Concept: Society of mind (Mind constituted by independent agents)

[Lucasxp64]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind

Quote

 

Nature of mind[edit]

A core tenet of Minsky's philosophy is that "minds are what brains do". The society of mind theory views the human mind and any other naturally evolved cognitive systems as a vast society of individually simple processes known as agents. These processes are the fundamental thinking entities from which minds are built, and together produce the many abilities we attribute to minds. The great power in viewing a mind as a society of agents, as opposed to the consequence of some basic principle or some simple formal system, is that different agents can be based on different types of processes with different purposes, ways of representing knowledge, and methods for producing results.

This idea is perhaps best summarized by the following quote:

What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle. —Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind, p. 308

 

I find this concept pretty close to how I can directly inspect on my own mind. Nothing new here, I just thought it was nice to share it, since I saw it being referenced on a Reddit post I found through googling about Large Language Models (LLMs).:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/10ybsjf/theory_of_mind_may_have_spontaneously_emerged_in/

It's pretty obvious to me LLMs are in PRACTICE some sort of mind, even though it's highly debatable how that emergent phenomena works (i.e. data vs raw intelligence, stochastic parrots, etc.).

Well, from the field of cybernetics, we know the threshold for an "entity" can be pretty low, i.e.: human organizations. But, LLMs have passed an entirely new threshold, both in a theoretical and practical way.

Edited April 21, 2024 by Lucasxp64

[Lucasxp64]

Btw, to me consciousness is different from mind. What scientific-minded people call "human consciousness" is merely describing the localized human mind, that's part of the bigger set of consciousness.

I haven't seen yet infinite consciousness like how Leo says - it just looks very murky/theorical to me anything beyond my mind and what it's fabricating, but I've had a lot of deep insights on my own mind. i.e.: A la "Book of not knowing" by Peter Ralston.