Observations and Statements

Observation is made in one’s mind through seeing. It is a personal experience. It stays in one’s mind.

When the observation is stated, it can be shared with others or others can re-experience the same observation. Imagine you were on a bus and saw a mitten drop from a stroller because the baby threw it. You state it to let the parent know, or to let others notice it as well. Letting others notice is letting others re-experience (i.e. finding a dropped mitten) for themselves.

Knowing is a cognitive exercise based on language, names and words.  This requires imagination. Even if the parent were to close their eyes, they could imagine what happened. Because they know the mitten’s colour, shape and size, all details. On the other hand, letting others notice is a guiding re-experience of the same experience you had. They will find out exactly what was dropped.

Making a statement from an observation is a powerful tool for recalling later within one’s mind. Every moment, we are constantly experiencing a new environment. Every second, as long as our eyes are open, we see something. Imagine a surveillance camera monitoring a busy intersection without recording. Nothing stays still—every action appears on a camera monitor and then disappears. You might ask what the point of a surveillance camera without recording is. Indeed. But that’s us. We live in the flow of the moment—seeing without cognizing or super-transient cognition as no danger without memorization. However, a statement helps cognize, memorize and recall past moments. Recalling allows one to know one’s past experiences as what happened – cognitive memory. There is a recall without a statement, known as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Re-experiencing the past by visual memory flashing back. 

A statement of observation allows us to cognize the observation. A statement consists of names and words. Anything without a name is very difficult to recognize and recall later, unless the scene evokes a strong emotion, leaving a visual memory.    

Language-based cognition is extracting an object from the background scenery. On the other hand, a visual memory is a snapshot covering the background, allowing rediscovery of other background objects later. Rediscovery means making a statement from a visual memory. 

A statement of observation is equal to a cognition of the observation. Without a statement, one sees it but does not cognize it.

A similar thing occurs in drawing. Without cognizing, one cannot draw any. The kids’ drawings at an early age show this particularly – tadpole person drawings. A face with hands and legs but no trunk. Of course, kids see the trunk. But it is not cognized by them. For kids, everyone is a face with hands and legs. Interestingly, in my daughter’s case, she drew a dog with a trunk. A dog had a face, ears, four legs and trunk!  What we see and what we cognize are different. Without cognition, we can not draw.

AI is interesting. It has no experience of its own, but is filled with knowledge, all written by names and words. It learned the frequency of connections between names and words. Then, it makes a statement. Because it has no experience, it has no idea what it exactly means. But it can answer a question correctly, because both a question and an answer are statements.

Does AI cognize anything without its own experience? Yes, it does. We know that as face recognition. During a training session of machine learning, AI reviews training images and learns the geometric patterns of key facial features. This is experience.

However, this experience is very different from the human experience.

Our experience has never occurred in one single sense. We experience each moment with all our seven senses – visual (eyes), auditory and gravity (ears), smell (nose), taste (tongue), and touch and heat (skin).

What do you imagine when you hear the word, apple? A red apple? Yellowish? Whole or cut pieces? Its smell? A bag of apples or an apple tree? An apple pie or a core after being eaten? Crispy texture or biting noise?  A shelf in a grocery store or a girl who always ate an apple for lunch during your high school time?  No word is alone, as no object is an independent isolation.

What the word ‘apple’ evokes in one’s mind is tightly linked with one’s experience. On the other hand, if you had never seen an apple in real life but only in a textbook, you have the knowledge of what an apple is, but no more than that. What you may know is that ‘apple’ is a type of fruit and can be used for a pie. On the other hand, two words like  ‘apple’ and ‘guitar’, or ‘apple’ and ‘submarine’, do not often go together.  Some may start linking them to Apple Records and the Beatles. AI is just playing this without knowing what an apple exactly is.

Interestingly, our current education style is quite similar. They memorize names and words as knowledge without experience. Then, they are evaluated in exams to determine whether their knowledge is correct. Often, without knowing what those names and words actually represent. Words go into their minds and straight back out as words without any stagnation associated with original objects and thoughts. They know what each name or word means and how to use them in exams, but nothing will be evoked by it, perhaps except for a sleepless night before the exam.

Names and words represent objects, actions, feelings and thoughts. When two unrelated objects are accidentally located together in one’s experience, the two unrelated words might be linked in one’s mind, not in others. Very personal. When this is stated, the two words are linked in others’ minds, though the connection is weak. For example, The Moon and Sixpence. If you know the novel by Somerset Maugham, you recognize it as a book title. If not, two irrelevant random words have no meaning.

The beauty of our experience and imagination is that we can connect random words in the WRONG way. I don’t think that  AI can do that.

Laughter often comes from the wrongness of word usage. Laughter often comes from a gap between words and the context.

You may compare this to AI’s hallucinating statements. The difference is that AI does not know awkwardness; it just makes up based on the previously installed dots and connections. For us, not making up, we have experienced it or noticed the link. The one making the statement knows the awkwardness of word selection but realizes that this awkwardness has captured something new that is reproducible.

Names and words represent things, including their associated properties (e.g., colour, smell, texture, etc.) and experiences. Names and words also abstract and extract things from a series of non-stop, continuous moments of our senses. Names and words are context-dependent. But the context is rarely stated because most communications occur between those who already share it. However, we must realize that the context is always local and temporal. No uniform and eternal context.

AI doesn’t age. AI doesn’t move. AI has no mood. AI doesn’t die. AI doesn’t laugh.

What makes us laugh?  

In the eternal uniform world, does laughter exist?