Attention focus and the Self (again...)

Why we cannot focus on two things at the same time? what would it mean to be able to do that, to read two texts at the same time, to see two different things simultaneously while giving them sense, etc? it would mean to be two persons, have two minds? what about acts that imply a lot of parallel processing? (actually virtually everything we do!). Lets imagine a pianist that plays with both hands: does he have two minds? in a certain way, yes, but then we realize that there is a hierarchy of minds in the brain, and that for the 'higher' one, the act of playing with both hands looks like a unique activity in which it can focus: the actual treatment is the feat of 'specialized' sub-minds that don't claim (normally) to be THE person playing. Every 'intuitive' act is atomic for the Self in that sense. Could it be otherwise? isn't it a consequence of the way the Talking Self is defined??
11/16/2011

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

12.9.2008 - Being an afterthought

From time to time, we are all (philosophical?) zombies! In fact, we are most of the time consciousless: most of what we do, we just do without really being aware of. Why then it looks like to ourselves as if we "are" there all the time? well, perhaps for the same reason that, at any time, it looks like to us that we are "seeing a perfectly detailed and total" image of the world with our eyes: because the potentiality of eliciting consciousness is there at any time: we can "switch" at any time a routine of "self awareness" so as to describe (to ourselves and to others) our current experience - but this does not mean that this routine is always on - nor that it need to be for us to "function" efficiently. We are not continuously scanning our actions, or at least not all the time with the same level of self-attention. Internal or external stimuli can switch this process on and off (cf. attentional self-less concept proposed in my boxedEg
Read more

Reinforcement Learning and the Ergodic Principle across the Multiverses

How we improve a chatbot today? instead of creating a model of the mind, just use the universe to test the answers: the reaction of one person, a thousand, a million.. that’s how a reinforcement learning chatbot would learn today. Now, let’s apply the ergodic principle. Suppose that instead of learning over time , you learn over zillions of simultaneous trials. Now suppose on top of that, that you can try an answer not over a million, not over a googolplex of people, but on an infinity of individuals. All the individuals that compose the multiverse.  Suppose that the chatbot don’t even CARE about the “meaning” of the conversation, but instead of making the person smile, and be happy, and think the chatbot is intelligent - and not only right after its answer, but on all the multiverses that emerge from that interaction (perhaps also towards the past.. but I digress).  The point is: meaning may emerge by a blind measure of a single quantity , the purpose of the conversatio
Read more

Real or Virtual Matter - or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Matrix

Image
On the way to the Space Elevator, an improbable view pop ups through the hyperloop oval window. It is the fleeting mirage of a floating ocean - or a gargantuan aquarium - stealing an entire city block. For a fraction of a second I can hear it, smell it, taste it... that is, I feel the seashore with all my senses. It was late afternoon, and a kaleidoscopic (virtually out-of-this-world) sunset had transfixed me, so it takes me a moment to realize that such experience was anything but real. These were not whales, dolphins and fish - just holographic projections rendered in a carefully crafted simulation (kids these days probably don’t mind the distinction; I guess I am too old not to feel cheated).  Dancing voxels of light: not a single flying fish. A short multimedia choreography took my senses by surprise, prompting that primitive part of my brain always eager to believe. These were fish - these were somehow fish - claims an inner voice rapidly gaining ground in my mind [1]. The
Read more