[Fis] Concluding Comments?

Fri Mar 8 12:19:38 CET 2024

Dear Alex and Lou,

Thank you for your responses to my provoking question.
It is good to also have your views on these future aspects.
I fully agree with both of you.

What I bitterly realize is that possibly all the industrial research I have
done in the 1990s and early 2000 in the area of wireless communications and
distributed intelligent networks, incl. my dissertation and patents might
have been used to support oppressive, invasive and harming technologies and
regimes. That's why I am very careful about what I do today.  It
always starts as a brilliant humanitarian idea, e.g. like prosthetics for
disabled and disadvantaged people as in the first MIT article I sent the
link to or this review here:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://magazine.medlineplus.gov/article/prosthetics-through-the-ages__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SvvLpPjHypMVgxUVQ5S9A_IM2pzb2MdpmZaSv5rtGU7muHRgDQkyAOt11uQQaZ59oVXPC7F-5eol-YUT889ONCOWItVP$ .
And then it strangely develops against its initial purpose in a weird
evolution through the 2. article (link) and 3. link with the video lecture
from Davos. Why? Why did the Western, particularly NSF/US and ESF/EU/UK,
research and funding become more and more dehumanized over time? And now we
truly face the replacement of our human made civilization by
something alien. Is this natural?
I was afraid I was about to get "Oppenheimer syndrome", but I stopped this
research early enough. Lucky me!

Anyway, I wished to share these concerns with you all and appeal for
thinking and acting with these motives of precaution in mind.
There is a way to stop the destruction of civilizations, I am sure. But we
need to be more insightful and united.

Lou, your last paragraph gives me the hope that we can deal with these
challenges.
I only wonder if we, with the systems and tools we develop, are not in a
Petri dish of some creature(s) outside who curiously observe our evolution.

I remain positive...

With all my good wishes to all of you for a wonderful spring time and a
new hope!

Plamen

On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 9:30 AM Louis Kauffman <loukau at gmail.com> wrote:

> Plamen,
> You are looking at the possibilities of computers and AI. This is
> evolutionary technology.
> Computers indeed are an evolutionary edge of formal systems.
> The other side of the coin, or the middle of the coin, is how we and our
> biology actually behave outside of
> formal systems. There is a life outside of these mechanisms and it is from
> this form of life, feeling, thought that
> the various systems that we know were and sometimes are created.
> This becomes very important as the interfaces (that you look at in these
> articles) become more intimate.
>
> We are not formal systems or even animated formal systems. It is because
> we are not that, that we can create them and participate in their
> evolution. Of course I only say this last as my opinion, not as a
> universal truth.
> Best,
> Lou
>
>
> On Mar 7, 2024, at 3:34 AM, Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <
> plamen.l.simeonov at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Well said. Thank you, Catlos.
>
> I have one last question:
>
> What do you and the FIS colleagues think of this kind of outlook for
> evolutionary formali(n)sation?
>
> 1.
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://news.mit.edu/2019/training-artificial-intelligence-brain-scan-0619__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SvvLpPjHypMVgxUVQ5S9A_IM2pzb2MdpmZaSv5rtGU7muHRgDQkyAOt11uQQaZ59oVXPC7F-5eol-YUT889ONP2IWB91$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://news.mit.edu/2019/training-artificial-intelligence-brain-scan-0619__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SsU3-gNIFwLZgKiiAaKmhhb1-cQGJaorxvmbNO3QLa-ar2RGlYGvCeFuJBLc7vMzwA0hIWAxk5GeRtvH74S8ZtvCj4Rp$>
>
> 2.
>
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/01/1072471/brain-scans-can-translate-a-persons-thoughts-into-words/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SvvLpPjHypMVgxUVQ5S9A_IM2pzb2MdpmZaSv5rtGU7muHRgDQkyAOt11uQQaZ59oVXPC7F-5eol-YUT889ONFOROeKL$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/01/1072471/brain-scans-can-translate-a-persons-thoughts-into-words/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SsU3-gNIFwLZgKiiAaKmhhb1-cQGJaorxvmbNO3QLa-ar2RGlYGvCeFuJBLc7vMzwA0hIWAxk5GeRtvH74S8ZtEGJZZW$>
>
> 3.
>
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.weforum.org/videos/davos-am23-ready-for-brain-transparency-english/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SvvLpPjHypMVgxUVQ5S9A_IM2pzb2MdpmZaSv5rtGU7muHRgDQkyAOt11uQQaZ59oVXPC7F-5eol-YUT889ONGwGaNOP$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.weforum.org/videos/davos-am23-ready-for-brain-transparency-english/__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!SsU3-gNIFwLZgKiiAaKmhhb1-cQGJaorxvmbNO3QLa-ar2RGlYGvCeFuJBLc7vMzwA0hIWAxk5GeRtvH74S8ZtSFL0yp$>
>
>
> All the best!
>
> Plamen
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 6, 2024 at 7:06 PM Carlos Gershenson <cgershen at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Pedro and colleagues,
>>
>> Thank you very much for the lively discussions and commentaries. I have
>> learned a lot.
>>
>> I would not say these are concluding comments, as all questions remain
>> open, but perhaps "summarizing comments".
>>
>> I think that efforts to “fix” formal systems to go beyond or around their
>> limits (*à la* Hilbert’s program) are doomed to fail. We still need to
>> accept them or find a better way of dealing with them. Perhaps an
>> alternative would be not to see them as something negative, but as
>> something we can exploit/benefit from. I mean, just hypothetically imagine
>> if mathematics was consistent, complete, and decidable. Yes, we would have
>> absolute truths, we could have certainty. But would we have creativity?
>> Innovation? Serendipity? In other words, we could eliminate many problems
>> we suffer from, but perhaps we would have many more. Even worse, perhaps we
>> would not even be here. For how could human culture evolve in a consistent,
>> complete, and decidable world?
>>
>> Of course, this does not mean that we should abandon science or formal
>> methods. But by acknowledging their limits, we should be able to use
>> different narratives to explore beyond them.
>>
>> Best (albeit incomplete) wishes,
>>
>> Carlos
>>
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