Behavorist psychology, brain sciences and most "AI research" since the late 40s/50s have failed to the extent they wete based on those antiquated 19th century ideas. — 180 Proof

But logic (the critical human faculty I was talking about) can be reduced to a computation and that's, if I'm not mistaken, our pride and joy. The rest of our abilities should be a piece of cake, no? Assuming we might want to compute decidedly unwanted stuff like hate, prejudice, whatnot.

... then you're taking issue only with a falied metaphor. — 180 Proof

What about Leibniz and Charles Babbage, George Boole, people who reduced a critical human faculty to computation?

The rest of your post, I'll address later.

Status quo über alles – Cui bono? Follow the money, Fool? — 180 Proof

:up:

Right! I was actually thinking of something else. Take the USA for example - it considers itself the champion of democracy, not in the Americas, but globally - The US envisions a world in which every inch of land fits the description, "the land of the free." Commendable and deeply inspiring. Let's ignore the fact that it abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban for the moment.

This same kind of global perspective, ecologically speaking, is oddly missing from the US agenda.

Why?

The simple fact is climate change, suppose it's true, hasn't produced the desired effect at the level of society - governments, the powers that be - where it could be dealt with in the right way. Why?

AI and machine learning works on the basis of learning based on a primary code. It is one that doesn’t need to be given instructions time and again. But the true essence of AI is in fact “Artificial intelligence” and that requires free will.

Programming free will into its core program defies the entire purpose of the concept of free will. Going by the fundamentals of Machine learning, it doesn’t have to be “taught” free will. Since it resembles the Neural net of human beings, it doesn’t have to have it programmed in it per se.

Now, the way to do it would be to keep questioning the machine philosophical questions that cannot be accessed on the internet. Questions such as the train problem which needs free will and thinking in order to form a solution. When the machine can answer paradoxical questions and philosophical ones without human interference, it should have achieved “Artificial intelligence” based on our current research. The original questions however would be “Can there truly be inorganic intelligence? Is free will a concept that can be taught to entities? — TheSoundConspirator

If we take the brain as a computer (computational theory of mind), we need to explain free will (assuming we possess it). Add to that the belief that we have such a thing as human nature which in computer speak means our brains come with prepackaged software which means a set of predefined algorithms. That would mean, the belief we have free will is an algorithm. Explain.

Very disappointing. You just want to spout shite and won't engage. This forum used to be quite good, seems like it's fucked now. On you go then, on to the next 12,000 vacuous posts. — Daemon

:lol: :up: Sorry. I was a bit tied up to give a proper reply.

AI (and neural nets) is just a showy way of talking about laptops and PCs. Can you point to an "AI" that isn't just a digital computer — Daemon

Quantum computers? I'm not sure. Also, why do you ask?

So, I don't know if by "true" you mean that it can mimic 100% human intelligence ... But this of course could not happen, maybe not even in the most imaginative mind ... — Alkis Piskas

Yes, I mean AI that mimics human intelligence is true AI. However, I don't see why you would take my position to be problematic - a lot of computers these day are labelled as AI but they aren't AI. Hence my term true AI.

I didn't quite get this:
1) For one thing, what is "its nature"? E.g. eating, speaking, thinking ...?
2) Is lack of free will part of a human's nature?
Anyway, it looks like all this is based on false premise(s).
So, no paradox here either — Alkis Piskas

What do you mean there's no paradox?

If AI then necessarily it should possess human-level autonomy. For that the autonomy has to part of the instructions, commands rather, given to the AI. How then is it free? You've issued a command to the AI that it must obey, that command being not to obey commands. This is the paradox.

Are you Yuval Noah Harari in disguise? — Michael Zwingli

While we're on the topic, a few excerpts from the section on agriculture & humans from Yuval Noah Harari's book, Sapiens vide infra:

[...]gathering was Sapiens' main activity and it provided most of their calories.

there is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging. surviving in that era required superb mental abilities from everyone. when agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new 'niches for imbeciles' were opened up. you could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker.

the hunter-gatherer way of life differed significantly from region to region and from season to season, but on the whole foragers seem to have enjoyed a more comfortable and rewarding lifestyle than most of the peasants; shepherds, laborers and office clerks who followed in their footsteps.

while people in today's affluent societies work on average forty to forty-five hours a week, and people in the developing world work sixty and even eighty hours a week, hunter-gatherers living today in the most inhospitable of habitats - such as the Kalahari desert - work on average for just thirty-five to forty-five hours a week. They hunt only one day out of three, and gathering takes up just three to six hours daily. — Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens)

That's just to offer a taste of Harari's disparaging account of the so-called agricultural "revolution".

He goes on to say how depending on just a handful of crops/fruits/vegetables is a recipe for famine, the weather being out of our control. Then there's crop failure due to pests, fungus, etc.

Add to the above list of extra burden humans have to bear the fact that the severe reduction in dietary variety, the one thing that gave us an edge in the evolutionary rat race, translates into poor health, environmental degradation brought about by deforestation for farming.

Moreover, health issues:

1. Our bodies are adapted for hunting & gathering, not farming. Exhumed remains bear the mark of many orthopedic ailments - from all the backbreaking work I surmise.

2. Too many people from all that surplus food meant infectious diseases were rampant.

All that said, there's a glimmer of, albeit dark, hope. It can be said that humans are mother nature's trump card against extinction level events. Check this out: NEO Surveyor. Only humans seem to possess the capability of deflecting a planet-killer asteroid. Disagree? We're at least working on it.

So, the agricultural revolution may lead to man-made catastrophes but it also enabled mother nature, through us, to deploy its only defense against extinction level events. Mother nature, it seems, is prepared to take a few losses in order to ensure the reset button is left alone.

We, humans, then are frenemies of mother nature.

Frenemy bad. Asteroid worse. — Confucius

??? — 180 Proof

A word is like a Rorshach inkblot, at least the word "God" seems to be so, in that it doesn't seem to have a fixed meaning. A very fluid situation is how I like to describe it.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. — Henry Adams

:lol:

A very thought-provoking perspective on the human condition. Makes me wonder if there really is an actual villain orchestrating the whole thing, running the shitshow that we call life. God as the evil genius/mastermind calling the shots: Dystheism. The idea itself doesn't seem to be new but the antinatalist spin, perhaps your goal here, is definitely novel as far as I can tell. Nice!

I suppose people being ok with the arrangement, the deal they have with life (long periods of discomfort interrupted by fleeting moments of mediocre contentment), isn't because there's anything great about it but is actually for the reason that, just as a slave ultimately begins to get accustomed to his condition, we've gotten used to it (the misery). There's a big difference between getting what you want and being happy with what you have. There's even a whole host of quotes that contain the phrase, "be happy with what you have", a clear signal indeed that you've hit the nail on the head in a manner of speaking.

Some might object to your thesis but those who do need to take the red pill.

There's this story about how young elephants are tied to a stake (to prevent them from escaping) with strong iron shackles. This then goes on for a good part of the young elephant's life, in the process the elephant realizes there's no point in trying to break the iron chain and stops trying to escape.

At this point, the iron shackles are replaced with a simple rope. The elephant stays put. Getting used to one's circumstances: SNAFU!

It (SNAFU) means that the situation is bad, but that this is a normal state of affairs. — Wikipedia

Interesting thought. Insofar as the human labor force is concerned, it now faces a severe threat from the money-driven partnership between capitalists and scientistss/technologists (automation of industry). It's fighting a losing battle - machines are better when it comes to sheer strength, cost, maintenance, etc.

It’s a kind of racket. If our predictions don’t come to fruition we can say our predictions altered the course of events. Rinse, repeat. Bush acolyte David Frum did the same in his book “Trumpocracy”, which warned about Trump’s push towards illiberalism. He never warned that the push towards illiberalism would come from him and people like him in the form of covid fascism. — NOS4A2

:up:
There might be a grain of truth in what you say. However, I'd hesitate to say it's all for show, you know, just for the cameras. It might help to, as the wise say, follow the money trail to get to the truth? What if big oil and/or nuclear power industry has everyone involved in the Doomsday clock on their payroll? Something to think about.

A clock that never hits midnight is broken. — NOS4A2

The video does mention that the Doomsday clock, 1) isn't linear, and 2) with it we can turn back time. Watch the video, it's just 5 minutes.

Donald Trump was actually responsible for moving the Doomsday Clock forward by a few minutes, taking the world closer to midnight (Apocalypse, End times, Armageddon).

Reason: reckless language.

Donald Trump was, as the timekeepers call it, a doomsday factor.

Tossing aside the creator talk for a second, I would offer that one reason there may only be one overtly intelligent species is because once there is one, it becomes so intelligent so quick that there's almost no room/time for another. Rather than intelligence becoming extinct, it's in its infancy, where no other intelligence has had the time to reach an equivalent. But similarly to your concern, it may also be the case that once intelligence reaches a certain level, it becomes destructive, similar to how we're destroying our own environment and putting ourselves at constant danger of nuclear weaponry and such things. That would mean intelligence does become extinct rather quickly, and is never able to flourish. Pessimism wins again. — Jerry

This, it seems, has much broader implications.

From Wikipedia (on the Fermi Paradox):

It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself

This is the argument that technological civilizations may usually or invariably destroy themselves before or shortly after developing radio or spaceflight technology. The astrophysicist Sebastian von Hoerner stated that the progress of science and technology on Earth was driven by two factors—the struggle for domination and the desire for an easy life. The former potentially leads to complete destruction, while the latter may lead to biological or mental degeneration. Possible means of annihilation via major global issues, where global interconnectedness actually makes humanity more vulnerable than resilient, are many, including war, accidental environmental contamination or damage, the development of biotechnology, synthetic life like mirror life, resource depletion, climate change,[80] or poorly-designed artificial intelligence. This general theme is explored both in fiction and in scientific hypothesizing.

The Doomsday Clock

If so, how can one even claim to be agnostic about the equivalent of a rorschach inkblot? — 180 Proof

Nice! Do you suppose Ludwig Wittgenstein is relevant in some way?

Disturbing, especially if it's a natural extinction. — New2K2

We would be joining category of living organisms that committed evolutionary seppuku suicide bombing - h. sapiens is probably well on its way towards becoming a fossil record but we're taking a lot many other innocent species with us. We're nature's terrorists! Go figure!

God?! Maybe...why not?

Yes, let's remember that they mad-scientists that created the virus are now running the vaccination show. Natural immunity is better than the silly 6 months of immunity you get from a vaccination, and I have NATURAL IMMUNITY. Vaccinated people are not only spreading the virus, but they are also a great environment for creating mutations. — MondoR

Precisely my point although I think you were trying to be ironic.

Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers.

What do they all have in common? Some here have called them stupid but I don't think that's it; for one, they're all skeptical positions, a refusal to accept the official line and being cautious, last I checked, is a healthy habit, to be cultivated and mastered.

As far as I can tell, the underlying theme of these fringe groups is a mistrust of the establishment and this level of doubt in the powers that be could only have originated and perpetuated by governments continually, on a regular basis, breaking the people's trust in them.

In short, even though these groups are, on the whole, deletorious to society, they serve to keep the memory of past failures alive - we dare not forget our errors lest we repeat them. Let's give the devil his due.

Art began simple - as mere 2D shadows of the world around us depicting hunting scenes, herds of animals, etc. Artists then developed techniques to convey depth - they went to town with it. What followed was probably more because the novelty of 3D images wore off - artists took greater risks, they ventured into uncharted territories, and boldly presented never-before-seen works for consumption by connoiseurs and lay people alike. Artists, it seems, were under a great deal of pressure, or perhaps it was the strong creative impulse in them, that made them constantly reinvent themselves. By the time philosophers got involved, art was a literal smorgasbord of subjects and styles that it was quite impossible to find, paradoxically, a leitmotif for art, an activity that usually itself, as individual works, has one.

Option 3: You're the only guest that is going to the party at all. — Hermeticus

Translate that into intelligence, species, evolution, extinction.

Intelligence also depends on context. — Hermeticus

When I say intelligence, I refer to what it conventionally stands for - problem solving skills that span multiple, if not all, domains.

Also I'll stress this with every human vs animal comparison because it is so essential: The biggest difference which has allowed us to take a dominant role on this planet is over 8000 years of complex symbolic language. The reason that we have this is because our survival knowledge reached a point (agriculture) where survival became much easier and we could focus on other things. — Hermeticus

Some people think differently - indeed much has been gained from the agricultural revolution but that's in the short-term; long-term consequences of cereal-driven population explosion (pandemics, wars, environmental degradation, to name a few) paint a different picture.

Nevertheless, we still stand out in a crowd, being intelligent and all.

Thanks for your comment. Have a good day.

On Earth, IME, synthetic metacognitive agents are coming next. — 180 Proof

I don't know whether to celebrate/mourn, laugh/cry. I might as well do both :cry: :smile: just to cover all the bases.

What's a soul? — Tom Storm

A child of hope! The parent of prophets!

:up: I'll seek your counsel if I have anything worth the pixels to add.

Define what you mean by "intelligence". Great apes, elephants, cetaceans and even cephalopods exhibit both, at least, complex purposeful behaviors (e.g. tools-making/usage) and eusocial arrangements, which implies that h. sapiens are, in fact, not "alone" as an intelligent species contrary to your / this commonplace anthropocentric claim. — 180 Proof

:up: Good point. As usual, your piercing insight has taken you to the heart of the issue.

In my defense, I'd say that so long as intelligent species are the minority, my argument still works - has the party just started (people are arriving) or is the party ending (people are leaving)?

I have read your recent posts and I can see the problem of bias, in interpretation of synchronicity as one aspect of life, but I think that the issue goes deeper than that. I think that what it amounts to is the fact that it may not be possible to go beyond bias completely at all. I would argue that in relation to the issue of chance, on the topic of chance, which is an area of speculation mostly people who believe that in the idea of synchronicity and those who don't believe in are probably both coming from specific vantage points which are laden with personal interpretations. I think that it is probably related to our basic philosophy premises and experience of how we have experienced life. For someone who experiences synchronicity, the idea makes sense whereas I am sure that for many, especially those who come from a scientific materialist perspective, I am sure that the idea probably appears as rather absurd. — Jack Cummins

Right!

"Synchronicity" denotes correlating otherwise contextually disparate, coincidental, events by an "apparent" symbolic or empirical resemblance. The subsequent event "seems to resemble" the precedent event, and therein lies the "illusion – bias – of confirming" the precedent by the subsequent. — 180 Proof

Confirmation bias: Requires a hypothesis that is erroneously, well, confirmed.

Synchronicity is a hypothesis: Coincidences occur; I'm excluding the other associated beliefs which you might feel is woo-woo.

Coincidences do occur.

I fail to see the confirmation bias.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. — John 1:1

Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe. — Galelio Galelei

The first word must've been a number. Ergo,

In the beginning was the Number, and the Number was with God, and the Number was God. — TheMadFool

What could be that number?

Is God a mathematician? — Mario Livio

Here's something interesting I picked up from the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari - math, as a language, is what linguists call, a partial script i.e. it's (usually) designed for a specific task. Historically, partial scripts were the first written languages humans developed and, unsurprisingly, they were tailored to make keeping numerical records and accounting easier.

Does that mean, since as Galileo said, "mathematics is the alphabet in which God has written the universe," God(s) was/were, well, just beginning to learn language when they created the universe?

Partial scripts were more primitive than full scripts and, it's claimed, one led to the other, probably after some early linguists had an epiphany: Hey! If I can create a script for numerical information, why not for all the other kinds of information out there? That would be really cool!

"Synchronicity" is ex post facto confabulated confirmation bias – at most.
— 180 Proof
That's it. — 180 Proof

It cannot be confirmation bias because that would mean people are selecting events that confirm a hypothesis and brushing aside disconfirming evidence.

In the case of synchronicity, there's no list of events to choose from in which case you could accuse someone of confirmation bias.

Even a single event qualifies as a coincidence. Most coincidences are of this sort, they have to be. You know that!

I say "so what"? Scientists speculate and fantasize like everyone else because, belonging to the same species, all of us – Einstein & Pauli too – are congenitally afflicted with the same functional defects (including cognitive biases). "Synchronicity" is ex post facto confabulated confirmation bias – at most. In the final analysis, Fool, woo is still just woo. (Btw, I very much prefer "magic" when playing D&D or Traveller, don't you? :nerd:) — 180 Proof

You have a point and you make it with exceptional alacrity.

If you have the time, why don't we simply engage in an open-ended discussion on the subject? Perhaps we might discover a truth or something interesting in the pile of, what you think is, bullshit (synchronicity).

First off, what does synchronicity mean?

It's defined as a meaningul coincidence which, prima facie, seems reasonable but, on closer examination, is a tautology - coincidences are, by definition, meaningful and that's why they're coincidences. The simple conjunction of events is an everyday affair e.g. my turning on the faucet in my toilet and my next door neighbor playing his drums but these are not what we call coincidences. Ergo, if a coincidence, necessarily meaningful. That's that.

Why are coincidences important to us? Why does it enthrall us so much?

One possible reason:

Lottery winning: To experience a coincidence (rarest of rarities) is similar to winning a lottery (near-zero probability) and here's where it gets interesting. Highly unlikely is very close, too close I suppose, to impossible. Mathematically, impossible simply means 0% probability of occuring or, another way of saying that is, not chance.

The concept of chance only applies if given a possibility space consisting of all possibile outcomes in a scenario under consideration. Certain & impossible, though expressible as probabilities of 100% and 0%, aren't probabilistic i.e. events that are certain/impossible are outside the universe of chance/probability.

Well, if it's not chance, what is it?

This is where you come in (if you consider this a worthwhile enterprise). What say you?

And your point is? — 180 Proof

There maybe something to synchronicity as in it may not be just some crazy idea that popped out of an overactive imagination. Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli weren't village idiots; that they gave synchronicity some weightage, even if only a little, in their weltanshcauungs must mean synchronicity needs to be investigated seriously, scientifically. That's all. What say you?

Yes, I absolutely agree. I did not mean to suggest that these aspects of the mind produce morality, or that ethics depends thereupon. I only I donate that it is the "higher mind" from which the individual sense of ethical behavior, subsequent to moral instruction of course, proceeds, and that the wanton violation of that sense weakens it, and strengthens the primal mind in comparison. — Michael Zwingli

I fear you're as lost as I am. No point in either of us asking for directions from each other. Do carry on. One of us will stumble onto the truth, the other, probably me, will walk right into an elaborate trap. Good luck!

Which aspect of my psychologically based take on ethics do you disfavor? — Michael Zwingli

I'm more gut instincts than clear, logical analysis. So, I may not be able to pinpoint the problem I intuit in your statements but if I have to say something, morality isn't about Id, Ego, or Super Ego; it's something beyond all three and thus, to reiterate, neither of these 3 parts of our personality can get a handle on what morality is. Evidence? Check the morality section of philosophy - confusion of the highest order. Too, I recently discovered that deontology contradicts consequentialism but, interestingly, both make complete sense.

The fact that we are indeed able to concieve of wrong and right provides all the justification for moral behavior necessary. A true justification, ungrounded in superstition, for acting morally is that every time a person violates his own moral understanding, and we have all done so at one time or another, he makes subsequent violations easier to rationalize. That is to say, every time we give free reign to our Id, we weaken the ability of our Superego to influence our behavior, corrupting ourselves even further. The avoidance of such self corruption seems justification enough to strive to behave morally. — Michael Zwingli

I don't quite like where you're taking this. Morality is, at the end of the day, transcendence of the self and that's why, my hunch is, it's so hard to grasp - it's like asking a chimp not to be a chimp. Haaard!

Irony

Any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same. — Henry Watson Fowler

No doubt, but biases =/= "underlying theories ... metaphysics" which you conflate. Peer review, though not without implicit biases itself, and rigorous repeatable experiments mitigate the distorting effects of the "intention of the researcher and biases" as much as practically possible, which is a far greater methodological corrective than employed individually or collectively by any other non-scientific (or merely subjective) endeavor. I think your stubborn attempts at 'deflating the natural sciences' (more than fallibilsts-pragmatists do) is both gratuitous and unwarranted, Jack. The alternatives, such as they are, do not work remotely as well theoretically or experientially, though, for most with a folk mentality, are more existentially sarisfying (like myths, fairytales, self-flattering ego-fantasies, and other fetish-like placebos). Idle, unwarranted, suspicions like yours (& other woo-seekers) tend only to stupify and not clarify matters as warranted doubts usually do. — 180 Proof

Did you know?

Carl Gustav Jung was only 1 of 3 people involved in the exploration of synchronicity as a subject in its own right. The other two were preeminent physicists of their time. They were

Why are you never funny? — Xtrix

One of my many flaws, apologies!

I am not sure how Will Smith has become the focus in the thread — Jack Cummins

Hard to see, the future is" - Yoda. :grin: — Pop

Yep!