
Machine Dreams [video] - AndrewKemendo
https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8369-machine_dreams#video&t=704
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xxyxx
I watched it live.

Really wanted to listen to the next talk afterwards but I couldn't, because my
mind went full rollercoaster about thought processes in my brain and I
couldn't concentrate :)

This talk was awesome.

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ozy
Amazing talk.

"Markov Decision Model ... also called a story" :)

As for consciousness, I like his explanation. I personally think it is the
brain that keeps a log of past decisions, so that when pain/pleasure comes, it
can look back and see what decision to reward/punish (delayed reinforcement
based learning). The moment a brain puts higher level things in decisions,
like expectation of pain/pleasure, and even "I made a decision", is when self
awareness comes in.

\---

I disagree somewhat when he says reality looks nothing like what our brain
thinks reality looks like. With different sensors, sure it would all look very
different. But not like reality is a cellular automata, and our sensors
register that stuff raw, yet our brains imagine (dream) the patterns as
objects and people with colors and sounds.

Our sensors see by the laws of physics, seeing objects with properties made
possible by the laws of physics. That underlying those laws might be something
entirely different, perhaps. But the translation from that underlying thing
happened before the light hit your eye, not in the brain. E.g. color is a
property of reality, not of the brain.

A completely different effect is that the "picture" we are get in our brain,
is heavily pre processed and filtered and predicted. So the color that we
notice, and what light has hit our eyes, those are not the same.

Would be interesting to know what he ment by that.

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spacehacker
> E.g. color is a property of reality, not of the brain.

Reality simply provides a field that vibrates at different wavelengths and it
is intelligence and evolution that come up with computationally convenient
category boundaries along that spectrum. We are certainly unaware of many
things that are part of the universe without the help of tools.

I agree that we can be certain that when e.g. we see a large rock falling,
that our mental representations relate with 99.999% certainty to the event
actually occurring. There are however many things which are more subtle, and I
think this is what he was referring to.

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ozy
"There are however many things which are more subtle, and I think this is what
he was referring to."

Can you give an example? Because I cannot think of any.

That we interpret the wavelength, or even the combination of wavelengths, to
mean to us, say brown. Sure. But knowing how the brain does that, we can
easily predict what things look brown to us and why. Including when something
is brown (physically), but looks red to us, because it is surrounded by
something our brains would think is a shadow, so it compensates.

~~~
spacehacker
We don't directly perceive of the phenomenon of EM radiation, but rather only
perceive a superficial, low-resolution projection of what is actually going
on.

There are many things that are too small, too large, too fast or too slow etc.
for us to notice. For example, you miss out all the air eddies you create as
you move through the atmosphere. Lots of things are also simply out of sight
and our minds construct perhaps 50% of what we perceive by pattern completion.
I think what we perceive is mostly right, but in many ways it only corresponds
superficially to the computations that are actually going on.

I don't find this distinction very useful either though. Yes, there is an
illusion of confidence in the accuracy of what we experience, and a lot of it
is tainted by values and false memories, but still, it seems plausible that
our experiences correspond very directly to things happening in the universe.

I also don't agree with the claim that mathematics being real in a Platonic
sense is an illusion. It all comes down to how you define 'real'. I find a
sensible definition is that it is a thought that corresponds to how the world
works, to things in the world (future, present or past), but also to how the
world hypothetically, but very plausibly works. In the same way as you can
plausibly assume that any imaginable thought corresponds to something in a
remote region of an infinite universe (or multiverse), you can also assume
that our mathematical theorems correspond to some computation somewhere. It
makes sense to extend the definition of real by immediacy: The fictitious
novel is also real (in some multiverse), but it does not have as much
immediate real-ness as mathematics. For mathematics you can find all kinds of
correspondences in nature (e.g. 1+1=2), but in the novel you can mostly only
find things you've previously taken from nature to write the novel, but if
your predictions are very real, then it might at some point be impossible to
tell whether it is true or not (just like a computer game that almost looks
real).

~~~
ozy
We perceive a low resolution, small slice, of reality, which our brains
preprocess and amend by prediction, and that is "what we see". So yes, we
don't see anything outside that resolution, or outside of that small slice.
And there is some real warping going on when the brain recognizes faces, eyes,
mouths. Or shadows, perspective, the horizon.

But I don't think that is what Joscha Bach was talking about. He said reality
is very different from the dreamed up reality our brains present to us.

The only thing I can come up with is "disgust". If somebody with dirty hands
touches something else, that other thing is now tainted in your mind, and the
brain is pretty good at tracking what is tainted. Even if it has no physical
counterpart.

Something similar for ownership. In a way, things in reality are recognized
and tagged with extra information, dirty, owner, important ... etc.

Something similar for math, or money, stealing, or how society works. Yet I
think most of us can easily recognize that those things are not part of
reality, but part of structure humans put on top of reality to analyze it, or
to share ideas about it, and work together in it.

But what idea in the mind is so far away from its counterpart in reality, that
one could say the mind dreams it up? Or has no counterpart, yet the brain
thinks it has. Maybe agency when we do not know the agent?

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ozy
Just watched all his 4 talks
[https://media.ccc.de/search?q=Joscha](https://media.ccc.de/search?q=Joscha) .
Time well spend on this Sunday January first :) And if I interpret it
correctly, he is talking about concepts that come not from our direct sensors,
but from structures humans put on top of reality, because things mean
something to us.

~~~
spacehacker
That makes sense. I also enjoyed the previous three talks a lot, but he should
really write it all down.

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danielbln
Great talk, the first few minutes are a little awkward, but then it becomes
Carmack-esque.

~~~
aburan28
It was hard to hear in the room for the first few minutes

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Pica_soO
I really love this sort of cross discipline talks. Marching from AI to neuro
science, human psychology and back.

Every year a brilliant talk by Joscha- if it weren't for the scared by the
Results of Science Radicals trying to censor at the QA.

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spacehacker
> Results of Science Radicals

If you are referring to the question from the IRC chat, I think it was not
about silencing but rather about genuine interest in further reading material
since he didn't yet publish on _anything_ from his three CCC talks. Some parts
make quite sophisticated points so it would be really helpful if it was
elaborated in written form.

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sebringj
Who was that guy? I felt like he was speaking pure reason and it was like a
religious experience or something. He is a genius.

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sebringj
ah ok Joscha Bach, wow. Now I have a new guru to follow.

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HugoDaniel
Easily one of the best talks i have ever seen. Amazing!

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Hydraulix989
CCC is an awesome conference, one day I hope to attend.

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majewsky
Having attended it for the fifth time now, the only bad thing about the
Congress is that it make nearly every other conference etc. feel tiny and
badly planned (as in "they don't even have their own GSM network" or "where's
a pneumatic tube transport when I need one"). :)

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fatdog
This talk is a rare example of what I would call beautiful thinking.

If I interpreted that correctly, implementing a turing machine in CGoL that
runs CGoL was delightful.

