Thanks for the clarification. You’re right that artificial intelligence and neuroscience are two different fields.
JohnEPaton
Karma: 11
I’m just wondering whether it’s true that the Markov property holds for minds. I’m thinking that a snapshot of the world is not enough, but you also need to know something about the rate at which the world is changing. Presumably this information would require the knowledge of states further back.
Also, isn’t there an innate element of randomness when it comes to decision making and how our minds work. Neurons are so small that presumably there are some sort of quantum effects, and wouldn’t this mean again that information from one step previous wasn’t enough.
I don’t know, but just some thoughts.
What is the tradeoff between average utility and total utility? Presumably a world with only ten people who all have tremendous utility would be just as repugnant as Parfit’s world.
I think he’s saying that the brain is not just the genome. What you see as an adult brain also represents a host of environmental factors. Since these environmental factors are complex, so then is the brain.
Yes you could probably use some machine learning algorithm to build a brain with the input of a video feed. But this says relatively little about how the brain actually develops in nature.
You make a good point that the genome does not completely determine how the brain is set up. Environment is hugely influential in how things develop. I recently read that things the expression of our genes can be influence by things called transcription factors, as well as process called slicing and transposition. Each of these things is effected by the environment. For example, if your a small rat pup and your Mom licks you then this will trigger a cascade of hormones that will end up changing your DNA and your amygdala so that you release less stress hormone as an adult. Indeed, when you pass on your genes you will also produce kids that are less prone to stress.
Since environment is so important in development this exponentially increases the complexity of the brain. You don’t only need to know the genome, but you also need to know all the relevant environmental factors from the moment of conception. There simply is no blueprint for the brain and any attempt to decode the genome is erroneous.
Okay, so your saying that Woman.height makes sense, but Woman.sexiness doesn’t really. I’m not sure if you can even say that Woman.height makes sense. The reality is that the knowledge of any attribute is predicated on the perceptual apparatus that an organism has. Perhaps the alien is blind?
You may retort that if the alien is blind, then he most likely has some sort of apparatus to measure size in the world. Perhaps he can send out tenticles to feel the size of objects.
But then, at the same time why couldn’t he send out some sort of tenticles to measure the attractiveness of a lady. In humans attractiveness isn’t a real thing either. Really what where doing is looking at features such as hip ratio, symmetry, eye color and various attributes like that and that’s what creates the sense of attractiveness. These are all things that the alien could measure and combine also.
I’m not sure if I completely get this post. Are you saying that the amount of time when you cannot work is chaotic or not? If I get it correctly, you’re saying that when you feel like you cannot work you can often look at various things that are going on (such as when you last had a meal, what time it is, whether you recently exercised etc...) and then use these factors to add an element of predictability into your down time. Is this right?
That’s cool that your studying a combination of Psychology and Engineering. I’m doing something similar and it seems to be very rare to find someone who is working in both of those fields. I’m sure that in the UK people would be even less understanding of this. It seems like over there you just choose one subject and that’s all you do for the next three years. Keep on looking at those library books. I think the most important thing as an undergrad is to follow your interests even if this means dialling back on the effort you put into class work.
Hello,
My name is John Paton. I’m an Operations Research and Psychology major at Cornell University. I’m very interested in learning about how to improve the quality of my thinking.
Honestly, I think that a lot of my thoughts about how the world works are muddled at the moment. Perhaps this is normal and will never go away, but I want to at least try and decrease it.
At first glance, this community looks awesome! The thinking seems very high quality, and I certainly want to contribute to the discussion here.
I also write at my own blog, optimizethyself.com
See you in the discussion!
-John
I’m twenty and I feel like I missed the space conquest spirit completely. When I think about the scientific interests that appeal to my generation, I think that advances in health, computing, and sustainable energy seem far more important. I believe that we haven’t really lost our need for conquest it’s just moved into domain closer to home. The question now is, how can we improve life on earth? How can we extend life? How can we collect and analyze data in better ways than before?
I think that the decline of violence in the world may have something to do with this. Since there is less violence between nation states, there is less of an incentive for countries to show their dominance on an international level. This is just a guess though.
I think that since you already know your basic criteria, it doesn’t really matter which specific school you choose. The reality is that you’re probably going to get a pretty much equivalent education wherever you go. I’d consider prestige to some extent. Not because this will mean a better education, but because prestigious school often attract better students, and if you get in this will help you with building solid connections.
I think this is one of those things that isn’t really worth stressing about. Just look at the list of twenty or so that you have now, and just apply to the five or six that you intuitively feel best about. Also, it might be worth applying early decision. That would mean you only need to apply to one school which could make it easier on you.
This is just a hypothesis, but I think that the variance in the education that undergraduates get is more determined by the specific undergraduate than by the school. In other words, if your motivated and want to do well, you will probably do well just about anywhere.
A potential boundary is that between the seemingly objective and subjective. At the moment, science seems to be set on measuring things outside of the self. There is relatively little exploration of what one subjectively perceives. This facet of existence is almost completely ignored, even in psychology. I think in time this boundary will have to dissolve. There really is no good way of separating the outside world from the inside world.
Another one could be the artificial boundary between nature and nurture. It seems like the expression of all genes is mediated to some extend by the environment, therefore it is senseless to talk about any boundary between the two. I recently heard a metaphor that the debate between nature and nurture is akin to debating whether length of width is a better determinant of the area of a rectangle.
This might be challenging because our beliefs tend to shape the world we live in thus masking their error. Does anyone have any practical tips for discovering erroneous beliefs?