The Singularity - Trailer (AI & machines / Humans)

[mrcash2009 0]

http://www.thesingularityfilm.com/

Within the coming decades we will be able to create AIs with greater than human intelligence, bio-engineer our species and re-design matter through nanotechnology. How will these technologies change what it means to be human?

This is a trailer for the feature documentary by doug wolens.

This project has been selected to the New York Film Market in September 2009 where there will be a work-in-progress screening of material from the film. It is anticipated that the film will be completed in 2010.

kJDvdEQJOew

Lets hope BIS get a taste, hope this gets completed and released. :) If this is a repeat thread, I looked back but may have missed it then lock it, and apologies.

Edited January 24, 2011 by mrcash2009

[walker 0]

Hi all

Taking a purely mathematical view, flawed I know but

Moore's law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PPTMooresLawai.jpg

Extrapolates the calculations per second of CPUs at around, 10 to the 10th, as of approximately now. Will look up real number calculations from another source.

And then considering the human brains calculation capability to be around, 10 to the 12th, to 10 to the 16th.

http://www.merkle.com/brainLimits.html

It would appear we are mighty close to the "event horizon"; if you will forgive the expansion of the analogy; of this singularity already.

In fact considering the total connections on the Internet I think we may have passed the theoretical and mathematical "event horizon" already.

You may want to read more here:

http://singinst.org/

Kind Regards walker

Edited January 25, 2011 by walker

[max power 21]

I wonder what you mean by close. By your numbers, in terms of calculating power, the human brain seems like it's still 100 to 1,000,000 times more powerful.

[walker 0]

Hi Max Power

Close in terms of time. Consider the exponential curve on the graph and extrapolate how long before a one thousand dollar computer siting on your desk reaches the 10 to the 12th, on up to the 10 to the 16th, range calculation that is given as value for humans, in the quoted paper. Then give me your assessment of the date that that happens?

There are some more recent and exact calculations on this page. That would seem to support the hypothesis that within a "networked environment" we may have already passed over the "event horizon" of the "technology singularity"

...NEC's SX-9 supercomputer was the world's first vector processor to exceed 100 gigaFLOPS per single core. IBM's supercomputer dubbed Roadrunner was the first to reach a sustained performance of 1 petaFLOPS measured by the Linpack benchmark. As of June 2010[update], the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world combine for 32.4 petaFLOPS of computing power.[1]...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS

If we are already talking in terms of petaFlops then theoretically and statistically it puts us potentially well beyond the "technology singularity's" "event horizon"

Of course as I pointed out I am talking about a purely mathematical view of intelligence and there is nothing to say that that is all that is needed; as I said I realise the circumstantial flaws in the approach. Never the less we are already across the the sheer number of calculations per second boundary.

Many things such as the mono directional calculation nature of computers until recently, parallel computing is a fairly recent innovation, versus the multi parallel nature of human thought, may throw off the value of purely statistical criterion.

Kind Regards walker

Edited January 25, 2011 by walker

[max power 21]

40 years? Yeah, I looked at the graph. I'm not exactly sure what the meaning of the comparison is. Ever since computing has surpassed dogs' brains, I have yet to see dogs be phased out, or become more important. It has been a long time since computers were worse than the average person at math. A computer now can create a 3d scene in real time much more detailed and persistent than one I can imagine one. The singularity seems like an arbitrary point in technological development. I also have problems with their supposition that biological processes are equal to machine processes in terms of calculating power in any meaningful way. Seems like a meaningless landmark that begs solutions to problems that don't exist.

[madrussian 347]

The Singularity already happened a long time ago. This is all simply one big sim of humanity's past.

[dmarkwick 261]

A computer now can create a 3d scene in real time much more detailed and persistent than one I can imagine one

Are you sure about that? Don't underestimate yourself, when was the last dream you had where you thought it wasn't realistic? ;)

[max power 21]

There's a difference between what you perceive to be realistic and what actually is realistic. How many times have you woken up from a dream that you remember vividly and realized that while everything seemed local in the dream, none of it actually made any sense at all? Are you ever aware of the functional dimensions of a room in your dreams? Are you ever in a complete room at all? I don't know, because I've never been aware of any rooms or places in my dreams other than what I'm concerned with at that moment. If you're in a house in a dream, do you know what every room in every house looks like in the whole neighbourhood? Sometimes it's as if I'm in a coherent environment, sometimes it's something based on a memory, sometimes I can't tell you what sort of environment I was in. As an artist, I'm quite aware of the limitations of my imagination and visualization. I can build something up and have it look quite good as I add information from my mind to a piece of paper or to a computer, but I can't imagine a whole island with every rock and tree in its place at once. I can imagine with 'some trees over here' and 'some rocks over there'. In your mind, that's good enough. That's easy to imagine. When it comes time to actually depict 'some trees over here', you realize what you are imagining is not trees at all. It is the suggestion of trees, and that's good enough for imaginations and for dreams, but it is not a complete scene.

Edited February 7, 2011 by Max Power

[dmarkwick 261]

Well, we enter the realm of the philosophical :)

There's a difference between what you perceive to be realistic and what actually is realistic.

No there is not, what you percieve is everything, and if you percieve it as realistic, then it's realistic.

How many times have you woken up from a dream that you remember vividly and realized that while everything seemed local in the dream, none of it actually made any sense at all? Are you ever aware of the functional dimensions of a room in your dreams? Are you ever in a complete room at all?

Ah, but waking up from a dream and retrospectively analysing it and actually dreaming the dream are two different states, and while you're dreaming, you can fill in any detail you need for the purpose. Tell me this: did you ever dream of a room that you percieved was incomplete?

I don't know, because I've never been aware of any rooms or places in my dreams other than what I'm concerned with at that moment. If you're in a house in a dream, do you know what every room in every house looks like in the whole neighbourhood?

But do you know what every room in every house in the neighborhood look like anyway? The point is you don't until you percieve them directly.

Sometimes it's as if I'm in a coherent environment, sometimes it's something based on a memory, sometimes I can't tell you what sort of environment I was in. As an artist, I'm quite aware of the limitations of my imagination and visualization. I can build something up and have it look quite good as I add information from my mind to a piece of paper or to a computer, but I can't imagine a whole island with every rock and tree in its place at once. I can imagine with 'some trees over here' and 'some rocks over there'. In your mind, that's good enough. That's easy to imagine. When it comes time to actually depict 'some trees over here', you realize what you are imagining is not trees at all. It is the suggestion of trees, and that's good enough for imaginations and for dreams, but it is not a complete scene.

What you imagine a complete scene to be when you're awake is different to what a complete scene is in actuality, and that's not even subjective, it's reality. If you choose to percieve the trees over there, you're not percieving the sand under your feet even though you can feel it. Or the water behind you, even though you might hear it. It's about where your attention is at, and if that attention-grabbing object is fully fleshed and realistic, you have no reason to question anything.

Your mind does this all the time, you'd be surprised at some of the things you thought you'd percieved in waking life, but had in reality merely filled it in yourself. There are many examples of such behavior, as I'm sure you already know :)

[maddogx 13]

Tell me this: did you ever dream of a room that you percieved was incomplete?

I've had z-fighting occur in one of my dreams once. I shit you not.

But for the sake of contributing something to the discussion: what Max Power was essentially saying, if I may summarize it, is that dreams are abstract. The brain is mostly working with concepts, not actual objects that can be incomplete or faulty.

A computer doesn't have that luxury though, because when we are looking at a computer screen we are awake, which means our brain is usually actively dissecting whatever is being displayed for us. In other words, a computer can't tell your brain "Okay, this is a forest, but don't look at the individual trees. It's just a forest, okay?". Whereas in a dream, whatever events there are could all be taking place in a forest, but after waking up you would have no recollection of the individual trees.

A computer can't compete with a dream, because there is nothing to compete with. It's really comparing apples and oranges.

Edited February 7, 2011 by MadDogX

[dmarkwick 261]

I've had z-fighting occur in one of my dreams once. I shit you not.

But for the sake of contributing something to the discussion: what Max Power was essentially saying, if I may summarize it, is that dreams are abstract. The brain is mostly working with concepts, not actual objects that can be incomplete or faulty.

A computer doesn't have that luxury though, because when we are looking at a computer screen we are awake, which means our brain is usually actively dissecting whatever is being displayed for us. In other words, a computer can't tell your brain "Okay, this is a forest, but don't look at the individual trees. It's just a forest, okay?". Whereas in a dream, whatever events there are could all be taking place in a forest, but after waking up you would have no recollection of the individual trees.

A computer can't compete with a dream, because there is nothing to compete with. It's really comparing apples and oranges.

What a computer cannot do is present you with something that you accept as reality, and that's what a dream can do. So as far as a singularity goes RE simulating a reality, I suggest that computing power has a very long way to go.

[max power 21]

Well, we enter the realm of the philosophical :)

No there is not, what you percieve is everything, and if you percieve it as realistic, then it's realistic.

What you are saying here is completely impenetrable to me. You don't perceive everything. You don't even perceive the world as it truly exists. What you experience does not even resemble the actuality of what the physical world is like. You perceive what your organism evolved to perceive in the most efficient and austere way possible to ensure its survival. The key to that survival is not to spend calories perceiving every atom of sand that you walk by.

Ah, but waking up from a dream and retrospectively analysing it and actually dreaming the dream are two different states, and while you're dreaming, you can fill in any detail you need for the purpose. Tell me this: did you ever dream of a room that you percieved was incomplete?

I have dreamt of a room that was complete in my dream but when I think about what I actually experienced in my dream, there was no indication that it was complete. Sometimes there was no indication that there was a room at all. There is the problem.

If you're interested in it, you should briefly fluff over some article on Gestalt Psychology. It lays a basis for modern work on sensory perception. Actually, so did a lot of early astronomy.

But do you know what every room in every house in the neighborhood look like anyway? The point is you don't until you percieve them directly.

The issue at hand is that the computer does know what every room in every house in the rendered neighbourhood looks like. I cannot imagine such detail. I have to build it up over time, using outside tools.

What you imagine a complete scene to be when you're awake is different to what a complete scene is in actuality, and that's not even subjective, it's reality. If you choose to percieve the trees over there, you're not percieving the sand under your feet even though you can feel it. Or the water behind you, even though you might hear it. It's about where your attention is at, and if that attention-grabbing object is fully fleshed and realistic, you have no reason to question anything.

You seem to have lost the plot here, DMarkwick. I'm saying that computers have more capacity to 'render' or 'put to image' detailed visual information in a given time than I do.

Your mind does this all the time, you'd be surprised at some of the things you thought you'd percieved in waking life, but had in reality merely filled it in yourself. There are many examples of such behavior, as I'm sure you already know :)

Yes, you people make a lot of assumptions all of the time. This is called generalization and everyone does it all the time. However, behind my computer monitor is a brick mantle. I see it every day. If you asked me to draw you the exact pattern of pits and rises on every brick I don't know if I could even do one accurately. The brick mantle in my mind is not a complete brick mantle. It is the vague suggestion of a brick mantle. I know where it is, what it does, what some sample of it might feel like, but I don't know what it looks like and cannot imagine it with any degree of accuracy other than the overt forms that define it. Without looking at it, I can tell you that it has two vertical pillars 1 brick length wide and one brick width thick that form the lintel. It has a shelf about 5 feet from the ground, and an inset arch in the overmantel. At the bottom it has a raised hearth. This seems detailed but it's not even close- not even close to what it actually looks like.

What a computer cannot do is present you with something that you accept as reality, and that's what a dream can do. So as far as a singularity goes RE simulating a reality, I suggest that computing power has a very long way to go.

Drugs can present you with something false that you accept as reality. This is not a computational problem at all.

And actually they do have working 'bionic' eyes that bypass the eyes and stimulate the visual cortex directly manipulating visual phenomena known as phosphenes. So does the world seen through a camera that's hooked up to your brain seem real or not? I'm not sure, but since what you are seeing is real I think the point is rather moot.

Edited February 7, 2011 by Max Power

[maddogx 13]

What a computer cannot do is present you with something that you accept as reality, and that's what a dream can do. So as far as a singularity goes RE simulating a reality, I suggest that computing power has a very long way to go.

Looks like you've pointed out the problem in the first sentence, but draw the wrong conclusion in the second sentence.

As far as presenting something that we would accept as reality is concerned it's less of a computer power problem, and more to do with a lack of a more direct interface. Who's to say that todays computers couldn't simulate a full believable world, Matrix style, if they could somehow be directly hooked up to the appropriate parts of our brains?

As it stands, all a computer can do is show us images and play sounds.

[dmarkwick 261]

Who's to say that todays computers couldn't simulate a full believable world, Matrix style, if they could somehow be directly hooked up to the appropriate parts of our brains?

Well, certainly not me, but that's what I meant by a very long way to go :)

[dmarkwick 261]

What you are saying here is completely impenetrable to me. You don't perceive everything. You don't even perceive the world as it truly exists. What you experience does not even resemble the actuality of what the physical world is like. You perceive what your organism evolved to perceive in the most efficient and austere way possible to ensure its survival. The key to that survival is not to spend calories perceiving every atom of sand that you walk by.

Aaah - I don't mean you percieve everything, I meant what you percieve is everything, as in, your perceptions at the time go to make up the reality that you believe (or not).

I have dreamt of a room that was complete in my dream but when I think about what I actually experienced in my dream, there was no indication that it was complete. Sometimes there was no indication that there was a room at all. There is the problem.

The problem is not that you dreamt an incomplete room, but that you are retrospectively analysing something that you had no trouble at all believing in at the time of the dream. Whereas, in a computer simulation, you can be very aware of even the most tiny of inconsitencies at the time.

The issue at hand is that the computer does know what every room in every house in the rendered neighbourhood looks like. I cannot imagine such detail. I have to build it up over time, using outside tools.

No, you just need to visualise being in there, as in a dream. Your mind will fill in any blank areas faultlessly, regardless of how you seem to remember it when you wake up. Don't confuse replicating/modeling new stuff with imagining it. :)

You seem to have lost the plot here, DMarkwick. I'm saying that computers have more capacity to 'render' or 'put to image' detailed visual information in a given time than I do.

What I'm saying is that your mind can already do this faultlessly, in better-than real-time (seeing as dreams can last hours even though you only slept minutes). Any detail you care to observe is fully fleshed out, and you can't ask for more than that :)

Yes, you people make a lot of assumptions all of the time. This is called generalization and everyone does it all the time. However, behind my computer monitor is a brick mantle. I see it every day. If you asked me to draw you the exact pattern of pits and rises on every brick I don't know if I could even do one accurately. The brick mantle in my mind is not a complete brick mantle. It is the vague suggestion of a brick mantle. I know where it is, what it does, what some sample of it might feel like, but I don't know what it looks like and cannot imagine it with any degree of accuracy other than the overt forms that define it. Without looking at it, I can tell you that it has two vertical pillars 1 brick length wide and one brick width thick that form the lintel. It has a shelf about 5 feet from the ground, and an inset arch in the overmantel. At the bottom it has a raised hearth. This seems detailed but it's not even close- not even close to what it actually looks like.

However, if some small detail was magically different one day, you would immediately pick up on it.

Drugs can present you with something false that you accept as reality. This is not a computational problem at all.

Bit of a diversion there :) but I would equate a drug trip with a dream state.

And actually they do have working 'bionic' eyes that bypass the eyes and stimulate the visual cortex directly manipulating visual phenomena known as phosphenes. So does the world seen through a camera that's hooked up to your brain seem real or not? I'm not sure, but since what you are seeing is real I think the point is rather moot.

Well, I don't wish to get too out-of-this-world but no-one ever sees anything real, they only ever see small electric signals generated by the light of whatever they're looking toward. So "real" is not purely what you see, but what you percieve. There is no difference in what a camera sees and what an eye sees, if the brain is the same brain doing the percieving ;)

Anyway. Looks like we went a little OT :D

Edited February 7, 2011 by DMarkwick

[walker 0]

Hi all

The human brain works on carrying around a model of the world outside within it. These factors that make up the model are derived from its sense data from the environment. Our mind is constantly orbiting round the model adjusting it to fit with what we know, so that it can use the model to plan what to do. In fact Bipolar-ism occurs when instead of a singular orbit your mind orbits round two poles thus having two models of the world. Like the real world this model is dynamic and unfixed. The physics of the real world is modeled on our perception of how it works, as are the human and societal relations that we perceive to exist.

To the majority of the pre Columbus world that world was a flat surface and if you sailed to edge of the world you fell off it (yes I know it was not just Columbus who proved the world was round so let us not get into that) and even members of his crew feared they would sail off the edge of the world. BUT! those who were educated perceived a different world, a world in which you could sail to India without having to go round Africa and through the lands claimed by others.

So our perceptions of the world differ and more importantly we individually can change from seeing the world as flat to round! So as I say we constantly re model the world we perceive.

That model is held not as a 3D simulation model, rather it is a neural network set of weightings that encapsulate the world/universe we perceive, as it were a formulae/algorithm by which we describe the world and know it. Further our model is filtered by our perceptions and previous experience, what we KNOW is the model; I refer you to "Plato's Allegory of the Cave"

It is not surprising that a Dream seems real to us. It could not be anything else, for our brain contains our sum of formulae/algorithm of the real world and that is what we KNOW and we expect to be real but what is missing in the dream is our conscious self comparing the dream via our perceptions to Plato's shadows on the wall. When we awaken in a dream our concious reasserts itself comparing the modle to the percieved world and says; hold on that is not correct, the model does not fit the reality, and we realise we were dreaming.

We use the model to plan what we will do by imagining our actions in the model, whether it be the unconscious act of placing one foot in front of the other or the conscious act of planning what shopping we will buy at the supermarket. Without that model we would be lost.

It is our conscious that monitors our internal expectations and compares them to the real world and flags up inconsistencies that necessitate the model be changed, the world is round not flat, so we can sail without fear of falling off, so the plan is to sail to America and then on to japan and India and back via the Panama canal thus missing the cape of Good Hope. The car is slowing and turning left not going straight on, so the plan is to slow down to account for it.

Without the model to compare it to, none of this could be planned!

The way a human creates that model is in the process of interacting with the real world, from being a child sucking at its mothers teat to it learning to wail for a cuddle or that saying a word will get it food or drink or that walking gets parental praise and falling down hurts your bottom, and bumping into things with your head really hurts.

For an AI to become conscious it must perceive and interact with the world in much the same. Whether that is through the receiving text and numbers that make up business transactions on the Internet to run a bank or abstracting data from a streaming CCTV image and alerting the authorities to a potential terrorist. Or becoming a better online translator by being told it was good a good or bad translation by the users or where a 3D model in an artificial physics world leans to stand by falling down and standing up.

In humans it is pain and pleasure that drive these events that change our model in AI it positive and negative numbers affecting the weighting.

In all cases it is the environment that teaches.

Kind Regards walker

Edited August 23, 2011 by walker

[max power 21]

Aaah - I don't mean you percieve everything, I meant what you percieve is everything, as in, your perceptions at the time go to make up the reality that you believe (or not).

The reason we are talking about the difference between perception and reality is to try to illustrate the way the brain works in terms of detail. Visualization, imagination, and dreaming can produce rich internal stimulus, but it's not the same as painting a picture. It's just not, I'm sorry.

The problem is not that you dreamt an incomplete room, but that you are retrospectively analysing something that you had no trouble at all believing in at the time of the dream. Whereas, in a computer simulation, you can be very aware of even the most tiny of inconsitencies at the time.

Yeah, so what? It's because, when you're dreaming, you're unconscious and hallucinating. The point is that you seem to believe what is going on even if it doesn't make sense. You seem to believe you're in a room when you're not in a room, and if you think back to exactly what you saw, you can probably pick out quite glaring inconsistencies in the imagery.

No, you just need to visualise being in there, as in a dream. Your mind will fill in any blank areas faultlessly, regardless of how you seem to remember it when you wake up. Don't confuse replicating/modeling new stuff with imagining it. :)

No, your mind will gloss over any blank areas, and certainly not faultlessly. I think your rather sunny outlook on what mental imagery actually looks like might be as a result of either your brain being much more visual than mine, which I doubt but it's possible; or you're not as critical about your own internal stimulus or sensory perception as I am. Do you do a lot of drawing? If you try and draw some complex thing from memory, then compare what you've drawn to the actual thing, you will see that what the brain does is not faultless.

What I'm saying is that your mind can already do this faultlessly, in better-than real-time (seeing as dreams can last hours even though you only slept minutes). Any detail you care to observe is fully fleshed out, and you can't ask for more than that :)

Who told you that dreams can last hours while you sleep only minutes? That has never happened to me. Furthermore, research from stanford indicates that there is no time dialation in dreams at all.

http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/time-passes-dreams/

However, if some small detail was magically different one day, you would immediately pick up on it.

You mean if someone took two similar looking bricks from my mantle and traded their places? No way. For someone to notice something like that, the change would have to be part of the definition of the form if the thing as I know it. If I had a favourite brick or if I knew of a brick that stood out from the others and someone took that, maybe I would notice, because it's part of the definition of the mantle in my mind.

Bit of a diversion there :) but I would equate a drug trip with a dream state.

They are both altered states of consciousness and they are both driven by internally generated stimulus, but they are not equal. The point was, as MadDogX more eloquently put, that the problem is not a computational one but an interface one.

Well, I don't wish to get too out-of-this-world but no-one ever sees anything real, they only ever see small electric signals generated by the light of whatever they're looking toward. So "real" is not purely what you see, but what you percieve. There is no difference in what a camera sees and what an eye sees, if the brain is the same brain doing the percieving ;)

Not even Descartes believed in global skepticism, and he is credited with being one of the most important minds in its development. You should not either.

Regarding 'there's not difference between what the camera sees and what your eyes see'. Have you ever been to a lecture and made an audio recording of it? Do you notice that while in the lecture, all you really hear is the lecturer, but when you're listening to the recording you hear all kinds of shit going on in the background like coughing and people dropping their pencils and other ruckus? That's because your brain does this thing called gating and the recording does not. This is just one example of how we can use tools to expose the capabilities and limitations of our sensory-perception system.

Edited February 7, 2011 by Max Power

[dmarkwick 261]

The reason we are talking about the difference between perception and reality is to try to illustrate the way the brain works in terms of detail. Visualization, imagination, and dreaming can produce rich internal stimulus, but it's not the same as painting a picture. It's just not, I'm sorry.

Who mentioned painting a picture? I'm talking about presenting reality. Reality is not purely a visual representation.

Yeah, so what? It's because, when you're dreaming, you're unconscious and hallucinating. The point is that you seem to believe what is going on even if it doesn't make sense. You seem to believe you're in a room when you're not in a room, and if you think back to exactly what you saw, you can probably pick out quite glaring inconsistencies in the imagery.

Again, my point is that you do not pick out these inconsistencies at the time And, I would take issue with the notion that you can pick them out even after the fact. What you might do is not have noticed a certain element, like a particular wall, and assume it wasn't there in your dream. It was, or you would have dreamt not seeing it. But reality is at least half about accepting ordinary things as presented unless those ordinary things are obviously flawed.

No, your mind will gloss over any blank areas, and certainly not faultlessly. I think your rather sunny outlook on what mental imagery actually looks like might be as a result of either your brain being much more visual than mine, which I doubt but it's possible; or you're not as critical about your own internal stimulus or sensory perception as I am. Do you do a lot of drawing? If you try and draw some complex thing from memory, then compare what you've drawn to the actual thing, you will see that what the brain does is not faultless.

Well, you say gloss over, I say fill in :) it perhaps comes down to the same thing anyway. Acceptence of the ordinary.

Who told you that dreams can last hours while you sleep only minutes? That has never happened to me. Furthermore, research from stanford indicates that there is no time dialation in dreams at all.

Who told me? No-one, I experience it all the time. As do many people regardless of what Stanford says :)

You mean if someone took two similar looking bricks from my mantle and traded their places? No way. For someone to notice something like that, the change would have to be part of the definition of the form if the thing as I know it. If I had a favourite brick or if I knew of a brick that stood out from the others and someone took that, maybe I would notice, because it's part of the definition of the mantle in my mind.

I mean more like if the detail or depth of the brick texture was different, you would pick up on it. You might not know exactly what was different, but you would be alerted. Did you ever wonder about the mind's ability to retain an astonishing amount of detail that you wouldn't have credited yourself with? Imagine if you heard a piece of familiar music that you hadn't heard for a long time. Now, imagine if someone had somehow tampered with it and added something, or taken something away. You would most likely notice immediately, you have a sort of comparing algorithm in your mind that notices when things are different like this.

They are both altered states of consciousness and they are both driven by internally generated stimulus, but they are not equal. The point was, as MadDogX more eloquently put, that the problem is not a computational one but an interface one.

They're equal in that they're both hallucinatory, and both internally generated, and both accepted as real by the dreamer.

Not even Descartes believed in global skepticism, and he is credited with being one of the most important minds in its development. You should not either.

Please don't credit me with something I didn't do, global skeptisism is something you seem to have mentioned with no real reason.

Regarding 'there's not difference between what the camera sees and what your eyes see'. Have you ever been to a lecture and made an audio recording of it? Do you notice that while in the lecture, all you really hear is the lecturer, but when you're listening to the recording you hear all kinds of shit going on in the background like coughing and people dropping their pencils and other ruckus? That's because your brain does this thing called gating and the recording does not. This is just one example of how we can use tools to expose the capabilities and limitations of our sensory-perception system.

It's all about the presentation. Listening to a recording is clearly a different presentation than believing yourself to be there, if my brain was the only thing doing the gating then I would be able to gate the recording, which as you pointed out does not happen. People have a knack for discarding the incidental in any situation, and when listening to a recording, all sounds are equal because there's no indication of what is incidental. The same lecture when presented on a TV and not just an audio recording has a few more levels of presentation and it becomes more easy to disregard it. Not 100%, because a video recording is still not the same as believing you're there, but you can see how more presentation or belief can alter your perceptions so that, contradictorily, you can ignore most of what you percieve and accept it as normal, and disregard it.

After a lecture, do you remember each background sound, even though you percieved it at the time and were not dreaming? No, but you still know it was there. If you had dreamt it, would there be any difference between hearing it and noticing it, and hearing it and desregarding it? Or even not hearing it, but accepting that the situation was "normal" and therefore there "must" have been some noise?

[TRexian 0]

It really seems like you guys are talking around each other, saying more or less the same thing....

Do you notice that while in the lecture, all you really hear is the lecturer, but when you're listening to the recording you hear all kinds of shit going on in the background like coughing and people dropping their pencils and other ruckus? That's because your brain does this thing called gating and the recording does not. This is just one example of how we can use tools to expose the capabilities and limitations of our sensory-perception system.

To me, that illustrates the fundamental difference between the virtual reality of computers and the imagined reality of dreams.

In order for VR to be 'hi fidelity' it would have to mimic those same events, which would then have to be 'gated' by the brain, or not, dependent on the user's wishes. Humans can override the gating by paying attention to details around them.

But, in dreams, the brain, or rather the experience of dreaming, presumes the gating, until something happens that brings the background 'noise' (it doesn't always have to be auditory) into focus.

[max power 21]

The point of bringing up gating was to illustrate that there's a limit in perceptual throughput that the brain is capable of handling, and your perception of the lecture is different than what actually happened there. The information contained in the photograph or the audio recording is much more rich. People who have insufficient gating like people with autism or schizophrenia are not happy people in busy settings. They can't handle all the activity.

DMarkwick, what I'm attempting to talk about is how much information is capable of being 'displayed' in a visual scene by the human mind vs. a computer at any instant. I'm not really interested very much in discussing what you learned about the world in Inception: The Movie. Your 'out-of-this-world' comment is not out of this world, but the most basic fact of perceptual psychology. I misread it though and thought you were saying that there is no reason to believe in an outside world, which is global skepticism. It's all find and good to do mental experiments on your sensory information through-put, but when you reject scientific information it makes me not want to talk to you. These people who have done these studies have put considerably more thought, time, and effort, and resources into exploring these questions than you or I.

I'm not sure what TRexian is saying regarding you and I saying the same thing. Maybe he sees something in your posts that I don't. I think that your suggestion of people 'filling' in scenes as they go does suggest that you believe that humans are not capable of visualizing a scene as complex as a computer can at any instant.

[dmarkwick 261]

The point of bringing up gating was to illustrate that there's a limit in perceptual throughput that the brain is capable of handling, and your perception of the lecture is different than what actually happened there. The information contained in the photograph or the audio recording is much more rich. People who have insufficient gating like people with autism or schizophrenia are not happy people in busy settings. They can't handle all the activity.

DMarkwick, what I'm attempting to talk about is how much information is capable of being 'displayed' in a visual scene by the human mind vs. a computer at any instant. I'm not really interested very much in discussing what you learned about the world in Inception: The Movie. Your 'out-of-this-world' comment is not out of this world, but the most basic fact of perceptual psychology. I misread it though and thought you were saying that there is no reason to believe in an outside world, which is global skepticism. It's all find and good to do mental experiments on your sensory information through-put, but when you reject scientific information it makes me not want to talk to you. These people who have done these studies have put considerably more thought, time, and effort, and resources into exploring these questions than you or I.

I can tell you with full authority that I spend hours in dreams that only last minutes. Whether you choose to disbelieve that for any of your imagined reasons doesn't make it any different, and if scientific information tells me that I don't dream for hours in a few minutes, well what am I supposed to do with that information? I didn't "learn it from a film" it's what happens to me regularly. Cheapening my opinion is a well esteblished method of appearing to have a better opinion, but please. Try and stick to things without bringing in imaginary reasoning.

I'm saying it doesn't make any difference how much information is displayed in a dream vs how much is displayed by a computer, if the person doing the observation has no reason to question it. I have hardly EVER seen a computer generated image that I did not know or suspect was generated, because in a waking form I have reason to question it, but I never question my dream situations. Everything I need to notice in a dream is generated without fault, when I need it, without limit. Whether it's visual, impressionistic, or otherwise, it's always presented as reality with no flaws that I can identify at the time.

I'm not sure what TRexian is saying regarding you and I saying the same thing. Maybe he sees something in your posts that I don't. I think that your suggestion of people 'filling' in scenes as they go does suggest that you believe that humans are not capable of visualizing a scene as complex as a computer can at any instant.

I don't think it's necessary for ANY entity (be it dreamer or computer) to imagine everything at any instant. The only thing that matters is that it's generated when it's needed. What possible advantage does a computer have in visualizing stuff it doesn't need to? I'll answer that, because it doesn't have the resources to generate it dynamically. Generating stuff on-the-fly is much more intensive, and your mind does it all the time.

[johncage 30]

the answer to all those questions is no.

[Herbal Influence 10]

Interesting stuff.

And in a way it relates to my thesis here , I mean the 'gating'-thought. Yes, in its double meaning.

What I like about BIS-Games is that they attract people who like to think and at the same time BIS-Games make you think.

One of my favorite thoughts in the beginning (2001) was: What do the enemy AI troups in the village do when I am not watching them? :-)

[TRexian 0]

What do the enemy AI troups in the village do when I am not watching them? :-)

They probably complain about human players having magical maps that indicate enemy positions, sneaking up on them in the darkness and headshot'ing them from 200m with silenced M9s. :)

[walker 0]

Hi all

In an example of the speed at which AI is improving Watson a computer AI built by IBM to chalenge the human all time champions at the US television Quiz Show Jeopardy took them on.

The quiz involves quite a complex understanding of human language as well as various strategic and tactical skills.

Warning the link below leads to the results so if you are wanting to watch it I suggest you do not follow the link:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/02/watson-jeopardy-finale-man-vs-machine-showdown.html

Kind Regards walker

Edited February 17, 2011 by walker