From: hsr4@vax.ox.ac.uk (Auld Sprurklie)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Multiple Experiences
Date: 30 Jul 92 00:17:03 GMT

In article <Jul.22.21.03.49.1992.17403@planchet.rutgers.edu>, erich@dehn.mth.pdx.edu (Erich Boleyn) writes:
> 
> hsr4@vax.ox.ac.uk (Auld Sprurklie) writes:
> 
[lots deleted for brevity and because I don't disagree strongly with most of
 the points made :-)]

>>I guess the result of not resolving those conflicts before joining the parts
>>together to update the whole, will be a catatonic state.  The primary will be
>>unable to function because one or more internal conflicts will occupy its
>>mind entirely.
> 
>    This seems to be making the assumption of "ontological deadlock", by
> which I mean that concepts go into conflict and don't stop.  Fortunately,
> this happens very rarely in real people who claim to believe things that
> are obviously contradictory.  There are many "features" of the human mind
> that seem designed to prevent this, like the mechanism that seems to
> cause the bahavior of boredom, another is the idea of "looking at it in
> a different way", for example using functional instead of moral ways of
> interpreting societal structures (this is much preferred by myself,
> for instance ;-).  It would be quite interesting to see what would happen
> and if it was possible to trace the paths of the "deadlock".

I didn't make myself properly clear (because I wasn't being at all rigorous
in my arguments), but I see a cause of what you describe as ontological
deadlock, not so much in the event that people believe in things which are
obviously contradictory - from OUR perspective - but that they find themselves
saddled with beliefs which THEY find contradictory (saddled by virtue of being
subject to brain-dump from one or more clones).  In this event an individual
could quite happily entertain what appear to us to be contradictory beliefs,
and not experience deadlock, provided s/he didn't find them contradictory.  In
'real-world' terms, I have talked to people who appear, on the surface, to have
beliefs which are contradictory, but which, on closer examination - by asking
them precisely what they mean - show themselves to be subtly different and
therefore capable of coexisting.

[more deleted]

>>Since what we appear to be talking about here is not the primary holding an
>>audience with its clones, listening to their separate discourses, and choosing
>>which to take on board, but a primary being 'brain-dumped' with a combination
>>of the experiences of the clones, I can't see that it would be viable.
> 
>    Well, again, this assumes that "ontological deadlock" could take place.
> One of the models of human experience and memory that appears to have some
> possibilities is one calling memory a kind of evolving "context".  A simple
> justification of this idea is that memories are usually recalled by and
> "linked with" everything else you were doing, recently thinking, feeling,
> smelling, etc. at the time.  One could imagine a kind of "amnesia" model
> where they are just recalled with simply no reference to each other, and
> the re-integration process is just trying to take a bunch of information
> from each and correlating them together.

My limited (very limited) comprehension of neural networks leads me to believe
that while it may well be possible to copy an entire network, I am not so
convinced that it may be possible to either remove or impose a form of amnesia
on any given area without affecting the network as a whole (assuming the
interdependence of all stored information), in order to incorporate new (and
possibly conflicting) experience/information.  My feeling (which may be way
off the mark) is that while networks may sustain damage while still retaining
much if not all of the stored information, the kind of controlled 'damage'
necessary to impose amnesia might result in an instability (this is highly
speculative so feel free to flame away), on the assumption that the present
stable state of the network has been achieved by the integration of all the
information (used in its loosest form) present.  My understanding is that if
one attempts to train a network with conflicting material, an instability is
inevitable since the network cannot settle down into a stable configuration.

In human terms, presumably this results in a rejection by the intended
recipient of whichever piece of information (received wisdom, whatever) causes
the conflict.

>>[The telegraph and telephone are over a century old, but we're just now
>> learning to synthesize voices with any verisimilitude.  I expect the
>> same phenomenon in the nanofabrication of thinking machines patterned on
>> the brain--we'll probably be able to build working ones that are a copy
>> of an existing one long before we're able to do things like "mind-melding" 
>> (if ever).  So don't be surprized if the best known way for your clones
>> to get their info back into your head is nothing better than talking.
>> --JoSH]
> 
>    JoSH's point is well taken...  that my examples may lack practicality...
> oh, well...  at least there are some of us who are working on it now ;-) !
> 
>    Erich

I see a difference between a mechanism for transmitting speech over a
distance greater than that achievable by, say, shouting, and a
mechanism for synthesising speech, so the point is not quite so clear
to me.  My comparison of the speech and telegraphy example with the
creation of thinking machines and a mechanism for transmitting their
thoughts subsequently to others, leads me to conclude that at present
it is as if we had first found a way of synthesising speech before we
had found a way of transmitting the speech any distance...  Or am I
missing something fundamental ?

Peter "Ouch!  One of my brains hurts..." Brooks

[I was simply trying to say that it's often possible to build something
 that works without knowing how it works, if you're copying something.
 For example, given a pile of transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc,
 and a soldering iron, one can build a working radio by following an 
 existing one, without in the slightest being able to build one using a
 different circuit from scratch.
 I would point out that this is exactly the position biotechnology is
 in right now with respect to genes.
 --JoSH]