Saturday, December 20, 2008

vision vs. touch/kinesthetics

I have long been perplexed at the obsession with so many AI folks with vision processing.

I mean: yeah, it's important to human intelligence, and some aspects of human cognition are related to human visual perception

But, it's not obvious to me why so many folks think vision is so critical to AI, whereas other aspects of human body function are not.

For instance, the yogic tradition and related Eastern ideas would suggest that *breathing* and *kinesthesia* are the critical aspects of mind. Together with touch, kinesthesia is what lets a mind establish a sense of self, and of the relation between self and world.

In that sense kinesthesia and touch are vastly more fundamental to mind than vision. It seems to me that a mind without vision could still be a basically humanlike mind. Yet, a mind without touch and kinesthesia could not, it would seem, because it would lack a humanlike sense of its own self as a complex dynamic system embedded in a world.

Why then is there constant talk about vision processing and so little talk about kinesthetic and tactile processing?

Personally I don't think one needs to get into any of this sensorimotor stuff too deeply to make a thinking machine. But, if you ARE going to argue that sensorimotor aspects are critcial to humanlike AI because they're critical to human intelligence, why harp on vision to the exclusion of other things that seem clearly far more fundamental??

Is the reason just that AI researchers spend all day staring at screens and ignoring their physical bodies and surroundings?? ;-)

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

anton webern

this mini-biography of composer Webern, from Rhapsody.com, is just too good ... such perfect dry humor w/ so much of the human condition in it...

"Doomed to total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference, he inexorably kept on cutting out his diamonds, his dazzling diamonds, of whose mines he had a perfect knowledge," said Igor Stravinski of Anton Webern. A member of the Second Viennese School, Webern's diamonds appear mostly in geometric twelve-tone technique and serialism, a compositional technique based on the manipulation of a set of musical elements, stemming from twelve-tone technique.

Born in Vienna in 1883, he was a dedicated pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, and, in one of his early tonal works, produced 1908's Passacaglia. He left tonality altogether with his songs of 1908-'09, though, and his instrumental pieces between1909-'14 were very short due to technical limitations on thematic development. The songs of 1910-'25 show a reintroduction of traditional formal patterns which prelude his late-career serialism. On September 15, 1945, during the occupation of Austria, he was accidentally shot and killed by an American Army soldier while smoking a cigar after curfew.

- Nate Cavalieri

arguments with thoughtless anti-transhumanists...

Some excerpts I've pasted for future reference from a very silly dialogue at

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=23400750&postID=9133136415007870265&page=1

that I uselessly got involved in... basically someone wrote an annoying blog post stating that transhumanists are fuckups because they're gripped by fear of death. A number of us transhumanists replied, to the great irritation of themselves and their followers.

*****

Hi,

I am one of the transhumanists mentioned in this post, and I wrote an article on open-source robotics for the first issue of H+. I'm an AI researcher aimed at creating human-level AI: see novamente.net, goertzel.org, opencog.org, singinst.org.

In your post you say What I don't like about transhumanists is the fact that they simply refuse to understand certain arguments of their opponents - like the idea, best advanced by Bernard Williams, about boredom not with the things of the world but with oneself, or, as Roger Scruton puts, the soul grows tired of inhabiting the body.

What I don't like is this sort of glib generalization about large groups of people. Transhumanism is not a cult any more than, say, democratism or spiritualism is a cult. There is a lot of diversity.

My father has sometimes expressed the attitude you cite: he's said he wouldn't want to live forever because life can be kind of a pain, and from his view, the finitude of human life gives it some of its meaning. That's fine for him, though it saddens me, and I hope he changes his attitude.

I have also explored Zen fairly deeply, and enjoyed its approach that experiencing the present moment is what is important, rather than focusing on thoughts of the past or future. From this perspective, whether I live forever or become transhuman or whatever is basically irrelevant: what's relevant is the depth of the Now I'm experiencing. The me who wakes up tomorrow morning will be a different guy anyway.

Having said all that, though, I remain a dedicated transhumanist, both in my attitudes and my actions.

It's not about the technology: in fact I too get a bit worn-out with quasi-fetishistic blurbs and glossy photos of shiny gadgets, though I appreciate their importance for marketing new ideas to the uninitiated.

It's about mind and experience: about the embracing of Becoming as well as Being ... about the feeling of becoming something more than I am now, something more than I can even conceive now. While doing my best to embrace each Now along the way.

No doubt many others will run out of curiosity and ambition, and choose death. That's OK. As for me, I'm not a quitter.

And it's also about suffering. Yes, as the Buddha said, "all existence is suffering" -- but Buddhists also do practical work to reduce suffering. Transhumanist technology can drastically reduce suffering among humans and other sentient beings.

I watched my grandfather die a few months ago, at age 92. Even if he would have chosen to die given the option not to, it's obvious he wouldn't have chosen to die in the manner he did. Dying in the midst of disease and dementia is part of the human condition, and it's a part that I feel an ethical duty to help us transcend, by enabling possibilities for living that are generally-human but not precisely legacy-human.

He also would have liked to transfer more of the understanding he'd gained during his life to me and his other family and friends. Transhumanist technology will enable this eventually.

So it's not just about living forever as a human, and it's not just about the possibility of transitioning to something far beyond humanity -- though both of these possibilities interest me intensely. It's also about drastically reducing the level of suffering of those who choose to remain generally-human but not precisely legacy-human.

Most likely some nonzero level of suffering is intrinsic to the condition of any generally-human-type being -- but I strongly suspect this level of suffering is far lower than what many of us currently experience ... even those of us with the good fortune to be living in the middle or upper classes in developed parts of the world.

The only intellectually and ethically respectable argument I have heard against the transhumanist perspective is that the development of transhumanist technologies could lead to grave dangers, perhaps even to the extinction of the human species.

I think this is a possibility that needs to be taken very seriously, and am pleased that organizations such as the Lifeboat Foundation and the Singularity Institute (both of which I'm involved with) exist precisely to understand these issues more fully.

However, my strong intuition is that the human race is facing a lot worse dangers than technologies that improve the mind and body. I'm a lot more worried about chemical and biological weapons, runaway nanotech, or good old fashioned nukes. In my view we will be far more able to wisely handle the risks of these other technologies we've developed, if we can improve the fundamental basis of our thought and judgment processes -- which means improving the human mind and body.

Susan B, in her comment, wrote

People think they want it, but really they don't. The fear is of old age and suffering, not death per se.

Give me a break, please! I am 41 years old and have been thinking hard about these topics for most of my life (while, yes, also conducting a normal life, with a successful career, 3 kids, a lot of travel, and various assorted other accomplishments and hobbies). I have read plenty of relevant literature and philosophy and theology and am aware of the various perspectives out there. I am not driven by naivete, and I am not driven by fear. I am driven above all by curiosity and a desire for more and more interesting, pleasurable, growth-inducing experiences. I'm not afraid of death, I just prefer it not to happen ... and I'm not afraid of remaining a legacy-human, but I would prefer a more interesting future if possible (and amazingly, it does seem this may be possible).

It is unfortunate (but typically human) for people to lampoon and summarily dismiss perspectives they have not thought-through carefully and do not deeply understand.

***********
Someone nicknamed Brit wrote:

I'm all for re-thinking concepts of the self, Guilio, I just don't see a replica as giving me immortality. I don't give a hoot if everybody, including the replica, thinks it's me.

Here's another thought experiment for you. (Assume for the purposes of the thought experiment that the science is all bona fide and you have complete confidence that the doctors can do what they say that can do, and that you like the idea of being rich).

You get an offer from a scientist: when you go to sleep tonight we’re going to kill you in a painless manner. But don't worry, we've backed up all your memories and personality onto a microchip. Eight hours after you die, we'll remove your body, upload the data into a new brain in an identical body and put it in your bed. The new brain will think it was you, and will think it just went to sleep - we'll erase the memory of this whole conversation. For doing this, we'll put £1million in your bank account every year from now on.

Do you accept?

Brit: not surprisingly, I would make the same choice as Giulio in the situation you mention.

This really comes down to philosophy of mind. So far as I can tell, "I" consists of a certain system of dynamic patterns, that happen at this time to be associated with a particular physical system (my body).

If my body were replaced by another physically-nearly-identical one, then the same system of dynamic patterns constituting "me" would be there.

Note that many of the cells in my body are dying and being replaced every minute.

Do you believe that your "I" is some sort of extraphysical soul that is attached to your current, particular body, and wouldn't reattach itself to the new body in your thought-experiment?

Or, do you believe that your "I" is somehow immanent in the small percentage of cells in your body (e.g. most neurons) that don't get turned over through natural biological processes?

What philosophy of mind does your attitude derive from? Or is your attitude more of a non-theoretical, instinctual bias/reaction?

****

(in reply to a comment by Max More, someone named Mildred wrote)

Max, let's face it; you will not be alive in 5250. I'm sorry you can't deal with that, but it's the reality.

Mildred: if it happens that Max and I don't live to 5250, we can certainly "deal with that." Not only in the sense that dealing with being dead is easy ... but also in the sense that we are both people who enjoy our lives in the here-and-now very much: so if either of us found out we were to die soon (in 5 minutes or 50 or 5000 years or whatever) we'd have no major regrets except not having more of life to enjoy.

However, I find your narrowmindedness and hubris somewhat absurd. How can you propose to know what's going to happen? Your way of thinking seems to be the same as the one that led people, 150 years ago, to say a man would never walk on the moon.

Not to mention: even in the 1960s when Ted Nelson suggested the Xanadu project, nearly all the pundits (let alone the common person) bloviated confidently that nothing like the Internet could ever exist. Yet, here you are, polluting it with your overconfidently pessimistic yabblings....

The mainstream media is now reporting that within decades biologists will be able to regenerate a Neanderthal from old DNA. I'm sure quite recently a lot of folks would have called that impossible too.

I regret the combination of genetics, upbringing and chance that has caused you to grow into a person with such a lack of imagination and vision. Too bad for you, my friend....

Monday, December 1, 2008

email about possible importance of differences btw empirically equivalent theories

> If two theories give identical predictions under all circumstances
> about how the real world behaves, then they are not two separate
> theories, they are merely rewordings of the same theory. And choosing
> between them is arbitrary; you may prefer one to the other because
> human minds can visualise it more easily, or it's easier to calculate,
> or you have an aethetic preference for it.
>
> --
> Philip Hunt,



However, the two theories may still have very different consequences
**within the minds of the community of scientists** ...

Even though T1 and T2 are empirically equivalent in their predictions,
T1 might have a tendency to lead a certain community of scientists
in better directions, in terms of creating new theories later on

However, empirically validating this property of T1 is another question ...
which leads one to the topic of "scientific theories about the sociological
consequences of scientific theories" ;-)

ben g