GENIUS FORUMS

We get robots to do predictable routine tasks.

We use robots mostly for the entertainment industry.

Robots are logical. Enlightenment is logical.

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kjones wrote:We get robots to do predictable routine tasks.

We use robots mostly for the entertainment industry.

Yeah, people enjoy predicting what they will do, after they've done their first round. It makes them feel omniscient.

Robots are logical. Enlightenment is logical.

I've tried, but i fail to make sense of this part Kelly.

Perhaps you could flesh out the idea for us?

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Robots are logical. Enlightenment is logical.

Delusion is always the same. All the predictable, routine work of enlightening the mind can be done robotically. Every error has a standard error correction code. Enlightening couldn't be empirical, or one could never know one is certainly enlightened. The uncertainty about subtle delusions is only because they haven't been experienced.

Well-designed robots are very long-lasting. Only a few super-manager robots are needed. A consciousness-controller has the program, and can be repeated identically in any situation.

It'd be much faster to troll through everything in advance, creating all possible scare-scenarios. That would create a kind of level one cache of quickly-accessed error-correction codes.

The whole process of learning to "ride the bull" is about reducing the access time to the error-correction codes.


Kelly

Kelly: i think i understand what you are trying to say:

Enlightenement = Logic without error.

Machine can theoreticly have logic without error, and percive world without forming ilogical conclusions about reality.

If so then such machine could be called enlightened.?

The question here then is: can machine be without error?



The brain is also machine that has evolved in living organisms to get the uper hand in the race against other organisms in strugle for available resources.

Little side note:

"Organism" in my definition as aplicable here:

A cooperative of cells or cooperative of multicelled organisms.


"cooperative of cells"

Living cells working together towards common goal.
eg: wolf,fish,human
Therefore you could describe wolf as a organism

"cooperative of multicelled organisms"

Multicelled organisms working together towards common goal.
eg: pack of wolves,school of fish, tribe of humans.
Therefore you could describe a pack of wolvesas a organism

There can be other types of organisms that are not based on biological definition also.

In case you are reading Pye :)

It is a evolutionary adoptation just like aye,teath,ear,lung etc.

The more accurately brain interprets the world around itself, the more accurate will be its conclusions and actions.

Brain that makes error in interpreting the world around itself, will form erronious conclusions and will run a chance of making decisions that will put it in mortal danger, or spell demise for itself.

Such foulty machinary will not be able to have time to propogate its blueprint and eventuly will be extinct.

This means that evolution is a race to enlightenement ie. understanding of reality. A genetic race for perfection (see definition of perfection)

What you sugesting is, that machinary (computers) can reach the level of sophistication that took human brain millions of years of evolution and overtake it to ultimate perfection.

The concept of perfection itself is unatainable, because reality is in a state of constant flux ie. uncertainty.
(Just look at quantum physics laws)

so the answer (i think) would be "no" robots cannot atain enlightenment (if enlightenement is defined as perfect understanding of reality) .

I agree though that machine based on blueprint radicly different to that of carbon based life forms, in theory can get closer to enlightenement (perfection).

This is a realy complicated discussion on AI on which you should reffer to stuff Alan Turing wrote.

kjones wrote: Delusion is always the same. All the predictable, routine work of enlightening the mind can be done robotically. Every error has a standard error correction code. Enlightening couldn't be empirical, or one could never know one is certainly enlightened.

You mean that a more systematic approach could be followed? I believe this has been tried by ancient teachers already. The traces of these systems and procedures can still be found if you know where and how to look.

But also these systems were no match for the ego. They can easily be absorbed and put to use to let delusion grow even further.

To build a conscious machine without ego, the designer had to understand first consciousness as a whole as to implement it correctly. But the questions arises if it's possible to create such machine without also creating the possibility of grave delusion. It might be linked, just as shadows and the lightsource are linked.

Of course this scenario might already have happened when a god created mankind.

Hsandman,

hsandman wrote:Kelly: i think i understand what you are trying to say:

Enlightenement = Logic without error.

I'm defining enlightenment as comfortably dwelling in Reality, rather than any intellectual insight about ultimate things.

So, flawed logical thoughts could appear in the enlightened consciousness. One might be watching TV.

Machine can theoreticly have logic without error, and percive world without forming ilogical conclusions about reality. If so then such machine could be called enlightened.?

To comfortably dwell in Reality, the machine needs a self-organising program, that has a particular job to calculate that all such "absolute" concepts as self-organisation, are relative. Then it has to be able to apply its result to itself and all things, and importantly, modify the self-organising program to correct its original, "self-isolated" programming.

If it gets through that process without becoming corrupted or breaking down, it would be enlightened. As I'm still correcting self-isolated programming flaws, I'm going by definitions here.

The question here then is: can machine be without error?

This is a good question. Would the bits of binary logic in a robotic language be conducive to free-thinking? Or would it create a false pecking order, seeing that wisdom is programmed at "Level One priority"? Even if logic were "instinct" and therefore a false level one program, could it detect that all its bits are intrinsically egalitarian, and be capable of rewriting its program levels?

As long as it remains logical, then there should be no reason why it can't detect its philosophically false programming.

I'm glad you realise this is all immediately relevant to humans, as your next quote shows.

The brain is also machine that has evolved in living organisms to get the uper hand in the race against other organisms in strugle for available resources.

It is a evolutionary adoptation just like aye,teath,ear,lung etc.

We could define a galaxy is a living organism, or machine, because it has a self-gravitating nature. A cluster of galaxies are the same. Neither a galaxy or a human being are intrinsically evolved for any reason at all. A human has developed because its symbiotically-gravitating parts have developed as a unit. By chance, certain unity-advantageous functions have been created, such as the self-construct "I".

The more accurately brain interprets the world around itself, the more accurate will be its conclusions and actions.

Brain that makes error in interpreting the world around itself, will form erronious conclusions and will run a chance of making decisions that will put it in mortal danger, or spell demise for itself.

Such foulty machinary will not be able to have time to propogate its blueprint and eventuly will be extinct.

This means that evolution is a race to enlightenement ie. understanding of reality.

No, there's no such thing as an ultimate evolutionary purpose. It's philosophically false to see humankind as intrinsically the apex of all creation. Its unified complexity, having many parts operating together, with a consciousness of itself, has only occurred because the rest of the infinite causes it to.

A galaxy doesn't develop consciousness, for example, and I don't believe it propagates itself, but it has unified complexity.

"A genetic race to perfection" is a result of the philosophically false self-isolated program. It has to overcome its delusional softwiring. The definition for perfection you gave from Wikipedia had four parts:

1.

Perfection is a state of flawlessness. Something is called perfect when it has no flaws.

I define perfection as perfect wisdom. It means dwelling comfortably in Reality. By definition, this entails total absence of delusion.

2.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said: Perfection (in design) is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Reality has no form to add, or take away. The above definition for perfection is only relevant to design, so it's not useful here.

3.

Perfection in the dualistic sense is a theoretical state of existence which is beyond all possible improvability. In this mode every thing is either perfect or flawed. Despite the either-or nature of this concept of perfection, it nevertheless relies upon the relativistic notion that a thing exists in a state which is flawed in comparison to an idealized or existent thing of the same class which can be determined by all possible methods not to possess any flaw. This concept of ultimate perfection is commonly applied in dualistic ideologies, and can be said to be validly established by the fact that we can always judge a thing to be flawed, and therefore falling short of the ideal. There is an ontological relationship between the concept of perfection and ideology itself, since ideologies are predicated on concepts of what constitutes better or worse.

This is an illogical definition for perfection, which is clearly ridiculous. It defines something as perfect if it is itself and flawed if it is not itself. Consequently, it cannot define a flaw as perfectly itself, and nor can it define what a flaw is not, i.e. not-flaw, since this is typically defined as a flaw.

I'd throw that in the bin, as it ends up making perfection impossible, since it can't define what flaws to be perfectly what they are: perfectly not-perfect.

4.

Perfection in the non-dualistic sense is considered to be a continuum of relative merit, established in some thing's relationship to all other things which can be considered relevant to the thing's nature. In this sense there is no ultimate perfection, but instead the relative perfection of a thing is established in terms of its suitability for a particular purpose. For example, a screwdriver can be said to be the perfect tool for embedding a screw. However, while a screwdriver may be perfectly suitable for embedding a screw in wood, a screw-driving power-drill attachment may be considered to be more suitable to embed a screw into a harder material, and hence more perfect in a given case.

This is another illogical definition for perfection, which is for exactly the same reason, ridiculous. It uses exactly the same definition: a thing is perfect if it is itself, and flawed if it is not itself. But it fails to see that a thing that is "not quite as perfect" is still itself. So, again, it can't define something as flawed because it is still perfectly flawed.

I'd throw this out, too. These definitions can't be applied to becoming enlightened, because they have this error: One cannot become perfect, with the aim of making oneself perfect, since one is already perfectly oneself. As I mentioned above, the delusional soft-wiring of the machine to view all things as absolutes, because it views itself as intrinsically existing, has to be overcome.

Perfection is not the attainment of a self-existence that has been cleaned of all flaws (relative to its self). Rather, it's the consciousness of what all things ultimately are, in which flawed beliefs, values, emotional reactions, and ideas, (the ego), never arise.

What you sugesting is, that machinary (computers) can reach the level of sophistication that took human brain millions of years of evolution and overtake it to ultimate perfection.

You've used a flawed understanding of perfection in which perfection is a relative scale.

Nevertheless, it may well be that robots with less karmic disabilities evolve.

The concept of perfection itself is unatainable, because reality is in a state of constant flux ie. uncertainty. (Just look at quantum physics laws)

I'm learning quite rapidly about quantum mechanics, by reading stuff by Einstein, Hawking, Schrodinger, and Feynman. They make some really illogical statements, because they start with flawed definitions. That Reality manifests in infinite ways doesn't mean the nature of Reality to manifest in infinite ways is uncertain....

so the answer (i think) would be "no" robots cannot atain enlightenment (if enlightenement is defined as perfect understanding of reality) .

Certainly they can't, if they define perfection as the accomplishment of understanding what is certainly never certain to be understood.

I agree though that machine based on blueprint radicly different to that of carbon based life forms, in theory can get closer to enlightenement (perfection).

A=A is not "if carbon-based life-form exists, then A=A".

This is a realy complicated discussion on AI on which you should reffer to stuff Alan Turing wrote.

From the site:

The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to perform human-like conversation. Described by Alan Turing in the 1950 paper "Computing machinery and intelligence", it proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test. It is assumed that both the human and the machine try to appear human. In order to keep the test setting simple and universal (to explicitly test the linguistic capability of the machine instead of its ability to render words into audio), the conversation is usually limited to a text-only channel such as a teletype machine as Turing suggested or, more recently IRC or instant messaging.

.....It has been argued that the Turing test so defined cannot serve as a valid definition of machine intelligence or "machine thinking" for at least three reasons:

1. A machine passing the Turing test may be able to simulate human conversational behaviour, but this may be much weaker than true intelligence. The machine might just follow some cleverly devised rules. A common rebuttal in the AI community has been to ask, "How do we know humans don't just follow some cleverly devised rules?" Two famous examples of this line of argument against the Turing test are John Searle's Chinese room argument and Ned Block's Blockhead argument.
2. A machine may very well be intelligent without being able to chat like a human.
3. Many humans that we'd probably want to consider intelligent might fail this test (e.g., the young or the illiterate). On the other hand, the intelligence of fellow humans is almost always tested exclusively based on their utterances.

Another potential problem, related to the first objection above, is that even if the Turing test is a good operational definition of intelligence, it may not indicate that the machine has consciousness, or that it has intentionality. Perhaps intelligence and consciousness, for example, are such that neither one necessarily implies the other. In that case, the Turing test might fail to capture one of the key differences between intelligent machines and intelligent people. Of course, machines passing the test would most likely vehemently disagree.


.....(Tests of consciousness)
As there is still not a clear definition of consciousness, no empirical tests currently exist to test consciousness as a whole. Some have even argued that empirical tests of consciousness are intrinsically impossible. However, some researchers have devised tests to detect what they feel are certain aspects of consciousness.My interrupt: Did they also devise a test to prove the test for certainty? A test similar to this was used in the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick to see if a person was a robot or an actual human. In the Ridley Scott movie, Blade Runner, which was inspired by that book, it is known as the "Voigt-Kampf" test, and tests the subject for empathy.

Turing Test
Alan Turing proposed what is now known as the Turing test to determine if a computer could simulate human conversation undetectably. This test is commonly cited in discussion of artificial intelligence. The application to consciousness is that, according to some philosophers, anything capable of passing the Turing test as well as a person is necessarily conscious. Other philosophers say that a philosophical zombie could pass the test yet fail to be conscious. This matter is heavily disputed. Still others take it for granted that computers can think, since this is what they were designed to do; Edsger Dijkstra commented that "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."

A thought experiment, which is intended to show problems with the Turing Test, is as follows. Imagine a computer in which are stored a very large number of questions and a very large number of actual human responses to these questions. If the number of questions and answers was large enough, then the computer would be able to mimic consciousness by a purely mechanical procedure. Of course, this is a purely hypothetical example, because any attempt to create a lookup table for all possible responses would entail a device of truly gigantic proportions. For this reasons, some consider this thought experiment to be misleading. See Chinese room.

Mirror test
With the mirror test, devised by Gordon Gallup in the 1970s, one is interested in whether animals are able to recognize themselves in a mirror. Such self-recognition is said to be an indicator of consciousness. Humans (older than 18 months), great apes (except for gorillas), and bottlenose dolphins have all been observed to pass this test.

This is quite funny. Kierkegaard's saying that people often forget they exist, comes to mind.


Kelly

kjones: Very good post in my view there, up to this point :P

I'm defining enlightenment as comfortably dwelling in Reality, rather than any intellectual insight about ultimate things.

Well I guess then we disagree on that definition of the word. I do not think "content idiot" can be called enlightened, but that’s just me I guess.

No, there's no such thing as an ultimate evolutionary purpose.

Ok, let’s synchronize on some definitions:

Do you agree with concept: evolution is a race.?

If it is, then a race by definition needs a goal/destination.


Let’s think of water flooding a very complex maze.
The water is not consciously looking for solution to the maze, but never the less it will find it. So it is intrinsically solving the equation

"equation"
The act or process of equating or of being equated.
The state of being equal.

I think you are using word "intrinsically" (Of or relating to the essential nature of a thing; inherent.)

where you should be using "consciously" ( Having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts.)


I can see you making just such erroneous statement here:

Neither a galaxy or a human being are intrinsically evolved for any reason at all.

But never the less they have/are.


Similarly evolution is not consciouslylooking for solutions, but never the less it is finding them.

It's philosophically false to see humankind as intrinsically the apex of all creation.

You like that word, don't you? :/

First of all I never said or implied that human race is at the apex of creation (creation: what ever that means in your interpretation.)

Why would you infer such meaning to my post is your reason, which I can only guess.
You are giving answer to a question that I didn’t ask.
(the form of explanatory statement "It is" leads me to believe that it is a answer to question)

I agree with your answer though.
Good to see you arrived also to such realisation.

Its unified complexity,

having many parts operating together,

with a consciousness of itself,

has only occurred,

because the rest of the infinite causes it to.

Wording there is confusing and liberal use of your own definition of words, but I think you are trying to describe this:

The water is not consciously looking for solution to the maze, but never the less it will find it. So it is intrinsically solving the equation



---------changed my mind------------
You are either so much above people in understanding of reality such as myself, Einstein, Hawking, Schrodinger, and Feynman, Alan Turing (did I get them all?) or you are a quack with some insights..
I don't know. My guess the later. This should have been the clue to me :S

I'm defining enlightenment as comfortably dwelling in Reality, rather than any intellectual insight about ultimate things.

You, certainly seem to be "enlightened" by your own definition of the word. :S

edit:
I am not sure why are you here then, if search for intellectual insight is not your aim? Comfort is not achieved trough understanding , I am sorry.. the things that comforted you before and made your believe in security, will not look the same once you have some understanding of reality. Yes, the problems you have now will seem insignificant.., but only because you will discover bigger problems. There is certainly nothing wrong with comfortably living in reality. Ignorance is bliss.
I am sorry for lashing out. Bye. :)

What the hell! edit is posting as reply.

nt.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:

kjones wrote: Delusion is always the same. All the predictable, routine work of enlightening the mind can be done robotically. Every error has a standard error correction code. Enlightening couldn't be empirical, or one could never know one is certainly enlightened.

You mean that a more systematic approach could be followed? I believe this has been tried by ancient teachers already. The traces of these systems and procedures can still be found if you know where and how to look.

But also these systems were no match for the ego. They can easily be absorbed and put to use to let delusion grow even further.

If delusion is always an illogical worldview, that is out of touch with the real world, then enlightenment is always the same approach. If the system used is illogical, it won't work. For instance, it may be seeking the perfection of a finite being, as hsandman suggests. Certainly, there are countless attempts to do this, and none of them have worked, for the reason you suggest: they are fundamentally flawed. They're basically samsaric.

There is one system, one path, one way, one truth, but it isn't one particular finite system, path, way or truth. Certainly this is a predictable scenario, true always, but it isn't really anything one can use, like a particular solution.

What I'm trying to work out is, how do you have faith in nothing at all? I'm guessing that one has to somehow stop looking for solutions, stop living, in a way, without conceiving of really having done anything at all.

It's a bit of a joke, really. I suppose this is what Jesus meant by saying, "When you become two, what will you do?"

To build a conscious machine without ego, the designer had to understand first consciousness as a whole as to implement it correctly. But the questions arises if it's possible to create such machine without also creating the possibility of grave delusion. It might be linked, just as shadows and the lightsource are linked.

Of course this scenario might already have happened when a god created mankind.

I wasn't thinking, hypothetically, of designing any so-called artificial consciousness (or intelligence), but rather of designing consciousness of Truth immediately. It's far too easy to pass the enlightenment buck onto some uncertain existence in the future.

In my reply to hsandman, I mentioned the necessity of the consciousness that uses an organisational self-construct, which it perceives as absolute. Without this self-construct, there can be no concept of "things", and without things, there can be no intellectualisation of the totality, and therefore no understanding of Reality's nature.

So, I agree it is impossible to design consciousness of Truth without the ego, simply because enlightenment requires the re-orientation to a different "north".

That is, the ego-magnet is part and parcel of the removal of the ego-magnet.


Kelly

hsandman wrote:

I'm defining enlightenment as comfortably dwelling in Reality, rather than any intellectual insight about ultimate things.

Well I guess then we disagree on that definition of the word. I do not think "content idiot" can be called enlightened, but that’s just me I guess.

I was hoping this meaning wouldn't appear. By dwelling comfortably in Reality, I don't mean the ordinary dickhead loafing around in mindlessness.

The mere suggestion of the nature of Ultimate Reality is extremely uncomfortable to the ordinary bloke. There's no way he'd be happy dwelling in an enlightened understanding. He'd think it formed part of a mental case's nightmare.

There's no life in enlightenment, no burrowing into interesting little rabbit-holes. As far as I've had any insight into enlightenment, anyway. But one may well appear as a contented idiot, since the consciousness of Truth doesn't make one telepathic or suddenly open to extra-consciousness neurotransmissions.

kjones wrote:No, there's no such thing as an ultimate evolutionary purpose.

Ok, let’s synchronize on some definitions:

Do you agree with concept: evolution is a race.?

If it is, then a race by definition needs a goal/destination.

No, I don't. Anything that evolves does so through the "permission" of everything else. If there is an ultimate purpose, then all of it has the same purpose. But that removes the possibility of a race, doesn't it.

Let’s think of water flooding a very complex maze.
The water is not consciously looking for solution to the maze, but never the less it will find it. So it is intrinsically solving the equation

It's not evolving. It's just caused to fill the maze, if it has the appropriate causes to do so. It won't get through the maze if there is no maze structure, space, gravity, temperature, hydrogen ions, and so on, allowing it to flow. So, it doesn't intrinsically have the capacity to do anything at all.

"equation"
The act or process of equating or of being equated.
The state of being equal.

I think you are using word "intrinsically" (Of or relating to the essential nature of a thing; inherent.)

where you should be using "consciously" ( Having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts.)

What's the point you're making?

I can see you making just such erroneous statement here:

Neither a galaxy or a human being are intrinsically evolved for any reason at all.

But never the less they have/are.

Yes, things are, but what reason has caused everything?

Similarly evolution is not consciouslylooking for solutions, but never the less it is finding them.

Solutions to what?

kjones wrote:Its unified complexity, having many parts operating together, with a consciousness of itself, has only occurred, because the rest of the infinite causes it to.

Wording there is confusing and liberal use of your own definition of words, but I think you are trying to describe this:

The water is not consciously looking for solution to the maze, but never the less it will find it. So it is intrinsically solving the equation

I'm going to make a stab in the dark. I'm assuming you think only things in consciousness don't really exist, and that everything that doesn't have consciousness has real existence.

Incidentally, the water flowing through a maze is not solving the maze, itself. It is the observer's conception of the water making a linear path *all the way through a maze* that creates the idea of the water "solving" a puzzle.

---------changed my mind------------
You are either so much above people in understanding of reality such as myself, Einstein, Hawking, Schrodinger, and Feynman, Alan Turing (did I get them all?) or you are a quack with some insights..
I don't know. My guess the later. This should have been the clue to me :S

I'm defining enlightenment as comfortably dwelling in Reality, rather than any intellectual insight about ultimate things.

You, certainly seem to be "enlightened" by your own definition of the word. :S

No, I've already said many times (!) that I'm not thoroughly enlightened, ie. haven't become so fully mindful of the Way, that philosophy doesn't occasionally fill me with loathing.

edit:
I am not sure why are you here then, if search for intellectual insight is not your aim? Comfort is not achieved trough understanding , I am sorry.. the things that comforted you before and made your believe in security, will not look the same once you have some understanding of reality. Yes, the problems you have now will seem insignificant.., but only because you will discover bigger problems. There is certainly nothing wrong with comfortably living in reality. Ignorance is bliss.
I am sorry for lashing out. Bye. :)

This response may be out of date, given my explanations above. Or do you still think it is true?


Kelly

Edit: This thread wasn't planned to get into QM, and I'd prefer not to explore that here, yet. I plan to go more into the Existing Wisdom thread. So, if anyone asks for clarification of my thoughts on Einstein, et al, I'd advise them to be patient.