[ExI] a fun brain in which to live

[Brent Allsop]

Spike,

Hope you don't mind if I get back to this discussion, and probe a bit more.

This is definitely a good response, and I know what you mean by being 
interested mostly just in the world which can be represented by equations.

I just have one question.  Do you ever think of uploading?  Or of having 
your mind being run on another computer?  Obviously, there is the stuff 
going on in your mind, and there is the stuff going on in my mind, and 
with the uploaded mind, there would be the stuff going on in that mind 
also...

Right now, the left side of your visual field is represented in the 
right hemisphere, and the right side in the other hemisphere.  Obviously 
these two are merged together, so you know what each is like, all 
together in the same mind.

I'm glad you'd like to try on my brain, and I'd hope you'd like to also 
experience what your upload brain is like, at the same time you are 
experiencing your brain.

Sure, all this behavior could be modeled by equations, but how do you 
glue it all together, in a phenomenal way, so you know what it is all 
phenomenally like?

If you are interested in imagining what uploading, and the future is 
going to be like, is not this kind of stuff one of the most important 
parts?  Isn't knowing that a red quality is not a property of the 
strawberry, but instead is a property of your knowledge of such?  A 
property of something in your brain, and that this property can be 
merged with all the rest of your phenomenal knowledge?  We should be 
able to capture such merging together with equations, but till you eff 
them, and share them, we'll never really know what they are like.

Brent Allsop



On 2/6/2011 11:20 AM, spike wrote:
>>> Likewise, yours is a brain I would like to try on, just to figure out
>>> what is qualia.  I confess I have never understood that concept, but
>>> do not feel you must attempt to explain it to me...  spike
>
> Brent it isn't so much a problem with the concept of qualia, rather it is
> just me.  I live in a world of equations.  I love math, tend to see things
> in terms of equations and mathematical models.  Numbers are my friends.  I
> even visualize social structures in terms of feedback control systems,
> insofar as it is possible.  Beyond that, I don't understand social systems,
> or for that matter, anything which cannot be described in terms of systems
> of simultaneous differential equations.  If I can get it to differential
> equations, I can use the tools I know.  Otherwise not, which is why I seldom
> participate here in the discussions which require actual understanding
> outside that limited domain.
>
> The earth going around the sun is a great example.  With that, I can write
> the equations, all from memory.  I can tweak with this mass and see what
> happens there, I can move that term, derive this and the other, come up with
> a whole mess of cool new insights, using only algebra and calculus.
> Mathematical symbols are rigidly defined.  But I am not so skilled with
> adjectives, nouns and verbs.  Their definitions to me are approximations.  I
> don't know how to take a set of sentences and create a matrix, or use a
> Fourier transform on them, or a Butterworth or Kalman filter, or any of the
> mind-blowing tools we have for creating insights with mathematized systems.
>
> All is not lost.  In the rocket science biz, we know we cannot master every
> aspect of everything in that field.  Life is too short.  So we have a
> saying: You don't need to know the answer, you only need to know the cat who
> knows the answer.
>
> In the field of qualia, pal, that cat is you.  Qualia is the reason
> evolution has given us a Brent Allsop.
>
> So live long, very long.
>
> spike
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