Doesnt have to be free will, just has to be information processing. A robot could also choose which side of a fork to take, based on programming or machine learning etc.
Ok so lets say the universe is a giant deterministic* computer calculating its own future one picosecond at a time.
If something acts only due to external forces - a rock rolling down a hill, or a river flowing around some rocks, we say it doesn't have agency.
If something partially acts based on processing/decision making processes running inside its own boundary - like us, or a roomba, we say it has agency.
So it comes down to processing and actions as a result of processing. Doesn't matter whether its deterministic or not.
* = (probably; ultimately it doesnt matter much whether its deterministic or partially random, either way theres no way of finding out the future other than waiting for it to arrive, due to sensitive dependence on initial conditions)
The problem with this view is Hilary Putnam's "a rock implements every finite state automata". (Nicely explained, with a rebuttal in [0].)
It's an attractive idea that some thing has agency (or consciousness, or whatever property you want to define) to the extent it does some sort of computation. But then you have to go figure out what it means for something to do that computation. That turns out to be extremely difficult; most things can be interpreted as computing most other things.
most things can be interpreted as computing most other things
Chalmers paper is behind a paywall but I dont see how your point makes any sense. A rock is not processing anything, an insect or a person or a calculator is. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
The states that Putnam argues are happening inside the rock dont mean anything unless some action results from them. You'll notice I mentioned 'actions as a result of processing' above.
Imagine a beam of light hitting a prism. What comes out on the other side is a Fourier transform of the incoming light. Did the prism do a computation? If you say no, how about if I place photo detectors on the other side and measure the result - did I build a computer that does not do computations?
If its doing something with the result of the photon detectors, then yes I guess its processing the input and taking some action as a result. Bonus points if the incoming beam or light actually means something (e.g. perhaps it varies when something gets in the way). Congratulations you imagined a processor
Cmon guys, rocks arent processors, whatever Putnam may say
Unless you're into panpsychism - which I can't discount because although its a ridiculous explanation of consciousness, all the other possible explanations are equally ridiculous
A river flows in one way rather than another because the particles that form the river have momentum one way rather than another. The reason they have this momentum is because the surfaces of the river interact with the air, obstacles, and the rock bed underneath it, and then pass on momentum to internal river particles, which pass on that momentum to other particles, etc. In this way, is the river not processing information regarding things it can directly "observe" about its environment at its surface, as well as the things it has experienced in the past, then processing that information deeper and deeper, until it ultimately leads to a decision on which way the river flows?
Its a complex system but I wouldnt say its processing anything.
I suppose for what I'm calling processing there needs to be some order. Things that do processing (our cells, processors, etc) use energy to keep some order in the system (keep lower entropy than their surroundings by using energy from those surroundings). Whereas the river is just at maximum disorder relative to its surroundings the whole time.
You could make a water computer where water flows through pipes and collects in cups and then the weight of the cups implements AND gates and OR gates and so on. But in that case the order is provided by the pipework and the energy input is whatever gets the water to the top of the system (and maintains the pipework from being worn away over time)
Is a collection of balls falling down a galton board into bins to form a normal distribution a form of processing? How is it materially different than a ball rolling down a hill?
If you draw an imaginary line around the galton board and then if there was some outcome based on the balls falling into bins (the weight of the bins makes some other thing happen ...) then yeah I guess you'd call that a processor. It takes an input coded as balls and produces an output via bin weights. If it could reset itself rather than be a one-shot thing that would help.
I mean I'm not saying it conscious or anything. I'm just saying it has agency, which is to say "it is a thing that does things"
Indeed, one of the ways in which someone was trying to prove that Navier-Stokes can't be solved was to build a Turing machine out of turbulent vortices. If it's possible, then an analytic solution to their motion would be equivalent to solving the halting problem.
NCEA is New Zealands main secondary school qualification.
First link talks about 'equal status' of Māori knowledge, but it talks about that in context of pathways to passing the NCEA, i.e. my reading of it is, its like a different curriculum for getting the qualification. That isn't the same as saying 'Māori knowledge has equal status with western science full stop'. It seems to be more like 'theres a path to this qualification that is based more on Māori knowledge'. Also a lot of it is about values rather than knowledge. But I've only skimmed it, thats just the impression I got.
Wow thank you! Good finds. This is exactly the content I was imagining was out there: clear details about what’s expected of teachers following this change.
That second link has quite a bit of information sorted under those “toolkit” tabs. I think your intuition is correct: that this is opening up a different way to be accredited, not optionally supplementing “western science”. Teaching under the correct cultural context for a student to get that most value from a lesson seems good. I’m also seeing a lot of values like you’re saying, which also seems like a good thing.
A group at my fathers university bought a system, the liked it so they bought another, four floppies, four hard disks, for both systems. The company could not believe it. The called to confirm the order, they wanted to know why they needed to have so much storage: Image processing for MRI. Cremenco for the win, turned out to be extremely reliable.
They complained about the 92k disks, so I got them a notcher. They took me out for a wild night of drinking.
I'd be cautiuous with such general statements given the rapid pace of development in this area.
Benchmark shelf lives aren't that long.
You ommitted the fact that tuning bumped it to 26% vs random.
Sure, questionable what effort is involved in that step, but at the same time, that hints to me that tuning will be the new baseline within the next 12-24 months.
Sure I would expect it to improve. But it was a bit fishy how 'it took an IQ test!' is in all the highlights but then they mumble quietly about the score that it actually got and hope no-one is listening to that bit.
Its notable that it was able to attempt it at all I suppose.
This sort of "lying but with some plausible deniability on top" is SOP in the world of "journalism bordering on activism", a category which the site clearly falls into whether one agrees with the policy they're peddling or not.
