Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

Yes, absolutely. All my own research says that is what it is. Really simple stuff too, just adding-up, although we are also carrying out transformations on the data. But it isn't only classic computation, or only computation within spacetime. If you are thinking about this from the perspective of present technology of some sort of silicon chip from today, forget it, that won't work. Neither will proposed quantum computers, for one, they don't have plasticity.

But I remain unsure about whether it's only computation, undoubtedly is mainly computation, but at times it seems their may be a reason to introduce some other type of tiny 'intrusion' to kick the thing off, something that lies between the symmetries. The alternative is just to say we're transforming from A -> B, and that this A -> B transformation is set (it's already happened - although that is in inaccurate expression), but we still have to go through the transformation.

It seems to me that the kind of complex evolutionary innovations concerned (intricate irreducibly complex machines) inherently required intentionality combined with mind, and you don't address my arguments that data processing cannot constitute mind. Look at some of the steps in the creative process as we know it:

Identification of the problem
Understand the problem using insight from collecting information
Achieve insight into a possible solution
Explore the prospective solution, implement, test and revise it into something workable

You apparently are suggesting that data processing bacteria or other cells having no intentionality can and did achieve creative problem solutions. If not by the above means, please specify by what means.

Well I had a stab at explaining this a couple of years ago on skeptiko, I'll just paste it below again...


I wrote about this again here on Skeptiko... and I'll quote a bit of it...

"I've rushed off a very simplistic diagram from the perspective of an observer, showing coherent interference (quantum) with themselves. The idea was to try and show using a 2D circular representation of space-time, how just simple stronger summed (coherent) patterns over space-time could allow the organism to move forward in a better direction - rather like the needle of a compass points north.

The organism isn't necessarily testing every future degree of freedom, it's simply summing over time (processing over time) and the most frequent (strongest) pattern is influencing it's future direction. In this case (all being equal) the orange square pattern has the most influence on the organism, and it takes this path.

The observer is simply decoding the system into space-time, it's way of understanding how to manipulate it, and learn, and then encoding it again in the system until it's next observation."

As shown by the bolded, you are presupposing at the start what is being attempted to be explained (some of the properties of mind), and for creativity adding quantum computing to the mix.

And the American Psychology Association published Transcendent Mind in 2016

This book looks as if it may be extremely interesting, but it is rather out of my price bracket! I am wondering if anyone here intends to read it.

There is another book with the same title by Sunita Pattani, so don't confuse the two. Here is an interview with Sunita Pattani, which looks worth listening to.

https://vimeo.com/185173637

[Ninshub]

This book looks as if it may be extremely interesting, but it is rather out of my price bracket! I am wondering if anyone here intends to read it.

Sciborg posted here an interview with one of the authors. It does indeed look interesting - and so is the interview:

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...aru%C5%A1s

Yes, absolutely. All my own research says that is what it is.

Hey - I hadn't realised you were a researcher in this field - do you have a list of papers?

I agree with this, but I'm not sure how it addresses Max's points?

Is the idea that "processing" which Max refers to is computation, and this suggests a top-down influence from a mental entity since computers are, as Calasso put it, prosthetics to the Mind[?]

Yes, I think the origin of the sort of biological systems being discussed necessitates not only intelligence such as in machine intelligence (as apparently being suggested by Max B), but crucially, mind and intentionality and the creativity that can only come from these things, which are properties of a sentient mental entity or entities. I can only repeat my response to Max B:

"It seems to me that the kind of complex evolutionary innovations concerned (intricate irreducibly complex machines) inherently required intentionality combined with mind, and you don't address my arguments that data processing cannot constitute mind. Look at some of the steps in the creative process as we know it:

Identification of the problem
Understand the problem using insight from collecting information
Achieve insight into a possible solution
Explore the prospective solution, implement, test and revise it into something workable

You (Max B) apparently are suggesting that data processing bacteria or other cells and/or their organelles (having no mind or intentionality) can and did achieve creative problem solutions. If not by the above means, please specify by what means."

Computation is inherently absolutely never "about" anything other than itself, that is, the computation itself. And that computation is just internal mapping: input to output according to an algorithm — irrespective of the input. A simple example is a word-processing program, blind to the meaning conveyed by the letters typed into it. The word processor doesn’t know or care about the meaning in the text typed into it. The photo image processing program uploads and processes picture data from a digital camera - it certainly doesn't care whether the pictures are of a trip to France or of your grandma or of your kid’s school play.

Computation is never about anything; it is non-intentional. The mind is the mind in part because it’s always about something. It’s intentional. Computation is the opposite of the mind. If it is computation, it is not mental. If it is mental, it is not computation.

Maybe one way to approach this, is to think of the two cases - digital and analogue computation.

Digital computation (the usual case) can and is broken down into very simple steps - load this, add that, compare this with that, (conditionally)transfer control to some other location, etc. Clearly at that level there is not a shred of intention, or interest, or awareness. What we normally call computation is just a heap of a few tens of thousands of steps like that, executed millions of times! Can we just magically ascribe awareness or comprehension to a heap of things like that?

Analogue computation isn't commonly used now, but really it is a collection of circuits (or some other physical system) that follow the same set of equations as the thing you are trying to study. You could use an electronic damped oscillator to mimic (i.e. compute future states of) a pendulum, for example. However, the link between the circuit and the pendulum would only exist in the human mind - not in the equipment.

The joke is that materialists normally scoff at anthropomorphic statements - "my computer doesn't understand me", and yet ultimately they try to derive the human mind from computation!