I'll be interested in Part 2 because the implications of your final paragraphs seem to contradict the accepted narrative about what's wrong with the current era! I feel like for years, I've been hearing that we are too isolated and lonely and atomized; that we've forgotten the meaning of community; that therapy has allowed us to put up too many boundaries and be afraid of vulnerability. Yet here, you say that the problem is that we are too vulnerable/porous, and that our best hope lies in building up our inner strength and individuality! This is genuinely thought-provoking and I look forward to more.
The Silph Scope metaphor is I think both powerful and genuinely original here. There exists a sort of lenticular effect where in the mass of systematic perturbations across the slate of language we can begin to perceive the geometry of the stack of associations themselves.
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
ChatGPT is like a massive concordance for me. I read the Fathers, Chrysostom, Climacus , Gregory of Nyssa and it gives me context for such works alongside making interesting links between seemingly unrelated texts and other cultural phenomena. I find it stimulating and capable of making good recommendations for readings etc. I used to think: ‘What could Bach have done with a computer?’ Now I ask: ‘What would, say, Joyce and Derrida have done with ChatGPT ?’
Intrigued by the critique of Crowleyan magick! Robert Anton Wilson, who probably had a bit more sympathy for Crowley than is useful, leaned into the notion that (cribbing from Clarke) any sufficiently advanced applied psychology is indistinguishable from magick, and that concept of semiotic immersion as a means of reinforcing “reality tunnels” went on to inform much of chaos magic. But, yeah, rather than interrogating and constructing those tunnels, AI encourages us to passively soak up whatever it throws at us…
I'll be interested in Part 2 because the implications of your final paragraphs seem to contradict the accepted narrative about what's wrong with the current era! I feel like for years, I've been hearing that we are too isolated and lonely and atomized; that we've forgotten the meaning of community; that therapy has allowed us to put up too many boundaries and be afraid of vulnerability. Yet here, you say that the problem is that we are too vulnerable/porous, and that our best hope lies in building up our inner strength and individuality! This is genuinely thought-provoking and I look forward to more.
How do you relate or distinguish your observations and insights to the Christian ascetic reflections on logismoi?
The Silph Scope metaphor is I think both powerful and genuinely original here. There exists a sort of lenticular effect where in the mass of systematic perturbations across the slate of language we can begin to perceive the geometry of the stack of associations themselves.
I wonder whether the real Silph Scope effect is not revealing entities, but revealing how quickly human beings turn patterns into entities.
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
If I may: https://sharpweapons.substack.com/p/brain-worms?r=iedx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
ChatGPT is like a massive concordance for me. I read the Fathers, Chrysostom, Climacus , Gregory of Nyssa and it gives me context for such works alongside making interesting links between seemingly unrelated texts and other cultural phenomena. I find it stimulating and capable of making good recommendations for readings etc. I used to think: ‘What could Bach have done with a computer?’ Now I ask: ‘What would, say, Joyce and Derrida have done with ChatGPT ?’
Intrigued by the critique of Crowleyan magick! Robert Anton Wilson, who probably had a bit more sympathy for Crowley than is useful, leaned into the notion that (cribbing from Clarke) any sufficiently advanced applied psychology is indistinguishable from magick, and that concept of semiotic immersion as a means of reinforcing “reality tunnels” went on to inform much of chaos magic. But, yeah, rather than interrogating and constructing those tunnels, AI encourages us to passively soak up whatever it throws at us…