From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Oct 29 2002 - 23:42:05 MST
Rafal writes
> Our mind is a low-power general reasoning device built atop a huge
> conglomerate of highly efficient, specialized modules, or drives. All of
> these modules, as well as the general reasoning device (the rational
> intellect), evolved during the propagation of a pattern of chemical and
> physical processes, that now constitute our bodies and brains. Throughout
> evolution, parts of the pattern changed, some elements were eliminated when
> they no longer supported the propagation of the whole unit, and branching
> occurred trillions of times since the initial replicator arose billions of
> years ago.
Beautifully written; these happen to be Minsky's "Society of Mind" agents.
> The most evolutionarily modern tools for survival are analytic concepts.
> They allow a contingent analysis of the environment, and the choice of the
> optimal, individual solution. One of the most important advances is the
> ability to analyze parts of the mind to resolve conflicts and choose the
> best solution. Initially, the rational intellect performing these analytic
> tasks is merely a tool of the various drives. The drive to survive uses the
> intellect to produce a simple notion of self. The drive to proliferate uses
> reason to maximize the number of offspring. Etc.
Well, at many points in the *past*, reason promoted the production of
the maximum number of offspring. Currently, it probably does not.
> However, if the rational intellect is allowed more in-depth, recursive
> analysis, both of the drives I mentioned above can be re-framed, as tools
> for pattern propagation. You are able to reach conceptually to the beginning
> of evolution and internalize its direction for your own. Since the rational
> intellect itself has no motivation, it can only borrow a motivation from the
> lower levels, but not necessarily from any single module.
So far as I can see, what you have written is completely correct!
Way to go.
(I ever so slightly reword the remainder of your post.)
> If it happens so that your simple-self module (with built-in notions of
> temporal continuity and direct qualia and memory access) is ascendant over
> others, you will get one [position on the question of identity]. If your
> altruism module (evolved during the kin-selected phase of our evolution)
> wins, you might get a Gandhi-like persona.
>
> I think that some of us allow our rational faculties to take over
> motivation by borrowing liberally from the simple-self module, and
> the altruistic module, and the pattern-propagation-through-children
> module. We abstract the most important elements of them - imperative
> to propagate a pattern, with maximal similarity to the original, that
> is compatible with temporally extended propagation (you can't propagate
> for long if you don't change, but if you change too much, it's no longer
> propagation), and take it as the prime directive.
This is the best paragraph explaining the source of my and
all other's takes on identity that I have ever read. Kudos.
Indeed, I would say that that is just what I have done:
taken as the prime directive the conflation of the most
important elements of
1. the simple-self module
2. altruistic module
3. pattern-propagation through children
Thanks again for providing a good explanation. Some may
worry about number 2 on your list, but here is how it
fits in. By this item, what is meant is mostly the
manner in which altruism provides an *objective* view
of who should benefit. It does this by overriding the
incredibly powerful predilection towards self-reward
at the expense of all other organisms.
> If course, it is a value judgment - but a value determined
> much closer to first principles than the simple-self value set.
Yes. Exactly. That "simple-self value set" is what IMO
forbids most people from seeing the truth that their
close duplicates are themselves. "Me, me, me, has to
be over here, not over there!" It was the first edict
of their early baby selves, and it remains our strongest.
(I am not at all proposing that it is wrong or unimportant;
on the contrary, it merely has to be updated with all the
possibilities now before us.)
> Also, patterns that propagate more efficiently will overtake others.
> Since I will support my copying, teleportation, and uploading, while
> many of the simple-selfers won't, in the end patterns like me will
> rule the world. Join us.
Yes, that happens to be true IMO. Yet even without the semi-biological
or logical reward that you here refer to, it's still true, as you
explained so well above, that our *selves*, when seen in the best
and most advanced light, thrive by "copying, teleportation, and
uploading", regardless of the "reward".
Lee
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