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Re: resolving trouble

Hi Judith and John M.

May I intervene in this discussion, which seems to have ended with John
Mike's unnecessary retirement?

I would like to express a sentiment that I have felt for a long time
regarding these discussions (multiple lists, not just this one).
They are a mixed blessing to me. On the one hand it is great to discuss
ideas with others thinking about the same subjects.
But on the other hand, there is always this barrier we all erect around our
ideas and ways of expressing them.
I have been as much a victim of this as a perpetrator of it, so it is a
human weakness (assuming I am counted among the human and am typical in
this regard).
We have to ask first and foremost why we converse at all, I mean what is
the goal? The desired outcome?
Here's some possibilities:
1. our individual learning, regardless of what others get out of it
2. increase collective understanding
3. seek consensus, i.e., agreement whether it is correct or not
4. get an right answer to a question from others
5. vent frustrations and repressed desires to "be heard"
6. to enlighten others
7. to represent some legacy (person or theory)
8. just to "win" at something with words
9. to have fun
10. to integrate ideas and build on them
11. to discover our own thoughts through the exercise of expressing them
12. to get peer review of our own thoughts

We all can probably add more reasons, but each of these requires a group,
so we're here. And each requires that we express our ideas at some point
(except if one's purpose is just to listen). The problem with expressing
ideas to a group was identified by the famous Murphy (was he a real
person?) who said: "It is impossible to make anything fool proof, because
fools are so ingenious."

No matter what we say or how we say it, someone will be able to find an
objection. From that point on we talk about the objection rather than the
original idea. If that goes on long enough someone might feel offended.
Then we talk about the offense or perception of it. Then, ultimately, we
get to messages like this asking what we're really trying to accomplish.

I think the goal should be to stick to original ideas.

To do that, we have to all be disciplined enough to not defend our
particular vocabulary, or our particular source of information. An idea,
first expressed, requires reflection. One has to look at it from many
angles before reacting. There are 1000's of ways to misinterpret it and
only one or a few ways to understand it as it was meant. Most of us don't
express ideas with 1000 meanings intentionally.

So it is easy to say "no" to say "I disagree" or say "that's not my
view"  - so what? Is that the point? Or is the point to find a way to
understand?

Here's a test in understanding something that at first seems wrong: In my
increasing post-middle age I have come to the idea that there are no wrong
statements (with one exception). We use words as symbols for things we have
experienced and are experiencing, and there are no wrong experiences. So
how can the symbol for something true be called false? Its like saying if
the word "ouch" or the word "damn" is the right one when someone gets hurt.
The main point is the experience, and we can agree on the words only after
we've agreed on the experiences we're describing.

Sounds crazy, right? But think of it this way. Right and wrong are defined
entirely by context. We hear the statement but not the context. So we can
declare it wrong. But there is another choice. Instead of saying "no" we
can do the hard work, and ask more about the context - try to find the way
in which we can say "yes."

This is a different kind of learning than most are used to. Instead of
mechanically labeling syntactic statements as "right" and "wrong", one is
using them to evaluate contexts in which they have meaning. Doing this will
always result in the feeling of doing something meaningful, because it is
literally working with the meanings, not the structures. Some contexts will
turn out to be very limited and not much use for anything else. But still
one can agree with the statement and then explore (together) how far it
gets us. This is science at its absolute best, I think. Because the real
insights come from exploring a paradigm and finding which statements are
correct or incorrect in which paradigm.

My suggestion: Think first how we can agree. Think last, or not at all, how
we can disagree. No one's honor will be soiled by this.

John K.

PS I hope John M. does not leave the list. His insights are extremely
valuable and an integral part of this discussion.



At 03:44 PM 4/20/04 -0400, John M wrote: 
You wrote:
I'm not sure what your problem is with all this, John.
Are you disagreeing with my father's work or with what
I've said about his work? Or something else?
Let's clear it up.

Judith
----------------------------------------------------
This is the kind of discussion I will not go into.
So - with all respect - I will hold my opinions in the future
from your list.
I would like to stay in good terms with friends, off list.

John Mikes Ph.D., D.Sc.
<***>
"http://pages.prodigy.net/jamikes/";


----- Original Message -----
From: "Judith Rosen" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 11:37 PM
Subject: Re: causing trouble, active/passive


> > John M wrote
> > First the photograph, taken by Voyager 13 months after launch and
> evaluated
> > by a computer BEFORE ant human saw it. I hope you don't deny the
> > machine-conciousness working in AI? (I just do not equate it
> > with a human mind).
>
> John, my view is that computers are extensions of the human mind. They
> evaluate based on our desires and intentions, using our measures and
> perspectives. Artificial Intelligence is merely a human created machine
> doing the bidding of human intelligence, using aspects of human
intelligence
> as the tools for such work as it is programmed by us to do. Therefore a
> computer analysis of a picture is, in my view, exactly the same as human
> analysis, by extension. This is a completely different situation from what
> happens in organisms regarding the "internal predictive model" and its
> causal influence on the behavior of the organism.
>
>
> > John M. wrote: Then the hotheaded 'human' superiority. Yes it is that.
WE
> are the big ones
> > because we made gadgets. So does a beaver and a bird. "human"
> > consciousness? because we do not understand the other animals?  When
> > I first became upset about "consciousness" (human that is) I started to
> > go 'back' in species and kinds to see where is a natural barrier? I
didn't
> > find one. Tools, methods, targets changed according to the kind of
> creature
> > (feature?) and its circumstnaces, but no barrier in MY wording of the so
> > called 'consciousness', the sensitivity, acknowledgement and response to
> > information arriving from the world. (I/O)
>
> Like you, I have also always had a problem with the human assumption (more
> like a conceit, really) that we are the only species on the planet
(indeed,
> in the entire universe) gifted with consciousness. I've expressed my views
> regarding this subject here on the list several times. What I said before
> was that I have finally arrived at a definition of "intelligence" as "the
> ability to think". Many other creatures besides human beings clearly have
> intelligence. "Consciousness" I define as "the ability to think about
> thinking". It's harder to measure or evaluate such an ability, therefore
we
> can't be "sure" (in the reductionistic scientific sense of the word) of
its
> existence in other species. Furthermore, our notion of consciousness is
> based on our perceptions of it via the way WE think about thinking. Whales
> may be conscious creatures, but their consciousness may be just enough
> different from ours to not "look" like consciousness to us. Who knows? I
> consider it a distinct possibility that many other species on Earth are
> conscious beings. However, based on my definitions, I believe that
> consciousness requires a brain of sufficient complexity to generate both
the
> ability to think and the further ability to think about thinking.
> Consciousness is a dimension beyond mere intelligence, in my way of
> organizing these concepts.
>
> Therefore, my analysis of statements in the above paragraph of yours: tool
> making (in beavers or birds) reflects intelligence. However, creating a
tool
> that can think requires the ability (in the creator) to think about
> thinking. Computers have certain aspects of human intelligence built into
> them, which gives them a limited "artificial intelligence", but not any
> artificial consciousness (so far). I have seen other people using the
terms
> "consciousness" and "intelligence" very differently than I use them, so
> perhaps your response to what I wrote is based on a different
understanding
> of what you thought I was saying? If so, I hope that these definitions
> clarify my position?
>
> John M. wrote:
> > A similar regressive trial I did on 'life' and went back to viruses,
then
> to
> > those clay-organic and clay structures, back to molecules, and so on,
> > if the questions were asked right.
>
> Well, sure: If one chooses to define one's terms imaginatively, then black
> can indeed be white, up and be down, hello can be goodbye... However, this
> is not what my father did in delineating his theories on complexity. He
saw
> clear differences between the behaviors of living systems and the
behaviors
> of bubbles in clay pots or other physics-explainable, non-living systems.
He
> analyized those differences, he defined his terms, he discussed his
reasons
> why he did all these things and the implications of doing them... I'm not
> sure what your problem is with all this, John. Are you disagreeing with my
> father's work or with what I've said about his work? Or something else?
> Let's clear it up.
>
> Judith
>
>
> > You wrote the tricky expression: ">...in a certain sense...< Not as
> > ubiquitously and always generally findable, but picking an exemplatory
> case
> > where a goal-oriented 'sense' justifies MY idea. (Pointed sentence).
> > Such are the carefully planned measurements, how the Big Bang was
> > 'experimentally' proven. (Background radiation, linear retrogradicity
> etc.)
> > In a "certain sense" there is (human) life, and that is enough for
> biology.
> > Just consider the 'life' of superhuman artifacts, somebody on another
list
> > just mentioned the internet, we don't have to go to the sci-fi "Hal"
> > supercomputer...or Terra (AL).
> >
> > We can reduce our interest to our life and the heck with a world w/o it.
> > Even narrower than what Dan lately quoted about the biosphere:
> > plants and their parasites. Only ONE, us. Blinders down and we live.
> >
> > Sorry for the harsh ideas (the words are aony pointers)
> >
> > John M
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Judith Rosen" <***>
> > To: <***>
> > Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 5:34 PM
> > Subject: Re: causing trouble, active/passive
> >
> >
> > > John M. wrote:
> > > > excellent idea, the non-human modeler. I have an example:
> > > > a photograph. It is a reduced model (e.g. no smell included)
> > > > of the visual boundaries-enclosed modeling. Momentarily I
> > > > am at a loss to mention another one - product of not some
> > > > *conscious activity* (like the camera, or say a bee-raindance
> > > > provided information of flowers - to say extremes). I was
> > > > looking for a model 'made' by a stone or a glalxy... Sorry.
> > > > Do you think conscious activity can only lead to models?
> > >
> > > Any organism other than a human being is a "non-human modeler" in a
> > certain
> > > sense. Complexity itself, is a model creator/generator. Any example
> > created
> > > by human beings, like your photograph, is only a model because of
human
> > > consciousness. As such, I think it muddies the water rather than
> > clarifying
> > > things. Models don't show up in the natural world until complexity
> reaches
> > > the dimension of living systems (biology). this is why these concepts
> are
> > so
> > > alien to physicists. Models, functions, anticipation, life: These are
> all
> > > properties of complex systems of a certain dimension of complex
> > > organization.Contemporary physics deals with systems of lesser
> complexity
> > > than biology does, but the common feature is complexity.
> > >
> > > Judith