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  Brent Allsop

  31 July 2008 | 14:13

  [ Permalink ]

  Steve (Yoduuh), over on jcs-online made a great post suggesting some methodology for coming up with some consensus definitions of consciousness:

  http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/jcs-online/message/6291

  I completely agree with him that such an endeavor is important. Rigorous and efficient collaborative methodologies of how to do just this and so much more has been our goal with the grass roots effort over at http://canonizer.com.

  Steve has pointed out some of the problems of such efforts, many of which can be resolved using techniques employed at http://canonizer.com.

  I’ve reposted his great post here, with some inserted information about some of the http://canoizer.com methods for resolving some of these problems in an effort to seek more collaboration, feedback, and ideas along these lines.

  ---

  yoduuh,

  I’m very glad that you are thinking this much about what I agree is a
  very important and necessary endeavor. It appears that we are not the
  only ones thinking along these lines, as there is a popular discussion
  also going on over on the “Brain Physiology, Cognition and Consciousness
  on Nature Network” forum here: http://network.nature.com/forum/bpcc.
  I’d like to repost your comments over there, along with my comments, so
  let me know if you’d rather I didn’t do that.

  yoduuh wrote:
  >
  > In reply to Brent and Hans below,
  >
  > I suspect a better way to get some real progress on this definition
  > issue is to dedicate a reputable journal issue to 2-3 page definitions
  > of consciousness. Then follow that up online with a debate forum like
  > this one or those proposed here for a run-off. That will entice all
  > the serious players to offer something in enough detail to be coherent
  > – not limited to brief one liners – so they can explain themselves.

  There are several problems with doing things this way. First off, who
  decides which definitions make it, and which do not? Another critical
  problem is, once they are published things can’t be easily changed. And
  there are no capabilities that I know of to tally any results for any
  kind of a ‘run-off’.

  Precisely a process like you describe, and so much more, has already
  easily started at http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/71. There are already
  2 proposals each with one or so page descriptions. There is a powerful,
  reputation based ways to tally (canonize, if you will) results for which
  proposals everyone thinks are best. There is no need to limit any
  proposals, even if they are minority opinions (after all, a now minority
  opinion proposal could turn out the be the ‘correct’ one as could be
  demonstrated by scientific results soon to come in.) Nothing is static
  at canonizer.com. Statements for all camps can constantly improve as
  long as nobody in the ‘camp’ objects to the changes being proposed. Any
  changes that anyone is objecting to can be added to a ‘forked’ camp, and
  that camp can seek to gain more ‘support’ than the others – motivating
  camp participators to compromise with others in an effort to win more
  support or merge camps for the benefit of all… Again, all this
  ultimately resulting in well grouped, concisely stated camps with
  quantitative (canonized) measures of support.

  > Plus they will likely then get more feedback than they ever wanted
  > online.

  This is the biggest problem of all. You want way more than “more
  feedback than they ever wanted”, you want feedback from hundreds of
  thousands of participators. And you need it to all be grouped in
  similar camps, all concisely stated and quantitatively measured. Nobody
  has time to digest and quantify hundreds of thousands of individual
  responses, and this is the big problem. But canonizer.com is set up to
  easily collaboratively develop precisely what everyone thinks, concisely
  and quantitatively.

  > Onlookers can judge definitions for themselves. There could
  > even be a ‘membership’ poll for the top 5-10 to allow those authors to
  > submit something more detailed for publication after that.

  Where would this polling take place? There are public poll systems, but
  all of them suffer from the fatal flaw for which once the first vote is
  cast, the text of the voted for text can not change. As I indicated, at
  canonizer.com, everything is dynamic, real time, and constantly
  improving. People can jump camps any time they want as new scientific
  data comes in real time… Any camp statement can be improved at any
  time by anyone, as long as no supporters of that camp ‘object’. Even if
  you published new versions of the top camps monthly in journals, you’d
  still not approach the simple automatic history of the camp mechanism,
  and who supports each camp, and so on implemented at canonizer.com.

  > I do not
  > recommend the usual review process because so far with all the
  > consciousness related publications that have been accepted, precious
  > few have addressed this problem, and they get through (amazing).
  > After many years and many conferences, we have no agreement on what
  > the field is studying. I do not recommend an open “anything-goes”
  > online forum either. That will create a lot of noise that is hard to
  > sift through.

  Exactly. But one persons ‘noise’ is another persons theory one is
  willing to bet their eternal salvation on. I beleive the reason there
  has been so much lack of success with anything like this, is you’ve got
  to allow for lots of diversity, all prioritized any way anyone wants to
  prioritize it.

  > The problem with formal review is that the review process is such that
  > the one best definition might be left out due to inherent biases in
  > the selection process. That goes double for invited papers. By
  > limiting to a few pages on first pass, more voices can be heard.
  > Those can even be coauthored by teams or research labs where there is
  > local consensus (legislated or not).

  Exactly. I think we need teams of hopefully tens of thousands. And we
  need a networked based setup with rules that facilitate this kind of
  large scale cooperation and collaboration. And it needs to be a very
  dynamic real time system the ebs and flows as new evidence comes and and
  more people experience and learn and change camps or ‘teams’. And an
  accurate quantitative history needs to be maintained of all of this as
  it approaches whatever it is we will surely someday all accept as ‘the
  right’ theory.

  > If you open up a moderated forum on-line, same selection problem
  > exists, and possibly little incentive for some authors who would
  > rather go on record in print and get credit for their views. Papers
  > that can be cited seem to still rule. You can see that somewhat here.
  > With some exceptions the more well known seldom comment except to
  > make an announcement. Sometimes this all looks like a fight club with
  > the titans watching the ring from a monitor in the poker room.

  canonizer.com clearly tracks who is in what camp, and who is making what
  contributions. You can set the ‘as of’ selector on the side bare to see
  what was the current ‘state of the art of the theory’ at any time in the
  past. All credit will be plainly tracked for all those responsible for
  any contributions. And even more importantly, canonizers will be able
  to use who was in the ‘right’ camp the soonest when determining who gets
  the most influential vote for the current camps going forward, and so on.

  As far as what is required for ‘citation’ this can also be elegantly and
  easily accomplished at canonizer.com. A particular journal may specify
  or develop a particular ‘canonizer’ to produce a quantitative score.
  Only camps that achieve that particular canonized score threshold would
  be accepted as citable for articles published. For example, today, a
  journal could specify that a score of 30, as defined by the PhD
  canonizer on the side bar, indicating that 30 PhDs supported the
  particular camp statement that would then be accepted as cite-able in
  articles being published. Or the journal could specify a set of ‘peers’
  with one vote each, all other votes being ignored. Once any statement
  met the required threshold of having enough supporting pears, the
  statement would then be accepted as citable in that journal. And of
  course, more sophisticated, rigorous, and more generally accepted
  ‘canonizers’ would surely eventually be developed for such as things
  progressed.

  > 2 cents,
  > Steve

  I think this is worth much more than just 2 cents. And one hundred
  million times 2 cents is more than $1 million. And we can all afford 2
  easy cents right? As long as we have an appropriate dynamic real time
  system that can appropriately combine all this in easy and powerfully
  collaborative ways. If everyone contributes even just a bit, we can end
  up with something truly phenomenal enabling us to move forward in
  powerful ways.

  Also, if anyone has any other ideas of how to do these kind of systems,
  proposals for other ‘canonizer’ algorithms, or anything, the canonizer
  itself is being developed by a canonization process, and the grass roots
  developers are always open to all contributions by anyone to improve
  things. Our goal is to make it as much as possible what everyone
  wants. Let us know (i.e. canonize) what you want, we are at your service.

  Upward,

  Brent Allsop