The mother of all analogies is the analogy between what we experience and what is happening. For example, it refers to our idea that a system is doing computation and what it is "actually" doing (Searle). It refers to our idea that what is "really" happening in the world is the intention of God versus what is "really" happening in the world. It is the difference between Tao and the Tao that is named. The brain (and, by extension, the "mind" it creates) builds an electro-chemical analog computer based on this - to map sensations from the real world into analogous mental phenomena. This mapping is called "intentionality." So far, most of our discussion of the mind has concentrated on consciousness. This concentration might give the impression that the mind is essentially a self-enclosed arena of subjectivity. But, on the contrary, the primary evolutionary role of the mind is to relate us in certain ways to the environment and especially t...

Christina Desan gives a calm and civilized talk about the nature of money. It really looks back at the orgins of our current stories from the point of view of current stories. This leaves out "irrelevant" issues such as slavery, colonization, debt, etc. Still lots of interesting perspectives. "Money" is worth something because, by law, it can be exchanged for goods and services for sale in that currency. That means the coin carries the value of what it can buy. Private credit creation = "replication" of the basic unit of account decreed by the State. She puts forward the idea that credit = debt but also the concept that all of this works in the "eye of the beholder." She does note the rise in the power of creditors that parallels the rise of money itself. Generally, the conversation ignores the history of debt.  Did medieval banks morph into modern banks? She claims that the Bank of England was the first actual bank, which was fundamental to the...

  This is a fantastic book. Highly recommended. What follows is just a home for my notes on the book. Also, see Christine Desan , a commentator on money and the institutional structures that support it. There is a connection with my AI deliberations. "Money" is in the eye of the beholder. Piketty points out that the social structures behind it are also in the eye of the beholder, such as class, property, and borders. This leads to the observation that many see elements of capitalism, such as inequality, are real and not "subjective." Economic inequality tangibles to actual results. The human "economy" is built on top of a real environment. Money is imaginary until you have none. Wealth is in the eye of the beholder until you look at the physical destruction involved in our economic history (war, depression, climate change). Since all aspects of the "economy" and the structures of society are subjective, it is not surprising to see wildly differen...

I must admit to being a rabid fan of Rachel Maddow . In my experience, she is the smartest person in the public eye. For many, her fame and success distract from the depth and insight of her insights. This book is a deeply informative history of the USA's "drift" toward militarism. Don't be distracted by the fact that it's an entertainment page-turner. Rachel reviews the process that led to the US military going off the leash from the Viet Nam war to the present day. As usual, I will use this post for a few notes on the subject. ============================================= I was skeptical about the Grenada invasion from the start. Maddow provides the details. It's worse than I thought. A farce from start to finish. === DUE TO TECH BLUNDER, EXTENSIVE NOTES LOST === DynCorp's sex slaves in Bosnia. Claim that US law did not apply in Bosnia or USA. Some sex slaves with 14-year-old sex slaves. Sex videos. DynCorp was bought out approx 2020. ==================...

Since I am prone to mania (part of being "Bipolar"), I look for an "operational" definition of mania - that is, a way to define it or measure it in real life to prevent it from sliding out of control. In my case, that means hospitalization in a mental health facility.  Part of my regime to prevent that is this test by Psych Central . It turns out to be useful when observing other people. Quite commonly, people are in a manic frame of mind more or less permanently without the slide into mental illness - or at least not in public. Mania can be brought on by drugs, which is a topic for another post. It's a good idea to check out the test. For the moment, I will list the criteria in short form.   Sharp mind Less Sleep Many plans   Pressure to talk and talk Particularly Happy Unusually active People have a hard time keeping up with me More ideas than I can handle Irritable Jokes and Funny Stories Full of Energy Thinking about Sex Special Plans for the World Spendi...

In 1969 I was in Grenoble, France. The plan was to create an interactive programming version of a new programming language ( Algol 68 ). Of course, my future held nothing of the kind, but a clever idea connects the 23-year-old hot-shot to the 75-year-old armchair philosopher and a young guy with a 2022 vision that is strangely related. At this time, interactive access to a computer was a new thing. In 1975, Bill Gates wrote an interactive BASIC version that launched his career in 1978.  Oops*. I was excited by the possibilities. At one time, "soon" (it turned out to be half a century), everyone would have access to the "Spirit System." Soon, all human knowledge would be "online." The main thing that excited me was the ability for people to share projects online, even creating music. My "field" at the time was "Artificial Intelligence," so it was easy to imagine an "app" that would impersonate a real person. Specifically, we w...

 In this post, I summarize some of the conclusions that come out of the LamBDA issue controversy. To find out what LamBDA actually is, check here .  This post deals with the current controversy, which is whether "LamBDA" or any similar creation can be "sentient." Spoiler alert: noting we are doing now places us on the road to creating a sentient machine. A sentient computer would be like a sentient book. Computers talk to us like books, TV, and phones talk to us.  Talking computers descend from centuries of effort that have given us talking parrots. When we see intelligent words coming out of a computer, our natural instinct is to attribute sentience to the computer. We will get over it, just as we got over our amazement at words coming from the first telephone.  Or a parrot. Under normal circumstances, I use words to cause mental events in your mind. This depends on both understanding the language and having a reasonably similar experience of life. In this way, lan...