Kihbernetics - Network

Dec 18, 2024, 15:51

The other day while playing with the Mastodon unique "transfer to another server" feature I must have messed up something because I just realized that after I "returned everything to normal" there are only three followers of my account and selecting the "32 subscribers" tab returns a "Not found" response.
Well ...
Nice job Einstein🤪

Nov 20, 2024, 00:10

Do you agree?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQNAEec9W38

Nov 19, 2024, 15:47

"What persists exists" but do minerals really "evolve" the same way life does?
Is #evolution nothing more than #complexification?
Life evolves. So do minerals. How about everything else? | Science | AAAS
https://www.science.org/content/article/life-evolves-so-do-minerals-how-about-everything-else

Nov 07, 2024, 05:09

**Biological Exceptionalism** is the belief that only certain biological systems are uniquely capable of being conscious.
Three key elements grant them this ability:
1️⃣ They are alive and constantly struggling to maintain this unstable equilibrium state.
2️⃣ They construct internal models of their external environment and understand their place within it.
3️⃣ They create models (plans) for the solution of specific problems and can "run" internal "simulations" of multiple such models in their minds before selecting one for implementation.

Oct 29, 2024, 16:06

The "hard problem of consciousness" is characterized as the difficulty of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than unconscious.
If you regard #consciousness as a #state of #cognition, then there is no "hard problem" as only a tiny part of (top) cognitive processing is actually conscious.

Also, objections from analytic idealism that physicalism attempts to explain experiential qualities (the territory) in terms of physical quantities (the map) are wrong because it is the physical processes in the brain that make the territory and the map is made by the subjective experience of physical quantities (differences).

You can have multiple maps of the same territory.

Oct 10, 2024, 00:55

#Consciousness is a state of #Cognition. Cognition is a necessary condition for #Life, but consciousness isn't. Almost all cognitive processes are unconscious and will become conscious only when there are alternative options available requiring the conscious entity to exercise their #free_will and make a deliberate choice.

Making choices requires an #Environment where deliberation (competition) and #Selection can emerge. For unconscious living beings, the only available environment is the one external to them, where #Evolution happens. Conscious beings, in contrast, have also an additional *internal* #Learning environment where they can make deliberations and choose between competing alternatives more or less independently from what happens outside.

Sep 17, 2024, 02:11

‘To understand something is to stand under it, so that you may foster its development.”

Heinz von Foerster

Jul 28, 2024, 18:18

"#Information is a difference that makes a difference (G. Bateson, 1972, p. 315), and what it ‘‘does’’ or what it means is thus dependent on what is already in place and what alternatives are being distinguished."

(S. Oyama, 2000, p. 3)
https://www.dukeupress.edu/The-Ontogeny-of-Information/

Or, as more clearly defined in #Kihbernetics: #Information is the difference between the results of #Knowledge-based #Prediction (function A) and the #Perception (function B) of sensory inputs that will make a difference once integrated into a new knowledge #state of the dynamical (learning) system.

Jul 07, 2024, 17:19

This brilliant essay by Robert Lawrence Kuhn (@CloserToTruth) about the *landscape* of all the **theories of consciousness** is a highly recommended reading for anyone interested in such things.

https://closertotruth.com/news/a-landscape-of-consciousness-toward-a-taxonomy-of-explanations-and-implications/

Jul 07, 2024, 05:15

#HH_Pattee's *epistemic cut* implies that living organisms at the same time operate on two separate levels of description in complementary modes:

1️⃣ A rate-dependent, dynamic, mode governed by *universal, inexorable, and incorporeal* #laws of physics and chemistry, and

2️⃣ A rate-independent symbolic or linguistic mode of information processing, interpretation, and meaning governed by *local, arbitrary system* #rules

Jun 13, 2024, 06:13

Most theories of #consciousness start with #information while a proper way to address any neural theory of consciousness should be as a #control science because the primary function of the nervous system is not to process information but to control the body.

Most control is internal to the system, a distributed, analog, homeostatic ***unconscious*** #regulation 1️⃣ of essential internal variables that are keeping the body alive and well. None of the mechanisms on this level "cares" about what is happening outside of the body.

Only on the next level do we find the kind of information necessary for the rate-dependent negative #feedback_control mechanisms 2️⃣ keeping some *external* controlled variables within limits engaging (through the use of regulators) in performing whole-body actions (behavior) in the immediate environment. Those actions can be conducted either ***consciously or unconsciously***.

Finally, on the highest level, we have the rate-independent, open loop always ***conscious*** #governance 3️⃣ maintaining the long-term goals and providing stability and direction to the lower level of control that will plan, implement, and track the fulfillment of those goals.

Mar 06, 2024, 14:33

Even if you are gullible enough to believe LLMs are like brains, with their own 'minds', you must surely realize that they are 'brains in a vat'.
There are three ways one can take from here:
1️⃣ Use them as intelligence amplification tools;
2️⃣ Equip them with bodies;
3️⃣ Join them inside the vat.😏

Mar 06, 2024, 04:45

For David Chalmers, virtual reality is genuine reality, at least until lunchtime 😀

https://youtu.be/7s0SzcUnzZo?feature=shared&t=637

Mar 06, 2024, 04:25

A #representation is not something that can be found in an observer's mind. Representations are physical copies or models of the object they represent and they are all residing in the same domain external to the observer's mind.

According to #CS_Peirce, a #sign (the ***representation***) is something that brings its #interpretant (the #observer), into *the same sort of correspondence* (#state of mind) as the #object it stands for. Therefore, #information and #knowledge exist in a different domain internal to the system

#Representation = #Reproduction.

The representation can be a #copy, or the re-#production of the object using the same #substance the object is made of (e.g. a *carbon copy* of a page or a copy of a living cell). In contrast, a #model (a map) is the reproduction of the object's form in a different substance.

Unlike real (artisanal) art, the reproduction (copy) of "digital art" is indistinguishable from the original. In addition, what is usually referred to as the "digital copy" of a physical work of art, is, in fact, a digital *model* of the real object it represents.

Feb 17, 2024, 01:42

>Although the history of science and ideas is not my field, I could not imagine adopting Alfred North Whitehead's opinion that every science, in order to avoid stagnation, must forget its founders. To the contrary, it seems to me that the ignorance display ed by most scientists with regard to the history of their discipline, far from being a source of dynamism, acts as a brake on their creativity.

***On the Origins of Cognitive Science*** - *The Mechanization of the Mind*

by J-P Dupuy and translated by M. B. DeBevoise

*An examination of the fundamental role cybernetics played in the birth of cognitive science and the light this sheds on current controversies.*

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262512398/on-the-origins-of-cognitive-science/

Feb 05, 2024, 01:42

A Springer Open access book from @decidim

**Decidim, a Technopolitical Network for Participatory Democracy**

*Philosophy, Practice and Autonomy of a Collective Platform in the Age of Digital Intelligence*

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-50784-7

Jan 10, 2024, 17:15

The difference between a #Transformer and a #Transducer is that a *transformer* can re**form**ulate (modify the form) of the same substance, while a *transducer* can re**produce** the form observed in one kind of substance into the *same* form but in *another* type of substance. This kind of *reproduction* is usually called the #model.

Jan 07, 2024, 21:23

*Terrence W. Deacon* writes beautifully about this conundrum:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2022.0282#d7508913e1

I have a somewhat different position on his second statement, however.

I think there **is** a self that determines **how** the system responds to an external perturbation.

Jan 07, 2024, 21:04

Found it! 😎. It is called the
***Maximum Entropy Production Principle (#MEPP)***:

>The so-called maximum entropy production principle (MEPP) is known much less (even among specialists in physics of nonequilibrium processes). This antipode, as its name seemingly means, of Prigogine's principle has been overshadowed by its more famous twin. MEPP was independently proposed and used by several scientists throughout the 20th century when they dealt with general theoretical issues of thermodynamics and statistical physics or solved specific problems. By this principle, a nonequilibrium system develops so as to maximize its entropy production under present constraints.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0370157305004813

Jan 07, 2024, 20:39

A system doesn't ***feed*** on #order (or #negentropy) from the environment it has to ***create*** it.

You can't get your desk organized by just acquiring some order from the environment. You have to do some #work and use some of your #free_energy. Schrödinger admits as much: