A question for tomorrow

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Another example in different domain is Coq.  

Scientists often aren't very good about reproducibility.   Recently, the psychology community has had a pound of flesh taken, but I'd argue it is a fundamental problem.   Good enough to publish isn't really that high a bar.  

Marcus

On 4/27/19, 7:26 PM, "Friam on behalf of Russell Standish" <[hidden email] on behalf of [hidden email]> wrote:

    On Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 12:52:02AM +0000, Marcus Daniels wrote:
    > Russell writes:
    >
    > < However, conversely, there appear to interesting results that indicate P=NP for random oracle machines. There is some controversy over this, though, and personally, I've never been able to follow the proofs in the area :). >
    >
    > Minimally, why is LaTeX the preferred format and not, say, Mathematica?   At least the latter makes it complete and computable.
   
   
    Convince Stephen Wolfram to open source Mathematica (or at least the
    typesetting bits of it), then there might be some chance of
    this. Otherwise, not so much.
   
    LaTeX got its head start by not only being superior to its
    competition, but also by being open source from the get go (unusual
    for the time). When LaTeX came out, the only thing better (at least
    according to some people) were incredibly expensive desktop publishing
    packages worth $10K or more (back when $10K was worth more than double
    that now).
   
   
    --
   
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Dr Russell Standish                    Phone [phone] (mobile)
    Principal, High Performance Coders
    Visiting Senior Research Fellow        [hidden email]
    Economics, Kingston University         http://www.hpcoders.com.au
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   
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[lrudolph]

> Thanks, Marcus.
>
> How often are proofs with errors published in refereed articles or
> textbooks?

Some years ago, when you guys in Santa Fe were reading Ruben Hersh's "18
Unconventional Essays on the Nature of Mathematics", I took the
opportunity to download a copy for myself.  Assuming you(-all) still have
your copies too, I recommend that you read (or reread) the
philosopher-of-mathematics Jody Azzouni's chapter, "How and why
mathematics is unique as a social practice", where he elaborates an idea
he calls "the benign fixation of mathematical practice".    Here's a brief
passage from that chapter (asterisks indicate italicized matter):
===begin===
Let’s turn to the second (*unnoticed*) way that mathematics
*shockingly* differs from other group practices. *Mistakes are ubiquitous
in mathematics.* [...] What makes mathematics difficult is (1) that it’s
*so easy* to blunder in; and (2) that it’s *so easy* for others (or
oneself) to see
—when they’re pointed out—that blunders have been made. (pp. 204 and 205
of Hersh's book)
===end===
If the claims in that passage are true (and they ring true to me), then
even the informal refereeing (from colleagues, friends, or students) to
which a proposed proof is subjected at the blackboard or in pre-print form
is likely to turn up mistakes, and even less-than-diligent formal
refereeing to which a proof submitted for publication is subjected most of
the time, are likely to lead to corrections before eventual publication;
and if errors persist (as they often do), then unless the publication goes
unread (as many do...) they too will likely be corrected, eventually.

None of this quantifies the "how often" question, but it is consistent
with the general consensus "not often (but sometimes), and eventually
corrected (unless no one gives a good goddamn about the result)".

For more on this, read the chapter by me at the following link (I may have
sent the list, or some subset of it, this chapter once before; sorry about
that), which (incidentally relevant to an earlier subthread) has a
footnote mentioning computations with unreliable oracles.

https://clarkuedu-my.sharepoint.com/personal/lrudolph_clarku_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Flrudolph%5Fclarku%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2Flogics%5Ffor%5Farxiv%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Flrudolph%5Fclarku%5Fedu%2FDocuments&cid=2d17a63c-3b2f-4b08-ada5-7f384570ef5a



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[Prof David West]

Last colonoscopy I was thoroughly anesthetized but totally conscious. In recovery room, doctor explaining he had removed three minor polyps and I interrupted to say I thought I counted four. Shocked look on his part then told me the fourth was more like a skin tag. The anesthesia did prevent feeling, just not consciousness. 

Dave west

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, at 8:35 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

No.  But people who are under light anesthesia such as during a colonoscopy sometimes talk.  I don't think they remember that.

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

My memoir:

https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 12:32 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Oh, yes.  We agree that I was unconscious.  And if you had been there, you would have experienced my unconsciousness.  But did I?  I think a person who adopts your position has to say, “No.”

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2019 12:16 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

Yes, you were unconscious.  As you know, I had that experience a few days ago.

 

Frank

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

My memoir:

https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 12:13 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Frank,

 

The problem is that one has immediately to ask, what is the contrast class of experiencing consciousness?  Experiencing non-consciousness?  I think for your line of thinking, where consciousness is direct, that’s an oxymoron.  For my line of thinking, when I woke up from my surgery and 24 hours had passed, I had a powerful experience of my non-consciousness. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2019 11:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

Jon,

 

How about "experiences consciousness" in place of has consciousness.

 

Frsnk

 

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

My memoir:

https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 11:03 AM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick,

 

I love that the title of this thread is 'A question for tomorrow'.

My position continues to be that the label `conscious` is meaningful,

though along with you, I am not sure what language to use around it.

For instance, can something have consciousness? That said, a

conservative scoping of the phenomena I would wish to describe

with consciousness language begins with granting consciousness

to more than 7 billion things on this planet alone. Presently, for those

that agree thus far, it appears that the only way to synthesize new things

with consciousness is to have sex (up to some crude equivalence).

This constraint seems an unreasonable limitation and so the problem

of synthesizing consciousness strikes me as reasonably near, ie.

 `a question for tomorrow` and not some distant future.

 

You begin by asking about the Turing machine, an abstraction which

summarizes what we can say about processing information. Here,

I am going to extend Lee's comment and ask that we consider

particular implementations or better particular embodiments.

 

Hopefully said without too much hubris, given enough time and

memory, I can compute anything that a Turing machine can compute.

The games `Magic the Gathering` and `Mine Craft` are Turing

complete. I would suspect that under some characterization, the

Mississippi river is Turing complete. It would be a real challenge

for me state what abstractions like `Mine Craft` experience, but

sometimes I can speak to my own experience. Oscar Hammerstein

mused about what Old Man River knows.

 

Naively, it seems to me that some kind of information processing,

though not sufficient, is necessary for experience and for a foundations

for consciousness. Whether the information processor needs to be

Turing complete is not immediately obvious to me, perhaps a finite-

state machine will do. Still, I do not think that a complete description of

consciousness (or whatever it means to experience) can exist without

speaking to how it is that a thing comes to sense its world.

 

For instance, in the heyday of analogue synthesizers,  musicians

would slog these machines from city to city, altitude to altitude,

desert to rain-forested coast and these machines would notoriously

respond in kind. Their finicky capacitors would experience the

change and changes in micro-farads would ensue. What does an

analogue synthesizer know?

 

Cheers,

Jonathan Zingale

 

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

I underwent a laminectoforaminotomy

In which piece of a vertebra is removed to permit access to the foramin, the tunnel through which a nerve passes from the spinal cord to, for example, an arm.  My seven year-old grandson wanted to know if the surgeon had done this before.  The doc said that he had done it a few times and that he was a smart seven year-old.  I suspect it's routine for a neurosurgeon.

You probably need to be unconscious for this.  They put pins in your skull to keep you from moving.  But it's considered minimally invasive surgery.

Frank

On Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 2:51 PM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

Last colonoscopy I was thoroughly anesthetized but totally conscious. In recovery room, doctor explaining he had removed three minor polyps and I interrupted to say I thought I counted four. Shocked look on his part then told me the fourth was more like a skin tag. The anesthesia did prevent feeling, just not consciousness. 

Dave west

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, at 8:35 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

No.  But people who are under light anesthesia such as during a colonoscopy sometimes talk.  I don't think they remember that.

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

My memoir:

https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 12:32 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Oh, yes.  We agree that I was unconscious.  And if you had been there, you would have experienced my unconsciousness.  But did I?  I think a person who adopts your position has to say, “No.”

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2019 12:16 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

Yes, you were unconscious.  As you know, I had that experience a few days ago.

 

Frank

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

My memoir:

https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 12:13 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Frank,

 

The problem is that one has immediately to ask, what is the contrast class of experiencing consciousness?  Experiencing non-consciousness?  I think for your line of thinking, where consciousness is direct, that’s an oxymoron.  For my line of thinking, when I woke up from my surgery and 24 hours had passed, I had a powerful experience of my non-consciousness. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2019 11:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

Jon,

 

How about "experiences consciousness" in place of has consciousness.

 

Frsnk

 

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

My memoir:

https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone [phone]

 

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 11:03 AM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick,

 

I love that the title of this thread is 'A question for tomorrow'.

My position continues to be that the label `conscious` is meaningful,

though along with you, I am not sure what language to use around it.

For instance, can something have consciousness? That said, a

conservative scoping of the phenomena I would wish to describe

with consciousness language begins with granting consciousness

to more than 7 billion things on this planet alone. Presently, for those

that agree thus far, it appears that the only way to synthesize new things

with consciousness is to have sex (up to some crude equivalence).

This constraint seems an unreasonable limitation and so the problem

of synthesizing consciousness strikes me as reasonably near, ie.

 `a question for tomorrow` and not some distant future.

 

You begin by asking about the Turing machine, an abstraction which

summarizes what we can say about processing information. Here,

I am going to extend Lee's comment and ask that we consider

particular implementations or better particular embodiments.

 

Hopefully said without too much hubris, given enough time and

memory, I can compute anything that a Turing machine can compute.

The games `Magic the Gathering` and `Mine Craft` are Turing

complete. I would suspect that under some characterization, the

Mississippi river is Turing complete. It would be a real challenge

for me state what abstractions like `Mine Craft` experience, but

sometimes I can speak to my own experience. Oscar Hammerstein

mused about what Old Man River knows.

 

Naively, it seems to me that some kind of information processing,

though not sufficient, is necessary for experience and for a foundations

for consciousness. Whether the information processor needs to be

Turing complete is not immediately obvious to me, perhaps a finite-

state machine will do. Still, I do not think that a complete description of

consciousness (or whatever it means to experience) can exist without

speaking to how it is that a thing comes to sense its world.

 

For instance, in the heyday of analogue synthesizers,  musicians

would slog these machines from city to city, altitude to altitude,

desert to rain-forested coast and these machines would notoriously

respond in kind. Their finicky capacitors would experience the

change and changes in micro-farads would ensue. What does an

analogue synthesizer know?

 

Cheers,

Jonathan Zingale

 

============================================================

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[Nick Thompson]

D

 

I like this example!  I might parse it differently.  I might say, you were conscious of the fact of the polypectomy but not of the damage done to your colon in the process.  I think of “pain” as a damage sensor. 

 

N

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2019 2:51 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

Last colonoscopy I was thoroughly anesthetized but totally conscious. In recovery room, doctor explaining he had removed three minor polyps and I interrupted to say I thought I counted four. Shocked look on his part then told me the fourth was more like a skin tag. The anesthesia did prevent feeling, just not consciousness. 

 

Dave west

 

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, at 8:35 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

No.  But people who are under light anesthesia such as during a colonoscopy sometimes talk.  I don't think they remember that.

 

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

 

My memoir:

https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

 

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

 

Phone [phone]

 

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 12:32 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Oh, yes.  We agree that I was unconscious.  And if you had been there, you would have experienced my unconsciousness.  But did I?  I think a person who adopts your position has to say, “No.”

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2019 12:16 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

Yes, you were unconscious.  As you know, I had that experience a few days ago.

 

Frank

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

 

My memoir:

https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

 

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

 

Phone [phone]

 

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 12:13 PM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Frank,

 

The problem is that one has immediately to ask, what is the contrast class of experiencing consciousness?  Experiencing non-consciousness?  I think for your line of thinking, where consciousness is direct, that’s an oxymoron.  For my line of thinking, when I woke up from my surgery and 24 hours had passed, I had a powerful experience of my non-consciousness. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2019 11:33 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

Jon,

 

How about "experiences consciousness" in place of has consciousness.

 

Frsnk

 

-----------------------------------

Frank Wimberly

 

My memoir:

https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

 

My scientific publications:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

 

Phone [phone]

 

On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 11:03 AM Jon Zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick,

 

I love that the title of this thread is 'A question for tomorrow'.

My position continues to be that the label `conscious` is meaningful,

though along with you, I am not sure what language to use around it.

For instance, can something have consciousness? That said, a

conservative scoping of the phenomena I would wish to describe

with consciousness language begins with granting consciousness

to more than 7 billion things on this planet alone. Presently, for those

that agree thus far, it appears that the only way to synthesize new things

with consciousness is to have sex (up to some crude equivalence).

This constraint seems an unreasonable limitation and so the problem

of synthesizing consciousness strikes me as reasonably near, ie.

 `a question for tomorrow` and not some distant future.

 

You begin by asking about the Turing machine, an abstraction which

summarizes what we can say about processing information. Here,

I am going to extend Lee's comment and ask that we consider

particular implementations or better particular embodiments.

 

Hopefully said without too much hubris, given enough time and

memory, I can compute anything that a Turing machine can compute.

The games `Magic the Gathering` and `Mine Craft` are Turing

complete. I would suspect that under some characterization, the

Mississippi river is Turing complete. It would be a real challenge

for me state what abstractions like `Mine Craft` experience, but

sometimes I can speak to my own experience. Oscar Hammerstein

mused about what Old Man River knows.

 

Naively, it seems to me that some kind of information processing,

though not sufficient, is necessary for experience and for a foundations

for consciousness. Whether the information processor needs to be

Turing complete is not immediately obvious to me, perhaps a finite-

state machine will do. Still, I do not think that a complete description of

consciousness (or whatever it means to experience) can exist without

speaking to how it is that a thing comes to sense its world.

 

For instance, in the heyday of analogue synthesizers,  musicians

would slog these machines from city to city, altitude to altitude,

desert to rain-forested coast and these machines would notoriously

respond in kind. Their finicky capacitors would experience the

change and changes in micro-farads would ensue. What does an

analogue synthesizer know?

 

Cheers,

Jonathan Zingale

 

============================================================

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[Steve Smith]

Nick -

>I think of “pain” as a damage sensor. 

I think of "pain" as a "threat" indicator.  A great deal of the pain I've experienced in my life was not really commensurate with the damage that has already occurred.  

Touching a hot stove doesn't always lead to significant damage if you react quickly to the pain.

In my late teens, I had a dentist tell me that the "pain" I was feeling from his drill was really from the *heat* of the drill, not direct damage to any nerve.   I had complained that the novacaine was more disturbing than anything I felt when he was working on me.  He said "I can do it without novacaine next time, if you prefer".  He said that the time he saves not waiting for the novacaine to kick in allows him to run the drill at a lower speed and go more carefully/slowly and that if I was willing to signal him if I began to feel pain by raising a hand and promised not to panic, he would prefer that.  Sure enough, It worked and I haven't had novacaine since excepting one root canal.  Most dentists seem perfectly familiar with this alternative.   The dentist who did the root canal *promised* me that no matter how slow she went, the process of killing and cleaning out the root would be the most excruciating pain I ever felt without novacaine.  I didn't argue.  I felt more than a little during the deep file-plunging. 

I don't associate a headache with "damage" though I do acknowledge it as some kind of warning... often nothing more than mild dehydration.   I could pop a few ibuprofen and ignore the pain or I could drink a glass or two of water and take the lesson my body was offering me.    A concussion or tumor or aneurism?  A different matter I suppose.

I *HATE* ice-cream headaches, even though I know they will pass quickly if I quite gulping it down.  My partner Mary doesn't get ice-cream headaches, in her case the same class of pain settled under one of her shoulder blades.  Once again, a glass of water is a good remedy for me...

I have never had "phantom pain" but that is another example I think of how Pain != Damage?

Glad to Frank's surgery (apparently) went well.   I hope he's back on the Tennis Court soon!

 - Steve

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[Nick Thompson]

Steve,

 

Oh, all right.  Threat of damage.  I am truly puzzled by the function of pain.  I mean, pain in my ankle causes me to favor my ankle.  But what good is gut pain?  Or headaches, for instance.  Clearly, from an evolutionary standpoint, the function of pain must be what it leads you to do.  My heart pain was in my elbow.  What’s with that? 

 

Well, you say; the body can’t get everything right.  But those mistakes seem really bonehead ones. 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2019 10:37 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

Nick -

>I think of “pain” as a damage sensor. 

I think of "pain" as a "threat" indicator.  A great deal of the pain I've experienced in my life was not really commensurate with the damage that has already occurred.  

Touching a hot stove doesn't always lead to significant damage if you react quickly to the pain.

In my late teens, I had a dentist tell me that the "pain" I was feeling from his drill was really from the *heat* of the drill, not direct damage to any nerve.   I had complained that the novacaine was more disturbing than anything I felt when he was working on me.  He said "I can do it without novacaine next time, if you prefer".  He said that the time he saves not waiting for the novacaine to kick in allows him to run the drill at a lower speed and go more carefully/slowly and that if I was willing to signal him if I began to feel pain by raising a hand and promised not to panic, he would prefer that.  Sure enough, It worked and I haven't had novacaine since excepting one root canal.  Most dentists seem perfectly familiar with this alternative.   The dentist who did the root canal *promised* me that no matter how slow she went, the process of killing and cleaning out the root would be the most excruciating pain I ever felt without novacaine.  I didn't argue.  I felt more than a little during the deep file-plunging. 

I don't associate a headache with "damage" though I do acknowledge it as some kind of warning... often nothing more than mild dehydration.   I could pop a few ibuprofen and ignore the pain or I could drink a glass or two of water and take the lesson my body was offering me.    A concussion or tumor or aneurism?  A different matter I suppose.

I *HATE* ice-cream headaches, even though I know they will pass quickly if I quite gulping it down.  My partner Mary doesn't get ice-cream headaches, in her case the same class of pain settled under one of her shoulder blades.  Once again, a glass of water is a good remedy for me...

I have never had "phantom pain" but that is another example I think of how Pain != Damage?

Glad to Frank's surgery (apparently) went well.   I hope he's back on the Tennis Court soon!

 - Steve

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[Prof David West]

"Pain is instructive."  Read that in a book once, don't remember which one.

But pain really is what you make of it. "Damage sensor" or "threat indicator" are such limited possibilities. Pain is "ecstasy," pain is "erotic," pain is "illuminating," pain is a means to the transcendental.

Nick — as a fan of Pierce's triads, have you ever explored J.G. Bennet's epistemological triads?

also, if the Turing machine, the programmer, and the 'user' form an appropriate triad, might it be said that the Turing machine 'knows' what the programmer programmed and the user observes? None of the three elements "possess" that knowledge in isolation, but 'triadically' they all do.

dave west

On 4/29/19 7:53 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Steve,

 

Oh, all right.  Threat of damage.  I am truly puzzled by the function of pain.  I mean, pain in my ankle causes me to favor my ankle.  But what good is gut pain?  Or headaches, for instance.  Clearly, from an evolutionary standpoint, the function of pain must be what it leads you to do.  My heart pain was in my elbow.  What’s with that? 

 

Well, you say; the body can’t get everything right.  But those mistakes seem really bonehead ones. 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2019 10:37 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

Nick -

>I think of “pain” as a damage sensor. 

I think of "pain" as a "threat" indicator.  A great deal of the pain I've experienced in my life was not really commensurate with the damage that has already occurred.  

Touching a hot stove doesn't always lead to significant damage if you react quickly to the pain.

In my late teens, I had a dentist tell me that the "pain" I was feeling from his drill was really from the *heat* of the drill, not direct damage to any nerve.   I had complained that the novacaine was more disturbing than anything I felt when he was working on me.  He said "I can do it without novacaine next time, if you prefer".  He said that the time he saves not waiting for the novacaine to kick in allows him to run the drill at a lower speed and go more carefully/slowly and that if I was willing to signal him if I began to feel pain by raising a hand and promised not to panic, he would prefer that.  Sure enough, It worked and I haven't had novacaine since excepting one root canal.  Most dentists seem perfectly familiar with this alternative.   The dentist who did the root canal *promised* me that no matter how slow she went, the process of killing and cleaning out the root would be the most excruciating pain I ever felt without novacaine.  I didn't argue.  I felt more than a little during the deep file-plunging. 

I don't associate a headache with "damage" though I do acknowledge it as some kind of warning... often nothing more than mild dehydration.   I could pop a few ibuprofen and ignore the pain or I could drink a glass or two of water and take the lesson my body was offering me.    A concussion or tumor or aneurism?  A different matter I suppose.

I *HATE* ice-cream headaches, even though I know they will pass quickly if I quite gulping it down.  My partner Mary doesn't get ice-cream headaches, in her case the same class of pain settled under one of her shoulder blades.  Once again, a glass of water is a good remedy for me...

I have never had "phantom pain" but that is another example I think of how Pain != Damage?

Glad to Frank's surgery (apparently) went well.   I hope he's back on the Tennis Court soon!

 - Steve

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[lrudolph]

Dave writes in relevant part:

> also, if the Turing machine, the programmer, and the 'user' form an
> appropriate triad, might it be said that the Turing machine 'knows' what
> the programmer programmed and the user observes? None of the three
> elements "possess" that knowledge in isolation, but 'triadically' they
> all do.

I really like this formulation, except that I would go all the way and say
that it's the triad (rather than any one or two of "Turing machine",
"programmer", "user") that "knows" [something].  At least, with "Turing
machine" replaced by something like "partly formalized proof", it can
happen (and has happened to me more than once, sometimes with me in the
role of "programmer"="formulator of partly formalized proof", and
sometimes with me in the role of "user"="understander of partly formalized
proof"--where the latter has, again more than once, been either
"myself-at-later-time-stage-of-formulator" or
"myself-as-different-person-than-formulator") that the second of these two
triads "knows" something other than what the first knew (specifically,
that the proof actually proved more than what it was claimed to prove; of
course, the other case, where it didn't prove what it claimed, also
happens but then it may not be fair to say "know" for the earlier state of
affairs, depending on whether or not you epistemology insists that only
truths can be known).  Of course a "partly formalized proof" is not a
Turing machine, but some of the programs people have been creating lately
for doing various mathematical tasks (theorem verification, theorem
generation) really are TMs, and I see no reason why similar phenomena
couldn't happen there as well.



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[Nick Thompson]

Hi David,

 

No, on Bennett.  Not yet.

 

But as I struggle with Russ’s assignment, that I sketch out a material account of the consciousness relation (the conscious-of relation?”), can I share this thought with you? 

 

Why exactly do FRIAMMERS fascinate me?  It is because you begin with elemental worlds of great simplicity and make magic of them.  From a small number of assumptions, you make worlds of wonder.  What could be more like the emergence of consciousness then the miraculous patterns produced “unpredictably” by cellular automata.  And yet, some of you deny the material continuity of consciousness.  How could that be?!!!!  It’s as if I ran into God on the street and I said, “God, I have always wondered:  How did you do this creation thing?  And God answered, “What creation thing?”

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of David West
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2019 12:16 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

"Pain is instructive."  Read that in a book once, don't remember which one.

But pain really is what you make of it. "Damage sensor" or "threat indicator" are such limited possibilities. Pain is "ecstasy," pain is "erotic," pain is "illuminating," pain is a means to the transcendental.

Nick — as a fan of Pierce's triads, have you ever explored J.G. Bennet's epistemological triads?

also, if the Turing machine, the programmer, and the 'user' form an appropriate triad, might it be said that the Turing machine 'knows' what the programmer programmed and the user observes? None of the three elements "possess" that knowledge in isolation, but 'triadically' they all do.

dave west

 

 

On 4/29/19 7:53 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

Steve,

 

Oh, all right.  Threat of damage.  I am truly puzzled by the function of pain.  I mean, pain in my ankle causes me to favor my ankle.  But what good is gut pain?  Or headaches, for instance.  Clearly, from an evolutionary standpoint, the function of pain must be what it leads you to do.  My heart pain was in my elbow.  What’s with that? 

 

Well, you say; the body can’t get everything right.  But those mistakes seem really bonehead ones. 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2019 10:37 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

Nick -

>I think of “pain” as a damage sensor. 

I think of "pain" as a "threat" indicator.  A great deal of the pain I've experienced in my life was not really commensurate with the damage that has already occurred.  

Touching a hot stove doesn't always lead to significant damage if you react quickly to the pain.

In my late teens, I had a dentist tell me that the "pain" I was feeling from his drill was really from the *heat* of the drill, not direct damage to any nerve.   I had complained that the novacaine was more disturbing than anything I felt when he was working on me.  He said "I can do it without novacaine next time, if you prefer".  He said that the time he saves not waiting for the novacaine to kick in allows him to run the drill at a lower speed and go more carefully/slowly and that if I was willing to signal him if I began to feel pain by raising a hand and promised not to panic, he would prefer that.  Sure enough, It worked and I haven't had novacaine since excepting one root canal.  Most dentists seem perfectly familiar with this alternative.   The dentist who did the root canal *promised* me that no matter how slow she went, the process of killing and cleaning out the root would be the most excruciating pain I ever felt without novacaine.  I didn't argue.  I felt more than a little during the deep file-plunging. 

I don't associate a headache with "damage" though I do acknowledge it as some kind of warning... often nothing more than mild dehydration.   I could pop a few ibuprofen and ignore the pain or I could drink a glass or two of water and take the lesson my body was offering me.    A concussion or tumor or aneurism?  A different matter I suppose.

I *HATE* ice-cream headaches, even though I know they will pass quickly if I quite gulping it down.  My partner Mary doesn't get ice-cream headaches, in her case the same class of pain settled under one of her shoulder blades.  Once again, a glass of water is a good remedy for me...

I have never had "phantom pain" but that is another example I think of how Pain != Damage?

Glad to Frank's surgery (apparently) went well.   I hope he's back on the Tennis Court soon!

 - Steve

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[gepr]

We can apply your ... pragmatism (not pragmaticism) inherent in "what good is gut pain" to your story vs. model question, too. The significance of any thing lies in what you can *do* with it. Hence, any "taken as given", self-evident propositions will only exist as tools, just like their derived siblings. If the oracles like priests or Feynmans are understood as the tools they are, then it's relatively easy to see that all models are complete[able] stories because they imply the parts you think are missing. This is precisely the same as the assertion that a hand implies a glove.

It's not that doubt in *all* matters is impossible and reverence of some authority is necessary.  It *is* that you're looking at the fossils without inferring the agency that constructed the fossils. Feynman is *used* as an oracle when the user can do something with Feynman's authority. God is used when the user can use Him. Etc.

FWIW, I use my gut pain all the time. Headaches are more interesting for me, because I get these seizure-like headaches that often end in shivers and hours of puking. If they don't end that way, they go on for 3-5 days. Such headaches are, to me, spiritual experiences. I come out the other side feeling *erased*, like the fresh skin underneath a peel from a sunburn ... or how I imagine a cicada must feel after it emerges from its molting. I would never induce one of these headaches purposely. But they still seem like the serve a purpose, have a correlated "Why?" to them, etc.

On 4/28/19 10:53 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Oh, all right.  Threat of damage.  I am truly puzzled by the function of pain.  I mean, pain in my ankle causes me to favor my ankle.  But what good is gut pain?  Or headaches, for instance.  Clearly, from an evolutionary standpoint, the function of pain must be what it leads you to do.  My heart pain was in my elbow.  What’s with that?
>
> Well, you say; the body can’t get everything right.  But those mistakes seem really bonehead ones.

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[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

This is, among many other things, glorious prose.  Thank you.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen?C
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2019 11:04 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

We can apply your ... pragmatism (not pragmaticism) inherent in "what good is gut pain" to your story vs. model question, too. The significance of any thing lies in what you can *do* with it. Hence, any "taken as given", self-evident propositions will only exist as tools, just like their derived siblings. If the oracles like priests or Feynmans are understood as the tools they are, then it's relatively easy to see that all models are complete[able] stories because they imply the parts you think are missing. This is precisely the same as the assertion that a hand implies a glove.

It's not that doubt in *all* matters is impossible and reverence of some authority is necessary.  It *is* that you're looking at the fossils without inferring the agency that constructed the fossils. Feynman is *used* as an oracle when the user can do something with Feynman's authority. God is used when the user can use Him. Etc.

FWIW, I use my gut pain all the time. Headaches are more interesting for me, because I get these seizure-like headaches that often end in shivers and hours of puking. If they don't end that way, they go on for 3-5 days. Such headaches are, to me, spiritual experiences. I come out the other side feeling *erased*, like the fresh skin underneath a peel from a sunburn ... or how I imagine a cicada must feel after it emerges from its molting. I would never induce one of these headaches purposely. But they still seem like the serve a purpose, have a correlated "Why?" to them, etc.

On 4/28/19 10:53 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Oh, all right.  Threat of damage.  I am truly puzzled by the function of pain.  I mean, pain in my ankle causes me to favor my ankle.  But what good is gut pain?  Or headaches, for instance.  Clearly, from an evolutionary standpoint, the function of pain must be what it leads you to do.  My heart pain was in my elbow.  What’s with that?
>
> Well, you say; the body can’t get everything right.  But those mistakes seem really bonehead ones.

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[lrudolph]

> It's as
> if I ran into God on the street and I said, "God, I have always
> wondered:  How did you do this creation thing?  And God answered "What
> creation thing?"

God:creation::fish:water


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[Nick Thompson]

Lee

 

God:creation::fish:water::programmer:emergence?

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of [hidden email]
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2019 11:31 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

 

> It's as

> if I ran into God on the street and I said, "God, I have always

> wondered:  How did you do this creation thing?  And God answered "What

> creation thing?"

 

God:creation::fish:water

 

 

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[gepr]

I struggled to find the proper branch of the thread-tree to place this post.  But I decided to do it, here, because your invocation of "organism" confirms my bias.  The inclusion of "consciousness" is a red herring, I think. And the expansion to "relations between entities", including "triads" is nice-to-have icing, but unnecessary[†].

The important part is, as Marcus pointed out with self-driving cars, and I tried to affirm, the glove *knows* hands just like a pattern recognizing AI knows the patterns it's been programmed to recognize. We've demonstrated that knowledge can be instantiated into objects/machines/animals/people. The term we use for that is "specific intelligence" these days, in order to distinguish those tasks/jobs that are straightforward to automate. Those difficult to automate jobs require general intelligence (GI).

The attribute of our current examples of GIs (animals and maybe even plants) that we long settled on is "alive" and the common term for the machines that exhibit GI is "organism". So I struggle to find a unique question in this thread that does NOT boil down to "what is life?"

What am I missing? Why are we talking about all these abstract things like "monism", "mind", "knowledge", "experience", "consciousness", and all that malarkey instead of the more biologically established things? How is this thread NOT about biology?


[†] The common term "ecology" and the pairwise, triadic, ..., N-ary, relations it implies seems sufficient without diving into semiotic hermeneutics.

On 4/27/19 11:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> As we talk, here, I am beginning to wonder if the minimal conditions for a ‘knowing” require co=ordination between two organisms.

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[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

You are right, here.  We could conduct this conversation just as well if not better over the question of how the organism develops from the zygote.  

Still, I think it's useful to have the conversation about the "-Isms" every once in a while, because we are committed to them in ways we do not know.  I was in a forum with a bunch of physicists last year many of whom were wedded to the notion that nature was determined by things beyond experience that we would never know.  That's both a tautology AND an oxymoron.  

After my exchange with Lee, I wasn't sure the conversation couldn't be had around the manner in which cellular automata generate entirely unexpected outcomes ... "seething dog vomit" as Carl used to so charmingly say ... never mind psychology or biology.   Clearly, the fact that we understand how something came about (in the way that we "understand", down to the finest detail, how cellular automata phenomena are generated) cannot be the criterion for non-conscious, if we are ever to ask the question, "How do we explain consciousness?" in any way that is not inane.  (Geez, was that a quadruple negative?)

But I am clearly in over my head, here.   I am still trying to get for Russ a definition of the material relation that is consciousness, something that I used to do confidently only a few years ago.  

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen?C
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2019 9:54 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow

I struggled to find the proper branch of the thread-tree to place this post.  But I decided to do it, here, because your invocation of "organism" confirms my bias.  The inclusion of "consciousness" is a red herring, I think. And the expansion to "relations between entities", including "triads" is nice-to-have icing, but unnecessary[†].

The important part is, as Marcus pointed out with self-driving cars, and I tried to affirm, the glove *knows* hands just like a pattern recognizing AI knows the patterns it's been programmed to recognize. We've demonstrated that knowledge can be instantiated into objects/machines/animals/people. The term we use for that is "specific intelligence" these days, in order to distinguish those tasks/jobs that are straightforward to automate. Those difficult to automate jobs require general intelligence (GI).

The attribute of our current examples of GIs (animals and maybe even plants) that we long settled on is "alive" and the common term for the machines that exhibit GI is "organism". So I struggle to find a unique question in this thread that does NOT boil down to "what is life?"

What am I missing? Why are we talking about all these abstract things like "monism", "mind", "knowledge", "experience", "consciousness", and all that malarkey instead of the more biologically established things? How is this thread NOT about biology?


[†] The common term "ecology" and the pairwise, triadic, ..., N-ary, relations it implies seems sufficient without diving into semiotic hermeneutics.

On 4/27/19 11:10 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> As we talk, here, I am beginning to wonder if the minimal conditions for a ‘knowing” require co=ordination between two organisms.

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[David Eric Smith]

> I was in a forum with a bunch of physicists last year many of whom were wedded to the notion that nature was determined by things beyond experience that we would never know.  That's both a tautology AND an oxymoron.  

I think this requires care.  Never wanting to defend the positions of people I don’t know in a conversation I wasn’t in, it would be helpful to know what topic the conversation was about, in the terms the participants applied to it.


Since physics has existed as a mathematical science (let’s say, since Newton?), it has employed a notation of “state” of a system.

Also since that time, it has employed a notion of the “observable properties” (shortened to just “observables”) somehow associated with the system’s states.

In classical physics, the concept of state was identical to that of a collection of values assigned to some sufficiently complete set of observables, and which observables made up the set could be chosen without regard to which particular state they were characterizing.

aka in common language, anything inherent in the concept of a state was just the value of an observable, meaning something knowable by somebody who bothered to measure it.


In quantum mechanics, physics still has notions of states and observables.

Now, however, the notion of state is _not_ coextensive with a set of values assigned to a complete (but not over-complete) set of observables, which one could declare in advance without regard to which state is being characterized.

To my view, the least important consequence of this change is that the state may not be knowable by us, even in principle, though that is the case.  (To many others, this is its most important consequence.  But the reason I shake that red cape before a herd of bulls is so that I can say…)

The important consequence of this understanding is that we have mathematical formalizations of the concept of state and of observable, and they are two different kinds of concept.  It is precisely that both can be defined, that the theory needs both to function in its complete form, and that the definitions are different, that expands our understanding of concepts of state and observable.  A state still does the main things states have always done in quantitative physical theories, and in the sense that they characterize our “attainable knowledge”, observables do what they have always done.  Before, the two jobs had been coextensive; now they are not.


I assume Shakespeare wrote the “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” line about the same phenomenon as the thing that makes the Copernical revolution a revolution: people fight to give up importance they believed they had, or control they believed they had.  Once the fight is in the culture, there may not be that emotional motive in all the combatants; they may believe they have a logical problem with the revolution.  But how can there be a logical problem with the Copernican revolution?  It is a statement about the alignments of beliefs and facts.  Likewise the concepts of state and observable in quantum mechanics.

It feels like a Copernican revolution to me, every time physics shows that new operational understandings are required, and tries to give us new language habits in which to coordinate our minds (singly or jointly) around them, to pose the question how this was known all along in our folk language and thus can be logically analyzed with its categories.  There is only very limited reason for our folk language to furnish “a description” of the nature of the world.  It is a collection of symbols that are part of “the system of us”, which when exchanged or imagined mediate coordination of our states of mind (and yes, I know this term can be objected to from some behaviorist points of view, but it seems to require much less flexibility to use provisionally than the state of a quantum system, even though it is also much less well-understood at present).  If a collection of robot vacuum cleaners exchange little pulse sequences of infrared light to coordinate, so they don’t re-vacuum the same spot, we might anticipate that there is a limited implicit representation of the furniture of the room and its occupants in the pulse sequences, but we would not expect them to furnish a description of the robots’ engineering, or the physical world, or much else.  Human language is somewhat richer than that, but it seems to me the default assumption should be that its interpretation suffers the same fundamental hazard.  Signals exchanged as part of a system should not be expected to furnish a valid empirical description _of_ the system.

Common language is fraught with that hazard in unknown degrees and dimensions; technical language can also be fraught, but we try to build in debuggers to be better at finding the errors or gaps and doing a better-than-random job of fixing them.

The fluidity and flexibility with which the mind can take on new habits of language use, and the only-partial degree to which that cognitive capability is coupled to emotional comfort or discomfort in different habits, seems important to me in trying to understand how people argue about science.

Eric




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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Eric writes:

< The important consequence of this understanding is that we have mathematical formalizations of the concept of state and of observable, and they are two different kinds of concept.  It is precisely that both can be defined, that the theory needs both to function in its complete form, and that the definitions are different, that expands our understanding of concepts of state and observable. >

It seems to me that it is kicking the can down the road.   It enables communication but it is not clear it drives toward a resolution of what is going on.   I have heard other (computational) physicists claim that "all physics is local", which may or may not be true depending on what the calculator chooses to believe.   It seems to keep the two concepts clear one cannot make that commitment.

Marcus

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[gepr]

I don't know. Eric's pointing out (I think) both the bootstrapping concept (writing a compiler in the language it compiles) *and* the ontological status of levels in, eg, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Things like state space reconstruction and the holographic principle seem to flow directly from Nick's objection to nature's phenomena being generated by a language/mechanism that's beyond experience.

Maybe the state/observable distinction targets those issues well, even if it only implies them.

On 4/30/19 1:41 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Eric writes:
>
> < The important consequence of this understanding is that we have mathematical formalizations of the concept of state and of observable, and they are two different kinds of concept.  It is precisely that both can be defined, that the theory needs both to function in its complete form, and that the definitions are different, that expands our understanding of concepts of state and observable. >
>
> It seems to me that it is kicking the can down the road.   It enables communication but it is not clear it drives toward a resolution of what is going on.   I have heard other (computational) physicists claim that "all physics is local", which may or may not be true depending on what the calculator chooses to believe.   It seems to keep the two concepts clear one cannot make that commitment.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Glen writes:

 

< I don't know. Eric's pointing out (I think) both the bootstrapping concept (writing a compiler in the language it compiles) *and* the ontological status of levels in, eg, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Things like state space reconstruction and the holographic principle seem to flow directly from Nick's objection to nature's phenomena being generated by a language/mechanism that's beyond experience. >

 

Experiment seems to address but not resolve experience to me.   How can this be more than an wizard’s elaborate spell?   Don’t basic questions like whether there is randomness in the universe matter?   If not, what _does_ matter?   Just knowing the spells?

 

A not insignificant, but minor issue to me is the difference between fast and slow thinking.  There’s a difference between a taxi driver taking me across London through dozens of small and large streets and me following GPS to do the same.  The taxi driver can holistically see the route from hundreds of other possible routes. 

 

Marcus

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