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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 1, 2018 - 08:12am PT
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The nervous system is one of the body's two control systems. It's a major contributor - if not thee major contributor - to our agency; and also to our ability and competence - and freedom as well - to go climb at will.
"I don't think you can, in a meaningful sense, claim that this is what humans look like or truly 'are'." Why not?
"Everything a human has ever learned during its life is encapsulated in this creature on the table. If it were alive somehow, it would think, it would still have a sense of self, and it would still be human, even if it were no longer experiencing the world in the same way." -Matt Taylor
Everyone should know about the so-called "brain in a vat" thought experiment...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat
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RussianBot
climber
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Gotta love the self-delusion of thus. Believing that we know the truth is as good as knowing the truth. For other people. But not to me because I know the truth. And to prove it I’m going to say it over and over and over and over and over again. Praise consciousness! Now if only I could stop saying it over and over and over and over again ...
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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HFCS, the "Brain in a Vat" thought experiment can be easily simulated if one learns the Art of Dreaming, or Lucid Dreaming (in which one's will is paramount). Years ago I learned this technique and experienced a world seemingly just as real, if not more sharply real, as normal reality.
Stephen King's and Peter Straub's "The Talisman" has a memorable passage in which the central character shifts into an alternate reality so sharp and clear one can smell an onion being pulled from the ground a mile away. This is not an exaggeration of a deep Dreaming experience.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 1, 2018 - 02:19pm PT
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re: "easily simulated"
jgill, is this more or less what you speak of?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream
If so, it seems to me I've had a few instances over the years and decades of lucid dreaming as well. Although very fleeting.
I think I do remember laughing about one or two as well, as my circuits apparently moved in or out of wakefulness near waking up.
Interesting. :)
The Art of Dreaming, by Carlos Casteneda
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Dreaming-Carlos-Castaneda/dp/006092554X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519942782&sr=8-1&keywords=the+art+of+dreaming
If you havent' already seen it, you might be interested in Anil Seth's TED talk. There is an idea, or set of ideas, in brain science gaining in popularity in recent years that all our perception (the qualia, the self-consciousness, intention, etc) is actually, for lack of a better word, "hallucination" kept in check - i.e., on the straight and narrow of objective reality - during wakefulness by its brain's continuous sensory input.
Here it is...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo&t=5s
David Eagleman, also a neuroscientist, author of The Brain, wonders same.
Use of the word "hallucination" seems problematic for this idea though, it seems to me.
And in the case of no sensory input, as by way of a sensory deprivation tank, e.g., the hallucinating runs wild, or at least has the potential to. Similarly with dreaming. Again, no sensory input - at least not of the signal strengths that typically accompany wakefulness. Anyways, that's the basic idea. A bit eerie.
Of course some posters here have been saying it from the beginning: that the brain's a perception machine (or perception generator) effectively - evolved to internally represent the outside objective world and to serve as controller for the body system and its needs as it navigates its environment. This links perfectly well to Seth's model and its ideas (above), Eagleman's model, etc.
...
"I feel bad for Unconsciousness. Consciousness does 1% of the work and takes 99% of the credit." -Dean Buonomano
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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For me, there seemed to be a significant difference between the Art of Dreaming and Lucid Dreaming in that the former was a product of intent and when it commenced I-consciousness was entirely controlled by the will. One becomes pure will. Lucid dreams also seem real but lack the control mechanism. At least that's what I recall. Could be different for others.
And, yes, the key to capturing the experience is "awakening" while in the hypnagogic state. This is most easily done by "programming" one's self with intent.
On the other thread, Largo distinguishes between the Art and his Zen experience by explaining that one has an "object" and the other lacks this quality. I contend that both are fascinating products of an active brain, and nothing more.
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WBraun
climber
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It's time to make YOU HFCS into a chimp.
Do the actual experiment or shut up.
No ... you won't, you'll just experiment on someone else because you're a coward.
When you do the actual experiment on your own self you'll get the actual experience yourself to whether it's actually beneficial or not.
Get to work Dr Frankenstein .........
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 9, 2018 - 09:44am PT
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Re agency and "free will", I am still waiting on the Sean Carroll Sam Harris showdown (podcast) to be uploaded. Apparently there is some editing, do-over or making-up between the two in the works.
In the meantime,
To those who attended the Sean Carroll talk last night, how was it?
"It seems to me that Sam had better points about Determinism and Sean wanted to hold on to the use of Free Will because it was more useful than dispensing with it entirely. So he seemed Compatibilist like someone else has said here."
"It was a fight to the finish. He pinned him down and then Sam was gasping for air. Carroll had him in a Humeian Headlock. Sam was visibly purple with cognitive dissonance before he tapped out and Victory was extolled."
https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/7zth6t/to_those_who_attended_the_sean_carroll_talk_last/
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 9, 2018 - 10:05am PT
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Dingus, couldn't agree more.
"...with funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Dynamics
It's right around the corner, somehow we (the world's nations and publics) have to get a lid on this.
Re dangerous AI, forget superhuman AGI, imo, the worry of many incl Musk, Harris, Gates and othes; my biggest fear is autonomous algorithms behind control systems in charge of large scale life and death decisions.
Autonomous swarms that have been weaponized that then make it into the hands of an adversary are the biggest concern.
Black Mirror covers some of these horrors.
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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I, Robot movie points out the failing potential of the three original laws, but they have been updated, yes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
Moose, you thinking of this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict
Munge, the premise of all those stories is that even if you think you have worked out a defensible scheme to protect us, there are holes in our logic and thinking that are not obvious. Developing a workable set of laws is non-trivial.
My bigger concern is that all the ethics planning and rules won't make a damn bit of difference, because some humans will decide to bypass these when creating their AIs. They will do this because of greed and hubris and an inaccurate estimation of their own ability to stop it after they have obtained maximum personal benefit. Or, a pissed off tyrant will do it to take out everyone with him/her. Or, a corporation will desire faster response time or better specs, and remove the extra loops of rule-checking to make the system perform better for a market advantage.
In any case, relying on ethics won't be enough to save us. But, we might have enough wisdom to treat them as a good parent would care for a child, instill a sense of ethics to protect us, from the other AIs that are not raised well (i.e. those raised by every government for "defense"). The main problem will be that the people who have the sense to do this will have less money and resources than the governments focusing on killing. So the ones to protect us will not be able to compete against the ones trying to kill us.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 21, 2018 - 09:23am PT
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While it seems vogue to worry, there are simple physical restrictions that place severe constraints on robots: energy efficiency being primary.
Considering the entire "life cycle" energy required to build and operate a robot, I conjecture that the total requirements far exceed those required by biological systems, and place robots in a disadvantaged position regarding competition for energy resources.
For example, estimated photosynthetic efficiency ranges from 3% to 6%. Evidenced obtained from remote sensing of the Earth's oceans reveal that the phytoplankton produce roughly 58% less energy from light than the possible maximum (see http://geology.rutgers.edu/images/falkowski_gobunov_phil_trans_2017.pdf ). The lack of nutrients could explain this inefficiency of a biological system; put another way, more sunlight hits the surface than can be used by the phytoplankton.
But in any case, the efficiency range of a few percent includes all the other processes required for life, including reproduction. The fact that there is surplus energy, stored chemically as sugars and starches, provides a legacy we exploit in our modern world through the extraction of fossil fuels, which represent hundreds of millions of years of photosynthetic activity. Interestingly, our inefficient lifestyle will exhaust this resource in mere hundreds of years (maybe as few as two hundred). The release of all this sequestered carbon in the form of CO₂ in this short time period would likely render the climate uninhabitable for humans.
As far as I know, robots' energy demands would be unsustainable, certainly for large robots. "Microbots" also require tremendous infrastructure for production, and these as-yet-to-be produced entities have unknown life cycles with no proposed self-replicating capability. Even supposing they could be built and released as autonomous agents, they would all die eventually leaving no progeny.
Of all the things to fear, or marvel at, robots have to be far down the list.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Apr 21, 2018 - 11:09am PT
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Westworld, season two begins tomorrow (4/22). An interesting take on the "Singularity" with a very gradual path towards self-awareness. The Rachel Wood character embodies cyber-woman's empowerment. No trifling #MeToo whining here - cross this creature at your peril!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Apr 21, 2018 - 04:20pm PT
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$10,000/lb to get to Earth orbit.
around $800,000,000/lb to get to the Moon.
I don't think we're going to launch a major energy generator into space to save our asses.
Solar pannels are about 10W/lb
putting them in Earth orbit, $1,000/W or $1,000,000/kW
Electricity today costs about $0.10/kWh, so costing only the launch, it would take about 1,000 yrs to bring the electricity generated by orbiting solar panels down to the current cost of electricity generated on Earth.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 23, 2018 - 12:20pm PT
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dingus, jgill, check this out...
It’s Westworld. What’s Wrong With Cruelty to Robots?
By Paul Bloom and Sam Harris
Moral: Don't murder, rape, or torture robots because (a) they might be conscious and (b) even if they aren't, it's likely to corrode your interactions with real people.
Food for thought. :)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/23/opinion/westworld-conscious-robots-morality.html
we might one day create conscious machines...
For the record, I'm not holding my breath.
(You can open in a private window (no cookies) or else in a fresh browser if this NYTimes piece is behind a paywall.)
...
60 Minutes last night was all about agency, power and freedom - from Hugh Herr and the MIT Media Lab to Alzheimer's.
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WBraun
climber
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May 11, 2018 - 04:31pm PT
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St00pid modern gross materialists wasting their time making a st00pid inferior machine while they are already within a machine themselves.
And all these fools think are advancing all while unknown to them they are devolving .......
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