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Language: en
let alone consciousness oh is that
little own consciousness yes because
that's tied up in there too you can't
just put that on another shelf every
once in a while I got interested in
consciousness and then I go and I've
done that for years and ask one of my
betters as it were their view on
consciousness that's been interesting
collecting them what let's try to take a
brief step into that room well as Marvin
Minsky there's even a consciousness and
Marvin said consciousness is basically
overrated
it may be an epiphenomenon after all all
the things your brain does but or if
they're actually hard computations you
do not consciously and there's so much
evidence that even the things the simple
things you do you can make decisions you
can make committed decisions about them
the neurobiology can say he's now
committed he's going to move them left
before you know it so his view that
consciousness is not that's just like
little icing on the cake the real cake
is in the subconscious yo-yo so
conscious non conscious non-conscious
that's the better word sir it's only the
Freud captured the other word yeah it's
that's a confusing word subconscious
Nicholas chater wrote an interesting
book
I think I saw delivers divined is flat
flat and in a neural net sense you might
have to be a flat is something which is
a very broad they're all know without
really any of the layers in depth or as
a deep brain would be many layers and
not so broad
in the same sense that if you push
Minsky hard enough he would probably of
said consciousness is your effort to
explain to yourself that would you have
already done yeah it's the weaving of
the narrative around the things that
already been competed for you that's
right and then so much of what we do for
our memories of events for example if
there's some traumatic event you witness
you will have a few facts about it
correctly done if somebody asks you
about it you will weave a narrative
which is actually much more rich in
detail than that based on some anchor
points you have of correct things and
and pulling together general knowledge
on the other but you will have a
narrative and once you generate that
narrative you're very likely to repeat
that narrative and claim that all the
things you have hidden are actually the
correct things
there was a marvelous example of that in
the Watergate / impeachment era of John
Dean John Dean you're too young to know
had been the personal lawyer of Nixon
and so John Dean was involved in the
cover-up and John Dean ultimately
realized the only way to keep himself
out of jail for a long time was actually
to tell some of the truths about Nixon
and John Dean was a tremendous witness
he would remember these conversations in
great detail and very convincing detail
and long afterward some of some of the
tapes the secret aces were which these
Don was Jane was recalling these
conversations were published and one
found out that John Dean had a good but
not exceptional memory what he had was
an ability to paint vividly and
in some sense accurately the tone of
what was going on by the way that's a
beautiful description of consciousness
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do you mean like worried where do you
stand in your today so perhaps it's
changes day to day but where do you
stand on the importance of consciousness
in our whole big mess of cognition is it
just a little narrative maker or is it
actually fundamental to intelligence
that's our that's a very hard one what I
asked Francis Crick about consciousness
he launched forward a long monologue
about handle of the peas yeah and how
Mendel knew that there was something and
I hope our biologists understood there
was something in inheritance which is
just very very different and he is the
effect that inherited traits didn't just
wash out into a gray but it's this or
this and propagated that that was
absolutely fundamentals of biology and
it took generations of biologists to
understand that there was genetics and
it took another generation or two to
understand that genetics came from DNA
but there but but but very shortly after
Mendel thinking biologists did realize
that there was a deep problem of about
inheritance any Francis would of like
would like to have said and that's why
I'm were working on consciousness but of
course he didn't have any smoking gun in
the sense of Mendel
and that's the weakness of his physician
that he read his book but you wrote with
coke I think Nia Christophe go ah I find
it under Vinson for this for smoking gun
reason so I going on and collecting
views without actually having taken it
very strong with myself because I
haven't seen the entry point not seeing
the smoking gun and the point of view of
physics I don't see the entry point
whereas where is the neurobiology once
they understood the idea of a collective
a and the evolution of dynamics which
could be described as a clock a
collective phenomenon I thought ah there
is a point where what I know about
physics is so different from any
neurobiologist that I have something
that I might be able to contribute and
right now there's no way to grasp at
consciousness from a physics perspective
from my point of view that's correct and
of course people this is like everybody
else do you think very badly about
things you have the closely related
question about freewill do you believe
your freewill business will give an
offhand answer and then backtrack
backtrack backtrack where they realized
that the answer they gave must
fundamentally contradict the laws of
physics that natura answering questions
of freewill and consciousness naturally
lead to contradictions from a physics
perspective because it eventually ends
up with quantum mechanics and then you
get into that whole mess of trying to
understand how much from a physics
perspective how much is determined
already predetermined much is already
deterministic about our universe and
there's not the difference and if you
don't push quite that far you can say
essentially all of neurobiology which is
relevant it can be captured by classical
equations of motion right because in my
view of the mysteries of the brain are
not
the mysteries of quantum mechanics for
the mysteries of what can happen when
you have a dynamical system driven
system with 10 to the 14 parts the BET
complexity is something which is that
the physical complex systems is at least
as badly understood as the physics of
phase coherence in quantum mechanics
you