Anil Seth’s Faraday Lecture has generated a fair bit of chat. I was initially a bit too unimpressed, not enough originality – probably turned off previously by his use of “hallucination”. In fact he is synthesising many of the same sources I am. Nothing new under the sun again.
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Mystery – zzz.
Lost under anaesthesia (main aspect anyway, self-aware aspect – the bits keeping us alive are still there – as as he concludes later – it has much more to do with life than intelligence).
We know it better than anything – a la Descartes
Nagel’s – like to be
Mystery – Chalmers – Hard Problem – zzz
The “real” problem – many different aspects – check
So-called hard problem will “dissolve” – check
Level (how) / Content (of what) / Self (sense of)
Content example “colour” – Visible EM Spectrum
Pink (Lilac chaser) dot illusion.
Prediction machine – check (+ Plato’s Cave)
More expectation / illusions
Bayesian predictions / expectations – check
von Helmholtz process / result (not explicit calculation, certainly not bottom-up from sum of all inputs – nope – high level prediction compared with any available inputs at any level. The game is minimising the unexpected. “Predictive Processing” – generative
Wm James on the case
Pareidolia – hallucinations – hmmmm.
Hallucination as uncontrolled perception
Perception as controlled hallucination.
Kinda – check (OK see intro)
Perceptual echo-chambers (That dress)
The Perception Census
Humility
Self <> World
Self is our perception of “us perceiving”
Bodily, Perspectival, Volitional, Narrative and Social – Self
Bodily ( more Sacks / Damasio stuff) – the “Rubber Hand”
Interoception
Emotion (after James again)
Control (Cybernetics)
ACTIVE INFERENCE – Friston!!!
ROSS ASHBY – system regulation
FRISTON FREE ENERGY of living systems
Interoceptive Predictions
Good or Bad affective experience
Descartes Error!
Part of Nature not Apart from Nature
AI & Consciousness zzzz
More smart (intellectually) is not more consciousness.
Anthropocentrism / Anthropomorphism.
What a mind is, is not separate from what it does
Less clear line between hardware and software – all wetware
Info independent of embodiment.
Another reason to be wary of computing machine language.
Property of life.
AI will only become Real I when it has Real Life – check.
AI that seems to be consciousness may be a really bad thing for us.
Dennett quote – AI Tools not Colleagues.
Mystery that matters. (Good round-up)
OOOH Friston in the front row.
And Adam Rutherford – Genetic evolution not mentioned (a given, surely, yes says Seth.)
Maturana and Varela. More “systems thinking” autopoesis.
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For me:
Frankly, it’s not a mystery, it’s clearly common knowledge.
Person who developed it most from Friston is Solms.
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