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Jim Clipper
climber
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Nov 21, 2018 - 12:39pm PT
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self-organizing system entropy? huh. Not why I came here, sorry to interrupt. what to do...
Last one...
Went to visit the practitioner, and others. His brother was ill, and it was a chance to get together...
Practitioner had aged. Bad arthritis.. He broke rocks with his hands. His teachers would tell him, no one is that hard.
"Lost" a leg in a contest. It stopped. He said he wanted to keep going. Throw his opponent, and use his jujitsu.
He was maybe a little stooped. Kept saying, "This old guy, no hair, no teeth."
just remembered, put out a candle? another story..
my 2 cents. Hope it doesn't seem out of context. Putin is not a red belt. Full stop. I'd take that to my grave, maybe at best.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 21, 2018 - 02:23pm PT
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The entire universe is a self-organizing system
"self-organization" is an interesting idea, but once again, the question arises, who is the "self" , what is "organized" in it, and what is "organization."
These are heavily human centric ideas.
How do you recognize something like "organization"?
How do you avoid the context in which organization takes place, starting with the question what agent does the organization?
Once again, the use of such a familiar word by scientists can lead to many misconceptions regarding what it is they are talking about.
All valid questions IMO, but remember, the links provided are simply introductory interviews and question-answer stuff meant to introduce people to vastly counterintuitive data. Hoffman, who is setting out to fashion a theory of mind/reality by way of mathematical equations, will no doubt use other terms to frame his findings, but imagine the confusion should he trot those out in an introductory lecture. Neil Theise is a little more exact with his terms, and people are still lost and arguing points vastly beside the point of what they are driving at.
I'm not a staunch follower of any of this, at least not to the letter, but it's fun and instructive to to take their point of view as a thought experiment (once you understand their drift), to put on Hoffman's hat, so to speak, and try and answer Ed's question from that perspective.
Take this first block from Ed: "self-organization" is an interesting idea, but once again, the question arises, who is the "self" , what is "organized" in it, and what is "organization."
First, we accept for the moment that there is no "real," permanent stuff that stands apart from the rest of the world (world here means the whole enchilada). To me, "self" in this regards pertains to the fact that the universe is not homogeneous, is not uniform, identical, unvaried. Even on an atomic level, what we label electrons and so forth are different from each other, just as thoughts and feelings are different and not the same. While Theise would label all of this qualia, he's quick to note that the qualia vary, in form and complexity.
"Self," then, would refer to that which varies, and while it organizes in increasingly complex structures (all impermanent), there is no independent external physical stuff that "causes" the variation. The "what" that organizes is the qualia, and organization in this regards is complexification process itself.
If you were to don Hoffman's hat, just as a thought experiment - not to prove him wrong, but to explore his ideas - how might you put it?
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capseeboy
Social climber
portland, oregon
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Nov 21, 2018 - 02:35pm PT
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Largo thx 4 ur 10:55 & 11:42 posts today.
I looked at the beginning of this thread. Has anyone come up with why we have consciousness?
Cheers!
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Jim Clipper
climber
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Nov 21, 2018 - 02:35pm PT
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Like I've said before. My last post.
Context?
self organizing, or replicating? entropy? I thought it was interesting. Where is the miracle?
edit: I may have confused the mountains. Memory is faulty, experience virtual. Please correct me.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 21, 2018 - 02:49pm PT
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Has anyone come up with why we have consciousness?
There is NO why.
We are part parcel of the whole original consciousness itself.
When we come in contact with the material plane our original pure consciousness becomes perverted due to us not being complete and only part parcel of the whole.
The complete whole never becomes contaminated by the material plane as it is the source of the material plane.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 21, 2018 - 04:59pm PT
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It's ALL appearances.
We can work with that.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 21, 2018 - 07:29pm PT
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Idealism and specifically Hoffman's scientific version of it fail to answer the question of how is it that we agree on so much of what we perceive if we are each generating our own realities. Why do we subjectively agree on so much? That alone is problematic enough let alone the question of how minds evolve if they themselves create time.
And it should be noted that Hoffman has pursued research into perception and cognition via simulations comprising of agents within models with a dial on the agents' level of perceptual filtering. In that context, it's no surprise agents with optimal contextual filtering are more performant than those less optimized and that's true both in simulations and in real life where organisms' neurological systems are optimized for a 'just right' level of perceptual modeling. But it's not a matter of 'hiding reality' as Hoffman has latched onto, but rather simply a matter of each organism has a finite set of resources available for decision-making and taking action thus has to filter (optimize to available resources) down to what matters. Again it may seem like semantics relative to Hoffman, but it's not.
Ultimately I think his fundamentalist father won in the end and Hoffman, like most people, just can't tolerate unanswered questions so fills in the gaps accordingly. Cleverer than most by half, but his form of idealism really doesn't hold up in the end and he gives himself away when he says:
...so I’m very interested in eventually getting a mathematically precise notion of these things and a mathematically precise spirituality...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nov 21, 2018 - 08:06pm PT
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healyje: . . . how is it that we agree on so much of what we perceive if we are each generating our own realities. Why do we subjectively agree on so much?
It's a conspiracy. You're in on it.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 22, 2018 - 09:37am PT
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Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Nov 22, 2018 - 09:39am PT
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Not in Argentina it isn't! But thanks anyway, Largo!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 22, 2018 - 10:49am PT
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HTG from my mind to yours!
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 22, 2018 - 01:17pm PT
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Why do we subjectively agree on so much?
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My take on this is A) you're looking for stable external objects which you believe exist separate from the observer, and which confer sameness on said observers, and B), the agreement between us that our experience of blue or the brain or (fill in the blank) is owing to the fact that what we experience (for us humans - as a distinct species) is organized with a certain recognizable sameness.
One thing you might remember about Hoffman and others of this ilk is that they consider time and space to both be articles of experience, NOT qualities or phenomenon that exist outside of the experiencer. So the linear/causal "creation" angle gets junked from the outset. This is such a radical take on "reality" that it takes some getting used to in order to even imagine what is being claimed, given that our minds are, for example, disposed to consider all and everything as "existing" outside and beyond perception.
More interesting than his take on reality is the logic and reasoning that got him and others to this position. The fact that many scientists and computer geeks couldn't lever consciousness out of the mix is in large part what fueled Information Theory, and other developing takes on the whole shebang.
And few if any of them are saying to give up the measuring game. That's important to remember as well. It's just that consciousness, they feel, must be part of the equation per any comprehensive theory about reality.
One could look at all this as a counter argument to Dennett and others who believe that only the "objective" is real, whereas Hoffman and his cronies say exactly the opposite - though the reasons go deeper than that by a long shot.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 22, 2018 - 01:31pm PT
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there is objective space-time, it is very different from subjective space-time...
and the objective space-time is the background on which Hoffman's ideas play out.
and part of the "commonality" of the experience is due to the fact that we are taught a lot about how to interpret the experience (probably mostly taught).
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 22, 2018 - 03:03pm PT
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I’m walking the trail around Devil’s Tower, barefoot after a climb. My foot hits a rock. I see what is happening first, as my forward progress arrests and my arms fly out in front. About a second later, the serious pain arrives. Shortly after that, the gear sling, which had kept moving, arcing out and up, slams back into me.
And then I had to laugh.
I mention it now because of the ballet of physics and physiology involved in the incident. That was not how I interpreted it at the time, but it is a good example of how various aspects of our understanding of objective space-time co-ordinate so well with one another. It also shows how what I have been taught plays a part in how I view it now.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 22, 2018 - 03:17pm PT
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there is objective space-time, it is very different from subjective space-time...
and the objective space-time is the background on which Hoffman's ideas play out.
A friend puts it this way: From a Euclidean point of view, in our Universe, space is said to have 3 dimensions, x, y and z, while time measures the durations of events and the intervals between them. Of course some consider time as a dimension that orders events from past to future.
Ed’s “objective space-time” works off the first assumption that these dimensions are orthogonal, and independent. That is, they exist independent of the observer. Hoffman is clearly saying, not so.
Space and time are not the background over which reality plays out, and in which objects and phenomenon arise. They are just as much articles of experience as blue and the taste of chocolate are. That is, space and time arise out of mind, not the other way around.
As mentioned, this is a radical take on things, because it inverts our normal “folk” way of considering and measuring “things” (and especially "fundamentals"), relegating all to “qualia.” Put differently, from Hoffman’s perspective, neither space nor time exists independent of an observer.
If you say, "If we're mistaken about the nature of reality, then our actions won't work," then you've misunderstood what Hoffman is saying.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Nov 22, 2018 - 04:11pm PT
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Actually MH2, it seems to me the fact "pain" and "rock" and "foot" characterize your perception of reality at that moment, instead of other things you might "observe" or "experience", has a lot to do with what he's trying to formalize in his concept of a "fitness landscape".
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 22, 2018 - 08:39pm PT
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Why all the quote marks?
Actually, in the moment I was not thinking foot or pain or rock. I was aware of them and of surrounding trees, sky, tower, resin odours, and much more(edit: but aware of them at a sub-verbal level). However, in the act of telling what happened I did use words and cannot do a brain dump. The story must necessarily be told and received by what we refer to as "observers," without trying to define what an observer is.
Maybe what an observer is is supposed to be obvious. How is an observer introduced in Hoffman's fitness landscape? Is it just assumed that we know one because we are one?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Nov 23, 2018 - 02:52am PT
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The quotes were meant to emphasize the use of those particular words from natural language in the description. Me, I tend to be a lot less aware of what else might be going on when I smash my foot on a rock.
Beats me about Hoffman. All I know about him is that 10 minute video Largo put up, so I'm just speculating. However I would imagine that most people nowadays in our culture would insist that if you smash your foot on a rock it will cause pain. I think it's reasonable to ask to what extent "feet", "rocks", "pain" and "causes" give true descriptions of the natural world (So I'm a "quote" troll. Deal with it). It does seem that modern physics paints a somewhat different picture about what's "really" out there and I suppose our common sense interpretation has as much to do with human need ("fitness" sounds like an interesting possible match here) as it does with some sort of human-independent reality. Personally, I tend to be pragmatic about these things (in the philosophical sense) although I don't necessarily prescribe to any particular philosophical bent.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 23, 2018 - 08:52am PT
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I think my neurophysiology background played a role. It is quite interesting to directly experience the difference in conduction speed between large axons (100 m/sec) and small unmyelinated axons (1 m/sec). But that interpretation came a little after the events.
I think a lot depends on the level or scale we look at. For most practical purposes the world is solid and reasonably persistent. I think of Hoffman's ideas as a variant of: this may all be a dream or a computer simulation or a Tegmark universe or...
Sure could be, but then what?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 23, 2018 - 11:39am PT
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here is a link to MikeL's Jul 25, 2015 post quoting Hoffman, which started this off
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1593650&msg=2660973#msg2660973
and the article
Objects of consciousness
Front. Psychol., 17 June 2014
and a followup on the analysis:
Conscious agent networks: Formal analysis and application to cognition
"These results show that robust perception and cognition can be modelled independently of any ontological assumptions about the world in which an agent is embedded. Any agent-world interaction can, in particular, also be represented as an agent-agent interaction.
which would certainly imply conscious agents can exist outside of a biological setting....
While the authors take the view that local-causality should be abandoned, they would have better picked that realism should be "thrown overboard."
At this point, it is a philosophical choice... it will be interesting to see where the physics leads, but the abandonment of realism is much closet to what the authors propose and study in their models.
Nature, at least biological nature, does not implement the models in detail, though they may be functionally equivalent, and may result in the same behavior. The abandonment of realism would allow this to be perfectly natural.
My guess is that their formal theory can be reformulated without the assumption of realism (counterfactual definiteness) to a much better effect.
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