[ExI] Flash of insight...

Alan Grimes agrimes at speakeasy.net
Thu Nov 4 05:04:47 UTC 2010


chrome://messenger/locale/messengercompose/composeMsgs.properties:

>>> I look forward to soon
>>> knowing first hand just how diverse your experience of yourself are,
>>> Alan, compared to my own.
>> ????

>> How do you propose to do that?

> You haven't read chapters 5 and 6 of 1229 Years After Titanic yet, have
> you?

> http://home.comcast.net/~brent.allsop/1229.htm#_Toc22030742
> <http://home.comcast.net/%7Ebrent.allsop/1229.htm#_Toc22030742>

=\
I skimmed those again, they just seemed to be a random collection of
vague statements or dialogue beginning with "I". =\

If you want to see how to write in the first person, read Orange Sky by
myself. =P Problem is, I don't have it up on the web right now and since
the thing is over 300k in length, it'd take weeks to convert it to html
format. I was thinking of publishing it but then I'd have to rewrite it
and I was running out of creative energy before I even finished it. =\

> To start, if we happen to represent things very similarly, there is a
> chance something like an FMRI will be able see enough resolution of
> neural operation to tell us that my experiences are very similar to
> yours - or not.  There may be other tricks, like using cameras and
> goggles to induce one of us to experience things the way the other
> does.  (Again, being confirmed by the FMRI like device observing us
> achieving similar responsible neural correlates - and then saying:
> "There, you have it, that is what it is like for Alan.)

Implausible.

The proposal fails to account for dimorphisms in the neural architecture
that are at the heart of what's being discussed. ie: our neural networks
might be incapable of simulating the other without in some ways becoming
the other, so you couldn't just "sample" it like a taste test. The
proposal doesn't even account for getting even that far.

> Ultimately, though, as predicted by brilliant V.S. Ramachandran, we need
> to do between brains, what the corpus calosum is doing between our brain
> hemispheres.  We need to eff the ineffable - as in oh THAT is what salt
> tastes like for you.  Such a connecting 'cable of neurons' will enable
> our conscious models of reality worlds to subjectively merge.  When I
> hug my spouse, currently I only experience half of what is going on. 
> With this kind of a hook up, I'll be able to experience it all, just as
> I now do for both the right and left half of my body and world of about
> 2 miles in both directions - represented by both hemispheres - right
> hemisphere representing my lift body/world and visa verse.

Now that is an interesting proposal. In my Tortoise Vs. Achilles dialogs
I have a character, a borganism, who has a true single consciousness
across several bodies. (Look, I've written ten times as much as you and
I'm better at it too!, I just don't go around citing it as if it were a
classic or peer reviewed literature).

I'm extremely cautious with the word "need" but yes, the ability to set
such up between brains and, more importantly, between a brain and a
computronium counterpart would be extremely useful. It definitely falls
within the category of Real Transhumanism (tm).

> And, as predicted in the 1229 story, our 'spirits' will freely traverse
> between such consciously connected phenomenal worlds.  We'll be making
> unimaginable phenomenal worlds exponentially more diverse and which
> nobody has yet experienced anything phenomenally like yet, and so much
> more.  Not to mention we'll finally know 'what it is like to be a bat'
> or a snail.... as we grow toward becoming omni phenomenal and realizing
> that all of nature is so much more than just cause and effect behavior.

Predictions of this sort are useless because they don't lead towards
meaningful action.

The correct way to think about this is "Do you want to do this or do you
not want to do it?"

With the answer to that in hand, the next question is "So what are you
going to do about it, huh? punk... What are you going to do!".

Me? I'm going to get my self a NAO, and a personal supercomputer and
solve AI. After that it's off to the races...


> I know how the light of a sunset behaves, and what my brains
> representation of a sunset is phenomenally like.  The real question is,
> what is the actual sunset really phenomenally like.

I'm not sure that question is meaningful.

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