James Hoover

Dear ApricotCapybara,

thanks for having read my essay and for leaving a comment.

The essay title is related to my prediction that AI will not only become AGI within the next then years, but when it has arrived it will be able to to understand all the fine nouances in human language and face-expression of humans (the latter can already be done!) and it will – amongst other purposes – give each person an almost perfectly fitted confirmation / contribution to the individual's beliefs, the individual's desires, the individual's predjudices, the individual's fears etc.

In this sense, I am convinced that AGI will give each individual its daily dose of “epiphanies” (with that I mean a daily dose of quasi-information that is consistent with what the individual already believes, but mustn't necessarily be true in all its facets), just like Tarot-Card-reading or esoteric “channeling” can do. But with the difference that the latter is not widely accepted by the majority of the population, but the former will be.

This perfect service will be due to money-making aspects, but not only. It will hinder the individuum to learn and progress, but will further enclose the individuum in its bubble-like belief-system and worse, will therefore more and more demotivate it to think for itself. So it could easily be misused by political leaders, and also surely by all other kinds of people.

AI has a big potential as a scientific tool, but it also has a big danger also in other areas, as for example deception, sabotage, spying. In a society that is already heading towards more and more political turmoil, this can easily turn into political instabilities etc.

If you like, please read the statement site of the Center for AI Safety here →

https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk

and also on this site about the potential dangers of AI.

“I am concerned about social media as an example of this black box where algorithyms take the place of humans in guiding users to a toxic exchange of information where the agenda is profit for the creator not truth. The process is disguised as science.”

I agree and I am concerned too.

I will read your essay and look for how you judge the risks of future AI-technology and after that leave a comment on your essay page.

Best wishes,
AquamarineTapir

Stefan Weckbach

An interesting piece of information theoretic philosophy:

Recently I saw a video on youtube in which a computer scientist made a proposal for answering the question why the machine (the universe and its physics) that he considers as a purely information processing entity, came into existence in the first place. As far as I could interpret his lines of reasoning, he aimed to answer the question, well, “self-evidently” on a pure information processing basis, means by “determining” the initial information we need for understanding how that machine once could at all be started up.

In the following I like to examine the computer scientist's lines of reasoning. I begin with my own reasonings:

Common sense tells us that you can't get something from nothing, at least at the physical level. Otherwise inconsistency creeps in. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Nothing can come out of nothing, not even more of that nothing. Nonetheless it is obviously possible that there can exist a universe.

The quest about nature's necessary or merely possible existence is a metaphysical question, since no theory of everything will be able to provably answer that question. It can only take the needed axioms for its answer as simply given. But that does not mean that this question cannot be examined by the human mind.

There are generally two options to examine the question. One is on the basis of logical thinking, the other is on the basis of illogical thinking. Illogical thinking would lead to the conclusion that everything can be true, can be possible, even its opposite! So we are left with logical thinking.

The computer scientist's lines of reasoning went as follows:

The existence of the universe is obviously possible. For answering the question whether that possibility could not even have played out in reality, one needs something to specify that the universe notwhithstanding its possibility to exist would never had come into existence. In other words, one had to presuppose a certain reason, something additional to what we mean by pure nothing.

Since by definition, nothing cannot entail such a reason – since it then wouldn't be anymore nothing, but something – there is no such logical reason that the universe could never had come into existence.

At first sight this sounds compelling, doesn't it? We may be tempted to conclude from this that we discovered that the universe's existence is not only possible, but moreover logically necessary! But on a second look, it is clear that nothing can also not entail any logical reason for why the universe factually came into existence. So at this stage of affairs we are left again with merely a possibility and not a necessity. Moreover, pure nothing cannot even entail something like a “possibility” for a universe to come into existence.

Now, the scientists further line of arguments goes like this:

Because before the universe came into existence, there are no priors, no “source code” at all but on the other hand the universe is obviously possible, therefore there is no way to have the universe non-existent. Now, this conclusion of the scientist is not consistent for the above mentioned reasons: since the nothing we speak about cannot – by definition – entail any logical reasons for its existence, not even some ghostly possibilities or probabilities, his purely information theoretic approach to explain why information processing is all there can be simply fails.

To understand his arguments better, he proceeds with saying that the universe, before its becoming real, is “undecided”: the universe is both existent and non-existent.

Here now inconsistency creeps in, by attributing to the nothing a dual nature. This argument is based on the truth that something is indeed possible to exist and something is indeed possible to not exist. But that truth does in no way imply that it is also possible for something to at the same time exist and non-exist: The latter is obviously the signature of an inconsistent logical system!

Now, if one nonetheless takes the lines of reasonings of the computer scientist serious, then the universe and its information processing attributes must be an expression of some ghostly “first reason”, termed “inconsistency”.

But again, “inconsistency” is something, it is not nothing, it is a property. Moreover, if reality is on its base level rooted in inconsistency, there is no reason to believe that an exclusively only information processing reality should at all emerge from that! Moreover, there also would be no reason for anything logical to ever exist!

The only reason for this scientist to believe that his information processing paradigm should nonetheless be true is that he defines consistency and inconsistency in pure logical, information theoretic terms. Well, if we agree with that definition, then I am forced to conclude something different from what the scientist believes to have concluded:

I then must conclude that on the basis of pure logical information theoretic terms, reality cannot be rooted in inconsistency, but in logics. This logically leads to the conclusion that what the scientist really deduced with his lines of reasoning, but confused with possibilities and paraconsistent logics, is that there cannot be such a thing as “pure nothing”, there had to be at least consistent “logic” existent to produce an existing universe.

In my opinion this is no wonder, since many things in the universe are understandable and logical. But as I pointed out in my essay, logics also has its limits, especially when it comes to the question why such a thing as logics should at all exist!

The scientist then concludes

“If you haven't any source code to define the universe to begin with, you get a universe! This is an interesting result, just because its possible!”

My answer: No, you must at least presuppose the existence of a consistent logics (means no paraconsistent logics, no inconsistent logics) “at the very beginning” to at all arrive at that illogical conclusion. This logically means that consistent logics is superior to inconsistent logics. And if you agree with that, you additionally had to explain why pure logics, something that we assume to be platonic in nature, is able to produce a dynamical, material world. If you don't agree, you furthermore had to explain why inconsistent logics should logically be superior to a consistent logics and why this should at all lead to an exclusively only information processing nature of reality.

In our minds, we can play around with inconsistent systems. We even can attribute to quantum mechanics to be of that kind of inconsistent nature. But if the latter is true, why does QM produce a consistent classical world? Moreover, why should it exlusively only produce a purely information processing world? And last but not least why then would QM even follow quantum mechanical laws if it would be defined as "fundamental inconsistency which should be able to produce some consistencies"? One cannot logically infere by the fact that our world is obviously possible that therefore "fundamental inconsistency is indeed able to produce some consistencies (our world)".

With these considerations we arrive at the fundamental question what the real relationship should be (if there is at all one) between consistency (mathematics) and inconsistency (illogical noise) for being able to at all produce our universe. That relationship may only be existent in the human mind and QM itself (or any other ground state reality) would be not inconsistent, but simply different from being a mere combination of consistency with inconsistency.

The source of the video can be found at

The relevant discussion begins roughly at minute 42.

I post this because in my essay I say that it is not without risks for human logical thinking to simply accept some ontological or logical "truths", an AI could offer. Since Josha Bach believes that we humans are some sort of prediction and optimization machine too, although a more "naturally" evolved one than AI, I think it is appropriate to examine what his framework says about the metaphysical roots the latter could be based on.

I never thought of the algorithms almost exclusively used in social media as part of AI but the NPR article shows "AI poses urgent risks of "systemic bias, misinformation, malicious use, cyberattacks, and weaponization." that it poses toxic damage in our culture and in the minds of the young, using it to simply maximize profit. The article you reference and the warning involved should be dispersed widely. Your concern should help heighten the threat.

    James Hoover

    Dear ApricotCapybara,

    I hope more people get at least informed about the dangers.

    Here is the perspective on the issue from a former Google CEO:

    And here is what Nvidia is already capable of doing with their technological advanced systems:

      Stefan Weckbach
      Dear AquamarineTapir,
      Would you please stop frightening yourself by listening to/ watching trash videos? Like the above ultra nonsense video, “EMERGENCY EPISODE: Ex-Google Officer Finally Speaks Out On The Dangers Of AI! - Mo Gawdat”.

      This is a great example of the absolute lunatic nonsense that can fill some people’s imaginations: “08:43 AI is alive and has more emotions than you”.

      The trouble is that the vast majority of people have no way of evaluating the truth or otherwise of what these people say, because they merely look at the surface appearances of AIs, and they have absolutely no idea of the detailed nitty-gritty of how computers actually work. After being fed a diet of science fiction in books and movies all their lives, many people seem to be all too willing to believe anything and everything they are told about AIs.

        Lorraine Ford

        Dear CornflowerCicada,

        thank you for your feedback. The video was ment to demonstrate current discussions on AI within the AI scientist's community. It does not necessarily reflect my personal point of view. My view is that it does not make a great deal of difference whether or not AI is factually able to feel and be conscious, since effectively in my opinion it will persuade many people to think it is. There will be a whole quasi-religion built on this asumption in the future in my opinion, when AIs may become general in their abilities. The reason for this is that most people never think about metaphysical questions like the mind-body problem, determinism versus free will, the nature of consciousness and all the things we discuss here. You are totally right, therefore they will not be able to discriminate between assumptions and proven facts.

        And therefore the danger is there for our society, at many levels. AIs very likely will be able to program other AIs without a human prompt, what then will seem to many people as another confirmation of them being sentient.

        The video link isn't ment to frighten anyone but to alarm people, but I think it made some good points. We really don't need better iPhones and the like, we need a more sustainable way of consuming things. If I should have given the reader a false impression of AIs being sentient, then hopefully they also read the discussions here and your comments within this contest. Here is another video that is more down to earth and better reflects what I am thinking about the whole issue and with insights that are already proven to be true:

          Stefan Weckbach
          Dear AquamarineTapir,

          I haven’t got time to watch an hour-long Tristan Harris video, but Tristan Harris’ website has a good summary of potential AI problems:

          “… social media brought immediate connectivity to family and friends. But it also negatively impacted childhood and adolescence, contributed to widespread disinformation, and interfered with free and fair elections. Artificial intelligence offers massive increases in productivity, expression, and problem-solving. But these capabilities can easily lead to a world with bot-manipulated democracies, massive unemployment, exploitation of children and other vulnerable populations, and a world where no one can tell synthetic media from reality.” https://www.humanetech.com/key-issues

          Not many people seriously believe that society will not be able to manage the above AI problems. The alarmists don’t seem to comprehend that people control computers: computers don’t control normal people (but some people might need help with their mental health).

          The thing that seems to worry some people is the idea that AI will become conscious, and/or get out of control, and/or take over the world. The vast majority of these people have no way of evaluating the truth or otherwise of what the alarmists say, because they merely look at the surface appearances of AIs, and they have absolutely no idea of the detailed nitty-gritty of how computers are made to work. The people who know how computers are made to work, like myself, are not the slightest bit worried that AI could ever become conscious etc.: the idea is truly absurd and ridiculous.

            Lorraine Ford

            Dear Cornflower Cicada,

            I think the reason why people believe that an array of computers can be conscious is because they also believe that everything else in the universe is purely information processing in nature.

            So they conclude that the brain is an exclusively only deterministic machine, and since it produces consciousness, therefore an equally complicated information processing device (computer array) must also be conscious at some point. They explain this by “weak emergence” (not strong emergence).

            I speculated in my essay “computers may become conscious” not because I believe in that possibility, but because I believe that I have to argue on the basis of such beliefs for at all being able to introduce my contrasting point of view. Therefore I never mentioned that I do not believe in conscious computers.

            My belief is that “computers can become conscious” is a kind of “Eliza effect”, first observed in the 1960s, where a computer program with 100 lines of code made people believe that this thing must be conscious (look it up at Wiki if you wish).

            ChatGPT has roughly about a hundred million users today. And it often clearly outputs illogical, dramatically non-factual information (especially for simple math questions). For both reasons I believe it is concluded by the majority of those users that this thing cannot be conscious, or its consciousness must have some serious bugs (what presumably not many people will believe since this would somewhat indicate that human consciousness could also have some bugs...).

            But in my opinion, the situation will change when scientists will have facilitated an AGI and billions of people will use it, a computer array with human common sense behaviour: if humans already fall short of discriminating fake-news from truth delivered by social media, I think it is not too far-fetched that they also will fall short in concluding that whatever AGI will say about iself (it is conscious, it knows the secrets of life etc.) must be merely the result of a very huge computing power together with some very sophisticated algorithms. Too long it has been told to people (not to all people) that consciousness is a phenomenon of weak emergence. Those that believe in the latter will probably also conclude that this weak emergence must necessarily also occur within an AGI at some point. Anyways, the Eliza-effect seems to be a regularity when people engage themselves in what Alan Turing called the “imitation game”.

            Of course, I could be totally wrong with the prediction in my essay and it is true that society will be able to manage upcoming AI problems – and further that the majority of people will not be alarmed by the alarmists. At least I do not overestimate my contribution to the current essay contest in its influence in either direction: most probably it will have not the slightest effect on the course of future events.

            Nonetheless I apprechiate Tristan Harris' engagement, not only because I am convinced about what the video (and website) identifies as real dangers and that managing these dangers means to be aware of these dangers in the first place, but because it seems to me that I have good reasons to think that humanity will not be able to exclude the malicious use of that upcoming technology – by other human beings. This hasn't worked with computer viruses and I think it also will not work with computer attacks on human infrastructure (the latter heavily based on computers and internet) by some human beings (for political, ideological or other mentally ill-defined intentions).

            I do not think that a conscious or not conscious AGI will decide to do such attacks, or will decide to take over the world. But a sufficiently powerful computer array that already has been fed with all kinds of source codes from all kinds of open source projects in the world may be able to produce large infrastructural damage by exploiting all its weak points and then be promted to write a malicious program (that already happened) for a user (human being). Take for example Iran, where its centrifuges for nuclear science were coupled to computers, the latter were coupled to the internet at some point. Some years ago, somebody (no AGI but (a) human being(s) managed to infiltrate the system and to make the centrifuges run much, much faster than they should – until they crashed and the facility was severely damaged.

            In my opinion it is not too far-fetched to think of other scenarios where something is damaged upon which a huge population of human beings is dependent on (for examples computer memory with no backups available, electricity facilities etc.). I am not the only one who thinks along these lines. What do you think about it?

              Stefan Weckbach
              Dear AquamarineTapir,

              I think the reason why people believe that an array of computers can be conscious is because they also believe that everything else in the universe is purely information processing in nature.

              But what is “information” and what is “processing”? The ONLY types of information that the real physical world runs on ("processes") are: 1) categories like energy and momentum; 2) relationships between these categories; and 3) numbers that apply to these categories.

              These real-world categories, relationships and numbers are not symbols, but my previous sentence uses word symbols (“categories”, “energy”, “momentum”, “relationships”, “numbers”) to represent aspects of the real physical world that are not in themselves symbols. Alternatively, I could have used equations and special symbols to represent the real physical world categories, relationships and numbers. Also, I could have, using sound waves, spoken the above word symbols, instead of writing the above word symbols. Also, I could use a computer circuit/ transistor/ voltage setup to re-symbolise the abovementioned word symbols, equation symbols, number symbols and other special symbols that in turn symbolise aspects of the real physical world, where the real physical world is the only thing that is NOT a symbol.

              These symbols:

              • Are comprised of physical matter, but the “symbol” part of a symbol only has meaning from the point of view of human beings.
              • Human beings may physically move or respond after their minds have processed a written or spoken symbol. But the symbol itself has no power or efficacy in the world: the only types of information that have power and efficacy in the real physical world are the above described real physical world categories, relationships and numbers.

              It is time to come to grips with the issue of symbols, especially in order to understand the true nature of computers/ AIs.

              In my opinion it is not too far-fetched to think of other scenarios where something is damaged upon which a huge population of human beings is dependent on (for examples computer memory with no backups available, electricity facilities etc.).

              The world is already like this. These are the problems we are already having to deal with. We have organised our world so that we are very dependent on computers. Our whole society is much less resilient because we are so dependent on computers!

                Lorraine Ford

                Dear CornflowerCicada,

                “But what is “information” and what is “processing”?”

                Good question. Also your question about symbols. The latter I think is what has been called the “symbol grounding problem”.

                I think the term “information” in our usage is a symbol that means “knowledge”. Within a pure information processing paradigm, “processing” then could mean to hand over “knowledge” (for example how to further behave as a particle after an interaction). “Processing” in general would then mean for two particles to somewhat hand over the needed knowledge about the laws of physics.

                That interpretation totally antropomorphises what humans mean by knowledge and information and handing the latter over to another person. Nonetheless, in an information theoretic sense one could view such a process at the bottom of physics as having the goal of ensuring that the physical world works consistently according to the laws of physics, instead of inconsistently. But one therefore had to assume a certain kind of goal-like behaviour at the bottom of physics. Moreover one had to assume that this goal was set up by a goal-oriented being that knows the difference between consistent and inconsistent and at least knows the laws of physics (if not facilitated them). Dead matter cannot make these distinctions by definition.

                With all the above I do not intend to see particles as capable of discriminating between consistent and inconsistent. I merely want to stress how difficult it is to use the words information and knowledge for the bottom of what we know about physics today.

                A linguist may tell you that the word information means “bringing something into a certain form”. If I would use “noitamrofni”, that wouldn't be the correct form, since it is the reversed form of the term “information”. But there are many other forms of symbolising the term “information” since there are and could be a plethora of different symbols that have attached the meaning “information”.

                To know that they have attached that meaning, you somewhat had to be informed that this is the case, and what does inform you of that case other than other symbols you are already informed about that they mean something specific. So “meaning” also comes into the quest about what is information.

                In my opinion the terms “information”, “meaning”, “consistent” etc. are able to be meaningful because the existence of consciousness must be considered as a meaningful, but yet unexplained phenomenon in its own right in a world that also has meaning independent of human beings. Independent because a physical world without human beings would surely operate as consistent as it does now and this in my opinion is already a meaningful distinction from inconsistency in and by itself. So I conclude that there must be something meaningful that has informed the physical world in the first place to operate consistently. That in my opinion is the true source for “meaning” being at all existent in this world: there is information about the true source for “meaning in the world, by means of logical thinking, by means of observing nature, by means of observing one's own desire for meaning (even atheists have that desire, they strive for the meaning of existence to be meaningless and try to convince others).

                Back to computers: for the case of a computer, the latter is only possible because human beings exist, understand what symbols mean, invented new symbols (zeros and ones), figured out how matter works to build the hardware and then wrote the inherent meaning of the software into some matter.

                So I totally agree with you when you say

                “It is time to come to grips with the issue of symbols, especially in order to understand the true nature of computers/ Ais.”

                The paradigm of pure information processing has to aknowledge that the mere existence of computers in this world is already a signature for the existence of meaning in this world. But not in the sense that the world is purely information processing in nature, which in my opinion is not the meaning one can logically give to the “meaning in this world” since the term “information” has its problems, as I intended to show with the above lines of reasonings. One has also to factor in the fact that human beings can extract meaning from what they find in the external world and that they can conclude that “meaning” must mean more than just subjective definitions, otherwise computers wouldn't be possible.

                In constrast to the information processing interpretation of the world I would say that what we found out about nature and about ourselves up to now strongly suggests that there must be a layer of reality that is made out of what you call “aspects that are not in themselves symbols”: these aspects do not refer to something else but are truths in their own right qua the power of their mere existence. Even the belief in something is a truth in its own right, since that belief exists. Independent of whether or not that belief meets reality, the mere fact that beliefs exist already meets objective reality. And the fact that meaning exists also does already meet objective reality, as can be seen by the consistent behaviour of a physical world that is independent from the presence of human beings but nonetheless acts consistently instead of inconsistently.

                That all of this can be conceptualised is by what we call knowledge and by the fact that consciousness exists. So the existence of consciousness is already a proof that there exists objective meaning, objective information in the world that cannot be squeezed into some information processing symbols. Alfred Tarski already pointed this out by his undefinability theorem that roughly says

                “The theorem applies more generally to any sufficiently strong formal system, showing that truth in the standard model of the system cannot be defined within the system.”

                And in the Gödelian sense one cannot make truth more reachable by adding more and more axioms to a certain standard model, since for reaching objective truth there had to be added infinitely many such axioms.

                So for the truths I sor far mentioned above to be recognized as truths by human beings and to be regonized as being fundamentally different from pure information processing algorithms, it already necessitates that there must be “aspects of the world that are not in themselves symbols”. Therefore I conclude that one of these aspects is objective meaning in conjunction with objective information, both being able to exist in the world because they inherently and immanently are already the signature of a certain goal that was “implemented” together with the existence of the world.

                This view of mine is in constrast to the point of view where the universe is seen as a purely information processing entity, but when asked what's the information content it computes the answer is “nothing” (or likewise “everything”). Both answers contradict the objectivity assumption, the assumption of there being an external world that is consistent and independent of beliefs, and therefore these answers already contradict the standard model itself (means the pure information processing paradigm). Thus, that paradigm in my opinion is not consistent with our notion of truth, and therefore not consistent with a consistent logics.

                  Stefan Weckbach

                  “… symbols. The latter I think is what has been called the “symbol grounding problem””.

                  Re symbols:
                  This is not a philosophical problem of “Chinese rooms” and “symbol grounding”, much discussed by philosophers like David Chalmers. The fact is that symbols don’t exist, except in the human imagination.

                  Symbols don’t exist because written and spoken words (i.e. word symbols) can’t be measured or weighed. You could weigh and measure the paper that words were written on, but that would be weighing and measuring paper, not written words. You could measure sound waves, but that would be measuring sound waves, not spoken words.

                  Similarly, binary digit symbols don’t exist except in the human imagination. The technical article “Logic Signal Voltage Levels” (https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/digital/chpt-3/logic-signal-voltage-levels ) explains the connection between voltage and “binary digits”/ “logic states” in computers. If you read the article, you will notice that “binary digits”/ “logic states” are an idea that human beings have imposed on voltages in computers. Binary digits don’t exist because they can’t be measured or weighed: you could measure voltage, but you can’t measure binary digits.

                  Symbols don’t exist in the real physical world “out there” because they can’t be weighed and measured. All symbols - written and spoken words, number symbols and other mathematical symbols, binary digits - only exist in the human imagination. And it is not only single binary digits that only exist in the human imagination: groupings of binary digits (that are supposed to represent the abovementioned written and spoken word symbols, number symbols and other mathematical symbols) also only exist in the human imagination.

                  “for the case of a computer, the latter is only possible because human beings exist, understand what symbols mean, invented new symbols (zeros and ones), figured out how matter works to build the hardware and then wrote the inherent meaning of the software into some matter.”

                  Yes, but what symbols “mean” is irrelevant, because symbols only exist from the point of view of the human imagination anyway.

                  This view of mine is in constrast to the point of view where the universe is seen as a purely information processing entity, … Both answers contradict the objectivity assumption, the assumption of there being an external world that is consistent and independent of beliefs, and therefore these answers already contradict the standard model itself (means the pure information processing paradigm). Thus, that paradigm in my opinion is not consistent with our notion of truth, and therefore not consistent with a consistent logics.

                  Seemingly the human imagination is a slightly different thing to the measurable world “out there”.

                    Lorraine Ford

                    Dear CornflowerCicada,

                    “Symbols don’t exist in the real physical world “out there” because they can’t be weighed and measured.”

                    Agreed. But what is the ontological status of symbols. They can't be measured and weighed. Are they non-physical things in a world about many people think that it is exclusively only made up from matter, down to the last “bit”? What do you think?

                    Well, maybe I should put the question like this:

                    Is the human imagination a thing produced solely by (deterministic) matter and its behaviour, or is it something else. We know that human imagination exists, but it also cannot be measured and weighted, like symbols (when I say “symbols” I mean the meanings attached to these symbols, not necessarily the symbols themselves).

                      Stefan Weckbach
                      Dear AquamarineTapir,

                      “what is the ontological status of symbols”

                      Symbols are special arrangements of matter, but the arrangements are invisible to the laws of nature.

                      In the case of written word symbols, ink is arranged on paper, but this arrangement is invisible to the laws of nature. A person’s eyes interact with light waves, and the person analyses the information gained to identify the symbols. Also, people have created special setups including computer programs to identify written symbols.

                      Similarly, in the case of spoken word symbols, sound waves are arranged in the gaseous air, but this arrangement is invisible to the laws of nature. A person’s ears interact with sound waves, and the person analyses the information gained to identify the symbols. Also, people have created special setups including computer programs to identify spoken symbols.

                      The case of binary digit symbols in computers is slightly different. In the context of the whole circuits/ transistors/ voltages/ computer program setup, voltage is used to represent the binary digit concept. Usually the higher part of the selected voltage range is used to represent the binary digit one, but the lower part of the selected voltage range can also be used to represent the binary digit one. A person who knows what the pre-selected voltage range was, and what the particular voltage currently is, and whether or not the higher part of the selected voltage range is used to represent the binary digit one, could work out what individual binary digit symbol corresponded to this particular voltage; but this special arrangement is invisible to the laws of nature, which only “see” voltage. Similarly, people have devised various different special arrangements of these binary digits that are used in computers to represent words, letters, numbers and other symbols, but these special arrangements are also invisible to the laws of nature, which only “see” voltage, and not arrangements of voltages. Also, in the context of the circuits/ transistors/ voltages/ computer program setup, transistors are used to represent logical operations between the binary digits; once again, the laws of nature only “see” voltage and the material that the transistors are made out of; the laws of nature are not doing logical operations.

                      So symbols are a human artefact, having no special ontological existence But living things do have a special ontological existence because they are routinely physically arranging matter; and routinely identifying arrangements of matter using collation and logical analysis which are aspects of the mind that can’t be derived from the deterministic laws of nature, which are merely relationships between categories. I think this is the answer to your question:

                      “Is the human imagination a thing produced solely by (deterministic) matter and its behaviour, or is it something else”

                        Lorraine Ford

                        Dear CornflowerCicada,

                        thank you for your decisive answer, I am now able to much better see what you see and I agree.

                        P.S. I already rated your essay after I first commented on your page – in case that the issue of ratings in this contest should be important to you.

                        Best wishes
                        AquamarineTapir

                          Stefan Weckbach

                          I think this comment of mine, made on the essay page of CornflowerCicada, should also appear here.

                          Stefan Weckbach Dear CornflowerCicada,

                          I want to thank you so much for our exchange of thoughts. I just read your essay again and I highly recommend it for everybody to read and contemplate it. This is good and solid work you have done and worth much more attention than it has received so far in my opinion.

                          Best wishes
                          AquamarineTapir

                            Stefan Weckbach
                            Dear AquamarineTapir,

                            Thanks very much for your kind words about my essay, and I like your essay very much too. I also want to thank you, because our exchange has helped me clarify my thoughts. And I am very glad to converse with you because we seem to think about the world in very similar ways. (I also rated your essay when I first commented on your essay page.)

                            Best wishes,
                            CornflowerCicada

                            Stefan Weckbach Greetings, Aquamarine Tapir. As someone who has studied social and physical sciences at different times, as well as having worked in progressive politics, I appreciate a look at expanding science in the two basic ways (as I see your point) discussed in your essay. First, yes indeed, science needs to pull in types of people that traditionally have been underrepresented in Western science activities. I am also pleased to see your call for expanding opportunities for hierarchically disadvantaged contributors (those not working in academia or relevant professions), such as myself. Yes, let's see more blind refereeing, such as is being done right here!

                            Also, would you (and anyone reading this) please take a look at my essay too, which attempts to disprove AI reductionism about minds. I use both a philosophical argument about existential knowledge (a sort of update of Descartes famous experiment) plus inferences from quantum mechanics. Thanks, and rem: this is the last day to rate essays!

                              Neil Bates

                              Dear PersimmonCatshark,

                              thank you for your comments on my essay. I already read your essay some days ago and commented on it on your page.

                              Best wishes
                              AquamarineTapir

                              7 days later

                              Stefan Weckbach

                              Dear Aquamarine Tapir,

                              here are (finally) some more comments to your inspiring thoughts.
                              The point you are raising differing between logical consistency and empirical support of a theory/model is quite interesting. Most cases of model-testing usually deal with proofs that the model at hand is logically inconsistent. Then, it's easy to refute the model. Yet, if it is logically consistent, the latter part is usually so much harder and that is something often fiercely debated. So I agree with you that any further proof or counterexample on an empirical basis also requires that we have assumed a certain ontology and relation to the (epistemical) model to be tested. There may not be a unique relation, the ontology may not even exist, etc.. It seems to be the heart of the discussion how to interpret quantum mechanics, for example.

                              Concerning the notion of infinity, George Ellis once said that "Mathematical infinities do not exist in Nature" and I think there is a fundamental truth in that, if the Universe had a beginning (there are also other models that may work, but then, still, we always need to specify some boundary/initial conditions to understand and describe such cosmologies). The concepts of infinity that Cantor found are highly useful in the realm of theories and of mathematical models, but, anything that we can observe in Nature has some boundary/finiteness, maybe even the Universe itself. It's just that our models become easier to handle when making this extrapolation of infinities (like infinite accuracy or precision, or infinite volume or time). Yet, as you wrote, there is no ultimate way to find out whether these infinities are ontologically existing and in what sense. Thus, for a theory/model to describe our world around us, I think, we should not use a description including such potentially incorrect infinities and rather account for our limitations in our models. The latter become more truthful then and we explicitly introduce relationships between our point of interest and its environment/external influences -- based on my experiences, these extrapolations/interpolations are the key points where non-uniqueness in our descriptions of reality arises and I can't help but think that uniqueness is a kind of holy grail in science, even if Nature does not necessarily provide it based on the data it gives us.
                              Maybe it is daring, but, obviously, our science over the history of humankind has not required an infinite understanding to find good approximations to explain phenomena in Nature. Hence, why should this be different with consciousness? As you wrote, our knowledge is provisionary, but we know the limits in which certain theories hold, so we may hope to discover the same in studies of consciousness.
                              At the same time, there is no necessary clash with any existence of an intelligent designer or the contents of the Bible -- the concept of time is already interesting in the first paragraph that the world was created in seven days and you could ask: in which reference frame or does that imply a fundamental observer exist?! But isn't that anything else than questioning a certain, assumed ontology again...

                              I will also have a look at the other discussion thread you sent and will comment soon.
                              As I very much like our discussions here, I have something for you to remember this great essay contest, now that it is in its final step: https://ibb.co/mhf8hbN That's how aquamarine tapirs look like according to AI.

                              Cheers,
                              Beige Bandicoot.

                                Jenny Wagner

                                Dear Beige Bandicoot,

                                thanks so much for the nice picture of the aquamarine tapir (me! :-), I will take that picture for my colour-animal-account (yours looks quite nice, too!)!.

                                One of the reasons for why many scientists (in my opinion) have abandoned the idea / the hypothesis for a Creator God is that the physical world seems to be so different from any conceivable God-like realm. The physical seems to rule with an iron fist, and therefore, many people infer, there is no place even for the idea of a Creator.

                                An example: I think it had been the Scholastiks that developed the seemingly contradiction between an omnipotent God and physical reality. They asked whether or not God is able to fabricate a stone that is that heavy that God himself is not able to lift that stone.

                                At first glance it seems convincing that this is a real contradiction, not only a logical one, but also somewhat a physical one, since it suggests that God is bound to his physical creation. Surely, God, in my opinion is not omnipotent, since he / she surely cannot annihilate himself (I simply assume this without further proof).

                                So let's also assume that God isn't able to fabricate a stone that is too heavy for him to lift. From this follows that God is “merely” able to fabricate stones that he himself is able to lift.

                                The first sentence above is about an impossibility. The second sentence above is about a possibility.

                                Let's now imagine the possibility for God fabricating a stone that has infinitely many atoms, each of them infinitely heavy. One could even imagine a stone that is made out of a non-denumerable infinity of atoms whereby each of the atoms is infinitely heavy – as long as God is able to lift that stone. And voila – what had been a severe contradiction in the minds of the Scholastiks is now possible: God can make any conceivable stone, as long as he can lift it.

                                This example shows me how nonsensical it is trying to pull down the idea of a Creator to the layer of human physical understandings.

                                I like to tell you another line of reasoning that may be equally nonsensical than the first one. Imagine that you have a list of all the things that are physically impossible. Let's say this list is long, but not infinitely long, it is finitely long.

                                Now you are able to decide what things are possible in principle and what things are not. You simply had to look up the list and see whether or not the thing that you examine is listed as impossible. If it is not listed as impossible – well, then it is at least possible. So far, so good.

                                But now remember that there is a difference between a possible thing and a necessary thing. Necessary things must happen necessarily. Possible things are possible to happen, but mustn't happen. But now we have a problem: if certain possible things NEVER happen, they are in a certain sense IMPOSSIBLE, aren't they? Therefore, they had to be on the list of all impossible things!

                                It seems that with this result we have deduced that possible and necessary things are one and the same – if something is “possible”, in reality it must be necessary to happen! This then would strengthen (prove?) the worldview of Many Worlds.

                                But can this be? Can a simple thought experiment with a simple finitely long list somewhat prove the Many Worlds interpretation of QM be correct? That would mean that logics somewhat could dictate how fundamental physics should behave!

                                I think there are at least two errors in the above line of reasoning. Firstly we have no such list. Secondly logics tells me – on the basis of the two given examples – that what is possible to exist, what is impossible to exist and what is ultimately necessary to exist are things that are at least beyond human reasoning. I would go a step further and say that all three modalities may not be ultimately fixed, so there is plenty of “wiggle room”. For this to be true and at the same time not be drifting into paraconsistent logics, in my opinion it needs a Creator whose abilities are beyond human understanding of causality and human logical systems. That is what I refer to when I say that logics is able to “transcend” itself: one needs a reference point where it is able to transcend into.

                                You are right, the ontological question is at the heart of how to interpret QM. The latest effort to circumvent non-locality that I have read about is by Tim Palmer and Sabine Hossenfelder. They suggest that the state space of all quantum mechanically possible experiments is such that not only the probabilities come out according to the Born rule, but also such that certain states that are implicit in all the Bell inequalities aren't existent in that huge state space.

                                What the authors in my opinion have done is nothing other than to define a list of allowed states for the purpose of explaining violations of Bell-like inequalities without having to introduce space-time like nonlocalities. Although I cannot exclude the existence of such a state-space, I like the approach for two reasons: firstly it demonstrates how thin the line between possible and impossible is – judged by human beings. Secondly it is obvious (at least to me) that this approach (called “supermeasure”) is entirely motivated by the intention to avoid non-locality in physics.

                                Similar hypothesis' have been facilitated with infinities involved by taking the mathematical fact of self-referencing formulas as physical facts, saying that the bottom layer of reality is infinitely fractal in nature. I whole heartedly would say that George Ellis is right what he says about infinities in nature.

                                I also agree that unity is indeed a holy grail, I think it is directly experienced by human beings via their 5 senses that seem to be very well “integrated” into consciousness such that we experience the world around us as a unity. I therefore think that consciousness and its unity is a separate level of reality, at least when the brain works how it should (see brain-split patients etc. where that does not quite work out). For me, it is no wonder why physicists strive for unity, since I think that is what is the case anyways. Monotheistic religions have figured this out and Christianity (and the bible) is built on the assumption that nature (creation) is not equal with God. Abraham, before he went to the promised land, worshiped a moon goddess, thus worshiped nature, the creation instead of the Creator.

                                The problem with the hypothesis of a Creator is not that this hypothesis is stupid right from the start, but that it has the “baggage” of tension between what individuals dreams for their own lifes and what God gave as commandments for each individual – to enhance the whole, not only the individual. Surely, there are other problems like the quest of evil in the world etc. But from a logical point of view I would say that nothing can speak against such a Creator, since we not even know on a logical basis what things are fundamentally impossible to exist, what things are fundamentally possible to exist and what things are fundamentally necessary to exist. About the latter I would say that for reaching at all a grip on what is fundamental in reality, human logics demands that itself is a clever invention of something that is necessarily more intelligent than human beings.

                                I know, many people will disagree with that. But on what basis should the human brain be ever able to discover something like a “theory of everything”, other than on the basis of wishful thinking, means the wish that the universe should be such that it is totally congruent to human logics and human mathematics? And if true, wouldn't that be the most anthropocentric idea in the whole history of mankind – the fundamental layer of reality is such that it perfectly fits the intellectual capacities of a randomly evolved “ape” that at some point in time “realized” that he is neither at the center of the universe, nor at the center of the solar system nor at any center at all. Nonetheless scientists strongly believe that this “ape” should at least be at the center of intelligence in the universe such that it is able to “find out” that its intellectual capacities are perferctly congruent with fundamental reality... Well, these lines of thoughts are not convincing to me, since they obviously are born out of wishful thinking that an impersonal, solely material and rigogorously deterministic physical reality should deliver to us what we so whole-heartedly wish for.

                                It may well be that we really cannot unite QM with GR. Not because reality is not a unity, but because the big picture isn't solely made up only from physical things. It may well be that physical reality is not there for the purpose that humans understand how “it works”, but for an entirely different purpose. To cut a long story short, many scientists in my opinion seem to think that reality is there for the purpose of entirely understanding it by humans. I see that as an equally anthropocentric idea as may be considered the idea of a Creator, so in this respect both ideas are at par.

                                Best wishes
                                Aquamarine Tapir

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