Interesting stuff but it hurts so much that the writer has the common misconception of pavlov's dog doing a circus trick. Sure the dog also consciously understands the connection between bell and food. But the physiological reaction of the saliva flowing is not a conscious decision of the dog. Circus tricks with animals existed long before Pavlov. The key discovery is that there is a physiological reaction which cannot be suppressed anymore consciously. That's why PTSD is such a bitch to be treated: even with the stimulus gone, the physiological reaction remains.
The article just reminds me that I hate modern journalism and try to not read any news articles.
Hyperbolic attention grabbing headline followed by appeal to authority, appeal to authority, appeal to authority, counter opinion appeal to authority that the previous appeal to authority might all be wrong.
So wide reaching and all over the place, the reader and can pick from the menu on what point they want to use as confirmation of what they already believe to be true. Then the article can be cited in a type of scientistic, mostly wrong, gossip.
You say the dog “also consciously understands the connection between bell and food,” which is actually not something Pavlov’s framework establishes at all. Whether the dog has conscious understanding of the association is exactly the kind of claim Pavlov’s behaviorist approach was designed to avoid. We can observe the salivation; we can’t observe the dog’s understanding.
The PTSD analogy is intuitively appealing but also somewhat off. You say “even with the stimulus gone, the physiological reaction remains,” but PTSD is better characterized by impaired extinction and stimulus generalization (too many things become triggers), not by the response persisting in the total absence of any triggering stimulus. The difficulty of treating PTSD has as much to do with how the fear memory is consolidated and how extinction learning fails to transfer across contexts as it does with the simple involuntary nature of the response.
> That's why PTSD is such a bitch to be treated: even with the stimulus gone, the physiological reaction remains.
Helping a friend with cPTSD and this is so true! It’s such a hard thing to overcome. By helping I mean I’m helping pay for counseling and therapy not that I’m doing it cuz I’m hella unqualified.
Seems to me we’re ignoring history:
1. Prescott Lecky destroyed the validity of Pavlov’s experiments with his paper on Self Consistency.
2. Macys conference in 1960s converged on the idea of systems theory and cybernetics; cause and effect is for elementary school - self organization is for the adults.
3. Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (Autopoesis) are rolling in their graves.
It’s not a new discovery if something better has already been in use for 50+ years.
> Prescott Lecky destroyed the validity of Pavlov’s experiments with his paper on Self Consistency.
Clearly you feel strongly about this. Unfortunately, a non-AI search for "prescott lecky" and "pavlov" really reveals very little support for this claim, to the point where your comment is actually the 5th result.
Quite a special scifi novel that starts like this. Quite grounded at the beginning, but it then evolves into body horror and later becomes quite abstract.
So they've taken causality, emergence and consciousness and combined them into one simple to measure number? And now they're making philosophical statements about the implications.
Scientists have managed to create chemical reaction networks that can 'learn' in a similar way to a simple artificial intelligence (neural networks). The key: if you mix the right molecules, they can 'classify' images or chemical signals from their environment. They aren't thinking consciously, but they are processing information intelligently
Wait ... our brains are composed of molecules, and we think with our brains. That makes it a question of scale or organization, not principle.
This may sound kind of woo-woo, but many people are asking that question -- where do we draw the line between thinking and simple biological existence?
One idea is something called panpsychism, the idea that all matter is conscious, and our brains are only a very concentrated form. Easy to say, not so easy to prove -- but certainly the simplest explanation. In this connection, remember Occam's razor.
Philosophers describe consciousness as their "hard problem" -- what is it? Not just what it is, but where is it located, or not located. At the moment we know next to nothing about this question, even what kind of question to ask.
Consider the octopus -- it has islands of brain cells scattered around its body, and if you cut off an octopus arm, the arm will try to crawl back toward the ... umm ... rest of the octopus. Weird but true. Seeing this, one must ask where to draw the line between brain and body, between neurology and physiology.
Readers should be aware the New Scientist regularly publishes articles that ... aren't remotely scientific. In this case, one clue is the presence of the word "mind," which, notwithstanding its colorful history, isn't accepted as a scientific topic.
The reason? The mind is not part of nature, and scientific theories must refer to some aspect of the natural world. If we were to accept the mind as science, then in fairness we would have to accept religion, philosophy and similar non-corporeal entities as science. So far we've resisted efforts to do that.
Some may object that psychology studies the mind, and experimental psychology is widely accepted as science. That's true -- there's plenty of science in psychology, some of it very good. But the many scientists in psychology study something that cannot itself be regarded as a basis for scientific theory.
This means psychology can do science, but it cannot be science. It's the same with astrology, a favorite undergraduate science topic by students learning statistical methods. But only the seriously confused will mistake an astrology study, however well-designed, for proof that astrology is a scientific theory.
People have the right to use the word "science" any way they please. So the only reality check is an educated observer. The fact that New Scientist has the title it does, and publishes the articles it does, stands as proof that there aren't nearly enough educated observers.
dust42|13 days ago
That said, the article is still worth a read.
topocite|13 days ago
Hyperbolic attention grabbing headline followed by appeal to authority, appeal to authority, appeal to authority, counter opinion appeal to authority that the previous appeal to authority might all be wrong.
So wide reaching and all over the place, the reader and can pick from the menu on what point they want to use as confirmation of what they already believe to be true. Then the article can be cited in a type of scientistic, mostly wrong, gossip.
IMO a complete waste of time.
perfmode|11 days ago
The PTSD analogy is intuitively appealing but also somewhat off. You say “even with the stimulus gone, the physiological reaction remains,” but PTSD is better characterized by impaired extinction and stimulus generalization (too many things become triggers), not by the response persisting in the total absence of any triggering stimulus. The difficulty of treating PTSD has as much to do with how the fear memory is consolidated and how extinction learning fails to transfer across contexts as it does with the simple involuntary nature of the response.
gigatexal|13 days ago
Helping a friend with cPTSD and this is so true! It’s such a hard thing to overcome. By helping I mean I’m helping pay for counseling and therapy not that I’m doing it cuz I’m hella unqualified.
raincole|13 days ago
nextaccountic|13 days ago
aeonque|12 days ago
It’s not a new discovery if something better has already been in use for 50+ years.
Am I missing something here?
sigbottle|12 days ago
PaulDavisThe1st|12 days ago
Clearly you feel strongly about this. Unfortunately, a non-AI search for "prescott lecky" and "pavlov" really reveals very little support for this claim, to the point where your comment is actually the 5th result.
So ... got links?
pella|16 days ago
oersted|13 days ago
Quite a special scifi novel that starts like this. Quite grounded at the beginning, but it then evolves into body horror and later becomes quite abstract.
bsenftner|13 days ago
patcon|12 days ago
throwaway27448|13 days ago
Someone shoot me please
airstrike|13 days ago
polishdude20|13 days ago
AI "agents" don't have "agency". They do what you want at your every whim (or at least they never say no). That's a slave.
gzread|13 days ago
unknown|13 days ago
[deleted]
contravariant|12 days ago
You know what, fine, be that way if you must.
juan-j-garcia|12 days ago
shevy-java|13 days ago
estearum|12 days ago
lutusp|12 days ago
Wait ... our brains are composed of molecules, and we think with our brains. That makes it a question of scale or organization, not principle.
This may sound kind of woo-woo, but many people are asking that question -- where do we draw the line between thinking and simple biological existence?
One idea is something called panpsychism, the idea that all matter is conscious, and our brains are only a very concentrated form. Easy to say, not so easy to prove -- but certainly the simplest explanation. In this connection, remember Occam's razor.
Philosophers describe consciousness as their "hard problem" -- what is it? Not just what it is, but where is it located, or not located. At the moment we know next to nothing about this question, even what kind of question to ask.
Consider the octopus -- it has islands of brain cells scattered around its body, and if you cut off an octopus arm, the arm will try to crawl back toward the ... umm ... rest of the octopus. Weird but true. Seeing this, one must ask where to draw the line between brain and body, between neurology and physiology.
phyzome|12 days ago
bookofjoe|12 days ago
lutusp|12 days ago
The reason? The mind is not part of nature, and scientific theories must refer to some aspect of the natural world. If we were to accept the mind as science, then in fairness we would have to accept religion, philosophy and similar non-corporeal entities as science. So far we've resisted efforts to do that.
Some may object that psychology studies the mind, and experimental psychology is widely accepted as science. That's true -- there's plenty of science in psychology, some of it very good. But the many scientists in psychology study something that cannot itself be regarded as a basis for scientific theory.
This means psychology can do science, but it cannot be science. It's the same with astrology, a favorite undergraduate science topic by students learning statistical methods. But only the seriously confused will mistake an astrology study, however well-designed, for proof that astrology is a scientific theory.
People have the right to use the word "science" any way they please. So the only reality check is an educated observer. The fact that New Scientist has the title it does, and publishes the articles it does, stands as proof that there aren't nearly enough educated observers.
unknown|11 days ago
[deleted]
GoblinSlayer|12 days ago
Anthropology?