The Untold Theory - chapter 2

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To attack the problem from another direction (than reverse engineering the polished human brain), I would think Conway’s game of life should have provided a foundation to study how self-awareness could have emerged. Though I haven’t encountered a convincing theory or example, the glider there is rather inspiring.

We as the “god” in that simulated game world, could easily identify a glider once its “gliding” process presented to us. But so far if without our god-like-insights, there are only spiking (physical) cells those never move, there is no such a concept as movement at all, neither body or form, at the simulated physics level. In what way we (the god) come to identify “a” glider individual? Then further how can “it” be aware of “itself”?

One of the hardness to proceed the discovery is, IMHO, those “life” patterns are of chaotic nature, our reasoning power seems insufficient to deduce the consequences given arbitrary start points. Will time resolve?

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I disagree. The many interesting patterns that arise in the game of Life are simple examples of emergent behaviour in chaotic systems, which are easy to create to order. It may well be a prerequisite for life, but it has nothing to do with consciousness.

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If they can behave as some life form, why they can not be considered (self) conscious? Especially after they developed/evolved interactions with their environment? I can imagine some variants appear picky about certain targets, compared to other variants. Then how can you prove that’s not free will at work?

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Wall*E!
Fat lazy blobs hovering around in their hover chairs, all controlling everything with their neurallinks!

:smiley:

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Consciousness is…

Something that goes on as an emergent process involving “presumably” the neocortex and its interaction with the rest of the brain, and thusly, the body. It tends to be of irreducible quality, and yet can be switched on and off by various chemicals.

We can – more or less – objectively observe and distinguish the difference between someone that is conscious and someone that is not. Since we can objectively observe the difference in those two states, does that not alone gives it objective existence?

Now, what is really “hard” is defining the detailed mechanism of consciousness. I posit that it is really a hyper-complex reentrant state attractor (or a set of the same!!!). Now the danger here is that I may be simply substituting one set of texual symbols for another, but we have to start somewhere.

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Definitions. An animal has a ‘conscious’ state: it can be alert, drowsy, asleep, comatose, anaethetised, etc. These are objective and observable, open to scientific enquiry. And they have nothing to do with ‘consciousness’.

Wikipedia says: Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scientists.

Consciousness, however defined, is not an objective thing and is immune to scientific study.

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I would regard that math (algebraic, symbolic computations) works just this way, why it works ascribes to different intuitions one has got against different symbols, and gradually new intuitions are built up as one mess with that many of them.

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I have a point here:

Scientific studies are limited by the level the subjects (who perform the study) “exist” at. The “life forms” exist in a Conway’s game world, have no way to observe matters beyond their dimension, while we the god (of that game world) have a precedence.

Then there exist “definitions” never plausible by those game lives, do approachable by us the god of their world. This opens cross-dimension opportunities to perform studies with multiple orders/levels of existence involved.

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No. Science rests on three pillars: (1) the belief that there exists a real physical world which is the source of our sensory inputs and (2) the ability to apply logical thought processes to construct mental models of the RPW (3) the means to select and apply motor outputs to affect the RPW, thus closing the loop.

We are not gods, we are simply the only entities we know of with those 3 abilities.

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The life forms in a simulated Conway game world should ultimately achieve all the three pillars, given enough time for evolution, can this be proved false?

Then their “science” and our science are at different levels/orders of existence, no?

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Are you serious? Given enough time they will look exactly as they do now. They do not evolve.

There is nothing to prove false because there is nothing to test. There is no empirical data beyond the pattern you see.

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Do we have extra data beyond what can be seen by the god of our universe?

The physics of our universe is believed to look exactly as it is since the very beginning to today, any essential difference between our world and a simulated world by us? Complexity of physical laws? But that’s not essential if they are reducible.

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BlockquoteI would regard that math (algebraic, symbolic computations) works just this way, why it works ascribes to different intuitions one has got against different symbols, and gradually new intuitions are built up as one mess with that many of them.

This would quickly slide into semiotics. But in this case, what would be the “signified”? Sometimes one signified can be the signifier for another signified, but what does this all mean when we get to consciousness?

Something to think about for this weekend as we enter into the holidays! :smiley:

Perhaps, then, at least at some level, consciousness arises as a direct result of reentrancy and recursion and feedback.

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Think metaphor instead.

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Blockquote(1) the belief that there exists a real physical world which is the source of our sensory inputs

Oh, that’s a tricky one. I am reminded of Morhpeus’ statement to Neo in The Matrix: “What is ‘real’? How do you define ‘real’?”

It is even further complicated by the fact that our own brains are creating representations of something that we conceive of as “reality” that is most likes the furthest thing from.

Our perception of colors for example. Colors do not exist in nature at all, and the “physical reality” that we’re responding to is just a tiny slice of the entire EM spectrum. That’s a trivial example, of course, and temperature is another, but much of “reality” is completely inaccessible to us, let alone the representations our brain/mind creates being totally fictitious.

Blockquote (2) the ability to apply logical thought processes to construct mental models of the RPW

So now we entail creating “models” of the models our sensate represents, which are totally fictitious to begin with?

Aside from the trivial examples I gave above, what about a much deeper one: Our sense of “time” and “space”? In physics, time has no “arrow”, and yet everything in us strongly suggests an arrow of time, and we construct our very complicated models around that base assumption.

There is some research – I’ll have to look it up – that states that when we get rid of our misconceptions of time and space, that the equations of physics are greatly simplified. I have not been afforded the time (!) to delve into that yet, so I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Blockquote(3) the means to select and apply motor outputs to affect the RPW, thus closing the loop.

And, of course, given the first two above, one must ask what exactly are we “closing the loop on”?

Evolution evolved us for just enough of a tiny slice of “reality” that was necessary for our survival. Once evolution or nature created the very scalable neocortex, we took on massive layers of abstraction that nature never really intended us to achieve. Understanding, say, quantum physics has nothing to do with the 4 F’s of evolution – Fleeing, Fighting, Feeding, and Reproduction. :smiley:

In a very real way, we repeat the above when we create SDRs. We want to fashion only the salient features of the input stream necessary for HTM to work, and nothing more.

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Blockquote Think metaphor instead.

What is the difference between semiotics and metaphor? Semiotics is something that happens at a deeper level. The word “tree” is the signifier for the physical tree. It is not a metaphor for the same.

Where as “metaphor” takes one situation / object and relate that to another situation / object because of some implicit analogy or correspondence between them. Thusly, sticking your hand in fire, say, would be a metaphor for suffering negative consequences for jumping into a situation you could have otherwise avoided.

Apropos, the signifier->signified relationship is, at some level, “hard-wired”, and normally we don’t even notice or consider the nature of that relationship. When we see the word “tree”, the picture of a tree is immediately invoked in our mind.

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This is conjectural at this point, but I assert that reductionism is not possible beyond the (mini) columns.

A similar issue would be to attempt to understand an entire organism from a single cell from it. Starting with groups of functioning cells would be a better option.

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