daedalus2u

Karma: 32

daedalus2u Aug 24, 2010, 2:46 AM
0 points
in reply to: Jayson_Virissimo’s comment on: Minimum computation and data requirements for consciousness.
[Consciousness] :The subjective state of being self-aware that one is an autonomous entity that can differentially regulate what one is thinking about.

daedalus2u Aug 24, 2010, 2:42 AM
0 points
in reply to: inklesspen’s comment on: Minimum computation and data requirements for consciousness.
No, there are useful things I want to accomplish with the remaining lifespan of the body I have. That there is no continuity of personal identity is irrelevant to what I can accomplish.

That continuity of personaal identity is an illusion simply means that the goal of indefinite extension of personal identity is a useless goal that can never be achieved.

I don’t doubt that a machine could be programmed to think it was the continuation of a flesh-and-blood entity. People have posited paper clip maximizers too.

daedalus2u Aug 23, 2010, 11:58 PM
−2 points
on: Minimum computation and data requirements for consciousness.
This is my first article on LW, so be gentle.

daedalus2u Aug 2, 2010, 12:53 PM
4 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2010
I think the misconception is that what is generally considered “quality of life” is not correlated with things like affluence. People like to believe (pretend?) that it is, and by ever striving for more affluence feel that they are somehow improving their “quality of life”.

When someone is depressed, their “quality of life” is quite low. That “quality of life” can only be improved by resolving the depression, not by adding the bells and whistles of affluence.

How to resolve depression is not well understood. A large part of the problem is people who have never experienced depression, don’t understand what it is and believe that things like more affluence will resolve it.

daedalus2u Aug 1, 2010, 5:58 PM
4 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2010
Suicide rates are a measure of depression, not of how good life is. Depression can hit people even when they otherwise have a very good life.

daedalus2u Aug 1, 2010, 3:49 PM
4 points
in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: Open Thread, August 2010
The framing of the end of life issue as a gain or a loss as in the monkey token exchange probably makes a gigantic difference in the choices made.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/2d9/open_thread_june_2010_part_4/2cnn?c=1

When you feel you are in a desperate situation, you will do desperate things and clutch at straws, even when you know those choices are irrational. I think this is the mindset behind the clutching at straws that quacks exploit with CAM, as in the Gonzalez Protocol for pancreatic cancer.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=1545

It is actually worse than doing nothing, worse than doing what main stream medicine recommends, but because there is the promise of complete recovery (even if it is a false promise), that is what people choose based on their irrational aversion to risk.

daedalus2u Jul 30, 2010, 6:32 PM
3 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
This is how people with Asperger’s or autism experience interacting with people who are neurotypically developed (for the most part).

daedalus2u Jul 30, 2010, 2:49 AM
0 points
in reply to: mattnewport’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
I am not a dualist. I used the TM to avoid issues of quantum mechanics. TM equivalent is not compatible with a dualist view either.

Only a part of what the brain does is conscious. The visual cortex isn’t conscious. The processing of signals from the retina is not under conscious control. That is why optical illusions work, the signal processing happens a certain way, and that certain way cannot be changed even when consciously it is known that what is seen is counterfactual.

There are many aspects of brain information processing that are like this. Sound processing is like this; where sounds are decoded and pattern matched to communication symbols.

Since we know that the entity instantiating itself in our brain is not identical with the entity that was there a day ago, a week ago, a year ago, and will not be identical to the entity that will be there next year, why do we perceive there to be continuity of consciousness?

Is that an illusion of continuity the same as the way the visual cortex fills in the blind spot on the retina? Is that an illusion of continuity the same as pareidolia?

I suspect that the question of consciousness isn’t so much why we experience consciousness, but why we experience a continuity of consciousness when we know there is no continuity.

daedalus2u Jul 30, 2010, 12:33 AM
0 points
in reply to: mattnewport’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
Except human entities are a dynamic object, unlike a static object like a book. Books are not considered to be “alive”, or “self-aware”.

If two humans can both be represented by TM with different tapes, then one human can be turned into another human by feeding one tape in backwards then feeding in the other tape frontwards. If one human can be turned into another by a purely mechanical process, how does the “life”, or “entity identity”, or “consciousness change” as that transformation is occurring?

I don’t have an answer, I suspect that the problem is tied up in our conceptualization of what consciousness and identity actually is.

My own feeling is that consciousness is an illusion, and that illusion is what produces the illusion of identity continuity over a person’s lifetime. Presumably there is an “identity module”, and that “identity module” is what self-identifies an individual as “the same” individual over time (not complete one-to-one correspondence between entities which we know does not happen), even as the individual changes. If that is correct, then change the “identity module” and you change the self-perception of identity.

daedalus2u Jul 29, 2010, 10:50 PM
0 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
SilasBarta, yes, I was thinking about purely classical entities, the kind of computers that we would make now out of classical components. You can make an identical copy of a classical object. If you accept substrate independence for entities, then you can’t “dissolve” the question.

If Ebborians are classical entities, then exact copies are possible. An Ebborian can split and become two entities and accumulate two different sets of experiences. What if those two Ebborians then transfer memory files such that they now have identical experiences? (I appreciate this is not possible with biological entities because memories are not stored as discrete files).

Turing Machines are purely classical entities. They are all equivalent, except for the data fed into them. If humans can be represented by a TM, then all humans are identical except for the data fed into the TM that is simulating them. Where is this wrong?

daedalus2u Jul 29, 2010, 6:18 PM
0 points
on: Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
I am pretty new to LW, and have been looking for something and have been unable to find it.

What I am looking for is a discussion on when two entities are identical, and if they are identical, are they one entity or two?

The context for this is continuity of identity over time. Obviously an entity that has extra memories added is not identical to an entity without those memories, but if there is a transform that can be applied to the first entity (the transform of experience over time), then in one sense the second entity can be considered to be an older (and wiser) version of the earlier entity.

But the selection of the transform that changes the first entity into the second one is arbitrary. In principle there is a transform that will change any Turing equivalent into any other Turing equivalent. Is every entity that can be instantiated as a TM equivalent to every other TM entity?

I appreciate this does not apply to entities instantiated in a biological format because such substrates are not stable over time (even a few seconds). However that does raise another problem, how can a human be “the same” entity over their lifetime?

daedalus2u Jul 29, 2010, 12:07 AM
6 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
I am disapointed. I have just started on LW, and found many of Roko’s posts and comments interesting and consilient with my current and to be a useful bridge between aspects of LW that are less consilient. :(

daedalus2u Jul 28, 2010, 2:06 AM
−2 points
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Metaphilosophical Mysteries
I think this is correct. Using my formulation, the Bayseian system is what I call a “theory of reality”, the timeless one is the “theory of mind”, which I see as the trade-off along the autism spectrum.

daedalus2u Jul 26, 2010, 11:48 PM
−1 points
in reply to: arundelo’s comment on: 3 Levels of Rationality Verification
Yes, thankyou just one problem
- too obvious
and
- too easy

daedalus2u Jul 26, 2010, 11:43 PM
3 points
in reply to: WrongBot’s comment on: Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think
I see the problem of bigotry in terms of information and knowledge but I see bigotry as occurring when there is too little knowledge. I have quite an extensive blog post on this subject.

http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/2010/03/physiology-behind-xenophobia.html

My conceptualization of this may seem contrived, but I give a much more detailed explanation on my blog along with multiple examples.

I see it as essentially the lack of an ability to communicate with someone that triggers xenophobia. As I see it, when two people meet and try to communicate, they do a “Turing test”, where they exchange information and try to see if the person they are communicating with is “human enough”, that is human enough to communicate with, be friends with, trade with, or simply human enough to not kill.

What happens when you try to communicate, is that you both use your “theory of mind”, what I call the communication protocols that translate the mental concepts you have in your brain into the data stream of language that you transmit; sounds, gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, accents, etc. If the two “theories of mind” are compatible, then communication can proceed at a very high data rate because the two theories of mind do so much data compression to fit the mental concepts into the puny data stream of language and to then extract them from the data stream.

However, if the two theories of mind are not compatible, then the error rate goes up, and then via the uncanny valley effect xenophobia is triggered. This initial xenophobia is a feeling and so is morally neutral. How one then acts is not morally neutral. If one seeks to understand the person who has triggered xenophobia, then your theory of mind will self-modify and eventually you will be able to understand the person and the xenophobia will go away. If you seek to not understand the individual, or block that understanding, then the xenophobia will remain.

It is exactly analogous to Nietzsche’s quote “if you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into you”. We can only perceive something if we have pattern recognition for that something instantiated in our neural networks. If we don’t have the neuroanatomy to instantiate an idea, we can’t perceive the idea, we can’t even think the idea. To see into the abyss, you have to have a map of the abyss in your visual cortex to decode the image of the abyss that is being received on your retina.

Bigots as a rule are incapable of understanding the objects of their bigotry (I am not including self-loathing here because that is a special case), and it shows, they attribute all kinds of crazy, wild, and completely non-realistic thinking processes to the objects of their bigotry. I think this was the reason why many invader cultures committed genocide on native cultures by taking children away from natives and fostering them with the invader culture (example US, Canada, Australia) (I go into more detail on that). What bigots often do is make up reasons out of pure fantasy to justify the hatred they feel toward the objects of their bigotry. The Blood Libel against the Jews is a good example. This was the lie that Jews used the blood of Christians in Passover rituals. This could not be correct. Passover long predated Christianity, blood is never kosher, human blood is never kosher, no observant Jew could ever use human blood in any religious ceremony. It never happened, it was a total lie. A lie used to justify the hatred that some Christians felt toward Jews. The hate came first, the lie was used to justify the feelings of hatred.

Bigots as a rule are afraid of associating with the objects of their bigotry because they will then come to understand them. The term “xenophobia” is quite correct. There is a fear of associating with the other because then some of “the other” will rub off on you and you will necessarily become more “other-like”. You will have a map that understands “the other” in your neuroanatomy.

In one sense, to the bigot, understanding “the other” is a “dangerous thought” because it changes the bigot’s utility function such that certain individuals are no longer so low on the social hierarchy as to be treated as non-humans.

There are some thoughts that are dangerous to humans. These activate the “fight or flight” state in an uncontrolled manner and that can be lethal. This usually requires a lot of priming (years). There are too many safeties that kick-in for it to happen by accident. I think this is what the Kundalini kindling is. For the most part there isn’t enough direct coupling between the part of the brain that thinks thoughts and the part that controls the stuff that keeps you alive. There is some, and that can be triggered in a heart beat when you are being chased by a bear, but there is lots of feedback via feelings before you get to dangerous levels. I don’t recommend trying to work yourself into that state because it is quite dangerous because the safeties do get turned off (that is unless a bear is actually chasing you).

Drugs of abuse can trigger the same things which is one of the reasons they are so dangerous.

daedalus2u Jul 26, 2010, 11:15 PM
0 points
in reply to: arundelo’s comment on: 3 Levels of Rationality Verification
Thanks, I was trying to make a list, maybe I will figure it out. I just joined and am trying to focus on getting up to speed on the ideas, the syntax of formating things is more difficult for me and less rewarding.

daedalus2u Jul 26, 2010, 11:06 PM
−1 points
in reply to: MichaelVassar’s comment on: Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think
I disagree. I think there is the functional equivalent of a “social-co-processor”, what I see as the fundamental trade-off along the autism spectrum, the trading of a “theory of mind” (necessary for good and nuanced communication with neurotypically developing individuals and a “theory of reality”, (necessary for good ability at tool making and tool using).

http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/2008/10/theory-of-mind-vs-theory-of-reality.html

Because the maternal pelvis is limited in size, the infant brain is limited at birth (still ~1% of women die per childbirth (in the wild) due to cephalopelvic disproportion). The “best” time to program the fundamental neuroanatomy of the brain is in utero, during the first trimester when the fundamental neuroanatomy of the brain is developing and when the epigenetic programming of all the neurons in the brain is occurring.

The two fundamental human traits, language and tool making and tool using both require a large brain with substantial plasticity over the individual’s lifetime. But other than that they are pretty much orthogonal. I suspect there has been evolutionary pressure to optimize the neuroanatomy of the human infant brain at birth so as to optimize the neurological tasks that brain is likely to need to do over that individual’s lifetime.

daedalus2u Jul 26, 2010, 10:08 PM
5 points
in reply to: SforSingularity’s comment on: Contrived infinite-torture scenarios: July 2010
For me, essentially zero, that is I would act (or attempt to act) as if I had zero credence that I was in a rescue sim.

daedalus2u Jul 26, 2010, 4:08 PM
−1 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: 3 Levels of Rationality Verification
Test for data, factual knowledge and counterfactual knowledge. True rationalists will have less counterfactual knowledge than non-rationalists because they will have filtered it out. Non-rationalits will have more false data because their counterfactual knowledge will feedback and cause them to believe things that are false are actually true. For example that Iraq or Iran was involved in 9/11.

What you really want to measure is the relative proportion of factual and counterfactual knowledge someone has, and in what particular areas. Then including areas like religion, medicine, alternative medicine, and politics in the testing space is advantageous because then you can see where the idea space is that the individuals are most non-rational in.

This can be tricky because many individuals are extremely invested in their counterfactual knowledge and will object to it being identified as counterfactual. A lot of fad-driven science is based on counterfactual knowledge, but the faddists don’t want to acknowledge that.

A way to test this would be to see how well people can differentiate correct facts (data) from factual knowledge (based on and consistent with only data) from counterfactual knowledge (based on false facts and not consistent with correct facts) from opinion consistent with facts or opinion consistent with false facts.

An example: in the neurodegenerative disease of Alzheimer’s, there is the association of the accumulation of amyloid with dementia. It remains not established if amyloid is a cause, or an effect or is merely associated with dementia. However there have been studies where amyloid has been removed via vaccination against amyloid and a clearing of amyloid by the immune system with no improvement.

I imagine a list of a very large number of statements to be labeled as 1.true (>99% likelihood) 2.false (>99% likelihood to be false) [edited to improve definition of false] 3.opinion based on true facts 4.opinion based on false ideas 5.no one knows 6.I don’t know

A list of some examples

Iraq caused 9/11 2 WMD were found in Iraq 2 Amyloid is found in Alzheimer’s 1 Amyloid causes Alzheimer’s 2 (this happens to be a field I am
working in so I have non-public knowledge as to the real cause) Greenhouse gases are causing GW 1 Vaccines cause autism 2 Acupuncture is a placebo 1 There is life on Mars 5

You don’t want to test for obscure things, you want to test for common things that are believed but which are wrong. I think you also want to explicitly tell people that you are testing them for rationality, so they can put themselves into “rational-mode” (a state that is not always socially acceptable).

The table-like lists look fine in the edit box but not fine once I post. :(

daedalus2u Jul 26, 2010, 1:15 PM
2 points
in reply to: daedalus2u’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
The issue that are dealt with in psychotherapy are fundamentally non-rational issues. Rational issues are trivial to deal with (for people who are rationalists). The substrate of the issues dealt with in psychotherapy are feelings and not thoughts.

I see feelings as an analog component of the human utility function. That analog component affects the gain and feedback in the non-analog components. The feedback by which thoughts affect feelings is slow and tenuous and takes a long time and considerable neuronal remodeling. That is why psychotherapy takes a long time, the neuronal remodeling necessary to affect feelings is much slower than the neuronal remodeling that affects thoughts.

A common response to trauma is to dissociate and suppress the coupling between feelings and thoughts. The easiest and most reliable way to do this is to not have feelings because feelings that are not felt cannot be expressed and so cannot be observed and so cannot be used by opponents as a basis of attack. I think this is the basis of the constricted affect of PTSD.