[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[Brent Allsop]

At 05:15 AM 11/26/2005, gts wrote:
>On Thu, 2005-11-24 at 16:34 -0500, John K Clark wrote:
>
>>We might value such a [qualia] gene a great deal but to Natural
>>Selection it's useless, in fact to Natural
>>Selection it's invisible.
>
>Why useless and invisible? Presumably animals run from forest fires
>because they smell, hear, see, or feel them. All qualia.
>
>-gts

But we can also program "zombie" machines to do the same thing.  The 
difference is - they wouldn't do it as efficiently.  Qualia are a 
very powerful and intelligent way to represent diverse kinds of 
information.  Some things we really have a hard time representing 
with mere abstract programming or mere numbers.  Motivation is 
another thing that is very difficult (though not impossible) to 
program - yet something that qualia accomplishes naturally and simply.

Nature obviously has phenomenal properties - why wouldn't evolution 
discover and utilize these powerful tools to make us more intelligent 
and motivated - and hence more survivable?

Brent Allsop