[FRIAM] Is consciousness a mystery? (used to be "mystery...deeper".T

Nicholas Thompson thompnickson2 at gmail.com
Fri Jul 12 13:08:49 EDT 2024 

Marcus,

I agree with you that  your two conditions

  i*f 1) it had continuous real time training and 2) the training was
coupled to the physical world through an array of sensors.*

necessary for a system to be conscious.  but unless you assert these
conditions define a conscious system, you leave begging the question of
what sort of experiences would lead you to assert that such a system is
conscious.   If, on the other hand, you do take these condition to be
defining, then the statement that such a system is conscious is a
tautology, without empirical implication.

On Fri, Jul 12, 2024 at 12:50 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
wrote:

> Some supercomputer networks an effective radix of 64.  Blue Gene Q had
> five-dimensional real torus for connectivity.    These network fabrics are
> typically autonomous remote DMA systems that are configured so that
> processors do not have to intervene in data transfers.
>
> Extreme ultraviolet lithography systems can fabricate 100 layers for a
> digital processor.
>
>
> It seems to me a LLM would have a sort of consciousness if 1) it had
> continuous real time training and 2) the training was coupled to the
> physical world through an array of sensors.
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
> *Sent:* Friday, July 12, 2024 9:00 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Is consciousness a mystery? (used to be
> "mystery...deeper".T
>
>
>
> Two separate responses:
>
>
>
> first to Steve—Personally, I do believe in the spectrum of "consciousness"
> you suggest with, perhaps a nuance. One contributor tot he spectrum is
> simply quantity; a quanta has 1 'bit' of consciousness, an octopus has Domegegemegrottebyte
> (real thing according to Wikipedia) 'bits'. A more significant contributor
> is "organization." Molecules with differing numbers of atoms of the same
> elements, organized differently, have very different properties and
> behaviors. A human and an octopus might have the same number of bits of
> consciousness, but the organization of those bits (in an N-dimensional
> space) is radically different.
>
>
>
>    This means it may be possible to say that some threshold quantity and
> and organization results in entities being included in the set of
> generically conscious things, it is unlikely we will ever be able to say
> that Consciousness-Human is identical to or even similar to
> Consciousness-octopus.
>
>
>
> BTW: much of my antipathy to AI claims arises from this perspective. A
> machine very well might have the requisite number of 'bits' of
> consciousness from the material of which the embodying machine is composed
> (and the fact that every 1/0 bit of the executing code has a 'bit' of
> consciousness) and those bits will be 'organized' sufficiently to join the
> generic set; but machine consciousness will never equate to human
> consciousness. My objections to machine "intelligence" comes from the fact
> that machines do not have the N-dimensional organization of humans or
> octopi.
>
>
>
> to Nick—
>
>
>
>    Beware blatant anthropomorphism (applied to both Dave and Dusty)
>
>
>
> Dave is sleepy and calm.
>
> Dusty is anxious and afraid.
>
> Dusty crawls onto Dave's shoulder and finds reassurance and security.
>
> Dave is tolerant and does not shove Dusty off bed.
>
> Dave senses Dusty's need for reassurance and rests his arm across her back
> and lets her stay as she is.
>
> Dusty relaxes and goes to sleep.
>
>
>
> Love is not present in this transaction, unless you presume that a series
> of prior interactions created a kind of meta-state of Lovingness between
> the two and absent that state the interactions  and 'feelings; as presented
> would not have occurred. But, perhaps Dave is just an (occasionally) good
> Buddhist showing Dusty the same respect he would express to any living
> being?
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2024, at 7:02 PM, steve smith wrote:
>
>
>
> Nick -
>
>
>
> (of course) I've larded up my usual style of response below (maybe only
> for my own need to "express" the buildup of mental-pus that comes with
> everything I hear here and elsewhere) but to save you (and anyone else who
> cares) the burden of parsing a few dozen lines of back-and-forth, I offer
> the punchline.  If you are curious about how I came to said (vaguely)
> concise punchline you can read the rest after the <horizontal line> element
> below:
>
>
>
> A) Can you recognize that there is a spectrum/continuum of things you
> would acknowledge as "conscious" between the two extrema (perhaps) of a
> (presumably apex-complex) human/cephalopod/cetacean and that of a quark or
> a brane or a string-loop or some abstract monad?  B) if yes, what are the
> implications of this?  or C) why does quantizing "conscioiusness" into
> "humans like me" and "every other bit of life" feel necessary, useful or
> appealing?
>
>
>
> Steve
>
>
>
> If FriAM typical discourse is the Thunderstorm, is this a (weak) cuddle?
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Steve,
>
>
>
> The scale of your response alone suggests that it cannot be baby steps.
>
> Thus recognizing it was more of a baby (naive) pentathalon (long, arduous
> and multi-modal) hellride of a traverse through the implied space.
>
>
>
> I guess I am proposing a method here, one inn we work outward from an
> evocative experience to explore our understandings of contraversial
> concepts, and that we do it in relatively short bursts.
>
> yes, let us extrude short strands of noodle and see how they criss-cross.
>
>
>
> *Dusty comes to cuddle with David when she hears thunder.*
>
> *Does Dusty love David?*
>
> Dave (or does he self-identify as David?) loves Dusty and finds Dusty's
> cuddling sufficiently similar/familiar to his own cuddling to attribute it
> to love if he is in the mood to do so.
>
> If yes, what else would you expect Dusty to do with  respect to David.
> given you have made that attribution.
>
> If no, what more would have Dusty have to do, before you would make such
> an attribution.
>
> Qualified yes...    Dusty could cower under the bed, leaving Dave to
> choose to coax Dusty out and cuddle Dusty, giving Dusty the "love" or at
> least comfort which Dave would offer as the closest cross-species
> expression of love he knows how to offer in this moment.  Dave loves Dusty,
> Dusty dog-loves Dave.  They are reciprocal but asymmetric in quality, even
> if either would give their lives for the other?
>
> I would like to respond to an inference that there is something
> patronizing about my insisting on a method, as if  I think you need
> thought-therapy and I am the guy to give it.
>
> If in fact you were to have intended (consciously or not) as patronizing,
> I take it as an gesture of love, of filial empathy, of generous guidance
> from someone who has been around at least as many trees as I have...   I
> definitely need or seek thought/spiritual therapy/guaidance from every
> quarter, including this one.
>
> In reply, I only would say that if somebody were willing to ask me short,
> to-the-point questions about my thinking on any matter and explore
> carefully my answers, I would eternally grateful.   I might even cuddle
> with them in a thunderstorm.
>
> I would choose to give you this level of fine-grain attention around your
> fascination with vortices in the context of meteorology (and other domains)
> more than this domain, but if this is the one you prefer (for the moment),
> let me ask a short, three-part but to-the-point question (and leave it to
> you to ignore the fecundly laden pregnant assumptions hidden by the implied
> simplicity of the construction):
>
> *A) Can you recognize that there is a spectrum/continuum of things you
> would acknowledge as "conscious" between the two extrema (perhaps) of a
> (presumably apex-complex) human/cephalopod/cetacean and that of a quark or
> a brane or a string-loop or some abstract monad?  B) if yes, what are the
> implications of this?  or C) why does quantizing "conscioiusness" into
> "humans like me" and "every other bit of life" feel necessary, useful or
> appealing?*
>
>  Steve
>
> Steve
>
>
>
> NIck
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 4:05 PM steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>
> Nick -
>
> I'm glad you acknowledged (in another branch of this thread?) the
> "grumpiness" aspect of your initiation/participation in this thread.  Your
> analogy around thought/feeling "expression" and that of pimple popping is
> in fact very apt if a bit graphic.  I do think many of us want this
> apparently deeply thorny/paradoxical problem to be easier than it is?   And
> the plethora of complexly subtle dis/mis-agreements on language around
> consciousness, intelligence, cognition, (self) awareness, qualia
> complicates that yet more.
>
> I don't know if my own baby-steps are helpful, given that my
> background/perspective might align more with DaveW than most others here
> (I'm very sympathetic with a pan-consciousness perspective)?  maybe it
> parses as baby-babble more than baby-steps...
>
> I missed most of this (and related) threads but am surprised at where this
> seems to be going. I always associated consciousness with subjective
> experience and not necessarily with self awareness. The "hard problem of
> consciousness" is qualia, not self-awareness. No? An AI agent cannot
> understand language on anything other than a superficial basis because it
> has no idea what, for example "wet," means. Nevertheless, it will be quite
> good at stringing words together that say coherent things about wetness. An
> AI agent has no *idea *about anything. At the same time, an AI agent will
> be quite good at creating coherent statements about very many things. Just
> because an AI agent is able to create coherent statements does not mean
> that those statements reflect the agent's ideas--since it has no ideas.
>
>
>
> Russ's  point here is a good pivot point for me in this conversation if it
> is possible to make the pivot.  It may not be.
>
> Knowing and Knowing-About:
>
>   I use the former to be the quality of qualia... not easily formalizeable
> nor quantifiable nor with obvious models which are not intrinsically
> subjective.   "Knowing-About" is for me reserved for the formalized models
> of "facts about the world and relations between ideas" and when I say
> "formalized" I don't preclude storytelling or the highly vilified "just so
> stories".
>
> Formalized mathematical, statistical, logical models with digital computer
> simulations (or analog electronic, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic
> "circuits" or "systems")  are "knowing about"...  a steam train for example
> embodies "knowing about" converting carbon-fuel into linear motion across
> long distances, carrying heavy loads by way of many repeatable
> mechanisms...   the implementation and operation of such a device/system is
> a "proof" in some sense of the design.
>
>  On top of that design/system are other design/systems (say the logic of
> Railroad Robber Baronages) upon which yet other systems (say
> Industrial-revolution era proto-hyper-capitalism) on top of which rides
> trans-global corporatism and nationalism in their own "gyre and gimbal"
> with a in intra-stellar and eventually inter-stellar variation in the sense
> of Asimov's Foundation and Empire or perhaps for the youth culture here
> (under 60?) George Lucas' Star Wars Empire or Roddenberry's Star Trek
> Federation vs ???
>
> Consciousness:
>
> A the lowest level consciousness or perhaps proto-consciousness registers
> for me as "having a model of the world useful for guiding behaviour toward
> surviving/thriving/reproducing/collectivizing".     This permeates all of
> life from somewhere down at the single-celled
> bacteria/archaea/fungi/phyto-thingies/  up to and through
> vertebrates/mammals/hominids/sapiens
>
> On the reflection of whether my cat or dog, or the hummingbirds outside my
> window or the mice trying to sneak back into my house have "consciousness",
> or even more pointedly the mosquito I slapped into a blood (my blood by the
> way) spot on my forearm last night, have "consciousness"...   while each of
> these appear to have a "consciousness" I know it to be variously more or
> less familiar to my own.   My elaborate (unfettered?) imagination allows me
> to make up (just so?) stories about how cetaceans, cephalapods, jellyfish
> all variously have aspects of their "consciousness' that I could (do?)
> recognize (empathize with?).   So I would want a multivalued function with
> at least two simple scalars: Familiarity-to-Me(Conscioiusness) and
> Potency-of(Consciousness), pick your scale... my identical twin or maybe
> conjoined twin might max out on the first scale while a nematode or a
> bacterium might trail off toward nil on the first AND second scale.  And
> beyond the scale of organic life into artificial life and  beyond, the
> "familiarity" of a glider or oscillator in the GameO'Life or the braided
> rings of Saturn, even less significant but not zero?   The Potency-scale
> seems to be something like *agency* which feels absolute for most of us
> except Robert Sapolsky while the *agency* of an electron or neutrino seems
> registered at *absolute zero*, though the Quantum Consciousness folks maybe
> put it at max and our own more an illusive projection of that?
>
> The idea of "collective individuation" (e.g. mashup of Eleanor Ostrom's
> collectives and Jung's individuation) suggests that perception, cognition,
> intelligence, even consciousness may well be a collective phenomena.   Our
> organs, tissues, cells, organelles, macromolecules, CHON++ molecules,
> atoms, baryons/fermions, quarks, strings, branes  are on a loose hierarchy
> of diminishing Familiarity-Consciousness and Potency-Consciousness.   I'm
> more interested (these days) in the emergent collective consciousness of
> the noosphere and perhaps the symbiotic culture of humanity and
> life-at-all-scales (SCHLAAS?)   it feels wild and science-fictiony to
> assert that earth's biosphere has already (in the last 150 years) conjured
> a nervous system, a global-brain (ala Francis Heylighen: Global Brain
> Institute)
>
> https://globalbraininstitute.org/ with "our own" Bollen, Joslyn,
> Rodriguez still on the Board of Technical Advisors.   I scoffed at this
> somewhat 25 years ago (mostly because of the hubris of "Global" and
> "Brain").
>
> OK Nick, so not "baby steps" more like a hyper-baby's mad dash through an
> obstacle course or maybe a pentathalon?   I tried shunting all this to
> George Tremblay IVo but he referred me to Gussie Tumbleroot who cheered me
> on on my careening ideational orbits.
>
> Gurgle,
>
>  - Steve
>
>
>
>
>
> -- Russ Abbott
>
> Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
>
> California State University, Los Angeles
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 9:30 AM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Glen,
>
>
>
> This is a test to illustrate somethiing about Gmail to Nick.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 9, 2024 at 4:37 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347215003085
>
>
>
>
>
> On July 9, 2024 2:04:29 PM PDT, Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
> wrote:
>
> Maybe I should not be replying, as I do believe my dogs (and your cat if
> you have one) are conscious.
>
>
>
> I have not experienced a Vulcan Mind-Meld with either of my dogs, so I
> cannot say with certainty they are conscious—I must infer it from
> observations:
>
> 1- interactions with other dogs would seem to indicate they "remember"
> past interactions and do not require the same butt-sniffing protocol with
> dogs they have met at the park frequently. Also they seem to remember who
> plays with who and who doesn't. "That ball is not mine, this one is."
>
> 2-they modify their behavior depending on the tenor, sharpness, and volume
> of barks, ear positions, tail wagging differences, by the other dogs; e.g.,
> "that's enough."
>
> 3-They do not communicate to me in English, but seem to accept
> communication from me in that language—not trained responses to commands,
> but "listening to conversations" between myself and Mary and reacting to
> words (e.g., dog park) that are exchanged in those conversations. Mary and
> I are totally sedentary and speaking in conversational tone, so pretty sure
> there we are not sending 'signals' akin to training words, training tone of
> voice.
>
> 4-they seem to remember trauma, (one of our dogs spent three days with
> dead owner before anyone knew the owner was deceased and will bite if
> anyone tries to forcefully remove him from my (current bonded owner)
> presence.
>
> 5-seek "psychological comfort" by crawling into my bed and sleeping on my
> shoulder when the thunderstorm comes.
>
>
>
> *All of these are grounded in anthropomorphism—long considered a deadly
> error by ethologists.* (Some contemporary ethologists are exploring
> accepting and leveraging this "error" to extend our understanding of animal
> behavior.)
>
>
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 9, 2024, at 2:54 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
> While I find all the  ancillary considerations raised on the original
> thread extremely interesting,  I would like to reopen the discussion of
> Conscious as a Mystery and ask that those that join it stay close to the
> question of what consciousness is and how we know it when we see it.  Baby
> Steps.
>
>
>
> Where were we?   I think I was asking Jochen, and perhaps Peitr and
> anybody else who thought that animals were not conscious (i.e., not aware
> of their own awareness)  what basis they had in experience for thinking
> that..  One offering for such an experience is the absence of language in
> animals.  Because my cat cannot  describe his experience in words, he
> cannot be  conscious.  This requires the following syllogism:
>
>
>
> Nothing that does not employ a language (or two?) is conscious.
>
> Animals (with ;the possible exception of signing apes) do not employ
> languages.
>
> Ergo, Animals are not conscious.
>
>
>
> But I was trying to find out the basis for the first premise.  How do we
> know that there are no non-linguistic beings that are not conscious.  I
> hope we could rule out the answer,"because they are non-linguistic",  both
> in its strictly  tautological or merely circular form.
>
>
>
> There is a closely related syllogism which we also need to explore:
>
>
>
> All language using beings are conscious.
>
> George Peter Tremblay IV is a language-using being.
>
> George Peter Tremblay IV is conscious.
>
>
>
> Both are valid syllogisms.  But where do the premises come from.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
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> --
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> Frank Wimberly
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