In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph

[bandwraith at aol.com]

And besides computers don't get high... he says,
as he sits quaffing his second tumbler of frascati.

It does seem that consciousness requires a
motivated self, and the primary motivation might be
self-definition. Self-definition probably preceded
consciousness- as self-reproduction, but why
would a system want to reproduce itself? Initially
they/it probably didn't want to, but given the
inherent properties of space/time/mass/energy,
mixed in the flask of the day/night/day... and all
the other macroscopic repeating trends, found
itself being replicated, on a more intimate scale.

But it didn't care. It hung together as much by
inertia and The Principle of Least Action, as by any
concern for self.

The line between tools, or artifacts, and the system
selected for replication, by the conveniences of the
day, must have always been fluid. Artifacts became
internalized or essentials extruded as chance events.

Somehow motivation was dependent on a complete
lack of motivation- a completely unbiased, inconsid-
erate, neutral field of debris, that didn't care one way
or the the other, and still doesn't, if some quirky sub-
aggregation ends up evolving into a jackass. Or, do
you imagine the field  to be biased somehow, is, I
guess, what I'm asking.

AI might be impossible either way, but if life is the
result of an accidental chain of events, there is
nothing in the mix working against AI, other than the
sheer difficulty of the engineering, and the anti-bias
of the second law.

If life wasn't an accident- well then, have you ever
known anything more motivating for our species than
a good challenge?



-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Fri, Mar 16, 2012 3:42 pm
Subject: Re: In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph


Well I just wrote a longish answer to your question, then somehow
disappeared
it. But here is the essence.
I don't know what thought is. I am open to the possibility that what we
call
consciousness is really one of the dimensions of reality that is as
fundamental
as space or time and that thought is  a form within that dimension.  Of
course
it could be more a practical aspect of biological survival, but I have
a hard
time with the idea of wings coming from random mutations. Too much like
rolling
a rock down a mountain and getting the Nike of Samothrace. I suspect
there is a
deep connection between mind and body  or even mind and life that has a
role in
evolution.
 I listened to Rupert Sheldrake yesterday talking about homing pigeons.
Scientists have studied them a lot and they don't know how the pigeons
do it.
They have done experiments to test all the ideas that seem to fit what
we know:
sight, smell, ability to discern and remember the path away from home,
celestial
navigation, sun navigation, magnetic field of earth. It appears you can
completely block any and all of these and they still fly home, though
without
sight they can only get a couple hundred feet from home.  Science has
no
explanation for how they do it and there are several similar mysteries,
that
point to the possibility that we may be missing some real basic parts
of our
picture of consciousness.

Still it is a lot about how you define intelligence.  Chess programs
beat
chessmasters and computers can be programmed to solve very hard
problems. But
will they ever ask their own questions and want an answer? But maybe
that isn't
really what Pynchon is talking about , but more what happens when
machines can
do anything we can do faster and with no mistakes.


On Mar 15, 2012, at 11:26 PM, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:

> But do you imagine that thought is something
> more than a physical process, or just some
> physically embodied process that is way too
> complex and self-referential to program from
> the top down?
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Thu, Mar 15, 2012 2:25 pm
> Subject: Re: In Which Jung prewrites AtD's epigraph
>
>
> I personally think every prediction of AI so far is absurdly
premature. The
> premise still seems fundamentally bizarre to me. I just can't imagine
self
> generated thought apart from the kind of innate will that comes with
being in
a
> bodily form with natural desires attributes and limits. The idea that
you can
> program curiosity, or desire to formulate and solve a problem into an
electronic
> device designed only to process  binary code just seems real iffy.
>