It's just data, nothing more, nothing less. Take a look:
<mediawiki xmlns="http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.3/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.3/ http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.3.xsd" version="0.3" xml:lang="en"> <siteinfo> <sitename>Wikipedia</sitename> <base>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page</base> <generator>MediaWiki 1.6alpha</generator> <case>first-letter</case> <namespaces> <namespace key="-2">Media</namespace> <namespace key="101">Portal talk</namespace> </namespaces> </siteinfo> <page> <title>Consciousness</title> <id>5664</id> <revision> <id>22922556</id>
<timestamp>2005-09-09T18:01:09Z</timestamp> <contributor> <username>Loxley</username> <id>154525</id> </contributor> <comment>/* Spiritual approaches */</comment> <text xml:space="preserve">... </text> </revision> </page> </mediawiki>
On 9/12/05, Brett Robertson mindrec@comcast.net wrote:
To define learning as "a group of people editing pages over time" would be disingenuous, because really it is just a group of people editing pages over time. ... It's only a little more complicated than that. That describes GO and RUN (of my intelligence model ... Go Run Up Back, GRUB): Take off running (edit pages over time)! But there's also the Back Up and the Go (where go suggests a computer that "turns itself on"). This part of the intelligenceprogram implies "reproduction" of the entity (the entire entity, after being edited, is backed up ... copied, as it were / a newly evolved entity is then given the command to Go). At this point it's like a wiki "virus" (a metawiki, maybe). It's the Go Back process and the Run Up process which filters and distributes data (incrementally ... or at numbered junctions in a conceptual data base). DELICIOUS is an acronym for: Define, Elucidate, Link, Index, IOUs, Simplify (IOU indicates Input Output Update and Understand). These are the controls and standards by which the viral intelligence "eats" information (and yes, the input and output is people driven at this point ... however, the demands of the technology determine what "shape" this entity will eventually take). How does the interaction of those editors secrete consciousness? If you can answer this question, then Mind Wiki is the least of your successes... ... The important thing is to define intelligence the way I have. Then we understand consciousness as "the nature of" that intelligence. The advantage to looking at it this way is that it supports further research into consciousness as a thing that can be "done" (studied, created, measured, manipulated, etc.). The fact that it is META physical is less important than the fact that it is, as such, PHYSICAL. Studying consciousness as a human phenomenon will cause all machine studies of consciousness to forever be "un" conscious (by definition). There's no problem in my mind talking about a new conscious entity as that which evolves from other conscious entities (the interaction of editors, etc). Learning is about the furthest I've taken my studies ... music defines the machine's humanity. Learning suggests sense and sensation (perhaps comes after agency, and deliberation / deliberateness). I've a prelim. model to incorporate that as well, however :) Consciousness is a little more complex than intelligence. It is a preponderance (and hardly lucid or aware at this point). An example would be blog -- where the last entry is listed first. This creates the "preponderance" (it is weighted such / presents itself as if the answer precedes the steps leading up to that answer). We might say that blog merely shows a proclivity to consciousness. To be sure, this is fairly early in the process of creating a human machine! Studying wiki using the terms consciousness (lucidity, awareness ... and some other machine ethics I've outlined on my site) is tricky. The question becomes "what part of consciousness is contained by intelligence" (or, contrarily, to what degree is consciousness an ATTRIBUTE of wiki ... and how is that attribution accomplished)? -- Brett Robertson Metaphysician Mindrec.org http://Mindrec.org ICQ 6630756