Not a word of it got through. Cross chatter interrupted my subconscious and rose to the surface each time I pushed it under, like those polystyrene swimming floats. Drifting out of sleep at four am to rude consciousness, from oblivion to brutal being in seconds is the marker of that horror that punctuates my life. Months go by of standard peaks and troughs, days of joy, contentment, sadness, never lingering long enough to define me as categorically happy, sad or stable. Then the beast under my skin will flex. Is it the work? The endless lack of base? But you can spend hours of psychotherapy, stripping back the layers of the onion, only to find more of the same. And here you have to accept that it isn't the subject, because altering the focus changes nothing. Think of your softest kitten subjects, or daily chores, and all deliver the same fear. Fear is the correct response to some situations, depression only to be expected during grief. It is when no trigger can truly be isolated. No problem can be unearthed causing the malaise.
Few get to explore their lives as they would wish. Most never get a big enough stash of money to sit still for long. No matter how distressing their job, they must go to work. Even where the work is slowly killing them, be it inhalation of dust, or the psycho disturbance of stress from incapacity of human endurance. They just don't have the money. Stop for a week and you may pick it back up. Eat a little less, no sweeties or comics. But drop a month and you are close to the gutter. For most, homelessness may feel a mile away but, really, it is within reach. Stop working and your rent runs out. So we jump from bus to train, never able to look at the scenery. Lives consumed like so much petrol. Consolation only recorded by pride in offspring. It is all worth it for the kids. But passing the buck to the next generation is a poor excuse for sacrificing your life.
Purpose is what we all need. My admiration goes out to the few who can tolerate unemployment. Excusing ones own being is hard enough when you are paying for it. Your life is your responsibility, I was brought up to believe. We started out from home, set on a new way. To differ from previous generations defined by war. Still our tribal pride, our faith in the people was betrayed by tradition, or maybe nature, when couples took up together, staked their place, had children,then abandoned all other responsibilities. Herein lies the seed of our destruction. All effort from this point dedicated to the furtherance of their own genes, at the expense of all others, overlooked how life works. Any organism is dependent on environment.. Further, the organism is an expression of environment. And just as the dogma of the soul separated our consciousness from our bodies, so too, this perversion for the isolation of the nuclear family seperate a us from our context. Environmental disregard follows abandonment of the tribe. The delusion that a mind can be free from a body is a parallel to the delusion that we can live, as an organism seperate from our environment. You can see how the separation of labour and specialisation leads to confusion and ignorance as to where food comes from, where objects come from, to the point where money is our only currency.
All this haste, the political dogma of growth, the inability to look down from a higher point, one where we see that this idea of a global race is recent, and ought to be discarded. The idea of a linear narrative, from confusion to understanding, forward to Christian salvation, or scientific truth, is not the only way. Other people's have seen cycle where we see race. Have observed seasonal change and rotation.
But I'm drifting here. Off target. Terrors have me. The sweeping slurry of vehicular noises swash outside below me. Work has begun, and the men must go out to fight for their supper. Vans, exhaust, death. And the more mad than me are caught out, they must prove they are mad or go to the gutter. This government has chosen to see the unwell as fraudsters. To assume all mental illness is a hoax. They have to be assessed, their madness tested. This barbarity is the nearest to political evil we have seen in our soft post war lives. Those smart enough to play the system will continue to benefit, while those who are really ill will die.
Monday 29 July 2013
Tuesday 23 July 2013
Thursday 18 July 2013
Why artificially created consciousness won't happen for a very long time,
A popular speculative idea amongst those overly impressed by computers is that of artificial intelligence. Some think that any computational system beyond a certain level of complexity inevitably achieves consciousness.
Computers may be impressive but to think they can be conscious , at least at current levels reveals the vanity in man and his own achievements.
For consciousness to occur I advance the idea that it is entirely dependent on having a body. The religious idea of consciousness being untied to the body is called the soul. Adherents to the soul concept argue that a consciousness can leave the body. That souls can transmigrate. That consciousness can survive after the death of the body.
Firstly it ought to be pointed out that there is not a single case study of a consciousness surviving death. Christianity is built on a legend of this happening, and the suggestion that the followers of Christ may too transcend death. Sadly not a single one has come back after dieing.
The reasons are simple. The somatic marker hypothesis thought up by Antonio Damasio has shown how all cognitive processes are dependent on emotion. Further to this, emotion is a process taking place not in the soul, not even mostly in the brain, but in the body. Each time we encounter any new object, any new situation or any new person, we react to them. A pulse of neurotransmitters marks them. We know how we feel about oranges, daisies, tony Blair, the Eiffel Tower. They all trigger an emotional reaction. We have a personal feeling about each one. This somatic marker laid down and attached to each object seldom changes. Sometimes how we feel about people changes over time but largely the same object continues, throughout our life delivering the same feeling to us.
Creating a mathematical system is easy for a computer. But they have no emotional responses to anything. A computer could establish a social expectation ladder based on people's personal histories but it would lack the intuitive feelings we have towards others.
So, a mass of data, bereft of any emotional or personal relevance would be like a statistical manual. Merely a list.
When we feel scared, our body tightens, genitals shrink, hair stands on end, pupils dilate, digestion stops. Love equally alters our body. Emotions take place in the body. Second to the emotion is the conscious reaction to the emotion. Most emotions go unnoticed. An emotion is not dependent on us knowing about it. The conscious experience of emotion is not present in most animals and the majority of emotions humans go through happen without our reflecting on our experiencing them.
Any object encountered is marked, through a pulse of neurotransmitters. So a snake may inspire fear, a dog pity and a little fear. People will be marked by complex cocktails of neurotransmitters rendering some good, some bad and the whole spectrum of emotional responses in between. Each time we encounter someone, before any cognitive rational assessment takes place we have reacted to them emotionally. Without this emotional somatic marker system all objects, all people would mean nothing. There would be the rational judgement, but for survival this is an inefficient system. If met by a tiger in the jungle we need a system faster than reason to steer our movement.
So, for any sense to be made, by the organism of the information coming in, an amotional reaction needs to take place, and for an emotion to take place a body is necessary. Therefore any form of AI, artificial consciousness to form a feeling body must work in loop, or as a single system with the computer or brain. The current fashion for all things brain, and the old comparison between computer and brain, lead people to think AI may happen soon. It is not the sofistication of the computers that is lacking but the lack of any artificial body.
Any attempt to create an artificial intelligence would require a body for feelings to take place within. It is through mental comparison with sensations in the body that the mind has any yardstick at all.
Computers may be impressive but to think they can be conscious , at least at current levels reveals the vanity in man and his own achievements.
For consciousness to occur I advance the idea that it is entirely dependent on having a body. The religious idea of consciousness being untied to the body is called the soul. Adherents to the soul concept argue that a consciousness can leave the body. That souls can transmigrate. That consciousness can survive after the death of the body.
Firstly it ought to be pointed out that there is not a single case study of a consciousness surviving death. Christianity is built on a legend of this happening, and the suggestion that the followers of Christ may too transcend death. Sadly not a single one has come back after dieing.
The reasons are simple. The somatic marker hypothesis thought up by Antonio Damasio has shown how all cognitive processes are dependent on emotion. Further to this, emotion is a process taking place not in the soul, not even mostly in the brain, but in the body. Each time we encounter any new object, any new situation or any new person, we react to them. A pulse of neurotransmitters marks them. We know how we feel about oranges, daisies, tony Blair, the Eiffel Tower. They all trigger an emotional reaction. We have a personal feeling about each one. This somatic marker laid down and attached to each object seldom changes. Sometimes how we feel about people changes over time but largely the same object continues, throughout our life delivering the same feeling to us.
Creating a mathematical system is easy for a computer. But they have no emotional responses to anything. A computer could establish a social expectation ladder based on people's personal histories but it would lack the intuitive feelings we have towards others.
So, a mass of data, bereft of any emotional or personal relevance would be like a statistical manual. Merely a list.
When we feel scared, our body tightens, genitals shrink, hair stands on end, pupils dilate, digestion stops. Love equally alters our body. Emotions take place in the body. Second to the emotion is the conscious reaction to the emotion. Most emotions go unnoticed. An emotion is not dependent on us knowing about it. The conscious experience of emotion is not present in most animals and the majority of emotions humans go through happen without our reflecting on our experiencing them.
Any object encountered is marked, through a pulse of neurotransmitters. So a snake may inspire fear, a dog pity and a little fear. People will be marked by complex cocktails of neurotransmitters rendering some good, some bad and the whole spectrum of emotional responses in between. Each time we encounter someone, before any cognitive rational assessment takes place we have reacted to them emotionally. Without this emotional somatic marker system all objects, all people would mean nothing. There would be the rational judgement, but for survival this is an inefficient system. If met by a tiger in the jungle we need a system faster than reason to steer our movement.
So, for any sense to be made, by the organism of the information coming in, an amotional reaction needs to take place, and for an emotion to take place a body is necessary. Therefore any form of AI, artificial consciousness to form a feeling body must work in loop, or as a single system with the computer or brain. The current fashion for all things brain, and the old comparison between computer and brain, lead people to think AI may happen soon. It is not the sofistication of the computers that is lacking but the lack of any artificial body.
Any attempt to create an artificial intelligence would require a body for feelings to take place within. It is through mental comparison with sensations in the body that the mind has any yardstick at all.
Saturday 13 July 2013
Harrier over Somerset Levels
This bird I at first thought was a male hen harrier. Further inspection of the photos makes me think it might be a male montagus harrier. Either way, a rare bird and a good sighting.
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