[ExI] Symbol Grounding

Tue Apr 25 07:18:03 UTC 2023

And here it is GPT like LLM that can interpret photos and even find the
humor in a picture. Is this enough grounding?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAjrpYjx0ps

On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 8:45 PM Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Brent,
> Your jargon is impenetrable and also when you use jargon you need to
> define what you mean. I may not always use the most precise language in the
> context of these informal emails but I don't use some jargon that I made up
> myself.
>
> For example with  *"The strawberries in the illusion are made of grey
> elements but our brain says they are red."* I simply mean what the
> everyday language meaning of these words is. Now I understand that you have
> a problem with "the brain says they are red". I can explain what this
> means.
>
> Somehow the brain has a "code" for red. That code is actuated in the
> experience of redness. It is not just a code but it produces an action,
> exactly like an actuator does. The result of the actuation is the sensation
> of redness.
>
> What the code consist of is almost surely (we have already a lot of
> evidence to support this) a particular firing pattern in the brain.
> Consider that this firing pattern is different for each individual up to a
> point. It is both universal (in the sense that probably involves similar
> brain regions, sequences, and so on) and also very individualized. These
> are well-known things in neuroscience it is not that we don't know anything
> about how these things work.
>
> What I was trying to express with "brain says" is that some high-level
> process in the brain, probably involving the prefrontal cortex alerts the
> rest of the brain of the presence of the color red in the external
> environment. And for the color red I really mean the range of wavelengths
> that we associate with the experience of perceiving red, which you call
> redness (I even like this term by the way, it is a good contribution to the
> discussion).
>
> But you can see that in the case of the illusion, there is a disconnect
> between the real physical external information and the interpretation of
> the brain. This is why an illusion. Something went wrong in the information
> processing of the brain and it was tricked to assign redness to something
> that is not red. Something was lost in translation. You claimed many times
> that to label something RED needs a dictionary and the illusion shows that
> the perception of red, what you call redness is also a sort of translation
> and in the case of the strawberry illusion is the wrong translation.
>
> Do you understand what I try to communicate?
>
> If you have a different argument of what is going on let me understand it
> but what you wrote in your previous email is not achieving this goal at
> all. For example, let's take a look at this sentence:
>
> *the result is knowledge of strawberries that has a form of that person's
> redness quality,*I have no clue what you mean, can you try to do what I
> just did? I told you that I think there is some failure in the usual code
> that interprets colors (because maybe color association was learned under a
> certain type of lighting and if you change lighting conditions the code
> fails), I'm implying that color processing is a complicated and prone to
> failure process, that is made of the connections between neurons and their
> exchange of information, filtering, signal processing and so on and on.
>
> This is not even an invention of mine, we know this is more or less how
> the brain works. We maybe do not to the point where it is fully understood
> in all the details (neuroscience is like that, it can be pretty vague in
> comparison with physics for example) but we know the general principles. We
> have enough experience with how we process data via signal processing,
> coding, and neural network to realize that these types of illusions are to
> be expected, it is actually a miracle they don't happen more often.
>
> While what you do is only use a few jargon words.
> Can you explain a plausible mechanism that is consistent with your view
> that redness is caused by a specific physical milieu at the level of a
> particular neurotransmitter or similar stuff and that can account for the
> existence of the illusion?
> If not then your interpretation of redness is useless and not connected
> with reality.
> Giovanni
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 8:09 PM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> There are diverse physical and subjective properties I need to refer to,
>> which can't be unambiguously referred to without some new jargon.  So I
>> don't know how  you want me to achieve that.  For example, when you say:
>> "The strawberries in the illusion are made of grey elements but our brain
>> says they are red."  Certainly "says they are red" is made up terminology.
>> What do you mean by "say"  And when you say "red', that is completely
>> ambiguous.  Which 'red' property are you referring to, hopefully not the
>> light?  Is it not far more precise to simply say: "The image of the
>> strawberries is emitting a pattern of grey light, and the result is
>> knowledge of strawberries that has a form of that person's redness quality,
>> at least if that person is not suffering from achromatopsia, or even red
>> green colorblindness.
>>
>> And no, everything you say still seems to me to confirm that the
>> perception system is just rendering knowledge which has any quality it
>> wants.  I have no idea what physics in our brain is responsible for my
>> knowledge of the strawberries, but I know, absolutely, that my knowledge of
>> them has a redness quality, even if it is a bit of an odd redness.  Maybe,
>> I should substitute the word "render" with "say", when talking to you?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 5:40 PM Giovanni Santostasi <
>> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Brent,
>>> I explained in detail why all these optical illusions support the
>>> functionalist position. The color sensation is not a 1 to 1 causal chain
>>> otherwise the brain would not be tricked by these illusions. The
>>> strawberries in the illusion are made of grey elements but our brain says
>>> they are red. If there was a simple chemical substance responsible for the
>>> sensation of red when we our visual system receives light in a given
>>> frequency range these illusions should not be possible. They are possible
>>> because the perception of color is a complex and intricate phenomenon that
>>> requires the orchestrations of many brain regions in a self-referential
>>> loop. This is also explained in the video. The brain takes in a lot of
>>> information, including the frequency of light reflected by the objects, the
>>> surrounding light, the presence of other colors nearby, the shape of the
>>> object, the nature of the object (the fact they are strawberries), it uses
>>> the memory of similar light conditions (this why people that are owls see
>>> the dress as blue and black why larks see gold and white). All this
>>> indicates that the processes, the interactions, the loops, the high-level
>>> interpretation (similar to uttering RED) is what counts. Don't you get it?
>>> It really blows my mind you don't.
>>>
>>>
>>> *The brain is just choosing to reindeer whatever quality it wants into
>>> consciousness, despite the  noisy and distorted light entering the eyes*
>>> How does the brain does this choice and what that has to do with
>>> substratum-dependent redness? I agree that the brain decides what to render
>>> that is what these illusions try to show but it is the opposite of what you
>>> claim, the brain creates the noise. The signal is clear, there is a region
>>> of grey light coming into our visual system that happens to have the shape
>>> of strawberries, the light conditions are unusual so the brain doesn't know
>>> how to handle what it sees and it comes up with a "story", it is the
>>> equivalent of confabulation. If you were an animal whose life depended
>>> on eating these strawberries you will have wasted precious resources to get
>>> them given they are fake strawberries.
>>>
>>> It doesn't show how robust the visual system is but on the contrary, it
>>> shows that as amazing as the visual system is it is very fallible as every
>>> complex system is. It shows you that indeed redness is a color for what the
>>> brain thinks is a particular phenomenon but this detection is quite
>>> imperfect.
>>>
>>> Does this clarify how the illusion proves once and for all that your
>>> naive understanding of redness is profoundly flawed?
>>> If not please give a well-reasoned argument of how a
>>> substratum-dependent understanding of redness can cause these illusions.
>>> But please stop using your own invented jargon.
>>> Giovanni
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 4:18 PM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes, I watched it, and I don't understand how you think this proves
>>>> functionalism.  This is exactly the kind of stuff which "qualia are
>>>> physical qualities" is predicting.
>>>> Take this optical illusion, for example:
>>>> [image: teaser-adelson-01.jpg]
>>>>
>>>> Even though the light emitting from square A is the same as square B,
>>>> the perception system realizes one is in a shadow, so it adjusts the color
>>>> it renders into consciousness, to better reflect reality, despite one being
>>>> in the shade.  It's all the same stuff with the video.  The brain is just
>>>> choosing to reindeer whatever quality it wants into consciousness, despite
>>>> the  noisy and distorted light entering the eyes.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 3:20 PM Giovanni Santostasi <
>>>> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Brent,
>>>>> Did you watch the video about color constancy I linked previously?
>>>>> They did something much more clever than what you propose and they showed
>>>>> that people can interpret grey as red under certain conditions. Doesn't
>>>>> this answer everything you need to know about this topic of redness and
>>>>> greenness?
>>>>> Giovanni
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 7:26 AM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Giovanni,
>>>>>> Yes, for sure, that is all I am asking for.   The more rigorous,
>>>>>> clear, and non black box, the better.  THANK YOU.
>>>>>> [image: The_Strawberry_is_Red_064.jpg]
>>>>>> It's a simple inversion of the red signa wirel in a color video
>>>>>> stream being plugged into the green socket, and vice versa, as illustrated
>>>>>> in the A version, above.
>>>>>> Or it is an app, running on a phone that changes redness to
>>>>>> greenness, and vice versa, as illustrated with B, in the image.
>>>>>> A and B are functionally the same, (their dictionary for what they
>>>>>> should represent 'red' knowledge with is inverted) and they both result in
>>>>>> the strawberry seeming to be green, instead of red.
>>>>>> So, in the A example, red light, reflected off of the strawberry is
>>>>>> landing on the retina.  The question is, what is the seeming greenness?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 12:04 AM Giovanni Santostasi <
>>>>>> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Brent,
>>>>>>> Ok, let's play your game. Explain in detail how your magical
>>>>>>> converter works. You cannot say it is a black box and you don't care how it
>>>>>>> works. There is a precise reason I demand a precise description because I
>>>>>>> actually want to make an important point on the basis of your response. If
>>>>>>> you have no idea of course you can say you have no idea.
>>>>>>> Let's start from there.
>>>>>>> Please go ahead.
>>>>>>> Giovanni
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 11:19 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 2:38 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> As for Brent's strawberry fetish etc., I've given up trying to
>>>>>>>>> make
>>>>>>>>> sense of his impenetrable jargon. Plenty of people have explained
>>>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>>> him, at painful length, "doing what you've always done will get
>>>>>>>>> you what
>>>>>>>>> you've always got", but he just won't listen.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> But, yes, his diagram is the same as mine, just with a couple of
>>>>>>>>> details
>>>>>>>>> pulled out, and focusing only on vision. The eyes and 'perception
>>>>>>>>> process' are one of my arrows from the left, the 3D strawberry
>>>>>>>>> model
>>>>>>>>> should be one of the bubbles. What 'composed of subjective
>>>>>>>>> qualities'
>>>>>>>>> actually means is anybody's guess really. I strongly suspect it
>>>>>>>>> doesn't
>>>>>>>>> mean anything at all.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I am simply asking the question, where IF you put a red / green
>>>>>>>> signal inverter between the retina and the optic nerve there will be red
>>>>>>>> light from the strawberry landing on the retina, yet the strawberry will
>>>>>>>> seem green.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I'm just asking, what is that grenness seeming?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 3:52 AM Giovanni Santostasi via
>>>>>>>> extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The directness and vividness of the experience are just an
>>>>>>>>> illusion.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Exactly, and what is this vivid greeness illusion of a red
>>>>>>>> strawberry?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> That is all I'm asking.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>>>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
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