[ExI] personal

[William Flynn Wallace]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 11:26 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 3:52 PM, William Flynn Wallace <
> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Human probabilities change instant by instant, like seeing parking place
>> taken and looking around for another.  I see the AI as coming up with one
>> answer then taking that action.  I have a problem seeing an AI dithering
>> among several actions that have nearly equal probability and those
>> probabilities are changing very rapidly.  Are there neurotic AIs?
>>
>
> There are.  However:
>
> 1) AIs think and react faster than humans.  For an area where AIs exceed
> human competence, it takes a more complex and dynamic situation to befuddle
> an AI than a competent human, because they can evaluate more possibilities
> and find the best option faster.
>
> 2) Any AIs that are neurotic tend not to get much press, compared to other
> AIs.  Neurotic AIs aren't good for much, so why bother showing them off?
> But they still turn up from time to time in the lab or on student projects.
>
>
>> We know very, very little about these aspects of the unconscious.  It
>> might be that if we made these processes conscious we could not do them.
>> Our unconscious knows how - we don't.
>>
>
> ​​
> Not even "might".  Can you consciously control your heart rate?  How about
> walking at a fair pace by consciously thinking through each motion in turn?
>
>
>> Who of you is actually working in the field of AI in some way, and who is
>> a hobbyist (not part of your job)  at it?
>>
>
> I've dabbled in it, enough to know the basics, but my current professional
> focus lies elsewhere.
>
> ​
​
Not even "might".  Can you consciously control your heart rate?  How about
walking at a fair pace by consciously thinking through each motion in turn?

Many years ago biofeedback was very popular and I saw a study where a man
stopped his heart.  He came into the lab after hearing about such things.
It turned out that he was some kind of yogi or something.  After signing a
bunch of releases, they hooked him up and he could do it.  Actually, he did
not stop it, but put it into fibrillation;  pumping little blood at a
heartbeat of 200.  After a minute or so the experimenters got really
anxious and so he started it again.  I have not heard any more about it
since.​

​  I can demonstrably lower my blood pressure at the physician's office.  I
have dabbled in some self-hypnosis, and that is very relaxing. ​

​I was really thinking about mental tasks, not purely physiological ones.
Our bodies make around 100K enzymes and I don't know how to tell my body to
make even one.  (Walking, by the way, is an instinct, not learned - ask me
for more info if interested).

Take face reading:  many of us can tell when  person is lying but cannot
verbalize how we do it (See Paul Ekman, who can tell you which muscles are
involved in facial emotions).  We can be unconsciously influenced by
smells, pictures with faces in our environment, and many, many more.

AI?  Me?  My abilities overlap very little with the people here and so I
try NOT to be laughed at more than I think of laughing at anyone else.

I don't know whether to be insulted or praised by the suspicion that I am
an AI.  But I do want to discuss this:  I am 74 and not the man I used to
be, whether in the bedroom or in the cognitive fast lane.  I am beginning
to have trouble with nouns, a first sign of mental decline.  That is, when
I need to come up with one, I cannot do so with my former rapidity.  I was
a really good candidate for Jeopardy when I was younger.​  A polymath (but
at a lower level) - very widely read; generalist rather than specialist,d
three undergraduate degrees, etc.  But not now.  I can generally get most
of the questions and could really compete, but I am far too slow.

I am using crosswords as a sort of test of decline.  I don't do the Friday
and Saturday NYT puzzles anymore:  can do but takes forever.  (too many
references to pop culture also - don't watch movies or TV).

Are there things that some of you older people are using to check your
status?  I know that there are millions of brain teasers and puzzles and
web sites and so on devoted to these things and I don't use them - maybe I
should.

​bill w​

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