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Re: Scary AI

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On 4/9/2025 3:53 PM, Chris wrote:

>>
>>    I'm not a scientific materialist. I regard it as a thoroughly
>> untenable way to look at the nature of experience. Science
>> can't accept mind or even life as such, because those things
>> can't be measured empirically.
> 
> I mean there is a whole field of science looking at life and has done for
> hundreds of years - biology - so that's an odd take.
> 

    Yes. Most people would think so. Yet the idea of mind
arising from matter is fairly new. We say that we recognize
mind and life, but what's studied empirically is just matter.
That's why the DSM is a book of symptoms. What's
schizophrenia? What's awareness? What's OCD? e describe
it as symptoms. If you display enough symptoms then
your insurance will pay for a happy pill prescription. More
recently we talk in terms of fMRIs and neurotransmitters.
But what science CAN theorize or know is limited to what it
can arrange a repeatable experiment for. Science can never
accept mind as such, or even life as such, because it can't
confirm them empirically. A biologist can describe a mouse
and tell us about its respiration and so on. They can also
describe the evidence for a dead mouse. But what is it that
maintains that unimaginably complex symphony of processes
that characterizes a live mouse? What is missing when the
mouse dies? We can't say. Why? Could there be some kind
of non-material essence that is life? Science must say no,
simply because such possibilities are outside of science's
purview.

>> But if you accept mind as
>> a something not arising from matter,
> 
> Where else would it arise from?
> 
   Some posit a soul. Christianity, for example. Hinduism
says there's something like a soul-self. The atman. Buddihsm
says there's awareness and mind, but the material world is
a projection of confusion. In other words, we're all God
dreaming, so to speak.


>>    That may seem odd at first, but look at what science posits:
>> Lots of atoms, over billions of years, accidentally ended up
>> as amino acids, then DNA, then complex, communal systems
>> of cells, which spend all of their energy on maintaining their
>> own integrity as distinct entities, which implies will. Yet it all
>> happened willy nilly. And the incredibly complicated balance that
>> maintains these living systems is also happening by accident.
> 
> None of what you describe is an "accident". We simply cannot fathom the
> power that billions of years has.
> 

   If there's no mind as such then the universe would have to
be an accidental soup of matter and energy. There are clearly
patterns that apply, but science must reject anything like
intelligent design or some kind of will. That would mean that DNA
can only be a preposterously unlikely accident.

>>     Further, if that's the case then we're
>> simply accidental bio-robots and thus have no capacity to
>> reflect on these things in the first place.
> 
> And yet we do and have done for millennia.
> 
    So says you. But if you believe you're a bio-robot, and that
mind arises from chemical reactions and electricity in the brain,
then how could you posit that you reflect? All apparent
thoughts would be merely Scrooge's "bit of mustard".
Interestingly, that's actually the current position of neuroscience.:
"Mind is what brain does." The comedy here is that these PhDs
haven't considered the implication that they're in no position
to think about it if that's true.

   That's not to say that science is a problem. It's very useful for
specific, relative situations. It tells us the boiling point of
water or the distance to NYC. But there's no objective
meta-context from which to observe the fundamental nature
of experience empirically. Science simply can't go there.
It's fatal flaw is that it can't know what it can't know, so it
tries to explain all.

   We feel certain of our take on reality. Yet we were also certain
during the dream before waking up this morning. That's the point
of the famous Taoist riddle: Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a
butterfly. Did Chuang Tzu dream he was a butterfly, or was it the
butterfly dreaming it was Chuang Tzu?

    On the surface that seems like a silly question, but if we
think about it, it's unknowable. We can't observe absolute reality
from an external vantage point. We only imagine that we do.

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Scary AI Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> - 2025-04-08 16:26 +0100
  Re: Scary AI "Alan K." <alan@invalid.com> - 2025-04-08 11:45 -0400
  Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-08 12:39 -0400
    Re: Scary AI Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> - 2025-04-08 19:07 +0100
      Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-08 14:45 -0400
        Re: Scary AI Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> - 2025-04-08 20:35 +0100
          Re: Scary AI jetjock <jetjock@unkown.com> - 2025-04-09 14:01 -0500
        Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-08 20:57 +0000
          Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-08 17:16 -0400
            Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-09 19:53 +0000
              Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-09 16:47 -0400
                Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-11 12:23 +0000
                Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-11 13:31 -0400
                Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-13 02:30 +0000
                Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-13 07:49 -0400
                Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-13 13:08 +0000
                Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-13 02:38 +0000
            Re: Scary AI Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.moc> - 2025-04-18 01:40 +0300
              Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-17 20:22 -0400
                Re: Scary AI Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> - 2025-04-18 02:12 +0000
                Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-18 06:44 +0000
                Re: Scary AI Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com> - 2025-04-18 14:34 +0300
      Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-08 20:46 +0000
        Re: Scary AI Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> - 2025-04-08 22:48 +0100
          Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-09 09:50 +0000
    Re: Scary AI occam <occam@nowhere.nix> - 2025-04-18 16:45 +0200
  Re: Scary AI Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> - 2025-04-09 05:29 +0200
  Re: Scary AI Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.moc> - 2025-04-18 01:02 +0300

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