Yeah, *if* that's how the brain works, sure. But from my (limited) experience,
brain anatomy and connectomes exhibit robustness (multiple parts per single
phenomenon) and polyphenism (multiple phenomena per single part). So, while it
seems reasonable to assume the brain is somehow a linearly composed construct,
I doubt that it is. In order for
d = d - lesion + knowledgeOfDevice,
the device has to also participate in everything else the lesioned part
participated in. Otherwise, we obtain
lesion > knowledgeOfDevice, and
d < d + knowledgeOfDevice.
Even if there is such a linear way to do such things, the error terms will swamp the operators. Of course,
perhaps there's some higher order calculus over anatomy and connectomes such that "distance" isn't
so naive. But at that point, "distance" is a misleading term ... "complexity" might be a
better one.
On 4/13/22 10:47, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Ok, so suppose we have Joe as a guinea pig. The distance between a non-Joe committee understanding
the things Joe does is distance "d" before the implant. First is a surgery to remove some
part of Joe's brain. Now Joe can't identify his favorite song. Poor Joe. Second is a surgery to
implant a device that will recognize his favorite song again. Joe recovers and he is enjoying the
melody again. Lots of testing is done to ensure that Joe performs on a large battery of tests in the
same way. However, now the committee understands exactly how the device recognizes the melody of
Joe's favorite song. Thus, the distance is d - knowledgeOfDevice, and the mind/body gap is better
rationalized. Of course, Joe would never consent to this surgery without an incentive, and
presumably his new gadget gives him extra features that are not activated until this testing procedure
is complete. After activation he is Joe(postActivation) > Joe(priorSurgery). So, in that sense
I agree that "d" may increase because Joe discovers novel uses for the implant.
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2022 10:15 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive heuristics
Right, I think I got that. But as with Jon's consistent evocation of "mereology"
<https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/> and our prior discussion of has-a vs
is-a, an implant is not different in kind from one's arm or tongue, only in degree. I admit it
can seem fundamentally different to an individual organism. But over the species, our
spectacles, pencils, electron microscopes, etc. are all part of the extended phenotype ... just
like our fingers and toes. And if we end up with CRISPR or adding implants in the (artificial)
womb as a banal part of making babies, then it'll be more obvious the difference is one of
degree, not kind.
On 4/13/22 10:02, Marcus Daniels wrote:
The distance is the possibility of an implant or interface. That thing can be
studied separate from anyone that adopts the implant. Some implants might
evolve after implant, some might have fixed function.
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2022 9:59 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
heuristics
Yeah, I agree with almost everything, here, except the "distancing" metaphor.
There is no distance between mind and body and there never will be. Similarly, there is
no fundamental difference between machine and meat, digital and analog. Regardless,
cyborg-ification is the future of machine intelligence. (And cyber-physical systems are
the future of computation.) We'll simultaneously be hosts for and be hosted by machines
through any kind of singularity.
On 4/13/22 09:45, Marcus Daniels wrote:
< But we don't "create the neural structure over and over", at least
we don't create the *same* neural structure over and over. >
Anastomotic systems aren't useful for the purpose of distancing mind from body.
As you say, neural systems reflect the environment of their training. So,
when machine learning systems are racist, it is because they observe racist
behavior. That doesn't give insight to racism. Explainable AI aims to extract
meaning from anastomotic systems and record it as artifacts that are subject
independent. By implanting interfaces to such artifacts, or by splicing-in
an existing freeze-dried anastomotic ANN (Neuralink), or even graft in
pre-trained tissue, I posit, one could skip through stages of development more
quickly. So, ML systems that mimic things are the beginning of the mind/body
distancing process, not the end of it.
Hugh Herr's team at MIT is designing prostheses for amputees. These devices
link to the nearest nerves remaining after the amputation. Users have enough
plasticity to learn again how to walk, run, climb, etc. using these signals and
artificial devices. I don't see why it should be different if the interfaces
were in the brain. Of course, if the interfaces are high-level enough, it
would pervade personality. One could risk proliferating personality disorders
by adoption of genius modules. Ok, then one could identify personality
disorders through diagnostics and learn how to cut them out. Software defects,
basically. You'll be so much better in V2!
I'm not claiming that digital ML has yet matched human intelligence, although I think it
will. Rather, I'm taking the meat bath and its digital counterpart for granted and
wondering what the higher-order technology derived from us will look like. I doubt it
would be the Matrix battery scenario (whether heat or spiritual energy), more like we'll
all be walking around acquiring information for the collective anastomotic data mining
system. That system would be interesting itself, but the "goal" in my mind
would be to continually compress the story.
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2022 8:37 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
heuristics
But we don't "create the neural structure over and over", at least we don't create the *same* neural
structure over and over. One way in which big-data-trained self-attending ANN structures now mimic meat intelligence is
in that very intense training period. Development (from zygote to (dysfunctional) adult) is the training. Adulting is
the testing/execution. But these transformer based mechanisms don't seem, in my ignorance, to be as flexible as those
grown in meat. Do we have self-attending machines that can change what parts of self they're attending? Change from
soft to hard? Allow for self-attending the part that's self-attending (and up and around in a loopy way)? To what
extent can we make them modal, swapping from learning mode to perform mode? As SteveS points out, can machine
intelligence "play" or "practice" in the sense normal animals like us do? Are our modes even modes?
Or is all performance a type of play? To what extent can we make them "social", collecting/integrating
multiple transformer-based ANNs so as to form a materially open problem solving collective?
Anyway, it seems to me the neural structure is *not* an encoding of a means to do things. It's a
*complement* to the state(s) of the world in which the neural structure grew. Co-evolutionary
processes seem different from encoding. Adversaries don't encode models of their opponents so much
as they mold their selves to smear into, fit with, innervate, anastomose [⛧], their adversaries.
This is what makes 2 party games similar to team games and distinguishes "play" (infinite
or meta-games) from "gaming" (finite, or well-bounded payoff games).
Again, I'm not suggesting machine intelligence can't do any of this; or even
that they aren't doing it to some small extent now. I'm only suggesting they'll
have to do *more* of it in order to be as capable as meat intelligence.
[⛧] I like "anastomotic" for adversarial systems as opposed to "innervated" for
co-evolution because anastomotic tissue seems (to me) to result from a kind of high pressure,
biomechanical stress. Perhaps an analogy of soft martial arts styles to innervate and hard styles
to anastomose?
On 4/12/22 20:43, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Today, humans go to some length to record history, to preserve companies and
their assets. But for some reason preserving the means to do things -- the
essence of a mind -- this has this different status. Why not seek to inherit
minds too? Sure, I can see the same knowledge base can be represented in
different ways. But, studying those neural representations could also be
informative. What if neural structures have similar topological properties
given some curriculum? What a waste to create that neural structure over and
over..
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2022 7:22 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Selective cultural processes generate adaptive
heuristics
On 4/12/22 5:53 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
I am not saying such a system would not need to be predatory or parasitic, just
that it can be arranged to preserve the contents of a library.
And I can't help knee-jerking that when a cell attempts to live
forever (and/or replicate itself perfectly) that it becomes a tumour
in the
organ(ism) that gave rise to it, and even metastasizes, spreading it's hubris
to other organs/systems.
Somehow, I think the inter-planetary post-human singularians are more like metastatic cells than
"the future of humanity". Maybe that is NOT a dead-end, but my mortality-chauvanistic
"self" rebels. Maybe if I live long enough I'll come around... or maybe there will be a
CAS mediated edit to fix that pessimism in me.
On Apr 12, 2022, at 4:29 PM, glen <[email protected]> wrote:
Dude. Every time I think we could stop, you say something I object to. >8^D
You're doing it on purpose. I'm sure of it ... like pulling the wings off flies
and cackling like a madman.
No, the maintenance protocol must be *part of* the meat-like intelligence.
That's why I mention things like suicide or starving yourself because your wife
stops feeding you. To me, a forever-autopoietic system seems like a perpetual
motion machine ... there's something being taken for granted by the conception
... some unlimited free energy or somesuch.
--
Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙
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