Thessaly's Tooth

The comments on the last post raised some new ideas about machine consciousness, and I decided to post a new entry instead of making a really long reply. This isn’t exactly a response, just some new stuff on the subject which I felt like writing about. It’s very long, and I’m not at all sure I’ve accurately represented the theories I cite, but it was fun to write.

(more…)

A friend and I once took an evening class with an anthropology professor who had some pretty unique theories. I had some difficulty staying alert in that class, it being a long evening lecture class and all, but these theories would be enough to wake me up and cause me to wonder if I’d just fallen asleep and dreamed that he said that.
One of the less wacky theories was that children are optimal foragers (the class was about hunter-gatherers). He said that because of our hunting-gathering origins we tended to prefer foods that had the highest fat, protein, and carbohydrate levels because those are the three nutrients that keep us from starving to death–vitamins & minerals are of secondary importance. Children are the best at this which is why they like stuff like macaroni & cheese & fruit juice. So when we try to eat healthy and lose weight, we’re going against our natural tendency to eat foods with the highest amounts of the above nutrients, which I guess is why it’s difficult to choose salad over a hamburger. Okay, so maybe it’s not that interesting, but it has stuck with me all these years.
A somewhat weirder theory was that the plants are going to kill us. The prof maintained that because we are focused in on only a few species of food (wheat, corn, and what have you); ultimately these species will evolve defense mechanisms that will make them poisonous to humans, to prevent us from keeping them from reproducing by consuming or confiscating their seeds. Now “the plants are going to kill us” is prima facie wacky, and more difficult to maintain from an evolutionary point of view, since domestication has actually increased the habitat of these species probably several thousand-fold; and they are so genetically engineered they don’t have much hope of any natural mutation working its way in to the general population. But maybe I didn’t fully understand his argument. Either way, the important thing is that I got to use the phrase “the plants are going to kill us” in my blog.
Yesterday Andy and I were discussing the concept of artificial intelligence and how it always seems to be perceived as hostile to humanity. I maintain (ha, you thought you were going to get out of this without one of my own personal wacky theories) that if an artificial “intelligence” or “awareness” could be created, it would be very different than human intelligence. First of all, I don’t think you can create a “consciousness” that has nothing to be conscious of–it would have to have sensory equipment and the equivalent of arms and legs with which to move around and manipulate its environment (based on the theories of Husserl, Heidegger, and other hermeneutical theorists, which I am incapable of reproducing here). Second, while I can imagine a computer becoming aware of its surroundings and able to act and solve some problems better than a human, I can’t imagine it writing a poem or painting a picture or having an emotion of altruism or love or hate. It might be able to mimic such things very well, but it would not be having the experience that a human has. Computers now can’t do anything but what a human tells it to do, and they have only the data that a human gives them or equips them to gather. My idea of an “aware” computer is one that doesn’t need a programmer–it recognizes problems that threaten it or whatever its mission is, and programs itself to solve that problem. I don’ t see how we can program a computer to have an emotion, or to have a human-like consciousness–largely because we ourselves have only a very sketchy notion of what human consciousness is. I mean, that has been one of the big debates of philosophers over the millennia, and we haven’t come to any kind of concensus yet. Science doesn’t seem to be able to throw much light on the phenomenon either, and the humanities and social sciences only study the artifacts of consciousness. In any case, I’m not too worried about the “the machines are going to kill us” hypothesis–I mean, if it’s not the machines or the plants, it’s bound to be something.

Let’s see…back before the cat stuff, the gaming, the church stuff, the pity party, and the digressions, there was the holidays. New Year’s was quite fun this year, especially in comparison to other New Yearses I’ve experienced. One year, some time in the mid-nineties, we had gathered at a friend’s house to celebrate New Year’s. We were expecting another friend to come by after work, but she never showed up. We got really worried about her (I worry about people when I don’t know where they are), so another friend and I decided to go look for her. We drove past her place of employment and she didn’t seem to be there, so we went on to her house. We didn’t want to freak out her mother if it turned out she wasn’t home, so we tried to sneak up to the house to see if the light was on in her room (her room was in the basement, so we had to get pretty close to the house to see). Unfortunately, her mother noticed two suspicious figures creeping up to the house, and called “who’s there” tremulously out the front door. We admitted it was us, and tried to figure out whether her daughter was home without actually asking. Fortunately, she was. Another co-worker had wanted to go rent a movie after work but couldn’t decide on one, so she was stuck staring at a copy of Prizzi’s Honor as the new year came in. I don’t know, New Year’s just isn’t my holiday.
But this year it was good. We spent it with some friends who made dinner for us, followed by a game of Settlers of Catan (not the time I won–the New Year’s curse no doubt).
Before that was Christmas, which was very relaxing. Andy and I opened presents and had a very enjoyable day. Presents were very multimedia this year–several DVDs including Indiana Jones, Mr. Bean, The Tick (the live action one), The Matrix Reloaded; also Game Cube games and books. The cats got canned food which seemed to make their day.
Instead of an advent wreath, church had different windows from houses attached around the sanctuary with candles in them; and a picture of Salvador Dali’s “girl at a window” (I forget the exact name). It was quite cool. I looked through a Salvador Dali book at Schuler’s the other day. Most of the pictures in the book wouldn’t be suitable for church.

I’ve been playing a lot of games during the past few weeks. Only 6.5 weeks until my comprehensive exams, that seems appropriate. Andy got Soul Calibur and Mario Kart for Christmas, both of which I’ve spent a good amount of time with. SC includes strange phrases like the above–Andy says they make sense if you know the back story, but I find it difficult to imagine what such a story would be like. Mario Kart is also quite fun. I don’t use the adjective “trippy” very often, but it’s really the only one suitable to describe the last map, which Andy unlocked recently.
We’ve also played Magic a few times lately. I’d played it in college a few times, but never really got into it. I find it more fun now, maybe I’m just better at losing games now. I used to get really competitive about games, especially Monopoly for some reason.
Andy and I played a game called “Settlers of Catan” with varoius people over the holidays. It was quite fun. I expected to be awful at it, since it requires strategic planning which I am bad at; but I actually won once. It’s kind of a board game, in which the board is made up of hexagonal pieces which you colonize in order to gain resources, build new settlements, and establish cities. It comes with little wooden pieces representing the towns, etc., which you can use to build small structures while waiting for your turn. I think you should get extra points for building the most interesting structure, but I haven’t been able to sell any of my co-players on that idea yet.
Little update on the cats: They went back to the vet yesterday. Still don’t know what’s the matter with them, but the answer seems to be spending more money. They now have pills that I give them with a scary-looking contraption called a cat-piller. I think the cats think it’s a cat-killer, from they way they react.

This was obviously an enterprise begun by an immature mind, one with an utter lack of ability to comprehend its cost in dollars, time, effort and standard of living; or with any hope of being able to meet that cost. Already it has cost more money than anyone is likely to see in one place at one time, and every day it continues, it plunges us further into financial chaos. Even after months and years of dealing with an ever more difficult and time-consuming task, there is no clear concept of how or when it’s going to be resolved; and it shows every sign of dragging on for years more. Meanwhile, on the home front, money is tight, and any improvement in the economy hasn’t yet improved the situation. It may already be too late to get out of this thing unscathed–financially, morally, mentally, and emotionally.
I refer, of course, to graduate school.

The biggest adventure of the past few weeks (and this is a good indication of the usual excitement level of our lives) has been administering medicine to our beloved pets, Misty and Teti. They both developed little scratches or something that didn’t seem to be healing up, so off to the vet we went. The vet didn’t know what was going on with them, so she decided to charge us for everything–er, I mean she decided to treat them for everything. So for 10 days I had to squirt liquid antibiotics into their mouths and anoint them with Tresaderm, twice a day. No one enjoyed this process one little bit. I got better at medicating them as time went on–the first couple of times more medicine got on their faces, my hands, my jeans, the floor, and whatever else was within a three-foot radius, than in their mouths. They go in to the vet again tomorrow, and I’m hoping the vet will say they’re okay.

(more…)

Actually, things have been going pretty well lately. I figured that a post with the above header would garner more readers than one entitled “Actually, things have been going pretty well lately,” however.
It’s been a while since I posted, so I’ll work backwards in time through the missing month; and you the reader may play Merlin to my King Arthur (sounds like someone thinks a lot of herself).

(more…)

I’m done with Christmas shopping! Now need to wrap, finish the Christmas cards, and mail everything. I decided it was too rainy to walk the packages to the post office today. I can’t resist a perfectly good weather-based excuse like that.
This weekend we went to a “progressive dinner” with the church we’ve been attending. They asked me to bring 2 appetizers–I’ve never really made appetizers before, so didn’t really know what to make. I finally decided to make a pizza dip from Andy’s mom’s recipe, and a pretzel dip made with cranberry sauce, ginger, and mustard which sounded interesting. However, I didn’t think the pretzel dip recipe would make enough so I decided to double it, with the result that we now have about a year’s supply of pretzel dip. It’s tasty, but not that tasty.

Over Thanksgiving, while my parents were visiting, I discovered the all-Christmas-music station here in GR. I think I need to stop listening to it for a while, because I’ve started thinking about the songs a little too much, and a lot of them don’t really stand up to much analysis. For example, there are a few songs that I have no idea why they play at all, such as John Lennon’s So This is Christmas. “So this is Christmas, and what have you done; another year older, and a new one just begun.” That just doesn’t say Merry Christmas to me. It makes me feel old and depressed.
I have quite a high tolerance for Christmas music, no matter how sappy or overplayed. I secretly love “Sleigh Ride,” even dopey Lawrence Welk-like vocal versions, though the Boston Pops instrumental one is my favorite. I even like that Paul McCartney “simply having a wonderful Christmas” one. There are a couple that I really don’t like, though. For example, “Someday At Christmas.” I appreciate the general idea, but it’s a little too sanctimonious for me. And today I finally heard a song that was far too sappy even for me, it ended like this: “Christmas is sleigh bells, Christmas is sharing, Christmas is holly, Christmas is caring, Christmas is holly.” I guess they really wanted us to remember about the holly.
A perennial Christmas mystery for me is why certain songs are played only at Christmas, though they have nothing to do with the holiday. For example: Frosty the Snowman, Sleigh Ride, Winter Wonderland, Baby It’s Cold Outside (I actually never associated that one with Christmas before, but they played it on the Christmas station so it must be), and other winter-themed ones.
My parents have an annual tradition of counting the number of times they hear “Little Drummer Boy.” They some years are very Drummer Boy-heavy, while others have a Drummer Boy dearth. I think this is going to be a big year for the Drummer Boy; we counted three or four L.D.B’s just while they were here visiting (plus one mistaken hearing–I always mix up LDB and Do You Hear What I Hear, for some reason).

Yesterday at the cafe at Schuler, a copy of the book entitled Dude, where’s my country (or something like that, I feel silly just typing that title) by Michael Moore was sitting next to my table. I picked it up and flipped through it, not expecting to find any “facts” or “insights” necessarily, but I was hoping for a few laughs. Unfortunately, I was disappointed (in the latter expectation at least).
I enjoyed Roger & Me, as well as TV Nation the couple of times I watched it. I understand there’s some widely divergent opinions regarding Mr. Moore, but I figured that as long as you take his work as the expression of a particular viewpoint, not an attempt to present an unbiased expression of all viewpoints, it was okay.
However, towards the end of Dude, Moore violates my personal cardinal rule for political discourse. As a result I would like to propose a new rule, modeled upon “Godwin’s Law”, which regards gratuitous comparisons of one’s opponent to Hitler/the Nazis. (Thanks to Andy for the link to the official definition). My rule, which I would like to call the Moore-Coulter Rule, runs as follows:
“Any argument based upon the attribution of the arguer’s opponent’s political opinions to his or her ignorance, fear, or malevolence, should be disregarded.”
Towards the end of his book, I think in a chapter about how to talk to your conservative brother-in-law, Moore explains that the reason conservatives are conservative is because they fear [black people, gay people, Moore himself, whatever] because they are ignorant–they don’t know any [see list above]; and therefore they wish to oppress them in order to protect their own personal worldviews and lifeways. (That’s what I gathered from my quick skim, anyway.)
I wouldn’t dream of touching the logic of this argument with a ten-foot pole. What aggravated me was that Moore, a man a good deal older than me and presumably more politically savvy, is using the same dopey arguments that I did when I was 16 (the only possible reasons anyone could disagree with me is that they must be either mean or stupid or both). Like the Nazi comparison, the mean/stupid gambit is a blatant ad hominem attack, and works by instantly conjuring up emotional animus against the opponent by means of an unprovable generalization; in place of an actual reasoned argument against the opponent’s position.
I’m so tired of this kind of stuff. I first noticed it when I used to read the editorial page in the University of Nebraska’s student paper. I guess it’s understandable in 20-year-olds, but, to borrow Moore’s argument, by the time you’re forty-ish one would hope you’d actually met some [conservatives, liberals, republicans, democrats, whatever] and realized that they’re a pretty equally mixed bag as regards intelligence and philanthropy.
In any case, I believe that this rule would improve the quality of public discourse, and reduce the amount of time I have to waste reading about how Republicans hate everyone whereas Democrats only hate America.
By the way, the “Coulter” in the rule’s title refers of course to Ann Coulter. I haven’t read any of her work, but their titles speak for themselves as far as this rule’s applicability in her case. As a final note, I would also like to propose that the credibility of anyone who chooses to appear on the cover of his or her own book should automatically be reduced by 50%; but maybe another time.