What does hardcoded mean? — Joshs

Pre-programmed, in contrast to self-organization. Its not some technical concept. For instance, you could say pain or hunger is in some sense hard-coded into us.

You have then seemed to base the rest of the post on latching onto thia use of the word "hardcoded" even though I initially brought that word up in the post to say that "hardcode" is exactly not what characterizes self-organization or what A.I. do.

And can we also create life from scratch if we had all the technological capabilities? What I am going on about are the important differences between the cognizing of a living organism and the thinking of a human-designed machine. — Joshs

It seems to me you are going on about differences between living organisms and our current machines. But there is no refutation here that in principle one can build machines which are as complex as living organisms. You haven't set out any reason why those differences wouldn't be breachable. You just say that living organisms are like this and machines we have built are like that. You don't seem to think that in principle we can understand the principles of self-organization and use that to build self-organizing machines when people have been doing that for decades. The learning that A.I. does isn't even all that different to self-organization in the sense that in modern A.I. we don't hardcode the capabilities and things these systems are actually doing; usually people don't even really know how the A.I. they have designed does what it does on a mechanical level. What is being hardcoded, effectively, is the ability for a system to learn to do things by itself without explicit supervision, which is self-organization.

There is absolutely nothing of any substance in Josh's post that refutes the idea that one could build a self-organizing machine.

I really don't understand what you are going on about. A brain is a physical object. In principal, you can build a brain that does all the things brains do from scratch if you had the technological capabilities.

No, I don't and you don't here provided sufficient evidence to convince me of your view. Rather, it seems to me that, given the impressive results we have obtained with computers you are concluding that our congition is also algorithmic. — boundless

How would you interpret the fact that our brain (or at least the component that seems involved in processing information and long distance message-passing) is almost entirely composed of the same kind of cell with the same fundamental underlying physiological and anatomical structures and mechanism in terms of membrane potentials that induce action potentials.

We don't have a deep understanding in which we can build detailed realistic functioning models of exactly what human brains are doing and why but we have a reasonably good basis for understanding the kind of information processing principles that underlie what neurons do such as in terms of efficient, sparse, predictive coding using recurrent connectivity. And really, LLM architectures work under very similar basic principles to what neurons do which is just prediction. You can fidn studies that the same kind of models used for LLMs are actually really very good at predicting neural responses to things like language processing because fundamentally they are doing the same thing, prediction.

All living beings seem to have a 'sense' of unity, that there is a distinction between 'self' and 'not self' and so on. They do not just 'do' things. — boundless

There is no reason to think that these things can't be achieved with the same fundamental processes that transformers already use... why? Because they work in the same way brains do. The difference is that all LLMs are trained to do is predict words. Human brains don't just predict but act and control themselves; not just that, but these things are clearly biased, in terms of the evolutionarily-conserved structure of the brain itself, for very biologically specific control (i.e. what you would call homeostatic and allostatic). But the point is that there is no reason to think these things cannot be performed by the same processes that fundamentally underlie what transformers and LLMs do if you just structure them or design them in a way that allows them to do that. It would be surprising if they didn't imo because that seems to be what brains do. Neurons share the same core fundamental physiological, anatomical, functional properties, and there is the same kinds of interplay between excitation and inhibition, that are used for everything from homeostatic regulatory responses from the hypothalamus and midbrain to visual processing, motor control, language, executive functions, emotion, etc. There is of course a great variety in neurons and structures across the brain but they all share fundamental commonalities with some shared core which is virtually ubiquitious.

I will say bluntly that no machine we invent will do what we do, which is to think. — Joshs

I don't see the grounds for such a statement. A brain is just a certain kind of machine, and it thinks. If brains exist, then in principle you can build one. LLMs don't have a lot of things humans have, but doesn't mean that in principle you could build machines that do.

and they operate according to algorithms (programmed by us) just like mechanical calculators. — boundless

And you don't think we do? Our brains are bundles of neurons which all work in very similar ways. You could easily make an argument that we operate in accordance with some very basic kind or family of algorithms recapitulated in many different ways across the brain.

All their activities can be explained by saying that they just do what they are programmed for. — boundless

As can a human brain.

I mean, none of this has any relevance to any points I am making. Obviously, to artificially recreate a human brain to acceptable approximation, you need to construct this computational system with the kinds of inputs, kinds of architectures, capabilities, whatever, that a human does. I am not making any arguments based on specific assumptions about specific computing systems, just on what is in principle possible.

Yes, I guess it depends on how easily convinced you are about this being case. For me, without further reason to believe otherwise, it seems like the biggest roadblocks in modelling something like the brain is intractable complexity. There is no indication that in principle we cannot someday model all our own behaviors and reports through computer models. I think even just looking at AI now indicates that there isn't really a conceivable limit on what they can do given enough power and the right inputs, which is what you might expect from something which is Turing complete: i.e. they can compute anything in principle.

Well, if we can in principle explain our reports and behaviors regarding our own conscious experiences in terms of physics and biology, and epiphenomenalism is ridiculous, then this suggests that a coherent view of these kinds of metaphysics has to be monistic, if thats the right word.

I assert that your mechanics will fall flat on its face if it amounts to nothing but a ‘third-person’ mechanics. — Joshs

But everything in your previous post was "third-person mechanics".

According to Kuhn, when paradigms change, the accounts they express inhabit slightly different worlds. — Joshs

Which is when scientists disagree with each other. But scientists don't generally set out to disagree with each other or foresee science as being full of ideas that are inherently contradictory. They aim for a family of models which agree on underlying metaphysics, ontology, on empirical predictions - and when they don't scientists will explain that away as idealization or models and science in general not being good enough yet or complete enough. You can view the mind and brain through many different perspectives and scales with different methods, and people have different hypotheses. But most people don't think that they don't or can't agree in principle, at least in the future.

There is another, perhaps more important, issue at play here. It’s not just a matter of providing an explanation. It’s recognizing that there are a multiplicity of explanations to choose from, differing accounts each with their own strengths and weaknesses. — Joshs

I don't really find this that interesting in the context of the problem of consciousness. Its almost a triviality of science that different problems, different descriptions utilize different models or explanations. Given that any plurality of explanations need to be mutually self-consistent, at least in principle, this isn't interesting. Ofcourse, there are actual scientific models that are not actually mutually consistent, but most people don't recognize that kind of thing as somehow alluding to a reality with inherent mutual inconsistencies. Possibly the only real exception is in foundations of physics albeit there is no consensus position there.



Or maybe the dualism of physical and mental is illusory with regard to fundamental metaphysics.

To me, they would if they had exactly the same brains as us but just devoid of any "lights on" inside. My impression is that there is nothing really in biology that suggests we couldn't explain our behavior entirely in terms of the mechanics of brains, at least in principle.

But why aren't the physically different statuses simply physical? — Patterner

What's also interesting here imo is the the question of why something "simply physical" would exclaim things that to us sound like proclamations of consciousness and experience yet surely are produced solely by physical chains of events. I don't see a strong reason why a "simply physical" version of us wouldn't make those exact same kinds of claims as us insofar as they would have the same brains as us. And I don't think most biologists believe there is something fundamentally glaring about brains that would render them insufficient for producing the complex behaviors we are capable of.

How do you determine what is part of the system and what is not?
Is it possible for a system to contain a system?
If yes, what exactly is a system of all systems? — Pieter R van Wyk

In the Markov Blanket perspective, there are no strict boundaries and systems under this definition can be recursively nested within each other, which is natural; molecules in cellular components in cells in organs in people in societies, ecosystems, solar systems, etc, etc.

Because its a rigorous formal framework, it can be put into practise. An interesting proposal in this paper where they do this, producing algorithms for distinguishing systems and components of systems - "a Markov Blanket detection algorithm".

https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.21217

Point particles with intrinsic properties is itself an incoherent idea. Therefore you wrongly classify your interpretation as coherent. "Point particles" is just a mathematical facilitation, which physicists know does not represent anything real, due to that incoherency. Therefore it does not avoid the so-called measurement problem, it's just a fiction which simplifies some calculations. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well I don't think there is any picture or theories of any kind of physics or metaphysics where a point particle wouldn't be a kind of idealization or fiction to simplify conceptualizations of the world. The fact that fields are fundamental doesn't necessarily make particles inconsistent with them; but I do take the point that quantum field theory does seem to suggest to people that some point particle properties just cannot exist in QFT (e.g. a photon cannot be localized in space like a you would expect of a point-particle). But I believe this only conflicts with point particles if you conflate a particle with the quantum state - its the quantum state which cannot be localized. This would not be the case in stochastic mechanics or Bohmian mechanics where neither particles nor field configurations would be identical to a quantum state, so there would be no inherent contradictions even if particles are generalized by a field description.

Very nice analysis :up: :up:

Rather, experience cannot be disentangled from the functional structure of the brain; attempts to do so result in bizarre paradoxes like the p-zombie who believes they are conscious, reports their own experiences and can converse about it as well as yourself.

I could write it out, but my argument doesn't depend on this Bayesian framework. Most people won't understand it anyway. What I think is funny is that I estimated the probability of my conclusion being correct at 95% even before the Bayesian analysis. — Sam26

No one's going to take you seriously unless you are going to back up your mathematical claims. I would like to see how you got to these numbers.

Edit: in [ ] : nevermind, I see what you're saying for this bit.

Updating yields a posterior probability of approximately 0.95 (95%). — Sam26

Can you explicitly write out this calculation?

Yes, it does seem odd that even though we don't need brains for experiences, our earthly-transcendent spirits have experiences of the exact same kind which are supported by brains which, in the earth-bound counterparts, would be compromised by brain injury. If I have a stroke, will my stroke-related deficits manifest in the afterlife? If not, why do I even have a brain in the physical world that can be disrupted to produce stroke-light deficits. If stroke-like deficits are specific to my earth-bound experiences, why does my transcendent experiences resemble my earth-bound ones? Lots of bogglement ensues.

It would put into question things we know about how physics and biology works.

Very much hoping for a chapter on your NPC hypothesis.

But don't you see how momentous that decision would be? The admission that the fundamental particles of physics are not themselves physical? That you choose not to see this, is not any kind of argument. — Wayfarer

But you can say the wavefunction is just mathematical object that is describing the behavior of physical particles without being identical to them. You can use an evolving probability density function to describe the behavior of a single particle undergoing diffusion, the evolving probability density function is not the particle itself.

luck — Sam26

This can only be done statistically.

history and forensics don't wait for lab recreations to draw conclusions — Sam26

Because forensics is based on established science which is used to assess whats going on. History makes much weaker inferences than the ones you are trying to make.

but that doesn't erase the explanatory power of what's already on the table. — Sam26

No explanatory power at all. You don't have any model, just a vague claim that life exists after death based on circumstantial evidence rather than any explicit refutation.

for every edge case — Sam26

You shouldn't be using underexplored edge cases to make leaping claims that overturn entire paradigms.

you know, the ones courts and historians use daily) — Sam26

Good lord, try brining this to a court or historian and lets see how that goes.

That's not a fallacy; that's consistency. Your crowd's the one gerrymandering epistemology to protect pet paradigms. — Sam26

Just ridiculous to think you can overturn the whole body of knowledge regarding physical science from a few case studies that completely lacking in methodological rigor. And yes, its the entire body, because if there was any other weird stuff going on that was anything like the claims you are making, we probably would have found it scientifically by now.

"more rigorous testing" while ignoring the rigor already in play. — Sam26

Its very basic. Take a class in methods in sociology and see what they tell you about the pros and cos between things like case studies and qualitative research as opposed to quantitative ones.

Clinicians deal with anomalous data all the time without tossing out naturalism wholesale. Historians reconstruct events from fragmentary evidence without demanding Petri dishes. — Sam26

Yes, they make inferences as reasonable based on evidence and the methodological principles they have been taught. Do you really think any of these people would come to the same conclusions as you regarding this topic? If not, there is no point bringing them up.

independent reports matching on checkable facts. — Sam26

Yeah, and you don't know if those effects would replicate in systematic study with lots of these cases as opposed to the case studies where you cant control what people say, how things are reported or checked, cant control how or why these case studies came to prominence (i.e. some kind of selection effect in sampling). You can't control lucky statements, you can't control actual genuine naturalustic ways people may have come to that knowledge. Unless these things are systematically tested then we are forever speculating on these case studies without a definitive conclusion about what happened.

quantum weirdness, consciousness gaps, — Sam26

Quantum weirdness is naturalistic and consciousness is naturalistically studied.

You say science isn't different from other knowledge, but then pivot to demanding everything fit sociology, cog sci, or biomed methods? — Sam26

Because its clearly the subject matter. How is it not? Those are the natural methods you would use to answer exactly this topic.

it's about what holds up under scrutiny. And mine does — Sam26

The whole issue is the dearth of scrutiny, ironically.

but know you're missing out on a paradigm shift. Your call. — Sam26

:lol: :rofl:

But surely this was linked to the fact that science was in search of a or the 'fundamental particle', the basic componentry of the atom. So it is natural that this would amount to a search for a physical particle. The fact that this ended up with the uncertainty principle just is the measurement problem. — Wayfarer

But you can interpret the wavefunction in other ways coherently. From my perspective, fact that people decided to try to interpret it as the physical particle is misplaced. They could have decided to interpret it differently from the beginning and no measurement problem would have existed. The measurement problem is not an inherent part of quantum theory, it is a property of certain interpretations. The only reason it seems so widespread is a knee-jerk inclination of how to view it. The uncertainty principle can be interpreted purely statistically.

Even if consciousness plays no unique role, the measurement problem remains: something distinguishes measurement interactions from non-measurement interactions, and standard quantum theory doesn't specify what that 'something' is. We still need to explain why certain physical interactions produce definite outcomes while others maintain superposition. — Wayfarer

Well, I endorse an interpretation that has a measurment problem so this is solved for me, personally.

But the measurement problem is precisely why interpretations were needed in the first place. — Wayfarer

No, the measurement problem is a result of the fact that when quantum theory was first created, people's first and perhaps natural inclination (considering the predecessors to quantum theory) was to interpret the wavefunction as the physical particle itself. If you choose to do this, you are going to come up with a measurement problem. But its also clear that you can produce coherent interpretations and formulations of quantum mechanics where you don't interpret the wavefunction as an object. Nonetheless, this habit has stuck even though it is not a necessary one. The need for interpretation does not come from the measurement problem; the measurement problem comes from assuming a certain kind of interpretation.

This puzzle can't be dissolved simply by adopting interpretations that claim it doesn't exist. — Wayfarer

It absolutely can. There exists more than one interpretation where you have point particles in definite configurations that reproduce all the predictions.

Hmm, I misread this bit as something to do with philosophical zombies.

Basically, if there was no consciousness, the electrical activity, magnetic activity, blood flow, blood oxygenation, metabolic activity, gap-jumping neurotransmitters, and whatever else, would still be taking place. How would the readings of any scans look different in that case? The differences in the scans of brains with identical activity, one with consciousness and one without, would reveal the physical properties of consciousness. Obviously, we can't scan a normally-functioning human brain that is not conscious. I guess this is a TE about if we could. — Patterner

The point being I don't think there's anyway something could not experience things in a way that is not directly related to how brains, or something equivalent, work.

Edited: spelling

No. I shut the door on untested alternatives that never touch the specific constraints of specific cases. — Sam26

This is very obviously, fallaciously presuming that these specific case studies have some kind of priority here when in reality the problem people might take with your work is that the case studies you have are all themselves methodologically limited, and we should be creating new studies to test alternatives rigorously and systematically. Trying to explain specific case studies does not allow you to assess things statistically with factors like luck or confounds that you cannot have accounted for. With specific case studies like these, you cannot even really be sure of what happened.

That’s an appeal to popularity (a fallacy in basic logic). Truth isn’t a vote. The standard I’m using is ordinary public standards — Sam26

:snicker: :chin:

does not rebut existing anchored matches any more than “take more photos” makes today’s photo disappear. — Sam26

Sure, but this is only if you can definitively validate those photos and what they show, which is difficult to do retroactively for case studies as opposed to more rigorous testing.

A null there doesn’t touch other time-locked, public particulars (verbatim speech, staff actions, instrument use, timestamps) — Sam26

Which themselves should be validated in more rigorous testing.

Courts, historians, and clinicians use the same epistemic tools. — Sam26

Absolutely no one in these categories of people would agree that your evidence is sufficient to justify the claim there is life after death. I think you don't seem to understand that whatever self-imposed standards you seem to apply to these case studies, the issue here is that the evidence is too sparse for most people to take it seriously as a falsification of the most successful paradigms of knowledge in human history.

What I won’t do is treat generic “maybes” as if they were explanations. — Sam26

Bottom line for readers: When independent reports line up on the same publicly checkable details, the burden shifts — Sam26

I think what you have got to understand is that our scientific, naturalistic paradigms are so successful that the burden of proof is much higher for a relatively small number of methodologically limited case studies that make claims contradicting them without even presenting alternative models for what is happening.

Clearly, the issue is that you treat naturalism with disdain, so your standard of evidence for the supernatural is much lower than most other people who think that the success of naturalism demands extraordinary evidence for extraordinary contradicting claims.

If you think science alone defines knowledge, you fall into what philosophers call scientism, the idea that only scientific results count as real knowledge. — Sam26

I don't think science is inherently different from other kinds of knowledge. Its just obviously the case that this topic is in the realms of evaluation using the same methods of science you would find in sociology, cognitive science, biomedical science.

because they shut down the door on untested "alternative hypotheses" that conveniently dodge empirical accountability. — Sam26

They don't though, and seemingly a majority of posters don't agree with you on this thread.

You have this bizarre attitude that the fact that actual experiments or studies to verify alternative hypotheses haven't been done or are difficult to do means that they shouldn't be entertained. No other rational person takes that attitude; instead they will say: "lets go out and study this more, lets not jump to conclusions when other possibilities exist that haven't been fully explored". When other people suggest that more rigorous studies need to be done, you then suggest that those kinds of methods aren't the right kind.

Just mind-boggling your inability to entertain alternative possibilities that could feasibly be the case.

they are evasions, shifts of definition, or vague possibilities dressed up as if they were explanations. — Sam26

And from their perspective what you do looks like evasions, faulty definitions and an inability to entertain plausible alternatives.

Are you suggesting that people shouldjust accept what you are saying and there is no need to explore alternative options and that all other naturalistic explanations have been shutdown?

but in philosophy — Sam26

This isn't philosophy though. This discussion is clearly in the realms of science. It is an empirical question. Seems to me like you are trying to turn this into a philosophical discussion to try to downplay the idea that people don't think your evidence is empirically sufficient.

don’t mistake volume for rigor — Sam26

Good lesson for reading your book!

There’s probably precious little agreement amongst them about what the word even refers to. — Wayfarer

But there seems to be largely agreement that measurement does not require consciousness because there is simply nothing in quantum theory to suggest this. It only arises as something you might consider when speculating about interpretation, and if your preferred interpretation does not have a profound measurement problem, there is no longer a reason for you to want to bring consciousness into it, on top of the fact that quantum theory does not suggest consciousness is required in any way.

Just seems to me like you're gerrymandering standards of evidence in a way that no one would reasonably accept outside of the vicnity of yourself and other likeminded bastions of woo-ism like Bernardo Kastrup and Wayfarer. "Yes, these are extremely rigorous standards of evidence if you are not allowed to entertain alternative hypotheses that the methods do not explicitlh account for or we don't generallyhave a great deal of knowledge about currently." Sounds good to me.

Basically, if there was no consciousness, the electrical activity, magnetic activity, blood flow, blood oxygenation, metabolic activity, gap-jumping neurotransmitters, and whatever else, would still be taking place. — Patterner

I disagree. Such a brain would still report its own consciousness and talk its own consciousness in the exact same way we all do. It would be able to engage with you just as well as anyone about phenomenal experiences.

It stands to reason that your knowledge and reports and whatever compels you to make the statements, have the beliefs you do about consciousness would be for the same kind of reason as this brain that supposedly does not have consciousness - the electrical, biochemical activity is what makes you open your mouth, type the words on screen, does it not?

If everything you say and claim about consciousness is for the same reason as this brain that supposedly does not have consciousness, then the idea of distinct "physical" stuff with completely separate, independent causal powers to some distinct "phenomenal" stuff becomes increasingly absurd and also causally redundant. It also leads to questions of reliability about your "knowledge" about conscious stuff, after all, this brain without consciousness may come up with the exact same viewpoint as you without having any consciousness itself, supposedly. Why would it do such a thing?

Seems to me if you want to bite the bullet and commit to such a picture you would have to commit to some bizarre mental gymnastics about the nature of the universe, entertain supposed hypotheses about the brain in relation to conscious - possibly with serious implications for physics and other sciences - that we simply have no empirical, scientific evidence for.

I find there is a certain bizarre lack of humility in people who think that, in principle, their own direct aquaintance with experience is beyond and superior to facts about the causal powers of their own brains and the possibility of illusions or fallibility about the way they are as beings in the world.

:up: :100:

It absolutely can, people can just be either unfairly dismissive or ignorant.

:chin: :chin:

I don't really like these quantum examples because you are getting to a point where people don't really know what these things mean in a metaphysical sense. In other parts of science, I don't see arguments over downward causation being anything other than semantic, because it is clear that what is not necessarily reducible is an explanatory framework in an epistemic sense, rather than any genuinely novel strongly emergent metaphysics. You obviously get novel behavior, but again, my intuition is that arguments over the significance of this would largely be semantic. There is something like a downward causation in Friston's description, but it is does not invoke anything more than the same genre of mechanisms that you would talk about to explain natural selection in evolution which are "blind".

They aren't criticisms, and if you just read the papers and try to understand what is being said then you will see that. Your best criticism was "belief is a silly word".

Which authors? — apokrisis

Of the papers I linked, including Friston! Friston has even talked about examples like the rock in zoom discussions.

My point is that it is just dumb to confuse equilibrium systems with far from equilibrium systems. A hot rock has its internal state. Drop it in a bucket of cold water and it then shares the collective internal state of the thermal system that is the much colder rock and the now slightly warmer bucket of water. — apokrisis

Yes, a point which refuses to engage with what I am talking about. Its very simple. Read the papers and they will tell you precisely what I have been saying. Nothing is being confused apart from yourself.

So your strawman is a strawman. — apokrisis

How? The thread is about systems in the most generic sense. You're the one who started unnecessarily complicating things with your misunderstandings.

Bringing Bayesian belief into this discussion is a publicity stunt and not serious science or philosophy. — apokrisis

This is an area I have been busy in for a long time. — apokrisis

For someone who has apparently had discussions with Friston himself, its bewildering your inability to just engage with what is being said in these papers and the thread itself.

But with a point of view inserted. — apokrisis

Bayes' rule is just as valid for objective probabilities. Thats why its just generic probability. Bayes' rule describes frequencies for things that have nothing to do with beliefs or minds or living systems. Its just generic probability theory.

The properties of living systems doesn't strictly come from Bayes but their complicated nature in the sense that if you characterize a system as performing Bayesian inference, but its state space is simple, its not going to look like a living thing. An often used example is a thermostat, sensing the temperature and regulating it. That can obviously be seen as active Bayesian inference, and aligns with your dissipative topic. But it doesn't look very much like a living creature does it.

I come back to the point that to claim belief for a rock is to collapse your epistemology into ontological confusion. — apokrisis

This is just a strawman if you refuse to engage with the way "belief" is intended by the authors of the theory.

Bayesian reasoning is great as a general theory of the organism in its semiotic relation with the world, and so then loses its way when it goes beyond what it was meant to be and is bandied about as a theory of literally anything — apokrisis

Bayesianism is just probability theory. There is absolutely no reason that this should be organism-centric, and the authors have literally constructed mathematical proofs describing its domain of applicability. Whether you like the theory or not, its just a mathematical fact that it can describe a rock. I don't actually see any constructive criticism in your comments other than an unexplained intuition that there is something about it you don't like. The theory fully accomodates characterizations of complicated life; and even so, the topic of the thread is "systems", a concept far more general than ypur favorite topic. The generality of Bayesian mechanics then fits it perfectly.

The best theory of absolutely everything in my book is dissipate structure theory. — apokrisis

Which is more or less just the free energy principle that has been talked about, or at least a corollary with regard to persistent, complicated structures.

You can give a description in terms of what brains do and perhaps how brain relates the perception in of thought.

One can say that money or love or meaning are not strictly physical properties, but that doesn't mean those concepts aren't instantiated in the physical world in such a way that physical modela describe all the events one could possibly associate with any of these things. I would s ay the same goes with consciousness. Ofcourse consciousness is conceptually distinct from the physical just like money is from paper, machine learning from brains, musical theory from the physical vibrations that carry pitch, squiggles on pages from meanings. But that doesn't mean there are inherent dualisms carrying distinctly independent causal powers regarding any of these things. Its just in regards to different levels of explanation that concern different scales of detail regarding patterns that exist in the universe.