Friday 29th of March 2024

animal intelligence versus beliefs...

animal intelligence

If scientific method is only one form of a general method employed in all human inquiry, how is it that the results of science are more reliable than what is provided by these other forms? I think the answer is that science deals with highly quantified variables and that it is the precision of its results that supplies this reliability. But make no mistake: Quantified precision is not to be confused with a superior method of thinking.

I am not a practicing scientist. So who am I to criticize scientists’ understanding of their method?

I would turn this question around. Scientific method is not itself an object of study for scientists, but it is an object of study for philosophers of science. It is not scientists who are trained specifically to provide analyses of scientific method.

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/opinion/there-is-no-scientific-method.html

 

Gus: James Blachowicz makes an interesting point, but let's not fool ourselves. the Scientific Method, whatever it is based upon or not, poetry or metaphysics, is relying on results of repeatable observations and experiments in our specified environment. All other philosophical adventures in metaphysics are not. Religions are not even close to processes of nature and are a total misunderstanding, sometimes deliberate, of what is. 

All we are doing in our quest here is dealing with stylistic interpretations of "life" and science is mighty close to explaining the process. What metaphysics are trying to do is to give us a reason for the process. May as well throw darts in the dark to an imagined but non-existent target.

This desire to apportion reason, especially to a godly creation or others through metaphysical ideas, is anchored in our misunderstanding of whom we are. We prefer to be fallen superior beings with hope of being accepted in sublimation forever than being emerging monkeys. It's understandable, but overall this delusion is limiting our potential scope. The non-acceptance of religious beliefs should be our priority in order to liberate ourselves from fear of being failures in search of redemption. This non-acceptance of beliefs would give us a better grounding to scientifically manage our relationships with other humans, with other creatures and with the universe , including the small planet we call Earth. 

The next step here is to understand chaos. That is to say that two monkeys are not the same monkey twice. Not even Polly the sheep is the same sheep twice — or thrice, with more duplication. Spacial experience even tells us the "same cat" is in two places at once or may not be there (sorry I am super-shortening a massive complex quantum concept here). This is the crux of the building blocks of the universe and our interpretations should not be reductionist nor metaphysical. But our limited peanut brain demands simplicity when simplicity is not an explanatory option. We crave the simpletonariat, like the idea of god. Science cannot provide this.

At this level, the idea of god is a complete reductionist view of the universe by excellence. But it is wrong. 

What is missing in a lot of these metaphysics and transcendental studies is our animality. Pain and contentment are born from the evolution of living matter. Emotions and thoughts are part of this evolution of pain and of basic contentment. So what does this mean? It means that because we have too much free time, we do navel-gazing and we become afraid to be a one-off sample with a limited shelf-life. So we invent spirits and eternity that we suck on like babies in nappies suck on dummies. No food but only the illusion of food.

Enters Artificial Intelligence.

Enters the next. AI has the potential to change the ball game and there are some people with serious reservation about it. Here when we create AI, we define a new paradigm where pain and and contentment do not define the survival purpose. The mechanics of AI use the complex order of chaos.

Comes John Battelle, Founder, EIC, CEO, NewCo, on LinkedIn:


“It’s hard to imagine anything more amazing and positively impactful than successfully creating AI,” writes Greg Brockman, the founding CTO of OpenAI. But he continues with a caveat: “So long as it’s done in a good way.”

Indeed. But who determines what is good? We are just now grappling with the very real possibility that we might create a force more powerful than ourselves. Now is the time to ask ourselves — how do we get ready?


This has been the grand theme of the Terminator movies. Here the science fiction travels in time to "save" humanity from the machines. But in real sciences, we have to learn to live with AI in real time.

Though AI can be a powerful tool, how far can we let it take over our own decision-making and our own decided purpose? We have changed a lot of things since the industrial revolution. We now have machines that perform menial tasks far better than our slaves. But we have become secondary units to the maintenance (or replacement of washing machines when they go bung) of the robots, with less and less prospect of employment when our robots can self-repair or call for the repair robot themselves. The evolving game is what's in it for us? Are we destined to a life-long of uninterrupted leisure, while we need to restructure our ways to collect cash to improve this personal and collective entertainment. Will we become so lazy as to become blobs of no importance? We already are only important to ourselves. Blobs?

According to the law of chaos, some of us will, some of us won't. Let's hope that we would still manage to make an educated choice. To be a blob or not to be a blob? We are already half-way there with obesity and lack of curiosity, beyond a few peanuts, becoming chronic.

There will be good and bad, as usual. Perfection cannot exist in a transforming universe. Transformation of space, time and energy forbids perfection. Perfection cannot transform.

 

 

Gus Leonisky

You local soup kitchen atheist.

 

 

al — the sadistic computer of the 2001 space odyssey...

 

One of the most intriguing public discussions to emerge over the past year is humanity’s wrestling match with the threat and promise of artificial intelligence. AI has long lurked in our collective consciousness — negatively so, if we’re to take Hollywood movie plots as our guide — but its recent andvery real advances are driving critical conversations about the future not only of our economy, but of humanity’s very existence.

In May 2014, the world received a wakeup call from famed physicist Stephen Hawking. Together with three respected AI researchers, the world’s most renowned scientist warned that the commercially-driven creation of intelligent machines could be “potentially our worst mistake in history.” Comparing the impact of AI on humanity to the arrival of “a superior alien species,” Hawking and his co-authors found humanity’s current state of preparedness deeply wanting. “Although we are facing potentially the best or worst thing ever to happen to humanity,” they wrote, “little serious research is devoted to these issues outside small nonprofit institutes.”

That was two years ago. So where are we now?

Insofar as the tech industry is concerned, AI is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed. Which is to say, the titans of tech control most of it. Google has completely reorganized itself around AI and machine learning. IBM has done the same, declaring itself the leader in “cognitive computing.” Facebook is all in as well. The major tech players are locked in an escalating race for talent, paying as much for top AI researchers as NFL teams do for star quarterbacks.

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See also:

 

James Blachowicz is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago and the author of “Of Two Minds: The Nature of Inquiry” and “Essential Difference: Toward a Metaphysics of Emergence.”


FINALIST – 2015 John N. Findlay Award in Metaphysics, presented by the Metaphysical Society of America
Proposes a new way of understanding the nature of metaphysics, focusing on nonreductionist emergence theory, both in ancient and modern philosophy, as well as in contemporary philosophy of science.

 

 

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)

 

rechtwijzer to become solomon...

An artificial intelligence platform, called Rechtwijzer, could soon give lawyers in Australia a run for their money by being called on in legal battlegrounds like divorce, custody, employment and debt disputes.

Key points:

  • Program has been moved into debt and tenancy issues in Canada
  • Netherlands have working system for family law issues, resolution of child support
  • Mr Warner says it is more than just a robot, can handle sensitive cases
  • Works as an affordable alternative for those who cannot afford a lawyer

National Legal Aid and RMIT University are showcasing Dutch technology that could make time-consuming and expensive court conflict a thing of the past.

The technology would be similar to eBay's dispute resolution service that helps people log on, rather than lawyer up.

The dispute resolution robot was born in the Netherlands and can mediate everything from divorces, tenancy disputes, and employment, debt and consumer matters.

For custody matters, for example, it will ask the ages of the children to be sensitive to their development needs.

It remembers who you are and gives proposals based upon predictive results on what other people have achieved in the resolution when they come to separate.

Rechtwijzer 'empowers people in their legal dispute'

Bevan Warner, from Victoria Legal Aid, said the Dutch technology, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning, had already been snapped up in the UK and Canada.

In Canada the program had been moved into debt and tenancy issues, and in the Netherlands they have a working system for family law issues and resolution of child support.

And Mr Warner said the program was more than just a robot and could handle those types of sensitive issues.

"So, the system works by moving people into the care of a trusted adviser, so referral to an online mediator, when they need it," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-06/robot-lawyers-dutch-conflict-resolution-technology-on-its-way/7572488

relative confirmation...

 

 

I decided to write an email to Jim Blachowicz, with the post at top below the toon, just to express a few more ideas on the subject of sciences and "the" scientific method.

Those who follow my loony blogs would know by now that I am strongly involved in VARIED "scientific methods" while being fully aware that sciences is only a position of understanding without certainty but with relative confirmation. I say here varied, because I rarely try to follow the same route to get to the same conclusion. I practice chaos like some people do meditation. Scientists always reassess their views according to new discoveries — some of these, they are looking for and some they get by pure luck, but pathways (or methods) are often based on previous experiences or "educated guesses" on where to look. I deal in uncertainty.

Say I start with the simple observation that if I cut my finger, I feel pain. But then despite the cut being still there, the pain tends to go away after a while, unless there is a change of status in the original cut. Things become more complex once the scientific mob study "where pain comes from", and what makes it disappear. There is a reasonably confirmed theory that once the brain (the nervous system) has alerted us to a problem, it will "eradicate" or "tone down" the message with self-made opiates. 

Sadism for example will be a method (moral or not) used by someone else to prevent the opiate from being effective by changing the status of the wound (mental or physical). Here we enter the realm of relationships — good or bad. There no such things as a separate being like evil trying to nasty. We are animals versus animals — and some of us become addicted to see others suffer. This evolutionary process is complex and can involve beliefs in the supernatural. At this stage, on this planet, the "supernatural" is a delusion. 

Scientists know they can be somewhat deluded until confirmation of hypothesis by repeatable results — which are often nothing more than a specific scattering of statistics with a range of precision defined by scientists themselves according the the subject studied. For example no one has "seen" a Higgs boson. Its existence is only 99.999 per cent "confirmed" by very rigourous statistical analysis.

There is a lot of trials in "trial & error method" and a lot of failure to confirm where we're at.

As Blachowicz explains in his thesis, which upon examination appears to be a solution in search of a problem, there are different ways to do things. To put it in a more satirical way, it appears to me that Jim is an academic trying to justify his existence as a philosopher, when science is walking on his turf. And this is fair enough but it lacks a bit of oxygen.

Jim's introduction (extract) to Scientific Method: A Philosopher’s Perspective

This paper examines, from the point of view of a philosopher of science, what it is that introductory science textbooks say and do not say about ‘scientific method’. Seventy introductory texts in a variety of natural and social sciences provided the material for this study. The inadequacy of these textbook accounts is apparent in three general areas: (a) the simple empiricist view of science that tends to predominate; (b) the demarcation between scientific and non-scientific inquiry and (c) the avoidance of controversy—in part the consequence of the tendency toward textbook standardization. Most impor- tantly, this study provides some evidence of the gulf that separates philosophy of science from science instruction, and examines some important aspects of the demarcation between science and non-science—an important issue for philosophers, scientists, and science educators.


I know a lot about breaking the barrier between sciences and other disciplines which are non-scientific. Apart from rambling on this blog, I am presently working on such a big project, mostly designed to enthuse people about sciences towards the elimination of dogmatic beliefs, while still having room to move with IMAGINATION. Big brief.

Sciences is not easy. Sciences is complicated because the... subjects of the studies are very complex. From my first email with the blog at top, I got from Jim (James) a standard response to "his critics" which is slightly disappointing.

I was not criticising. But the response shows I don't deserve to understand the philosophy of science. My apology to the readers who thought I did. This is why I replied. First the response by Jim:

----------------------------

Dear Mr. Leonisky,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Below I will append my general response to all who have emailed me.

Jim Blachowicz
************

To all those who took the time to respond to my piece on scientific method:


The title was indeed meant to provoke discussion, although many who jumped in didn't note the qualification in the 2nd paragraph: “So saying ‘There is no scientific method’ is a little misleading: more precisely, it should be qualified as ‘There is no distinctively scientific method.’”



At the very least, I could have italicized “Scientific” in the title to forestall misunderstanding. This was my fault, not the editor’s, who proposed instead “Maybe There Is No Scientific Method.”

Philosophers of science wouldn't have spent centuries trying to understand the nature of scientific inquiry if they didn't find it important, fascinating and effective (me included: I was a double major as an undergrad: physics and philosophy). I should probably add that I strongly oppose creationist and other ideological bents that just don’t want certain scientific findings to be true (e.g., global warming). 


The fact that a scientist skillfully practices scientific inquiry doesn't mean that he/she can articulate what this is. The fact that I can skillfully speak English doesn't mean I know its grammar. Scientists analyze natural phenomena, but as I said in my essay, scientific method is not one of the phenomena that scientists analyze. 


So scientists provide the data (their inquiry IS the data) for those, like philosophers of science, whose job it is to provide a theory of the nature of scientific method.


But suggesting that the method science uses is its exclusive property is an inflationary claim that doesn't serve science well. If you still think the language of “proof,” “verification” and “falsification” are appropriate components of this method, I would ask that you look at my paper How Science Textbooks Treat Scientific Method: A Philosopher’s Perspective. 
http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/2/303.full.pdf?keytype=ref&ijkey=B09bBKC3QeU9lzp 
This is an empirical (!) analysis of what 70 science textbooks have to say about scientific method. Pretty much everything is covered (and in accessible language). 


The point of comparing science to poetry was to focus on what it is that is common to any systematic attempt to move from a experiential level of knowledge to a more conceptual level. We do this in the scientific explanation of empirical phenomena; but we also find it, for example, in the poetic (or artistic) expression of experience, in articulating a principle of law that is initially only intuited, in devising social, political and philosophical theories, and in such seemingly simple acts as “saying what we mean” (which may well be quite challenging). 


Each of these diverse efforts at articulation also involves “testing” proposed articulations against the experience that we seek to articulate, and an intelligent editing in response to error. (This is quite complex – something I could not get into in the Stone piece. My book Of Two Minds: The Nature of Inquiry provides the complete story.)


I never supposed that a subjective experience that an individual had articulated was somehow as reliable as a scientific observation (or set of observations, all reproducible). 


As for “quantitative precision” and a “superior method.” The former is not to be taken lightly! Science is unmatched in this regard. It’s much of the reason we trust it. Yet this doesn’t mean that the heart of the “method” science uses is not also used in other productive inquiry. A good argument can be made that observation, hypothesis formation, prediction and testing, reproducibility and, most importantly, responses to testing (tentative confirmation, tentative falsification, and intelligent correction of hypotheses) are all found in all these other areas of inquiry as well. 

In this respect, this method is shared. In claiming that scientific method is not a superior method of thinking, I am not demeaning science, but trying to give the productive inquiry we find in non-scientific areas the respect it’s due.                         

One last point: Those who have simply dismissed philosophy (and poetry and other non-scientific areas of inquiry and expression) like Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and others, do so without giving any evidence that they’ve ever worked through what they’re criticizing. Scientists become very sensitive when their work is criticized by those who know very little about scientific inquiry. This is a two-way street. If you are unwilling or unable to work through challenging philosophical theories (including theories of scientific method), it would be inadvisable, wouldn’t it, to simply dismiss it all. Where’s the objectivity here?


Some of you recommended I read Karl Popper, who championed a falsificationist method. Please see my essay: “Elimination, Correction, and Popper’s Evolutionary Epistemology,” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 9: 5-17, or pp. 100-108 of my book Of Two Minds: The Nature of Inquiry for a criticism.


Thanks again for your comments. It’s been an education.


Jim Blachowicz


-------------


Here is my reply email:

Hi James

Thanks for your response. I was not criticising your piece but hopefully added my personal "two bobs" to it. I mix a lot of disciplines, intuition, rightly or wrongly, satire, manual labour and art, including cartoons, in a lot of what I do.

One thing I rarely see in the philosophical context I come across is the mention of the "animal" intelligence of humans — an entity often mistaken for instincts — and that can often be destroyed (or badly modified) by beliefs. My childish curiosity and Chaos (in a scientific/mathematical fashion) come in to streamline my steps, including making mistakes.

As English is not my first language, I also pride in comparing ideas and subtext, rightly or wrongly, in other languages where not strangely some concepts have no common words or equivalent for.

This is why I introduced the concept of pain and contentment (and death) which I believe underpins our human intellectual stylistic processes, not being used in the ethos of artificial intelligence, fascinatingly changing the purpose of the ball game.

Always in a quest to add and learn ideas in my little space, especially in my old age, I have not shied of corresponding with academics, scientists and philosophers of note like yourself who are trying to find, I hope, less ridiculous pathways to the betterment of humankind beyond our pitiful politics.
I always learn something new. Thank you.
---------------------

 

the Schrödinger cat...

Above I wrote:

The next step here is to understand chaos. That is to say that two monkeys are not the same monkey twice. Not even Polly the sheep is the same sheep twice — or thrice, with more duplication. Spacial experience even tells us the "same cat" is in two places at once or may not be there (sorry I am super-shortening a massive complex quantum concept here). This is the crux of the building blocks of the universe and our interpretations should not be reductionist nor metaphysical. But our limited peanut brain demands simplicity when simplicity is not an explanatory option. We crave the simpletonariat, like the idea of god. Science cannot provide this.

 

Someone complained to me that the Schrödinger cat question is that the cat can be dead or alive at the same time while being hidden in the box... Here I can confirm further that the cat (not a Schrödinger cat) can be in two location at once. This has been a quantum mechanic recent discovery, explained by Wang et al. See Science issue of 2016 page 1087.

fading memory? I can't remember...

 

Although diphenhydramine (Benadryl) has acquired a popular reputation as a medicine with some version of an unlimited safety envelope, this is really the result of relentless advertising, and not any version of a biological fact.


When we were tracking admissions to our Geropsychiatry/Alzheimer's unit, Benadryl was most frequent medicine implicated in confusional states in elderly patients in cognitive decline. It simply is not a safe medicine in the elderly, because if that person has the beginning of Alzheimer's disease (and this disease is increasingly penetrant into US society for many reasons with early stages of Alzheimer's disease rarely being diagnosed), one is risking induction of a delirium (which requires inpatient care to treat), even at low to moderate doses.


The notion referenced later in the discussion that delirium only happens at very high doses is absolutely untrue, at least in the elderly. Diphenhydramine is really a potent anticholinergic, and thus interacts badly with basal forebrain cholinergic degeneration (an important core component of Alzheimer's disease). As a longtime Alzheimer's clinician and now researcher, I am astonished at the number of elderly patients (and even primary care doctors!) who mistakenly believe that Benadryl is the safest medicine that the elderly could possibly take.


Given the distorting influence that drug company advertising has in our current healthcare environment, it really behooves people to be more sophisticated and less naive about the seriousness of the risks associated with diphenhydramine, particularly in the elderly. Even in younger patients, it has serious risks. A recent study demonstrated that when young adults (far more resistant to the effects of sedating and anticholinergic medicines than elderly adults) were placed in a driving simulator and tested on a stiff dose of Benadryl versus when they were legally drunk, they did significantly better when they were legally drunk.


Given evidence that the induction of a delirium from anticholinergic medicines actually accelerates the underlying Alzheimer's disease and requires inpatient level care, and is not simply an 'inconvenience', this suggests that the discussion of side effects in the article really needs to be strengthened significantly. As it is worded currently, it is grossly inadequate. These warning should also apply to patients with other cognitive disorders, for example. those suffering from post concussional syndromes, where anticholinergic medicines can exacerbate cognitive symptoms.


Even more troubling is the emerging evidence that long term use of anticholinergic medicines contribute to overall risk for Alzheimer's disease, though uncharted mechanisms and interactions. Anyone appreciating the central role at acetylcholine plays in cognition, cortical arousal and neuroplasticity would hardly rush to a medicine with strong blockade of ACh receptors.

 

read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ADiphenhydramine

 

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylcholine

 

Read from top.

when no-one comes to visit you...

Have you seen the movie Robot & Frank? It's about a retired jewel thief who's dealing with the onset of dementia, and his son tries to help by giving him a robot as companion and carer.

The movie came out in 2008 and, eight years on, robots are at a level of sophistication where they could provide both care and companionship for older Australians.

But do we want them to?

The Australian Society for Medical Research (ASMR) is the peak professional society representing Australian health and medical research, and during National Science Week 2016, it's hosting 'Science in the Cinema'.

They'll be screening Robot & Frank in Melbourne and will follow it with a panel discussion on the cutting edge, emerging technologies that will transform clinical care for patients with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Two of the guests on that panel can be heard here. Futurologist, Tané Hunter and Professor Rajiv Khosla, who is the creator of emotionally intelligent aged care robots.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rnafternoons/robots-care-for-the-aged/7736008

my brain, the machine...

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow


Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Hebrewההיסטוריה של המחר) is a book written by Israeli author Professor Yuval Noah Harari from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The book was first published in Hebrew in 2015 by Dvir publishing as The Brief History of Tomorrow. The English version will be published in September 2016 in the UK and in February 2017 in the US. As with its predecessor, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harari inspects the course of history while describing events and the individual human experience along with ethical issues derived from history. Homo Deus, as opposed to the previous book, deals more with the abilities acquired by mankind (homosapiens) throughout the years of its existence while basing itself as the dominant being in the world, and tries to paint an image of the future of mankind, if any. Throughout the book, many philosophical aspects are inspected, such as the human experience, individualism, human emotion and consciousness. Likewise, the book showcases the current abilities and achievements of mankind.


Central thesis[edit]

  • Since the verbal/language revolution around 70,000 years ago, human beings live within "imaginary orders" such as countries, borders, religion, money, all created by man in order to enable large-scale cooperation between different individual human beings.
  • Humankind's immense ability to give meaning to its actions and thoughts is what enabled it to carry out its many achievements.
  • Humanism, worship of humankind, putting mankind and its desires as a top priority in the world while basing itself as the dominant being.
  • The threat which technology has over humankind and humanism and the continued ability of humankind to give meaning to its life under new conditions which have arisen and prophesying the coming replacement of humankind with a super-man or a Homo Deus (God-man) endowed with supernatural abilities such as eternal life.[1]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Deus:_A_Brief_History_of_Tomorrow

 

Read from top. Please understand that HUMANISM is not the worship of humankind, but the understanding of the natural evolution in which humankind came about. This aspect of knowledge does not need "worship" to be accepted. Humanism still needs a certain level of management and understanding of diversity. The decided aim of the "zeitgeist" should be to minimise pain and improve contentment in a chaos field.