Dear Georgina,

I read your essay with great interest, particularly your warnings about biases and your identification of goals as based on imagined futures.

I agree with much of your analysis. I also noticed that you cited Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow", which points out the illusions in our conscious thinking.

In my own essay, "No Ghost in the Machine", I also cited Kahneman, and identified a series of illusions that have obscured our understanding of intelligence and consciousness.

I further propose that consciousness may reflect a specific evolved brain structure based on an adaptive neural network, which creates a simplified dynamical model that recognizes self and other agents in a causal world. I also point out the role of dreams as an alternative consciousness without external sensory input. Finally, analogous electronic networks may be developed to create true artificial intelligence.

Alan Kadin

7 days later

Hi Georgina,

Good essay, nicely distinguishing some key differences defining intelligent life (in agreement with mine) if not 'diving off' the solid ground to any less solid hypothesis. I also agree that instinctive behaviour needs less 'intelligence', indeed I take that further to suggest WE are to often guilty of that primeval response mode when higher rationalization would be better. Would you agree?

You seem to be suggesting what I say, which I'll word simply; The ability to draw on input (experience/memory) to 'imagine' scenario's lets us 'run' them through to our motor cortex and find responses, (chemical release etc) which are either good or bad. We then have 'feedback' to inform other scenario's, then can make decisions (form 'aims') at a high 'layer' which lower level decisions serve. Was I 'reading in' too much? or wrongly?, or do you agree?

I didn't feel you 'committed' to CA or not, but tended to point to it? I see it as helpful but flawed and actually identify a fundamental 'momentum' not utilized in QM which allows the inherent complex states necessary. It may be 'too QM' for most but it simplifies QM to a classical mechanism it so do let me know how you get on.

Well done for your thoughts. Do correct my interpretations above! Well founded and sound as a pound as usual. (what would we say if we had Euro's?!)

Best of luck in the contest.

Peter

    Peter,

    I was distinguishing life able to set goals and work toward the chosen/desired outcome rather than just responding or achieving functional outcomes without imagination of the outcome.

    Outside of the discussion in my essay but addressing your point: Some people are highly reactive, acting on impulse and may be described as having poor impulse control. The other side of that is some people can be "paralysed" by indecision, which may extend to small inconsequential matters. It comes down to neurotransmitter levels, which can be due to the environment during brain development or medications; and innate neural architecture or results of accident or disease. Traumatic brain injury can drastically alter a person's responses- for example, they may lose impulse control due to structural damage or become indecisive along with psychomotor retardation due to depression. I think your point was a generalization reflecting that not all decisions are good ones. Yet it might also be said there are times when any decision is better than none, when inaction is not good. In a raging fire window or door beats staying put. You can think about whether it was the right choice if you are still alive afterwards, which you won't be if you don't move.

    I haven't gone into the details of how conscious decisions are made. From what I have read/ been taught it seems that many subconscious "calculations' (action potential threshold competition) happen prior to the conscious mind coming to a decision. It is as if the consciousness is CEO or director with final say rather than one of the executives or business managers. I have mentioned that tasks are necessary for the achievement goals. This is (except in rare purely mental tasks) interaction with the external material world. Goals alone being impotent. The limbic system provides desire and motivation, enabling planning leading to subsequent task performance, requiring coordination of motor functions by different parts of the brain.

    Some cellular automata are like growth in foundational material reality, in that they demonstrate local sequential change; which can lead to an emergent pattern. The example of the sea shell pattern was given. However, they are limited in modelling nature, as growth is not the only kind of development. There is also breaking down of existing structure and folding, as seen in embryology. Metamorphosis and decomposition are other examples of the breaking down of structure, freeing raw materials for subsequent reuse in the formation of new structures. That recycling /reuse/reorganization was what I meant by the analogy of many pairs of needles doing a makeover of the surface rather than growing the length of the scarf.

    Dear Georgina,

    Thanks for reading my contribution to the contest.

    I have read your essay with great interest.

    Your "emerging" comes from complexity, my thinking is also complexity is an emerging phenomenon, our whole experience of reality is an emerging phenomenon.

    Causality is (in my latest perception) the effect that EVERYTHING we are consciousness experiencing ihas happened in the PAST (because we are "living" in a time and space-restricted reality). We only are aware of events that were "caused" by earlier events in our memories. This PAST has its origin in what I call Total Simultaneity. There the several moments (ENM's) forming our life-lines are timeless so eternal. The NOW moment we seem to experience is immediately becoming past and no longer "available" in our emergent memory experience. However it is still an eternal ENM in TS. You could then imagine that the NOW moment we seem to experience "contains" ALL the Information of a specific life-line in TS, so it seems a FLOW experience. When going further it could mean that the life we are living is only an emergent NOW moment with all its specific life-line info in our emergent memory. In this way causality and flow of time could be understood. I amaware that this is not yet a complete perception but in this contest all the other opinions are contributing to the basic idea.

    I rated your essay and hope that you will rate mine also.

    best regards and good luck in the next Eternal Now Moment

    Wilhelmus

    Hi Georgina

    It is interesting that you suggest that your measures of intelligence could be applied to "colonies and mankind collectively", because my measure of intelligence is also meant to do the same thing. I guess the difference is that my measure is designed from the social system or the Constitutional nation state, whereas yours is coming from a great deal of common sense regarding what ought to be considered as intelligent.

    I totally agree with you that mimicry, even sophisticated ones, should not be considered as intelligent. As I have written even in my essay, Turing test is definitely flawed in that respect. It is not objective because it requires reference to humans.

    Regards, Willy

    6 days later

    Georgina,

    Yes, it's that 'imagination of the outcome' I agree is critical, and I discuss the results of the feedback loops from running those 'scenarios' in mine.

    " In a raging fire window or door beats staying put. You can think about whether it was the right choice if you are still alive afterwards, which you won't be if you don't move. ". . I also agree entirely, indeed I use a tiger in the same scenario! what I'm suggesting is distinguishing between two thought modes, and using 'rationalisation mode' is essential for advancement of understanding.

    I'm sorry mine used QM again this year, but simplified so 4 of 5 barmaids understood it so I'm certain you will - if using thought mode 2 - 'goal directed'! (there's also a nice video, and a 100 sec glimpse version here; Classic QM.).

    Yours looks too low to get many reads so I'll help it now. I hope it doesn't get as hit by the trolls as mine!

    Very best

    Peter

    By the way, there is a temporal component to embryological development that can be seen as connected to the foundational arrow of time. For example the timing of the correct specific concentration gradients at certain receptor sites can have profound outcomes.

    6 days later

    Georgina Woodward,

    I will post on both your topic and my own in the essay contest.

    Enjoyed your essay as usual. And agree with most of your observations. I would like to make a couple of comments. The first relates to giving the lower ranked life forms a little more credit. My essay originally included my experience with slime mold but due to size restrictions - something had to go; and anyway, who would believe such simple creatures could have goals and anticipate the future? And a second has to do with time. I know that you have expressed a long interest in the nature of time. So much of physics is more beautiful when viewed with a working understanding of time. My essay in the first FQXI contest on the nature of time describes how time and the laws of physics come from one underlying principle.

    Sherman

      Hi Sherman, I have described why only the higher organisms are able to have prior goals; rather than merely functional outcomes that only have the appearance of being consciously goal directed. I'd like to have included something about the social insects and how the sum of individual behaviours produces "wisdom of the crowd" leading to the appearance of group decision making achieving a planned goal

      Hi Georgina,

      Super to be in another contest with you (I missed the last one). I think you have been in all contests and used your biological and teaching background to great effect. And once again you have created a very good essay. Let me comment about your conclusions:

      1. "The limbic system common to birds and mammals provides innate emotions that appear to be drivers of many goals." Yes, a very good point "emotions" are not mentioned in other essays.

      2. "A goal is in the future imagined by the thinker. Yet the goal exists wholly Now in the only materially existent reality." Yes, from a third person scientific point of view. No, from a first person point of view. If asked how they feel, a person will generally give you an emotion (pain), not a materially existent reality (I feel like an arrow in my foot).

      3. "Goals are impotent, tasks are interactions with material reality that can lead to goal achievement." Maybe, I find this to be a bit of word salad.

      Please forgive my being nitpicky. This is a really good look at material reality, and establishing a link to emotions. In my own essay I tried to establish a link to emotion....didn't do as good a job as you did.

      Do check out my essay.....it is relativity easy on the neurons:)

      Thanks for being in the contest and for an excellent essay.

      Don Limuti

        Hi Don, thank you so much for your thoughtful and helpful comments.

        Re. your 2., I am purposefully differentiating conscious thought about the goal, which is about information processing in the brain producing an imagined outcome at a future time, from material existence and where/when that physical biochemical/neurological process is happening. I am using the uni-temporal model of material existence which is that all existing material things exist at the same and only time there being no time dimension in foundational reality.There is a paper about uni-temporalism here if interested. Uni-Temporalism, the Relation of Human Beings to Time and the 'future' of Time in Physics

        Re. your 3., Having a mental idea about what can be caused to happen, or is a desirable outcome, is different from doing what is necessary to make the imagined outcome happen. So here I am differentiating goal from task. There are authors that do not differentiate them, considering task performance giving a functional outcome to be the same as being goal directed or to imply a prior goal. To reinforce the difference; Consider the difficulty of translating a goal into task performance when there is nerve damage causing paralysis, or where there is insufficient neurotransmitter production.

        I will read your essay, kind regards Georgina

        Some thoughts: Outcomes are not always the product of prior goals. Most things in nature happen without being goal directed, which is not denying the functionality of the outcome but recognizing that functionality does not require prior aim or purposvity. A goal is not something to be retrospectively assumed but is generated prior to task/s (or happenings) and outcome.

        A goal is not just neural activity happening now but also pertains to something or relationship that is imaginary; i.e. that does not yet exist. It is the task planning and execution in between that raises the probability that the imagined outcome is achieved. Shooting the ball at the net, after taking clear aim, significantly raises the probability that the ball will go through the net as imagined. Choosing to alter the probability of an outcome in the external reality is where will comes in to play. Yet the choices made can also be affected by things like neurotransmitter levels/ balance which can be reduced to chemistry and physics, or seen as the product of lifestyle and environment and social relationships. The freewill problem may come from trying to isolate goal production (will) from micro and macro environment. Yes, we can have will, yet it can never be entirely free.

          The imagined component of a goal (rather than process of its production), could be used as an argument against the time reversibility allowed by classical mechanics and Einstein's relativity. Reversal of tasks (a series of actions) seems odd, with a 'uni-directional' subjective experience of passage of time. Even more so, going in reverse from outcome through tasks to (neural processing product) the goal, such as "this X is what I am going to do," to pre-goal is more than odd. In reverse direction, the imagined future of the goal pertains to the past and has no relevance to what will be done progressing in time reverse 'direction'. A counter argument is that there wouldn't be coherent thought but nonsensical reverse direction un-thinking in time reversal, so no imagined future, as the neural processes too are reversed. Time reversibility is not an issue in uni-temporalism.

          About free-will: employing a uni-temporal viewpoint, only Now exists materially so the material future is open rather than already fixed. The goal imagined is not itself a part of the existing external material reality. Goal setting may be the way off of the path of inevitability, allowing conscious manipulation of the probabilities of outcomes; Rather than merely passive automatic biological response and inanimate mechanics of physics.

          Georgina,

          Thanks for your comment on mine. I responded, posted here for your convenience;

          Thanks Georgina.

          Yes, the 2 parts (really 3) are directly as well as indirectly connected which 'reverse engineered' the ontology, but I had to trim a few of the words that that clarified how. (And a few too many others!)

          Essentially; The fine structure complexity required to produce 'Qualia' (Ullas excellent word) and 'intent' from the architecture and 'mechanisms' in our cortices simply wasn't adequate. However decoding all the 'noise' (in a Shannon information channel, - see my It from Bit IQbit essay) by revealing the second Cos2 momentum distribution on the surface of an electron easily allows it.

          We then 'loop' back' (as the neural architecture does) to thinking modes, which shows why, because physicists have no 'memory' (patterns) embedded in that complex RAM, that all such new concepts are rejected a priori when thinking in Mode1 (primeval evolved intuitive response mode). So once you see the link you should see a massive elephant sized Catch 22! (some smaller scale ones have been identified!)

          I actually announced a medium sized one; Anyone 'skipping over' the essay (mode 1) would miss most of it's true value. You'll see I guesstimated ~20% would 'get' the BIG and important (ClassicQM) discovery (many aren't interested in QM) that's just been surpassed, which is great progress!

          I hope that helps. I hope that didn't feel too much like decoding Shakespeare in English Lit!- but I AM saying we need to self evolve to more Mode2 analytical thinking to understand nature better after all!!

          Very best

          Peter

          Very nicely laid out..

          I like this essay a lot Georgina, and I'm sorry I could not get here to read and comment sooner. A lot on my plate. I concur with Don's comment above that it's nice to read an essay by an author unafraid to talk about emotions as a defining concept relating to goals. You may be the only one who weaved that and several other related concepts in to treat a topic that arguably demanded it. I think you nailed it, though (disagreeing with Don's word salad comment), when talking about tasks vs goals. Tommaso Bolognesi uses the word mechanism, in place of task, but you are on the same page. He also talks about CAs in a similar connection.

          Thanks for a most pleasant and informative read I'll want to return to.

          All the Best,

          Jonathan

            By the way,

            I got to hear Temple Grandin talk a few years back, and she was a wonderful and engaging speaker.

            All the Best,

            Jonathan

            Thank you very much Jonathan. I really appreciate you having read the essay and your positive comments. I ma glad you like it.

            3 months later

            I really would like more feedback to know where i have gone wrong with this essay. I tried to fully address the stated requirements. Taking out the comments that were not anything to do with the essay, there are only 10 community members and one FQXi member who commented (prior to name change). I did read and comment on other's essays. was involved with the process.

            i think that perhaps in trying to answer all of the questions each one was not considered in enough depth. Maybe I should have picked just one. I don't know if referring to the uni-temporal concept of time passage counted against it as it isn't "recognized". I wonder if talking about the cellular automata as i did was a bit too simplistic or an analogy too far for readers. These are what spring to mind but maybe its something/other things else I haven't considered. Can anyone help with this?

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