Really wanted to listen to the next talk afterwards but I couldn't,
because my mind went full rollercoaster about thought processes in my brain and I couldn't concentrate :)
"Markov Decision Model ... also called a story" :)
As for consciousness, I like his explanation. I personally think it is the brain that keeps a log of past decisions, so that when pain/pleasure comes, it can look back and see what decision to reward/punish (delayed reinforcement based learning). The moment a brain puts higher level things in decisions, like expectation of pain/pleasure, and even "I made a decision", is when self awareness comes in.
---
I disagree somewhat when he says reality looks nothing like what our brain thinks reality looks like. With different sensors, sure it would all look very different. But not like reality is a cellular automata, and our sensors register that stuff raw, yet our brains imagine (dream) the patterns as objects and people with colors and sounds.
Our sensors see by the laws of physics, seeing objects with properties made possible by the laws of physics. That underlying those laws might be something entirely different, perhaps. But the translation from that underlying thing happened before the light hit your eye, not in the brain. E.g. color is a property of reality, not of the brain.
A completely different effect is that the "picture" we are get in our brain, is heavily pre processed and filtered and predicted. So the color that we notice, and what light has hit our eyes, those are not the same.
Would be interesting to know what he ment by that.
> E.g. color is a property of reality, not of the brain.
Reality simply provides a field that vibrates at different wavelengths and it is intelligence and evolution that come up with computationally convenient category boundaries along that spectrum. We are certainly unaware of many things that are part of the universe without the help of tools.
I agree that we can be certain that when e.g. we see a large rock falling, that our mental representations relate with 99.999% certainty to the event actually occurring. There are however many things which are more subtle, and I think this is what he was referring to.
And to add to the Markov Decision Model: strategies to the decentralized partially observable markov decision process (dec-pomdp) is a model for our shared strategies in spoken and non-spoken communication (grounding.).
Yeah, the first few opening comments were crickets, everything later on was superb. Did anyone else notice how the host just didn't give a single fuck?
If you are referring to the question from the IRC chat, I think it was not about silencing but rather about genuine interest in further reading material since he didn't yet publish on anything from his three CCC talks. Some parts make quite sophisticated points so it would be really helpful if it was elaborated in written form.
Having attended it for the fifth time now, the only bad thing about the Congress is that it make nearly every other conference etc. feel tiny and badly planned (as in "they don't even have their own GSM network" or "where's a pneumatic tube transport when I need one"). :)
[+] [-] xxyxx|9 years ago|reply
Really wanted to listen to the next talk afterwards but I couldn't, because my mind went full rollercoaster about thought processes in my brain and I couldn't concentrate :)
This talk was awesome.
[+] [-] ozy|9 years ago|reply
"Markov Decision Model ... also called a story" :)
As for consciousness, I like his explanation. I personally think it is the brain that keeps a log of past decisions, so that when pain/pleasure comes, it can look back and see what decision to reward/punish (delayed reinforcement based learning). The moment a brain puts higher level things in decisions, like expectation of pain/pleasure, and even "I made a decision", is when self awareness comes in.
---
I disagree somewhat when he says reality looks nothing like what our brain thinks reality looks like. With different sensors, sure it would all look very different. But not like reality is a cellular automata, and our sensors register that stuff raw, yet our brains imagine (dream) the patterns as objects and people with colors and sounds.
Our sensors see by the laws of physics, seeing objects with properties made possible by the laws of physics. That underlying those laws might be something entirely different, perhaps. But the translation from that underlying thing happened before the light hit your eye, not in the brain. E.g. color is a property of reality, not of the brain.
A completely different effect is that the "picture" we are get in our brain, is heavily pre processed and filtered and predicted. So the color that we notice, and what light has hit our eyes, those are not the same.
Would be interesting to know what he ment by that.
[+] [-] spacehacker|9 years ago|reply
Reality simply provides a field that vibrates at different wavelengths and it is intelligence and evolution that come up with computationally convenient category boundaries along that spectrum. We are certainly unaware of many things that are part of the universe without the help of tools.
I agree that we can be certain that when e.g. we see a large rock falling, that our mental representations relate with 99.999% certainty to the event actually occurring. There are however many things which are more subtle, and I think this is what he was referring to.
[+] [-] edejong|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielbln|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aburan28|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jayajay|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pica_soO|9 years ago|reply
Every year a brilliant talk by Joscha- if it weren't for the scared by the Results of Science Radicals trying to censor at the QA.
[+] [-] spacehacker|9 years ago|reply
If you are referring to the question from the IRC chat, I think it was not about silencing but rather about genuine interest in further reading material since he didn't yet publish on anything from his three CCC talks. Some parts make quite sophisticated points so it would be really helpful if it was elaborated in written form.
[+] [-] sebringj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebringj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HugoDaniel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hydraulix989|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majewsky|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fatdog|9 years ago|reply
If I interpreted that correctly, implementing a turing machine in CGoL that runs CGoL was delightful.