The popular evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins has said that the biggest unsolved mystery in Biology is - what is consciousness and why did it emerge?
WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
"Modern purpose machines use extensions of basic principles like negative feedback to achieve much more complex 'lifelike' behaviour. Guided missiles, for example, appear to search actively for their target, and when they have it in range they seem to pursue it, taking account of its evasive twists and turns, and sometimes even 'predicting' or 'anticipating' them. The details of how this is done are not worth going into. They involve negative feedback of various kinds, 'feed-forward', and other principles well understood by engineers and now known to be extensively involved in the working of living bodies. Nothing remotely approaching consciousness needs to be postulated, even though a layman, watching its apparently deliberate and purposeful behaviour, finds it hard to believe."
WHY DID CONSCIOUSNESS EMERGE?
He speculates that consciousness must have been a product of our ancestors having to create a model of the world in which they inhabited.
To be able to think ahead (even if it's just one step into the future), and plan for eventualities must have led to the development of consciousness which gradually improved from its primitive form to the type of consciousness we now have.
"Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself. Obviously the limbs and body of a survival machine must constitute an important part of its simulated world; presumably for the same kind of reason, the simulation itself could be regarded as part of the world to be simulated. Another word for this might indeed be 'self awareness', but I don't find this a fully satisfying explanation of the evolution of consciousness, and this is only partly because it involves an infinite regress-if there is a model of the model, why not a model of the model of the model...?"
The quoted passages are from his book, The Selfish Gene.
Richard regards consciousness as a really great puzzle.
Also, most users (actually everyone I know personally) have multiple HN accounts which is natural for an anonymous platform, so it's not abnormal for long-term users to remake accounts regularly. I believe most of us don't access their oldest account (probably due to post history, beliefs that have changed...)
Yea, I have 3 type of accounts (and the HN mods know this and they tell me I'm not the only one).
1. This account, an account where I'm fully myself, honest and is a pseudonym as to who I really am. I do not want this to be linked to my actual real identity but if it happens to be linked to my real identity, it's fine. Well... fine-ish... fine enough anyway.
That leads me to account type 2.
2. Some takes I have are simply too spicy. I know this, but I still have those takes [1]. In very rare situations, I find it important to share these takes as they are actually relevant. For this, I either create a throwaway account or access whatever throwaway account is available because my browser auto logs in on them (certain browsers I use so little that my throwaway account auto logs in on it).
But then we have the flipside of this, which is account type 3.
3. An account with a username that is actually traceable to me if you know how to search. On this account I am still myself, but I do ask myself if my take is a "clean take" that under any circumstance or reality is still a nice clean take. I don't put anything on here that is even remotely controversial.
[1] Here's a simple "spicy take" that I daresay on this account, so the actual spicy takes I have are a little more wild than this. Here it is: in 10 years from now we'll have so much cybersex you can't even fathom it. We'll have 3D models that will look almost indistinguishable, those 3D models will be more intelligent than you are on many things. You get the idea, a spicy take.
Maybe, if you're to ashamed to risk your real name being linked to something you say, you shouldn't say it?
No every opinion needs to be heard, not every thought needs sharing. If you are embarrassed by what you type, then why do you think other people need to read it?
Absolutely not, you should say it if it makes sense, anonymity is very important for free speech, it has nothing to do with being embarrassed, sometimes there is legal consequences possible as well in what you say, or potentially doxxing and such.
Not ashamed, aware that small, petty people will retaliate over honest criticism. Remember when a famous billionaire showed up at the Thai cave to rescue a soccer team with a submarine that wouldn’t fit in the hole? He tried to take charge and needed to be informed that he was out of his depth. That story was told in reporting about the event.
He retaliated by baselessly accusing the actual heroes (who were risking their lives) of a terrible crime. Refused to back down, refused to apologize, said “if it’s not true sue me” got sued, hid behind his lawyers (his defense was “I didn’t actually say his name)
“). Yeah that guy and guys like him can’t handle criticism and have the wealth and power to retaliate.
An honest discussion space utilizes anonymity to shield normal people from retaliation by sensitive man-child retribution. I’m not embarrassed to say it, it needs to be said. It needs to be heard.
There are so many posts here by those who ought to be mortally ashamed of what they wrote but apparently aren't that one more poster will hardly be noticed.
I get it. Every social medium has mobs, even HN. There are still subjects that I would like to respond to on HN, but do not, because doing so will incur merciless downvoting by a vocal minority.
The AI techno-luddite crowd is an example that comes to mind.
For the meantime, I use forbearance. But it is a shame that one cannot steer conversations in interesting directions because of the tyranny (such as it is) of the few . I rather like the idea of a sacrificial account, to be honest.
On Reddit, you just can't participate with different ideology with your main account, you'll literally get banned of subreddits for the SOLE reason of joining other subreddits, this is a direct proof of the necessity of multiple accounts (and anonymity).
Well, sometimes I say things about my work here - enough that a determined person might be able to figure out who my (past) employer was. So I have, a time or two, made a comment here that was about my employer, but I did not want it to be linkable to my actual employer. So I used a new throwaway account, just because I didn't want my employer to be tarred by peoples' reactions to that particular post.
Now, if you make a waiting period or whatever, then that becomes impossible unless you had the foresight to create a throwaway two weeks ago (or whatever time frame).
I use Chrome majorly because I like how it feels and I'm used to it.
But I wanted to stream football (soccer) and NBA games on my phone and the ad pop ups on the streaming sites were too much, I used Brave and the ad-blocking feature is amazing.
I'm currently reading (Re-reading actually) Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and in a chapter where he talked about Venus and how hot Venus is (Venus is actually the hottest planet in the solar system despite Mercury being closer to the Sun - although this wasn't mentioned in the book), and how the space probes that were sent there met an ugly fate, he had this interesting footnote which I want to share -
"In this stifling landscape, there is not likely to be anything alive, even creatures very different from us. Organic and other conceivable biological molecules would simply fall to pieces. But, as an indulgence, let us imagine that intelligent life once evolved on such a planet. Would it then invent science? The development of science on Earth was spurred fundamentally by observations of the regularities of the stars and planets. But Venus is completely cloud-covered. The night is pleasingly long - about 59 Earth days long but nothing of the astronomical universe would be visible if you looked up into the night sky of Venus. Even the Sun would be invisible in the daytime; its light would be scattered and diffused over the whole sky - just as scuba divers see only a uniform enveloping radiance beneath the sea. If a radio telescope were built on Venus, it could detect the Sun, the Earth and other distant objects. If astrophysics developed, the existence of stars could eventually be deduced from the principles of physics, but they would be theoretical constructs only. I sometimes wonder what their reaction would be if intelligent beings on Venus one day learned to fly, to sail in the dense air, to penetrate the mysterious cloud veil 45 kilometers above them and eventually to emerge out the top of the clouds, to look up and for the first time witness that glorious universe of Sun and planets and stars."
> sometimes wonder what their reaction would be if intelligent beings on Venus one day learned to fly, to sail in the dense air, to penetrate the mysterious cloud veil 45 kilometers above them and eventually to emerge out the top of the clouds, to look up and for the first time witness that glorious universe of Sun and planets and stars."
like when in matrix revolutions they climb up above the clouds and see the sun for the first time :')
I went back about 2 years ago and speed ran all of them. Somehow the sequels seemed substantially better than I remember them. In fact, on the first watch I was _so_ disappointed with 2 that I didn’t even watch 3. 20-odd years later, I had a very different (positive) experience. Not sure why. Maybe I was in a good mood.
> The development of science on Earth was spurred fundamentally by observations of the regularities of the stars and planets.
perhaps on Venus, it would be spurred on by the creatures there trying to understand why a gaseous swirl goes in a certain direction, or why a vortex does what it does for as long as it has to
they may be better at fluids and flow than we are :) worth sending a message in a bottle at least
Yeah I think even if we didn't have the stars, there's plenty of other natural phenomena to spark science. Sparks being one of them. But pretty much any field other than astronomy could be a starting point. Meteorology is certainly a possibility
This really struck a chord for me. The majority of the people I know - including me - want to be drawn into a topic somehow and that somehow is story telling. People like Sagan and Tyson are amazing story tellers, they will draw you in with their use of language, their voice and pace and will open the doors for everything else. This is how great teachers do it and this is what is missing for most of the people to be interested into a topic, no matter how basic it is.
It’s ironic what you wrote because it was Carl Sagan who first developed the theory to explain the Venusian climate.
I met Carl Sagan and he was not a person who dumbed down anything. He had a profound impact on planetary science on top of inspiring many including myself to pursue physics.
I think the fact that we are all still talking about Carl 30 years after his death is strong evidence of his impact.
If a science book is too heavy, you'll get less people interested in science than would normally be.
Carl Sagan significantly influenced Neil deGrasse Tyson (another popular science writer), for example. But I'm not sure if Tyson would have pursued science regardless of Sagan's influence.
When explaining something to people outside of science, I was ok with 60% accuracy. Even 50% and some technical lies was fine if this would encourage them to learn more. Some came back to say "you lied!!" and these were one of my most cherished victories.
In lectures for 1st year students, I would have here and there an asterisk with "almost true", to which we would come back a semesters or two later.
Dumbing down science to dumb up people is wonderful.
This is a terrible take, and I say this having a PhD in Physics.
Many physicists have written popular articles and books for the general population. Eg Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox. Improving accessibility of advanced concepts is nothing to scoff at.
Making information more accessible and approachable never harms society in the long run.
Your view is just a snobbish and rigid one, Sagan made science topics interesting for more people, from those people very likely many got inspired enough to pursue deeper science training.
Dumbing down is necessary to make it interesting for people who feel it's unapproachable, it breaks a barrier, I have no idea how you look at this and think "this is harming society"...
The popular evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins has said that the biggest unsolved mystery in Biology is - what is consciousness and why did it emerge?
WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
"Modern purpose machines use extensions of basic principles like negative feedback to achieve much more complex 'lifelike' behaviour. Guided missiles, for example, appear to search actively for their target, and when they have it in range they seem to pursue it, taking account of its evasive twists and turns, and sometimes even 'predicting' or 'anticipating' them. The details of how this is done are not worth going into. They involve negative feedback of various kinds, 'feed-forward', and other principles well understood by engineers and now known to be extensively involved in the working of living bodies. Nothing remotely approaching consciousness needs to be postulated, even though a layman, watching its apparently deliberate and purposeful behaviour, finds it hard to believe."
WHY DID CONSCIOUSNESS EMERGE?
He speculates that consciousness must have been a product of our ancestors having to create a model of the world in which they inhabited.
To be able to think ahead (even if it's just one step into the future), and plan for eventualities must have led to the development of consciousness which gradually improved from its primitive form to the type of consciousness we now have.
"Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself. Obviously the limbs and body of a survival machine must constitute an important part of its simulated world; presumably for the same kind of reason, the simulation itself could be regarded as part of the world to be simulated. Another word for this might indeed be 'self awareness', but I don't find this a fully satisfying explanation of the evolution of consciousness, and this is only partly because it involves an infinite regress-if there is a model of the model, why not a model of the model of the model...?"
The quoted passages are from his book, The Selfish Gene.
Richard regards consciousness as a really great puzzle.
https://www.rxjourney.net/extraterrestrial-intelligence-and-...
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