I think it would be possible to dump the mystical elements of Buddhism, and combine the rest with Bayesianism. I could see the ideal of optimal enlightenment.
David_Allen
In Bayesian inference, all probabilities are conditional on background knowlege.
Absolutely. The interpretation of the evidence depends entirely on its meaning, within the context at hand. This is why different observers can come to different conclusions given the same evidence; they have adopted different contexts.
So when we observe a person with behavior or beliefs that appear to be irrational, we are probably using a different context than they are. If we want to understand or to change this person’s beliefs, we need to establish a common context with them, creating a link between their context and ours. This is essentially the goal of Nonviolent Communication.
I also see ideas in Buddhism that can be phrased in terms of the context principle. Suffering (dukkha) is context dependent. We may suffer under conditions that bring another joy. My wife, for example dislikes most of the TV shows I watch. If she realizes that I am happy to put on headphones to spare her from exposure, she can experience gratitude instead of resentment.
In all cases, there are rules for transferring information between context and “content”.
This is a key insight. If you can split a system arbitrarily between context and content, how do you decide where to make the split? In programming, which part of the problem is represented in the program, and which part in the data?
This task can be arbitrarily hard. As I stated above:
In general it is very difficult to implement a simple idea, in a simple way that is simple to use.
The Daily WTF contains many examples of simple ideas implemented poorly.
But you can never completely eliminate the context. You are always left with a residual context which may take the form of assumed axioms, rules of inference, grammars, or alphabets. That is, the residual is our way of representing the simplest possible context.
In computer science you can ground certain abstractions in terms of themselves. For example the XML Schema Definition Language can be used to define a schema for itself.
The observable universe appears to be our residual common context. If we want to come up with a TOE that explains this context, perhaps we need to look for one that can be defined in terms of itself.
I think that it is an interesting research program to examine how more complex contexts can be specified using the same core machinery of axioms, alphabets, grammars, and rules.
This sounds similar to what I am working on. I am working on a methodology for creating a network of common contexts that can operate on each other to build new contexts. There is a core abstraction that all contexts can be projected into.
Key ideas for this approach come from Language-oriented programming and Aspect-oriented programming.
In myself, I have labeled the rationality blocking emotion/behavior as defensiveness. When I am feeling defensive, I am less willing to see the world as it is. I bind myself to my context and it is very difficult for me to reach out and establish connections to others.
I am also interested in ideas related to rationality and the human condition. Not just about the biases that arise from our nature, but about approaches to rationality that work from within our human nature.
I have started an analysis of Buddhism from this perspective. At its core (ignoring the obvious mysticism), I see sort of a how-to guide for managing the human condition. If we are to be rational we need to be willing to see the world as it is, not as we want it to be.
The Idea
I am working on a new approach to creating knowledge management systems. An idea that I backed into as part of this work is the context principle.
Traditionally, the context principle states that a philosopher should always ask for a word’s meaning in terms of the context in which it is being used, not in isolation.
I’ve redefined this to make it more general: Context creates meaning and in its absence there is no meaning.
And I’ve added the corollary: Domains can only be connected if they have contexts in common. Common contexts provide shared meaning and open a path for communication between disparate domains.
Possible Topics
I’m considering posting on how the context principle relates to certain topics. Right now I’m researching and collecting notes.
Possible topics to relate the context principle to:
explicit and tacit knowledge
theory of computation
debate and communication
rationality
morality
natural and artificial intelligence
“emergence”
My Request
I am looking for general feedback from this forum on the context principle and on my possible topics. I have only started working through the sequences so I am interested in specific pointers to posts I should read.
Perplexed has already started this off with his reply to my Welcome to Less Wrong! (2010) introduction.
- 17 Sep 2010 0:05 UTC; 2 points) 's comment on The conscious tape by (
If wizards has some type of magically generated “soul”, this would be grounds to treat non-wizards as a soul-less subclass. This doesn’t seem to be the direction MOR is going.
Consciousness is a roughly defined and (leaky) abstraction.
So this leads to the conclusion that, if a Turing machine computes consciousness and summarizes its output in a static representation on a tape, the tape is conscious.
Without context the content of the tape has no meaning. So the consciousness that has been output on the tape, is only a consciousness in the context that can use it to generate the consciousness abstraction.
It is the set of “stuff” that produces the consciousness abstraction that can be called conscious. In a Turing machine, this “stuff” would be the tape plus the machine that gives the tape the necessary context.
- 16 Sep 2010 23:20 UTC; 5 points) 's comment on The conscious tape by (
Your option 1 seems to make a false distinction that something non-computational could exist
William Rapaport, in the paper PhilGoetz refers to, appears to exclude the idea that the universe is performing computation.
He states:
… it could also be said that it is Kepler’ s laws that are computable and that describe the behaviour of the solar system, yet the solar system does not compute them, i.e. the behaviour of the solar system is not a computation, even though its behaviour is computable.
I would agree with you, that the universe is performing computation.
The idea is that everything in the universe is a computation run by the universe. So yes, option 2 certainly.
But functionalism describes a philosophy where the mind is formed by levels of abstraction. The substrate that performs the computation for any particular level is not important. This is option 1.
So option 1 and 2 are not incompatible. They are context specific perspectives.
David Allen notes that consciousness ought to be defined relative to a context in which it can be interpreted; somewhat similarly, Jacob Cannell believes that consciousness needs some environment in order to be well-defined.
Good summary. Yes my statements are in part a recasting of the functionalism philosophy mentioned by Jacob Cannell, in terms of the context principle, which I describe here.
But of course, it’s trivial to write a different Turing machine which writes on a tape (call it Tape B) the entire history of Machine A’s computation (as well as its output), and this indeed has the required richness for me to be comfortable in calling Tape B conscious.
In what context can Tape B be labeled conscious?
A history of consciousness does not seem to me to be the same as consciousness. A full debug trace of a program is simply not the same thing as the original program.
If however you create a Machine C that replays Tape B, I would grant that Machine C reproduces the consciousness of Machine A.
I agree with everything you say here.
I claim that the “interpretive framework” you refer to is essential in the labeling of Tape B as conscious. Without specifying the context, the consciousness of Tape B is unknown.
It seems that consciousness requires some type of thought, and that thought requires the system to self-modify. A static representation of the Turing machine then does not meet this requirement.
So a Turing machine that is not running is not conscious.
Is there another perspective to consider?
I’ll need more details. What is a mono-consciousness?
There was a famous children’s story author who wrote 2 books. The first was from the POV of a kid continually being bothered by a bully. The second was the same story, from the POV of the bully. But I never read them. Wish I could remember the titles or author name.
I read those, about 30 years ago. I don’t remember the titles or author, but I do remember being surprised by the bully’s POV and feeling empathy for him.
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There appears to be some photo-retouching involved to improve the match.
Context creates meaning and in its absence there is no meaning. To discuss meaning we also need to discuss context.
Perplexed suggests a personalized context.
What meanings have you given to your life?
When the Mormon missionaries visit my home, we often invite them in. Once I was asked, “If you don’t believe in God, then what is the meaning of life?”.
After talking with them, I could see that what they meant was purpose. Their beliefs gave them purpose and direction. They knew what they needed to do, and acting on those beliefs gave them comfort and satisfaction. In the face of the unknown and uncertain, they could place trust in the plan of their Heavenly Father.
From their perspective without God there is nothing but the unknown and uncertain. Life would be shallow, purposeless and frightening, and would in fact be Hell.
I wasn’t sure how to explain to them why, without God, I found purpose in exploring my life, challenging the unknown and uncertain that I find within myself.
In Buddhism, the primary purpose of life is to end suffering.
Much of this is about being willing to see the world as it is, not as we want it to be.
This doesn’t mean that we simply become comfortable with the status quo. This is explained well in Radical Buddhism and the Paradox of Acceptance.
Instead it gives us the awareness we need to transform our circumstances.
I am not Buddhist but I like the epistemic rationality of Buddhism. It provides a purpose for life and a how-to guide that seems to get to the core of the human condition.
I skimmed the material and see what you mean.
I would restate the thought experiment as such. A state sequence measured from a rock is used to generate a look-up table that maps from the rock state sequence to a pre-measured consciousness state sequence. This is essentially an encryption of the consciousness state sequence using the rock state sequence as a one-time pad. The consciousness state sequence can be generated by replaying the rock state sequence through the look-up table. With the final question being: is the rock conscious?
In the model I’ve outlined in my comments, consciousness exists at the level the consciousness abstraction is present. In this case that abstraction is not present at the level of the rock, but only at the level of the system that uses the look-up table, and only for the duration of the sequence. The states measured from the rock are used to generate the consciousness, but they are not the consciousness.
Thanks for the clarification.
In my comments I have been working on the idea that consciousness is an abstraction. The context in which the consciousness abstraction exists, is where consciousness can be found.
So a mono-consciousness would still have a context that supports a consciousness abstraction. I don’t see any problem with that. However the consciousness might be like a feral child, no table manners and very strange to us.
How about this. If a consciousness tells a joke in a forest where no other consciousness can hear it, is the joke still funny?
My search began when I realized that I was confused. I was confused by what people did and what they said. I was confused by my responses to other people, how interacting with other people affected me. And I was confused about how I worked. Why I did the things I did, why I felt the way I did, why sometimes things were easy for me, and sometimes they were hard.
I learned very early in my life that I needed to critically analyze what other people told me. Not simply to identify truth or falsehood, but to identify useful messages in lies and harmful messages hidden in apparently truthful statements.
At the age of 11 I taught myself to program on a TRS-80, and in the process I discovered how to learn through play and exploration. Of course I had been learning in this way all along, but this was when I discovered the truth about how I learned. This realization has changed my approach to everything.
Computer programming confused me, so my search continued. By focusing on how I thought about programming, I quickly became very skilled. I learned how to explore problems and dissolve them into useful pieces. I learned how to design and express solutions in many programming languages and environments. I learned the theory of computation and how it is tied to philosophy, logic, mathematics and natural languages.
I worked in industry for 20 years, starting with internships. I’ve worked on large and small systems in low level and high level languages. I’ve done signal processing for engineering systems and developed web interfaces. I’ve worked alone, and in teams. I’ve run software teams launching companies.
Programming still confused me. I was frustrated and confused by how difficult it was to do programming well. In general it is very difficult to implement a simple idea, in a simple way that is simple to use. Even under ideal circumstances and in the best designed system, complexity grows faster than the code base. This dooms many projects to failure.
I am now coming to grips with the true nature of this problem, and with its solution. The problem rests in the nature of knowledge and meaning. The implications extend far beyond computer science and I intend to write articles on this topic for Less Wrong.
A core idea that I am exploring is the context principle. Traditionally, this states that a philosopher should always ask for a word’s meaning in terms of the context in which it is being used, not in isolation.
I’ve redefined this to make it more general: Context creates meaning and in its absence there is no meaning.
And I’ve added the corollary: Domains can only be connected if they have contexts in common. Common contexts provide shared meaning and open a path for communication between disparate domains.