[FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

[Steve Smith]

Marcus -

Even though I play the Luddite most of the time, I am in fact fascinated 
with the possibilities of post/transhumanism, at least in the sense that 
it feels "inevitable".   With the implied magnitude of qualitative 
change in Homo this-n-that to /Homo postHomo /or maybe /Homo Cyborgis/ 
or quite possibly Homo goneBabygoneNevertobeSeenAgain along with all 
mammalian/warm-blooded/vertebrate life, depending on our overshoot, it 
seems worth a second thought or two as to what we *might* have some 
control over.


We are about to enter a chaotic maelstrom of change, and while that can 
seem hopeless, I do believe that extreme sports enthusiasts are very 
precise about the line they enter their maelstroms from/on.  (Surfing, 
skiing, Niagra-Falls-Barrel-Diving... etc)


Regarding the augmentation of LLMs...  we were all born in a time of 
huge augmentation in the form of libraries and books and most saliently 
perhaps reference books for our language (dictionary, encyclopedia, etc) 
and reference books to our myriad specialties (Technical Libraries).  
*IN* my lifetime I have participated in the digitization of most if not 
all of that matter as well as adapting the professional and plebian 
workplaces to those changes, whilst adapting our personal lives (e.g. 
handheld device connected to the "global brain" 24/7) to those 
changes.   We can all probably conjure a 1000 utopian/dystopian 
vignettes supporting/undermining any determination of whether this is 
"for the good" or not.   I'm almost completely habituated to this 
"modern era" but old enough to still have intellectual inertia making 
paper maps, newspapers, magazines, etc.  at least *quaint* items if I 
almost always defer to the other.  I recently gifted my 1903 Blackies 
Encyclopedia set to a HS History teacher to use in his classes to give 
his students a snapshot of time *in the original text and atoms* for 
whatever that is worth.


I'm not likely to be an early adopter of neural interfaces (unless I 
face an acute disability in that area) but I am already a fairly regular 
GPT4-whisperer.  I can't say it has improved any of the practical 
aspects of my life (yet), but it has been an interesting correspondent 
in the way I usually burden *this group* with my maundering 
speculations.   GPT4 is infinitely patient, broadly and deeply informed, 
and only occasionally fails to provide me with some interesting feedback.


I recently funded a Kickstarter for a powered exoskeleton (Lower 
extremety only) which may return to me a little more mobility than 
megadosing NSAIDS and velcro-strapped stabilization belts for my 
hips...   I don't know that this will be anything more than a novelty or 
if it will be as (relatively) good as the Oculus (I've been playing with 
VR since before it was called that and was totally blown away by the 
"value" Oculus represents).


<ramble off>

- Steve

> I don't mean "we" as in FRIAM, I mean "we" as in nations.   A benefit 
> of capturing knowledge with LLMs, or similar technology, is that 
> people wouldn't need to be educated about the same material over and 
> over, especially if these systems are integrated into our neural 
> systems.  Why not have individuals inherit a common database so that 
> their lives can be spent on differentiated activities?   There's so 
> little that tie together individuals besides their fears and 
> superstitions.  When I see chatGPT emit passable conversations like 
> this, it seems kind of absurd to waste years of a young person's time 
> covering the same old ground.  (Actually, it already seems that way to 
> me.) Countries like Israel and Greece have mandatory military service. 
>  Some believe this instills in them values greater than themselves. 
>  In this case of the Borg, care of the collective is care of the self 
> and vice versa.  The common practice in the open source LLM community 
> of fine tuning pre-trained LLMs is so much more efficient than what 
> humans do to educate.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Jochen Fromm 
> <jofr at cas-group.net>
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 4, 2023 3:17 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism
> Discussions with large language models are new. But you are right, we 
> had discussions of similar topics before. Maybe I was hoping I could 
> inspire Nick and/or Eric to write a summary of their ideas and what we 
> have discussed before ( such as the solution to the hard problem of 
> consciousness, the nature of subjective experience and what it has to 
> do with path dependence, complexity science and James' radical 
> empiricism ).
>
> -J.
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
> Date: 6/4/23 9:54 PM (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism
>
> The conclusion I draw is that these conversations have all occurred 
> before.  So I wonder, why have them?
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Jochen Fromm
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 4, 2023 10:44 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Radical Empiricism
>
> ChatGPT now allows sharing conversations. I've asked it about William 
> James book "Essays in Radical Empiricism"
>
> https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b
>
> -J.
>
>
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