[FRIAM] Wolpert's 12 questions

[Steve Smith]

On 9/12/22 9:47 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote:
> 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. 
I will easily (eagerly) concede this point, replacing "we are unique" to 
"this is what we often/pervasively take to be the basis of our uniqueness".
> 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.
Yes, this feels to be the dependent co-arising of Buddhist/Vedic thought 
that continues to capture me more and more at every (re)exposure to it.
>
> 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).
Agreed...
> 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?
I offer Robert Forward's (working physicist who also wrote SciFi) 
"Dragon's Egg" 
<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/263466.Dragon_s_Egg>as a 
contemplation of this kind of emergence convolved with Edwin Abbot 
Abbot's Flatland on the surface of a Neutron star, unfolding on a 
timescale that has a human space-expedition observing "life" emerging 
from "matter" (Creatura from Pleroma to quote Bateson) in realtime, and 
then developing a culture (and SAM) that ultimately transcended that of 
the space-faring future-humans.   Not quite *literature* but still an 
amazing contemplation/framing of these ideas IMO.
>
>>>> 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.
What else are we going to sweep under a rug if not details <grin>?
> 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".
I'm behind in my reading here so must just acknowledge this and hope to 
hold it in abeyance in my head long enough to catch up. (or fades 
gracefully for you to remind us again, some more, forever until we "get 
it"?)
>
>>>> 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.
I will agree as best I can articulate my agreement.  "equivalent" or 
"dreaming" are the weasel words we have/resort-to when finding we cannot 
leave our own "self" perspective enough to say otherwise.  I think the 
universality you are gesturing toward (or stating bluntly) is the grail, 
but for the moment my expressions are caught in my 
not-nearly-objective-enough perspective as the "self" that I currently 
am (whatever that means and implies).
>
>>>> 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".
I especially, acutely, appreciate your return to the 
definition/boundaries of self.  I think we first crashed together on 
this when I invoked the old saw of "enlightened self interest" and you 
(at the time, as I remember it) insisted that "self" is an illusion.   
This started me on the path I am still on which is believing that 
"scoping of self" is a pervasive theme in these considerations.   
"enlightened' is the usual suspect/inspected word, with perhaps 
"interest" coming second, but "self" may be where the richest ore is.
>
>>>> 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).
More reading (of List) to (maybe) catch up (a little)...
>
> I'm reminded of doing calculus with the hyperreals. Packing infinities 
> into a single symbol feels, to me, like "higher up in the sequence".
Oh my, the hyperreals!  I *think* I know what you are gesturing toward, 
but am hopelessly without traction.  I will defer invoking hypercomplex 
numbers as a lame distraction.
>
>>>> 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.
I think there is something *very* subtle going on in question of 
teleology and I think that Deacon sneaks up on it well with 
Teleodynamics...  in the idiom of the Princess Bride "I don't think that 
word means what you think it means" applies to all uses of 
"teleology"?    I take teleology and specifically his teleodynamics to 
be a recursive observation about "the illusion of purpose or final 
cause".   "Life" and "Consciousness" act *as if* they have a purpose.   
This also references the illusion I find in Stephen's stuck-bit about 
bidirectional path tracing.    We find the answer to the posed question 
by starting at a family of answers and working back to the middle where 
it meets the forward chain from *the question*...
>
>>>> 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.)
I will have to defer again to being behind in my reading (thinking in 
this case)...  I haven't parsed your terms "jumping up in the sequence" 
carefully enough to know what to think.  My intuition is that you are 
(as most always) "on to something" but I'm definitely scrambling.   
Codifying it in terms of graphs is promising to me, however.
>
>>>> 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.

I got there through what to me feels like a series of historic 
coincidences and a faulty but long memory (artifact of diachronicity 
over episodicity?).   I was *barely* aware of quasi-periodic tilings 
(Penrose only at the time).    I dismissed his offering at the time as 
his ego expressing itself into my budding pursuit of some deep truths, 
but hindsight points out how "everything is relevant" even if *my* 
current consciousness is too lame to recognize it at any given point.

I also think there is something afoot with the Orchestrated Objective 
Reduction (further along the chain of implication than MT-facilitated 
light transduction)  that is relevant to the larger question that 
Wolpert's 12 point at?

>
> 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?
I'm not sure of what the boundaries of *standard* you apply here... I've 
probably just not listened closely enough (to you, or to all of the 
Maths I've been exposed to along the way).
>
>>>> 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]"
I have a new kitten and puppy in the house.  It is effing amazing how 
capable the kitten (5 months to the puppy's 4 months) is in nearly every 
way (navigation, locomotion, bathroom habits, human emotional 
manipulation, etc).   The puppy is learning to come down the 
metal-spiral staircase (in the manner you say a cat comes down a 
ladder).  I am so lame that I come down many staircases (nod to JennyQ 
and DaveW and the canonical Dutch Staircase) as if it is a ladder.  The 
puppy emulates the kitten, though with great (and appropriate) distrust 
in his own footpad traction and center of gravity and momentum vector, 
etc.   The kitten goes up/down/sideways, jumps from 7 feet to the floor 
without a slip or a care...  her phase-space awareness exceeds the 
puppy's and perhaps always will?  And that was all packed into her 
genome and gestation... how?
>
>>>> 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.
More reading and thinking and revisiting.   I've woefully failed to 
follow your and Jon's discussions of (Prior's) Tonk, being distracted 
along the way with the Card Game and the Musical sense of the term and 
their separate etymologies.   "Logics without introduction"  leaves me 
with grok-blok.   I suppose it is obvious?   More reading and 
revisiting.   "Why does head hurt when Hulk try to think?"
>
> 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.
said to the worst thread-bending, thread-breaking, thread-tangling 
creature on the list...  and the implications of the 
laptop/home-machine/cloud, truck/driving have me imagining you having 
written this from a backwoods pub on the Olympic Penensula or at the 
foot of Shasta with a Sasquatch reading over your shoulder from his 
perch in a tree.
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