From Athena to AI: the past and future of intention in nature by Rick Searle

Dear Rick,

A great story about determinism, which I highly estimate.

I share your aspiration to seek the truth

«Something like structure and organized behavior flows almost inevitably from physics itself.»

«What sets complex adaptive systems apart from other types of systems is their ability to respond to not just external cues from its environment, but to signals emanating from the system itself.»

In my opinion, such elementary an adaptive system is classical parametric resonance in the form of a soliton wave.

Perhaps my essay will complement your understanding of the determinism and causes of physical processes.

Your essay allowed to consider us like-minded people.

Kind regards,

Vladimir

Rick,

Interesting way to tie the ancient with the modern. You do a credible job of showing the agenda-driven AI endeavors as our modern gods.

Jim Hoover

Rick,

Great essay in all respects, and better for not inviting Aristotle or Plato to tread old ground. Our essays use orthogonal views and interactions with Mount Olympus but (I think!) agree on every single point.

It did seem old Pythagorus was in need of another dimension (=3) and dynamic interactions. I apply his theorem in such a way and shockingly a classical derivation of QM emerged from his cosines. I jest not! Do read and comment You may recall from previous finalist essays the same discrete field mechanism (DFM) of re-emissions at local 'c' allows unification with relativity in QM's 'absolute' time.

I also entirely agree "...if society continues to fail to educate citizens in how artificially intelligent systems work, or fails to empower them with the ability to influence their programming,..." then our short evolution may be ended. I go on to identify why and how our method of thinking must evolve to allow advancement. I hope you'll read and comment. I think no genuine new science can emerge while cognitive dissonance keeps us locked in the dungeons of ancient thinking. Come to think of it, wasn't Pythagoras killed by a mindless Roman soldier for dissent?

Well done, and thanks for the powerfully fresh historic multiparable.

Peter

Dear Rick,

I think it was the 2014 contest when I first read an essay of yours. I like your essay this year, as I did the previous two which I read. I must also say that I read your reflections at the IEET Web site. I rarely comment because of time constraints, but I do read what you have to say. I agree with much of it, and always find it worthwhile. I hope that in the future I will be able to respond more often.

Thanks for your comments on my essay. I will reply to them on the Web page for that essay.

A number of points in your essay are worthy of comment. I am especially interested in your answer to the question which you ask in your concluding section. "Are we actually free?" I think you are saying that at this moment in history to some extent we are. You seem to be cautiously optimistic that such freedom as we possess, if used wisely, can last for a long time (at least by normal human standards of duration) and can become effective over a wider range of human activities. I wonder whether the growth and expansion of freedom is more likely, or less likely, than the diminishment of freedom and its eventual extinguishment. But then, in the last sentence of the essay, you suggest that in the long run the forces of nature are adverse to the enterprise of enlightenment and freedom. If that is so, then perhaps the appropriate human outlook on the future is to take a view which is long but not too long. The view ought to be long enough to lift us from the problems of daily living but not so long as to bring into the picture the inevitable or almost inevitable unhappy ending.

This may or may not be what you had in mind, but it is what occurs to me as I reflect on the text. The issues you raise are important and challenging.

Best wishes.

Laurence Hitterdale

Dear Searle

The initial discussion with the pre Socratic philosophers was delightful. I have written similar essays a few years ago and so found your essay to be rather engaging. I rate your essay pretty highly.

I tend to agree with Dennett's view that freedom must have co-evolved with our brain's ability to decide between aims and intentions. You go on to state, "Until the forms of artificial intelligence we create can likewise reason about their decisions and leverage their internal states (their equivalents of imagination and emotion) they will remain mere tools". It is not clear whether this is Dennett's own view or your own interpretation of his work.

My own work suggests that artificial intelligence will always remain a tool, even after they acquire intelligence that is recognizably equivalent or perhaps even superior to that of humans. This is because acceptance into human society does not hinge on intelligence, but rather on the ability to avoiding harm to fellow humans. The 'internal states' that you referred to in artificial intelligences will be different from the internal states of humans, in that, since they are embedded in a non-biological substrate they cannot internalize all the biological vulnerabilities present in the biological world.

Warm regards

Willy

Dear Rick,

I certainly agree with your injunction to do as much good as we can here and now, regardless of what the longer term outlook might be. Herbert J. Muller in "The Uses of the Past," a book from about 1953, expresses similar ideas, and a few thoughts are like this: " . . . we cannot escape mystery . . . . our life is surrounded by darkness. . . . Meanwhile, however, we live on an island of light. As life can be worth living even if we are not going to live forever . . . ." It is a good book, though it probably seems now a little out of date.

Best wishes.

Laurence Hitterdale

Dear Searle,

You start off with a nice peice of theology but then make it relavent to the modern world. Very Nice!

I also like the fact that you have a clear introduction to how Jeremy England's work is important for the questions discussed.

I have never heard of Giulio Tonoi or his work. Thank you for pointing me in that direction.

Please have a look at my paper.

All the best,

Noson

Dear Rick,

what a wonderful essay and thanks for bringing Englands work to my attention.

Some comments about evolution (I wrote my PhD thesis on this topic):

you mentioned thermodynamics as the source of disorder but mutation as the corresponding evolution process produces new potential informtion. That is new species are generated with completely new properties. But this new information has no goal. Wandering towards a goal (at least locally) is given by the selection (Is the sepcies adapted?). This selection can be a global function where one tried to find the global minimum (or maximimum). But in our world, all species are forming this function via a non-linear interaction.

So in this short form: you need white noise to create something new and you need the selection given by the interaction between the spoecies.

In my essay I tried to develop a model for our brain which models the process of intention. Maybe you are interested to read it?

Best wishes

Torsten

Damned I was logout...

It was me with the highest voting.

Best Torsten

Hi dear Rick

I have remembered Schrodinger's amazing words when I began to read your nice essay. I think you will know this also; about "necessities to link our present opportunities with the wisdom of our ancestors, based on their ability of direct - natural thinking ..." (But who take care this now?) I am inclined to see the main merit of your work here, despite there are many important things also, that no need to repeat for you. Your work just is need to read slowly and good thinking how right we have doing now, in our live or, in the science?

So I just can evaluate it very high, because it calling to return to wisdom and to a morality as well. Hope you will open my article and you will tell some words that will valuable for me, as from maestro!

With best wishes,

Dear Rick

Your favorable words are over of any my expectations! It's very encouraging for me to meet with people who preferring thinking by own head. We know the bosses always are right in life. I think however in the science every thinker must be free to feel himself an small prophet. Then we can cry in our deserts, hoping somebody will passed nearest! Now I'm thinking it may really happen.

Thank you, and my best wishes to you!

Dear Rick,

it seems that the unconventional presentation of your essay obscures its depth to many. However, I could not help but be both impressed and amused at your somewhat subversive framing of the issue---we see the echoes of Pythagoras in today's mathematical universes, the specter of Heraclitus in thermodynamic and information-theoretic approaches, and so on, each providing their part of and path to an answer. (A shame, though, that Epicurus was born too late, his 'swerve'---the clinamen---interrupting the downward fall of atoms having obvious correlations to many present ideas of free will/intentionality.)

Anyway, this essay deserves a much higher rating!

Cheers,

Jochen

Dear Rick,

bravo, you actually managed to draw a line from the pre-Socratics to modern science in a coherent way! Your essay is impressive and enjoyable to read.

In some passages I see connections to other essays which I liked. Your Heraclitus reminds me of Joe Brisendine, and when you wrote that "[o]ur intelligence and decision making (...) emerges in this tension between thought and action, the gap between our internal models of the world and reality itself" I had to think again about the essays of Sofia Magnúsdóttir and Alan Kadin.

I think the views expressed in my own contribution are in line with yours, though I expressed them in a less poetic way and I chose a slightly narrower scope.

Cheers, Stefan

Democritus arose from his seat clearly amused and let out a belch. It appeared he may have already been a little drunk. :)

Dear Sirs!

Physics of Descartes, which existed prior to the physics of Newton returned as the New Cartesian Physic and promises to be a theory of everything. To tell you this good news I use «spam».

New Cartesian Physic based on the identity of space and matter. It showed that the formula of mass-energy equivalence comes from the pressure of the Universe, the flow of force which on the corpuscle is equal to the product of Planck's constant to the speed of light.

New Cartesian Physic has great potential for understanding the world. To show it, I ventured to give "materialistic explanations of the paranormal and supernatural" is the title of my essay.

Visit my essay, you will find there the New Cartesian Physic and make a short entry: "I believe that space is a matter" I will answer you in return. Can put me 1.

Sincerely,

Dizhechko Boris

An interesting and fun read Rick,

I especially like the Greek philosophers cited, and how that lays a groundwork for modern independence of thought. I'm not certain how much of the got-motivated view people actually believed, but I am sure they were taught and ruled by fear of crossing their will. Better to be an independent thinker, if you are going to be responsible for your actions anyway. Nice that you wove in Tononi (misspelled twice), and so raised the idea of a non-human measure of consciousness.

More later,

Jonathan