Re: Half a Century of Crappy Computing

Purposely or only after e.g. having lost their sense of direction due to sonar?

Purposely or unconsciously, from depression?

Purposely or because they are programmed to?

Being unaware of danger is something else than choosing to commit suicide.

All very nice examples of animals performing suicide, but the question was related to purpose. In how many of these examples does the animal make the conscious (not necessarily self-conscious) decision to want to die?

I thought those were called Worms or Liero?

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Reply to
Boudewijn Dijkstra
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What do you mean by "conscious"? We have the word, but no generally agreed definition of what it means, or how one might test for its presence in an animal, or influence in making a decision. And if you can't measure it, it ain't science -- it's politics (aka philosophy).

Reply to
Ken Hagan

:^)

Reply to
Chris Thomasson

You push them out to sea, they beach themselves again. Even assuming a fault in their sonar (something there is zero evidence for) are you saying that they are too stupid to realize "hey! when I swim in *this* direction I can dive a hundred meters before hitting bottom but when I swim in *that* direction my flippers hit sand while me blowhole is still in the air!" They appear to know exactly what they are doing.

Calling something "depression" doesn't change what it is -- choosing to die. The original question was "Do any other animals besides humans suicide on purpose?" There was no "exept on cases of depresssion" in the question.

Interesting that you questioned all the other example but not this one.

Assuming that salmon are programmed and thus cannot do anything on purpose seems to be a way to get the answer to "do any other animals besides humans suicide on purpose?" that you were looking for.

The termites certainly make a conscious decision to want to die. They wait until doing so is needed to protect the hive, and then sacrifice themselves. If that isn't a conscious decision then nothing any insect does is a resut of a conscious decision.

Nope. Lemmings, not Liero. (Computer game) Liero fight to stay alive, (computer game) Liero fight to stay aliv and kill other Liero.

Lemmings:

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Lemmings, Pingus, CLONESW:

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Liero, Worms, MoleZ:

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Guy Macon
Reply to
Guy Macon

Op Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:59:23 +0100 schreef Ken Hagan :

I mean that, in this case, a decision is based on both feeling and some knowledge of the consequences of both choices.

One sign of a choice being made to destroy their physical body on purpose, with social animals, is the behaviour to say goodbye to loved ones.

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Reply to
Boudewijn Dijkstra

Hard to measure "feeling" and "knowledge of the consequences". That makes it hard for third parties to demonstrate any connection between these two things and the decision-making process in the experimental subject.

As far as I know, most people who commit suicide don't say goodbye, and actively avoid their loved ones prior to the act. That would, of course, suggests that they are motivated by their beliefs about how the others will feel.

In both cases, I accept that there is something that would be nice to explain and measure objectively. Sadly we don't have the tools.

If we did, we might discover that our consciousness is an illusory side-effect of "mindless mental processing" and that the feeling of free-will results merely from being unable to step outside our mental processes and see them for what they are: a system responding in a fixed manner to a hugely complex input (both sensory and memory).

Or we might not. Without definitions based on objective measurements, we can't formulate any testable hypotheses, so can't honestly claim to have done *any* scientific research in this area. We are so far from having a clue, that we scarcely know what a clue would look like.

Reply to
Ken Hagan

I can't speak for the previous respondent, but I found that one slightly disturbing. I suppose that means I found it fairly convincing.

Might be true, though. How would you tell? In any case, surely if you are programmed, then you will do what you are programmed to do on purpose. Isn't that what "programmed" and "on purpose" mean?

There's a species of solitary wasp that drags its prey back to its hole, leaves it outside, goes down the hole to prepare inside, comes back up, takes the prey down. If you move the prey even a millimetre or so around the hole, the wasp gets confused and moves it back, before going back down the hole to prepare again. Given a patience experimentor, I think it is possible to starve the wasp to death by repeating this movement ad infinitum. Suicide by OCD, or just hardwired to perform very complex actions (that usually benefit the genome)?

I think the consensus is that consciousness has been seen in the preying mantis, various octopods, lots of vertebrates, and nothing else. If anything, the last fifty years have seen a hardening of this line, since "everyone now knows" from their experience with computers that complex behaviour can be hardwired.

Reply to
Ken Hagan

Some animals use acoustic location, but none use sonar. I was talking about the possible negative effects of active sonar in marine animals:

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Humans certainly seem to be 'too stupid' to be able walk straight after having been quickly rotated a dozen times and 'too stupid' to keep their food in their stomach after having been rotated a few dozen times while making certain head movements. A 'fooled' or malfunctioning sense of direction can certainly cause odd or nonsensical behaviour.

Depression may cause a diminished appetite. Choosing to die by not eating is something different than not eating without realizing the consequences.

I didn't find this example very useful. Shock treatments are known to cause many kinds of malfunctions.

Well Chris Thomasson was looking for it. I'm not sure how his opinion is on this, but I wouldn't attach such a heavy conclusion to such a light assumption.

Indeed so.

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Reply to
Boudewijn Dijkstra

Title: Range accuracy: One more peculiarity of the dolphin's sonar Publication: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Title: Biosonar and Neural Computation in Bats Publication: Scientific American

Title: Book Review: _The Sonar of Dolphins_ by Au, Whitlow Publication: Science

Title: Discrimination Of Cylinders With Different Wall Thicknesses Using Neural Networks And Simulated Dolphin Sonar Signals Publication: Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Neural Networks for Signal Processing IX

Title: Modeling of penetration of dolphin sonar clicks into ocean sediments Publication: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

The vast majority of whale beachings are no associated with military sonar

Looking deeper, I found that what I wrote above was wrong. There is at least one case of 17 whales beaching after military sonar caused acoustically-induced hemorrhages around the ears.

That's balance, not navigation/location. No matter how dizzy a huma gets, he will crawl away from a fire, not towards it.

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Guy Macon
Reply to
Guy Macon

I stand corrected.

True. It was just one example of beaching attributed to sensory confusion.

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Still, confused sensory organs can cause 'erroneous' behaviour.

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Reply to
Boudewijn Dijkstra

He did. Five fold symmetry and all that. He does other things, too. One of my climbing partner's has a Dad who's one of Penrose's colleagues. I get ear fulls.

Ask him for help in reading.

Right the Brits in Python said "I blame Society." "Right, we'll arrest him, too."

Reply to
Eugene Miya

Try a thought experiment. A UFO lands, and something comes out. How can you tell if it's a sentient alien, or an autonomous non- sentient robot?

Many human suicides don't do this.

Reply to
Paul Burke

In article , snipped-for-privacy@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) writes: |> In article , |> Ken Hagan wrote: |>

|> >Firstly, to the extent that we understand how intelligence emerges, |> >we can simulate the neurons on a computer. Therefore, the extent to |> >which we've failed to "solve AI" is a fair indicator of how much of |> >a clue we have. |> >

|> >Secondly, and rather more strongly, I'd argue that AI research has |> >delivered almost no progress over the past fifty years, the only |> >success being the discovery of neural nets, which nevertheless remain |> >little more than a curious phenomenon that we don't really understand |> >beyond hand-waving arguments. |> |> You mean the 2nd appearance of neural nets when device technology became |> cheap enough to try things.

I don't know what he means, but we know that their operation has almost damn-all in common with the brain's.

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

Reply to
Nick Maclaren

Since they are the ones with star ships, it's probably more important that they recognize _us_ as sentient.

Eric

Reply to
Eric P.

Neurals nets went thru 2 phases: the 50s when memory was expensive and from the 90s on to when memory became cheap.

Reply to
Eugene Miya

So are you people about to introduce the theory that Rachel Corrie was infected with this Toxoplasma gondii? Sheesh! ...

And now you are trying to bring in the topic of extremist Muslim suicide bombers? Sheesh! ... >

And even more attempts to make fun of Muslims? Sheesh! ...

Reply to
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj

In article , snipped-for-privacy@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) writes: |>

|> >I don't know what he means, but we know that their operation has |> >almost damn-all in common with the brain's. |> |> Neurals nets went thru 2 phases: the 50s when memory was expensive |> and from the 90s on to when memory became cheap.

Oh, indeed. The first phase had damn-all in common with anything useful - it was the second phase that was an optimisation, er, algorithm that had damn-all in common with brains ....

According to many definitions of 'algorithm', they don't count, but it is hard to know what else to call them, as they are an automatic procedure to produce some sort of a solution to a problem.

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

Reply to
Nick Maclaren

Why do you assume that the above makes any reference to Muslims?

Reply to
Guy Macon

Oh? Like?

While I am not a fan of neural nets, perceptrons, etc., I do recognize the value of thinking theory like Hollnad machines, cellular automata, and English demos used to "prove" the ambiguity of the Beatles.

You seem to be in a phase when you say "damn" a lot.

I believe that brains were also argued in phase 1 as well.

Well fewer people hear or read the word "heuristic". Even fewer appreciate its meaning.

Reno was OK. Various lights were popular. Oh, Reno had a power failure during the 1st afternoon. Big UK booth.

Reply to
Eugene Miya

Since they are the ones with star ships, *they* may be able to.

Reply to
Ken Hagan

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