How to bring "human" technology and how technology helps to understand and improve and scale the "human"?
This will help us harsh Marvin Minsky, who with his merciless mind analyzes feelings, emotions, pain, love and consciousness.
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§5-4. Reflexive Thinking
I was going to repeat the psalm I know. Before I started, my attention was focused on the whole picture, but as soon as I started talking and moving away from the beginning of the conversation, this moment began to stretch in my memory. My action was divided into memory, which contained the part that I said and the expectations that contained what I was going to say next. Nevertheless, my attention was all the time with me in the present, and through it I transferred the future, which immediately became the past.
- Augustine in Confessions XXVIII (Confessions XXVIII)
When Joan first saw the approaching car - this situation completely captured her attention, but after that, when she had time to think, she could remember what she had done recently and think about recent decisions and actions, thus
Joan reflexively ponders her hasty decision.In order for her to do this, Joan must recall certain aspects of her past thoughts, using a trick similar to time travel, and remember what she was thinking about then. But how can she do this? From the point of view of common sense in this action there are no problems: it is worth simply remembering these thoughts, and then “thinking over” them again. But when we ask how this can specifically work, we understand that we need a certain kind of mechanism, like that discussed in §4-8, in which resources at each level record what the underlying levels did at a particular time.

In any case, there is nothing strange in detecting any events that occur in our brain. Many parts of the brain do this all the time, and only some of them have external connections that, for example, receive signals from the eyes and skin, or that transmit signals to your limbs. Moreover, it would be much easier to develop those resources that would reveal any events in new parts of the brain (for example, the level of thoughtfulness), than to create new resources that would record any events of the surrounding world - because our the sensory system is more complex (thanks to the evolution that has been going on for hundreds of millions of years).
How could we design a machine that could reflexively evaluate its actions? Can the addition of an additional “cognitive level” give such a necessary improvement? In fact, this is so - because the system of discussing your recent thoughts can use the same processes that you use to discuss recent events of the surrounding world. For example, Joan can remember what choice she made and see how she made it.
I decided that being late would be much worse than the risk of being hit by a car, because this result is extremely unlikely. But this choice was wrong, because my agility was reduced due to a damaged knee, so I had to change my priorities.What kind of brain activity should the reflexing system take into account? These activities should include predictions that were erroneous, plans that encountered obstacles, or failures in obtaining the knowledge you need. How should you respond to this? We will discuss this issue in detail in Chapter 7.
Student: Why would we like to call such a machine "conscious"? It includes most of the points you listed in §4-1, namely: short-term memory, sequential processing, high-level descriptions. This machine is just something missing models of itself.By eating better, some parts of the brain can reflect on what happens in the rest of the brain, the greater the degree of “thinking over” what is happening inside it. However, as long as the brain does not have a model that would allow the presentation of such events on a large scale, the machine will have no idea of itself as a self-aware entity. However, it would be extremely impractical for a system to have a detailed look at itself as something whole. In Chapter 9, we will discuss and conclude that if we want to create something similar to the human brain, then we will have to make not a single “unified” model, but a set of incomplete models, each of which would only know some aspects of what makes the whole system.
§5-5. Self-analysis
“Another of the greatest abilities of man, which fundamentally distinguishes him from other animals, is the presence of self-consciousness or the reflexive knowledge of oneself as a thinker ... [while the animal] never recognizes itself as a thinker, because they cannot discern in a particular act thinking is the element of thought and the operation through which they think "
- William James.
The reflective system, which we have already discussed earlier, can talk about recent events. Self-analysis does a little more: it considers not only past thoughts, but also the essence that had these thoughts. For example, when Joan was thinking about herself: “If my knee would let me down - I would be dead,” she now, in fact, evaluates herself: “It was reckless to risk having such an injury, just to save some time!”. In order for her to draw such conclusions, Joan must use some of her own model representations of herself.
Carol should also have similar models when she built the arch from the blocks: “I tried several ways to build the arch, but all of them were unsuccessful, because I tried to do it in a limited space. It was stupid to make such mistakes. Next time, I will try to plan in more detail. ”In this example, the child presents himself as an object with specific goals and opportunities that uses concrete knowledge.
Student: Is there no paradox in the idea when something describes itself?The system, of course, will fail if it tries to describe itself in “real time”, but it will succeed if the presentation is formed using a set of values, each of which reflects some one essence of this system.
Mystic: Some of us may be trained to perceive all the details right away. Anyway, very few people ever could do it.I very much doubt that this is possible. Instead, I suspect that this feeling of full awareness stems from a person’s ability not to ask questions about his condition all the time, which gives some illusion of knowing all the answers to the questions.
In any case, our thinking about our own thoughts should be based on records or on some other traces, that is, on partial descriptions of previous mental states. For example, as in §5-3, when Carol said: “Perhaps I remember these other events, and simply repeated them again.” But how and when these records were made, where and how they survived and arose in memory, and what Can a process organize these processes? How could Carol recognize that she had made a stupid mistake, and how could Joan remember that she didn’t know whether to cross the street or not? What does it mean when a person says that he is confused, confused or confused?
Think how smart you need to be to know that you are confused (or know that you are not confused). It means that you are switching from a current problem to a larger-scale representation of yourself, your motives and goals, from which you can recognize that you are wasting time on minor things, or you have lost the thread of what you were trying to do, or even that you have chosen the wrong goal that you are pursuing at a given time. This all can lead you to create a better plan, or it can lead to a large-scale cascade, for example: “Even the thought of it makes me suffer. Perhaps it is time to give up. ”
It seems to me that this is the key to the question of when we involve higher levels of thinking: we do this when our ordinary systems fail to cope with the tasks assigned to them and then reflexive thinking comes to the fore. For example, a normal person usually goes without any thought about how difficult walking is. But when Joan's knee stops functioning, she will study how she moves, which will make her act more cautiously.
However, as we noted in §4-1, self-analysis has its limits and risks. Any attempt to assess itself threatens to change this system, if not completely break it. It is difficult to describe a thing that continues to change its forms before the eyes, and, of course, it is even more difficult to describe something that changes its shape when you think about it. Therefore, you will almost certainly get confused if you start thinking about what you are thinking now, and this is probably the very reason why we are so perplexed by what we call consciousness.
§5-6. Self-Conscious Reflection
“There is a global tendency of mankind to evaluate all surrounding creatures like people, and to reflect on each object those qualities with which a person is familiar and who are deeply aware of. We find human faces on the moon, armies in the clouds, and due to natural inclination, if not adjustment by experience and reflection, we attribute anger or kindness to everything that hurts or pleases us. ”
- David Hume
This chapter was first discussed in §1-4, describing instinctive reactions; they include systems responsible for feeding, breathing, and other functions that keep our brain and body alive. They also include some mechanisms that are occasionally called original emotions — namely, systems that reflect various states of physical needs, such as nutrition, protection, and the like. The level of reactions studied includes the extensions that are studied after birth. Awareness and Reflection Levels are designed to solve more complex problems. Self-reflection occurs when these problems require us to use the models we create, or our view of a possible future.
However, in addition to this, it seems that people are unique in the sense that they have a level of self-conscious reflection that allows us to think about our “higher” ideals and goals. For example, when Joan asked herself the question: “What would my friends think about me?”, She wonders if her goals relate to her specific actions. Then Joan could come to the conclusion: “My friends might say that I’m completely careless and don’t worry about myself or them.” In order for her to think such thoughts, Joan had to build models that would describe how her friends could react, or she could recall a past negative experience when her friends reacted like this when she got into a similar situation. In any case, she finds a conflict between how she acts and the values of those to whom she is attached, which can lead to a whole cascade of reactions, which we can describe as the “self-conscious emotions” that were discussed in §2-2. So, let's add one more level, and consider the resulting system as the “Model Six”.

Psychologist: I do not see any clear differences between the different levels of this model. For example, when you reflect on your recent thoughts, don't you just discuss your discussions? And likewise, is not self-reflection a type of ordinary reflection? It seems that all levels above the first use the same thinking systems.I agree that these boundaries are fuzzy. Even your simplest discussions can include some kind of self-reflective thoughts about how to allocate your time and resources, for example: "If the attempted method does not work, then I will try another method," or "I already spent too much time on it."
Philosopher: But if these levels are not clearly distinguishable, what is the use of distinguishing between them? The theory should not contain more things than necessary.This policy of finding the simplest theory that would answer specific questions that you ask worked incredibly well in physics. However, I believe that this approach hindered the development of psychology. For when you know that your theory is incomplete, you must leave a certain place to expand your incomplete theory. Most older theories in psychology have explained only how certain animals behave in incredibly simple environments. However, although these theories were later refined to give good predictions, none of the old theory of behaviorism could explain how thinking people can reflect without having any external behavior.
We know that the brain has hundreds of specialized sites, and the development of each brain begins with a small cluster of cells that are ordered by levels. However, when some of these cells begin to migrate (standing up to thousands of different genes), this leads to the creation of thousands and thousands of connections between these clusters of cells, and the previously expressed levels become "blurred."
This means that we cannot clearly divide all the functions of the brain into distinct and distinct levels of the mind. It would be as useless as to clearly delineate the boundary of the seven seas. Instead, each of our departments shares maritime space on the basis of various conflicting assignments, such as geophysical, environmental, and political. Likewise, we need several models of the brain to explain certain phenomena of the mind. For example, we may need more complex theories about how self-conscious reflection works, if only because of the connection of this phenomenon with religious, legal and ethical issues.
Individualist: Your chart does not show the parts that control all the others. Where are I, who makes all the decisions? What defines the goals that I pursue? How do we choose which plans to stick with, and how do we control their execution?These questions show a real dilemma: no complex system like the one described above can function without organized control. Otherwise, she would not have seen directions - and unwittingly would have missed various necessary things. On the other hand, there is no point in creating control in one place, because failure in it would have thrown the whole system into chaos. Therefore, in the next chapters of this book several methods will be discussed that our brain uses for independent control. We consider them in more detail in chapter §9.
At that time, with regards to the question of central management, it should be noted that the Model Six could also be seen in Sigmund Freud's mind-sandwich model, which divided the mind into 3 parts.
Freudian “It” consists of instinctive motives, and “Superego” embodies our ideals (many of which are prohibitions). The “ego”, in such a case, is these parts that are in the middle — the Conscious and Reflecting levels. The principle of "Ego", according to Freud, is to resolve conflicts between "It" and "Superego". In this case, a person can see his ego as a set of different controlled things, while for the psychotherapist, “Ego” will be a battlefield.
Student: I would like to repeat the question I asked earlier. Can I use the word "consciousness" with regards to this car? It seems to me that the “Model of the Six” includes all the main functions that you discussed in Chapter §4-1, namely, short-term memory, sequential processing, high-level explanations and a set of models of yourself.It would not surprise me that such a machine, having acquired the necessary knowledge, would declare that it is the same conscious being as we are. This can happen if, as we assume in Chapter 9, its higher levels could present its “I” as a single, self-conscious entity. And, of course, other levels might not agree with this higher level.
This chapter began with questions about how we can think things and ideas that we have never met before. In the remainder of this chapter, detailed information will be provided on how our imagination could have arisen from various levels of environmental information processing.
For the translation, thanks to Stanislav Sukhanitsky. Who wants to help with the translation - write in a personal or mail magisterludi2016@yandex.ruTable of Contents of The Emotion MachineIntroductionChapter 1. Falling in Love Chapter 2. ATTACHMENTS AND GOALS Chapter 3. FROM PAIN TO SUFFERING Chapter 4. CONSCIOUSNESS
Chapter 5. LEVELS OF MENTAL ACTIVITIES
Chapter 6. COMMON SENSE
Chapter 7. Thinking.
Chapter 8. Resourcefulness.
Chapter 9. The Self.
about the author

Marvin Lee Minsky (Eng. Marvin Lee Minsky; August 9, 1927 - January 24, 2016) - American scientist in the field of artificial intelligence, co-founder of the Laboratory of artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [
Wikipedia ]
Interesting Facts:- Minsky was a friend of critic Harold Bloom from Yale University (Yale University), who spoke of him as “sinister Marvin Minsky”.
- Isaac Asimov described Minsky as one of two people who are smarter than himself; the second, in his opinion, was Karl Sagan.
- Marvin is a robot with artificial intelligence from the cycle of Douglas Adams novels Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film).
- Minsky has a contract to freeze his brain after death in order to be “resurrected” in the future.
- In honor of Minsk named the dog of the protagonist in the movie Tron: Legacy. [ Wikipedia ]
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