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AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)

Stephen Horne steve at ninereeds.fsnet.co.uk
Sun Oct 26 13:53:09 EST 2003 
On 26 Oct 2003 17:54:58 +0000, jjl at pobox.com (John J. Lee) wrote:

>Stephen Horne <steve at ninereeds.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
>> On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 22:34:47 GMT, Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it>
>> wrote:
>[...this is Stephen again...]
>> Just because physicists don't have a perfect model yet, it doesn't
>> change basic facts that anyone can observe by opening their eyes.
>
>'Basic facts that anyone can observe by opening their eyes' are
>elusive things!  The earth is not flat.  All observations are made in
>the context of a model of reality.

Well, I still think that the *local* 'flatness' of the Earths surface
is highly significant (at least the fact that the general
sphericalness has less significance at a local scale than the hills
and valleys and other lumps and bumps), even if only locally. Our
current models are much more general, of course, but showing that
something can be explained as local effects in a new and more general
model is not the same as proving that easily observable consistent
patterns are insignificant.

In the case of the Earths flatness, the historical model has not only
been superceded but now seems cringingly obsolete as our daily lives
have exceeded the limits of that model - not a day goes by without
some reminder of the non-flat nature of the Earth at non-local scales.

But are we likely to exceed the limits of perceptions where time is
significant any time soon? Ever? If so, how come no smug gits from the
future have come back to tell us how it is done?

If you say that our perception of time is not a universal absolute,
well some aspects of that are already proven fact and other aspects
are perfectly plausible. I have no problem with that. But to claim
that our local perception of time has no basis in our locally
perceptable 'region' of reality is, IMO, daft.

All the evidence shows that there is a consistent arrow of time that
we cannot opt out of - and 'local' in this case seems a lot bigger
than a few tens or hundreds of miles. Current evidence suggests that
works much the same in distant galaxies as it does in the next town
down the road, as long as we allow for relativity where relevant.

>> and our minds are
>> no more special than any other arrangement of matter.
>
>Unqualified, that's clearly nonsense.

It is qualified by the context of the discussion - the claims that
there is no reality separate from perception (and therefore that the
arrangement of matter called a brain has a special ability to write
the rules that all matter in the universe follows).

As I said in another post...

"""
Consciousness is not magic. Brains, like the rest of the body, are
just another arrangement of matter - certainly a complex and useful
arrangement, but it is still obeying (not defining) the rules layed
down by the universe we live in. There is nothing special about people
which lets them arbitrarily define the universe.
"""

Yes, the human brain is (currently, so far as we know) unique. It is
special. But it does not need magic powers in order to be special.

>> In quantum theory, the observer is nothing more than a sufficient mass
>> that a superposition must be resolved quickly. Not so long ago, people
>> were grasping to the idea that being an 'observer' in quantum physics
>> was a special function of human consciousness. I do not need that
>> hypothesis any more than I need the hypothesis of god, or the
>> hypothesis that we are living in the matrix acting as magical
>> batteries that somehow produce more energy than we consume.
>
>(I like your general thrust, but I think it's simpler than that -- the
>many-worlds theory just says "let's forget about the collapse of the
>wavefunction", and everything seems to work out fine.)

Yes, but why can we see the affects of superposition at the
microscopic scale but not at the macroscopic. That is what strikes me
as odd - if parallel universes work as an explanation, then why do
they work differently at the two scales. In particular, why can we not
see evidence of it at the scales we are good at percieving when we can
see the evidence so clearly at the scales we are not naturally
equipped to percieve at all.

>> To be honest, I don't see the point of basing opinions on what was
>> said by philosophers before the current level of knowledge about
>> physics and about the mind was achieved.
>
>Certainly some philosophers seem over-concerned with the history of
>philosophy.

Looking at that again, I overstated it of course. Wisdom is not such a
cheap thing. But still, these philosophers simply did not have access
to much of the knowledge that, thanks to science, we now take
more-or-less for granted.


One last thought, at least for today...

If there is no reality separate from perception, and if 'reality' is
therefore just another perception, how come it is so bloody complex
and impossible for most of the organisms capable of perception to
understand?

When essentially everyone on Earth believed in a flat Earth, why was
there any perceptible evidence that the Earth was not flat - unless it
was because of an independent reality 'taking precedence' over
perceptions?


-- 
Steve Horne

steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk
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