I turned 70 this year, and again I’m thinking what an amazing time it is to be alive. Even despite the perils and obvious doomsday scenarios. I think this augmented intelligence technology - that’s what I like to call it - is an amazing phenomenon to witness first hand. Hey my grandkids don’t even know what currency looks like - when I was a kid my grandparents cooked on a woodfire oven and our milk was delivered in a pail. In the old Stone Age, it took half a million years to slightly improve a flint ax. The rate of change is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Even my adult son is a bit daunted by AI - he finds it threatening - but I’ve been engaging with ChatGPT since the day it came out. It’s truly an amazing time to be alive. — Wayfarer

What are your thoughts, on the fact that these things are outcomes of the same physicalist thinking that you are constantly crusading against?

The technology used is not fMRI or EEG.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a functional neuroimaging technique for mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents occurring naturally in the brain, using very sensitive magnetometers. Arrays of SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices) are currently the most common magnetometer, while the SERF (spin exchange relaxation-free) magnetometer is being investigated for future machines.[1][2] Applications of MEG include basic research into perceptual and cognitive brain processes, localizing regions affected by pathology before surgical removal, determining the function of various parts of the brain, and neurofeedback. This can be applied in a clinical setting to find locations of abnormalities as well as in an experimental setting to simply measure brain activity.

Also, I wonder what kind of jamming hats people could wear to thwart it? — RogueAI

I suspect carrying a cellphone around might be sufficient, (or could be made sufficient). However for those who prefer a lower tech solution, that link I posted says:

Since the magnetic signals emitted by the brain are on the order of a few femtoteslas, shielding from external magnetic signals, including the Earth's magnetic field, is necessary. Appropriate magnetic shielding can be obtained by constructing rooms made of aluminium and mu-metal for reducing high-frequency and low-frequency noise, respectively.

So layered Mu-metal and aluminum would do the job. Mu-metal is nice and shiny and corrosion resistant, so you could be stylin.

The only common ground that actually functions as a universal objective fact, is our biology, our human nature. This has to be the foundational ground that guides our moral thinking, from which we extrapolate ideas about what is "good" and "bad" for us. Only by accepting this can we start to form principles to live by and moral principles to be discussed about.

And it's this that I mean is measurable. Our human nature exists as an objective thing, and it is measurable. Anything disregarding this foundation when trying to produce moral facts fails. — Christoffer

I broadly agree with what you are saying in this post. However, I think that saying that our human nature functions as a universal objective fact, ignores genetic variation between individuals. Isn't it more realistic to think that we have human natures with, similarities, but also differences? How do you avoid creating a Procrustean bed?

Here's a link I posted awhile back in The Post Linguistic Turn thread, which discusses the original research discussed in the OP video. From that earlier link:

Decoding worked only with cooperative participants who had participated willingly in training the decoder. If the decoder had not been trained, results were unintelligible, and if participants on whom the decoder had been trained later resisted or thought other thoughts, results were also unusable.

Some things are really hard to miniaturize, and I'm betting this is one of them. — RogueAI

Yeah, for now at least, you need a specially shielded room to do MEG.

So, you see the concern and validity of my argument I'm sure. — Outlander

Sure, just pointing out that we don't need tinfoil hats just yet. :wink:

You could potentially offer to give someone a ride and have the roof or seat of your car equipped with non-contact "brain sensors... — Outlander

It is worth noting the 15 hours that subjects spent in a scanner before the AI that was used had sufficient training data on the individual to be able to decode that individual's thoughts. Without the AI having been trained to form correct associations, between a specific individual's brain activity and what the individual was thinking about, the system can't decode thoughts.

Demonizing those who understand things differently than you. Nice.

The key feature of the modern worldview is the mechanistic model which, because it has rejected the Aristotelian principles of final causation and substantial form... — Wayfarer

I'm inclined to see evolution of scientific understanding as having resulted in recognition of "system structure" as playing a role analogous to that of "form" for Aristotle.

In the case of final causation, it is more a matter of 'having no need of that hypothesis', and Ockham's razor, than it is a matter of rejection.

↪wonderer1 smallism is probably the majority view of most people in the hard sciences - if I'm interpreting what it means correctly.

"Smallism" to me looks pretty interchangable with the statement "there's no strong Emergence", or in other words "all macroscopic phenomena are the direct consequence of microscopic phenomena" — flannel jesus

I'm skeptical that most people in the hard sciences would disagree with the proposition, "What happens at the microscopic level is a function of the context provided by a larger physical system." Do you think otherwise?

Is "smallism" a view that anyone actually endorses?

:up: :up:

I don't know the background motivation of the OP... — sime

Me neither, but I want to consider a pragmatic motivation for a compatibilist perspective.

A person can recognize that we are physically determined systems, and recognize that we are systems that develop probabilistic anticipations of future events. Furthermore, it's rather pragmatically valuable for machines like us to discuss such anticipations. (To get a job, to get married, to get to the moon, to end global warming, etc.)

It seems to me there is a pragmatic value, for the sort of machines we are, to being able to communicate in simplistic terms of free will, and as we are able, modify what we mean by "free will" to be more accurate.

IMO, Peter Tse, in The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation, does a good job of pointing towards a more accurate understanding.

This isn't inconsistent with Hume saying that "of course we still end up using inductive reasoning, because we sort of have to." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Or 'a more scientifically updated Hume' saying, "of course we still end up using the deep learning in our neural networks because we sort of have to."

I see.

Yes, appreciatively.

:up:

"Not disproven" doesn't mean: "proven", it means: "possible". — LuckyR

That depends on what sort of possibility you are referring to.

https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-logical-possibility-and-vs-metaphysical-possibility/

:100: :up:

It's not illogical. If you think it is, could you show how? — frank

Vats don't have toes that can be smashed.

The memories I retain are a sense of rapture at the extraordinary beauty of natural things, some vivid hallucinatory experiences, and a sense of 'why isn't life always like this?' — Wayfarer

For me it was the early 80s. I didn't have vivid hallucinations, although people I tripped with did. (I suspect I may be towards the aphantasic end of a aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum.)

But yes, the overwhelming beauty of everything was wonderful to experience.

Say I find out that there is some sort of obligation embedded into my genes: ok, is it really the moral thing to do though? — Bob Ross

I was quite surprised when my first child was born, how overwhelmingly protective I felt towards her. I had fully expected to love her, but this went beyond that, to recognition that I wouldn't hesitate to die to protect her.

I suspect most people are naturally inclined to view acting out of that sort of protectiveness to be moral. I myself don't think there are moral fact though.

Anybody want a peanut? — flannel jesus

:lol:

Do you have an opinion of how information exists, mechanistically or otherwise, only an abstraction or something physical? I've noticed some physicalislts use information as an abstraction without identifying a means for it to physically exist. — Mark Nyquist

Learning about Hebbian theory is a good place to start, followed by looking into information processing via neural nets.

But sometimes (not always) the appeal to emergence is just as much of a non-explanation as appealing to a notion of God. In both cases, we need convincing details. — bert1

Understandable, but sometimes convincing details are only available to people who study a lot of relevant stuff.

Me, I'm kind of a Fezzik of neuroscience. :strong: :wink: I've seen lots of convincing details, of the emergence of minds from brains.

Well some times emergence-of-the-gaps is used a bit like a God-of-the-gaps. Of course, lots of instances of novel properties emerging from systems is entirely reasonable and comprehensible. But sometimes people come pretty close to saying "emergence-did-it" without offering convincing details, most obviously when arguing that consciousness is an emergent property of brain activity. — bert1

There is a big difference however, in that instances of emergence are observed all over the place, whereas omniscient minds existing for no reason aren't.

Have I ever! Don't get me started . . . :starstruck: — J

FWIW, the fact that you have such a basis for comparison makes me more interested in hearing more.

In my opinion (and experience), a direct encounter with the mystical is extremely powerful evidence in support of theism. — J

Have you ever tried LSD, as a basis for comparison of altered states that you can experience?

I can certainly understand mystical states of mind as having an intensity that can be surprising, and how people can easily be inclined to think a non-mundane explanation is needed. However, "powerful evidence"?

Quite agree. This seems to be coming to the fore - that there is no single way in which to be conscious. — Banno

:100: :up:

Computer information processing is simply a mechanical procedure --- one thing after another --- as envisioned by Shannon. And some people still expect those assembly-line mechanisms to soon become Conscious, emulating human Sentience, as the data through-put increases. — Gnomon

Your thinking is rather last decade. The systems that run modern AIs use many interconnected processors operating in parallel, and a complex ballet of distributed processing is a more accurate metaphor than an assembly line. Furthermore, neuromorphic hardware that will massively increase the degree of parallelism while also dramatically dropping the power consumption is around the corner.

People often call a NTS fallacy in situations where there is actually a genuine ambiguity at hand. As such, it's not a case of a fallacy at all. — baker

There being a genuine ambiguity at hand, is rather key to a no true Scotsman fallacy being a fallacy.

Because many people have been indoctrinated into believing a false account of human nature and don't want to accept a more accurate (less grandiose) understanding.
— wonderer1

Having high expectations isn't necessarily painful. It is painful if it comes from a position of weakness, of loss, of dependence. If it comes from a position of entitlement or strength, then having high expectations is not painful. — baker

I don't know how your response is supposed to relate to what I said.

Do you consider "grandiose understanding" synonymous with "high expectations"? I sure don't. I didn't say anything about "painful" either. You are jumping to conclusions.

Do you think that religious indoctrination doesn't result in many people believing a false account of human nature?

I also think that saying to an apostate, 'you were never a true Muslim or Christian' is an obvious and often false accusation religions use to defend their own weaknesses. — Tom Storm

Not to mention a no true Scotsman fallacy.

The topic has induced more interest than I thought it would... — Banno

Though I haven't had time to read the book, I've very much appreciated the discussion.

I’d love to hear your thought on how his arguments don’t hold up! — T4YLOR

I'm afraid I'm not that interested in the topic these days, but you can find plenty of people to discuss WLC's arguments with at:

https://knowwhyyoubelieve.org/groups/reasonable-faith-forum/

There are some truly remarkable works in philosophy of religion (especially Christianity). One of my current favorites is William Lane Craig, who is best know for his popularization of the Kalam cosmological argument, writes on the question "What is the bare minimum we need to believe in Christianity?" This does not mean that we discard what is improbable, rather, we should interpret it in a way that is meaningful and in alignment with necessary doctrines. — T4YLOR

Have you spent any time on WLC's forum? You might find WLC's arguments don't stand up so well.

In any case, what is the relevance of "the bare minimum we need to believe in Christianity"? That sounds like a criteria that someone who wants to cling to a belief would be concerned with.

I don't think so, but the question is obviously pressing. And why is it pressing? — Wayfarer

Yeah, the issue of misinformation is a pressing one.

It wouldn't be because those despised 'Intelligent Design' advocates, Michael Behe and others, have actually hit a nerve? Heaven forbid! — Wayfarer

It sounds like you are a cdesign-proponetsist. Perhaps you are fooling yourself about being on the side of the angels here?

Why don’t people change their expectations instead of being mad about human nature? — Skalidris

Because expectations are largely a function of intuitions, and changing intuitions isn't under our conscious control, and can take a long time.

Because many people have been indoctrinated into believing a false account of human nature and don't want to accept a more accurate (less grandiose) understanding.

Gnice...like a gnife to the gnuts... — Janus

:naughty: