[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[Robin Hanson]

Pardon me for entering this conversation late.  I've been mulling.

On 11/23/2005, Brent Allsop wrote:
> > But how will you know if your theory is correct, how do you test it?
>
>You guys must not be listing to what I am saying either that or be very
>unclear on the concept of what I am trying to say.  Why do you keep saying
>this?  The proof is in the effing!  The ultimate absolute proof will
>eventually come when we join our minds together into grand unified conscious
>worlds (spirit worlds if you will) made of shared phenomenal properties.
>
>Right now, when I hug my wife, I am only aware of half of the phenomenal
>sensations.  I only know what it is "like" for me.  My prediction is that
>once we can eff, and so on, we will eventually be able to engineer ways to
>join our minds together (similare to the way our left and right hemisphere
>are joined) so that in addition to being aware of what I am feeling, I will
>also be aware of what she is feeling.  Why is this such a difficult thing
>for people to grasp?  If anything like this happens, this will prove that
>qualia exist since we will be engineering systems that use qualia to
>represent information like our brain does and manipulating the qualia in our
>own minds.  After reading this, how can someone ask: "how do you test it?"

But how will you know *that* you are effing?  Say we find some weird particle
that interacts with brains and correlates with states of awareness.  Say with
the help of such particles we let you and your wife mix up your minds, so
that your brain gets input directly from her brain.  How will you know this
isn't just some fancy hookup to her brain-as-computer that allows you to
treat her as a video game?  How will you know you are accessing her qualia?



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323