[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Spike,

Yes, you've got it.  (qualia is plural, for all of them, and quale is
singular for just one, like elemental redness)

Qualia are not quantitative, they are qualitative.  So you don't describe
them with equations, you simply discover and build a map of which physics
it is, in which state, (if you are a material fundamentalist.  or what
information it arises from, if an information fundamentalist...) that have
which qualitative properties.

We just need to realize most of us are currently limited to 3 primary
colors to paint our conscious knowledge with, but you can theoreize that
maybe there are more crayons out there I could discover and paint an
amplified conscious knowledge with, so what might those other colors be
like?  So you go out and discover thousands more, and then you have a lot
more colorful diversity enabling you to paint knowledge of much more of the
electromagnetic spectrum, and a lot of other things, with.  To say nothing
of what our limited effing sexual life, and so on, could become like, and
so on.


Kelly Anderson asked:
<<<
Can you explain how consciousness and qualia arise from collections of
neurons? That is the closest thing to magic that I am aware of on this
planet. If we get to the point of removing the magic and replacing that
with science, then and only then will we know enough to determine what's
happening inside of another sort of head.
>>>

We don't know why the laws of physics work the way they do, we just know
that they do work this way.  And the fact that we have discovered how this
magic reality works is what enables Spike to design systems that can dance
in the heavens.  For all we know, there could be Gods out there pushing the
planets around, and so on.   Whatever this magic is, doesn't change what we
need to do to dance in the hevans.

Similarly, whatever it is that has a redness quality, we don't need to know
why it has it, or why it arises from whatever it arises from, we just need
to discover what it is that is responsible for each of them.  So we can see
how others conscious knowledge compares to our own by observing their
knowledge, and so we can discover what other colors can arise from what
else is out there, and so on.  So we can start doing phenomenally godly
things like expanding ourselves in the direction of becoming omni
phenomenal.

Is there an infinite number of different crayons to be discovered?  Boy,
what would a picture with all that be like?  Or, just as there is a limited
number of elements, are there a limited number of elemental phenomenal
qualities correlated to sets of them?  Obviously science has an answer for
such questions just waiting for us to discover.  We just first need to know
what to look for (qualities), where to look for them (not on the surface of
the strawberry, or in the light...)  and how to effing look for them (not
thinking that something has a 'grey' quality, just because it is 'grey
matter' reflecting grey light).  The rest should be easy, we are already
way beyond the technology we need, I think.

It's all just an effing communication problem.

Brent Allsop




















On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 10:51 PM, spike <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike
>
> -----Original Message-----
>  [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Brent Allsop
>
> >>...Thanks for putting so much effort towards this, and I apologize that
> >I still, despite significant progress thanks to everyone's help, have so
> much difficulty communicating...  Brent Allsop
>
>
> >...Brent there is nothing wrong with your communication skills.  Qualia is
> (are?) a difficult concept.  I have pondered the hell out of it and still
> don't feel like I have even suck at it.  I would need to vastly improve and
> get a number of breakthrough insights on qualia to just suck.  It isn't
> your
> fault: your favorite topic is just hard to grok.  spike
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> I have been pondering why it is that qualia is (are?) difficult to
> understand, and I now have the insight: it is because there are no
> equations.
>
> The classic figurative notion for a complicated concept is "rocket
> science."
> But I would argue that rocket science is not hard to understand at all: it
> is so completely mapped out with equations, every bit of it, end to end,
> that it is extremely understandable.  All you need to do is get those
> equations, and now we have our astonishingly powerful mathematical toolkit
> to bear on it: we can completely understand rocket science well enough to
> fire a rocket and know right where it is going to land on a planet millions
> of km away months from now.  Rocket science is not at all mysterious, not
> even so much as what is causing our honeybees to decline.  We have
> equations
> to describe it all.
>
> Qualia has (have?) no equations, so I just stand here on the ground
> flapping
> my arms.  If qualia get (gets?) mathematized, we rocket scientists will
> mount up on wings as eagles, soar with the winds on that topic.  Until
> then,
> just useless arm flapping.
>
> spike
>
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