No wonder camera manufacturers loved digital photography

[markbarendt]

Just asking.... Don't feelings have a biological explanation?

Here's an interesting talk.
https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other#t-93695

 

[rrusso]

Solipsism is the philosophical position which says all that can be known is that one is conscious. Every other position is a variety of escalating assumptions, including that other people are conscious. It's useful as far as it goes, but fails on first contact with reality. I like the idea of someone posting a comment on apug, and being bemused that their conscious experience has tricked them into believing someone has replied, but I fear such sensibilities only exist in philosophy class.

Materialism fails likewise. Someone can insist they're a biological robot responding to stimuli till the cows come home, but when they finish their lecture with a warm glow at their own insight and enjoy an evening of good company and food with fellow philosophy academics, it's all feeling. In fact you can't stop feeling, so any serious appraisal of reality has to find a central place for consciousness within it.

In the immortal words of Keanu Reeves:

"Whoa..."

 

[blockend]

Just asking.... Don't feelings have a biological explanation?

It depends what you mean. You can probably track the sparks and chemicals, but the lever is consciousness. As no one outside the walls of a secure hospital or a science lab says my synapses have just been stimulated when the get angry or fall in love, we're forced to admit we're primarily, perhaps exclusively feelings.

 

[CMoore]

The problem with Neil deGrasse Tyson and his ilk, is they dismiss philosophy as a useless enterprise while being steeped in materialist metaphysics. They don't recognise their own biases and assumptions,.

Is that what their problem is.?
People recognizing their own axe to grind seems to have been a problem since day one, for all of us.

 

[markbarendt]

It depends what you mean. You can probably track the sparks and chemicals, but the lever is consciousness. As no one outside the walls of a secure hospital or a science lab says my synapses have just been stimulated when the get angry or fall in love, we're forced to admit we're primarily, perhaps exclusively feelings.

We're forced to admit nothing of the kind.

 

[blockend]

Is that what their problem is.?
People recognizing their own axe to grind seems to have been a problem since day one, for all of us.

In spite of your inference I'm fully on board with my own biases, and unlike Tyson et al I'm open to reappraisal should the evidence be persuasive. The difference between science as methodology and science as ideology is the first knows its limitations. Materialism claims to be open to conflicting evidence, but sets the bar for anything that challenges its shibboleths higher than those its comfortable with. It's essentially a philosophical cartel in denial of its desire for control and domination. There's nothing neutral about physicalism, scientifically, morally or intellectually.

 

[blockend]

We're forced to admit nothing of the kind.

A moments reflection would insist the pejoratives in your post are driven by feeling, not an austere and disinterested desire for empirical truth.

 

[blockend]

Still, it hasn't stopped them from continuing to deliberately ‘prestige’ certain features which wouldn't be difficult to standardise across the board comparatively cheaply, such as full-frame sensors, though models such as the Nikon D750 do start to address it.

The evolution of camera technology continues, the question is can you get off the bus? The model for DSLRs is the professional sports/wildlife camera, and all other DSLRs follow in its wake. The rationale for mirror-less cameras is the compact candid camera. You can use both for either, but design criteria follows those two strands. There aren't many "serious" cameras that break those moulds. The Leica combines contemporary tech with a manual interface and old school ergonomics - at a price. Epson tried something similar but didn't persevere. Fuji nailed its colours to rangefinder forms but have been forced to diversify into SLR shaped cameras. Sigma made interesting unconventional cameras and the division nearly went broke. Smart phones are the only camera type to have changed things round successfully, the rest is drip feeding buffs a new page in an old story and claiming it's a re-write.

 

[markbarendt]

A moments reflection would insist the pejoratives in your post are driven by feeling, not an austere and disinterested desire for empirical truth.

Giggle, You suggested that a specific absolute conclusion had to be reached, that's simply false. Your ideas are among the possibilities but are by no means the only possible answer.

 

[blockend]

Giggle, You suggested that a specific absolute conclusion had to be reached, that's simply false. Your ideas are among the possibilities but are by no means the only possible answer.

If parsimony is a guide, the admission of qualia as more than smoke from the machine is unavoidable. You only have to look at the curled lips of materialist spokespeople to conclude what they say and how they feel are barely on speaking terms.

 

[markbarendt]

If parsimony is a guide, the admission of qualia as more than smoke from the machine is unavoidable. You only have to look at the curled lips of materialist spokespeople to conclude what they say and how they feel are barely on speaking terms.

I'd say your guessing about the feelings of others and that is a notoriously tough job.

Good luck with that.

 

[blockend]

I'd say your guessing about the feelings of others and that is a notoriously tough job.

Good luck with that.

Unless you're a solipsist, it's a straightforward enterprise of deduction. I'm a robot, hear me rage is not a position I take seriously.

 

[Dan Pavel]

...but the lever is consciousness

IMO, we may not know exactly what consciousness is and how it appeared, but there only are a few possibilities.
It may be somehow written in our DNA code, case in which it's a matter of coding and the AI may rise to consciousness with the proper coding.
It may have spontaneously arise as a consequence of the complexity of the structure of our brains, at some level. In this case nothing stops it to arise in AI as well with the the rapid growth of complexity.
It may be a natural characteristic of the fabric of reality, present everywhere in nature at different, undetectable levels and it's somehow magnified in the living creatures. In this case it should be present in AI as well and it could be amplified by future scientific discoveries.
It may be inspired by God and given to us alone. Therefor we may never know what it is, if that's God will. In this case the consciousness may never arise in AI if God doesn't want it.
I can't see other logical possibilities that can't be reduced to the above.

The conclusion should be, IMO, that the only case when AI may never be able to reach consciousness is the one involving God's will. Otherwise it's only a matter of time...

An interesting reading on the future of AI is "The Coming Technological Singularity" by Vernor Vinge, professor of mathematics at the San Diego State University:
https://edoras.sdsu.edu/~vinge/misc/singularity.html
He may be wrong in dating his predictions, but still interesting in his conclusions and analyses.

 

[blockend]

Consciousness is almost certainly a manifestation of reality, and living things have a window on that reality. I don't believe consciousness is confined to the head, or that a sufficiently complex set of wiring magically manifests conscious awareness. Emergence isn't even an explanatory hypothesis, it's a description that allows a particular world view to take itself seriously.

Here's an interesting talk on conscious experience:

 

[Dan Pavel]

Consciousness is almost certainly a manifestation of reality, and living things have a window on that reality.

That's my opinion, too. But how did this mirror appear? And why should/shouldn't be possible to appear in AI, too? Hence I included the code and complexity reasons of appearance hypotheses, to cover all the possibilities. The God will possibility, because it's impossible to scientifically prove true/false, cannot be excluded, but it's a dead-end leading to no conclusion.

 

[CMoore]

THAT Video...??
The guy got it all backward in the first Two Minutes.
Deep Sleep is THE ONLY time when your mind is fully functioning and experiencing life. What these "intellectuals" consider to be "Experience"...when a person is awake... is akin to a race car driver being judged by how well he keeps in line during a Yellow Flag safety lap.
To paraphrase a Shaman....."I was doing time in the universal mind. I was turning keys i was setting people free".
The only time your mind is awake is when YOU are asleep. Free now of space and time, to become, endlessly anything.
The ancients got it right. Earth is neither the beginning or the end, it is merely a stopping place in a giant chain of a much bigger "Reality".
Ever notice how you can dream 3 weeks worth of events in two hours of sleep.?
THAT is important.
It is like a 2 dimensional creature all of a sudden having something fall down on top of him, but he has no vocabulary to describe something coming from "Above".

 

[markbarendt]

IMO, we may not know exactly what consciousness is and how it appeared, but there only are a few possibilities.
It may be somehow written in our DNA code, case in which it's a matter of coding and the AI may rise to consciousness with the proper coding.
It may have spontaneously arise as a consequence of the complexity of the structure of our brains, at some level. In this case nothing stops it to arise in AI as well with the the rapid growth of complexity.
It may be a natural characteristic of the fabric of reality, present everywhere in nature at different, undetectable levels and it's somehow magnified in the living creatures. In this case it should be present in AI as well and it could be amplified by future scientific discoveries.
It may be inspired by God and given to us alone. Therefor we may never know what it is, if that's God will. In this case the consciousness may never arise in AI if God doesn't want it.
I can't see other logical possibilities that can't be reduced to the above.

The conclusion should be, IMO, that the only case when AI may never be able to reach consciousness is the one involving God's will. Otherwise it's only a matter of time...

An interesting reading on the future of AI is "The Coming Technological Singularity" by Vernor Vinge, professor of mathematics at the San Diego State University:
https://edoras.sdsu.edu/~vinge/misc/singularity.html
He may be wrong in dating his predictions, but still interesting in his conclusions and analyses.

Welcome to the conversation Dan.

 

[Dan Pavel]

Thank you Mark!

 

[blockend]

That's my opinion, too. But how did this mirror appear? And why should/shouldn't be possible to appear in AI, too? Hence I included the code and complexity reasons of appearance hypotheses, to cover all the possibilities. The God will possibility, because it's impossible to scientifically prove true/false, cannot be excluded, but it's a dead-end leading to no conclusion.

If consciousness is primary, mind at large is indistinguishable from God. The problem with the God hypothesis is people bring preconceptions of what God represents. If I accept I'm conscious, and consciousness isn't epiphenomenal (illusory, smoke from the machine), then other forms of consciousness aren't a reach.

I don't believe machines will become conscious because they are man made. Even robots that make other robots are man made. I err towards idealism rather than Panpsychism.