[FRIAM] lurking

[Marcus Daniels]

My point was that the cost to probe some memory address is low.   And all there is, is I/O and memory.  

 It does become difficult to track thousands of addresses at once:  Think of a debugger that has millions of watchpoints.   However, one could have diagnostics compiled in to the code to check invariants from time to time.   I don't know why Nick says there is no privilege.   There can be complete privilege.   Extracting meaning from that access is rarely easy, of course.  Just as debugging any given problem can be hard.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
Sent: Monday, November 1, 2021 3:20 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] lurking

Literal self-awareness is possible. The flaw in your argument is that "self" is ambiguous in the way you're using it. It's not ambiguous in the way me or Marcus intend it. You can see this nicely if you elide "know" from your argument.  We know nothing. The machine knows nothing. Just don't use the word "know" or the concept it references.  There need not be a model involved, either, only sensors and things to be sensed. 

Self-sensing means there is a feedback loop between the sensor and the thing it senses. So, the sensor measures the sensed and the sensed measures the sensor. That is self-awareness. There's no need for any of the psychological hooha you often object to. There's no need for privileged information *except* that there has to be a loop. If anything is privileged, it's the causal loop.

The real trick is composing multiple self-self loops into something resembling what we call a conscious agent. We can get to the uncanny valley with regular old self-sensing control theory and robotics. Getting beyond the valley is difficult: https://youtu.be/D8_VmWWRJgE A similar demonstration is here: https://youtu.be/7ncDPoa_n-8



On 11/1/21 2:08 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> In fact, strictly speaking, I think literal self-awareness is impossible.  Because, whatever a machine knows about itself, it is a MODEL of itself based on well situated sensors of its own activities, just like you are and I am.  There is no privileged access, just bettah or wussah access.

-- 
"Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
☤>$ uǝlƃ


.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:
 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
 1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/