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ozyon Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

Maybe it is a self-filtering effect, they should have shown a graph of shoe price vs improvement, and improvement over time.

That would capture if those willing to pay more are self-selecting for being better, training more, etc. And if today the effect is stronger than a year ago, perhaps because of rumors of it making you faster.

ozyon AI winter is well on its way

I believe we can make thinking machines. And "deep pattern matching" will be part of it. But it will need to fit in another architecture, most likely a lot like (deep) reinforcement learning. Probably with strong focus on modeling and predicting the environment. But also with some kind of goal modeling.

See also for this not-magic: https://psyarxiv.com/387h9

ozyon AI winter is well on its way

We call it deep learning, but it is deep pattern matching. Extremely useful, but don't expect it to result in thinking machines.

ozyon Empiricism and the limits of gradient descent

Notice how blacks swans is a labeling/categorization problem. Whereas F=ma is a causal relationship. The first has no induction problem, there is no swan-ness except in our minds. The second has no induction problem, because you model causal relationships and predict from them, better predictions means less wrong. The problem of induction is only one of "ultimate reality".

ozyon Has there been progress in philosophy?

consciousness: https://psyarxiv.com/387h9

ozyon Has there been progress in philosophy?

In the past, philosophy had a lot of ground to cover. Today science covers all the ground on what is, what exists, what can be modeled. Philosophy only the ground of what matters.

For example, free will is entirely a science question. How to interpret what science can tell us so far, and how or if it matters, that is a philosophical question.

ozyon Technically, what is Understanding?

Some animals clearly show understanding up to a level https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04

But they can not explain it to us, so "can explain" is a unnecessary high bar.

ozyon Evolution Is the New Deep Learning

But you've now shifted the "how" question. (Or I misunderstood the original.)

It is not a question of how there is emergence, why there is magic. The answer to that is is because systematic interactions at a low level can create higher level playing fields.

So the "how" is now a technical question, what is this system, how complex is it, and at which levels can we understand it. And since this system has been learning how to avoid erasure by entropy or by competition for 3.5 billion years, it has searched quite a possibility space, namely 2^1277500000000, if we assume making a copy every day.

ozyon Evolution Is the New Deep Learning

Same way waves emerge in water.

The rules that govern a system can create patterns, which themselves behave according to rules, but with a set of rules that was "hard to predict" from the underlying system.

ozyon Evolution Is the New Deep Learning

https://psyarxiv.com/387h9

ozyon Heredity Beyond the Gene

Since life or evolution is basically self-replication with variation in a shared environment, any mechanism that can carry information forwards can and probably will be used, or has been in the past. From that perspective, some phenotype changes are trivially genotype changes. (Eg anything that changes the egg-cell, will influence the life that grows from it.)

It is weird to expect only DNA to be used. The process is not that orderly. The special thing about DNA (and a few other mechanisms), it is invariant to phenotype changes. And that it will copy over information that has no direct influences on self-replication. That is what enabled unlimited heredity.

ozyon New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

Sortof. But with a few caveats. 1) most computer viruses don't randomly vary, and thus don't have a learning effect, miss unlimited heredity. 2) they are not physical life, so the relevance is not the same as their chemical counterparts.

ozyon New Giant Viruses Further Blur the Definition of Life

My personal definition of life: self-replication with unlimited heredity.

self-replication: something can make a copy of itself.

unlimited heredity: when "information" is added, it is copied along, even if it does not contribute directly to the replication process itself.

Implied in the definition is variation. And in the bigger view, that all replicators are under pressure to do so well, or be outcompeted on resource usage etc., and disappear.

While a virus depends on a rich and active environment to work, they clearly fall into that definition.

ozyon Machine Theory of Mind

This is also very interesting and related: https://psyarxiv.com/387h9

ozyon The Meta-Problem of Consciousness [pdf]

> Via IQ tests?

Just the fact that you recognize an IQ test as such, allows me to mark you as intelligent. Very objective. The actual score, sure that is much more subjective.

> when I use a neural network instead of a table

That really depends on the degrees of freedom. Which are unlimited for IQ tests. First I could change things that have nothing to do with the test itself. Like reverse the A, B, C, D order, or put them on the left. Or simply device a never seen before kind of test, instead varying only the geometric shapes.

ozyon The Meta-Problem of Consciousness [pdf]

Consciousness is the observation of your self. There is only one system that can make that observation, you.

Outside we could observe how information is flowing, what connects to what, how parts work, how they work together. But never observe the actual feeling of you.

It's like seeing a river flowing, you can measure and describe all kinds of aspects of it. But to get wet, to feel the cold water, to feel the force by which is flows, you have to step into it. Only this river flows in virtual reality, your minds reality, and you cannot step into it.

Intelligence is hard to measure, but I can objectively say what is and what isn't intelligent. It is not the same kind of subjectivity.

And in general, your table idea, that only works for systems that can be in a limited amount of states. You cannot do it for an intelligence test, especially not if I get to redesign the test after you finished your table, same for consciousness.

ozyon The Meta-Problem of Consciousness [pdf]

Reinforcement based learning requires self-observation. Especially when done with predictive modeling. Both the brain clearly does. You might like this paper: https://psyarxiv.com/387h9

ozyon The Meta-Problem of Consciousness [pdf]

A system that can observe things, and also observe its own observations, its own mental states, it is not so clear that such a system can be a p-zombie.

ozyon The Meta-Problem of Consciousness [pdf]

https://psyarxiv.com/387h9

Conclusion

"We don’t have an objective measure of consciousness. But we can recognize three levels of learning that apply that to our brains and how those create an information processing system that integrates data into a first person perspective. This is how the brain is also a mind with subjective meaning and subjective experiences. The hard problem of consciousness is that we must rely on our intuitions to judge if such a system is conscious. At the same time, it is highly likely that most systems processing information in similar ways are conscious, whether running on a brain or on a computer."

ozyon DNA seen through the eyes of a coder (2017)

I might have missed it, but key is that DNA is not executed linearly. Instead all instructions are executed all the time. Much like the difference in normal programming and programming an FPGA, but then probabilistic.

ozyon Consciousness: Where Are Words?

Meaning and subjectivity come from (machine) learning, or relativity as Riccardo calls it.

I think, consciousness from how our brains learn, namely by having internalized the feedback. Which is another way of saying by modeling the world, and updating those models by constantly monitoring the effectiveness of those models.

We are self-observers, integrating our sensory information into a subjective first-person perspective.

ozyon Lost Einsteins: The Innovations We’re Missing

Again, since I didn't talk about those issues, you cannot conclude what I do or do not know.

ozyon Lost Einsteins: The Innovations We’re Missing

Why am I "pretty clueless" when your comment does not even address anything I said, let alone counter it?

You add a whole different perspective, but one that is fully compatible on top of what I said, nobody is denying that part of capitalism. Powerful people, no matter what system, can do horrible things without regard for the victims ... and under capitalism companies can become powerful too.

ozyon Lost Einsteins: The Innovations We’re Missing

You are saying one thing, but describing another.

We want people to always have good opportunities to bootstrap themselves out of a terrible situation (your gutter and wallmart situations). But we don't want to remove all the rewards from turning time into value.

"brutally enforced system of authoritarian capitalism" think you have a few opinions there that are deeply rooted in feelings ...

When you are alone on an island, the world rewards you when you spend time changing things for the better (eg hunt for food). If in that situation you have the opportunity to trade you will be even better off.

Things only go south when free markets also create a free labor market. Then the power of markets pushes strongly on those wages. Even if there is no evil intent by anyone, companies not ignoring this push will not be around for long ...

ozyon Europe still burns witches – if they’re named Monsanto

No. Why do you conclude the IARC does this "without scientific evidence". And why do you conclude the article claims it is doing a bad job?

Basically, the article claims people don't understand HOW the IARC does its job, what its reports mean. And that its data is easily misused for fear mongering. Eg scary fact, did you know your water contains lots of dihydrogen monoxide?

First and foremost it judges on hazard, which is how much an effect it could be in the worst exposure cases. Only secondly is its job to assess risks, that is how much is the effect under normal/expected exposures.

ozyon Europe still burns witches – if they’re named Monsanto

What bold claim are you referring to? Where the IARC places it on its list is a verifiable fact, and let's assume the IARC is doing a reasonable job.

It's a poison, let's be clear about that. So treat it carefully and with respect. But when you do, the end result to human life is more save than bacon.

ozyon Shut up and calculate: an extreme mathematical universe

Learning creates subjectivity.

ozyon After Universal Basic Income, the Flood

I am in favor of UBI, a few remarks:

- mostly because people on the bottom can be powerless and get stuck in low paying jobs, no means to move, to re-educate, etc.

- today most countries already redistribute money, in form of minimum wage, tax cuts, food stamps, disability benefits, heath insurance, etc.

- UBI is a dial, you can turn it up, or turn it down, redistribute 15% of all value created is not unreasonable, some European countries are already at 10-15%

- make sure every dollar earned, helps you move forward, benefits, UBI, taxation, should never have jumps in scales, but always be linear (this is horribly off in my country today)

- drug misuse, poor that cannot handle money, is a problem today, and UBI won't solve it, it's not on the agenda to dump all social workers ...

- lazy hipsters, that is intuitive but likely wrong, ... UBI is not exactly luxurious living, you'd want a job or no car, no nice clothes, no travelling, etc ...

ozyon Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think

I have a theory.

Any theory about consciousness that does not include learning is at best incomplete, but more likely just wrong.

---

Our brains create models of the world. They are constantly predicting, making choices. And on surprise, looking back to see where it went wrong. On reward, reinforcing the behavior leading up to it.

In a way, our brains are observers of our environment, our bodies, and itself.

ozyon The Hardening of Consciousness

How can people have theories of consciousness and not include learning. The brain is constantly predicting futures, thinking multiple steps ahead, and on surprise, check what past prediction was off, hoping to correct it and learn.

In a way, we are observers, that closely observe ourselves.