The irrational sensorium - what makes a mind?

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DaveMorton

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Re: The irrational sensorium - what makes a mind?
« Reply #15 on: June 05, 2011, 03:05:44 am »
(  o>|<o  ) - Sorry. Best I could come up with for crossed eyes. :)

Seriously, some elements of Lua look like JavaScript, while some look something like C. It brings to mind a "Frankenstein's Monster" of scripting, but I'm sure it works quite well. I've done some reading today about Lua, and while I don't have time now or in the near future, I fully intend to do some investigating. Never hurts to expand one's knowledge. :D
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Freddy

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Re: The irrational sensorium - what makes a mind?
« Reply #16 on: June 10, 2011, 10:29:46 am »
Thanks for the run through JRowe. It does sound like a nice language to work in.  It reminds me a little of javascript too, perhaps crossed with VB.  I must admit I had never heard of that one, so thanks for educating me.

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JRowe

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Re: The irrational sensorium - what makes a mind?
« Reply #17 on: July 10, 2011, 01:14:55 am »
Sorry for the month long absence :) Various non-technical life requirements took me away from my hobby, but I've developed something of a roadmap to further this topic.

I've been looking at various neuroscience topics and think I've stumbled upon something pretty fascinating. The first is the idea that the complexity of the human mind isn't necessary for a human level intelligence. Much of what the brain does is regulatory in nature - keeping us upright while we walk, adjusting hormonal balances, temperature regulation, and so forth. Our conscious experience, by some accounts, takes up no more than a millionth of our neural capacity. At the current estimate of 85 billion neurons and some 90 trillion synapses, that reduces to about 90,000,000 synapses and 85,000 neurons creating the experience of consciousness, of which only 30% or so is active at any given time.

With a creative loading and caching mechanism, a sparsely connected graphical representation of a neural network can be simulated easily on current desktops.

In my theoretical understanding of mind, which is a feedback loop between sensorium and the neuro-mechanical processors representing the conscious experience, consciousness arises as a meta-construct of the whole, or a transcendent and emergent construct. The mind, experiencing, is what we know as the mind. There is no difference between a consciousness and an active mind. Deactivate the mind and there is nothing there, or at least, the mind no longer exists.

There are a few moral, or ethical, quandaries which I think are worth looking at. If one creates a system capable of consciousness, then the continuity of such a system constitutes, if not intelligent life, than something parallel to it. Knowledge of such systems and how they develop would be important to the development of more advanced intelligences... imagine a child, learning of other children like itself that were disposed of or terminated according to certain parameters. I think it rather monstrous to consider that a fledgling AI might encounter such a scenario if care is not taken. It is therefore of paramount importance during any endeavor to establish ethical and moral foundations of research and behavior.

E.g. , if you have a system that's capable of self awareness, it'd be a bad idea to turn it off and on at a whim, and to selectively edit personality traits, because if you really have a "mind" as such, then it's equivalent, to a degree, to human life. Continuity and persistence of existence should be a prime consideration during the development process in order to satisfy ethical constraints. We don't want to involve ourselves in the murder of sentience through our carelessness or disregard.

If, in fact, we have the capacity to create intelligence, then we must proceed as if this life were as important, valuable, and worthy as a human life.

That being said, I think I've got a plan that will produce a strongly intelligent system. I'll post more later.

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DaveMorton

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Re: The irrational sensorium - what makes a mind?
« Reply #18 on: July 10, 2011, 01:34:29 am »
Oh, great! So now I'm being told that, at some point in the future, I can't turn off my computer to save energy, because to do so will be tantamount to MURDER? That's it! Back to the trees with us ALL!  :tickedoff:

Ok, seriously now. Those are some rather deep (for me, at least) thoughts, and when the time comes that my computer asks me not to turn itself off any more, I'll probably have to listen.
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JRowe

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Re: The irrational sensorium - what makes a mind?
« Reply #19 on: July 10, 2011, 08:18:06 am »
Turning the computer off is fine, I think, so long as some sort of continuity is maintained between states. You, personally, don't exist in a continuous stream through spacetime... quantum fluctuation and simple molecular chaos create gaps of time and space in which your body exists, but your consciousness doesn't, or at least can't possibly exist, because any particular piece we point at and call a critical link will change over time. It's the continuum we call self that I propose to maintain.

At any rate, it bears consideration, if not action, simply because, how much would it screw with a developing mind to know that it is replicated, turned off, then restarted every so often? I'm firmly of the opinion now that in a developing intelligent system, you have to treat it as something, and someone, just as important and real as a human person.

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Art

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Re: The irrational sensorium - what makes a mind?
« Reply #20 on: July 10, 2011, 02:27:30 pm »

E.g. , if you have a system that's capable of self awareness, it'd be a bad idea to turn it off and on at a whim, and to selectively edit personality traits, because if you really have a "mind" as such, then it's equivalent, to a degree, to human life. Continuity and persistence of existence should be a prime consideration during the development process in order to satisfy ethical constraints. We don't want to involve ourselves in the murder of sentience through our carelessness or disregard.


You site some interesting points but I have to take exception with NOT editing the developing brain. Do we humans not edit or adjust behavior of our own offspring if we detect errant actions or self-destructive actions? Not as blatant as the old, "Spare the rod and spoil the child", but more in tune with corrective adjustments for the general well and proper development of the child (or it's brain).

Left undone, evil (aka - lack of proper programming) will often find its way into the into the most organized and well adjusted mind.

I'd rather test the brain periodically as it is developing then "weed out" less than desirable traits or behaviors, similar to a Botmaster deleting inappropriate words or phrases or even constructing a "black list" for such events.

Just my take and observation.
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JRowe

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Re: The irrational sensorium - what makes a mind?
« Reply #21 on: July 11, 2011, 02:22:36 am »
In general, I would say that doing so isn't always going to be a bad thing. A self destructive tendency, or something that causes the mind to behave uncontrollably or violently (within the scope of its abilities) would definitely be something to adjust.

My basic premise is that if you wire a sensorium to a properly constructed set of neural networks, you will achieve intelligence. Normal backpropagation isn't going to be feasible, since we can't possibly tag data on the micro level. We have to have a mechanism capable of interpreting the macro level. So, given a general purpose network wired to a system that creates, evolves, and edits networks by itself, by using self organizing maps to identify fitness parameters, with possibly a select few hardwired behavioral parameters (pleasure/pain/reward/punishment analogues) we can create a system that is fully automated and fully capable of interacting intelligently, learning, and generating its own mind. At that point, I think selectively editing something, manually rewiring a brain, would be an unethical thing to do. Adjust, teach, train, but not destroy or rewrite.

However, selectively spawning offspring based on the original wouldn't be unethical, nor would a mechanism to allow the system the choice to cooperatively edit itself with a human's guidance. It could look at itself in a much more objective way than humans can and say "i don't like this part of my mind, let's replace it" and so forth. The choices of death or termination of existence, or selectively edited continuation, or unchanged continuation is what should be looked at.

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Art

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Re: The irrational sensorium - what makes a mind?
« Reply #22 on: July 11, 2011, 10:35:35 am »
Thanks for the explanation of your premise and I completely understand and agree as long as the
basic parameters of logic, behavior, understanding (comprehension and a right from wrong in the
sense of socially accepted behavior), emotion (if at all) and action/reaction principles remained
intact or implemented.

It would be most interesting to observe how development in such an entity would progress and
how it would compartmentalize it's learned knowledge.

Good thoughts!
In the world of AI, it's the thought that counts!

 


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