0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
In this thread I'd like to discuss if there is a goal or desired condition which is applicable for any organisms who have adequate time to evolve or develop until they are basically independent from condition of their natural environments.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 09/09/2017 07:41:27In this thread I'd like to discuss if there is a goal or desired condition which is applicable for any organisms who have adequate time to evolve or develop until they are basically independent from condition of their natural environments.I find the question rather bizarre, are you suggesting an organism can become independent of reality?
In this thread I've come into conclusion that the best case scenario for life is that conscious beings keep existing indefinitely and don't depend on particular natural resources. The next best thing is that current conscious beings are showing progress in the right direction to achieve that best case scenario.The worst case scenario is that all conscious beings go extinct, since it would make all the efforts we do now are worthless. In a universe without conscious being, the concept of goal itself become meaningless. The next worst thing is that current conscious beings are showing progress in the wrong direction which will eventually lead to that worst case scenario.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 10/12/2020 03:53:36Quote from: alancalverd on 09/12/2020 23:56:31Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 09/12/2020 21:53:22The minimum requirement for evolutionary process are duplication, mutation, and natural selection.The most fundamental requirement is sufficient sefishness to survive. Then natural selection requires conscious or unconscious competitiveness, whether to outgrow the adjacent tree or fight for mating rights. Very few species apart from the social insects seem to have evolved collaboratively. Self awareness came later in the process.IMO, the most fundamental concept in the most general sense is information protection, as I've mentioned earlier.Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 25/02/2020 03:40:08For any true statement, there are infinitely many alternatives that are false.Since the existence of the thinker is the only thing that can't be doubted, it must be defended at all cost. Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 16/11/2018 23:48:22Finally we get to the last question: how. There are some basic strategies to preserve information which I borrow from IT business:Choosing robust media. Creating multilayer protection. Creating backups. Create diversity to avoid common mode failures. The existence of a thinker is subject to natural selection. Thinkers who has backups tend to be better at survival than those who don't. Thinkers who reproduce backups to replace the destroyed copies tend to survive better, otherwise, all of the copies will eventually break down. Thinkers who actively protect their copies tend to survive better than those who don't.Thinkers who produce better version of themselves at survival tend to survive better than who don't.That information protection business applies broadly to any level of consciousness, from level 0 such as stones to infinity for Laplace's demon. Being hard as a diamond is a form of information protection. Being immersed in amber or buried under permafrost are some other methods. But those kind of protections are brittle. Some brief environmental changes can destroy them irreversibly. Some simple locomotion ability can often be effective in preventing the destruction.Evolution process can be viewed as trial and error to achieve balance among different methods to protect information. Its effectiveness has been resembled by genetic algorithm with much higher speed and efficiency.Being conscious offers flexibility to choose the most effective strategy and shifting balance among various methods according to current and future environmental conditions.Moral rules are methods to protect conscious beings from threats by other conscious beings. Threats coming from non-conscious beings are better handled using other methods.
Quote from: alancalverd on 09/12/2020 23:56:31Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 09/12/2020 21:53:22The minimum requirement for evolutionary process are duplication, mutation, and natural selection.The most fundamental requirement is sufficient sefishness to survive. Then natural selection requires conscious or unconscious competitiveness, whether to outgrow the adjacent tree or fight for mating rights. Very few species apart from the social insects seem to have evolved collaboratively. Self awareness came later in the process.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 09/12/2020 21:53:22The minimum requirement for evolutionary process are duplication, mutation, and natural selection.The most fundamental requirement is sufficient sefishness to survive. Then natural selection requires conscious or unconscious competitiveness, whether to outgrow the adjacent tree or fight for mating rights. Very few species apart from the social insects seem to have evolved collaboratively.
The minimum requirement for evolutionary process are duplication, mutation, and natural selection.
For any true statement, there are infinitely many alternatives that are false.Since the existence of the thinker is the only thing that can't be doubted, it must be defended at all cost. Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 16/11/2018 23:48:22Finally we get to the last question: how. There are some basic strategies to preserve information which I borrow from IT business:Choosing robust media. Creating multilayer protection. Creating backups. Create diversity to avoid common mode failures. The existence of a thinker is subject to natural selection. Thinkers who has backups tend to be better at survival than those who don't. Thinkers who reproduce backups to replace the destroyed copies tend to survive better, otherwise, all of the copies will eventually break down. Thinkers who actively protect their copies tend to survive better than those who don't.Thinkers who produce better version of themselves at survival tend to survive better than who don't.
Finally we get to the last question: how. There are some basic strategies to preserve information which I borrow from IT business:Choosing robust media. Creating multilayer protection. Creating backups. Create diversity to avoid common mode failures.
Elon Musk delivers an inspirational speech. Listen to the end for the most life changing quote of all-time. Don't let anyone ever tell you that you cannot achieve your dreams. Elon Musk has faced more failure than 99% of people on this planet, yet still pursues his dreams and believes in himself.On May 30th, SpaceX made a historic launch. Delivering 2 NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, and returning the rocket back to earth. Listen to one of the greatest minds to ever walk this earth!
Evolution process can be viewed as trial and error to achieve balance among different methods to protect information. Its effectiveness has been resembled by genetic algorithm with much higher speed and efficiency.Being conscious offers flexibility to choose the most effective strategy and shifting balance among various methods according to current and future environmental conditions.Moral rules are methods to protect conscious beings from threats by other conscious beings. Threats coming from non-conscious beings are better handled using other methods.
The most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing.– From the book “Foundation design”, by Coduto, Donald P.
Quote from: alancalverd on 29/12/2020 11:00:04Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 28/12/2020 09:23:58How do you measure the economy?"The economy" is all the money that changes hands, plus an estimate of the monetary value of bartered goods. A significant proportion of The Economy is money spent on illegal drugs (estimated) and prostitution (increasingly accurate as the profession becomes unionised and employs accountants - nobody wants to be imprisoned for tax evasion). It has nothing to do with morality, productivity (20% of UK GNP is taken up in mortgage payments for secondhand houses) or standard of living. Establishing good economy, just like with morality, is an instrumental goal to achieve longer term goal, which eventually leads to a terminal goal. Self sustaining community where its members can independently produce their own needs have 0 economy. It's not necessarily a bad thing.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 28/12/2020 09:23:58How do you measure the economy?"The economy" is all the money that changes hands, plus an estimate of the monetary value of bartered goods. A significant proportion of The Economy is money spent on illegal drugs (estimated) and prostitution (increasingly accurate as the profession becomes unionised and employs accountants - nobody wants to be imprisoned for tax evasion). It has nothing to do with morality, productivity (20% of UK GNP is taken up in mortgage payments for secondhand houses) or standard of living.
How do you measure the economy?
Here is a great video titled How Did Multicellularity Evolve? by Journey to the Microcosmos. It shows some examples of increase in effectiveness and efficiency through specialization.//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ksYl2VvIHc
Some main points I get from the videos are:- Autopilot builds a virtual universe in its memory space to represent its surrounding environment based on data input from its sensors.- Modular concepts are employed to increase efficiency, so many things don't have to start from scratch again everytime new feature is added.- Building the virtual universe is done in real time which means a lot of new data is acquired, hence a lot of older data must be discarded. Therefore, to make the system work, it must compress the incoming data into meaningful and useful concepts, after filtering out noises and insignificant information.- Those data selection requires data hierarchy like deep believe network I mentioned earlier. Higher level information (believe) determine which data from lower level believe nodes to be kept and used or discarded and ignored. It's similar to how human brain works. That's why sometimes we find it hard to convince people by simply presenting facts that contradict their existing believe system, such as flat earthers, MAGA crowd, or religious fanatics.- The automation process is kept being automated, up into several levels of automation. We are building machines that build machines that build machines, and so on, as Ray Kurzweil called indirection. And those machines are getting better at achieveing their goals put into them. That's why it's getting more urgent for us to find a universal terminal goal, as I discuss in another thread.
PhysicsScientists Use Physics to Understand the Mystery of ConsciousnessBy Monash University on Jun 07, 2020The study is potentially applicable to humans and reflects a growing interest in new theories of consciousness that are experimentally testable.An international study involving Monash physicists has confirmed a new approach to measure consciousness, potentially changing our understanding complex neurological problems.The study published yesterday in Physical Review Research describes how tools from physics and complexity theory were used to determine the level of consciousness in fruit flies.“This is a major problem in neuroscience, where it is crucial to differentiate between unresponsive vegetative patients and those suffering from a condition in which a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally because of complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body,” said study author Dr. Kavan Modi, from the Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy.
The research team studied the brain signals produced by 13 fruit flies both when they were awake and when they were anesthetized. They then analyzed the signals to see how complex they were.“We found the statistical complexity to be larger when a fly is awake than when the same fly is anesthetized,” Dr. Modi said.“This is important because it suggests a reliable way to determine the level of conscious arousal by tapping into a small region of the brain, rather than many parts of the brain.“It also suggests that there is a clear marker of conscious arousal that does not depend on specific external stimuli.”The researchers concluded that applying a similar analysis to other datasets, in particular, human EEG data could lead to new discoveries regarding the relationship between consciousness and complexity.
Just in case I haven't made it clear yet, when I said that currently known best chance to achieve the universal terminal goal is through improvement of humanity, I meant it as a superorganism, rather than human individuals. Individually, there's nothing much can be done compared to other life forms.The parts of this superorganism are not limited to physical bodies of homo sapiens, but include everything else that supporting its existence, such as their microbiome, food chains, infrastructures, institutions, and knowledge.
Nowadays, senescence and degenerative diseases sound like stupid design. But back then, they were important mechanisms to enforce genetic changes, hence opening the chance for genetic improvement.Even though harmful mutations have higher chance to occur than the beneficial ones, the risk can be countered by higher reproduction rate. But that means many individuals must be sacrificed to accumulate genetic improvements, which is not an efficient strategy.