Dreams. Time & Minds.
Summer 2022.
Dreams, and time to dream about it all...
The world is all about Time & Minds (Time & Minds).
What minds can experience, create and compute, in time...
Examples below:
I.e.
Visited Capra Robotics in April.
See more from Capra Robotics here.
With more about robots
from the grand annual Eaaa Robot Hackathon, here.
Certainly, they, the robots, will be able
to do all sorts of things...
even things like playing Pong...
Still...
(are you) Dreaming about an untouched, unchanged world?
...
Well, not everything has changed completely...
There is stil an untouched world out there
(Rebild, Korinth, Tversted).
A little, anyway [1]...
And though not exactly ''untouched''...
Copenhagen also looked pretty much ''unchanged'', when I visited in August...
So, below, also, some summer impressions from Copenhagen.
See: Summer School. Copenhagen. August, 2022.
Also see: Visceral Mind, Summer School.
Bangor, Wales, Uk. September, 2022.
Including a visit to the Alan Turing Memorial.
Not sure, what to make of it all?
Well, who knows, a New York Times columnist might be helpful...perhaps...
See more, here.
Time & Minds.
Review of, and thoughts about, Carlo Rovelli's ''The Order of Time''.
Penguin, 2017.
From: Simon Laub
NewsGroups: rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.science,
comp.ai.philosophy, comp.society.futures
Subject: Time and Minds.
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2022. 21:39:10.
In Stephen Baxters book ''Time'' we find ourselves in world:
Where it becomes possible to detect messages traveling back through time.
Thereby making it possible to learn from distant descendants
how to transform the structure of our current space-time,
into structures even better suited for mind and intelligence [2].
Indeed, what is time, but something that can create minds?
And something minds use to make sense of the world?
Certainly, it (time and minds) seems to be an undercurrent in Baxters books,
and also very much present when you read physicist Carlo Rovellis
books?
Still, getting your head around time is not easy...
Are time making minds, or are minds making time, or?
Luckily, physicist Carlo Rovelli tries to explain it all in the book ''The Order of Time''...
... Baxter was on to something in ''Time'' (Manifold)...
The concept of time is connected to the concept of minds...
Rovelli writes about an experience he had as a student, when taking LSD:
Among the strange phenomena was the sense of time stopping...
Things were happening in my mind, but the clock was not going ahead;
the flow of time was not passing any more.
It was a total subversion of the structure of reality [3].
Time is apparently something that is happening in our minds?
Still, time is also affected by the world out there...?
In ''The Order of Time'', Rovelli continues (In the section ''Crumbling of Time''):
If I were to ask: Are these two stones at the same height?
In interplanetary space, the correct answer would be, that the question doesn't make any sense...
Because there is no single notion of same height, throughout the Universe.
Similarly, if you ask whether two events are happening at the same moment, the correct answer is that
it doesn't make sense, because there is no such thing as same moment throughout the Universe...
I.e. in special relativity, we have that two events occurring far apart,
might even happen in one order when viewed by one observer,
and in the opposite order when viewed by another [4].
(In the section of Rovelli's book called ''The World Without Time'')
Rovelli describes physicist John Wheelers reaction to (one of his own) equations in quantum gravity,
where there was no time variable:
Explain time? Not without explaining existence!
Explain existence? Not without explaining time!
To uncover the deep and hidden connection between
time and existence...
Is a task for the future...
Perhaps now then?
Certainly, according to Rovelli:
There is nothing mysterious about the absence of time in the fundamental equations of quantum gravity...
Such theories describe how things change,
one in respect to the others, how things happen in the world in relation
to each other...
The movement of bodies is described in relation to other bodies.
Time holds no priviledged position.
Change is more important [5].
Variables evolve with respect to each other. It is a world of events rather than of objects.
According to Rovelli, time ''appears'', because we can't see the many, many details of the quantum level/world.
The physical interactions between the part of the world to which we belong, and the rest, are blind to these too many variables...
It is not possible for us to register all the quantum fluctuations going on at any one moment,
so our interaction with the world becomes partial;
we see a blurred version of it.
We take things that emerge at scale and think of them in terms of concepts that are meaningful.
So, in a world without time, we seem to create it...
– and that process is highly personal.
According to Rovelli:
This opens up the possibility that it wasn't the Universe that was in particular configuration in the past...
...
Perhaps it is us, and our interactions with the Universe that are particular.
...
We are the ones who determine a particular macroscopic description?
The initial low entropy of the Universe, and hence the arrow of time
(springing from this), may be more down to us, than to the Universe?
...
If a subset of the Universe is special in this sense:
Then for this subset, the entropy of the Universe is low in the past,
the second law of thermodynamics obtains, memories exists, traces are left
- and there can be life and thought...
Indeed:
What makes the world go around is not energy, but low entropy.
Where we belong to a part of the world
where spacetime has a dimension called time, and where entropy grows...
Inside our heads this then becomes a new approximation,
an approximation on an approximation, where time is uniform,
universal and ordered.
So, time for us is a multilayered, complex concept with multiple distinct,
propertities deriving from various different approximations.
Not recognizing time as this multilayered, complex phenomenon is
what causes a lot of the confusion about time, according to Rovelli.
According to Andrew Jaffe, in Nature:
Rovelli reconstructs how our illusions have arisen, from aspects of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.
He argues that our perception of time's flow depends entirely on our inability to see the world in all its detail
[6].
Time itself disappears at the most fundamental level...
The world we see is a world through a filter...
We observe a Universe that is becoming increasingly disordered.
Which leads us to our experience of time (From entropy and the second law of thermodynamics).
What we see is filtered by our position in our corner of the Universe,
and it is filtered by our perceptions, and minds.
It follows, that in other parts of the Universe our understanding of time might not exist...
Indeed, again we are back to the relationship between Time and Minds.
Time (our kind of time) creates minds, or is it minds that create time?
In order to create more minds...?
As in Baxters Time...
Indeed,
''Time'' and ''The Order of Time''
are thought-provoking books...
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
Computing.
Comments on physicist Sabine Hossenfelders
Time Magazine article ''Maybe the Universe thinks, hear me out''.
From: Simon Laub
NewsGroups: rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.science,
comp.ai.philosophy, comp.society.futures
Subject: The Universe is a Quantum Gravity computer, maybe!?
Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2022 10:56.
Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder writes in Time Magazine [7]
that ''Maybe the Universe thinks, hear me out''...
To be more precise, the distribution of matter in the Universe looks a little like the ''connectome''
(The network of nerve connections in the human brain). Neurons in the human brain, too, form clusters,
and they connect by axons, that are long nerve fibers which send electrical impulses from one neuron to another.
Here, she is in line with researchers Vazza and Feletti,
who has pointed out
that there is ''a remarkable similarity'' [8].
Now the Universe is different from a brain because the Universe
expands.
Another ''difference is that it takes a long time for signals to cross the Universe''.
Whereas, ''neurons in the human brain send about 5-50 signals per second''.
This means if the Universe is thinking, it isn’t thinking very much...[7].
Because, as far we know, there is such a thing as ''locality'' in the Universe.
Objects, always continuously move from one place to nearby places.
As far as we know...
And we don't really know that much about ''locality''...
It could be that space itself has many more connections than we observe,
non-local ones, not unlike portals: You go in one end and are instantaneously teleported to a different place [7].
These non-local connections would have to be very small tough,
too small for us, or even elementary particles to go through –
otherwise we’d have noticed already.
But they would still connect space with itself.
This way, two places we think are at opposite ends of the universe might be very close to each other [7].
E.g. some physicists have speculated that e.g. ''dark matter'',
is really just normal matter, it is just because
gravitational attraction
is multiplied and spread out (because places are non-locally connected to each other),
that it doesn't look like normal matter.
Sabine Hossenfelder ends the article
by telling us that there are zero evidence for
non-local connections, but to her:
The idea that the universe is intelligent is compatible with all we know so far [7].
There is no evidence against it...
Which brings her to the point
of her story.
Science has more to say than ''nope, you can't''.
It also opens our minds to new possibilities, new sources of wonder, and new ways to make sense of our own existence.
The Universe might think...
Currently, it is not
supported by evidence and it might never be.
But it not contradicted by evidence either.
Indeed, the idea that the Universe might be doing some kind of ''thinking'' is not
new.
Just think of Fred Hoyle's ''Black Cloud'' [9].
Here, scientists try to communicate with the cloud,
and succeed.
The cloud is revealed to be an alien gaseous superorganism,
many times more intelligent than humans.
''Thinking'' can take many forms...
In Science, it is now possible to work with ''qubits'':
Physically realized as e.g. spin of the electron, where quantum mechanics allows the Qubit to be
in a superposition of two states simultaneously [10].
Which eventually leads to new ways to do computations, in Quantum Computing.
According to physicist Seth Lloyd:
Tthe universe is indistinguishable from a quantum computer.
The Universe supports quantum computation and can be efficiently simulated by a quantum computer.
Back then (when this came up, in comments to
Lloyds book, and earlier), I suggested that we should take it a step deeper (further), and consider
how to calculate with SpaceTime itself.
Afterall, particles are just a kind of a field,
and if they/that can calculate, then why not SpaceTime?
And sure enough, such ideas followed shortly afterwards.
In the form of ideas about Quantum Gravity Computers and similar contraptions
(But still not formulated in a way where it is particular clear
what would constitute inputs and outputs, as normally understood in a computation).
Still, working at scales where there is no (making sense of) causality?
A quantum gravity computer might end up seeing its result before running its algorithms.
It is essential the same as a quantum computer strapped to a timemachine [11].
It's hard to come up with any plausible way to make quantum computers more powerful that wouldn't make them absurdly more powerful [12].
In the words of Lucien Hardy, there is a problem here:
A lack of conceptual clarity about what would constitute inputs and outputs that
prohibits the development of a theory of quantum gravity computation [13].
But there is also potential:
Allowing us to define a new class of computers which may have greater computational
powers because they may be able to harness the indefinite causal structure as a
computational resource [14].
There might be some thinking going on here...
whatever that really means...
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
A visit to Capra Robotics.
Visited Capra Robotics in April.
And wrote a small article about the trip on Eaaa's intranet.
Appetizer on the Eaaa intranet:
The article (published on Eaaa's intranet, April 2022):
And here is how the article appeared on Eaaa's intranet:
With more (about) robots here: Quadroped Robots.
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
Robot Hackathon 2022.
In august, it was time for this years grand Eaaa Robot Hackathon 2022.
See report on TV Oest (Friday August 19th, TV2 News).
I stedet for at bruge den sidste uge før studiestart på afslapning, har 20 It-studerende fra Erhvervsakademi Aarhus valgt at bruge ugen på at bygge robotter. Det er en del af en ny strategi, der skal opmuntre de studerende til at være mere selvstændige [15].
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
Playing Pong.
Pong is a game environment provided on the OpenAI ''Gym'' platform.
In the game, a player controls an in-game paddle
by moving it
vertically across the left or right side of the screen [16].
Interestingly, Reinforcement Learning with Policy Gradients can learn how to play Pong...
A dream come true...?
...
For details:
See the code that learns how to play Pong on Github.
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
AI articles on DataTech, 2020-2021.
DataTech articles, 2020-2021.
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
Out and About (in the world).
''Out and About in Denmark''.
Going to different places...
A glimpse of an older, and perhaps better world...
Rebild (Denmark) impressions:
Yggdrasil (''The Tree of Life'') [17], [18].
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
Out and About (in the world) II.
''Out and About in Denmark''.
Going to different places...
A glimpse of an older, and perhaps better world...
Korinth (Denmark) impressions:
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
Out and About (in the world) III.
''Out and About in Denmark''.
Going to different places...
Summer 2022.
Tversted (Denmark) impressions:
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
Summer School, Copenhagen 2022.
Summer School.
Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind.
Copenhagen University 2022.
8 - 12 August, 2022.
Attended the Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind 2022,
Summer School in Copenhagen.
So, below, a few impressions
from the Summer School and from Copenhagen:
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
''Economics, Politics and Zombies''.
Sebastian Mallaby writes, in the Atlantic, that
(New York Times) columnists like Paul Krugman should try to unite citizens around common understandings.
It is too easy to demonize adversaries,
and not particular helpful in a democracy...
According to Sebastian Mallaby:
Most people cannot be pigeonholed as purely good or purely evil. Their motives are mixed, confused, and mutable.
Mallaby continues:
Krugman should/will surely be the first to admit that his journalism, in the book ''Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future''
(like his research), is founded on radical simplification.
Like those economic models that assume people are perfectly rational, he presumes that his adversaries are perfectly corruptible.
This is elegantly clarifying.
But, to borrow one of Krugman's own phrases, it may mistake beauty for truth.
Well, well, perhaps...
but some of the stinging points from the book are indeed quite ''funny'':
See more on Twitter: @TBPInvictus, and on ''Goodreads''.
And btw.
If you think science fiction might provide a new way forward for
''politics'' (and ''the world'')
you will be surprised to learn that Paul Krugman
might agree with you ...
See here (d).
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
Visceral Mind, September 2022.
Visceral Mind Summer School (Visceral Mind).
The neuroanatomy of cognition and emotion,
Bangor University, Wales, UK.
5th-9th September 2022.
Attended the Visceral Mind
Summer School in Bangor, Wales.
So, below, a few impressions
from the Summer School and from Bangor & Manchester.
Prepared for the Summer School
by buying some UK pounds.
Apparently, many of us travel with very, very similar bags...
Landing in Manchester, UK.
My bag...[19].
Manchester, UK.
Alan Turing Memorial.
The Alan Turing Memorial, situated in Sackville Park in Manchester, England [20].
Notice: Turing is shown holding an apple [21], [22].
Turing Memorial, Manchester.
Alan Turing - widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
Turing died on 7 June 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, near Manchester,
from cyanide posening An inquest determined his death as a suicide.
As the story goes, on 7 June, 1954, he committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide.
Manchester, September 2022.
Queen Victoria, Manchester.
James Watt, Manchester.
Duke of Wellington monument, Manchester.
Victory over blindness. Manchester, Picadilly.
Manchester, Picadilly.
Bangor, Wales.
Bangor, Wales, Uk.
Bangor University dorm.
Bangor University.
Bangor, Wales.
Welsh.
On Tuesday, September 6th, there was a new Prime Minister in the UK: Liz Truss.
War Memorial. Bangor, Wales, UK.
Bangor University. Bangor, Wales, UK.
Bangor, Wales, UK.
Bangor University. Bangor, Wales, UK.
Back to the Visceral Mind week, and Nicolas Steno (1638-1686)...
The Discours sur l'anatomie du cerveau (''Discourse on the Anatomy of the Brain'') is one of the most famous works by Nicolas Stensen (Niels Steensen in Danish). 1638-1686.
...
...Steno's attitude has been labelled ''critical experimentalism''..
I.e. the methodological viewpoint according to which (a) ''brain anatomy is restricted to the mere description of forms, positions, colors, size, and connection of the parts of the brain'', and (b) ''one must base hypotheses about functions only on anatomical propositions that are obvious and certain''
[23].
Pioneers:
Franz_Joseph_Gall:Pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain.
Paul Broca: Best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that is named after him. Broca's area is involved with language.
Theodor_Meynert: Focused on brain anatomy, pathology and histology, including the mapping of its intricate pathways and topography.
Carl_Wernicke: Wernicke proposed a theory of localization and suggested that different identifiable regions of the brain control different behaviors and these areas interact to produce more behaviors.
Visceral Mind. Bangor University. Bangor, Wales, UK.
Visceral Mind. Bangor University. Bangor, Wales, UK.
Nerve tracts shown with diffusion MRI [24].
Visceral Mind. Bangor University. Bangor, Wales, UK.
Visceral Mind. Bangor University. Bangor, Wales, UK.
Visceral Mind. Bangor University. Bangor, Wales, UK.
Nerve tracts shown with diffusion MRI [24].
Bangor, Wales, UK.
Bangor University, Wales, UK.
Bangor University, Wales, UK.
Bangor University, Wales, UK.
Bangor University, Wales, UK.
Bangor University, Wales, UK.
Bangor University, Wales, UK.
Bangor University, Wales, UK.
Bangor University, Wales, UK.
Bangor University, Wales, UK.
Visceral Mind 2022. Bangor University, Wales, UK.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Wales.
[The] church of [St.] Mary (Llanfair) [of the] pool
of the white hazels (gwyn gyll) near to (go ger)
the fierce whirlpool (y chwyrn drobwll) [and] the church
of [St.] Tysilio (Llantysilio) of the red cave (gogo goch).
Beaumaris Castle.
Beaumaris Castle.
Beaumaris Castle.
Beaumaris Castle.
Beaumaris Castle.
Beaumaris Castle.
Beaumaris Castle.
Beaumaris Castle.
Beaumaris Castle.
Beaumaris Castle.
Welsh Dragon. Beaumaris Castle.
''Tudor Rose'' house, built around 1480. Beaumaris, UK (Tudors).
Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.
In the middle of the Bangor Visceral Mind summer school gala dinner,
thursday evening, September 8th, it was announced that
Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II had died.
Newspapers the following day.
Newspapers the following day.
Newspapers the following day.
Church service, Bangor, the following day.
Saint Deiniol's Cathedral in Bangor.
Church service, Bangor, the following day.
Bangor, Wales.
Bangor, Wales.
Manchester, Queen Elizabeth II.
Manchester, Queen Elizabeth II.
Manchester.
Manchester, Queen Elizabeth II.
King Charles I.
Manchester, King Charles III.
Manchester. Queen Elizabeth II.
Manchester. Ukraine demonstration [25].
Manchester, Queen Elizabeth II.
Manchester. Police recruiters.
Manchester.
Gin and Rum Festival cancelled after death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Sept. 10th.
Manchester.
Manchester Cathedral.
Manchester Cathedral. Queen Elizabeth II.
Sept. 10th.
Manchester Cathedral.
Manchester United.
Manchester United. All premier league games cancelled that weekend
due to the death of QE2.
Manchester United. All premier league games cancelled that weekend
due to the death of QE2.
Manchester United. All premier league games cancelled that weekend
due to the death of QE2.
Manchester United. All premier league games cancelled that weekend
due to the death of QE2.
Manchester United. All premier league games cancelled that weekend
due to the death of QE2.
Manchester United. All premier league games cancelled that weekend
due to the death of QE2.
Manchester United. All premier league games cancelled that weekend
due to the death of QE2.
Manchester United. All premier league games cancelled that weekend
due to the death of QE2.
Manchester United. The Munich disaster, 1958 (ManUtd 1958).
Manchester United. All premier league games cancelled that weekend
due to the death of QE2.
Manchester. The beginning of a new age.
Manchester, UK. September 2022.
Manchester, UK. September 2022.
Manchester, UK. September 2022.
Manchester, UK. September 2022.
No parking. Manchester, UK. September 2022.
Manchester, UK. September 2022.
Manchester, UK. September 2022.
Manchester, UK. September 2022.
Manchester, UK. September 11th, 2022.
Queen Funeral.
A week later: QE II Funeral, Sept. 19th, 2022 [26].
Scattered impressions & conclusion.
Certainly, a lot of impressions from this week in Wales and Manchester.
And, all mixed together, a little confusing...
Still, maybe, some of these scattered impressions will be useful
in the coming years, as we try to navigate towards a future,
we would all like to be part of!
Summer School group photo.
Indeed, the end of a wunderbar summerschool.
-Simon
Simon Laub (Let me Google that for you).
www.simonlaub.net
