[FRIAM] Wolpert's 12 questions

[glen∉ℂ]

Steve Smith sasmyth at swcp.com, Sat Sep 10 11:00:22 EDT 2022:
> This suggests to me that the very fundament of what I believe is 
> "consciousness" is self-other dualistic?   Is there something unique 
> about (our familiar form of) consciousness that requires the self-other 
> duality?

I agree with your orientation. But I reject the idea that we're unique in our self-other reflectivity. It seems like even pond scum engage in something like mimicry. Similar to what you aim at for question 2, the thing being made is a reflection of the thing making, and vice versa. So a paramecium following a gradient makes the gradient and vice versa. This looks like primitive mimicry to me.

The only difference between us and pond scum is the complexity of our internal machinery. I.e. pond scum *does* create a kind of science and mathematics (SAM). It's just that their SAM is obviously a mirror/dual to their internal machinery. What Wolpert's asking/asserting is: Our SAM is a reflection of our machinery. So the limitations of our SAM are directly caused by our structure. But, of course, like you and Dave have said, some of that structure isn't internal. It's transpersonal, cultural. And that culture has a historicity, momentum, inertia, caused partly by the built environment, including normative behaviors/ideas.

So a largely cultural tool like SAM has no choice but to reflect/mimic both our internal machinery and the "nest" we've built. Counterfactually, what alternative SAMs could we have built if we or our nest were different?

>>> 2. Restricting attention to what are, in some sense, the most 
>>> universal of humanity's achievements, the most graphic demonstrations 
>>> of our cognitive abilities:
>>>
>>> Why were we able to construct present-day science and mathematics, 
>>> but no other species ever did? Why are we uniquely able to decipher 
>>> some features of the Cosmic Baker's hands by scrutinizing the 
>>> breadcrumbs that They scattered about the universe? Why do we have 
>>> that cognitive ability despite its fitness costs? Was it some subtle 
>>> requirement of the ecological niche in which we were formed — a niche 
>>> that at first glance appears rather pedestrian, and certainly does 
>>> not overtly select for the ability to construct something like 
>>> quantum chronodynamics? Or is our ability a spandrel, to use Gould 
>>> and Lewontin’s famous phrase — an evolutionary byproduct of some 
>>> other trait? Or is it just a cosmic fluke?
> 
> The fitness payout vs the fitness cost, I would claim *is* tool 
> creation/use... both physical artifacts (e.g. neolithic cutting tools) 
> and mental constructs (models and logic, no matter how limited) which 
> could be *shared* (communicated).

I really like the idea that the tool and the context are the same thing ... or perhaps 2 abstracted aspects of the same thing. But your identity (fitness *is* tool creation) sweeps a lot of detail under the rug. Some fitness moves very fast (like many generations of gut biome within an 80 year life span) and some fitness moves very slow (geology astronomy). A tool like SAM emerges much slower than a tool like an arrow[head]. Even a single theorem/proof within SAM develops more slowly than a single arrow[head].

So, abstractly, it's reasonable to pair fitness-scopes with tool-scopes. But that sort of strict partial order (again cf List's levels paper) is prolly a fiction. I'd claim that inter-level (cross-trophic) interaction is the rule, not the exception. But in the context of Wolpert's question, what *could* it look like? It seems to hearken back to Langton's "Life as it could be".

>>> 3. Are we really sure that no other species ever constructed some 
>>> equivalent of present-day SAM? Are we really sure that no other apes 
>>> — or cetaceans or cephalopods — have achieved some equivalent of our 
>>> SAM, but an equiva- lent that we are too limited to perceive?
> 
> As with the human archaelogical record, we only have recognizeable (to 
> our sensibilities) artifacts and preserved (if from another era) or 
> transported (if from another locale) to apprehend/interpret. Our own 
> Richard Lowenberg has spent some time studying/co-creating with Koko 
> <http://www.richardlowenberg.com/blog/koko-the-gorilla>... his stories 
> expand my idea of interspecies "communication" in a way that may be 
> responsive (if only mildly) to this question.   I don't know if our 
> current understanding of the Cetacean or Cephalopod world hints strongly 
> one way or another, but I'd not be surprised if either/both were to be 
> "dreaming" in something like SAM as they go about what sometimes seems 
> like mundane business (singing songs that travel halfway around the 
> world in one case while changing colors and 
> flowing/dancing/fiddling-with-stuff in the other).

Well, I think both you and Wolpert are barking up the wrong tree, here. I think other species *do* create SAM analogs. Wolpert hides his error within "some equivalent of". What could "equivalent" possibly mean, here? And why hedge it with "some"? It's neither "dreaming" nor "equivalent". There is a family of possible SAMs. But question 4 gets at this nicely. But I'm going to snip your response to Q4 because it only confirms the question, w/o trying to answer it.

>>> 5. Ancillary abilities or no, are we unavoidably limited to enlarging 
>>> and en- riching the SAM that was produced by our species with the few 
>>> cognitive abilities we were born with? Is it impossible for us to 
>>> concoct wholly new types of cognitive abilities — computational 
>>> powers that are wholly novel in kind — which in turn could provide us 
>>> wholly new kinds of SAM, kinds of SAM that would concern aspects of 
>>> physical reality currently beyond our ken?
> 
> "Hypercomputation" in this context would be but one example?  Not just 
> computing the extra-computable, or effing the ineffable but 
> qualitatively new structures that transcend that which we all consider 
> to be the limits to our conceptual universe?   This is an area where I 
> am hopeful for CT becoming the language that allows us (maybe not me, 
> but many people) to express the fullness of what our limited conceptions 
> can express so that we *can* recognize where they might be lacking or 
> where a meta-construct can be laid atop?

Well, here is where I think your response to Q2 applies more than this response. There should be punctuated catastrophes where the current SAM crumbles, some parts of which may be used in a new SAM. The idea that we are (and will continue to become) cyborgs indicates to me that No, we are not unavoidably limited to building off our current SAM. Maybe we have to go extinct and a new species has to arise for our SAM to be completely deconstructed. But I expect it to happen. I guess it all depends on what we mean by "we".

>>> 6. Is possible for one species, at one level of the sequence of 
>>> {computers run- ning simulations of computers that are running 
>>> simulations of ...}, to itself simulate a computer that is higher up 
>>> in the sequence that it is?
> 
> This might be argumentative or arbitrarily constraining?  You (Glen) 
> stated early on that many examples of "hypercomputation" have been 
> debunked.   If the very (f)act of human consciousness (individual and 
> collective) does not *gesture* toward hypercomputation, then I don't 
> know what else would.  I accept that creating controlled (physical or 
> thought) experiments in this domain is slippery.   I look forward to 
> seeing what comes "next"...   Before Kurt Godel flipped the world of 
> math/philosophy, I don't think Russel/Whitehead (or much anyone else) 
> had a hint that there was something beyond the "boundaries" of knowledge 
> they had circumscribed around themselves?

What Wolpert's referring to, I think, is even more general than Goedel's rather specific argument. So, while hypercomputation might breach Church-Turing, it doesn't solve the philosophical problem as posed by Tarski's "indefinability of truth". Again, I think List's discussion of indexicality matters, here. Perhaps we can rephrase Wolpert's question as "can traces of an indexical graph do more than *approach* the non-indexical graph of graphs?" Do we have something like the parallelism theorem (that any parallel process can be fully simulated by a sequential process given extendable time).

I'm reminded of doing calculus with the hyperreals. Packing infinities into a single symbol feels, to me, like "higher up in the sequence".

>>> 7. Is the very form of the SAM that we humans have created severely 
>>> con- strained? So constrained as to suggest that the cognitive 
>>> abilities of us hu- mans — those who created that SAM — is also 
>>> severely constrained?
> 
> this is where I become more interested in the abstractions of "what is 
> life?" "what is intelligence?" "what is consciousness"... because at the 
> very least those questions look to hop over the limits of "mere 
> extrapolation" from what we are most familiar with.   the very terms 
> life/intelligence/consciousness may likely be the epitome of those 
> constraints?   Deacon's "Teleodynamics" feels to me to be one of those 
> terms that might help us peek around the edge of the constraints we 
> already have (mostly) given over to?

Hm. I haven't spent any time with teleodynamics. But it smacks of Stanley's myth of the objective. I'll take a look. Thanks.

>>> 8. Is this restriction to finite sequences somehow a necessary 
>>> feature of any complete formulation of physical reality? Or does it 
>>> instead reflect a lim- itation of how we humans can formalize any 
>>> aspect of reality, i.e., is it a limitation of our brains?
> 
> It does seem to be a limitation of our primary modes of conception of 
> "what means reality". Wheeler's Participatory Anthropic Principle 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler#Participatory_Anthropic_Principle> 
> rears it's pretty head about  this time?

I don't mean to be a broken record. But I think the focus on "finite sequences" could be teased apart by explicitly discussing indexicality. It's less about "teleodynamics", objectives, purpose, etc. and more about whether one walks the graph like some kind of control pointer or tries to (parallel) grok the whole graph (of graphs).

Similar to nonstandard calculus, clumping whole graphs into nodes of a higher order graph (like is done when trying to de-cycle a cyclic graph into a dag - or perhaps ways to handle metagraphs) seems to be jumping up in the sequence. Where this can be isomorphically formal (as in nonstandard calculus), it seems like we already do what Wolpert is asking for. (I might even channel a skeptic like Marcus and say Wolpert's questions are nothing but neurotic obsession.)

>>> 9. In standard formulations of mathematics, a mathematical proof is a 
>>> finite sequence of “well-formed sentences”, each of which is itself a 
>>> finite string of symbols. All of mathematics is a set of such proofs. 
>>> How would our per- ception of reality differ if, rather than just 
>>> finite sequences of finite symbol strings, the mathematics underlying 
>>> our conception of reality was expanded to involve infinite sequences, 
>>> i.e., proofs which do not reach their conclu- sion in finite time? 
>>> Phrased concretely, how would our cognitive abilities change if our 
>>> brains could implement, or at least encompass, super-Turing 
>>> abilities, sometimes called “hyper-computation” (e.g., as proposed in 
>>> com- puters that are on rockets moving arbitrarily close to the speed 
>>> of light [1])?  Going further, as we currently conceive of 
>>> mathematics, it is possible to em- body all of its theorems, even 
>>> those with infinitely long proofs, in a single countably infinite 
>>> sequence: the successive digits of Chaitin’s omega [69].  (This is a 
>>> consequence of the Church — Turing thesis.) How would mathe- matics 
>>> differ from our current conception of it if it were actually an 
>>> uncount- ably infinite collection of such countably infinite 
>>> sequences rather than just one, a collection which could not be 
>>> combined to form a single, countably infinite sequence? Could we ever 
>>> tell the difference? Could a being with super-Turing capabilities 
>>> tell the difference, even if the Church — Turing thesis is true, and 
>>> even if we cannot tell the difference?
> 
> Godel Numbering/Church-Turing seem to constrain this ideation pretty 
> solidly.   Even though I'm a big fan of Digital Physics ala 
> Fredkin/Tofolli/Margoulis  I think their formulation only reinforces 
> this constraint?  I'd like to say that I understand Tononi's IIT 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory>well enough 
> to judge whether it offers an "end run" around this or not.  More cud to 
> gurge and rechew...
> 
> I'm also left reflecting on a very strange series of events around 
> Penrose where he asserted to me in private correspondence in 1985 that 
> "the key to consciousness was in the infinities of a-periodic 
> tilings".   This was in response to a simulation I built with Stuart 
> Hameroff in 1984 
> <https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/cellular-automata-in-cytoskeletal-lattices> 
> demonstrating how information processing might occur on the surface of 
> microtubulin structures (Cytoskeletal Membrane) which were only *mildly* 
> non-traditional CA geomotry/topology (sqewed hexagonal local geometry on 
> a 13 unit diameter/3-off helical lattice).   He went on *later* (see 
> Emperor's New Mind) to invoke Quantum effects, but in 1985 he seemed 
> quite adamant that the magic dust of complexity-cum consciousness was in 
> aperiodic tilings.   I dismissed this as "one-trick-pony-ism".  I was 
> young and naive and arrogant....  now I'm old.  I wish I had engaged. As 
> you probably know he and Hameroff climbed into the same bed later 
> <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/#PenrHameQuanGravMicr>.
> 
> 
> I JUST found this strangely formulated (but recent) tangent to the MT 
> aspect of the topic:
> 
>     https://www.texaspowerfulsmart.com/tunneling-microscopy/mt-automata-holographyhameroff-watt-smith.html
> 
>     https://www.texaspowerfulsmart.com/tunneling-microscopy/the-microtrabecular-lattice-mtl.html
> 
> I don't know if any of this offers a possible "end run" around the 
> finiteness-problem.

Wow ... just .... wow. How you got from the overly reductive representation of reality with finite sequences from finite alphabets to MT facilitated light transduction is boggling! ... but maybe in a good way. I *do* think there's something to be said about a- and quasi-periodicity in relation to purpose-objective optimizing (including for things like light transmission and/or path integrals). And it may well relate to my dead horse of cyclic graphs, which definitely targets non-finiteness.

A more specific question is why Wolpert relies on *standard* mathematics? It's almost like he's committing an equivocation fallacy, starting with standard math and then adding things that *have been* added in nonstandard formulations. Prestidigitation? Prestilinguation?

>>> 10. Is it a lucky coincidence that all of mathematical and physical 
>>> reality can be formulated in terms of our current cognitive 
>>> abilities, including, in par- ticular, the most sophisticated 
>>> cognitive prosthesis we currently possess: human language? Or is it 
>>> just that, tautologically, we cannot conceive of any aspects of 
>>> mathematical and physical reality that cannot be formulated in terms 
>>> of our cognitive capabilities?
> 
> REminds me of the bad joke I can never tell right which starts with a 
> traveler asking a local how to get to a spot on the other side of a 
> natural barrier (river, mountain range, canyon, etc.) and after the 
> local tries to pick a route he can describe to the traveler in language 
> the traveler can understand without having "been there" he gives up and 
> says "well, you just can't get there from here!"  which we agree is 
> patently not true.   I get this feeling whilst speaking with (familiars 
> of) convincing "mystics" of the caliber of the Dalai Lama or Thich Nat 
> Hahn (RIP)...   I feel like these folks have traveled these realms and 
> if only I had already been into those realms myself, could I understand 
> some of their more nuanced descriptions?

That's an interesting take. My take was more banal ... like when I watch my cat try to come *down* a ladder. I'm thinking "of course, the idiot tries to come down forward. That's how cats work." I can imagine some hypercognitive alien from another galaxy looking at, say, our Standard Model of physics and thinking "of course that's what these morons would come up with. [sigh]"

>>> 11. Are there cognitive constructs of some sort, as fundamental as 
>>> the very idea of questions and answers, that are necessary for 
>>> understanding physical re- ality, and that are forever beyond our 
>>> ability to even imagine due to the limitations of our brains, just as 
>>> the notion of a question is forever beyond a paramecium?
> 
> I suspect the answer is in the analogy here...  If we believe that the 
> paramecium (or something of similar caliber) made the long climb of 
> becoming a complex multicellular multi-organ complex capable of abstract 
> language and logic and SAM through a torturous series of intermediate 
> evolutionary steps (mutation as well as mashup), then perhaps the "magic 
> dust" is (also?) in emergence?   Or if we defer to Bohm or 
> Penrose/Hameroff or even our beloved Pearce, then the magic dust is also 
> quantum?   I know I'm just kicking the can down the road and under the 
> rug here.  Just maundering speculatively.

Well, I think Wolpert's gone astray, here, in suggesting that a paramecium can't grok question/answer. But his main question is valid for reduction. And reduction, like everything else is healthy in moderation. Are there missing pieces to our very foundation that we could add that would immediately expand our modeling abilities? I'm reminded of my discussion with Jon of Tonk, introduction, and elimination. The logics without things like introduction are comparatively impoverished. And graduating from classical logics to paraconsistent ones blows your mind. So Wolpert's idea that there may be some fundamental lego block that, once we find it, there's no going back.

p.s. Sorry for breaking the threading. My home machine removes messages from the IMAP server and stores them in the cloud. I *could*, if I had the energy, access that on this laptop and preserve the threading. But I'm being lazy because I have to jump in the truck and continue driving.