[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[John K Clark]

"The Avantguardian" <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>

> It all depends on your definition of intelligence.

I don't have a definition of intelligence and don't need or want one; 
examples are far more important than definitions. Intelligence is the sort 
of thing that Einstein had and rocks do not.

> the example of animals running from a forest fire and this is
> obviously a rational choice for the animals.

Then machines have been rational for many years, any engineer with a few 
transistors could cobble together a machine that moved away from a heat 
source, and even bacteria move toward and away from various chemical 
gradients. That's not the sort of thing I mean when I say "Einstein was 
intelligent", and if you're honest with yourself that's not the sort of 
thing you mean either.

> if the two phenomena were 100% correlated, one would have to
> admit that a bacterium was a tiny bit conscious.

Yea, and a cigarette lighter and a Supernova are really the same thing 
because they both produce a ball of plasma.

 > it simply means that most people prefer conscious
> mates to unconscious ones

And how can people tell if their mates (or anybody else for that matter)
are conscious or unconscious? By the same way Natural Selection can tell,
by way they behave of course.

   John K Clark