[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

[Kelly Anderson]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 5:31 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at canonizer.com>wrote:

>
> Hi Kelly,
>
> Yes, definitely progress.  I would just provide some advice, in that I
> think you are getting side tracked on lots of irrelevant complex things
> that are leading you away from the simplicity that is important here.
>

There is nothing simple about this sort of thing, but I do find that I
often get side tracked.


> Just think of an idealized world where strawberries only reflect 650 NM
> light, which can easily be represented with a 1 (what we intend on
> picking), and leaves only reflect 700 NM light, which can easily represent
> with a 0 (what we don't want).  And only think of one redness quality and
> one greenness quality that we both agree is the middle of the road for both.
>

Ok.


> Also, we're talking about elemental qualities.  Some people think a single
> quale, is the entire supper complex emotional experience they have of life,
> and so they say my quale could not be felt by you, without you becoming
> me.  Of course THAT is true, but these experiences are built up out of, or
> painted with, elemental qualities that include the combination of simple
> elemental redness, a warmth feeling, our memories of everything to do with
> red, like blood.  The phenomenal knowledge of us perceiving this red, the
> phenomenal emotion, and so on.  All of this phenomenal knowledge is simply
> lots of elemental qualities our brain uses to 'paint' our conscious
> knowledge with.  And surely we will be able to 'eff' if you will, the
> qualitative elemental nature, to each other, and know if you are using my
> greenness, to represent the strawberry with, or if you are using some other
> phenomenal quality I have never experienced before in my life.
>

Ok.


> Also, you're starting to think sloppily when you say things like:
>
> <<<
> I can have a symbol "red" in a database, and if that is the result of a
> query issued by that camera device, then that recognition of red is no
> different than what happens from the query in my brain that comes up with
> the symbol "red".
> >>>
>

If you say so.


> All of that is the intermediate stuff, like the light, the eye, and
> everything.  They are all just random stuff, for which, if you interpret it
> to be 'red' that is what you have.  But without that interpretation, the
> light is just light, the +5 volts is just that, and nothing like a redness
> quality, or the property of the surface of the strawberry, it is being
> interpreted as representing.  The only thing that makes such abstract 'red'
> substrate independent, is the fact that there is a consistent hardware
> layer doing the interpretation, from whatever physical media you are using
> to represent it.  All that intermediate stuff can be thought of as 'red',
> but findamentally, none of it is anything fundamentally like the initial
> cause nor the final result of that perception of red process.
>
> Are we still on the same page?
>
>
I suppose, but I still don't know where you are trying to drive this bus.
There is a quality that is fundamental, that we agree on. Not sure why a
machine cannot also detect such a fundamental quality, but I'm listening.

-Kelly
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