated women. Tribal empathy?
see:
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/roy-moore-s-white-female-voters-are-part-long-history-ncna827976
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/video/roy-moore-in-the-alabama-senate-race-is-a-win-for-tribalism-1114233411736
Cognitive empathy is our source of judgment. As for what is mind, I see the ScAm author also calls cognitive empathy, theory of mind. Is theory of mind part of what is mind?
Compassion is more at the universal feeling for anyone.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 12, 2017 - 07:49am PT
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Largo has it right.
You guys do not even come close to "What is Mind".
You are ONLY observing the effects of the mind.
The mind itself you remain clueless too.
Just the same you do with life, you only observe the effects of life, and remain ultimately clueless to the living entity itself.
It's NOT as simple as just material data, measurements, and instruments.
When you use only those you come only to incomplete mechanistic conclusions.
Life itself is beyond the mechanistic realm.
It requires one completely studying one's self wholesale.
Darwin's whole theory is just that an incomplete theory that is without the conclusion of the life force itself.
The gross materialists never consult the life-force manufacturer, they just scoff and claim there is NO need for one (scientism).
Yet everything the gross materialists make has a manufacturer and when a problem arises they consult that manufacturer.
The gross materialists are hypocrites and think THEY are god .......
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Dec 12, 2017 - 08:02am PT
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Yanqui wrote this a few posts back.
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.
I would have to say that I do not agree with this at all. Free will does not depend on randomness in the universe, although there are almost certainly events in the universe that are random like radioactive decay as Moose pointed out. But let's just imagine that everything is absolutely determined. It has no affect on the free will problem. If the number of variables that go into a decision; my genes, my long- and short-term memory about the subject, whether I had a good night's sleep etc. are large enough, it would be essentially the same. I would believe that I truly have control over my decisions, and yet I don't. It is an illusion.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 12, 2017 - 08:31am PT
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yanqui: There have been various psychological studies that consider people's common sense "experience" of randomness and it tends to be very confused. When asked to write down or recognize randomness, untrained people do a poor job. With training they can do better. I imagine you wouldn't want just anyone to use their common sense idea of randomness to encrypt your bank account and credit cards. The untrained mind is confused about randomness, but something about this subject can be (and has been) learned.
You seem to be supposing that there is a thing that can be grasped called, “mind.” As a thing, it can be defined and delineated is implied, just as a bank account or credit card can be.
I’d suggest you look a bit more closely. It appears that you have a mind, yes? And what is that you experience of it? If you note (and believe) what you wrote above, you report that mind appears (to someone) as randomness, confusion. You are saying that mind includes that, as well. Mind can present itself as all of those things and anything else in your imagination. If you get that, if you see or admit that, then you may see that mind cannot be defined or delineated.
What is mind? The mind is something that can learn about the world.
That’s a start. Use it to learn about the mind, which includes the world, which makes up the world, which projects your world to you.
Again, this is clumsy writing. I’m just repeating what the Duck was pointing to (in his inimitably gentle way).
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Dec 12, 2017 - 10:56am PT
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That’s a start. Use it to learn about the mind, which includes the world, which makes up the world, which projects your world to you.
How do you account for those things which exert real determinative effects but somehow successfully escape being included in the worm ouroboros of the above quote ?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 12, 2017 - 12:19pm PT
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If you note (and believe) what you wrote above, you report that mind appears (to someone) as randomness
Not what he said. Read more carefully.
Edit: Maybe I'm mistaken. Not sure what he said. Non-deterministic algorithms? Some element of randomness in mental processes?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Dec 12, 2017 - 04:06pm PT
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eeyonkee: Perhaps I wasn't very clear. Looking back from my perspective I see this: Dingus said:
"People are not thought to be exactly finite automata because they can seemingly create new choices."
And then several people expressed the possibility that the mind is determined but unpredictable. So my thought (pure speculation, really) was that maybe some aspects of human thought work something like nondeterministic algorithms (instead of deterministic ones) and that this could be a meaningful way to interpret "free will". Nondeterministic algorithms use pseudo-random, or even (assuming they actually exist) true random inputs to produce a probabilistic interpretation (something is probable or improbable, based on the randomness that is encountered). Anyways this seemed to be one possible way to interpret Dingus's comment about "creating new choices" and it could also offer a possibility of thought processes that aren't in the category of "determined" but "unpredictable", but instead are not determined in some real sense. This was all speculation on my part. However, the idea of probabilistic, randomized or non deterministic algorithms is very much a part of current computer science.
But now that you mention it, I think that my idea of "free will" as the opposite of "determined as a function of the past" does not capture many of our common sense uses of the term. When we talk about "free choice" and "control", I think you may be right: we usually don't mean the opposite of "determined as a function of the past". However, I think I disagree with you, if you say our all (or even most) common sense uses of "free choice" and "control" are about illusions.
More later, I gotta go now!
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