Understanding Other Minds

Defining an epistolution test is a hard challenge. We have debated the minimal conditions we have to meet for several years, and the conversation never gets old, and so far never gets resolved. Since the clear examples we have of subjective knowledge all come from our own complex human umwelten, its quite a work of imagination to consider what the umwelt of a very simple epistevolver might be like, or what sort of changes it might provoke in a very simple resonant system. Even the language we might use to describe the parameters of a test isn’t developed yet and has to be assembled on-the-fly. Basically we are looking for a process that forms a new habit without entirely losing its old habits. It absorbs aspects of a pattern that can harmonize with the patterns already absorbed. It effects the partial accommodation of new waves, and the partial interference with them. It engenders the capability of action and perception in one seamless process. And so on.

We know that memory is the residue of sets of waves. It also occurs to us that memory is obliterating the vast majority of waves that enter through the doors of perception which are either entirely expected, or entirely discordant with the resonant pattern embodied by the mind. Only the slightly discordant is perceived and attention flows to it to resolve its contradictions. What is the minimal test for this process? Write to us if you have thoughts. Here are some of the models that have been tried so far:

These are test configurations that have been conjectured at various times.

2025

TalkingOctopus Business Plan. Link Here

Agential Engineers Experiment Designs. Link Here

Research Proposal for Agential Engineers. PDF Here

2024

Pans on Wire Test conjecture. PDF Here

2023

“Stynker” by Hector Lopez Lemus Python program in GitHub see: Link Here

To read the journal progress Link Here.

“Stynker” by Hector Lopez Lemus