Marvin Minsky's “The Emotion Machine”: Chapter 4. “How We Recognize Consciousness”

4-3 How do we recognize Consciousness?

Student: You still have not answered my question: if “consciousness” is only a multi-valued word, which makes it such a specific thing.

Here is a theory explaining why this happened: Most of our mental activity proceeds, to a greater or lesser extent, “unconsciously” - in the sense that we barely know its existence. But when we encounter difficulties, it launches high-level processes that have the following properties:
 

1. They use our latest memories.
2. They often work sequentially than in parallel.
3. They use abstract, symbolic, or verbal descriptions.
4. They use models that we have built about ourselves.

Now suppose that the brain can create a resource C that starts when all the above processes start working together:


If such a C-detector turns out to be quite useful, then this may lead us to the idea that it detects the existence of some “Conscious Stuck”! In fact, we can even assume that this entity is the reason for the existence of a set of the above processes, and our language system could associate the C-detector with such words as “awareness”, “self”, “attention” or “I”. To see why such a concept may be useful to us, we need to consider its four components.

Recent memories: Why should consciousness engage memory? We constantly perceive consciousness as the present, and not the past - as something that exists now.

In order for any mind (like any machine) to know what was done earlier, it must have records of recent activity. For example, let's say I asked the question: “Do you realize that you are touching your ear?” You can answer: "Yes, I recognize that I am doing this." However, in order to make such a statement, your language resources had to respond to signals coming from other parts of the brain, which, in turn, responded to previous events. Thus, when you start talking (or thinking) about yourself, you need some time to collect the requested data.

Generally speaking, this means that the brain cannot reflect on what it is thinking right now; at best, he can look at some records of some recent events. There is no reason that any part of the brain could not process the results of other parts of the brain - but even in this case there will be a slight delay in receiving information.

Consistent process: Why are our high-level processes for the most part sequential? Wouldn't it be more efficient for us to do many things in parallel?

Most of the time in your daily life you do many things at the same time; it’s not difficult for you to go, talk, see and scratch your ear at the same time. But very few people can tolerably draw a circle and a square using both hands at the same time.

Everyman: Perhaps each of these two tasks requires so much attention from you that you cannot concentrate on the other task.

This statement will make sense if we assume that attentiongiven in limited quantities - but based on this, we need a theory that explains what this kind of restriction can impose, given that we can still walk, talk and watch at the same time. One explanation is that such restrictions can occur when resources start to conflict. Suppose the two tasks performed are so similar that they need to use the same mental resources. In this case, if we try to do two such things at the same time, one of them will be forced to interrupt their work - and the more such conflicts arise in our brains, the less such things we can do at the same time.

In this case, why can we see, walk and talk at the same time? This is supposedly due to the fact that our brain has different systems located in different parts of the brain for these types of activities, thereby reducing the number of conflicts between them. However, when we are forced to solve extremely complex problems, then we have only one way out: somehow break this task down into several parts, each of which will require high-level planning and deliberation. For example, to solve each of these subproblems, one or more “assumptions” about a given problem may be required, and then a mental experiment will be required to confirm the correctness of the assumption.

Why can't we do this at the same time? One of the possible reasons may be quite simple - the resources that are necessary for the preparation and implementation of plans have been developed quite recently - about a million years ago - and we do not have enough copies of these resources. In other words, our highest levels of “management” do not have enough resources — for example, resources for tracking tasks to be done, and resources for finding solutions to assigned tasks using funds with the least amount of internal conflict. Also, the processes described above are most likely to use the symbolic descriptions that we described earlier - and these resources also have a limit. If this is the case, then we simply have to consistently focus on goals.

Such mutual exclusions may be the main reason why we perceive our thoughts as a “stream of consciousness”, or as an “internal monologue” - a process in which a sequence of thoughts can resemble a story or story. When our resources are limited, we have nothing else but a slow "consistent processing of information", which is often called "high-level thinking."

Symbolic description: Why are we forced to use symbols or words instead of, say, direct contacts between brain cells?

Many researchers have developed systems that learn from previous experience by changing the connections between different parts of the system, called "neural networks" or "students' machines through creating contacts." It is proved that such systems are able to learn to recognize different types of patterns - and it is likely that such a low-level process, which is the basis of "neural networks", can underlie the majority of our brain functions. However, although these systems are extremely useful in various useful areas of human activity, they cannot satisfy the needs of more intelligent tasks, because they store their information in the form of numbers that are difficult to use with other resources. Someone can use these numbers as a measure of correlation or probability, but they will not have the slightest idea what else these figures can talk about. In other words, such a presentation of information does not have sufficient expressiveness. For example, a small neural network may look similar.


In comparison, the figure below shows the so-called “Semantic Network”, which shows some of the connections between the parts of the pyramid. For example, each connection that indicates the concept of supports can be used to predict the fall of the upper block if the lower blocks are removed from their places.


Thus, while the “network of connections ” shows only the “strength” of the interaction between the elements, and does not say anything about the elements themselves, the three-level connections of the “semantic network” can be used for various considerations.

Self-models: Why did we include “self-models” in the necessary processes in your first diagram?

When Joan thought about what she had done, she asked herself the question: “What would my friends think of me?” And the only way to answer this question would be to use descriptions or models that represent her friends and herself. Some models of Joan would describe her physical body, others - her goals, others - her relationship to various social and physical events. In the end, we would create a system that includes a set of stories about our past, ways to describe the state of our mind, a body of knowledge about our capabilities and visualizations of our friends. Chapter 9 will explain in more detail how we do such things and create “models” of ourselves.

When Joan creates a set of these models, she will be able to use them for self-reflection - and then she will find that she thinks about herself. If these reflective models lead to any choice of tactics of behavior, then Joan will feel that she is “controlling herself” - and, probably, she uses the term “recognize” to generalize this process. Other processes occurring in the brain that she is unlikely to be aware of, Joan will refer to the area outside her control and call them "unconscious" or "unintentional." And as soon as we ourselves can create machines with a similar course of thought, perhaps they too will learn to say phrases like: “I’m sure that you know what I mean when I talk about“ mental experience. ”

I do not insist that such detectors (like C-detector approx.ed.)must be involved in all processes that we call consciousness. However, without the availability of ways to recognize specific patterns of mental states, we may not be able to talk about them!

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

This section began with a discussion of some ideas about what we mean when we talk about consciousness, and we suggested that consciousness can be described as detecting some high-level activity in the brain.


However, we also wondered what could trigger a start.data of high-level activities. We can consider their manifestation in the following example: for example, among Joan’s resources there are “Problem Detectors” or “Critics” that work when Joan’s thoughts come across problems - for example, when she doesn’t achieve any important goal, or doesn’t solve any some problem. Under these conditions, Joan can describe the state of her mind in terms of “unhappiness” and “frustration” and try to get out of this state with the help of rational activity, which can be described by the following words: “Now I have to force myself to concentrate.” Then she can try to think over the current situation, which will require the participation of a set of higher-level processes - for example, activating a set of the following brain resources:


This suggests that we sometimes use “consciousness” to describe actions that initiate processes rather than recognize the beginning of the work of high-level processes.

Student: On what basis do you choose terms for your schemes, and define through them the same words as “consciousness”? Since “consciousness” is a multi-valued word, each person can make up his own list of terms, which can be included in it.

In fact, since a large number of psychological words are ambiguous, we will most likely switch between different sets of terms that will best describe these ambiguous words, for example, “consciousness”.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

4.3.1 The Illusion of Immanence

“ The paradox of consciousness - the more intelligent a person is, the more layers of information processing separate him from the real world - this, like many other things in nature, is a kind of compromise. Progressive distance from the outside world is the price paid for any knowledge of the world in general. The deeper and wider [our] our knowledge of the world becomes, the more complex layers of information processing are necessary for further knowledge. "
- Derek Bickerton, Languages ​​and Species, 1990.

When you enter the room you have a feeling that you instantly see everything in your field of vision. However, this is an illusion, because you need time to recognize objects that are in the room, and only after this process you get rid of the wrong first impressions. Nevertheless, this process proceeds so quickly and smoothly that it requires an explanation - and it will be given later in chapter §8.3 of the Pananalogy.

The same thing happens inside our mind. We usually have a constant feeling that we are “aware” of things happening around us now. But if we look at the situation from a critical point of view, we will understand that there is some problem with such a representation - because nothing can be faster than the speed of light. This means that no part of the brain can know what is happening "now" - neither with regards to the outside world, nor other parts of the brain. As much as we can know the part we are considering is what happened in the near future.

Everyman: Then why does it seem to me that I am aware of all the signs and sounds, and also feel my body at every moment in time? Why does it seem to me that all the signals I perceive are processed instantly?

In everyday life, we can assume that everything that we see and feel we are “aware” here and now, and usually for us the assumption that we are in constant contact with the outside world does not go sideways. However, I will argue that this illusion stems from the organization of our mental resources - and I should finally give the name to the above phenomenon:

The Illusion of Immanence: Most of the questions you ask will be answered before the higher levels of consciousness begin to connect to the search answers to these questions.

In other words, if you get the answer to the question that interests you before you realize that you needed it, you get the feeling that you knew the answer right away and get the impression that no mind work has occurred.

For example, before you enter a room you are familiar with, it is likely that you are already scrolling through the memory of this room in your mind, and it may take some time after you enter to notice the changes that have occurred in the room. The idea that a person constantly perceives the present moment is indispensable in everyday life, but much of what we assume is our stereotypical expectations.

Some argue that it would be great to keep abreast of what is happening. But the more often your higher-level processes change their views on reality, the more difficult it will be for them to find meaningful information in changing conditions. The strength of our higher-level processes does not stem from continuous changes in our descriptions of reality, but because of their sufficient stability.

In other words, in order for us to feel how much of the surrounding and internal environment is preserved over time, we need to be able to research and compare descriptions from the recent past. We notice changes in spite of them, and not because they occur. Our sense of constant contact with the world is the Illusion of Immanence: it arises when we already find the answer to each question we ask before we even ask the question — as if the answers were already there.

In chapter 6, we will examine how our ability to activate knowledge before we need it can explain why we use things like “common sense” and why it seems “obvious” to us.

4.4 Reassessing Consciousness

“Our minds are so well created that we can begin to think without any understanding of how this works. We can only be aware of the result of this work. The field of unconscious processes is an unknown creature that works and creates for us, and, ultimately, brings the fruits of its efforts to our knees. ”
- Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

Why does Consciousness seem a mystery to us? I affirm that the reason for this is our exaggeration of our own insight. For example, at a particular point in time, the lens of your eye can focus on only one object at a limited distance, while other objects out of focus will be blurred.

Everyman: It seems to me that this fact does not apply to me, because all the objects that I see are perceived by me quite clearly.

You can see that this is an illusion if you focus on the tip of your finger while viewing a distant object. In this case, you will see two objects instead of one, and both will be too blurry to be examined in detail. Before we did this experiment, we thought that we could see everything all at once clearly, because the lens of the eye adjusted so quickly to the examination of surrounding objects that we did not have the feeling that the eye could do this. Likewise, many people think that they see all the colors in their field of vision - but a simple experiment showed that we see the correct colors of things only near the object that our gaze is directed at.

Both of the above examples relate to the Illusion of Immanence because our eyes react incredibly quickly to things that attract our attention. And I affirm that the same thing applies to consciousness: we make almost the same mistakes in relation to what we can see inside our mind.

Patrick Hayes:“Imagine how it feels to be aware of the processes by which we create imaginary (or real) speech. [In that case] a simple act, like, say, “inventing a name”, would turn into a sophisticated and skillful use of a complex mechanism of lexical access, which would be like playing an internal organ. The words and phrases that we need for communication will themselves be distant goals, to achieve which we need the knowledge and skills that an orchestra playing a symphony, or a mechanic who understands an intricate mechanism, has. ”

Hayes continues to say that if we knew how everything inside us worked then:

“We would all be in the role of servants of our past; we would run inside the mind trying to figure out the details of the mental machinery, which is now incredibly conveniently hidden from view, leaving time to solve more important issues. “Why are we in the engine room if we can be on the captain’s bridge?”

With this paradoxical view, consciousness still seems surprising - but not because it tells a lot of information about the world, but because it protects us from the tedious things described above! Here is another description of this process, which can be found in Chapter 6.1, The Society of Reason.

Think about how the driver drives the car without any knowledge of how the engine works, or why the wheels of the car turn left or right. But if we start to think about it, we will understand that we control both the machine and the body in a rather similar way. This also applies to conscious thought - the only thing you should worry about is choosing the direction of movement, and everything else will work by itself. This incredible process includes a huge number of muscles, bones and ligaments, controlled by hundreds of interacting programs that even specialists cannot understand. However, if you just think “turn in that direction” and your desire is fulfilled automatically.

And if you think about it, it could hardly have been otherwise! What would happen if we were forced to perceive trillions of connections in our brains? Scientists, for example, have been watching them for hundreds of years, but they still don’t understand how our brains work. Fortunately, in modern life we ​​just need to know what needs to be done! This can be compared with our vision of a hammer as an object that can be hit on things, and a ball - as an object that can be thrown and caught. Why do we see things not as they are, but in terms of their use?

Similarly, when you play computer games, you control what is happening inside the computer mainly through the use of symbols and names. The process we call “consciousness” works by and large in exactly the same way. It seems that the higher levels of our consciousness are sitting at mental computers, controlling huge machines in our brains, not understanding how they work, but simply “clicking” on various symbols from the list, which appears on mental displays every now and then.

Our mind did not develop as a tool for observing ourselves, but for solving practical problems related to food, protection and reproduction.

4.5 Models of Myself and Self-Consciousness

If we consider the process of formation of self-awareness, we must avoid the single signs of its manifestation, such as recognition and separation from the environment of individual parts of his body as a child, his use of words such as “I,” and even recognition of his own reflection in the mirror. The use of personal pronouns may be due to the fact that the child begins to repeat the words and phrases that others speak about him. This repetition can begin in children at different ages, even if their intellectual development proceeds identically.
- Wilhelm Wundt. 1897

In §4.2, we suggested that Joan “created and used models of herself” - but we did not explain what the word model means . We use this word in several meanings, for example, “Charlie is the model administrator”, which means that it is worth orienting on it, or for example, “I am creating an airplane model” which means creating a smaller similar object. But in this text we use the phrase “model X” to denote a simplified mental representation that allows us to answer some questions about some complex object X.

Thus, when we say “Joan has a mental model of Charlie, ” we mean that Joan has some mental resources that help her answer somequestions about Charlie. I highlighted the word some because each of Joan's models will work well with certain types of questions - and will give incorrect answers to most other questions. Obviously, the quality of Joan's thoughts will depend not only on how good her models are, but also on how good her skills are in choosing these models in specific situations.

Some models of Joan will predict how physical actions can affect the world. She also has mental models that predict how mental acts can alter her mental state. In chapter 9 we will talk about some models that she can use to describe herself, i.e. answer some questions about her abilities and inclinations. These models can describe:

Her various goals and ambitions.

Her professional and political views.

Her ideas about her competencies.

Her ideas about her social roles.

Her various moral and ethical views.

Her faith in who she is.

For example, she may use some of these models to assess whether she should rely on herself to complete a business. Moreover, they can explain some ideas about their consciousness. To show this, I will use the example proposed by the philosopher Drew McDermott.

Joan is in some room. She has a model of all the objects in this room. And one of the objects is Joan herself.


Most objects will have their own submodels, which, for example, will describe their structure and functions. The Joan model for the Joan object will be a structure that she will call “I”, which will include at least two parts: one of them will be called the Body , the second - the Mind .


Using various parts of this model, Joan can answer “ Yes ” to the question: “ Do you have a mind? ". But if you ask her: “ Where is your mind? "- this model will not be able to help answer the question as some people do:" My mind is inside my head (or inside my brain) . " However, Joan will be able to give a similar answer if I contain an internal connection between the Mind and the Body or an external connection between the Mind and another part of the body called the Brain .

More generally, our answers to questions about ourselves depend on the models that we put together about ourselves. I used the word model instead of model because, as we will see in chapter 9, a person needs different models in different conditions. Thus, there can be many answers to the same question, depending on what goal the person wants to achieve and sometimes these answers will not coincide.

Drew McDermott: Few believe that we possess such models, even fewer people know that we possess them. The key feature is not that the system has a model of itself, but that it has a model of itself as a conscious being. ” - comp.ai.philosophy, February 7, 1992.

However, these descriptions of themselves may be incorrect, but they are unlikely to continue to exist if they do not do anything useful for us.

And what will happen if we ask Joan: “ Did you realize what you did now and why you did it? ?

If Joan has good models of how she makes her choice, then she will feel that she has some “ control ” over her actions and uses the term “ conscious decisions ” to describe them. She can classify a type of activity for which she does not have good models as independent of it and call it “ unconscious ” or “ unintentional ”". Or vice versa, she can assume that she is still in full control of the situation and makes some decisions based on “ free will ” - which, despite what she can say, will mean: “ I don’t have a good explanation of what made me do this ".

Thus, when Joan says, “ I made a conscious choice, ” this does not mean that something magical happened. This means that she attributes her thoughts to various parts of her most useful models.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

4.6 Cartesian Theater

“We can consider the mind as a theater staging simultaneous productions. Consciousness consists of comparing them with each other, choosing the most suitable in the given conditions and suppressing the least needed by increasing and decreasing the degree of attention. The best and most noticeable results of mental work are selected from the data provided by a lower level of information processing, which is screened out from even more even simpler information, and so on. ”
- William James.

We sometimes compare the work of the mind with a performance staged on the stage. Because of this, Joan can sometimes present herself as a spectator in the front row of the theater, and “thoughts in her head” as acting actors. One of these actors was a pain in her knee (§3-5), which began to play a major role. Soon, Joan began to hear a voice in her head: “ I have to do something with this pain. She's stopping me from doing anything. "

Now, when Joan begins to think about how she feels and what she could do, then Joan herself will appear on the scene. But in order for her to be able to hear what she is saying, she must also be in the hall. Thus, we got two copies of Joan - in the role of an actor, and in the role of a spectator!

If we continue to watch this performance, even more copies of Joan will appear on the stage. A Joan writer for scripting appearances and a Joan designer for stage production should appear. There should also be other Joans behind the scenes to control the scenes, light and sound. Joan, the director for the production, and Joan, the critic, should appear to complain: " I can no longer endure this pain !"

However, when we carefully consider this theatrical point of view, we will see that it poses additional questions to us and does not provide the necessary answers. When Joan the critic begins to complain of pain, how does she feel about Joan currently performing on stage? Do you need a separate theater for each of these actresses to conduct performances with only one Joan? Of course, the theater under discussion does not exist, and Joan objects are not people. They are just different models of Joan herself, which she created to represent herself in various situations. In some cases, these models are very similar to cartoon characters or caricatures, in others they are completely unlike the object from which they are drawn. One way or another, Joan’s mind is replete with various models of Joan herself - Joan in the past, Joan in the present and Joan in the future. There are both the remnants of past Joan, and Joan what she wants to become. There are also intimate and social models of Joan, Joan athletes and Joan mathematicians, Joan musicians and Joan politicians, and various types of Joan professionals - and precisely because of their different interests, we cannot even hope that all Joan get along. We will discuss this phenomenon in more detail in Chapter 9.

Why is Joan creating similar models of herself? Reason is a confusion of processes that we barely understand. And every time we come across something that we don’t understand, we try to present it in forms familiar to us, and there is nothing more suitable than the various objects that are around us in space. Therefore, we can imagine a place where all thought processes are located - and, most amazingly, many people really create such places. For example, Daniel Dennett called this place the “Carthusian Theater”.

Why is this image very popular? Firstly, he does not explain many things, but its presence is much better than using the idea that all thinking is carried out by one Self. It recognizes the existence of various parts of the mind and their ability to interact, and also serves as a kind of “place” where everything processes can work and communicate. For example, if various resources offered their plans for what Joan should do, then the idea of ​​a theater scene could give an idea of ​​their common place of work. Thus, the Cartesian Theater Joan allows her to use many of the learned skills of real life "in the mind." And it is this place that gives her the opportunity to begin to reflect on how decisions are made.

Why do we find this metaphor so believable and natural? Maybe ability“Modeling the world within one’s mind” was one of the first adaptations that led our ancestors to the possibility of self-reflection. (There are also experiments showing that some animals create in the brain similar to the map displaying the environment with which they are familiar). In any case, metaphors like these permeate our language and thoughts. Imagine how difficult it would be to think without hundreds of different concepts like: “ I am reaching my goal .” Spatial models are so useful in our daily lives, and we have such powerful skills to use them that it begins to seem that these models are used in any situation.

However, perhaps we have gone too far, and the concept of the Carthusian Theater has already become an obstacle to further consideration of the psychology of the mind. For example, we must recognize that the theater stage is just a facade that hides the main action that takes place behind the curtains - what is happening there is hidden in the minds of the actors. Who or what determines what should appear on stage, that is, who chooses to entertain us? How exactly does Joan make decisions? How can such a model provide a comparison of two different possible “future outcomes of a situation” without simultaneously supporting two theaters?

The image of the theater alone does not help us answer such questions, because it gives too much to Joan's mind, watching the performance from the audience. However, we have a better way of introducing this Global Work Platform, which was proposed by Bernard Baars and James Newman, who suggested the following:

“The theater is becoming a workspace where a large set of“ experts ”have access. ... Awareness of the situation at any moment corresponds to the coordinated activity of the most active union of experts or composite processes. ... At each point in time, some can doze off in their places, others work on stage ... [but] everyone can take part in the development of the plot. ... Each expert has a “voting right” and, by creating alliances with other experts, can contribute to deciding which signals from the outside world should be immediately received and which ones should be “sent back for review”. Most of the work of this deliberative body is carried out outside the workspace (i.e., it happens unconsciously). Only issues requiring immediate resolution gain access to the scene. ”

This last paragraph warns us not to attribute the oversized role to the compact Self or “homunculus” - a miniature person inside the mind doing all the hard mental work, instead we have to distribute this work. For, as Daniel Dennett said,

“Homunculi are boogeymen if they copy all our talents that support our work, although they should have been engaged in their explanation and provision. If you assemble a team or committee of relatively ignorant, narrow-minded, blind homunculi to create intelligent behavior for the whole team, this will be progress. ” - In Brainstorming 1987, p. 123.

All ideas in this book support the above judgment. However, serious questions arise about the extent to which our minds depend on the total workspace or bulletin board. We conclude that the idea of ​​a “cognitive market” is a good way to start thinking about how we think, but if you look at this model in more detail, we will see the need for a much more complex model of presentation.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

4.7 Sequential Stream of Consciousness

“The truth is that our mind is not at the present time: memories and anticipations occupy almost the entire time the brain works. Our passions - joy and sorrow, love and hate, hope and fear relate to the past, for the cause that caused them should appear before the effect. ”
- Samuel Johnson.

The world of subjective experience seems perfectly continuous. It seems to us that we live here and now, steadily moving into the future. However, when we use the present, we are always misled, as already noted in §4.2. We can know about what we have done recently, but we are not able to know what we are doing "right now."

Everyman: Funny. Of course, I know what I'm doing right now, and what I'm thinking right now, and what I feel right now. How does your theory explain why I feel a continuous stream of consciousness?

Although what we perceive seems to us to be “real time,” in reality everything is much more complicated. To build our perceptions, some resources must go through our memory in sequence; sometimes they have to look at our old goals and sorrows in order to assess how much we have progressed towards a specific goal.

Dennett and Kinsborn “[Memorable events] are distributed both in different parts of the brain and in various memories. These events have temporary properties, but these properties do not determine the order in which information is provided, because there is no single, complete “stream of consciousness”, but parallel conflicting and constantly reviewed flows. The temporal gradation of subjective events is a product of the brain's interpretation of various processes, and not a direct reflection of the events that make up these processes. ”

In addition, it is safe to assume that different parts of your mind process information at significantly different speeds and different delays. So, if you try to present your recent thoughts as a sequential story, your mind will have to somehow compose it by selecting previous thoughts from various streams of consciousness. In addition, some of these processes try to anticipate events that try to predict the “predictive mechanisms” that we will describe in §5.9. This means that the “content of your consciousness” is associated not only with memories, but also with thoughts about your future.

Therefore, the only thing you really can’t think about is what your mind is doing “right now”, because every brain resource can at best know what other brain resources did a few moments ago. Philistine: I agree that by and large, what we are thinking about is connected with recent events. But I still feel that we should use some other idea to describe the work of our mind. HAL-2023:



Perhaps all of these things seem mysterious to you, because human short-term memory is incredibly small. And when you try to look at your last thoughts, you are forced to replace the data that you find in memory with data that comes in the real time interval. This way you permanently delete the data that you need for what you were trying to explain.

Everyman: I think I understand what you mean, because sometimes two ideas come to my mind right away, but whichever one is written down first, the second leaves only a faint hint of presence. I suppose this is because I lack enough space to store both ideas. But doesn’t this also apply to cars?

HAL-2023:No, this does not apply to me, because the developers provided me with a way to store previous events and my conditions in special “memory banks”. If something goes wrong, I can see what my programs did before the error, and after that I can start debugging.

Philistine: Is it this process that makes you so smart?

HAL-2023:From time to time. Although these notes can make me more "self-conscious" than any person, they do not contribute to improving the quality of my work, because I use them only in emergency situations. Error handling is so tedious that it makes my mind work extremely slowly, and therefore I only begin to look at recent activities when I notice my inhibited work. I constantly hear people say, "I'm trying to get in touch with myself." However, believe my experience, they will not come very close to resolving the conflict if they can.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

4.8 The Secret of “Experience”

Many thinkers argue that even if we learn everything about how our brain works, there will be another fundamental question: “ Why do we feel things ?” Philosophers argue that the explanation of "subjective experience" may be the most difficult problem in psychology, and perhaps this problem will never be solved.

David Chalmers:“Why, when our cognitive systems begin to work with visual and sound processing of information, do we get a visual or sound experience, for example, a feeling of deep blue or the sound of middle C? How can we explain why there is something that can entertain a mental image or survive an emotion? Why should the physical processing of information generate a rich inner life? Gaining experience goes beyond the knowledge that can be obtained from physical theory. ”

It seems to me Chalmers believes that gaining experience is a fairly simple and clear process - and therefore should have a simple, compact explanation. However, as soon as we become aware that each of our daily psychological words (such as experience , sensation andconsciousness ) refers to a large number of different phenomena, we must refuse to find the only way that explains the content of these polysemantic words. Instead, we initially had to make theories about every multi-valued phenomenon. Then we may be able to find their common characteristics. But until we can correctly divide these phenomena into parts, it would be rash to conclude that what they describe cannot be "deduced" from other theories.

Physicist: Perhaps the brain works according to rules that are still unknown to us, which cannot be transferred to a machine. For example, we do not yet fully understand how gravity works, and consciousness can be a similar example.

This example also suggests that there must be one source or cause of all the wonders of "consciousness." But as we saw in §4.2, consciousness has much more meanings than can be explained using one or the general method.

Essentialist: What about the fact that consciousness makes me aware of myself? It tells me what I think now, and thanks to him I know that I exist. Computers calculate without investing any meaning, but when a person feels or thinks, the feeling of “experience” comes into play, and there is nothing more basic than this feeling.

In chapter 9 we discuss what it would be a mistake to suppose that you are “aware of yourself”, except for very rough daily approximations. Instead, we constantly switch between the different “models of yourself” that you have, and each of them is based on a different, incomplete set of incomplete data. The “experience” may seem clear and straightforward to us - but it is often compiled with us incorrectly, because each of your different views on yourself can be based on oversights and various kinds of errors.

Whenever we look at someone else, we see his appearance, but not what is inside. This is the same as looking in a mirror - you only see what lies beyond your skin. Now, in the popular representation of consciousness, you also have a magic trick to look at yourselffrom the inside , and see everything that happens in your mind. But when you think about this topic more carefully, you will see that your “privileged access” to your own thoughts may be less accurate than the “understanding” of you by your close friends.

Everyman: This assumption is so stupid that it annoys me, and I know this because of some specific thing flowing from within me that tells me what I think.

Your friends can also see that you are worried. Your consciousness cannot reveal to you details about why you feel annoyed, why you shake your head and use the word “ annoying ” instead of “ bothering ”? Indeed, we cannot see all the thoughts of a person, observing his actions from the outside, but even when we look at the thought process “ from the inside ”, it’s hard for us to be sure that we really see more, especially since such “insights” are often wrong . Thus, if we mean “ awareness ” of “ awareness of our internal processes ”, then this is not true.

“The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate everything that it contains with each other. We live on a quiet island of ignorance, in the middle of the black sea of ​​infinity, but this does not mean that we should not travel far. The sciences, each of which pulls us in its own direction, have still done little harm to us, but someday the union of fragmented knowledge will open up such terrifying prospects for reality and its terrible situation that we will either lose our minds from revelations or run away from deadly light united knowledge into the world of a safe new dark era. ”
- G.F. Lovecraft, "Call of Cthulhu."

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

4.9 A-brain and B-brain

Socrates: Imagine people as if in an underground dwelling like a cave, where a wide gleam stretches in its entire length. From an early age, they have fetters on their feet and on their necks, so people don’t move, and they only see what is in front of their eyes, because they cannot turn their heads because of these fetters. People are turned their backs on the light emanating from a fire that burns far above, and between the fire and the prisoners there is an upper road fenced by a low wall like the screen behind which magicians place their helpers when they show dolls on top of the screen.

Glavcon: I imagine.

Socrates:Beyond this wall, other people carry various utensils, holding it so that it is visible over the wall; they carry statues and all kinds of images of living beings made of stone and wood. At the same time, as usual, some of the carriers are talking, while others are silent.

Glavkon: You draw a strange image ...

Socrates: Like us, they don’t see anything except their shadows or the shadows of these various things cast by fire on the wall of the cave in front of them ... Then the prisoners will consider reality nothing more than these shadows - Plato, State .

Can you think what you are thinking right now? Well, in the literal sense, this is impossible - because every thought will change what you think. However, you can be content with something a little less if you imagine that your brain (or mind) consists of two different parts: let's call them the A-brain and the B-brain .


Now suppose your A-brain receives a signal that travels from organs such as the eyes, ears, nose, and skin; then he can use these signals to recognize some events that happened in the outside world, and then he can respond to them by sending signals that cause your muscles to contract - which, in turn, can affect the state of the world around you. Thus, we can imagine this system as a separate part of our body.

Your B brain has no sensors like the A brain, but it can receive signals from the A brain. Thus, the B-brain cannot “see” real things - it can only see their description. Like the prisoner in the cave of Plato, who sees only shadows on the wall, the B-brain confuses the descriptions given by the A-brain of real things, not knowing what they really are. All that the B-brain sees as the “outside world” are events processed by the A-brain.

Neurologist: And this also applies to us all. For, no matter what you touch or see, the higher levels of your brain will never be able to directly touch these things, but they will only be able to interpret the idea of ​​these things that other resources have put together for you.

When the fingertips of two people in love touch each other, no one will argue that the physical contact itself has any special meaning. Indeed, there is no sense in such signals themselves: the meaning of this contact lies in the representation of this contact in the mind of people in love. Nevertheless, although the B-brain cannot directly perform a physical act, it can still affect the outside world indirectly - by sending signals to the A-brain, which will change its response to external conditions. For example, if the A-brain stalls in repeating the same things, the B-brain can easily interrupt this process by sending an appropriate signal to the A-brain.

Student:For example, when I lose my points, I constantly start searching from a certain shelf. Then a voice begins to blame me for this, which leads me to the idea of ​​searching elsewhere.

In this ideal case, the B-brain can tell (or teach) the A-brain what exactly it is worth doing in a similar situation. But even if the B-brain does not have any specific advice, it may not indicate anything to the A-brain, but begin to criticize its actions, as described in your example.

Student: But what would happen if when I walked along the road my B-brain would suddenly say: “Sir, you have been repeating the same actions with your foot more than a dozen times in a row. You should stop right now and any other activity.

In fact, this could be the result of a serious accident. To prevent such errors, the B-brain must have suitable ways of representing things. This accident would not have happened if the B-brain imagined “moving to a certain place” as one long act, for example: “Keep rearranging your legs until you cross the street”, or as a way to achieve your goal: “Continue to reduce the existing the distance. " Thus, the B-brain can work as a manager who does not have any knowledge on how to do this or that job, but can still give “general” advice on how to do certain things, for example:

If the descriptions presented by A -brain too vague - B-brain will force the use of more specifics.

If the A-brain presents things in too much detail, the B-brain will offer more abstract descriptions.

If the A-brain does something for too long, the B-brain will advise you to use other techniques to achieve the goal.

How could the B-brain acquire such skills? Some of them could be built into it from the very beginning, but there must also be a way to learn new skills through training. For this, the B-brain may need help from other levels of perception. Thus, when the B-brain oversees the A-brain, another object, let's call it the “C-brain”, will oversee the B-brain.


Student: How many layers does a person need? Do we have dozens or hundreds of them?

In Chapter 5, we describe a model of the mind in which all resources are organized in 6 different levels of perception. Here is a brief description of this model: it begins with a set of instinctive reactions that we have at birth. Then we can begin to reason, imagine and plan for the future, developing ways of behavior that we call “deliberate decisions”. Later, we develop the ability to “reflective thinking” about our own thoughts. After - we learn introspection, which allows us to think about how and why we can think about such things. Finally, we begin to consciously think about whether we should do all this. Here is how this pattern can be applied to Joan’s thoughts while crossing the road:

What made Joan turn to sound? [Instinctive reactions]

How did she know that it could be a machine? [Reactions studied]

What resources were used to make the decision? [Pondering]

How did she decide what to do in this situation? [Reflection]

Why did she reflect on her choice? [Self-reflection]

Did the actions comply with its principles? [Reflection of self-awareness]

Of course, this is too oversimplified. These levels can never be clearly defined, because each of these levels, in later life, can use the resources of other levels. However, the established framework will help us begin to discuss the types of resources used by adults, as well as how to organize them.

Student:Why should there be any levels at all, instead of one big cloud of interconnected resources?

Our argument in favor of our theory is based on the idea that for the development of effective complex systems, each step of evolution must find a compromise between two alternatives:

If there are few connections between its parts inside the system, then the system will be limited in capacity.

If inside the system there will be many connections between its parts, each subsequent change in the system will limit the operation of a large number of processes.

How to achieve a good balance between these extremes? A system can begin development with clearly delineated parts (for example, with more or less separated layers), and then build links between them. Embryologist:

During embryonic development, a typical brain structure begins to form due to the allocation of more or less delimited layers or levels, which is reflected in your diagrams. Then, individual groups of cells begin to form bundles of fibers that extend across the boundaries of the brain zones over fairly large distances.

The system can also start by establishing a huge number of connections, and subsequently delete some of them. A similar process is taking place with us: in the days when our brain evolved, our ancestors had to adapt to thousands of different environmental conditions, now many reactions that were previously “good” turned into serious “mistakes” and we need to correct them by removing unnecessary connections.  

Embryologist:Indeed, during embryonic development, more than half of the above cells die, barely reaching their goal. This process appears to be a series of edits that correct various kinds of “errors”.

This process reflects the main limitation of evolution: it is dangerous to make changes to the old parts of the body, because many parts that evolved later depend on the work of old systems. Therefore, at each new stage of evolution, we add various “patches” to structures that have already been developed. This process has led to the emergence of an incredibly complex brain, each part of which works in accordance with certain principles, each of which has a lot of exceptions. This complexity is reflected in human psychology, where every aspect of thinking can be partially explained in terms of clear laws and principles of work, however, each law and principle has its own exceptions.

The same limitations appear when we try to improve the performance of a large system - such as an existing computer program. For its development, we are adding an increasing number of corrections and patches, instead of rewriting old components. Each specific "mistake". Which we can fix can ultimately lead to even more other errors and make the system extremely cumbersome, which may be happening to our mind right now.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

This chapter began with a presentation of several widespread views on what “ consciousness ” is"And what it is. We came to the conclusion that people use this word to describe a huge number of mental processes that no one has yet fully understood. The term “conscious” is quite useful in everyday life and seems almost indispensable for talking on a social and ethical level, because it keeps us from wanting to know what is in our minds. The same can be said about most other psychological words, such as understanding , emotion and feeling .

However, if we do not recognize the ambiguity of the polysemantic words used, we may fall into the trap of trying to clearly define what these words mean. Then we found ourselves in a problem situation due to the lack of clear ideas about what our mind is and how its parts work. So, if we want to understand what the human mind does, we need to divide all the mental processes into parts that we can analyze. The next chapter will attempt to explain how Joan's mind can do the work of the human mind.

Thanks for the translation, Stanislav Sukhanitsky. If you want to join and help with translations (write in a personal email or e-mail alexey.stacenko@gmail.com)

“The Table of Contents of The Emotion Machine”
Introduction
Chapter 6. COMMON SENSE [ eng ]
Chapter 7. Thinking [ eng ]
Chapter 8. Resourcefulness [ eng ]
Chapter 9. The Self [ eng ]

Finished translations

• The Art of Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming
• Complete Translation of Community Building: Social Architecture
• "Hackers and Artists." How we translated Paul Graham’s RuNet for 13 years
• Translation of the book “Skunk Works. Personal Memoirs of My Work at Lockheed
• Translation of Andrew Un's book, Passion for Machine Learning
• The course of lectures "Startup". Peter Thiel. Stanford 2012

Current transfers you can connect to

• The Dream Machine: A History of the Computer Revolution.
• Translation of Richard Bartle's book Designing Virtual Worlds