[mjburgess]

We're not a lookup table of the things we're, eg., saying, or doing etc. Nor are we looking up, in this sense, when we act.

ie., when you compress text into an NN and use it to generate text, the generated text is just a synthesis of the compressed text.

Whereas when I type, I am not synthesising text. Rather I have the skill of typing, I have an interior subjectivity of thoughts, I have memories which arent text, and so on.

When my fingers move across the keyboard it isn't because they are looking up text.

Our causal properties (experiencing, thinking, seeing, feeling, remembering, moving, speaking, growing, digesting ...) are not each, "index on the total history of prior experience", "index on the total history of prior seeing". The world directly causes, eg., us to see -- seeing isnt a lookup table of prior seeings.

( Also, the whole of physics is formulated in terms that cannot be made into a lookup table; and there is no evidence, only insistence, of the converse. )

[bubblyworld]

I strongly disagree with your last statement - physics explicitly _is_ formulated in terms that can be made into a lookup table (see phase spaces in classical mechanics, for instance).

My point is that there's a finite light cone of possible causal influences over you at any moment in time, and in principle you can break those down into state variables finely enough to predict future states of a person. This is isomorphic to a lookup table, albeit one we aren't able to construct right now.

Im not suggesting it's enough to consider just the person in this scenario - the causal factors are part of the lookup.

[imtringued]

How do you lookup quantum mechanics? Please tell the physicists about your breakthroughs.

[bubblyworld]

No need, physicists already do this all the time - any computer simulation of quantum mechanical systems has to come to terms with the same problems (namely quantising the state space and representing the dynamics deterministically).

[mjburgess]

Physicists simulate on computers only what can be, which is almost nothing. Consider obtaining the dynamics of water by simulating all its parts: proton flow, hydrogen bonding etc. of 10^{PHYSICALLY UNCOMPUTABLE} interactions.

The simulations which do exist fail to model vast amounts. This is why, say, climate change is given as a prediction on temperature -- because it can be obtained as a mean which ignores "basically everything".

And it can be easily show that the assumptions of QM are false if Hilbert space is computable (QM becomes non-linear); and of classical mechanics (which becomes non-deterministic); and so on. ie., that the issue isnt merely 10^{PHYSICALLY UNCOMPUTABLE} but that non-computable functions are essential to the formulation.

The assertion that the world is computable is just that: there are no research projects, no textbooks, no experiments, no formalism to replace physics or anything like it -- nothing. All the basic assumptions of physics would have to be false, and we would have to have good reasons for supposing so.

This is just nonsense. The world is geometrical as described by physics. It is not computational as described by the discrete mathematician whose megalomania and platonism knows no bounds.

[bubblyworld]

To be honest, I don't really understand what you mean by Hilbert spaces being computable, and what that has to do with the linearity of QM, determinism of classical mechanics, universe being geometrical and not computational etc. I'm familiar with all of those concepts, but not sure how they tie together here. If you have resources you could share I would appreciate it (I had little success with google).

[mjburgess]

computable = expressible as Int -> Int

Hilbert space = set of functions in Real -> Real

geometrical & non-computable = Reals

determinism = g(x, t_future) fully set by g(x, t_now) and g

if you model a geometric, g : Real -> Real with computable, c : Int -> Int then there are gaps at arbitrarily high precisions, say p (eg., p = delta(g, c) at (x, t))

construct a classical system of arbitrarily complexity (eg., 10^BIG interactions), describe each interaction with g. Since 10^BIG are required, "delta(g, c) < BIG" is required in order for the system to remain deterministic (ie., described by g). We can easily find cases where BIG > delta(g, c), so CM would be non-deterministic if g is replaced by c.

As for QM, these "gaps" are cause much deeper contradictions with premises of QM.

If you replace wavefunctions, g, with computable ones, c then they dont sum to solutions of the wave-eq, so QM fails to be linear (the detla(g,c) are massive because hibert space is infinite-dim).

Now it might be that reality is really computable in the sense that there's some c which can replace g, but this would violate the assumptions of physics and has no motivation. Physics might be wrong, but there's no evidence of that.

There are also other issues, but these are just two off the top of my head.

Refences: Look for physical church-turing, church-turing thesis, non-det and det in chaos theory, non-det in classical mechanics, physical interpretations of the reals -- this will be in postgrad work, it wont be in popsci books.

[naasking]

> The assertion that the world is computable is just that: there are no research projects, no textbooks, no experiments, no formalism to replace physics or anything like it -- nothing. All the basic assumptions of physics would have to be false, and we would have to have good reasons for supposing so.

I have no idea what this means. Physics must be computable from straightforward physical arguments like the Bekenstein Bound: finite volumes must contain finite information. Any physical object has finite volume at any given time, the universe included, ergo they must contain finite information. Any system consisting of finite information can be modeled as a finite state machine.

[mjburgess]

Thermodynamic entropy isnt information in the relevant sense.

There's a wide class of computational mysticism born of people going around and equivocating between "information" as it means radically different things where it is used.

thermodynamic entropy (a real number) != information theory entropy (bits) != information in csi != information in stat mech' != information in QM != information in a turing machien !=. ...

This is basically pseudoscience at this point. If you hear people talking about "information" as if its defined in a general sense (ie., equivocating across physics, computer science, etc.), they have no clue what they're talking about.

Eg., the "entropy" of real-valued quantum states as measured by integer-valued notions of entropy is 1 bit (the measured state is UP,DOWN) -- but QM requires the state be real-valued (having infinite information in the computability sense).

These kinds of information are not measuring the same thing, and largely irrelevant to each other.

[FrustratedMonky]

"I am not synthesising text"

Then what are you doing?

I think you are falling for the same arguments as 'mystics'. Somehow your inner thoughts are un-explainable. But nothing in your argument explains it, you are just taking your own inner experience itself as the mystical explanation.

The old 'I think therefore I am' argument.

And where did the 'thinking' come from?

[mjburgess]

It's entirely explainable, I just explained it in the other comment, "Somatosenstory representations are built by the sensory-motor system."

Do you really think the meat of my body is growing so as to record every symbol i've seen, or even an induction across them?

I find this inability to think outside of the switching frequencies of a silicon chip as they model the patterns of text tokens on reddit, absolutely bizarre.

You're an ape, have some appreciation for it. You're much more interesting than what openai can steal from amazon's ebook library.

[FrustratedMonky]

My view is opposite.

"inability to think outside of the switching frequencies of a silicon chip"

Why can't you "think outside", and conceptualize that this 'internal subjective experience' we are having, is not unique, and could be taking place inside a silicon based NN?

It helps to meditate and observe your own thoughts, and how they arise. You can begin to realize that you don't 'think'. You don't think about what to think and thus think it. Thoughts just become un-bidden.

Its back to the Schopenhauer quote "“A man can do as he will, but not will as he will.”

Then, when you begin to notice the mechanistic nature of your own mind, you will have less resistance to how 'silicon' is also reacting. Silicon and Carbon both reacting to inputs, processing.

[mjburgess]

Organisms are mechanistic, there's nothing "not mechanistic" about the mind.

Its insane to suppose that somatosensory representation building, which requires organic neruoplasticity to be connected to the organically adaptive neuromotor system, etc. etc. etc. can just be instantiated in a bit of sand.

This is deeply mystical, pseudoscience.

You're credulously throwing away any kind of empirical analysis of the world in terms of it's properties and their mechanisms for the deeply mystical view that, unique in amongst all properties of the world, consciousness needs no empirical analysis of the properties of the systems which have it.

Of gold we ask: what makes it shine; of fire: what makes it hot.. and so on for everything empirical in the world.

But with the mind we must stop! No! No! do not do any science! please that might mean we can't be scammed by a VC out of our investment money; i cannot babble endlessly about scifi star treck episodes! no no! please do not rob me of my scifi religion! please please, do not ruin commander data for me!

Well there is no commander data. And the properties of gold are not those of sand, nor those of animals. And just as no bit of silicon will be trasumted into gold by the running of an NN on its electric field; likewise, no bit of silicon will desire or wish or conceive of anything.

We are biological organisms; we do not have souls, even if in your religion, the soul is "a pattern". Your consciousness will not be uploaded; commander data will never visit; and your local VC shyster is on a stock manipulation grift to bamboozle you out of money.

[FrustratedMonky]

Really. I'm not sure what you are getting at. I think from your last few sentences. We actually agree, and maybe just miss-understanding.

I'm agreeing, to the mechanistic nature. Nothing Mystical. Just physical world. No souls. I was trying to get you to see the mechanistic nature of mind, then you tell me to stop being Mystical?

You think that generating a mind from sand is 'mystical'. "just be instantiated in a bit of sand?"

But don't seem to realize Carbon, is also just a basic element. So why is any reasoning based from Carbon, Non-mystical? But Silicon is?

Then some other sentences seem to be </sarcasm>. But in these discussions it is hard to tell when someone is being sarcastic or making a point.

Like this sentence:: "We are biological organisms; we do not have souls, even if in your religion, the soul is "a pattern". Your consciousness will not be uploaded; commander data will never visit; and your local VC shyster is on a stock manipulation grift to bamboozle you out of money."

I totally agree, no soul, it is a pattern. That does not mean we can't create a 'mind' from silicon, that is based on a pattern, and be equivalent in functionality.

I also agree, we will never be uploaded. I don't think we'll ever be able to measure the human neurons to a degree to allow this. But that doesn't mean we'll never build a NN with as many connections as a human brain has, and that it wont also be able to have a 'pattern' of self.

And, there is a lot of VC Shysters out there, doesn't mean a lot of real progress is not being made.

[mjburgess]

You think that reality is a pattern, and that properties obtain from configurations. Eg., that, of course, we can transmute gold into lead. Alchemy.

The problem with this is that the patterns have semantics, a pattern of wood does not have the same properties as a pattern of lead. The pattern isnt the important bit.

If you want to turn hydrogen into lead you first have to fire up a star and wait a very very long time, and as protons and electrons bundle up in every more complex configurations interactions between them come to dominate their properties... so that lead is nothing at all like hydrogen.

What is the only known element that enables "weak polymerisation", ie., adaptive self-replication at the molecular level: carbon.

What are the properties of all intelligent systems known to science? They're organic.

Why? This is no coincidence. In order to think, you have to grow -- self-replicate at every level from the cellular to organs, tissues... the material placitity of the machine that holds your thoughts has to itself adapt its structure to that of your body (the device which explores the world).

Now, should we expect hydrogen to do that? No. Silicon? No. Why would we? Ah, only because we loath the idea of being apes, and of oozing.. our biological disgust instincts tell us to run far away from it. How more beautiful if, like in genesis, we can fashion man out of clay and breath in life.

but alas, we arent clay; nor will clay ever think or desire or want.. clay cannot take impressions of the world without becoming an impression. It cannot adapt.

[naasking]

> Its insane to suppose that somatosensory representation building, which requires organic neruoplasticity to be connected to the organically adaptive neuromotor system, etc. etc. etc. can just be instantiated in a bit of sand.

Why? That's just an assertion, not an argument. All of those big words and sophisticated concepts you used all reduce to field interactions that we've mostly captured mathematically. Unless you're imbuing these things with some magical essence that can't be observed, but then who's doing the pseudoscience?

[mjburgess]

I'm just driven mad by how people thinking physical objects with specific properties is "magic", but reducing reality down to abstract platonic mathematical forms is "science".

This is the opposite.

Gold isnt lead. Lead isnt wood. Cells are not bits of metal. Bits of metal do not polymerise. Bits of sand do not form weak covalent bonds...

It's kinda exhausting that this mathematical superstition is so prevalent in people who otherwise believe they are somehow anti magical thinking.

There is no more magical thinking in supposing that you can ignore reality, describe it in a formula, reinterpet that formula against some other reality, and it'll all work out.

As if, "2 + 2 = 4" means the same thing when it's "2 drivers + 2 drivers = 4 deaths" vs. "2 cookies + 2 cookies = 4 happy children"

The idea that reality is essentially mathematical and not essentially physical is pythagorean magical thinking. Science says the opposite.

All the mathematics in explanatory scientific laws are just paraphrases of descriptions of the physical properties of systems. None of it is actually mathematics.

Physics does not study "2". It studies there being earth and the sun and a force between them, summarised as "2 masses" etc.

[mewpmewp2]

Typing is just a medium, it is irrelevant. Seeing and all the other senses that you mentioned are input within a context window.

[mjburgess]

uhuh.. and how do you form the inputs into that context window?

Turns out you need to move (indeed, adapt) the body in order to form the very techinques which become concepts that can be given as inputs.

The eye does not move on its own, it has to be directed to attend to reality as conceptualised -- where do these come from? Somatosenstory representations are built by the sensory-motor system.

Or, simply: in order to first think, we move.