Re: How Robots Will Steal Your Job

[Eugeny Kornienko]

Roedy Green wrote

I can see that it could be either way, but I don't see what evidence
you have that birds should be unconscious. They appear do all the
things that conscious humans do except write on the Internet (which
many supposedly conscious humans don't do either).

Perhaps some humans write here instinctively that Steve attributes to the
birds whole lifetime. Not "either way". Both ways do matter.

I think instincts and reflexes badly explain complex behavior of birds,
or we cannot think out such an explanation in every case. So it would be
better the birds possess consciousness. Explanation of ones behavior from
its awareness of environment (and self, in some extent) is much easier.

As conscious as instinctive causes for a behavior need prove or evidence,
which normally are lacking. Especially when we study animals.

Usually we explain human actions by human consciousness. Whole human
behavior is merely non-explainable by reflexes and instincts. Such logic is
quite proper for understanding of animal behavior. Why pure instincts? Both
instincts and consciousness work. We may study (that is not easy, too) which
part of ones behavior is conscious. Say, in human it is 50%, in an ant it is
0.1%.

EK

 

[Robert C Monsen]

No, more like halfway between gorillas and chimps. Like I said before.

And neither gorilla or chimp females are faithful or monogamous.
Neither are orangs, surprisingly, from DNA study.

Relatively speaking, gorilla females are much more faithful and monogamous,
according to my reading. Its conjectured that thats the reason why they
their males don't need such huge numbers of sperm; they aren't competing in
that way. They compete by being agressive.

Saying something like "My, thats an angry sky" is "The Pathetic Fallacy".

The fact that DNA doesn't 'have any idea' what its doing doesn't mean its
not doing something. Machines do things. DNA is a hugely complex machine.

Its obvious to me that we are, in fact, acting out desires that are encoded
in our DNA that helped it to replicate over the eons. We are, for example,
attracted to people who share much of our DNA. Why would this be, except
that it increased the likelyhood that our own DNA would be replicated? Why
do we help those related to us in relation to the percentage of DNA we
potentially share with them? There is lots of evidence that we are acting
out strategies for DNA replication.

------------------------
Numerous strategies are interesting in "sperm warring", but these
are unrelated to our desires. We want what we want, and choose what
we're told will prove we're valuable to the group, and that can be
a pile of totally stupid shit in humans, since we have escaped a
lot of instinctual programming in our need to adapt quickly the
last few million years. Same place we got Awareness!


---------------------
Actually humans are miserable that way, but are the first animal to
have gained the ability to make themselves miserable for countless
generations on end before figuring out there are better ways to live.

The natural human sex act, as it is for all apes, is the gang bang.
It satisfies the females in the only way it is possible to completely
do so, and the males all like it too, because they all get sated.
One male can't remain erect long enough to do this for females, who
can **** almost all day.

While sympathetic with this viewpoint, and hoping it catches on, its clear
that ancestral women had two main reproductive strategies. One was to sell
reproduction for support. This is true in western society today, as it is in
more 'primitive' societies. The other was to cheat on the supporter. This is
also still true today.

The fact that women have no overt 'tell' as to when they are ovulating is
pretty good evidence that they had better, more successful offspring, if
they played it both ways. Most animals (chimps, for example, sharing 95% of
our DNA) have extravagant displays during estrus.

Also, the 'gang bang' doesn't allow for the choice of the woman, which its
clear has lots to do with how we evolved. Thats what sexual selection, in
the evolutionary sense, is all about. See below.

----------------------------
This has been disproven. Females have no been found to have virtually
all the semen DNA from all males in the troop, the silverback merely
doles it out to consolidate political power, as female chimps dole it
out to males toenlist their political support of their offspring in
their groups. Even Orangutans are now known to **** every male on the
periphery of their territory, which had not been known before.

Using google to search on the internet, all I find is you saying that,
without evidence, in other forums. I can't find any actual evidence. Where
did you read it? How was it 'disproved'? Who did the study? Where was it
done? If I'm quoting erroneous information, I'd like to know.

-------------
Big dicks float both boats. Males apes have as much say as females.
You're being a western culture bigot. The current notion is that women
are the gatekeepers for sex, but only because they are taught to be
shamed by it and limit it in this religiously superstitious society.

In other human societies it can be the males who decide and the females
who are gagging for it.

A western culture bigot? Hardly.

Its clear that the female has to be far more choosy than the male.
Successful males can father hundreds or thousands of children. Successful
females mother perhaps 20 at most, and most far less than that. More is
invested in sex for the female. This is also clear from the protected status
of young women in most cultures.

Its quality for the female, and quantity for the male.

Because of this, females must look for the sexiest male they can find. Thus,
those 'sexy' traits become passed on to their children. This is all textbook
evolutionary theory. There are any number of examples in the animal kingdom.
Now, the fact that females do this is well known. However, they don't do it
because they want to have better children. They do it because it feels
better to do it, that is, they are sexually attracted to 'sexy' traits, and
in fact are attracted to those traits that the group considers sexy. Its an
'unconsious' desire. If a female chooses a sexy trait that nobody else
considers sexy, her offspring, even if it has that trait, won't be as sexy
as one that has the trait that everybody thinks is sexy. Also, sexy traits
change from decade to decade. Thus is fashion born.

That, of course, is besides the point. There are things animals are that we
can never hope to understand. We are different, and thats ok. It doesn't
make us any better in a moral sense.

Intelligence is a survival/procreation strategy, just like everything the
DNA replication machine does.

 

[Joseph Dionne]

There are actually two kinds of consciousness, consciousness of
something and consciousness without an object.

I consider "consciousness of something" as experiences all creatures
sense, not to be confused with consciousness which describes moral, and
ethical "standards." Even a deaf/blind person has experiences, such as
touch, smell, taste sensations, in other words an experience of the
world around them.

And, how can a discussion of genital prowess, or lack there of, answer
the question of "what is intelligence?" How many intelligence lacking
things happen because of the obsession with genitals?

If the discussion continues focus on big balls, and even bigger egos,
then the question of "what is intelligence" will continue to elude us all.

[snip]

 

[dan michaels]

-------------------------------
No, consciousness is memory of self-existence.
"Last year I did this, and we had a great time".

They don't.
-Steve

The hallmark of discussions such as this is that they revolve around
the personal definitions that various people have for "consciousness".
This is why those such as Gerald Edelman, Daniel Dennett, and Nicholas
Humphreys prefer to describe 2 forms of C, which shortcut most of the
arguments .... from
Edelman, in his book A Universe of Consciousness ...

"... we emphasis the useful distinction between primary and
higher-order consciousness. Primary conscousness - the ability to
generate a mental scene in which a large amount of diverse information
is integrated for the purpose of directing present or immediate
behavior - occurs in animals with brain structures similar to ours
..... Higher-order conscousness is built upon the foundations provided
by primary conscousness and is accompanied by a sense of self and the
ability in the waking state explicitly to construct and connect past
and future scenes. In its most developed form, it requires a semantic
capability and a linguistic capability."

 

[Programmer Dude]

The hallmark of discussions such as this is that they revolve
around the personal definitions that various people have for
"consciousness". This is why those such as Gerald Edelman,
Daniel Dennett, and Nicholas Humphreys prefer to describe 2
forms of C, which shortcut most of the arguments .... from
Edelman, in his book A Universe of Consciousness ...

"... we emphasis the useful distinction between primary and
higher-order consciousness. Primary conscousness - the ability
to generate a mental scene in which a large amount of diverse
information is integrated for the purpose of directing present
or immediate behavior - occurs in animals with brain structures
similar to ours
.... Higher-order conscousness is built upon the foundations
provided by primary conscousness and is accompanied by a sense
of self and the ability in the waking state explicitly to
construct and connect past and future scenes. In its most
developed form, it requires a semantic capability and a
linguistic capability."

That's a pretty darn good definition!

 

[Guillaume]

Peacocks with dedraggled tails did not get laid.
What kind of bullshit is that, you obviously haven't studied, read and
observed much to say such a thing. You sound very much like a child
who thinks he knows it all. That's tiresome.
Claiming a peacock is unconscious and can't be unhappy is as stupid
as claiming that the Earth is flat.

You never back up your claims with any constructed arguments
of any kind, and you think it's ok. What are you doing in scientific
newsgroups? You are the exact opposite of the scientific spirit.

You're a troll, it's time people stopped answering your inept comments.

 

[OmegaZero2003]

There are actually two kinds of consciousness, consciousness of
something and consciousness without an object.

Are you familiar with Franklin Merrill-Wolff's work: "The Philosophy of
Consciousness Without an Object" and prior and subsequent works?

A western mind's approach to the perennial eastern religion's take on just
this topic. He was a mathematician at Princeton and had an experience of
pure CWO, thence CWO/Subject.

I uge all interested in studies of C to read the works because no study of
consciousness within science can ignore what he is saying and be complete.

Consider what would it be like to be deaf and blind. Clearly your
consciousness OF things is degraded. However, you could still have an
acute sense of beingness, of presence, that would exceed someone
hypnotised in front of a TV set.

Perhaps consciousness without an object is really just consciousness
of internal thought processes, though many people would say otherwise.
Many people attest there is a blissful state of consciousness without
thoughts. You deliberately stem the random flow of sporadic thoughts.

The practice of meditation (jnana yoga, kriya joga, hatha joga, etc.) are
all paths to that ineffable "state". FIrst learn to focus on some *thing*.
THen learn to focus on the light of consciousness that illuminates that
thing. Pure awareness/C without the object. Then too, sublimley dissolve
that self which is looking and become identical with the Self (notice init.
caps.).

The aphorisms in FMW's books are priceless.


"Before object were, consciousness without an object is"

"When awareness cognizes Time, then knowledge of Timelessness if born."

and 54 more...

OM TAT SAT

Then there is cosmic consciousness which I write about a bit on my
website in various essays such as http://mindprod.com/ccism.html. I
think this is much more common than people let on. They don't want to
talk about it to avoid being labelled crazy. Further it may only

No -I understand completely what you are saying!! I have been studying in
theat area since 1981 and met Merrill-Wolff.

happen a few times in a lifetime. Finally it is so hard to say
anything sensible about it because it is so different from ordinary
consciousness.

It leads me to speculate there many be many other sorts of
consciousness very different from our ordinary waking consciousness.

Of course; hypnotic states, drug-induced states (a myriad), dreaming states,

 

[OmegaZero2003]

I can consciously think about a future event/plan. So your description is
at best incomplete.

Consciouness_of is a function that is awareness_of. There is the notion of
pure consciousness without an object (and thence subject); See Franklin
Merrill-Wolff's work.

 

[OmegaZero2003]

That's a pretty darn good definition!

Then there is an even higher-order process of consciouness (hell with
state - it is too static) that build upon the negation of the "fiction"
(fiction_because_arbitrary and changing) of a self. It is called
consciousness without an object/subject.

Franklin Merrill-Wolff

 

[Englander]

On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 00:42:20 +0000, George W. Cherry wrote:

is it something as simple as the ability to survive?

is everything else the icing on the cake, is it taste rather
than intelligence?

i mean, look at the sort of art some people will pay millions for, tracey
emmen stuff etc. They must surely be dumb as muck.....

But is the pretending to like (or actually beleiving you do like)
something that someone more important likes intelligent? with a view to
being accepted by that superior?

1984

 

[Roedy Green]

"... we emphasis the useful distinction between primary and
higher-order consciousness. Primary conscousness - the ability to
generate a mental scene in which a large amount of diverse information
is integrated for the purpose of directing present or immediate
behavior - occurs in animals with brain structures similar to ours

That sidesteps the question that intrigues everyone. Do animals
create this mental scene purely as a calculation or is there something
in there actually experiencing it?

Is what goes on inside a frog closer to what goes on inside me (before
my morning coffee), or closer to what I imagine would go on inside a
simulated frog in a video game.

I will put out this speculation. Consciousness happens as a quantum
effect of a lot of rapid state change within a small volume. It
requires a minimum level of activity, then it suddenly kicks in as a
field effect. It is a fundamental of the universe like mass, time,
distance etc.

This would imply that machines are probably already conscious.

My hypothesis is 99% handwaving, but it at least suggests a line of
enquiry, trying to notice something physical that changes when you
come out of anaesthesia. What does the pattern of increased brain
activity look like when consciousness suddenly kicks in again?

 

[Michael Olea]

Roedy Green wrote



Perhaps some humans write here instinctively that Steve attributes to the
birds whole lifetime. Not "either way". Both ways do matter.

The unconditioned reflex is a popular literary form.

I think instincts and reflexes badly explain complex behavior of birds,
or we cannot think out such an explanation in every case. So it would be
better the birds possess consciousness. Explanation of ones behavior from
its awareness of environment (and self, in some extent) is much easier.

As conscious as instinctive causes for a behavior need prove or evidence,
which normally are lacking. Especially when we study animals.

Marc Hauser reports some interesting experiments based on the idea of
"expectancy-violation", which has also been used to study very young
infants. The idea is that when infants are "surprised" by something they see
they look longer at it. Surprise is not easy to measure (surprise meters are
very expensive and require special kryptonite batteries) but eye-movements
and fixation times are readily tracked and recorded. It turns out that many
other animals also have eyes. So what sort of things "surprise" infants,
apes, kittens, woodpeckers, and honey-bees? The answers are surprising.

 

[David Longley]

The unconditioned reflex is a popular literary form.


Marc Hauser reports some interesting experiments based on the idea of
"expectancy-violation", which has also been used to study very young
infants. The idea is that when infants are "surprised" by something they see
they look longer at it. Surprise is not easy to measure (surprise meters are
very expensive and require special kryptonite batteries) but eye-movements
and fixation times are readily tracked and recorded. It turns out that many
other animals also have eyes. So what sort of things "surprise" infants,
apes, kittens, woodpeckers, and honey-bees? The answers are surprising.

Yes - This sort of talk of "expectany-violation" and "surprise" is
decades old and is part of "Classical Conditioning" research (at least
from the early 70s and before). It is the other side of habituation in
many studies (dis-habituation) and can be studied in very primitive
creatures. In more elaborated conditioning work it is studied in terms
of what is widely known as Kamin's "blocking effect", a feature of
compound conditioning and discrimination learning which is the
touchstone of theories of Classical Conditioning such as the
"Rescola-Wagner" model (1971) - which is basically an ANN model. Talk
of "surprise" and "attention" all too easily lose their scare quotes
once things get even as complex as this, yet we still find these
features of behavioural plasticity in quite simple animals. All of our
talk about these matters is basically *talk* about behaviour, albeit
often quite subtle, spatio-temporally elaborated behaviour in
progressively more complex animals.

Why not just talk of more complex behaviours and dispense with the
metaphysics - it will prove just as interesting, and will probably prove
more fruitful and coherent for all concerned.

 

[OmegaZero2003]

Yes - This sort of talk of "expectany-violation" and "surprise" is
decades old and is part of "Classical Conditioning" research (at least
from the early 70s and before). It is the other side of habituation in
many studies (dis-habituation) and can be studied in very primitive
creatures. In more elaborated conditioning work it is studied in terms
of what is widely known as Kamin's "blocking effect", a feature of
compound conditioning and discrimination learning which is the
touchstone of theories of Classical Conditioning such as the
"Rescola-Wagner" model (1971) - which is basically an ANN model. Talk
of "surprise" and "attention" all too easily lose their scare quotes
once things get even as complex as this, yet we still find these
features of behavioural plasticity in quite simple animals. All of our
talk about these matters is basically *talk* about behaviour, albeit
often quite subtle, spatio-temporally elaborated behaviour in
progressively more complex animals.

Why not just talk of more complex behaviours and dispense with the
metaphysics - it will prove just as interesting, and will probably prove
more fruitful and coherent for all concerned.

Actually it will not for the same reason that talking of LCMO mechanisms
does not afford any information on genetic expression.

You do not have the breadth or depth in the sciences to realize this.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

No, more like halfway between gorillas and chimps. Like I said before.


Relatively speaking, gorilla females are much more faithful and monogamous,
according to my reading. -------------
Nope.


Its conjectured that thats the reason why they
their males don't need such huge numbers of sperm; they aren't competing in
that way. They compete by being agressive.

---------------
Or that sperm competition isn't important for their species.
Genes can just as easily succeed by supporting the survival of
collective offspring of its group, than its own, and the
proponents of "the selfish gene" analysis forget that constantly.

Saying something like "My, thats an angry sky" is "The Pathetic Fallacy".

-----------------------------
NOW you're missing the point of both poetry AND science.

The fact that DNA doesn't 'have any idea' what its doing doesn't mean its
not doing something. Machines do things. DNA is a hugely complex machine.

---------------------------------
Repeat that modifier "complex" all day.

Its obvious to me that we are, in fact, acting out desires that are encoded
in our DNA that helped it to replicate over the eons.

---------------------------
Or that are attendant upon our resultant bodily shape and its
requirements. Our "desires" are not specifically encoded, instead
they arise attendantly.

We are, for example,
attracted to people who share much of our DNA.

------------------
Sort of how fat dark haired men like blondes, eh?
Or did you mean "animals" who share much of our DNA.

Why would this be, except
that it increased the likelyhood that our own DNA would be replicated?

--------------------
By being mixed with that of skinny blondes?
Get real. It's a bit more complex, isn't it!?!!

Why
do we help those related to us in relation to the percentage of DNA we
potentially share with them? There is lots of evidence that we are acting
out strategies for DNA replication.

-----------------------
Moronic. We select mates for all sorts of good/stupid reasons.
We seem to pick people we are attracted to, or more likely,
who are attracted to us.
It's easier than rape and the attendant problems.
We'll **** almost anything that lets us.
They let us for all sorts of weird reasons, many of them
quite dysfunctional. We settle for each other, mostly.
That's a VERY complex genetic strategy with more ins and outs
than the act!

While sympathetic with this viewpoint, and hoping it catches on, its clear
that ancestral women had two main reproductive strategies. One was to sell
reproduction for support. This is true in western society today, as it is in
more 'primitive' societies. The other was to cheat on the supporter. This is
also still true today.

------------------------------
It didn't used to work. Travel far from home on a regular schedule
for work is recent, as is travel mostly. Jealousy is not actually
a very good tribal position, instead you want to be extending as
many favors to other males from of your female as piossible, to
enlist political support and fellow-feeling, and to please her
as well in a way you can't manage yourself. You get to keep her
if you can keep other males coming to her for sex. She gets the
dicking she wants, and the support for her children, and you get
the sexual variety when they provide theirs in turn and lots of
help to build stuff and gather and process and kill big food.
The groupsex tribe is a much more sensible way of living for
humans or any apes, and it should be re-adopted, as soon as we
kill off the religionists who were used by the gangs of vicious
sociopathic bandit-lords to shame and enslave us who became the
nobility of Europe.

The fact that women have no overt 'tell' as to when they are ovulating is
pretty good evidence that they had better, more successful offspring, if
they played it both ways. Most animals (chimps, for example, sharing 95% of
our DNA) have extravagant displays during estrus.

-------------------------------
Sure, we had more complex reasons for this, but it all came from an
effort to increase sexual access and variety.

Also, the 'gang bang' doesn't allow for the choice of the woman, which its
clear has lots to do with how we evolved. Thats what sexual selection, in
the evolutionary sense, is all about. See below.

---------------------------------
The sperm wars are sufficient to do that.

Using google to search on the internet, all I find is you saying that,
without evidence, in other forums. I can't find any actual evidence. Where
did you read it? How was it 'disproved'? Who did the study? Where was it
done? If I'm quoting erroneous information, I'd like to know.

--------------------------------
I carefully kept track of the reports, when DNA analysis of female
animals was being done, of how each near-human ape-kind had the myths
of its monogamy destroyed by that analysis. First fell chimps, which
of course we knew by then from Goodall et al., and then gorillas and
finally and most surprisingly, orangs, and there were articles about
it in several prominent science magazines, two of mine were lost in a
water-damage incident in long-term storage, but I did indeed assuredly
possess precisely this info.

A western culture bigot? Hardly.

Its clear that the female has to be far more choosy than the male.
Successful males can father hundreds or thousands of children. Successful
females mother perhaps 20 at most, and most far less than that.

-----------------
They don't know what they're getting, recessives, infertile, or
their own genetic mishappenstance. Trusting female choice is silly.
The thing they are MUCH more concerned about is support or demeanor,
not genes.

More is
invested in sex for the female. This is also clear from the protected status
of young women in most cultures.

------------------------
Thieving psycho-sociopaths ejected for cruelty and crime from the
tribes, wish to keep the best females to breed only their inheritors,
because they have no tribal allegiance to offer them a heritage and
legacy, but tribes see their same faces reborn life after life, and
they feel they have no need to guarantee their specific legacy beside
loyalty to the group and its coherence and its pleasure. In tribes and
egalitarian cultures women need no such prisoner-prize status.

Its quality for the female, and quantity for the male.

-------------------------
It's quantity/variety for both in egalitarian cultures where the
greedy/jealous psychopaths have been restrained or destroyed.
Jealousy/Greed IS a psychopathology.

Because of this, females must look for the sexiest male they can find. Thus,
those 'sexy' traits become passed on to their children. This is all textbook
evolutionary theory.

-----------------------
Yeah, amateurishly written textbooks.
In an egalitarian culture, women can afford to invest in a number of
different kinds of men and their distinctly different but useful
capabilities. They can either have children with them, encourage
another to do so, raise their children with them, or support others
in doing so.

There are any number of examples in the animal kingdom.

---------------------------
In which kingdom all these issues are barely worth mentioning, since
their world is so much smaller than ours.

Now, the fact that females do this is well known. However, they don't do it
because they want to have better children. They do it because it feels
better to do it, that is, they are sexually attracted to 'sexy' traits, and
in fact are attracted to those traits that the group considers sexy. Its an
'unconsious' desire.

---------------------------
This is blatant moronic western bigotry. Only in chaotic western
capitalism where no one is rewarded for caring about anyone else
do we find this peculiarly twisted form of sexual attractiveness
trying to hawk one particular trendy form over another in a way
that reminds us of the changing Paris fashions, first buxxom, then
waif-like, then austere, then cruel looking, then exotic, then
minority, etc. It's not "unconscious", it's SUPERFICIAL!! And
it's not real culture anyway, it's media manipulated dog-shit.

While everyone wants a healthy mate, humans are so plastic due
to their immense adaptibility that they can be convinced that
someone is attractive because they resemble a recent flash-in
the pan movie actor/actress!! Health is attractive, but at age
20 WHO ISN'T!!???

If a female chooses a sexy trait that nobody else
considers sexy, her offspring, even if it has that trait, won't be as sexy
as one that has the trait that everybody thinks is sexy. Also, sexy traits
change from decade to decade. Thus is fashion born.

-----------------------
Fashion conformity is NOT a source of enduring genetic truth!!!

That, of course, is besides the point. There are things animals are that we
can never hope to understand. We are different, and thats ok. It doesn't
make us any better in a moral sense.

---------------------------
Since we invented morality, yes, it does!

Intelligence is a survival/procreation strategy, just like everything the
DNA replication machine does.

-------------------------------
Intelligence is a bull by the tail that genetics was sucked into
inviting, but it could not conceive of the result, and which may even
sound the death knell for evolution itself in under 100 years!!

-Steve

 

[R. Steve Walz]

I consider "consciousness of something" as experiences all creatures
sense, not to be confused with consciousness which describes moral, and
ethical "standards."

----------------
Insipid. You're merely stating thereby that you prefer to think that
non-human, non-intelligent animals still have, for no reason at all,
the samesort of mind we do.

Even a deaf/blind person has experiences, such as
touch, smell, taste sensations, in other words an experience of the
world around them.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

What kind of bullshit is that, you obviously haven't studied, read and
observed much to say such a thing.

-------------------
Not true.

You sound very much like a child
who thinks he knows it all. That's tiresome.

 

[R. Steve Walz]

I can consciously think about a future event/plan. So your description is
at best incomplete.

--------------------------
No. I remember planning that too only a second ago.
The Present is just the Most Recent Past.

Consciouness_of is a function that is awareness_of. There is the notion of
pure consciousness without an object (and thence subject); See Franklin
Merrill-Wolff's work.

-----------------------------
There are no "objects", only ideas of "objects".

TAM TVAT ASI

-Steve

 

[Roedy Green]

You're merely stating thereby that you prefer to think that
non-human, non-intelligent animals still have, for no reason at all,
the samesort of mind we do.

And you keep stating the reverse, similarly for no reason at all. I
think we are going around in circles.

 

[Roedy Green]

She gets the
dicking she wants, and the support for her children,

I think it comes down to this. If the paternity is not clear, then
all males in the tribe will tend to protect all children in the tribe.

Since humans are so much better protecting as groups than
individually, this trait wins out over groups who look only after
their "own" children.