Nov 17 2009
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#COH
This is what I’ve stumbled on and what I have been finding so much value in (as it allows one to rigorously define coherent and justifiable values).No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via email on my Posterous here.
Nov 17 2009
Maybe a weird, evolving, considerate-seeming pattern of behavior?
No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via email on my Posterous here.
Nov 16 2009
Prove that statement incorrect.
No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via email on my Posterous here.
Nov 16 2009
If we, as humans, have historically had no tangible and fully-defensible definition of how and why we attribute “meaning” to the “things” we “act on”, why would some of us have thusly assumed we ever had evolved the ability to create a “strong artificial intelligence” akin to ourselves out of tangible (even predictable) substrate?
If one sees their “self” as an intangibly unpredictable phenom AND that we can create strong AI, it is an implicit assumption that we must be able to re-create what we call “intelligence” without first being able to fully explain it as a natural phenomenon. In what we call comedy, for example, this might be framed as an unintentional humorous-seeming fallacy (and this humor can even be semi-understood without endowing the receiver with the ability to explicate it). Comedy often codes for semi-understanding of fallacy of intentions/values (cf. The Daily Show).
Would it even be possible to create “AI” without a rigorous definition of what it might mean (from the creator’s perspective) for a machine to find that something means something, and act based on that? When a creator doesn’t understand a phenomenon, it will not be able to model its behavior effectively, let alone deduce how to perform the pattern of creation which produced such a self-redefining pattern (e.g., RNA transcription –> human-useful proteins, strong AI, reverse engineering software or cryptograms).
Maybe many individuals’ past urges to “see strong AI solved within our lifetime” are really the result of their brains’ un-expressible open question of finding meaning for existence.
A rigorous and precise investigation of what different tangible reasons for finding meaning in things (”epistemology”) might be a better step towards creating what most others consider “strong AI”. If an entity (human) has never purposefully re-created patterns acting in ways like themselves, that entity (human) has plausibly exhibited symptoms of either (1) an inability to find relevant meanings and deduce, (2) a non-valuation of modeling patterns or effecting other patterns by creating patterns or (3) an observer bias (failure of imagination, failure of consideration of their function within a larger environment).
If nobody can rigorously describe how a machine might act in ways they might find meaningful (or nobody can conceive of what meanings we might want to find in machines), strong AI research has likely been a shooting of arrows in the dark — a brute force attack on the plausible pattern-space. Science has given us much, and as a pattern, science induces meaningful patterns from phenomenon and deduces meaning from them. We need more material to deduce from. My advice to humanity to increase the amount of new models and meaningful ideas which might occur: look smart and hard for pattern, induce pattern while observing for pattern changes, find pattern by comparing and contrasting patterns (of any scale or level), no matter how unrelated or related they might “feel”.
One (AI-curious individuals, looking at you) might not regard language as necessarily immutable. One might not necessarily regard an inability to express an idea concisely as a completely value-killing signal. One might try harder, refine words, or create and define new words and by exposition of definition, breathe into them a lasting meaning.
No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via email on my Posterous here.
Nov 15 2009
Please be aware I’ve had significant trouble expressing the following thinking-defining tools I’m now finding useful in my thinking, and consider the historically-influenced limits of the available words and commonly understood perception encodings we call the English language. I’m attempting to maximize others’ understanding, and I beg one to not be turned off by my inability to express these ideas in terms which aren’t complex to comprehend — I normally exhibit a pattern of being able to do that — that may refine the predictions of potential meaning you attribute to a new way of thinking and behaving.
Prove this assertion implausible: Any entity which anything might consider “meaningful” is an entity which, at some point, has been entwined with other existence-probability-effecting patterns (and it is entwining itself with many of our own existence’s existence-persistence-defining patterns).
I consider non-random existence-pattern-emergence a useful base model for explaining literally everything. Mathematically, literally and (necessarily) metaphorically, everything. Crossing artificially-defined-existence-level boundaries in creating predictive/representational models offers patterns has the pattern-historical benefit seen to meaningfully influence the furthered existence of entities (humans have model of world, cf. “we can try things mentally without dying”, ideas of what keeps ideas existing allow these ideas to modify themselves, survive and thrive [and even effect humans, environments, plausibly eternal-representational-existence]).
Entities which evolve these models might are imbued with the improbable opportunity for model creation and a more intelligent course of action. This pattern shows up in the example of human existence — we have open ended thought which could plausibly lead to maximizations in future existence. The time and number of generations which the pattern-space (the set of all pattern we can plausibly observe or effect) normally is high, as it requires the development of complex and open-ended representation substrate. But this results in meta-predictively-using (modeling our environmental existence) patterns (humans) — which has the opportunity of positively effecting future existence of our patterns’ evolutionary threads.
It is highly possible that a pattern’s eternal existence might be quite well-served by fully understanding the constituent patterns (nature) of its meaning-reality, creating a highly-effective existence-continuance-effecting pattern. For a prediction pattern of this sort to “mean anything to” humankind, we might consider it requiring: (1) open-ended survival [few effects from other competitive patterns, which would be existing in an environment rewarding reactionary-competitive patterns of existence], (2) model-evolution [creation, survival, exploratory change, reproduction] by this created idea-substrate, finding models [future-existence-prediction-representation patterns] from limited observation of the plausibly existence-useful pattern-space, (3) use (pattern-y effects) of that model to “thoughtfully” inform and change success plausibility of future attempts at maintaining pattern existence relevance.
I am very curious about patterns, especially ones which might be observable, (1) affecting the set of all patterns we can understand (know the origins of), or potential future meanings of our own, (2) the patterns which our endowment with collective conscious thought might effect. I would really appreciate any serious objections to claims or requests for detail (consider language and identity might be an idea existence-defined propagation bandwidth issue).
As a human, the only plea I find it meaningful to make from my current pattern-y thought lens: consider the plausibility that every element of our existence exists or ceases to exist within a system which could be, in a small way, maximizing for something which rewards meta-thought-representational action in existence.
Please feel free to make claim requests for clarification and objection. One might consider that I do see two open questions in this model of interrelation and meaning:
* What models are affecting the patterns we might find useful to continue our patterns’ existence? Which models are in-conceivable? Which will we never be able to create predictive representations of?
* What system do we exist in? What will affect our continued existence within this system? Could understanding of this system lead to alterations in possibilities for of “our” patterns’ continued existence?
One might want to consider examples of patterns which represent themselves within a model and how it pattern-historically affected those patterns’ continued existence.
Me and every pattern which now representationally exists because I exist,
B
No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via email on my Posterous here.
Oct 25 2009
I’m interested in learning about most everything. Since I began conducting investigations in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and philosophy this year, I have come to the realization of just how intimately related every field of study really is. I find that the categories defined through education-system-division or economic-work-force-convenience are superficial and can ofttimes be outright deceiving.
I’m at an age and stage in my education (undergraduate Junior) when considering the things I’ll need to do to leave career doors open is beginning to sound important. Just don’t know what I’d love to do most. Which endeavors would be best to pursue for money and field respectability (extrinsic motivators)? Which endeavors are best left to pursue for intrinsic satisfaction? Must these two categories of motivation always be mutually exclusive?
there’s a relevant TEDtalk on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation and a paper on extrinsic motivation’s diminishing effects on creativity tasks (Eisenberger + Cameron, 1996).
Given unlimited time and opportunity, I currently think I would enjoy:
I would really love to hear thoughts on deciding on a path. What endeavors are best to keep mutually exclusive from income? What are some small things I can try that might help me whittle down the number of doors I’ll try to keep open?
Now back to studying for Professor Dennett’s philosophy of mind and language mid-term…
Respectable by association,
B
Oct 14 2009
(this is an edit-for-style/repost of a post I made to the Tufts Happiness Club’s facebook group page. oh, and a friend and mine are starting a Tufts Happiness club. maybe I’ll write about that when I’m not writing about this, or the dreams post I last promised! [so, my brain is highly distractable. what's it to ya! 
])
(UPDATE: watching The Daily Show 3 hours after I posted this, Dr. Ehrenreich was the guest! Also, she has a blog, is awesome, supported [with gusto!] Nader in 2000 and Obama in 2008 and currently serves on the NORML board of directors. <3)
You might have recently seen the Boston Globe interview entitled “Enough with the bright side: Positive thinking can be dangerous, says Barbara Ehrenreich”
I am not convinced this interview’s introduction is completely fair to Dr. Ehrenreich.
In the article, Dr. Ehrenreich seemed to make more of a case against the use of happiness-boosting techniques by secular (and cult, money-making, and non-scientifically-backed “self-help”) organizations than one against the growing body of research which enumerates various benefits of positive affect.
I am ordering two copies of her book for the club (Bank of Brian) and will review it myself, and I hope someone else from the Tufts Happiness Club will join me.
And thanks to some fortuitous Googling, tomorrow my good friends Lauren, Margaret and I are going to listen to a talk by Dr. Ehrenreich put on by The Harvard Bookstore at Brattle Theater in Cambridge. Info here, let me know if you’ll join us.
My current plan is to give a short presentation of her claims (and the research her book references) to the club during our second meeting. If positive affect has negative effects, we want to know what those are, we want to know why, and what amount of positive affect is “a bad thing” by those accounts. At this point I am interested in teaching and discussing with others the main points of this account.
Oh, also, Dr. Ehrenreich sounds pretty awesome, by most accounts:
* “In 1968, she received a Ph.D in cell biology from Rockefeller University.” [1]
* “In 1998, the American Humanist Association named her the Humanist of the Year.” [1]
* From the Boston Globe interview: “BE: No. And I think I was open to it. I wanted to feel the love, or feel what people were supposed to feel, but unfortunately, I’m saddled with this rational mind. At one conference in 2007, there was constant talk about how quantum physics explains how you can have anything you want just by thinking about it. That just infuriated me.” [2] — all good points and makes her sound more awesome in my book.
Quote refs:
[1] (as Freshman year English teachers everywhere cringe) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Ehrenreich
[2] http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/10/11/enough_with_the_bright_side/?page=2
I am curious to see whether this article has done her arguments justice, or if the Globe has simply sensationalized her book’s reasonable claims.
Please comment and let me know what you think, what you read, what you find, and points you’ve heard from others so I can investigate and we can discuss in the club!
Also, because she’s a biologist, a new goal in my life is to have a phone talk with Dr. Ehrenreich about the brain because I currently am obsessed with it, she seems incredibly rational and a great researcher, and I have way too many questions I need answered about the biological science of the brain (those questions are also another blog post).
My dentrites to yours,
Brian
Oct 08 2009
I feel compelled to preface two dream stories I will post tomorrow with some thoughts (NB: the bulk of my writing is tangential).
I think this boils down to two reasons, which you can avoid if you’re careful with your dream storytelling: (1) often times dream tellers over-attribute vivid awesomeness to the things that happened in their dreams, especially when the dreams are about things that are specific to only their lives, usually appearances of things from their episodic memory and (2) it’s hard for savvy dream story listeners not to get distracted by considering the folk-psychological (or logically obvious) meanings of the teller’s dreams. Sometimes it can be downright awkward to actively listen to these stories. A smart response: “Oh, interesting, you had a dream wherein your parents fought eachother with swords on top of red water so you went to hide in the forest of solitude where you ate orange berries until you heard a scream and assumed which one had died. Okay, let’s talk about something else for a bit.”
More information on dreams: contemporary dream interpretation, and there will be a NOVA episode called “Why do we dream?” on October 20th, 2009 (two weeks from now). Short summary of the NOVA episode (which I can’t find anything about online as of yet, even on the NOVA schedule… also, BBC Horizon did a similar episode):
“This captivating one-hour special highlights the latest that science has uncovered about the purpose and meaning of dreams. In their quest for answers, researchers are probing the minds of cats, sleepwalkers, and stroke survivors. A mix of personal stories (a woman dreams repeatedly about an abusive past relationship) and fascinating study results (a test subject suddenly excels on a ski-racing simulator after dreaming about snow) keep the show moving at a lively pace. The take-home lesson: The dreamworld affects both mental health and problem solving in our waking lives.” (via Discover Magazine, October 2009)
I do also find curious the differences in perception we have between ideas which come from within dreams and those during waking thought. When you hear someone’s great spark of genius came from within the dream world, it changes your regard of how they came up with it. Dreams offer our thoughts a space outside of a consistent reality–whether by purpose (evolutionary pressure) or poor machinery (our mental representation of the world needs constant confirmation feedback to remain accurate)–which results in bizarre things happening and novel things being stumbled upon. How would you regard the invention of a new, more efficient can opener if it were derived from a mathematical function? If it were created by trial and error during the daytime? Calculated by genetic algorithms? Came up with during a hallucinogenic trip? Conceived of within a dream?
Anyway, that all said, I believe I may have had two dreams with obvious and wholly un-interesting neuro-chemical-pattern origins that I think stand up as interesting on their own. One of them has a TEDtalk involved, the other an online-watchable episode of Family Guy. So you will always have that if tomorrow’s dream stories suck.
Oct 07 2009
Disclaimer: I began writing this as a response to a comment on this video, now decided to finish my thoughts. I first published this as a Facebook note.
I find the stories of correlation between old folk-scientific/philosophical beliefs and new accurate empirical evidence fascinating. How did those from the past stumble upon scientific accuracy?
It is very curious how durable many portions of the Zen Buddhist philosophy have proven throughout time, especially when considered alongside other folk philosophies of life, theories of happiness, religions — which were all conceived during the (relative) intellectual darkness of the past.
Of mild interest, though not the topic of my post, you will find that the stories of contradiction between folk beliefs and new empirical evidence are usually not told or largely ignored in popular literature — I suspect because they would make an important group of people blush, and might make those same important people think unkindly of those story-writers and subsequent story-tellers, considering them (and anyone in the non-folk-belief-following outgroup) as cold-hearted horrible-spiritless people who are advocating a world which would be bereft of happiness and meaning.
Two things to ponder when considering the case of Buddhism’s non-contradictory relationship with the emerging neuroscientific position on happiness, and, to a degree, science in general:
(1) Buddhism began with a null hypothesis (no presuppositions) and allowed rational thinking explicitly via Buddha’s Kalama Sutta, or Charter of Free Thinking
(2) The brain sciences are becoming powerful and mature enough to produce compelling empirical evidence about the basis of human nature, humans’ folk theories, and the comically un-mystical origins of mystic theories and stories.
More on these topics:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html Video of Harvard University psychology professor Dan Gilbert talking about the neuroscience of happiness and the inaccurate folk theories most people hold about the nature of happiness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalama_Sutta Zen Buddhism’s story expressing Buddha’s insistence on a proper assessment of evidence versus reliance on faith, hearsay or speculation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_science Buddhism’s relation to scientific inquiry, neuro/psychological findings and non-armchair philosophy.
(Seems less relevant when reposting this outside of Facebook, but I’ll include anyway:) Jon Sellon, I’m tagging you in this note because I am remembering in our confirmation class when you were the one person who expressed that you weren’t ready to be confirmed and wanted to explore other options — specifically, Buddhism! Boats of respect, that was not the easy thing to do.
Sep 07 2009
Hi. Before I ease you in to my half-baked proposal for a better solution, here are three things that are really cool, and I think are very useful for taking notes at a presentations (university lectures, keynotes and the like):
Wikis are great for asynchronous collaboration. They store versions, they scale well, even when you let anyone contribute, and the word wiki is just fun to say.
A nitpick: The self-described “non-computer” types, those who just hate it when their computer “is blowing up” or “spazzes” on them, often have trouble learning the MediaWiki interface (used on a large portion of popular wikis, like Wikipedia (and pretty much anything else set up by the Wikimedia Foundation). Adding media to wiki pages tends to be especially tough for first time users. Some simplification may be worth its weight in future contributions.
Some possible solutions (which probably exist as plugins, or as different wiki software): modify MediaWiki to streamline the uploading of images or the on-page instructions for doing so easier, add an internet meme esoterica quiz to the front page of your wiki, go to your local public library and teach a wiki editing course.
A partial solution: commercial entities such as PBWiki and Wikispaces have created wikis that allow for pretty-freakin-easy wiki creation and media uploading.
PBWiki - Now that's a nice customizable sidebar!
Like: the everything-on-one-page-height-interface, simple image uploads, comment functionality, page navigator, useful sidebar.
Hmm…: Edit/view distinction, synchronous editing in large groups, no flash-based audio or video players, no exposition of image and audio metadata
I suggested PBWiki when my roommate asked for a simple wiki for taking course notes, and his wiki was a hit come exam time (and other people helped edit it, too).
If you haven’t tried synchronous collaborative text communication (ytalk, screen, ICQ, etherpad, gobby, subethaedit, google wave), you are missing out, my friend.
Google Wave preview (abridged):
These collaborative tools let you see what’s being done by other people as it is being done. When you’re taking notes in a class, this becomes immensely useful, as you can see if something that’s been said has already been jotted down (no duplication of effort and merge conflicts). Imagine you have a question — you could ask first on this collaborative backchannel before interrupting class or the presentation. And if others have the same question, you might mount an internet-information-gathering-expedition before your professor stops to ask “any questions?”
Google Wave and etherpad seem to also offer built-in wiki-style version control and time-based playback. Because lectures are time-based (the lecturer speaks and introduces new ideas at their pace, your notes are taken around the same time), this can be incredibly useful if you have an audio or video recording of the lecture that you are working along with… which brings me to the next and final wonderful thing.
Timelining, to me, means organizing multiple pieces of media (photos, audio, text) in a way that exposes the temporal relationship between events. Imagine taking an audio recording, and while you are doing that, taking a bunch of photos. You could independently listen to the audio and leaf through the photos when you hear your camera shutter. It would be like video with a very low framerate. Now, what if both of these things were on your computer and had timestamps. Then you could write a program that will automatically leaf through your photos when audio start timestamp + time elapsed = photo timestamp (or more realistically, audio end timestamp – length + time elapsed = photo timestamp). If you have your program write the output of this and the audio stream to a video, you would essentially have a low framerate video.
This photo + audio time exposition is exactly what the unreleased Microsoft Research’s MyLifeBits project software does (new book about a couple of the researchers coming out in a month). And it is kind of like what video lifecasters do (except at a high framerate, and often broadcasted for anyone to see online).
This has to do with collaborative backchanneling because different people have different media acquisition tools, angles, etc. I have an audio recorder and recorded a 1 hour long mp3 of the class, you have a cell phone camera and shot 30 photos of the blackboard at different times. Temporally combined audio and photos (and text notes taken on-wiki during the lecture), could be a decent record of the class if someone missed it, and a great extra study tool. Video of a lecture is pretty useful if you can get it, but even when you have that, having collaborative class notes alongside the lecture would be quite bonus (and searchable!).
I’d like to see a web service with:
The technical limit here, I think, is the mechanism for obtaining the absolute times of photo and audio material. The three social limits are, and apologies for being completely out of my element, (1) will someone make this, (2) will students want to use it, (3) will students be allowed to use it, and under what terms.
Oh, and making sure everyone has their clocks set correctly.
I think the people behind PBWorks, Etherpad, justin.tv and any Joe off the street (even me?) using the Google Wave APIs are well poised to make something like this. But I hope someone makes it tonight, because my classes start tomorrow.
Do you have tips? Links? Starting points? Do you know if date created/modified information survives browser-based uploading? Leave a comment!
‘ere ya go!:
Make an offline client, for those lectures and presentations made far away from the ever spreading internet.
Add a new terms / vocabulary / flashcard section in the toolbar. Tie in with the Quizlet API, or some spaced-temporal memorization service.
Allow for on-the-spot drawings (javascript or Flash-based) in addition to photo uploads.
