Re: The problem of intelligence.

Risujin <risujin@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Curt Welch wrote:
> > lesterDELzick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Lester Zick) wrote:
> >
> >>Well the problem here with this observation is that it assumes there
> >>is any other way to proceed. Are we interested in intelligent effects
> >>or are we interested in intelligence? If the latter we really have no
> >>alternative to the arm chair introspection method because we have
> >>nothing to study except the process itself and that is only evident in
> >>ourselves. If we proceed empirically by studying the process in others
> >>we have to proceed via tangibles to study an intangible. So if we know
> >>what we're interested in is intangible we have no choice but to study
> >>the intangible process itself and not tangible effects. Our study may
> >>not succeed but the success of studying tangible effects will not shed
> >>light on the mechanics of an intangible process.
> >
> > That's only a valid position if intangibles were not tangible. I know
> > for a fact that they are, which invalidates the foundation of that
> > argument. Only our lack of understanding about the nature of the
> > universe (and the mind) led to the common false belief that intangibles
> > and tangibles are different.
>
> First of all, what you happen to take as fact doesn't mean anything to
> us unless you present reasonable proof.
>
> Second, intangible = tangible ... what are you talking about?! That
> nothing can be intangible (I could agree with this one)? Reply with your
> *reasoning*!

Well, I've written the answer many times. Including just a few days ago.
But here it is again:

There's a fundimential concept in our langauge which is an error. It's the
idea that the physical world and the mental world are not the same, when in
fact they are. Because people thousands of years ago didn't understand or
see, any connection between the two worlds, we developed this huge base of
understanding built on the idea that the mind and the body, were two
different realms of existence and shared no common foundation.

So, after thousands of years of living with this belief, we have devloped a
huge language based on this most fundimential of errors. We have one large
set of words to describe what happens in the mind, and another large set of
words to describe what happens in the physical world.

Tangible and intangible are just two of the thosands of words such as mind
vs brain and body vs soul such as thought vs action, such as hardware vs
software, such as body vs soul.

The mind and the brain are one and the same. There are not two things
here, it's only one.

Software and hardware are one and the same. There are not two things there
it's only one.

tangibale is meant to be a label for all the stuff in the physical world,
and intangible is a label for all the stuff that exists in the mind.

The reason this confusion happens is because we have sensory systems in our
head that enable us to sense activity our our own brains. They are called
neurons. They fire when they sense the active of other nerves. But we
also have the normal sensory systems which sense light and sound and touch
and test and taste.

When we sense the fact that there is activity going on in our brain, why do
we not call that the 6th sense? Why do we not even call it a sense?

Yet when we sense sound, we call it a sense. And when we sense that that
sound is a "word" being spoken we sense that fact not with our "ears" but
with the same parts of teh brain that sense our thoughts. Yet, when it
senses a word being spoken, we all it a sense.

What is about the 5 senses that makes us belive they are all sensing
different aspects of the same domain (the one we call the physical world),
yet this 6th sense, which is just as much of a sense as the others, is
considered to be sensing some other "world" called the "mind"? What makes
us thing the mind is not part of the same "world" that creates all the
other senses?

It's because the brain doesn't see any correlation in the signals. When we
have thoughts, we don't see any correlations happening in our vision, or in
our ears, or in our taste. But when I see a plate of food, I can smell it,
and taste it, and touch it, and see it, and hear it. Most things that
exist in the physical world can at times produce correlated signals in
multiple senses like that. And it's those correction, the fact that the
sound and vision happen at the same time, which causes the brain to create
it's internal structures which represtnes the fact that those sounds and
visions represent the same "thing".

But when we have thoughts, when we sense private brain activity, we can't
see it at the same time. We can't see the nurons fire. We can't hear them
fire. We can't touch them and feel them vibrate. We can't smell them. We
can't taste them.

It's this fact that the 5 physical sensors have been isolated from sensing
the ativity of our brain, that makes us belive that the what we sense
happing in the head is not physical.

And since the brain can't find a connection, we natually believe there is
no connection. And that was all fine 2000 years ago before we understood
what was happening in our bodies. But we know a lot more now, and we know
for fact that all this stuff happening in the mind is just the brain busy
at work. It's just our abilty to sense the physical activiy of nurons busy
at work in the brain, pumping chemicals here and there.

However, even though we understand this now, we still never get to
experience it. How many of us have gotten to feel our brain at work with
our fingers? Or seen or own neurons fire? Or stuck a probe in our brain
and cause it to activate a few neurons so we can feel the sensation it
creates for us in our mind when we do it? I never have. The closest most
people come is playing with brain wave monitors.

So, the stuff happening in the mind is just as physical as everything else
that happens in this universe. We sense the activity our our mind with
sensors that work just same as all our other sensors, and we "understand"
what sense the same way.

So, the only correct meaning of "intangible" is, "physical activity which
we can sense happening in our brains". And tangable means, "physical
activity we sense with the other 5 senses". But we know now that we can
sense brain activity with all our other senses with the simple help of a
few instruments to map brain activity to visual, or sound, or touch, data.
So that makes brain activity both intangible and tangible at the same time.

And, it's farily easy to see that most of what we call a "physical sense"
is just our ability to sense brain activity which directly linked to the
physical sense. Because everything we "understand" about the data, is not
the sense data itself, but instead, higher levels of brain activity which
we are sensing.

I don't just see light when I look at my computer. I see a computer, and
words, and windows. The eyes only send us light data. All the stuff we
sense in the data, is more of those same "mential activity" sensors at work
which when the sense activty not correlated to the other senses, we call it
"thoughts".

So, the entire foundation of the idea of tangible vs intangible is an error
in understanding created by the simple fact that our brain is hidden inside
a head where we can't normally see it, feel it, smell it, or taste it.

But in the end, it's just as much a part of the physical world as
everything we can sense with the other 5 senses. And everything we can
sense in our thoughts are physical.

Software is not intangible. It's very tangible and physical in all its
forms. It's hardware in all it's forms. When we write software, we are in
fact building physical machines. But, once again, because we can't see the
electrons moving, or the pits on the CD, or physical orientation of the
magnetic particles on the disks, it still feels right to talk about it as
being non-physical and put it into the part of the language from the mind.

The entire confusion over the existence of qualia is created by this same
language error. Qualia are real, but they are nothing more than the
physical signals in the brain that represents aspects of the physical
world. They only seem to create an odd type of paradox when you allow
yourself to get sucked into the lie and believe that the mental domain is
actually different and not connected to the physical domain.

The entire confusion of consciousness is created by this same langauge
error. Consciousness is trivial to understand once you remove this lie
from your langauge and your understanding. Consciousness is only hard to
explain if you belive that we have the power to sense the phyiscal world,
and the mental world at the same time, yet those two words are not
connected. If you belive the words are not the same, how do you explain
where "we" exist? Do "we" exist in the physical world or the mental world?
If we don't exist in the mental world, how is it possible that we know what
is going on there? Ok, so lets give ourselves a name for the part of us
that exists in the physical world, and we will call that the body. And the
part of us that exists in the mental world, we will call that our soul.

"But hey, when a person is alive and healty, we can talk to them, and they
can tell us about the stuff happening in their head, so their body must be
connected to their soul. But when the person dies, we can't talk to them
anymore. Hey, maybe the body and soul just split up and the soul went
somehwere else? yeah, that makes sense." This is the rubbish that happens
from the fundimential error of beliving that the activity we sense
happening in our brain is not physical, just because we can't sense it with
our eyes and ears.

Some people in this world not only make the mistake of believing the mind
is not the brain, but they get so addicted to the world of the mind, and
all the stuff they can do there, that they believe the mind is the center
of reality, and they then attempt to explain what the physical world is in
terms of the mind. But, as someone here just said (maybe you), we can't
see the brain from inside the mind. The brain just didn't give us the
tools to see all of it, from inside the mind. That's because the mind only
has one type of sensor. It's got neurons, which only have the power to
sense electical activity in other nevers. And with those sensors alone, we
can't tell much of anything about what's really happening in the brain. We
can't sense which chemicals are flowing around, we can't sense the location
of different neurons, we can't even clearly sense which neurons are doing
what. In order to see the brain with the mind, we have to use our other
senses - which means, the only way to "see" the brain, is from what we call
the physical world.

Once you learn to fix all this mess our culture has trained us to believe
in, all the hard stuff about the philosophy of AI just becomes trivial.

> -- Risujin

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

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