Re: Belated joining post

From: David Nyman <david.nyman.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:17:05 -0000

On Jun 27, 7:41 pm, c.ha....domain.name.hidden wrote:

> you are necessarily delittantish, for there is no profession
> for it!

None indeed. But for the amateur, all is done for love.

Cheers

D


> You are psychic...I was going to ask for a bio!....
>
> it is refreshing to find a computer scientist that honestly faces the
> brute biological reality of messy neuro-cells and their cognitive
> faculties and really lets it speak its story ... one more complex than
> mere symbol manipulation ...As an engineer I admit to the same
> experience... except I am going to build the AGI after the fashion of
> the experience thus obtained... dilettantry is not an option!...
> although if you are a multidisciplinary type (as it seems you
> are....you are necessarily delittantish, for there is no profession
> for it!
>
> cheers
> col
>
> Quoting David Nyman <david.ny....domain.name.hidden>:
>
>
>
> > Recent dialogues with Russell, plus discovering and finding helpful
> > previous joining posts, prompts me to post this for reference
> > purposes.
>
> > I was born in 1950 in Glasgow Scotland of Anglo-Scottish parents, and
> > come from Hungarian, Middle Eastern, Russian, and Polish ancestry
> > insofar as I can trace it. Mixed, anyway.
>
> > My formal academic background is also best described as 'mixed', but
> > early on I always felt a bit inadequate compared to my teachers, who
> > seemed to just 'know' the 'answers' somehow, because they wrote them
> > straight on to the blackboard. Myself, I had to 'puzzle' them out by
> > something like trial and error. Also, their 'explanations' seemed to
> > lead only to more questions. This exasperated my teachers. One day
> > (I guess I must have been about 9) I read a book of logic problems
> > that not only contained the answers, but the author's account of how
> > he'd reached them. Turns out he'd used trial and error! I remember
> > it dawned on me like a bolt of lightning: "Everybody thinks like
> > this!" And thus reassured, I went on in this way.
>
> > There's a corollary to this tale. Many years later, I attended a
> > seminar where the neuroscientist Karl Pribram was the principal
> > presenter. I was so stimulated by the dialogue that I 'kidnapped' him
> > afterwards by giving him a lift to the house where we'd both been
> > invited to dinner. As he sat wearily in the passenger seat, I rambled
> > on about this and that, and after a while this led to my 'sharing' my
> > great 'Everybody thinks like that' insight. "You're wrong." he said,
> > and sank back into torpor. My heart sank. Then he sighed, and said:
> > "Only people who can think at all, think like that."
>
> > My professional career spans 35+ years in computer systems development
> > in the private sector, from machine code and plug-board days, through
> > assembler and a wide variety of high-level languages. The hands-on
> > part spanned more than 20 years and I worked originally in commercial
> > applications development for systems vendors, focusing on elements of
> > operating systems and failure and recovery methods. I developed early
> > versions of 'net-change' manufacturing planning and forecasting
> > systems, and from 1989, was an early participant in the nascent on-
> > line (originally phone-based) retail financial sector. I became Head
> > of Systems Architecture and Head of Information Analysis for the first
> > UK on-line bank, and Head of IT for an on-line retail insurer. These
> > days, I do part time IT and business consultancy, and dabble in topics
> > like those on this list. I've now achieved the status I've always
> > sought: self-employed dilettante.
>
> > I can't recall exactly when my interest in AI and 'mind body' issues
> > began, but it was re-stimulated by John Searle's ideas as presented in
> > the 1984 BBC Reith Lectures, which got me furiously thinking and
> > reading about functionalism and then-current mind-brain theories like
> > Pribram's Holonomic theory. I reached a vague realisation that
> > functionalism was incompatible with materialism, which is why I had a
> > start of recognition when I encountered Bruno's arguments. But I've
> > really spent the intervening period just 'dilettanting' around the
> > related areas - philosophy of mind, epistemology, QM, cosmology,
> > Darwinism, etc. - as my enthusiasm and energy waxes and wanes.
>
> > I've read or skimmed quite a lot of the book list others have
> > mentioned, but definitely need more rigour on the math and logic
> > background. The existence of forums like this one has more or less
> > kept my marriage intact when it might not have survived many further
> > attempts to 'innocently' subvert ordinary conversations into
> > 'epistomology' or some such nonsense.
>
> > A few books that have triggered something or other, or that I often
> > return to:
>
> > The Fabric of Reality (Deutsch)
> > The Conscious Mind (Chalmers)
> > Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Bohm)
> > The End of Time (Barbour)
> > The Emperor's New Mind (Penrose)
> > Theory of Nothing (Standish)
> > Laws of Form (Spencer-Brown)
> > The Quark and The Jaguar (Gell-Mann)
> > Godel, Escher Bach (Hofstadter)
> > The Mind's I (Hofstadter and Dennett)
> > Consciousness Explained (Dennett)
> > The Selfish Gene (Dawkins)
> > The Blank Slate (Pinker)
> > The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Popper)
> > The Open Society and Its Enemies (Popper)
> > The Man who mistook His Wife for a Hat (Sacks)
> > The Society of Mind (Minsky)
> > How Children Learn (Holt)
> > The Act of Creation (Koestler)
> > The Psychology of Learning Mathematics (Skemp)
> > Frogs into Princes (Bandler and Grinder)
> > The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle)
> > Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Carroll)
> > Foucault's Pendulum (Eco)


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Received on Wed Jun 27 2007 - 20:17:28 PDT

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