[Fis] Tao and information processing (for a human): Fwd: Re: Emotional Sentience #2 The Metaphor of The Tao (the last long post!)

Sun Apr 28 02:52:20 CEST 2024

 michael levin has written of "competency architectures."
in my book Global Brain, i chose another name for these natural learning machines, "complex adaptive systems."  
here's a bit on the topic from Global Brain: the Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the Twentieth Century:

A complex adaptive system is a learning machine, onemade up of semi-independent modules which work together to solve aproblem.  Some complex adaptive systems,like rain forests, are biological. Others, like human economies, are social.  And the ones computer scientists work withare usually electronic.  Neural networks[i] and immune systems[ii] are particularlygood examples.  Both apply an algorithm--aworking rule--best expressed by Jesus of Nazareth: "To he who hath itshall be given; from he who hath not even what he hath shall be takenaway."[iii]
acollective learning machine achieves its feats by using five elements.  This quintet of essentials includes: (1)conformity enforcers; (2) diversity generators; (3) inner-judges; (4) resourceshifters; and (5) intergroup tournaments.[i]

                      •Conformityenforcers stamp enough cookie cutter similarities into the members of agroup to give it an identity, to unify it when it's pelted by adversity, tomake sure its members speak a common language, and to pull the crowd togetherin efforts sometimes so vast that no single contributor can see the largerscheme in its entirety.

                      Inhumans, upcoming chapters will show how conformity enforcers lead, among otherthings, to a myriad of cruelties and to a shared worldview which both shapesthe wiring of a baby's brain and literally changes the way that adults see, acollective perception which makes one group's reality another's mass insanity.

                      •Diversitygenerators spawn variety.  Eachindividual represents a hypothesis in the communal mind.  You can see this in one of nature's mostsuperb learning machines, the immune system. The immune system contains between ten million and ten billion differentantibody types.  Each one is a guess,pre-configured to snag the weak points of an enemy.[ii]  If one antibodyisn't properly shaped to lock onto an invader, another will have to sink itsspecialized hooks into the raider.  It'svital for defensive flexibility to have numerous fallback antibodies on thescene. So the immune system maintains a horde of seemingly-useless types in itspopulation, though it keeps these idlers in a state of deprivation.  When a previously unknown disease storms thebody's barricades, the immune system's pool of misfits often contains a fewindividuals with exactly what it takes to trounce the foe.  Among human beings, different personalitytypes also embody approaches which, while they may not be necessary today, couldprove vital tomorrow.  As we move pastthe ice age toward modernity, we'll see how odd-folks-out have oftensupercharged our history.

                      •Nextcome inner-judges.  Inner-judgesare biological built-ins[iii] which continually take our measure, rewarding us whenour contribution seems to be of value[iv] and punishing us when our guesswork proves unwelcome orway off the mark.  If we've solved aknotty problem and can hear the cheers of bosses, friends, family, and admirersechoing in our ears, our inner-judges flood us with hormones similar to amphetamineand cocaine.  These chemicals swell ourchests, give us energy, and set our minds ablaze. Zest and confidence help ussee new ways to achieve impossibilities. On the other hand, if we can't get a grip on our problems and no oneseems to want what we're offering, the inner-judges activate our self-destructmachinery.[v] Our bodies overdose on stress hormones, kill off braincells,[vi] dull our wits,[vii] sabotage our immune system, make us ill, depress us,steal our pep,[viii] and often fill our minds with an urge to curl up anddisappear or die. Our inner judges are sometimes generous, but are often farfrom kind.  Yet inner-judges are criticalto complex adaptive systems from those of single-celled creatures to those madeup of human minds.

                      •Fourthare resource shifters.  Resourceshifters range from social systems to mass emotions, but all have one thing incommon--they shunt riches, admiration, and influence to learning-machinemembers who cruise through challenges and give folks what they want. Meanwhileresource shifters cast individuals who can't get a handle on what's going oninto some equivalent of pennilessness and unpopularity.  Jesus captured the resource shifters'algorithm--its working rule--when he said, "to he who hath it shall begiven; from he who hath not, even what he hath shall be taken away."

                      •Bringingup the rear are intergroup tournaments, gang wars ranging from theLilliputian to the gargantuan, from friendly baseball games and corporatecompetition to terrorist raids and nuclear confrontation, face-offs which forceeach collective intelligence, each group brain, to churn out innovations forthe fun of winning or for sheer survival's sake.  
 with warmth and oomph--howard

[i].. Howard Bloom. "Beyondthe Supercomputer: Social Groups as

Self-invention Machines."  In Research in Biopolitics, vol. 6.: Sociobiologyand Biopolitics. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press Inc., 1998: 43-63.

[ii]..  Doyne Farmer, Alan Lapedes, Norman Packardand Burton Wendroff, editors. Evolution, Games and Learning: Models forAdaptation in Machines and Nature, Proceedings of the Fifth Annual InternationalConference of the Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos, NM 87545.USA, May 20-24, 1985. Amsterdam: North-Holland Physics Publishing, 1985:188.

[iii].. Inner-judges of many kindsshow up in the brain and body.  The workof Neil Greenberg indicates that one key location is the striatum. (NeilGreenberg, Enrique Font, Robert C. Switzer III. "The Reptilian StriatumRevisited: Studies on Anolis Lizards."  In The Forebrain of Reptiles: CurrentConcepts of Structure and Function, edited by Walter K Schwerdtfeger andWillhelmus J.A.J. Smeets. Basel: Karger, 1988: 162-177.) The striatum can wreakhavoc on such basic things as our ability to translate thought into movementand our capacity to dampen the pain of stress. Greenberg also points to another inner-judge, one which lowers oursexuality. (Neil Greenberg. Personal communication, June 20, 1998.)

[iv].. For one example, see: MyronF. Floyd. "Pleasure, arousal, and dominance: Exploring affectivedeterminants of recreation satisfaction." Leisure Sciences,April-June, 1997: 83-96.

[v].. In neural net terms, thesewould be referred to as mechanisms for "self-inhibition." (T. Fukai,S. Tanaka. "A simple neural network exhibiting selective activation ofneuronal ensembles: from winner-take-all to winners-share-all." NeuralComputation, January 1997: 77-97.)

[vi].. B.S. McEwen."Corticosteroids and hippocampal plasticity."

 BrainCorticosteroid Receptors: Studies on the Mechanism, Function, and Neurotoxicityof Corticosteroid Action, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 746,November 30, 1994: 142‑4, 178‑9; L.P. Reagan, B.S. McEwen. "Controversiessurrounding glucocorticoid‑mediated cell death in the hippocampus."  Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy,August 1997: 149‑67.

[vii].. Not only do the inner-judgesdull our wits by decreasing brain circulation, they also give us headaches.(Roy J. Mathew, W.H. Wilson. "Intracranial and extracranial blood flowduring acute anxiety." Psychiatry Research, May 16, 1997: 93‑107.)
[viii].. R.J. Mathew, A.A. Swihart,M.L. Weinman. "Vegetative symptoms in anxiety and depression."  British Journal of Psychiatry, August1982: 162‑5; Klaus Atzwanger and Alain Schmitt. "Walking Speed andDepression: Are Sad Pedestrians Slow?" Human Ethology Bulletin, 3Sept 1997.

[i].. J.C. Parikh, B. Pratap."An evolutionary model of a neural network."  Journal of Theoretical Biology, May 7,1984: 31-8; J.J.  Hopfield. "Neuralnetworks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities."  Proceedingsof the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, April1982: 2554-8.

[ii].. J.D. Farmer, S.A. Kauffman,N.H. Packard and A.S. Perelson. "Adaptive Dynamic Networks as Models forthe Immune System and Autocatalytic Sets." In Perspectives inBiological Dynamics and Theoretical Medicine, edited by S.H. Koslow, A.J.Mandell, and M.F. Shlesinger. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1987:118-131.

[iii].. Mark 4:25

    On Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 07:55:10 PM EDT, Levin, Michael <michael.levin at allencenter.tufts.edu> wrote:  

 Hi Aaron,

> but seriously incomplete, in my view,

    Absolutely; if this was complete, we could all go home and all of biomedicine would be solved :-)  certainly it is incomplete. I have focused on some specific issues and ignored many others, as the field is vast.

> As far as I know Levin has not mentioned or offered explanations for the
phenomena I've mentioned (and there's much more that I haven't mentioned). I've
written to him about this. 

    correct; I have nothing much to say about innate behavioral competencies of specific animals. But I view them as not more impressive than innate competencies of cells and various embryos in anatomical and physiological spaces - to me, the problem-solving strategies they deploy natively - "out of the box" - are of exactly the same type as the behavioral ones you emphasize. It is behavior, even though in other spaces besides our familiar 3D space, and complex problem-solving behavior at that. So, I think in working on the origin of that, we are addressing fundamentally the question you are asking: where do behavioral competencies, in whatever space, come from. We do have answers to some of that, although - absolutely, incomplete!

Best,

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Fis <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es>> on behalf of "a.sloman at bham.ac.uk <mailto:a.sloman at bham.ac.uk>" <a.sloman at bham.ac.uk <mailto:a.sloman at bham.ac.uk>>
Reply-To: "a.sloman at bham.ac.uk <mailto:a.sloman at bham.ac.uk>" <a.sloman at bham.ac.uk <mailto:a.sloman at bham.ac.uk>>
Date: Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 7:56 AM
To: "Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic <gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se <mailto:gordana.dodig-crnkovic at mdu.se>> 'fis'" <fis at listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>>
Subject: [External] [Fis] Tao and information processing (for a human): Fwd: Re: Emotional Sentience #2 The Metaphor of The Tao (the last long post!)

Dear Gordana (and Fis),

I apologise for the format of this message if anyone finds it difficult. I find
it very difficult to cope with the format of the Fis messages, which I have to
transform radically in order to be able to reply quoting parts, in the ancient
programmable text editor (part of Poplog) which I use on Linux for reading and
writing messages and other work, e.g. developing web sites.

I apologise for any errors or obscurities introduced by my re-formatting of
Gordana's text.

I am responding to the message in which she wrote:

> Dear Joseph
>
> Let me comment on the following statement in your mail:
>
> > You also introduce computability in an area where non-computability - the
> > absence of an algorithm - perhaps predominates.
>
> Allow me to disagree.
> Algorithm is not what it used to be -- the Turing Machine. Our late colleague,
> mathematician Mark Burgin has written extensively on that topic.
>
> I suppose you refer to this passage in Kate's mail:
> "wherein the ongoing cyclic transitions between them form the computational
> engine of The Tao. This dance delivers the algorithmic logic of Turing machines,
> and the opponent processes, metastability and regulatory switching, evident in
> metabolism, morphogenesis, genetic and the autonomic neural networks embody
> behavioral control."
>
> There is a way to represent all natural processes as computation -- natural
> computation, natural information processing.
>
> If we look at the physiological (bio-chemical) processes underlying emotions,
> feelings, and other sub-symbolic processes in the human body, all of them can be
> represented as information processes.

I have very recently taken that last idea much further and argued that the
oldest and most important forms of information processing in animals on this
planet are located in synapses, which are descendants of the most most ancient
ancestors of animals, including humans: single celled organisms, which later
evolved to the sexually reproducing single-celled organisms discussed by Tibor
Ganti in his book The Principles of Life, referenced in the huge, unfinished,
online document in which I am developing these ideas, referring to a vast, and
steadily increasing number of other sources:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/metamorphosis.html__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqvuMG5UA$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/metamorphosis.html__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqvuMG5UA$>

(search in it for "Ganti" for references to his work and to commentaries on it.)

My claim (strongly influenced by the work of Seth Grant and colleagues in
Edinburgh University -- also referenced in that document, whose ideas I have
extended) is that the most powerful forms of information processing used in
cognition in animals, including humans, occur in synapses, with neurons having
important but subsidiary roles, including transferring information between
synapses and other, more recently evolved, parts of animal bodies. There are
also other forms of communication and control, e.g. using hormones transmitted
via blood vessels.

Gordana wrote:

> Michael Levin and collaborators have practical applications in their work in
> biology and medicine. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://drmichaellevin.org/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqJ6BmNk8$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://drmichaellevin.org/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqJ6BmNk8$>

That is important and impressive work, but seriously incomplete, in my view,
e.g. ignoring processes that have evolved in branching trajectories in species
that reproduce by laying eggs enclosed in shells, and emerge with very complex
physiological structures and significant unlearnt cognitive competences, e.g.
many species of newly hatched birds and reptiles, including sea-turtles emerging
from eggs buried in sand and abandoned by their mothers.

As far as I know Levin has not mentioned or offered explanations for the
phenomena I've mentioned (and there's much more that I haven't mentioned). I've
written to him about this. He has also heard me give presentations on some of
the ideas, but not the most recent ones mentioned below.

I have not been using the word "algorithm" in connection with the biological
information processing mechanisms. Instead I talk about varieties of information
processing, especially processing of information during control of complex
biochemical processes of reproduction and development, and most recently in my
discussions of metamorphosis, involving very complex chemical decomposition and
recombination processes -- arguably more sophisticated than anything prodced by
human engineers, all happening in very small spaces with small temperature
changes and using small amounts of energy.

No human designed assembly mechanisms that I know of come close to matching
those features.

I am grateful for pointers to relevant published work (preferably freely
available online) that sould be referenced in the metamorphosis.html document
The name of the document is misleading though I think any other short name would
also be misleading. In a sense, the name of the document is partly justified by
the non-biological metamorphosis constantly occurring in the document as I
work on it!

More from Gordana:
(Replying to Joe Brenner)

> More about natural computing:
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_computing__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqR5mljTs$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_computing__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqR5mljTs$>
>
> A basic book: G.Rozenberg, T.Back, J.Kok, Ed., Handbook of Natural Computing,
> Springer Verlag, 2012
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-540-92910-9__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqDvbUgn8$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-540-92910-9__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznqDvbUgn8$>
>
> The question if The Tao can be *completely* captured computationally is
> outside the scope of this discussion.
>
> A photograph cannot completely represent every aspect of its object but is still
> representative enough for a human observer.

Our current ideas about computation now seem to me to form a subset of a larger
collection of ideas about forms of control using huge amounts of information
produced over millions of years, also using surprisingly little energy and very
small but very complex forms of matter.

I hope my departure from the Fis format has not caused any problems.

Aaron

Aaron Sloman,
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/>*axs__;fg!!D9dNQwwGXtA!W9gRYRrieeHk1y3RNgVHAZrWsk0M_Zii_NwPkNwh0nzzleU7DIlpri6-rcD9Ad6rWw9XM6QSmhjuiznq2Et8dy0$
Emeritus Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science
(Retired, but still working full time, on the Meta-Morphogenesis project,
while brain slides downhill)

School of Computer Science,
The University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham B15 2TT UK

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__________________________Howard BloomHowardbloom.netwww.howardbloom.instituteBRIC-TV's 66-minute film, The Grand Unified Theory of Howard Bloom,  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atYmiEZ6YDUBest__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Qa_JsVEoEPVWZfx27yZxTMsm-7tSIBBQY6tDM8sq4ZB8RV9X7oolyOZPgBrFMFPo5Dz9t4XFZZO7Hmw7XQ$  Picture, Science Design Film Festival. Best Documentary Feature, Not Film Festival, Italy. Available  on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, Microsoft, Vimeo, Vudu, and Fandango.
Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"-The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"-The New Yorker),The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("A tremendously enjoyable book." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic),  The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich),How I Accidentally Started the Sixties (“Wow! Whew! Wild! Wonderful!” Timothy Leary),The Mohammed Code (“A terrifying book…the best book I’ve read on Islam.” David Swindle, PJ Media), andEinstein, Michael Jackson & Me: a Search  for Soul in the Power Pits of Rock & Roll ("Amazing. The writing is revelatory." Freddy DeMann, manager of Michael Jackson and Madonna), Best Book of 2020, New York Weekly Times.A Quartz Magazine ProFormer Visiting Scholar, Graduate Psychology Department, New York University, Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Current Kepler Space University Professor of Practice.Founder: International Paleopsychology Project. Founder, Space Development Steering Committee.  Member Of Board Of Governors, National Space Society. Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society. Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project.

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