[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 03:16:56PM -0500, gts wrote:

> Thinking about insects, probably they live entirely in the present, with  
> no self-concept and zero recall of their qualia.... something like  
> watching a movie frame by frame but always forgetting the previous frames.

You are wrong, again. It is nice if you spin all kinds of alternative
reality models, but please don't sell them for the real thing to a
gullible public.

Your attempts at resurrecting animism in new clothing is duly noted,
and rejected. Animals, even primitive animals, are different from rocks.
There's further a fundamental difference between one transistor, and >10^9 
transistors arranged in form of a computer. Your transistor can't play
chess. Your computer can. There is really a difference between
those two.
 
> We can then ask the same question about even lower organisms like  
> bacteria, which unlike flies have no obvious sense organs. My imagination  

But of course bacteria have sense organs, and means of processing. 
I suggest you stop speculating on how things might have turned out
if $deity didn't have a proboscis, and hit your local university
library instead. Lots of yummy juicy knowledge nectar can be had there.

> does not stretch that far, but I note that the sense organs of the fly are  
> made of the same basic building blocks that make bacteria, and that  
> bacteria do sense their environments in more primitive ways. Like flies  
> they don't realize that they can sense their environments, but it's a  
> plain fact that they do.

You're either an elaborate troll, on on some really excellent drugs.
Can I have some of whatever you've been smoking?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.leitl.org
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