[FRIAM] The Possibility of Self Knowledgke

Mon Nov 8 13:10:27 EST 2021

But even when you stood in front of the church, in your way of thinking, you did not see the church.  So, either you always see an image of the church, in which case, “an image of the” drops out, OR, you ways see the church.  There is no indirect OR direct perception.  You have to commit yourself to one or the other. 

n

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, November 8, 2021 10:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Possibility of Self Knowledgke

I haven't been near that church for many years.  Offline?  OK.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Nov 8, 2021, 10:15 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

You’re experiencing a church, not an image of church.

We better take this off line or The People will excommunicate us. 

n

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, November 8, 2021 9:42 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Possibility of Self Knowledgke

Nick, 

I have an image of a beautiful church in my mind.  I see many details.  What church is it?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Mon, Nov 8, 2021, 7:40 AM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com <mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> > wrote:

Something like what Nick said. Of course people know things about themselves (in the casual sense of "know") - or - of course people have self-awareness (if you prefer that phrasing). The only thing to reject is the suggestion that people magically have infallible / unquestionable knowledge about themselves. That's part of generally rejecting that the world is magical. (Title of my eventual pop-culture book: Psychology without Magic.)  

That we most people don't tend to question people's claims about themselves is a social convention, not a fact about the nature of knowledge. Sometimes that social convention is very helpful, and other times it causes big problems. 

Why are we talking about this again? Something about computers?

Ok... so... I run the diagnostic that checks my hard drive for bad sectors. The report comes back that sectors 101-103 are bad. Does that guarantee those sectors are bad? No. It's a pretty damn reliable indicator, but there's no guarantee it's perfect.  Maybe some birst of electromagneticness hit the right part of the motherboard at the right nanosecond to screw up the diagnostic. Maybe someone hacked the diagnostic program, and put in a routine that reports back 101-103 are bad every time. Maybe those sectors registered as bad during the diagnostic, but it was due to a ridiculously minor flaw in a ball bearing, and next time the diagnostic is run two completely different sectors will come back as problematic. No matter which of these options is the case, the computer blocks off those sectors, and will never write to them in the future. Is that "self-knowledge"? Is it equivalent to someone who decides "I am bad at tennis" after one bad experience and never tries it again? 

Why are we talking about this?

On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 12:33 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Eric inter alia,

The position I have taken concerning self knowledge is that all knowledge is of the form of inferences made from evidence.  To the extent that some sources of knowledge may lead to better inferences-- may better prepare the organism for what follows--  some may be more privileged than others, but that privilege needs to be demonstrated.  Being in the same body as the knowing system does not grant  the  knowing system any a priori privilege.  If you have followed me so far, then a self-knowing system is using sensors to infer (fallibly) the state of itself.  So if Glen and Marcus concede that this is the only knowledge we ever get about anything, than I will eagerly concede that this is “self-knowledge”.  It’s only if you claim that self-knowing is of a different character than other-knowing, that we need to bicker further.  I stipulate that my point is trivial, but not that it’s false.  

I have cc’d bits of the thread in below in case you all have forgotten.  I could not find any contribution from Eric in this subject within the thread, although he did have something to say about poker, hence I am rethreading. 

Nick .  

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

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Nov 1, 2021, 4:20 PM (6 days ago)

to friam 

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

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Nov 2, 2021, 8:37 AM (5 days ago)

to The 

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.

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Nov 2, 2021, 9:06 AM (5 days ago)

to friam 

Well, I could be wrong. But both Nick and EricC seem to argue there's no privilege "in the limit" ... i.e. with infeasibly extensible resources, perfect observability, etc. It's just a reactionary position against those who believe in souls or a cartesian cut. Ignore it. >8^D

But I don't think there can be *complete* privilege. Every time we think we come up with a way to keep the black hats out, they either find a way in ... or find a way to infer what's happening like with power or audio profiles.

I don't think anyone's arguing that peeks are expensive. The argument centers around the impact of that peek, how it's used. Your idea of compiling in diagnostics would submit to Nick's allegation of a *model*. I would argue we need even lower level self-organization. I vacillate between thinking digital computers could [not] be conscious because of this argument; the feedback loops may have to be very close to the metal, like fpga close. Maybe consciousness has to be analog in order to realize meta-programming at all scales?

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