[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[Marc Geddes]

>Prediction is the essence of intelligence (see Jeff Hawkins' book "On
Intelligence"), and understanding is the job of an intelligence. I am
completely satisfied with this form of understanding, as applied to anything
that I want to understand. Give me the predictive capacity to let me master
the future, and I will be as content as a yogi achieving nirvana.

Rafal,

Prediction is indeed a major part of intelligence but not the only part.  I
think there are more abstract conceptions of causality than just physical
causality.

I think a more accurate definition of intelligence would be that
intelligence is the ability to achieve one's goals efficiently.  But even
this is not the *true* definition of intelligence I think.

I think the *true* definition of intelligence is that intelligence is the
ability to integrate different kinds of knowledge into a single explanatory
framework.  To be more precise, intelligence is ultimately the ability to
fully integrate explanations about functional systems with explanations
about memes.

>I feel reasonably confident that the progress of science will bring us
predictive understanding of qualia - being able to manipulate, elicit,
change and extinguish them at will. This understanding will be like
the understanding we have of circles, which we can draw without
fathoming their true Circle-nature. I am equally convinced that no
mystic understanding of qualia will flow directly follow from this
feat, since I think that the relevant parts of the temporal lobe are
quite resistant to frontal influences, at least in some people.

Whilst all the evidence would indicate that qualia are entirely *caused by*
and *dependent on* physical processes, it is still an open question whether
qualia are illusions (i.e they are really material processes) or whether
qualia have a reality over and above the physical processes which gave rise
to them.  The latter position can still be maintained - philosopher David
Chalmers is the leading proponent of this view-point.

In the battle of wits between me and Sing Inst, my gloves are starting to
come off boy.

The mists covering my eyes from the nature of intelligence/mind have started
to clear a little.  The mysteries of mind are actually beginning
to crumple under my intellectual onslaught!   :)


--
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
-William Blake

Please visit my web-site:
http://www.riemannai.org/
Sci-Fi, Science and Fantasy
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