[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

Mon Apr 29 18:00:14 UTC 2013

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Brent Allsop
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 9:02 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] Digital Consciousness .

Hi Spike,

>.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.

Hmmm, OK thanks, ja but a map is an example of a mathematical description.
That would help me understand.

Our discussion has led me to an insight that I would like to expand a bit.
Math is a technology.  Those of us who really get hot with it get to the
point where we use it everywhere always, and perhaps be become dependent.
Then when we get in an area where our technology does not apply, we are like
those unfortunate victims who become stranded on an escalator:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snkqvWrSBus

Math is such a powerful technology, we soon get as addicted to it as you and
I are to electric power and communications tech.  There are soooo many
things it can help you do, I am at the point where I feel blind, deaf and
dumber than a dog turd without it.

So here's my proposed solution (for me, not you.)  I have been helping my
son study math and science.  I will now wander off into an area where my
favorite technology cannot help me: a foreign language.  For starters, I
choose Spanish.  Ja, I know, for Californians, Espaniol is not really a
foreign language.  Depending on your neighborhood, you can legitimately
argue it is the local indigenous language.  This is my strategy: my son
loooves competition of any kind (he takes after his father.)  Even more than
that, he loooves to compete against his father.  This is bad in a way, for
he has one area in which he can beat me like an ugly stepchild: Mario
Brothers, pretty much anything Mario, I am child's play to defeat.  This is
remarkable in that I first played Marios 25 years ago, and he is only 6.

In any case, a six year old has an advantage over grown-ups in language
learning.  My brain is already filled with equations and such.  But his is
not, so he can learn it faster.  So I propose we learn Espaniol together,
even though I have a head start on him.  I know enough Espaniol to make
small-talk with the local non-English-speaking Vietnamese.  This challenge
will force me out of my comfort zone, cause me to stretch and grow.  When
(and if) that pea-sized part of my brain develops sufficiently, the
non-mathematical part, then I might have a shot at understanding qualia.

spike

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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