[MD] The Singularity is near

[Laycock, Jos (OSPT)]

just this bit for now please....

Ham says:

 If, as many of his followers believe, the metaphysics hidden 
> in Pirsig's MoQ
> is that Intelligence is a collective stratum of DQ which 
> individuals tap
> into at a certain stage of their evolutionary development, I 
> for one will be
> very disappointed.
As you probably know, I have a particular 
> beef with any
> philosopher or movement seeking to objectify proprietary 
> cognizance.  The
> very core of my philosophy is based on the "differentiality" of human
> awareness, including value sensibility.


Jos:
firstly:
"If something sounds bloody stupid it probably is" (ancient wise-man sayeth)

Now cognizance, I like the use of this word, implies to me, a consciousness
of deliberate choice laden with judgement, which clears up a lot of
ambiguity. 
I think it's the same as what I would describe as the intellectual part of
my consciousness, as opposed to the emotional (I say cultural) part, as
opposed to the awareness inherent in an animal, as opposed to the
"experience" of interacting inorganic particles.  (I recall that you weren't
very keen on this interpretation).

Not that I can claim to speak for anyone else, but as a quasi-follower, this
collective strata business doesn't accurately reflect my beliefs, so I
reckon Bob didn't really mean it either. (BTW didn't you mean SQ?, seems
simpler to see intellect as a static level like any other, but that DQ acts
on it more often/profoundly than the lower levels??)
Just so we're clear, I dont believe that I share my consciousness (at any
level) with anyone else so neither can I share my intelligence, true I tap
into a shared history and cultural value system continually in order to
think, but this is a backward probing extension by "me" rather than my being
a floating subset of a collective stratum. Granted the intellectual patterns
of me can be described as being of a particular level, but to me it doesn't
necessitate them being linked in any way to other similar ones. 
DQ doesn't come into it, the latched patterns interact on their own to
produce my various levels of consciousness and "cognizance" sits at the top
of this tree. If anything I see this to predict that intellect is convergent
point becoming progressively less collective and more individual the more it
evolves.
This only works by setting transcendent DQ awareness above intellect, which
rather cuts the intellectual level down to size, some might say that
intellectual patterns should be defined as the ones that perceive subjects
as distinct from objects..........

Minorities of one beckon us all. 




> -----Original Message-----
> From: moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org
> [mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org]On Behalf Of Ham Priday
> Sent: 10 August 2006 01:25
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] The Singularity is near
> 
> 
> Greetings Joseph, also Ian, Gene --
> 
> > I recently came accross the writings of the Ray Kurzweil,
> > who I realise can be a potential ally in softening
> > academic/public opinion in favour of the MOQ.
> 
> I remember seeing a few of your posts when I joined this 
> forum in 2004.
> Having written a column for my Value page on Kurzweil a 
> couple of weeks ago,
> your mention of his name instantly caught my attention.
> 
> Kurzweil is a cybernetics technician and pattern recognition 
> expert recently
> turned philosopher, who has made a good living out of 
> marketing the idea
> that information = intelligence = cognizance, to borrow from Pirsigian
> logic. (Actually, neither Pirsig nor Kurzweil defines 
> consciousness and both
> seem to believe that it has little significance.)
> 
> I don't know why you think Kurzweil's ideas can "soften" 
> public opinion in
> favor of the MoQ, unless you believe his pseudo-science is 
> acceptable to the
> logical positivists whom Pirsig strived to appease.  The "cognitive
> scientists", in particular, have persuaded many objectivists that
> intelligence is not limited to conscious awareness but exists 
> as a "natural
> principle" of the universe, in the same way that mathematics 
> and the laws of
> thermodynamics are thought to be intrinsic to "the real world".
> 
> Pirsig's Intellectual Level certainly supports this notion, 
> although there
> is much confusion as to how intellectual "information", in 
> the cybernetic
> sense, can be derived from Quality.  The so-called modernist 
> view of Reality
> is that everything has a "natural" (i.e., biological or 
> inorganic) origin
> and that consciousness is merely a complex pattern of evolutionary
> development.  This nihilistic objectivism has profoundly 
> shaped intellectual
> thought in our technological age.  thithe postmodern age.  We 
> now regard
> computers and their miniaturized surrogates as "thinking 
> machines" capable
> of being programmed to exceed the capacity of human brains.
> 
> Kurweil himself realized the resistance of his public to this 
> notion, but it
> hasn't discouraged him from trying to link computer 
> technology to human
> brain functions.  In 2001, he said: "If you run into a 
> character in a video
> game and it talks about its feelings, you know it's just a machine
> simulation; you're not convinced that it's a real person 
> there.  This is
> because that entity, which is a software entity, is still a 
> million times
> simpler than the human brain.  In 2030, that won't be the case."
> 
> The author's peculiar use of the statistical term Singularity 
> in reference
> to the acceleration of technological complexity doesn't make 
> his case that
> we are about to ring in "an epoch of such rapid and profound 
> technological
> change that we will see the merging of biological and nonbiological
> intelligence."  The idea is based on McFadden's theory that "the brain
> generates an electromagnetic (em) field that influences brain 
> function," and
> that this field "...is in fact the physical substrate of 
> consciousness."
> Like many cognitive scientists, Kurzweil believes it's all a matter of
> "complexity", and his repetition of the idea that 
> "technological change is
> exponential", as compared to human development, can be seen 
> as deceptive to
> anyone who understands that relating machine intelligence to human
> cognizance is an apples-and-pears comparison.
> 
> If, as many of his followers believe, the metaphysics hidden 
> in Pirsig's MoQ
> is that Intelligence is a collective stratum of DQ which 
> individuals tap
> into at a certain stage of their evolutionary development, I 
> for one will be
> very disappointed.  As you probably know, I have a particular 
> beef with any
> philosopher or movement seeking to objectify proprietary 
> cognizance.  The
> very core of my philosophy is based on the "differentiality" of human
> awareness, including value sensibility.
> 
> Here is how I concluded my "rebuttal" to a recent essay 
> Kurzweil ran in the
> Philadelphia Inquirer to promote his new book:
> 
> "Kurzweil and his supporters may not be dissuaded by the fact 
> that Science
> is incapable of resolving the difference between objective 
> behavior and
> subjective awareness.  But we are-or, at least, should be.  
> The truth is
> that, no matter how fast the pace of change is accelerating, 
> Artificial
> Intelligence is not what it is stacked up to be.  It is not human
> cognizance.  And it is not a brain-expander.  It is only a 
> technological
> tool of electro-mechanical engineering.  For those of us who 
> have resisted
> the nihilism of the probability theorists, man is not now, 
> nor will he ever
> be, the creator of cognizant intelligence."
> 
> Anyway, despite what I regard as misplaced enthusiasm, I'm 
> glad to see you
> back on the MD.
> 
> Regards,
> Ham
> 
> 
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