h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Taking it from the most rudimentary level, opponent process mechanisms of compensation, first described in connection of studies of visual sensory perception, but also relevant with respect to all the great emotional dualities and the more fundamental duality of pleasure and pain, while they superficially resemble binary codes of the kind characteristic of cybernetics, are actually organized on a 'sum equals zero' principle, rather than the simpler 'on' or 'off' switches characteristic of cybernetic binaries, on a great many sensory and perceptual threads, rather than the single one characterizing cybernetic binaries.

For example, if its night vision, recorded on the visual rods in the retina, there are two neurotransmitters representing light (or white) and darkness (or black).

Given a sensation of white or a perception of darkness, the visual rod either is or is not stimulated, the respective neurotransmitters for either are 'fired', generating a neural signal, then, reflexively, the opposite neurotransmitter is fired, canceling the signal of the first, clearing the neuroreceptor, preparing it for the next signal.

The paired neurotransmitters, called 'component', coding for a sensation or perception and 'anticomponent', coding for cancellation of the sensory or perceptual component, can be represented numerically as '+1', component, and '-1', anticomponent, the two taken together under the 'sum equals zero' principle clearing the neurone, put it back into its 'zero' or ground state.

Similar principles operate with tactile 'heat' and 'cold' sensations, though in this case, the separate sensations are generated by separate neuroreceptor sensory cells, in the same manner that red and green sensitivity in the visual cortex in produced by separate kinds of color sensitive cone cells.

Sensations and perceptions are distinguished on the point of whether the signal originates in an actual sensation produced by external stimulation of the sensory apparatus, or is instead a subjective artifact of neural processing.

In normal* visual processing, only white, red, green and blue are represented by actual sensations; black, yellow and all other color is perceptual.

Most of one's experience, though founded on sensation is perceptual.




Something a bit more profound in the genre, with catatonic schizophrenia, one of the most devastating of the organic or physiological psychiatric disorders, catatonic schizophrenics can be temporarily brought out of the catatonic state by means of l-dopa therapy.

The remission is temporary though, and the patient quickly relapses to the catatonic state, suggesting that while l-dopa physiology is involved, the actual root of the disorder is in l-dopa related opponent process mechanisms of compensation; that the dysfunction is in the compensatory processes re-setting neuroreceptor and neuroreceiver cells to the ground state, preparing them for new sensations or perceptions.




*Besides the various kinds of color blindness, some people, called tetrachromes, to date all of them known women, have an additional color vision cone in the retina, overlapping the range of the conventional red sensitive cone, but probably also extending a little into the near infrared.

touch receptors are weird... tust me having lost mine, then partially regained them, but finding it isn't quite right, ; largely probably due to now not having appripiate receptors that feedback on the spatial positioning of my hands, arms legs etc. - no wonder I feel I'm just existing in a nothing... its... very surreal

"your either 'on' or 'off' for a given 'point', on a spectrum, therefore its always trying to fit something inheriently not binary, into a binary point... which is of course always a bit rubbish, as non one really fits neatly into even a series of infinatly delimitated divisions of a range, or spectrum" [2Legs]

Caveat emptor!

I get the example of night vision. I also get the principle of hearing tests: at some gradation of sound, you can no hear the sounds. What I'm skeptical about is that researchers understand things as well as they *think* they do. As Will Rogers said, "It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so."

In late-17th Century Paris, a doctor proposed cleaning up the streets as a means of reducing the incidence of infectious diseases, and the other doctors laughed him out of town.

If reality isn't really binary, can we understand it by putting it into binary form?

not at all rust me... reality isn't real any more than... anything is... its all perceptional and ... an individuals perception is not only differnt to that of another individual's, but, trust me... one's o own perception can alter, hugely, in a short period, thanks to disruptions and distruction of sensory receptors etc often in quite odd and subtle ways and, not always directly conscious either

Opponent process mechanisms of compensation are not all there is to the process of consciousness.

The mechanisms as described are well founded, there's abundant physiological psychology literature on the opponent process model of sensory perception and tbe model itself was constructed on a basis of 1930s empiric studies of visual processes.

Simply restructuring cybernetic machine languge under the 'sum equals zero' model would not of itself invest the machine with consiousness.

I think that the 'pleasure/pain' principle is more fundamental.

Cybernetic devices a priori do not have any way of guaging pro-survival vs contra-survival responses.

This is why AI programs like "Cleverbot" don't succeed.

The machine is incapable of taking pleasure in correct responses and incapable of developing avoidant habits with respect to inappropriate responses.

Building appropriate biases founded on human operator responses would do more to improve capacity for social learning than any restructuring of machine language could achieve, something akin the positive reinforcement a human infant gets when they say something intelligible or appropriate to situation.

AI programs of the type simply are not equipped to apprpriately weight human responses to their own responses and this is capacity that can only be built up on a basis of a record of human responses biased according to appropriatenees and acceptability, 'social learning' that accumulates in the subconscious mind with humanity.

Beyond that, the machine needs to be constantly evaluatic its own responses at the preconscious level against its subconsciosness index of appropriateness, which is in turn developed on a basis of human evaluations of machine responses.

Pardon the typos.

"there's abundant physiological psychology literature on the opponent process model of sensory perception and the model itself was constructed on a basis of 1930s empiric studies of visual processes.
Simply restructuring cybernetic machine language under the 'sum equals zero' model would not of itself invest the machine with consciousness" [ITIWBS]

I appreciate that, and I admire the scientists who have worked painstakingly on the process. There's a semantic element that can wreak havoc with the public's willingness to embrace the findings, though. Most of us hear that something has been described as a "syndrome," and the assumption is that the person who has it is damaged at best, and harmful to society at worst. Some of us are shy. Some are outgoing. So what? Most of us get our lives sorted out sooner or later, and choose careers or life paths that suit us pretty well. That does not seem to me like having a syndrome....