44 replies to this topic

[macdog]

Okay, I'm going to propose a thought experiment that folks can do at home. This goes right to the heart of whether a Singularity is even possible. It's easy, and should only cost you $2.75 and literally 3 minutes of time when you choose to participate.

Here's my thinking:
The debate is between whether the mind is wholly a materially reductionist phenomenon (ie gray matter) and if it then we should be able to reproduce similiarly cognizant minds in some other subtrate (ie cyberneticallY)

OR

Some component of the mind is extrasomatic, connected to the baseline energy of existence, and not specifically resident in the skull. If so, this means that the mind is not reducible to mere systems of informatics and hence can not be reproduced cybernetically (I actually don't know that I'm saying specifically prohibits that, but let's use that as a working assumption).

Buy a set of six sided Dice. They usually come in packs of five, and are available for next to nothing at drug stores, book stores what not. If you don't have 5 dice, just note that but try to do a total of 15 total rolls. If any of the Dice fall off of you set feild, re-roll them.

Post the exact time from your time zone that you did the roll, and post the numbers you get. I'm looking for a relatively specific result, but let's set that up as a blind for now.

HONESTY COUNTS!!!!!

here are my rolls done at 12:24 EST
4-4-4-1-1
5-4-3-2-1
6-6-5-4-1

[Kalepha]

There are two instances of this thread, except that they have different titles. This is your most recent so I'll assume this is the one preferred. Hopefully administration will delete the other one.

Macgod, I noticed you kept your numbers from largest to smallest. Is that something we all need to take into account?

OK, here are my rolls.

11:50pm Central
4-4-4-3-2
6-6-6-4-3
5-4-3-3-2

*in suspense*

[d_m_radetsky]

whether the mind is wholly a materially reductionist phenomenon (ie gray matter) and if it then we should be able to reproduce similiarly cognizant minds in some other subtrate (ie cyberneticallY)

You're asking two questions here: If the mind is purely material, and whether if it were, we could use something other than grey matter. I know a lot of people around here think that the first just implies the second, but a) I'm not sure that's clear, and b) I suspect that may not be good for your test, whatever exactly it is. Now, I doubt you can say anything interesting with the rolls of dice, but even if you could, you'd want to ask only one question at a time.

Similarly, I don't know what you mean by "extrasomatic", so I'm just going to think of it as "Something really strange that minds do." Given that, the fact that my mind does not reside entirely within my skull does not mean that it's not entirely material, or not substrate independent. "This computer's program does not reside entirely within its hard disk" might make sense to us one day, though I'm not going to make a fool out of myself speculating how.

That said:

12:18 AM PST
5-3-2-2-5
5-1-3-3-1
6-4-6-5-1

[chubtoad]

16:01 Central Time
5,5,4,3,2
5,4,4,4,3
6,5,5,2,2

Is this some magic trick where we are going to add up are numbers, divide by something, and presto we all come out to the same number or something?

[macdog]

I really appreciate that despite the skepticism folks are still rolling the dice!

To define extrasomatic: Not a direct result/consequence of the body. To contrast, my digestive system is purely somatic. I don't digest food outside of my body, it all happens "in here".

The point of the experiment is that I have put an idea "out there" which will/won't affect the dice to a statistically significantly degree. I guess I'll just share the idea in it's simplest form: this thought form, let's think of it as an "entity" (as in independent of any of our individual minds) has a certain "affection" for prime numbers and odd numbers. It's true that me calling it a blind test isn't fair cause then I could just say the numbers are doing exactly what I want them to do no matter what happens. Another possibility is that Dice does not want to be told what he likes, and so swings the results against primes and odds. In any case, if the dice don't do anything statistically significant then you can chock that up to a win for the material reductionists.

Just don't you reductionists cheat!

6:56 PM EST
6-5-5-4-3
6-5-4-3-3
6-6-6-4-1

Obviously, there won't be much to analyze for awhile. My bet is that there are some much better mathematical minds on this board than mine. But here's a thought:1 & 3 are both prime and odd, 2 is prime. From 4-6 only 5 is both odd and prime So the average number that "Dice chooses" should be closer to the lower end than the higher end.

Let's just see what happens.

[chubtoad]

1 is not prime even though it is divisible only by itself and 1. I think it is defined as not prime or composite to make some abstract algebra theorems provable.

[d_m_radetsky]

if the dice don't do anything statistically significant then you can chock that up to a win for the material reductionists.

1) We aren't going to get enough data for them to do anything statistically significant.

2) What's the probability that a set of dice-rolling outcomes amounts to data which we can call statistically significant?

3) Can we find statistically significant data in any set of dice-rolling outcomes? For example, if I play with the data long enough, I might determine that the ratio of 4's to primes is equal to 5 (the number of dice!) times the percentage of roll sets that sum to a prime. But so what?

[macdog]

d_, If you can determine anything statistically you have a science. If the Dice do something statistically significant, especially following the "affections" I have described, then I think that says something about the mind having an extrasomatic component.

As far as getting enough data, if enough numbers are included into any consideration, it becomes enough data. Shall we say 1,000 rolls?

Here's another consideration: The chance of the dice coming up 1-3 or 4-6 is 50:50 BUT the sum of the numbers on the dice is 17, making the average value of the Dice 3.5, meaning that there is a slight tendency to an average over 1-3. I've predicted an average under that if my experiment works. The worst you have to lose is $2.50 on Dice and a few minutes of your time.

[macdog]

11:22 PM EST
6-5-4-3-1
6-5-5-3-3
6-5-3-3-1

[macdog]

As some highly legititmate questions have been asked about the real information in the potential data sets, I'm going to set some parameters, and people can feel free to question them or whatver.

Minimum number of rolls to input data: 15 in one hour period.

Max # of rolls: 45 in one 24 hour period in three rolls spaced at least on hour apart

Goal is to show an average numerical value below 3.

1,000 rolls will be considered initially indicative.

5,000 rolls will be considered evidentiary

10,000 rolls will be considered conclusive

If you consider that 10,000 rolls of Dice is 222 days of one person doing the max rolls, this experiment shouldn't take all that long. So far three people have participated, which makes for 2.5 month experiment.

Anyone can work the numbers as they wish.

[Kalepha]

Macdog, jes curious, is there a significance with time other than gaining some idea how long the experiment may take?

[chubtoad]

Here's another consideration: The chance of the dice coming up 1-3 or 4-6 is 50:50 BUT the sum of the numbers on the dice is 17, making the average value of the Dice 3.5, meaning that there is a slight tendency to an average over 1-3.

Some info from http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Dice.html.

For n s-sided dice the most likely role is given by,
P(n,s)=.5n(s+1)
for example 2 6-sided dice would give n=2 s=6 so
P=.5*2(6+1)=7
for 3 dice P=10.5
for 4 dice P=14
for 5 dice P=17.5
average of roll per dice for these values are 3.5 as you would expect since=(1+2+3+4+5+6)/6=3.5. Is that what you meant by the 3.5 that was above 3? It should be expected.

I'm not really sure what your hypothoses is. What outcomes of the huge data set would lead to a conclusion about whether the singularity is possible? There will be oddities in almost any data set, but unless you can predict them beforehand you really don't show much. Btw. you could write a simple formula on excel to for die rolls or would that skrew up the purpose of the experiment since it lacks the human contact?

[chubtoad]

6,2,2,2,1
5,4,2,2,1
6,5,2,2,1
23:27 central time

[chubtoad]

This better not be a 2* April Fools joke where mac has us all posting numbers like idiots and donating $2.50 to the local store.

[Kalepha]

23:53 Central

5 5 4 3 1
6 5 5 3 3
6 3 3 2 1

[chubtoad]

Okay I now see the hypothesis: Goal is to show an average numerical value below 3. What does this have to do with the singularity?

[chubtoad]

23:59 cen
5,5,6,4,4
6,4,4,3,1
5,4,2,1,1

[d_m_radetsky]

Okay, it's like this. First of all, if we're going to grant entities in (or however you want to think of the relationship) dice, I see no good reason why we should disallow similar entities in computers. That said, you said that 10000 rolls would be conclusive. Fine. I wrote a script that "rolled" 10000 D6's, 1000 times. It took that result, divided each value by 10000, and checked to see if any were under three. There were no matches. I repeated the experiment 10 times, and no matches in any single one. I considered repeating 100 times, but at that point, it seemed pretty stupid. Now, you could object that the computer is using a pseudo-random number generator, but that objection presupposes a kind of determinism that your argument seems to be opposed to.

But all this is entirely beside the point because I see no correlation between what you propose to show, and what you're looking for. Why does a statistical anamoly imply the existence of the entities you refer to, the non-reducible nature of the universe, or the impossibility of implementing minds in machines?

[macdog]

Okay, lots of good questions. At the very least we're sparking some debate and that's a good thing always. It's not an April Fool's joke, sorry if you blew your last $2.50. I know that's like a whole frappucino.

I thought that including the time the rolls are made as just basically good for scientific rigor, since the date is already put on there by the posts. There doesn't seem to be any reason to include geography, which is implied by noting our time zones or whatver.

d_, The reason I'm not going for computer generated numbers is because there is no physical 3 dimensional component to it. Well, of course, sure there is. The numbers happen on an electronic substrate or whatever. By using physical dice, individual hands, people, separated by space, drawn out through time my thinking is that if something statistically significant happens it's much more likely that this entity Dice has an actual presence. Using physical objects also does a wonderful job of focusing the mind, whereas just writing a little giddy-up-and-go applet to generate numbers doesn't quite do the same thing. Again we're getting into some of my more far out musings of resonant informatics. When I roll 5 dice and you roll 5 dice, we both have a very similiar subjective experience while creating a similiar objective moment of reality that nontheless contains an infinite amount of variability (as in no two rolls of dice will happen in exactly the same physical manner) and yet paradoxically create correlable (is that a word?) data sets.

Anyway, this is just supposed to be fun. It might even be informative.

[macdog]

12:37 A EST
6-4-4-3-2
6-6-6-3-3
5-4-1-1-1

Obviously, if I was cheating I'd stop rolling so many sixes!

[chubtoad]

5,4,3,2,2
6,5,3,3,1
5,5,5,1,1
15:48 Central

[chubtoad]

6,6,4,3,2
5,3,3,3,1
6,5,5,5,1
16:26 Central

[macdog]

18:16 EST
5-4-3-2-2
3-3-3-2-2
5-5-3-3-2

In addition to the goal being to get an average number below 3, I think finding a statistically significant prevalence of primes and odd numbers would also fit the parameters we've set for Dice.

[chubtoad]

Well if we get an average under 3 it is likely their will be a lot of primes and odd numbers. Primes 2,3,5 will likely be more common than the others if the average is <3 as will odds 1,3,5.

[chubtoad]

6,6,4,4,3
5,4,3,2,2
5,4,2,1,1
17:26 C

[chubtoad]

So.. macdog what is interesting about a statistically significant result averaging below 3? How is that at all related to the singularity?
6,4,4,4,3
4,4,2,1,1
6,4,3,2,2
17:37 C

[chubtoad]

6,6,6,5,3
5,4,4,3,2
4,3,3,2,1
18:07 C

[Kalepha]

18:18 C

5 4 2 2 1
3 3 3 2 1
6 6 3 4 2

[chubtoad]

18:21 C
6,5,5,3,2
6,5,5,3,1
6,5,5,4,2

[chubtoad]

18:49 C
6,3,2,2,1
4,4,2,1,1
6,6,4,3,1