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Post by Toreador on Mar 26, 2023 14:29:11 GMT
I told my patients - and tell my students - that dreams are the brain's way of defragging it's hard drive. All five of our senses are inputting information to the brain all the time, but much more so when we're awake. In normal times we can process all of that information as it comes in, but when under stress there is more information than our brain can cope with in the moment and so our dreams are evidence of that additional processing going on while we sleep.  You sure? When I once said I hardly ever dream they said I dreamt regularly but forgot.  |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Mar 26, 2023 14:35:09 GMT
It's a long time ago since I read about him and his beliefs. I think it was along the lines that dreams could predict/know stuff that the person did not. Whether that be predicting the future or other psychic claims I can't quite remember (might have been from the past), but is was saying dreams were an aid to psychic abilities of some sort. It was and still is a load of cobblers. Some other stuff he observed was more believable, such as collective intelligence, but when someone comes out with pseudo science at the same time and is a student of Freud, one has to see him as unreliable. He was a kind of Mystic Meg of his day, popular but not good for academia. I believe he was saying that dreams were messages from The Self, one's true character. Indeed, his theory holds that The Self 'knows stuff' the ego does not. It's all very unhelpful. I have bad news for a lot of people. The most interesting advancements in understanding the brain come from mathematics. There is a lot of interest in the subject due to the desire to create better artificial intelligence. One uses a computer as a test bed to experiment with hypotheses. Jung was what we call soft science. I mean Freud got his theories as a medical practitioner who people would send hysterical women to in order to cure them. What a job eh? Anyway, he gained a kind of intuitive understanding of what goes on in mental cases. It's all they could do at the time, as the science was very backwards. |
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Post by Einhorn on Mar 26, 2023 14:46:43 GMT
I believe he was saying that dreams were messages from The Self, one's true character. Indeed, his theory holds that The Self 'knows stuff' the ego does not. It's all very unhelpful. I have bad news for a lot of people. The most interesting advancements in understanding the brain come from mathematics. There is a lot of interest in the subject due to the desire to create better artificial intelligence. One uses a computer as a test bed to experiment with hypotheses. Jung was what we call soft science. I mean Freud got his theories as a medical practitioner who people would send hysterical women to in order to cure them. What a job eh? Anyway, he gained a kind of intuitive understanding of what goes on in mental cases. It's all they could do at the time, as the science was very backwards. Who better to send hysterical women to than a psychiatrist? Freud may be incorrect in some respects, but that doesn't mean he is incorrect in all. Even if he is entirely incorrect, his theory has an internal logic (though, if he is entirely incorrect, his theory can have no more than an historical interest). Artificial intelligence can't emulate human beings, because robots can't want anything. A robot doesn't have a survival instinct, so it will be indifferent to whether it lives or dies (unless a foreign entity, a human, has programmed it to 'want' to live'). If our instincts are the motivating force for everything we do, a being that has no instincts can never emulate us. A being with no instincts won't have an inclination to do anything. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Mar 26, 2023 16:13:50 GMT
It's all very unhelpful. I have bad news for a lot of people. The most interesting advancements in understanding the brain come from mathematics. There is a lot of interest in the subject due to the desire to create better artificial intelligence. One uses a computer as a test bed to experiment with hypotheses. Jung was what we call soft science. I mean Freud got his theories as a medical practitioner who people would send hysterical women to in order to cure them. What a job eh? Anyway, he gained a kind of intuitive understanding of what goes on in mental cases. It's all they could do at the time, as the science was very backwards. Who better to send hysterical women to than a psychiatrist? Freud may be incorrect in some respects, but that doesn't mean he is incorrect in all. Even if he is entirely incorrect, his theory has an internal logic (though, if he is entirely incorrect, his theory can have no more than an historical interest). Artificial intelligence can't emulate human beings, because robots can't want anything. A robot doesn't have a survival instinct, so it will be indifferent to whether it lives or dies (unless a foreign entity, a human, has programmed it to 'want' to live'). If our instincts are the motivating force for everything we do, a being that has no instincts can never emulate us. A being with no instincts won't have an inclination to do anything. Freud is of interest to historians because he was the first person to do psychoanalysis. The problem is his model he used to do this analysis was entirely wrong and would have set the understanding on a backward regressive path, much like listening to a witchdoctor explain the symptoms by bad spirits. He may well have had some benefit to these women in just the fact that he was the specialist, so he would see all of one type of ailment and this is all we can take from it which is useful, the idea of using specialist consultants.
Where you argue against robots, well this is missing the point. I did not mention robots as robots are physical things. What I was talking about is intelligence and what makes something intelligent. It may really surprise you how something so sophisticated as the human mind came from a very simple starting point. With humans the game is surviving long enough to reproduce. This criterion is in AI called the fitness function, which we can set to whatever we want. For example experiments have been done to setting the fitness function to win a game of chess. After billions of iterations (or generations) these machines can beat the best humans at chess, but no one had to teach them to play. They work it out for themselves. It's a bit like magic to see this happen in practice. Freud was a million miles away from the guts of how these things work. We could use maths to explain hysteria even. There was a thread I created on this research but it was too difficult for forumers to understand so got ignored. This is why Freud gets more attention today then the real research. The modern research is out of the grasp of the layman. Simple explanations are popular explanations.
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Mar 26, 2023 16:25:59 GMT
I told my patients - and tell my students - that dreams are the brain's way of defragging it's hard drive. All five of our senses are inputting information to the brain all the time, but much more so when we're awake. In normal times we can process all of that information as it comes in, but when under stress there is more information than our brain can cope with in the moment and so our dreams are evidence of that additional processing going on while we sleep. It's where the learning tasks place according to the latest research. The brain replays sensory information over and over again to form long-term memory. It's classically conditioning itself as it were. |
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Post by Einhorn on Mar 26, 2023 16:28:43 GMT
I told my patients - and tell my students - that dreams are the brain's way of defragging it's hard drive. All five of our senses are inputting information to the brain all the time, but much more so when we're awake. In normal times we can process all of that information as it comes in, but when under stress there is more information than our brain can cope with in the moment and so our dreams are evidence of that additional processing going on while we sleep. It's where the learning tasks place according to the latest research. The brain replays sensory information over and over again to form long-term memory. It's classically conditioning itself as it were. What's the purpose? Surely, it would be easier to just programme a machine to do X if presented with Y. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Mar 26, 2023 16:53:13 GMT
It's where the learning tasks place according to the latest research. The brain replays sensory information over and over again to form long-term memory. It's classically conditioning itself as it were. What's the purpose? Surely, it would be easier to just programme a machine to do X if presented with Y. Yes I understand what you mean there, and there was a time when people thought this is how you do intelligence. The called them expert systems, and tried to use them for diagnosing diseases by answering yes no questions in a decision tree. It was hopelessly inadequate. With genetic algorithms you don't need to teach it. This example, when playing chess, it made moves no one had ever contemplated, so they had to re-write the chess manuals and add in the AI games. AI even found a more efficient way in maths of multiplying large matrices. It could have got itself published in a maths journal. |
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Post by Einhorn on Mar 26, 2023 16:55:33 GMT
What's the purpose? Surely, it would be easier to just programme a machine to do X if presented with Y. Yes I understand what you mean there, and there was a time when people thought this is how you do intelligence. The called them expert systems, and tried to use them for diagnosing diseases by answering yes no questions in a decision tree. It was hopelessly inadequate. With genetic algorithms you don't need to teach it. This example, when playing chess, it made moves no one had ever contemplated, so they had to re-write the chess manuals and add in the AI games. AI even found a more efficient way in maths of multiplying large matrices. It could have got itself published in a maths journal. So, why do these machines need to emulate human beings? What's achieved by making them human-like (if that were possible).? |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Mar 26, 2023 17:05:04 GMT
Yes I understand what you mean there, and there was a time when people thought this is how you do intelligence. The called them expert systems, and tried to use them for diagnosing diseases by answering yes no questions in a decision tree. It was hopelessly inadequate. With genetic algorithms you don't need to teach it. This example, when playing chess, it made moves no one had ever contemplated, so they had to re-write the chess manuals and add in the AI games. AI even found a more efficient way in maths of multiplying large matrices. It could have got itself published in a maths journal. So, why do these machines need to emulate human beings? What's achieved by making them human-like (if that were possible). Nothing really unless you want a robot bar tender rather than a vending machine. We would rather they drive us home from the pub if we were too pissed to drive. It is advantageous for robots to understand how we behave though if say they are used in factories, they would be able to predict human motion in order to avoid accidents. They call these things cobots. |
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Post by Orac on Mar 26, 2023 17:08:28 GMT
Yes I understand what you mean there, and there was a time when people thought this is how you do intelligence. The called them expert systems, and tried to use them for diagnosing diseases by answering yes no questions in a decision tree. It was hopelessly inadequate. With genetic algorithms you don't need to teach it. This example, when playing chess, it made moves no one had ever contemplated, so they had to re-write the chess manuals and add in the AI games. AI even found a more efficient way in maths of multiplying large matrices. It could have got itself published in a maths journal. So, why do these machines need to emulate human beings? What's achieved by making them human-like (if that were possible). The flexibility is very powerful. Think of it like this - at the moment you have software on your computer. These are hand written scripts to do predetermined tasks in a particular way given certain information. You select the script / program for the task you have in mind (to some extent you have know what you are doing). In the not too distant future all of this could become redundant - there is no need to install / run particular software because your device has sufficient ability to be able to do any task by a simple request to do the task. This is just the tip of the iceberg btw - some of the possibilities start to get very eerie - so eerie that I'm not even sure giving people the idea is a good idea. My take is it spells outright doom. The government should probably close down the internet and go back to old style telephones. |
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Post by Einhorn on Mar 26, 2023 17:08:46 GMT
So, why do these machines need to emulate human beings? What's achieved by making them human-like (if that were possible). Nothing really unless you want a robot bar tender rather than a vending machine. We would rather they drive us home from the pub if we were too pissed to drive. It is advantageous for robots to understand how we behave though if say they are used in factories, they would be able to predict human motion in order to avoid accidents. They call these things cobots. Okay. I can see how being able to predict our actions would be helpful. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Mar 26, 2023 18:10:35 GMT
So, why do these machines need to emulate human beings? What's achieved by making them human-like (if that were possible). The flexibility is very powerful. Think of it like this - at the moment you have software on your computer. These are hand written scripts to do predetermined tasks in a particular way given certain information. You select the script / program for the task you have in mind (to some extent you have know what you are doing). In the not too distant future all of this could become redundant - there is no need to install / run particular software because your device has sufficient ability to be able to do any task by a simple request to do the task. This is just the tip of the iceberg btw - some of the possibilities start to get very eerie - so eerie that I'm not even sure giving people the idea is a good idea. My take is it spells outright doom. The government should probably close down the internet and go back to old style telephones. I think a greater law apples. This powerful stuff is created by technology. The technology falls into the hands of the most intelligent and they are the kind of people that would use it responsibly. Right now we see the rise of China. China has risen in power due to its international relations, which come partly from its own success, partly through trust and how other countries see it as a benevolent entity. The Americans have pretty much done the opposite and abused their power to force people to serve them against their will. This has caused them great problems. It's official now. Saudis are trading in yuan. Bretton Woods is history. China's robots will perform lifesaving surgery and all manner of good things. The human race will continue to prosper and the warmongers will die out. In the future America will go through the same path we did. The quality stuff in America will be the historical artefacts when the country was rich. One of our richest times was in the times of the wool trade. We see the massive stately homes and how they once lived. This will be America in 100 years. |
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Post by Orac on Mar 26, 2023 18:40:45 GMT
Nothing really unless you want a robot bar tender rather than a vending machine. We would rather they drive us home from the pub if we were too pissed to drive. It is advantageous for robots to understand how we behave though if say they are used in factories, they would be able to predict human motion in order to avoid accidents. They call these things cobots. Okay. I can see how being able to predict our actions would be helpful. You can ask the Ai to make predictive personality models of your friends, colleagues and family - ask it to give you the best strategies to employ to manipulate people and what lies to tell and what lies not to. It's going to be so much fun. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Mar 26, 2023 23:54:18 GMT
Okay. I can see how being able to predict our actions would be helpful. You can ask the Ai to make predictive personality models of your friends, colleagues and family - ask it to give you the best strategies to employ to manipulate people and what lies to tell and what lies not to. It's going to be so much fun.I suppose that's a bit like 3D printing a gun. There will always be those who abuse technology. I don't think those people will rule though. I think the ones who will rule will do constructive things with AI like completely automatic factories that make completely reliable goods for pittance, so the liar products just can't stand up to it. I see the market segment into the intelligent buyer products and those market products that sell for 20 times the price and can often be worse. Lying is something that eventually ends up deceiving the ones telling the lies. |
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Post by Einhorn on Mar 27, 2023 10:18:29 GMT
Okay. I can see how being able to predict our actions would be helpful. You can ask the Ai to make predictive personality models of your friends, colleagues and family - ask it to give you the best strategies to employ to manipulate people and what lies to tell and what lies not to. It's going to be so much fun.Can't ordinary human beings do this already? People manipulate and lie all the time. That brings us back to the original OP. Surely, the bigger threat to society would be a simple phone app that detects lies. If lies are necessary for all of us to get along, a reliable 'lie detector' app could have huge consequences for society. Even if such a thing weren't disastrous for society, it would certainly change our world dramatically. In other words, the threat doesn't come from people lying, but from people always telling the truth. |
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