Cell Intelligence in Physiological & Morphological Spaces

[AshvinP]

On the surface, things seem so so similar to what we are speaking of. Even the diagram with the spheres of Free Intelligence/Embedded Intelligence/Embedded Technology looks so much like what we used in the Stretching stuff as Macro-Meso-Micro spheres. This only shows how these things are 'in the air', so to speak, knocking on human hearts and minds. Yet once again things remain in the blind spot. One very easily declares "I'm the Intelligence that tries to know itself in the embedded state". However, if we question what is the real-time thinking process that utters this statement, one would immediately snap to the other half of the bistable condition, and now suddenly the Intelligence is seen as some kind of obscure Natural force that causes the thinking process from within the mysterious abyss (that is, one quickly succumbs to Schopenhauerism). Intelligence assumes that it is somehow responsible for the thinking process but believes that it cannot find this creative responsibility in the thinking process itself, that is, the thinking process is only a later reverberation of a more fundamental process of Intelligence (i.e. thinking reduces to that process). This more fundamental process, however, is nowhere to be found as a direct experience that can be traced as transforming from some more fundamental thing into thoughts. Thoughts seem to simply emerge at the horizon. Thus Intelligence either declares that it forever remains in the dark about its fundamental process or it expects that in some miraculous way it will reach that process in the future, while in the meantime it has to put up with mere modeling.

To be sure, I don't know how Bill would respond if led into this rabbit hole, but based on our experience so far, this is pretty much what we can expect.

Thanks for sharing this, Cleric. Yes, I suspect that would be where it leads as well. It's so interesting to observe how people really feel like they are immersed in cutting-edge phenomenology, revolutionary theories and paradigms of 'consciousness', when simply arranging mental images that represent valid intuition of the existential flow but failing to stop and meditate on what these mental images truly imply. The possibility that we could intimately experience the very process by which Intelligence embeds itself through the contextual spheres into our real-time perspective, is entirely unsuspected.

It reminds me of Cosmin's self-reference model of the 'I Am', where real-time thinking is imagined as the last echo of a more fundamental self-reference but where the latter is only the mental image self-referentially produced by the last echo of real-time thinking. I wonder what Cosmic would think when he came across this Theory of embodied Intelligence which 'explains' the qualia of experience just as well as his model. Recently I was also listening to an interview of JP by Lex Friedman, which is quite good as an intuitive exploration of 'ethical individualism' and establishing a voluntary symphony of contextual Minds. Actually, I would highly recommend this interview for orienting our intuition through many concrete examples, including much discussion of philosophy, literature, and scripture.





JP initially mentions a book called The User Illusion and says "it is the best book on consciousness that I have come across". Here is the description:

With foundations in psychology, evolutionary biology, and information theory, Demark’s leading science writer argues a revolutionary point: that consciousness represents only an infinitesimal fraction of our ability to process information. Although we are unaware of it, our brains sift through and discard billions of pieces of data in order to allow us to understand the world around us. In this thought-provoking work, Norretranders argues that our perceptions are not direct representations of the world we experience, but instead, illusions our brains craft to process it.

More timely and relevant than ever, in light of rapid development in artificial intelligence and large language models, this informative study of consciousness provides the framework to reflect on the inner workings of the mind and understand the self. As engaging as it is insightful, this important book encourages us to rely more on what our instincts and our senses tell us so that we can better appreciate the richness of human life.

It seems like quite a materialistic theory but still intuits some phenomenological realities of consciousness. JP even refers to how words are scaled mental images that encode a more temporally expansive 'cloud of images' that can be 'decompressed' into those images and actions. He goes on to discuss how perception is always active, even when we are simply staring at an object. I don't think he holds to a materialistic framework but rather appreciates how much insight empirical science can give into the phenomenological realities. He says perceptions are 'axioms of your thought' and can be considered a "thought that is so set in concrete that you now see it rather than conceptualize it" (which of course can be taken in a misleading mystical way without knowledge of the contextual inner depth).

Anyway, many of these people are hearing the knocks, as you say, from many different angles, but can't seem to open the door and let the Spirit that animates their real-time thinking in. JP is probably the most primed of all to recognize that Spirit knocking given his strong concentric alignment with the Christ impulse in an at least semi-conscious way. Given his fascination with Nietzsche, it would be great if his attention was drawn to GA 5, and then naturally to GA 4 from there

[Federica]

Coming back to Levin, it's interesting to hear some of his less scientific trains of thought at the beginning of this video, and see how - when the question is turned broadly to the future rather than to experiments - all the insights about the evolutionary nature of humanity are squandered. We should give up the idea that we can remain the same humans, yes, but then when it’s about envisioning future humanity, the thought is "what makes humans human is compassion, and we should require compassion in our future replacement species". Sadly there seems to lack a spiritual vision and the great insights fall flat to become mundane reasoning such as, paraphrased, "fear of being replaced by AI-powered transhumans is nothing new, it's like the old generations having a tough time understanding and sharing values with the new ones." An unspiritual, heredity-based, physical perspective that doesn't leverage the insights of the morphological spaces, other than for their functional applications, like in medicine or gene manipulation.

When it comes to the bowtie reference from the article, I haven't read it, but I see from how he speaks about it - from about 18:00 - that, again, the evolutionary perspective is conceived from an entirely a-temporal, sense-perceptual perspective. Speaking of memory for example, ML says things like: "we don't have access to the past", "biology is unreliable", "you have no idea how the other layers or morphological spaces are going to behave". What he calls "creative" actually means unpredictable by existing models. That's his idea of creativity.

In short, at their essence, the layers are an expression of randomness, rather than of an intelligent organization. There is no meaningful supra-order to be grasped, but its opposite. There’s a "beginner's mind" solving similar problems differently every time, unpredictably, which to ML means intelligently and creatively. That’s on the same wavelength as one of the hosts, who says that if we happen to have compassion, "that's just biology, kind of accidental".

Levin says that life is not a mechanical construction, since it is great at "solving novel problems" but actually the vision emerging from this dialogue looks terribly mechanistic. So much so that it’s extensible to physics, he says, and so there is intelligence to be discovered in light, for example. The agency of light is nowhere near human agency, of course. It’s at the bottom of a continuum. There we find agency/intelligence/problem solving capacity at a primitive level (free energy minimization). All in all, not a very exciting watch for my part!

Best quote: "Everything is an abstraction and all we have are metaphors" (41:00)
A recipe for eternal restlessness and perpetual floating in the void of meaninglessness?

[Cleric]

Coming back to Levin, it's interesting to hear some of his less scientific trains of thought at the beginning of this video, and see how - when the question is turned broadly to the future rather than to experiments - all the insights about the evolutionary nature of humanity are squandered. We should give up the idea that we can remain the same humans, yes, but then when it’s about envisioning future humanity, the thought is "what makes humans human is compassion, and we should require compassion in our future replacement species". Sadly there seems to lack a spiritual vision and the great insights fall flat to become mundane reasoning such as, paraphrased, "fear of being replaced by AI-powered transhumans is nothing new, it's like the old generations having a tough time understanding and sharing values with the new ones." An unspiritual, heredity-based, physical perspective that doesn't leverage the insights of the morphological spaces, other than for their functional applications, like in medicine or gene manipulation.

When it comes to the bowtie reference from the article, I haven't read it, but I see from how he speaks about it - from about 18:00 - that, again, the evolutionary perspective is conceived from an entirely a-temporal, sense-perceptual perspective. Speaking of memory for example, ML says things like: "we don't have access to the past", "biology is unreliable", "you have no idea how the other layers or morphological spaces are going to behave". What he calls "creative" actually means unpredictable by existing models. That's his idea of creativity.

In short, at their essence, the layers are an expression of randomness, rather than of an intelligent organization. There is no meaningful supra-order to be grasped, but its opposite. There’s a "beginner's mind" solving similar problems differently every time, unpredictably, which to ML means intelligently and creatively. That’s on the same wavelength as one of the hosts, who says that if we happen to have compassion, "that's just biology, kind of accidental".

Levin says that life is not a mechanical construction, since it is great at "solving novel problems" but actually the vision emerging from this dialogue looks terribly mechanistic. So much so that it’s extensible to physics, he says, and so there is intelligence to be discovered in light, for example. The agency of light is nowhere near human agency, of course. It’s at the bottom of a continuum. There we find agency/intelligence/problem solving capacity at a primitive level (free energy minimization). All in all, not a very exciting watch for my part!

Best quote: "Everything is an abstraction and all we have are metaphors" (41:00)
A recipe for eternal restlessness and perpetual floating in the void of meaninglessness?

Yes, Federica. His case is peculiar because the intellect holds within itself a very fertile idea, yet can't overcome its habits and ends up flattening it. I'm on the go so I can't write much but maybe I can share a comment posted under his essay about evolving algorithms (suggested by Ashvin). Of course, he did not reply. Who knows if he even read it. It's understandable because it turned out quite long, but I couldn't find a way to convey in a more compressed way these things. So we have something like the dilemma with FB: people want short messages but these can be endlessly deflected since they need to be substantiated from many sides. Without this, one attacks one of the sides and the conversation keeps skimming along the surface. On the other hand, if it is substantiated from the needed sides it becomes at least several paragraphs long and the other party simply says TLDR. So it's another version of Ashvin's Catch 22.

Hello Michael,

This opens an interesting topic so I decided to swoop in. I believe that at the heart of your work is the idea of nested morphic spaces, or configuration spaces, or scale-relative (fractal) spacetime, or however we decide to call them. In other words – the idea of ‘no privileged scale of causation’. Any computational system, CGOL for example, lives on a single level, so to speak – a quantifiable state and the rules of its iterative transformation. To transition that into a multi-level paradigm we would have to imagine that the basic rules are somewhat loose. In a caricature style, we can imagine that a glider in CGOL says: “Look at me, I’m a glider. My movement emerges from the basic rules but now I awaken at a scale where I intuit things like motion and direction. From this perspective, I can try to bend the flow, say, a little to the right.” Now we can imagine how this higher-order intent ‘backpropagates’ and alters very slightly the basic rules within the limits of their leeway, such that their dynamics coincide with the intended macro behavior. If we observe only the basic rules we may erroneously assume that the macro behavior is simply the result of the randomness inherent in the fuzzy rules. But in reality, their micro behavior can only be understood if we comprehend that their flow has been bent from within a higher-order insight and causative activity. It is obvious that a properly working computation system doesn’t allow for any such flow-bending from other scales.

If we imagine that higher-order processes are only the surprising behavior of simple ground rules iterated over and over, we have to get away with the idea of causative agency at these higher orders. Any such first-person sense of causative agency would have to be understood as an illusionary macro view of the ground rules which alone are responsible for the total behavior. There’s nothing in what a higher-order agent is ‘doing’ that steers the flow in a direction that is not already fully driven by the simple ground rules themselves. There’s nothing in the way the state is organized (whether there are higher-order forms or not) that feedbacks on the way the ground rules are applied. We can, of course, devise a more complicated ‘meta’ rule system, that at each step analyzes the state for higher-order structures and applies different rules accordingly, but are we really approaching in this way the *reality* of inner experience, or are we simply creating an intellectual monstrosity that is so general that it can eventually capture any possible form of computation (Wolfram’s Ruliad comes to mind)? In any case, no matter how complicated and convoluted our computational model is, it is still *flattened to a single plane of causation*. This plane is really the plane of our intellect. We are tempted to flatten the multilevel causative scales to a single scale because then our thinking being can fully ‘incarnate’ in that single plane and pretend that it understands how the illusions of other causative planes emerge. In other words, if the intellect is to ever be fully satisfied with its picture of reality, it needs to see all other planes as fully projected within its own plane (as mental images), and correspondingly project all causative forces within its own such that they can be mimicked by intellectual movements. Thus the initial insight of ‘no privileged scale of causation’ is undermined – it turns out that the intellect reduces all planes to movements of mental images in its own plane. Thus the idea of truly causally creative agencies at other scales becomes superfluous.

It is easy to see that our inner human condition lives along a whole spectrum of scales. Part of our experience is formed from ‘below’, from the somatic processes, sensory perceptions, bodily urges. Other influences bend our flow from ‘above’ (greater spacetime scales) – desires, ambitions, moral impulses, conscience. The intellectual plane is ‘sandwiched’ between these layers. At this plane, phenomena issuing from all other levels, find their symbolic reflections, and at the intellectual level of competency, we find ourselves able to arrange these symbolic images according to their intuitive consonances and dissonances (much like we snap together puzzle pieces). Then we try to project the intellectual dynamics on the other levels through the intermediary of our bodily will – that‘s how all our technology is born. It is easily seen that our human self is not simply locked into the intellectual plane. This is certainly where we find our most lucid self-reflection (by virtue of the fact that our intuitive intents find their immediate reflection in the dynamics of mental images, for ex. I think, therefore I am), but there’s no denying that our total being spreads along the full spectrum of scales. For example, we would never be able to resist a tempting desire if we were to only formulate the intellectual symbols of that intent. We need to be innerly active at a different scale, with a different kind of inner effort, in order to effectively bend the flow.

We need to recognize two fighting tendencies within our breast. One recognizes the intuitive truth of ‘no privileged scale of causation’ and seeks to expand consciousness along the full Cosmic spectrum of be-ing, where we can be intuitively active at different scales. The other continuously seeks to *flatten* the whole Cosmic spectrum into symbols on the intellectual plane and only causally work with them, eventually backpropagating them through the bodily will in order to modify the physical spectrum.

In the first, being seeks its home in the *inner experience* of the Cosmic scales and the corresponding causative creative activity. The intellect is not negated but finds its natural place within the Cosmic spectrum, as the plane where the totality is focused into intuitive handles (concepts) that give us a firm grip within the navigation of the flow.

In the second, being collapses into the intellectual plane and seeks to interface with reality entirety through the proxy of symoblic mental images. Now it is not sought to be creatively active at different scales *from within*, but to backpropagate the intellectual dynamics to the physical scales (through bodily will and its technological extensions), where we *indirectly* force certain physical constraints onto other perspectives, operating at different scales (if these perspectives are at all sensitive to physical constraints), such we can narrowly channel their causative creativity in a way that suits our needs.

[AshvinP]

So we have something like the dilemma with FB: people want short messages but these can be endlessly deflected since they need to be substantiated from many sides. Without this, one attacks one of the sides and the conversation keeps skimming along the surface. On the other hand, if it is substantiated from the needed sides it becomes at least several paragraphs long and the other party simply says TLDR. So it's another version of Ashvin's Catch 22.

It has been interesting for me to notice just how often Steiner makes this same point as well, for ex.:

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA107/En ... 29p01.html

Today we will consider some things already known to you from a certain side. But in all theosophical questions, we only fully penetrate them when they are illuminated from different aspects...

Theosophical learning is not like the mathematical. First it was shown, for instance, that there exist four group souls of which only the names are at first given. Then some or other aspect is chosen, and the matter is illuminated from outside. And so we approach continually from another side. We go around what is first presented, and illuminate it from the most diverse aspects. Whoever grasps this will never be able to say that theosophical matters contradict each other. This is also the case, even in the greatest things we consider. The differences come from the various standpoints from which one observes the matter. Let us take with us from this gathering what one might call inner tolerance. May we succeed in our special theosophical stream in bringing this inner spirit of tolerance into the theosophical movement. Let us take that with us as a content of feeling and try and work externally in such a way that this spirit of the most inner understanding may become effective.

In a certain sense, it feels like the people who are disciplined and enthusiastic enough to survey inner realities from enough standpoints, i.e. who have inner tolerance, are practically unreachable (for ex. a Levin or JP), while the people who can be easily interacted with always want the TLDR version. It's kind of a Catch-22 at the collective scale, similar to how when Christ incarnated the general consciousness was in the worst position to understand the significance of his presence and sacrificial deeds. There always seems to be at least one crucial element missing in most domains of the general population. I suppose that's related to the general fragmentation of temperamental qualities and inner capacities at our current time - they are all scattered around the globe and we have to piece them back together within ourselves.

Related to that, I have observed there is generally a huge lack of sensitivity to inner gestures. To be fair, even I have experienced times during my practices when the inner gestures were merged tightly into the background and I could barely sense them - they felt like a mere hypothesis. Yet once we become conscious to some extent of that inner reality and the environmental (soul) factors that numb sensitivity, we know it's only a matter of persisting and purifying those factors. For others, no matter how logical it is that we must do something inwardly to perform a mathematical operation, for example, it remains a mere hypothesis. Their sensitivity has been numbed by the soul environment to such an extent that it remains a mere logical proposition, a nice theory about "spiritual activity" that competes with other theories which explain away our feeling for inner activity.

Recently I used the duck/rabbit bistable perception as an example (I also used the mathematical example), and the response was:

Hmm. No, I didn't sense and don't resonate with that. I find the term "invisible intentional gestures" difficult because it seems to dilute the meaning of intent. Intent, to me, involves deliberate and conscious action, whereas the shift between seeing the duck and the rabbit is automatic and intuitive.

In my view, this perceptual switch isn’t driven by intent but by the brain’s natural ability to process ambiguity and patterns, which operates without conscious effort. Using the word "intentional" here seems to imply that we are actively choosing to shift our perception, which doesn’t align with how I experience it. I see this as a product of biological intelligence. It is a part of lived/living experience - as I'd define it but I'm not so sure that our definitions of living experience align.

We have also heard similar things here from Lorenzo, Eugene, FB, and others. I think for some people like FB, who have spent decades trying meditation exercises given by Steiner, Kuhlewind, etc, it's possible that when they didn't quickly gain sensitivity to the inner gestures, the inner commentary began to very subtly kick in and they began to confuse that commentary for "intuitive insight" or the "pure idea" of perceptual experience. They began to feel like theoretical concepts added on, like "product of biological intelligence" above, was equivalent to inner phenomenology. Or at best they get glimpses of the modern mystical state. Of course, the whole modern technological environment only serves to continually drown out that inner sensitivity further. For anyone who reaches an idea like the above, the way life unfolds in the modern environment only seems to confirm it.

To combine two previously used metaphors, it is like we have injected Novocain into our hands and start fashioning a pot of clay - when no kinesthetic or tactile sensations feedback from our hand movements, we conclude the pot is simply fashioning itself. There's only clay that morphs in mysterious ways and all we know is that we don't feel to be creatively involved in the shape of the morphing pot that we see. The fact that we ourselves gradually built up this dissociated condition is lost in the convolutions of receded spiritual activity - we can no longer trace the conceptual and emotional injections we gave ourselves. Then when we continue interacting with the morphing clay of the World content, it only further confirms our suspicion that there is no real 'doer'.

But again, it seems many of the people who would probably be somewhat open to experiencing those inner gestures, who haven't amassed too many metaphysical concepts that numb sensitivity, are the ones who seem to be unreachable or wouldn't bother to read through meditative exercises and try them out, because there is no reason to suspect it could lead to serious scientific work. These are the people who often have striking intuitions about the perceptual flow of existence and therefore reach the fertile ideas - they don't let themselves get bogged down in too many metaphysical propositions about the 'nature of reality' but rather like to experience the flow of reality first-hand. It's just that their attention is never brought to the inner flow of reality and the artistically reasoned illustrations that would provide the opportunity to consistently experience its contextually layered depth.

I also think this is another reason why the physical ignition exercise may be a great innovation to experiment with. It requires some sustained inner activity before the perceptual effect and, while the kinesthetic sensations that feed back are subtle compared to physical movement, they are more concrete than the flow of mathematical symbols or even some switching visual perceptions like the rabbit/duck. There is no mistaking that something is switching on and off when we concentratedly outpour our will versus when we don't. I doubt anyone could convince themselves the ignition happens "automatically". And unlike strictly physical feedback, it is still simple enough that we don't lose sensitivty as our activity is sucked across too many perceptual elements. This can be helpful when people are already invested in the discussion but have a hard time experiencing the import of these "invisible intentional gestures".

[Federica]

Yes, Federica. His case is peculiar because the intellect holds within itself a very fertile idea, yet can't overcome its habits and ends up flattening it. I'm on the go so I can't write much but maybe I can share a comment posted under his essay about evolving algorithms (suggested by Ashvin). Of course, he did not reply. Who knows if he even read it. It's understandable because it turned out quite long, but I couldn't find a way to convey in a more compressed way these things. So we have something like the dilemma with FB: people want short messages but these can be endlessly deflected since they need to be substantiated from many sides. Without this, one attacks one of the sides and the conversation keeps skimming along the surface. On the other hand, if it is substantiated from the needed sides it becomes at least several paragraphs long and the other party simply says TLDR. So it's another version of Ashvin's Catch 22.

Hi Cleric, thank you for sharing this here.
Beyond the content of your note to ML, that I need to read again, I would have a comment on your intro.

I think the reasons why people go TLDR in the face of the kind of written approaches we are talking about differ wildly. For FB the issue is a particular F-issue in my opinion and I wouldn’t include it in the point I will try to make here.

In the case of mainstreamingly successful scientists such as ML, DH, the 4D-guy, and others, I don’t think the problem is so much the length of the comment. These people are intellectually well trained and not afraid to screen through 10 solid paragraphs or more. The hindrance is rather that they don’t feel they need anything. They don’t feel any existential lack. They are not hoping for an insight, an illumination, an occurrence that would help them have a breakthrough. Of course, they are conventionally humble, they recognize they have worlds ahead of them to discover - by keeping experimenting, by doing more of what they are already doing. And they are careful with sticking to their specialized approach (one of the big problems of todays science). Therefore when they touch on domains lying outside their core specialization, they say things like ML says in the video: “of course I am doing armchair psychology here, I am not sure this is true…” Still, within their proper domain of recognized expertise and competence, they feel they lack absolutely nothing. The picture coming to mind while I was watching the video is this:

It seems to me that ML operates entirely from this vantage point position. I don’t see that he is more advanced than Justin Riddle, DH and other leading and living scientists. Rather, he is in a domain that is ‘up next’ in man’s expansion of consciousness, and these are the times for the beginning of the decline of the materialistic impulse anyway. And I don’t think ML is more open than average to experiencing inner gestures. Moreover, he has metaphysical stances, though they are not in focus, since his enthusiasm is not directed there. And I guess he is somewhat reachable, even only because of today’s media, the evolution of communications, and the ongoing transformation of academia. After all, he’s ready to spend hours in dialogues with philosophers and not only with natural scientists. Matt Segall recently had a philosophical (or transdisciplinary let’s say) dialogue with ML and so probably could Max, for example.

All this to say that the problem is not so much that he is unreachable, and put off by paragraphs of text. Rather, it’s that he doesn’t feel like he needs anything that he doesn’t already have access to, and less than less an illumination coming to him from nowhere. In this situation, I think the type of message above has close to zero chances to have an effect. Not because of its conceptual content or length, but because of its lack of context. Since he doesn’t need anything, why should he engage with a message coming to him outside of any contexts? What is the writer’s purpose with this message? What is the ‘abstract’ of these 10 paragraphs? Who is the writer - not necessarily in terms of trackable identity but even only in terms of in which capacity/persona is the writer choosing to make contact? Without such minimal contextual elements the proposition comes across to him as unintelligible and perhaps even odd, in my opinion. I guess there may be reasons I am not seeing for you to decide to write in this particular form?

[AshvinP]

Here is some more of the context for Cleric's post to ML. I had stumbled across his blog and found the algorithms post, so I decided to share some of Cleric's critique from the forum. ML responded and I responded to his response. Then I let Cleric know so, if he wanted, he could "swoop in" and add some more thoughts to flesh out the critique.

***

Ashvin
September 21, 2024
Hi Mike,

I would like to present a few thoughts for your consideration and feedback.

It seems the whole sorting algorithms simulation can be symbolized at a higher level of abstraction as a function, let’s say f. The initial distribution of the numbers can be represented as x. Thus, f(x) is the applying of one step of the simulation. Then we take the result and apply the simulation step again, thus we have f(f(x)). This is a simple iterative function system IFS. Such repeatedly applied functions exhibit certain attractors. I’m sure you would agree there’s nothing mystical about this – it’s not that different from the fact that 1/x tends to zero as we increase x. It’s simply the quantitative behavior of the expression. Functions are mappings. They map x -> y. When the mappings are not linear, it’s possible that certain x-es land more closely together in y-space and others further apart. Those that land closer together we say are ‘attracted’. Of course, it would be misleading if we imagine that some forces or strings pull the points together.

In this sense, can we say the fact that the two algotypes seem to ‘group together’ is any different than looking at an IFS fractal – for ex., https://sirxemic.github.io/ifs-animator/ – and recognizing that the video feedback accumulates in certain positions depending on the positions of the L frames? Isn’t it somewhat superstitious to believe these attractor patterns are exhibiting basal cognition, delayed gratification, etc.? By the way, I believe this is what Bernardo Kastrup was also pointing to in one of your recent conversations (#3 on Adventures in Awareness).


Mike Levin
September 21, 2024
If we believe that human brains obey the laws of chemistry, then one can say that their activity is also describable by some (very complex IFS). If being describable by an IFS rules out cognition, then there is no cognition in the physical universe, including in humans. Fortunately, these two things are not mutually exclusive. The fractal IFS you describe has not been tested for delayed gratification (DG) but we’re testing it soon. We can’t know in advance (yet) if something will have that property or not, you have to try it. For example no one knew that sorting algorithms would have it, and when I first polled people (prior to doing the experiment), no one thought it would. I would claim that it’s superstitious to assume systems won’t have specific capabilities without testing them. The thing about my definitions of cognition and its various competencies, like DG), is that they are very practical, empirical observable properties – you confront them with a specific problem and see if they temporarily move further from their goal in order to recoup gains later. Many systems won’t do that. For example, 2 magnets separated by a long piece of wood – in order to get together, one would have to move around the wood, temporarily getting further from the other, in order to go around and finally meet it. Even some animals won’t do it – I’ve seen 2 dogs trying to get at each other through a fence, with a hole in the fence just 2 meters away, but going there means moving away from the attraction object and they couldn’t do it. So, there’s nothing superstitious about it – we did an experiment, tested a process for the ability to move against its normal gradient when confronted with a barrier (a broken cell that won’t be moved), and found it. Other systems won’t have it. But the fact that all such systems can be described at the lowest level (machine code, or chemistry, or whatever) doesn’t reduce the reality of their capabilities. Because, what’s emergent from some kinds of rules is not only complexity but different degrees of problem-solving. And not knowing about those capabilities, and knowing only the lowest-level rules, leaves a lot on the table in terms of understanding and using those systems. Will there be a test which shows that fractal processes such as IFSs can do it too? Place your bets now, before we do the experiment.


Ashvin
September 22, 2024
For sure, the superstition can manifest in at least two different ways. One way is what you described, i.e. to simply assume lower-order systems cannot manifest cognitive capacities and therefore avoid rigorous experimentation. That is a terrible assumption to make and we should never stop testing what spheres of potential within Nature can be manifested through our creative activity. If nothing else, that will reveal many insights about how our human cognitive processes work, which is a critical domain of inquiry to pursue. The other way, however, would be to prematurely conclude a process exhibiting outer properties that resemble cognitive-like functions, which we are familiar with at our human scale, must necessarily have developed those capacities. If it quacks like a duck, is it necessarily a duck? I don’t think we can make that epistemic leap.

I sympathize with pushing back against the idea that there is something else hidden ‘behind’ the phenomenal appearances, some metaphysical reality determining whether processes are cognitive or not cognitive in a binary way. On the contrary, there is no reason to assume the ‘reality itself’ is not expressed through the phenomena that we observe and manipulate. But there are many reasons to conclude that we, with our temporally constrained intellectual thoughts that are steered by many unknown factors, are not necessarily in the best position to understand what the phenomena are speaking to us in their purity and completeness.

Perhaps we are unconsciously involved in ‘epistemic projection’, as Kastrup put it. I believe you responded that ‘epistemic projection’ is always happening and perhaps is the very means by which certain systems become cognitively active. But we don’t have great reasons to assume that current humanity, with its meso-level cognitive light cone, can bring new cognitive agencies into existence. We have many reasons to think humans lack the moral capacity that naturally comes with such an ability. It could also be that we have a secret desire to believe we are capable of attaining what still remains beyond our reach. There are probably many more possibilities to consider which could be obscured if we prematurely conclude cognitive agency from the behavioral characteristics alone.

It seems the least superstitious way is to avoid assumptions in either direction, either ruling out cognitive functions of sorting algorithms or imputing them, and continue the testing while keeping an open mind and resisting the formation of judgments as to their inner significance as much as possible. So I guess the question eventually becomes, how can we test if the outer properties correspond to an inner agentic perspective that could maintain its cognitive functions? Is observing the attractor patterns of the recursive algorithm and testing them against our defined parameters for ‘cognition’ the only way? Or is there a more direct and intimate way?

I think your approach to the ‘Platonic’ space of incorporeal cognitive agency by examining the very manner in which we combine, compare, distinguish, etc. thoughts is a promising avenue. Whatever experimental conditions we create and whatever results we observe occur through our cognitive activity. We know there are various subconscious factors that shape and constrain this activity, such as beliefs, preferences, habits, temperament, native language, deeper physiological factors, etc. To put it into a metaphor, if we walk through a museum we have our thoughts about everything we see but at the same time the guide leads us around and determines the context within which we manifest our thoughts. It’s similar in thinking, we’re producing our thoughts but we’re not fully aware of how we are being moved around the invisible contextual landscape. We think now of one thing and the next moment we think about something else. Did we really choose consciously in what direction to divert our thoughts? Sometimes yes, but most of the time we’re simply carried along an invisible inner landscape and we only verbalize our intuitions. This is the immediate context in which and through which the phenomena manifest their outer properties and it is just as much an empirical reality as the outer properties themselves.

How can we more directly investigate this context?

[Cleric post]

No responses from ML since.

[Federica]

Here is some more of the context for Cleric's post to ML. I had stumbled across his blog and found the algorithms post, so I decided to share some of Cleric's critique from the forum. ML responded and I responded to his response. Then I let Cleric know so, if he wanted, he could "swoop in" and add some more thoughts to flesh out the critique.

Thanks, Ashvin. Given these specific contextual elements, here's what I think. A personal blog like this one is by definition a place where the author shows an openness to enter in direct communication with readers. ML does that to some extent. So he chooses to be somewhat reachable, as he embraces present-day evolution of media, as a scholar. However, it’s clear that the ‘dialogue’ is not intended or practiced by the author as an in depth, peer to peer debate. Rather he offers spontaneous clarifications, sneak peeks, further references. And that’s about it - by today's standards that's not bad, to be fair.
In my opinion, Ashvin’s first, single-formed question was focused and anchored enough (IFS), and from MLs perspective, worth a clarification of what is intended with “cognition” [I haven't read or watched around, however it seems to me that what he means by cognition is to the reality of cognition what CBT is to depth psychology - terrible]. Anyway, Ashvin’s reply already put a sure end to the thread. Unlike the initial question, that reply features a number of less mainstream-clear concepts. Moreover it doesn’t buy the clarifications, and, it does all that in a particularly non deferential tone. Not to say it was inappropriate, however, in Levin’s territory, that sunk the thread way below his threshold of reply-worthiness. So, Cleric, you came in on an already dead track. This is the main reason for no answer, not the length of text. Perhaps you could experiment with a new comment of the same length to one of the upcoming posts. I can’t remember whether it was on the forum or elsewhere, but I am quite sure this exact pattern already happened with some other thinker. Maybe one of you remembers better than I do.


PS: On a completely different note, it's a cool 'coincidence' that, within a very short time interval, similar functional symbols came to expression independently as representations of cognitive phenomena (in Ashvin's initial question on ML's blog and in my comment to Cleric's Inner space stretching part 2).

[AshvinP]

Here is some more of the context for Cleric's post to ML. I had stumbled across his blog and found the algorithms post, so I decided to share some of Cleric's critique from the forum. ML responded and I responded to his response. Then I let Cleric know so, if he wanted, he could "swoop in" and add some more thoughts to flesh out the critique.

Thanks, Ashvin. Given these specific contextual elements, here's what I think. A personal blog like this one is by definition a place where the author shows an openness to enter in direct communication with readers. ML does that to some extent. So he chooses to be somewhat reachable, as he embraces present-day evolution of media, as a scholar. However, it’s clear that the ‘dialogue’ is not intended or practiced by the author as an in depth, peer to peer debate. Rather he offers spontaneous clarifications, sneak peeks, further references. And that’s about it - by today's standards that's not bad, to be fair.
In my opinion, Ashvin’s first, single-formed question was focused and anchored enough (IFS), and from MLs perspective, worth a clarification of what is intended with “cognition” [I haven't read or watched around, however it seems to me that what he means by cognition is to the reality of cognition what CBT is to depth psychology - terrible]. Anyway, Ashvin’s reply already put a sure end to the thread. Unlike the initial question, that reply features a number of less mainstream-clear concepts. Moreover it doesn’t buy the clarifications, and, it does all that in a particularly non deferential tone. Not to say it was inappropriate, however, in Levin’s territory, that sunk the thread way below his threshold of reply-worthiness. So, Cleric, you came in on an already dead track. This is the main reason for no answer, not the length of text. Perhaps you could experiment with a new comment of the same length to one of the upcoming posts. I can’t remember whether it was on the forum or elsewhere, but I am quite sure this exact pattern already happened with some other thinker. Maybe one of you remembers better than I do.


PS: On a completely different note, it's a cool 'coincidence' that, within a very short time interval, similar functional symbols came to expression independently as representations of cognitive phenomena (in Ashvin's initial question on ML's blog and in my comment to Cleric's Inner space stretching part 2).

Perhaps you are thinking of BK's NDE article, for which you also blamed me for 'killing the track' And maybe I did, maybe I didn't. If a person doesn't respond to a commenter's coherent post which reflects back clear understanding of his thinking and his inner tensions because, in his mind, the track was killed by an entirely separate commenter, then he simply lacks any interest to explore the flaws in his thinking and it wouldn't matter what we do.

I don't think that's the reason, though, but I suspect it's more the length of the post combined with the fact it points directly at the core issue and forces ML to confront a severe inner contradiction (the Guardian). When Cleric shared the post with me, he had said "To be honest, I'm skeptical that it will have any effect, but let's see", and I responded:

That is very clear and well-reasoned!

But yeah, if I try to put myself in ML's perspective, the inner tension explodes and seeks to suppress comprehension of what was expressed. The 'narrow channel' is essentially the entire curvature of his career, goals, expectations, research projects, etc. with all the financial and social incentives and rewards entangled with those.

Hopefully, though, it may plant a seed of doubt and questioning that sticks with him.

I think these are the real living soul forces we are dealing with - which continually steer thoughts away from comprehension and toward rationalizations (like Cleric's shopping mall example) - and therefore it doesn't make much sense to second-guess our articulations at every turn - the wording, the tone, the length, etc. It's helpful to get an overall sense for the archetypal resistances that we encounter through these (attempted) dialogues, and use that as feedback for our future efforts, but I think that should also be balanced by trust in the Spirit that is condensing our inspirations and guiding our thoughts along their curvatures.

That's not to say I don't second guess my own interactions with people across these platforms, in fact I do it all the time, but I am gradually realizing that it makes more sense to slow down and spend time meditating on and crafting a response, and once it's out there, it's out there and the result is out of my control. Those results can simply serve as useful feedback for where the inner tensions and insensitivities reside. Contemplating those may then lead to newly inspired ideas. Innovating and/or streamlined metaphors and exercises are always helpful, as these can penetrate deeper than intellectual concepts for most people, assuming of course they are willing to work with them concentratedly for at least a few minutes (which is asking a lot these days).

[Federica]

I don't think that's the reason, though, but I suspect it's more the length of the post combined with the fact it points directly at the core issue and forces ML to confront a severe inner contradiction (the Guardian).

Well, Ashvin, in your comment you told him that his constrained intellectual thoughts are unreliable because steered by many unknown factors. Then you mentioned moral capacities, and that we are not in the best position to get the purity and completeness of phenomena. Then you added that we may have secret desires when doing research. And that we should be careful to avoid judgments and premature conclusions, as much as possible. To conclude, you “guessed” the appropriate new direction for his future research, once he’s ready (“eventually”) to be open to a more intimate way.


In all fairness - and though I don’t sympathize with Levin’s perspective - what for anything could he have answered to that? As you say, you forced him to face the inner contradictions, yes well you put him in a corner, but in a voice that not only is non deferential (lecturing?) but also inevitably remains cryptic, without the extensive explanations. What I am saying is, at that point, it was too late to invite Cleric. I think it’s obvious.

[AshvinP]

I don't think that's the reason, though, but I suspect it's more the length of the post combined with the fact it points directly at the core issue and forces ML to confront a severe inner contradiction (the Guardian).

Well, Ashvin, in your comment you told him that his constrained intellectual thoughts are unreliable because steered by many unknown factors. Then you mentioned moral capacities, and that we are not in the best position to get the purity and completeness of phenomena. Then you added that we may have secret desires when doing research. And that we should be careful to avoid judgments and premature conclusions, as much as possible. To conclude, you “guessed” the appropriate new direction for his future research, once he’s ready (“eventually”) to be open to a more intimate way.


In all fairness - and though I don’t sympathize with Levin’s perspective - what for anything could he have answered to that? As you say, you forced him to face the inner contradictions, yes well you put it in a corner, but in a voice that not only is non deferential (lecturing?) but also inevitably remains cryptic, without the extensive explanations. What I am saying is, at that point, it was too late to invite Cleric. I think it’s obvious.

Federica,

This reminds me of the commentators who have never played the sport they are commentating on who are nevertheless always second-guessing the coaches and players, criticizing their strategies and decisions Maybe it would be more productive to redirect your inexhaustible energy toward critical opinions of our approaches and wordings toward learning the game and playing it yourself?

What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter at all whether my comment killed the track or not, whether your opinions happen to align with the objective situation or not, because that's all an unproductive focus on first-order content which will leave you in the same position. Whenever Cleric and I discuss these things, it's not to dissect and analyze the wordings and approaches involved, to find some rational foundation that justifies our opinionating and argumentative curvatures, but to become more inwardly sensitive to the archetypal thinking and feeling tendencies that live within all of us and come to expression in various ways. Even if the opinion occurs to us (as it surely does) that someone else's post could have been worded better, toned better, shortened or lengthened, etc., it doesn't occur to us to bring this up, because we know that serves no productive purpose and is only a temptation of lower impulses.

Do you think there is anything you could possibly learn from this?

Cleric first offered his comment just to help us orient to some of the issues involved, and you took that as an invitation to critically opinionate on its "lack of context". Fine, it's not like I think it is completely out of bounds to offer your opinion or that we can't possibly learn from it, but you should also try to take notice of this habit. Then, when I gave more context, the opinion switched from "lack of context" to "Ashvin killed the track". Great, another sideline commentary on the plays which fails to learn from the first instance of offering an opinion without context. Instead of this repetitive opinionating pattern, you could focus more on sensitizing to the underlying thinking habits at work like you did with the recursive mathematical analogy. Then you would soon find yourself in a position to experiment with "new comments of the same length" on ML's blog and see what happens.