peterjm91.bsky.social
Interested in painting, philosophy, consciousness and the natural world.
74 posts
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216 following
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Difficult discussions to have in short form! For me qualia are positions in a state space whose dimensions are sensory state (internal and external), valence (now and expected future) and committed action, where these are all hierarchically integrated and coherent at whole organism level.
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Regarding read, write, the difference between our views may just arise from where you draw the line between information structures and active processes over time. Either way in consciousness we can access and edit our own 'software', not just execute it.
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Yes. I'd say consciousness is knowing that we know, where knowing is not just passive awareness, but also active asserting and deliberate doing.
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I am using 'self reference' here to mean a processing hierarchy's ability to read and write its own structure, not specifically limiting this to the part of that structure that models self as opposed to world.
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Self reference is the key element in consciousness.
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I was just reading about how text prompt to image AI works and it is striking that they generate whole, credible images out of a learnt representation with 100s of dimensions. Not sure how we get our heads around such rich and alien representations.
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2 opposing forces can give rise to oscillatory equilibrium
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Lose your ability to make steel, you lose the next war
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The mental is just a high level account of the physical. In consciousness, self reference enables the mind to (partially) know itself at the mental level of description. In 'free' will, the mind can partially determine its future.
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Yeah, but the hat's made of cotton so the label is off something else!
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At another level, Trump said 'pay attention to me' and almost everyone did.
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I reckon it's a tautology: a god literally IS a collective belief, just personified to get the message across to the masses. The power of god is the power of collective belief. Different gods are different collective beliefs.
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www.amazon.co.uk/Mechanisms-C...
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How about qualia is a static snapshot of information and cognition is the dynamic generation and exploitation of that information?
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A wandering beaver made this flood defence next to our hotel in Pitlochry, photographed today
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Qualia are positions in a valenced state space.
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We now know enough about the mechanisms of consciousness to engineer something conscious, I believe. Time to get on with that rather than discussing how many angels fit on the head of a pin. Theories will sort themselves out in the wash.
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Well, the model is in the head of the programmer.
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I don't see the hard problem as intractable. Two parts to explain: what the process is that considers itself aware; and how what it is aware of is represented. Both tractable and capable of being replicated. Maybe more a reverse engineering problem than a scientific one.
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Define 'nature'!
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We deceive ourselves if we think we have a special relationship with the USA, and that's been the case from before Trump. The more so having split ourselves off from the EU.
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An asset, not an agent, as the article finally concludes.
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Or the flies are following the birds? Correlation is not causation.
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Why present a plan to the US? Present it to Russia.
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The university is a charity and the trustees can be in trouble if they run at a loss.
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It's not for the university to decide to train UK nurses if the costs don't add up, is it?
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Consciousness is control of control. It is described at a higher level than the physical, and this works for us because a description at that level has more predictive power than a lower level description would.
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The handling of this has been cack handed by the leaders of some universities, but let that not blind us to the fact that the core problem is a funding shortfall for home (UK) students that is not within their control.
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Consciousness tops out control at the whole organism level, so there has to be time for it to collect and analyse all sensory inputs and generate and propagate motor outputs.... a few hundred milliseconds.
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Over reliance on income from foreign students, which has been subsidising UK students, is a bubble that has been waiting to burst for years. Leaving the EU and changing visa rules, motivated by xenophobia, were the pins that popped it.
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Looks great. I wonder what the equivalent would be on the motor output side, i. e. a top down hierarchy to take a desired action and implement its constituent parts coherently.
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Not free to read (message that too many people already followed the link)
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Existence is relative
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A bubble has been created by too many UK students going to university, inadequate funding increases for UK students, subsidised by increased numbers of foreign students, then Brexit and visa restrictions reducing their numbers. These factors are under control of the Government, not universities.
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We all work with delusions, because the world is too complex without them. Everyone thinks their delusions are better than everyone else's!
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The advance of the right, of fascism, of strong men with a cartoonish view of the world, as we approach the earth's dwindling holding capacity, is predictable and we need to address the challenge with eyes open to that.
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Yes, and consciousness is control of control.
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Democracy and capitalism don't fix exhaustion of earth's holding capacity quickly enough. Structurally, they can't.
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Causality flows in part through my brain. The brain loops round on itself so it is partially the cause of its own next outputs. Some outcomes are probabilistic.
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It's because it's not in the interests of individuals, businesses or parties in a democracy to be worse off in the short term to improve the long term... or at least not until disaster is already upon us and it is too late. Sorry, but this is how it is.
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I've lived in South Wales for nearly 20 years, it's the sort of place I'd be interested to visit, and I've never heard of it until today.
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Most people have at least 2 months of food stashed as fat on their corpulent frame.
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My money is on them being deniable US intelligence assets on exercise. Because: reported every day except Thanksgiving, have correct lighting, FBI etc say not a threat but carefully don't say why, drones a major factor in ongoing military theatres such as Israel and Ukraine.
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No, the stupidity is real
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No, I am saying statements about god are nothing more nor less than to statements about collective belief. For example the power of god is the power of collective belief.
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God is collective belief. God was personified by early teachers and writers in order to communicate better with the masses.
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... or less of an impact on casualties!
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That the answer changes over time
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Coed Cadw approves red deer culls in the wood next to me here. They are not so numerous to cause a problem in my view, and I like to see them. Do you gave an opinion?