Thread: Trinity and the holy nothingness of 0

Originally Posted by S33k3R

I wonder...are the thought processes of other creatures linear, or fragmented and conflicting like ours, (No wonder my cat looks so damded smug and happy all the time).

In my opinion, what sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is consciousness. We are life being conscious of itself. Certainly there are other animals that have some idea of themselves and of being alive (gorillas, dolphins), but in no way does it come near to a humans abilitly to be aware of his surroundings. Other animals seem much more programmed, and I would call that program instinct. Most of their action is based on instinct, a body of knowledge, a way of behavior that has been created and modified to fit new situations over millions of years. To a certain extent the same goes for humans, but we have the abilitly to be aware of it (and change it?), where as I doubt most other animals do.

I disagree. I feel you are dividing two aspects of one and the same instinct, which I would call fear, and if you want to get more specific fear of death. There is no animal that I know of that is without it. You may even consider it the most important instinct for an animals survival, because if that wasn't the case all other instincts would be debunked. Hunger, thirst, sexual drive, could all be traced back to a fear of death, or the desire to continue living. The whole of an animals life(including our's) is based on prolonging life as long as possible.

So often do humans react without thinking in situations of life and death.

Originally Posted by Vir Sapiens

Ahh but does not the realization of one's mortality indicate a level of self awareness? In essence it follows this line of questioning; Can I die? Yes I can. Do I want to die? No I do not. If I can die I must therefore be alive and if I am alive I exist. Granted I'm not saying that animals talk to themselves but I think a basic self awareness is necessary for any survival instinct to manifest. The very notion of said instinct indicates a sense of self. If you discount instinct as an indicator of self awareness and only account for concious I think therefore I am thought processes then our self awareness is a result of socialization and not anythig inherent to our make up as human beings. Taking that a step further all that makes us human and unique is not in our DNA or our make up ,but is a learned behavior and if it is a learned behavior it is not by definition unique to us. Taking that one more step further then a new born infant would have to be considered on the same level as a cat which I think most people would have a hard time swallowing.

I agree with you. There is certainly a degree of self-awareness in other animals, and I think I had said so in my initial post. But, I would not go so far as to say that self-awareness came first, and then came the instinct. In my opinion it was the other way around. A prerequisite for the developement of a survival instinct would be a threat to survival. I feel that a degree of self-awareness definately benefits any attempt to survive, and that it was a much later developement based on the evolution of the animal kingdom as a whole into a system structured around a food chain.

And, take plants for example. They demonstrate efforts to protect their livelyhoods(thorns, etc), and as far as we can tell lack any awareness at all.

Can you get a little more indepth on how self-awareness might develop out of socialization? I am intrigued.

Originally Posted by zoomare

Can you get a little more indepth on how self-awareness might develop out of socialization? I am intrigued.

The philosophy that for every thing that knows you, there is a different you. (this includes your mom, a dog on the street, a bird, some group of teenagers at starbucks)

Mathematically it would look something like this, its very linear.

mom = you are my son, I love you
cat = he is a man, he can feed me
teenagers = he is a stranger, his hat looks funny

This is the philosophy that your soul, and every thing that you are, is represented by what others think of you. You hold a view of what "You" are. Your mother holds a view of what "You" are. Your self image is different than another's image of you. In essence, the more people, things and beings that you know and have interacted with via conversation or glancing eye contact on the street, you are a jewel of souls. Each opinion or view is different, some remain the same while others are opposite of your personal view of self.

Its a hard concept to grasp, and its not very pragmatic at all. Its an interesting notion though.

Allow me a little quotation here:

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

D.H Lawrence

I suspect the difference between man and animal lies implicit in this quote. An antelope will go down struggling to a lion...fighting to the last...aware of its situation and whats about to happen, (although I wonder if or how they conceptualize death), but it will never ask itself "why me?"

Thats a human thing

Good point about the wild children though. I could only imagine that they would ask "why me" if they were aware of a better way of living. Once they were re-integrated into normal society, they might well sit down one day and be angry at what happened to them. Animals can't do that...an abused dog will always come back to its abuser master.

However, even the wild children might sit and stare at the stars with a sense of wonder, curiosity in humans is much stronger than animals and I think that this had an important role to play in our development.

It alls comes down to the ability to question the status quo.

Originally Posted by S33k3R

This comes as a result of a conversation I was having in another thread here… Artificial Human Companions

We were chatting about Artificial intelligence and computers which got me to thinking about trying to express the human condition in terms of software and programming logic. This is of course what the whole AI trip is about. By achieving true AI mankind will have had to look at himself and come to grips with what makes him fundamentally different and unique, and then replicate that electronically.

Before I go further, I should probably qualify myself…I don’t know much about computer programming or fuzzy logic or any of that, (I have a basic appreciation and a bit of Python..thats it). But for the purposes of this conversation, I don’t really have to. It’s a more of an abstract thought experiment. If however you feel that you want to show your wizardry of programming in a fashion that could de-rail the thread…please go to Slashdot. I’m sure they will be sympathetic.

In very broad terms, computer programs are made up of 1’s and 0’s…on/off…yes/no…up/down. If something is such and such then the next thing is so and so, very deterministic. As far as the human condition is concerned, at lot of our actions are predictable and pre-determined knee jerk reactions to everyday common events, (it saves time thinking about whether you REALLY want a Coke or a Pepsi...you just take what you got yesterday), or as a result of some environmental influence, (your Sister likes Pepsi…you hate your sister so you take a Coke..whatever). For such situations, binary (1’s and 0’s) is cool, no hassle…if this..then that. Assuming all variables are known and catered to. I’m sure that one day soon some geek will sit down and re-create the character of his dead poodle in binary…and he’ll probably make a fortune doing it.

But what of free will? How do we code free will into an AI entity…can we?…do we want to?
What happens when we stop and really think about getting a Coke or a Pepsi, how do we make a choice?
I suppose only those who are interested in free will, (or believe in the concept of it) will find this of interest.

One of the concepts that came up in the other discussion was “Trinary” programming as opposed to “Binary”. Trinary, (actually called ternary Logic for those that care), uses 3 “places” instead of 2… 1 for “yes”, 2 for “no” and a third place..0 for “unknown, irrelevant or both”. In other words…uncertainty.

The funny thing about uncertainty is its association with choice…you have to be uncertain about something in order to make a choice. I don’t mean choosing between a set of pre-determined outcomes…looking at a menu in a restaurant has an element of choice, but not true free will…if you really feel like lobster Thermador and it aint on the menu…your screwed.

Coming back to creating true humanlike AI, one would probably have to look at employing a non-deterministic architecture, (like Ternary logic), and weave in this “uncertainty” to make any headway in replicating the vagaries of the human condition. This is all groovy, but the question that really bugs me is:

Why?

Why would we need the 0?….From where does this uncertainty arise?…what would precipitate the uncertainty that would necessitate a 0?

I find it fundamentally unsettling to think that the human condition can be expressed as the ability to say “How the hell should I know if I want chicken or beef...” and truly not know what you feel like.

So what do you all recon…binary is all that’s needed to understand the machinations of the human mind…or we require that funny little nothing in the middle to make us complete?

I should probably give credit to Sapiens Vir for getting me to thinking about expressing humanity as 1’s and 0’s. Thanks…I think.

so how do you program an AI to have a free will ???? progam it so it can learn on its own... make it able to understand and comprehend and there you go u have an AI with free will... the difficult part is that no one succeded to make an AI like that.

Originally Posted by Vir Sapiens

Well I base it more on the "wild children" phenomenon. There have been a few rare cases where children, in their formative years, have been socialized by animals. Not necessarily that the animals actually took care of them , but more that they didn't eat them and the children more or less tagged along after them learning by watching and taking whatever scraps of food they could find. In the end the children were more akin to animals than humans mentally speaking, so taking your original assertion that animals do not posess the same level of self awareness as humans and applying it to this then any human being that is mentally an animal will not have the same level of self awareness. That being said then the only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that our level of self awareness is a result of our socialization, the process for that having been explained above by SWM rather neatly I think.

But, isn't there the oportunity to "re-socialize" the "wild-child", and have him adapt to human society, and become a human as we know them? Where as, with a wolf for example, you can never expect it to learn how to function as an active member of a human society.

So, there seems to be a difference, and although socialization plays a major role in the development of human consciousness, humans have the inborn potential to develop it. Therefor it is not socialization alone.

zoomare acording to my opinion you are wrong. animals can be part of human society. the problem is lack of understanding. meaning we cant understand their language as they cant understand ours. and yes animals are less evolved when it comes so self-awareness. you know how animal trainers train animals ? with gesticulations, and after that they teach the animals to obey the vocal commands. meaning that animals have the potential to learn as good as humans. and like i said. there is a lack of vocal comunication between humans and animals. the problem is that we prefer vocal comunication (languages). if one is to try to teach an animal something one is to teach it via gesticulations.

I might further point out that wolves themselves are incredibly social creatures, with rather a complicated social hierarchy.

I'm no expert, but I would imagine the factors in determining the hierarchy are things like brute strength, big teeth and fertility.

Suffice to say that the more evolved human social structures are a bit more complex...but success and fertility still play a massive role.