Prometheus

Do you have to use polynomials? Just by eye it seems like a time series approach like ARIMA would make a better model (there is both seasonality and an upward trend), but maybe your teacher wants you to learn something specific about fitting polynomials. No idea how to do this in excel, but shouldn't be too hard to find a tutorial online somewhere - or have you already made the graph? Check out Runge's phenomena for why high order polynomials are often not a good model choice, although i think there's a more fundamental reason in this case.

I know some of the big publishing houses have in-house statisticians to look over stats (but not if its a paper primarily about stats).

Yes, i'm a Buddhist, and your view is particularly consistent with my understanding of the dharma. This means i have an emotional stake in you being right, which i temper with a bit more scepticism than usual. However, not being trained in philosophy, i prefer the little stories so keep thinking them up. This all leads again to the idea of emergence so i might take this back over to the AI sentience thread.

Triple blind - so even the editors don't know who is reviewing what? How would we ensure the reviewers aren't mortal enemies or best buddies with the authors? Maybe add preprint publication as a formal part of the publication process, to gain an informal peer-review from people interested in the field. Went to workshop recently in which an ex-Nature editor was arguing for this.

It's caricature for sure, but it helps me see the traffic for the cars. Considering the ring of cars as loosely analogous to the brain, my next question is whether that back-propagating phenomena has causative effects. Each car slows down because the car in front slows down - that's the chain of causation. The back-propagation seems to manifest from this chain, but itself is not a causative agent. It's like they are different categories of things. That's a nice way of putting it. Here's to the next level.

Also, It's a bit rude not to address a particular point, and then go on to expound your opinion related to that point. If you don't want to discuss it, don't discuss it.

If you disregard eating you die. Best be a damn good game.

I didn't mean to leave room for magic (though it is magic in the sense of wonder). Consciousness completely implemented by the brain, but once implemented is itself a 'cog in the machine', capable of influencing downstream (neurochemical) pathways? Thanks, but let's see if i'm right first.

I forgot we were only considering space colonization. Can we draw any inferences from the colonisation of the New World? I hear parts of the Americas are economically viable now, but when first being established there was no shortage of threats and starvations. Were Columbus's, and many subsequent, voyages not state sponsored? And even if it does just end up costing, in a world that globally spends $83 billion on hair products, isn't there room for another vanity project? I'd be happy to go baldly to finance this... And while economic arguments are important, should they be the only consideration?

The space industry is currently worth $330 billion, projected to be $3 trillion in 30 years time. That's not counting corollary technologies that have contributed to the economy. By what metric or figures do you come to the conclusion that there is no economic basis?

I can accept that in certain contexts it can add nothing. But do you agree that in certain contexts evolution is an equally useless explanation? Why are human ears shaped so? 'Because of evolution' explains nothing. We would like to know the details. That does not make evolution a useless theory though. Well that is the question and why i posted the OP. I think the concept of emergence has helped move the conversation forward a little because it allows us to ask the very question you pose above. Without the idea of emergence we might be stuck talking about a ghost in the machine. But it's a start to the answer, far from the end. Just because they are both reliant on my credulity. Given i'm alive once i don't see why i couldn't live again. Given sentience manifests in biological bits i don't see why it shouldn't emerge from computer bits. Both rely on me 'not seeing why something shouldn't be so...' I was hoping to give my belief a little more grounding or knock it off it's pedestal (as living twice in any meaningful sense has been).

@Eise I'm trying to understand your perspective - let me explain how i've come to understand it and tell me how close it is to what you're actually saying. You don't dispute that the contents of consciousness (value, meaning etc...) have neurochemical antecedents. But those antecedents give rise to another 'space' in which cause and effect can play a role. So when we come to choose something to eat, for instance, there are plenty of neurochemical antecedents driving a desire for meat - but for ethical reasons the person may choose other than meat. The choice of being vegetarian, in this instance, is sufficient to override the desire for meat - the choice to eat other than meat is the effect, the cause being the mental/ethical framework. Is that a reasonable caricature of your position?

I'm the prole here. I mean he speaks Latin and stuff, means he got eddicated.

I guess it depends on the context. It's like saying evolution is the reason human ears are shaped as they are. Absolutely true - but doesn't tell you anything about them. Doesn't mean evolution isn't an extremely powerful framework in other contexts though. If nothing else the concept of emergence allows us to talk about consciousness within a naturalistic framework, without recourse to a ghost in the machine. I think that's what Eise said, but all posh like.

Hi Gee, thanks for the input. I've been a spectator on this thread, because it's a subject i need to think about carefully and i haven't had the time recently, and everyone else is contributing so much i've been able to watch and learn. But here's some quick, and likely muddled, thoughts on your contribution. Perhaps the salient feature for sentience is that sensors are somehow linked to give a representation of the external world. A new sensory input will need to fit into that existing representation. But this is no different in humans: an eye in isolation doesn't 'see' anything, it needs a brain to parse the information. I'm not sure that's true. If a flame touches my skin the reflex arc doesn't go to my brain, it's initiated by the spine (IIRC) - then there is a delayed (milliseconds) feeling as the brain catches up with what's happening in the body and I feel pain. My understanding was that all cognitive processes contain both analogue and digital neurophysiology. Do neuroscientists now believe that memory, for instance, is an entirely digital process? Do you have any references i could look up regarding this?

Not a novel, but i feel i need to warn people: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. Hugely popular pop science, staggeringly awful for the plaudits it has received.

Yes, but that was during a phase 1 clinical trial for a prostate cancer vaccine. Quite atypical. The injection was over a few minutes (can't remember the details). But i'm not disagreeing with you on anything accept the statement the health professionals receive 'substantial extra training' for I.V administration. It's just not as substantial as it sounds, that's all - a few multiple choice questions, half a day practical session with a drugs calculation test at the end. Let me have my moan, man.

The point was an off-topic remark about the quality of teaching in the NHS - i feel i earned the right to moan a bit after more than 10 years in the NHS and some truly awful training (foremost IV administration training).

Less substantial than you might hope, but that's an entirely different thread...

I don't know the particulars of various vaccines (pH and such which may constrain routes of administration), but giving medications I.V. is not entirely risk free: phlebitis, infiltration, hematomas etc... Not to mention most vaccine are given to kids - and they have harder veins to find and tend to squirm. Much easier to hit a moving target with SC or IM injections. (although some vaccines are sub-dermal and that's just as tricky as IV). If you don't have to give something IV, don't.

Treatments working on similar principles already exist. Capsaicin, which puts the kick in chilis, is effectective with certain types of peripheral pain. Some chronic pain is due to pathological modulation of the central nervous system. It's been 6 months - did you get a chance to read those books i recommended? You obviously have an enduring interest in the subject - why not harness that and learn the science behind pain in detail?

Personalised medicine has been a Holy Grail in medicine for quite a while, and is starting to percolate into mainstream practice. Polypharmacy, a legitimate problem in certain demographics, will benefit from targeted therapies and may help determine cases where non-medical therapies are preferable. Certain types of depression may be more responsive to exercise than medication (which types and what kind of exercise?). Some people with type 2 diabetes can manage the condition with dietary changes alone (but which people and what diet?). However, if you only start to care about your joints when they start aching everyday then you've likely left it too late to avoid medicines all together.

Is a freewill debate pertinent to a discussion on AI consciousness? Is it not reasonable to assume that whatever freewill is, mirage or oasis, it is a feature of consciousness? I appreciate that many debates reduce to people thinking that humans possess some intangible quality that only humans can ever possess (surprisingly common even in secular circles), but i don't think anyone here is making that argument.

Dehydration is probably a significant factor.

Check out Arrival too - focuses on a linguist trying to decipher a non-lingual alien language.