[ExI] Quantum consciousness, quantum mysticism, and transhumanist engineering

[John Clark]

On Mon, Apr 3, 2017  Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com> wrote:

​> ​
> If a tornado make the Chinese Room, "Chinese" would cease to have any
> meaning!
>

Yes, ​I think ​
the Chinese Room
​ should get a award for the most meaningless thought experiment in the
history of the world. ​

​> ​
> You need 'The Chinese Language' to exist in order for the Chinese Room to
> have any context.


The Chinese Language
​ already exists so all the tornado needs to do is make Chinese room. But
as I said before I don't see ​how the room was built or by who changes
the relevance of the experiment, the room proves nothing regardless of how
it was built.


> ​> ​
> There's nobody to understand the Chinese.
>

​There would be a easy test to tell if that is true, ask the Chinese room
questions in Chinese, if the answers make sense to you then the room
understands Chinese. You could also use the exact same test to determine if
one of your your fellow humans understands Chinese.  ​


​> ​
> You're imagining the 'Chinese Room' being magically developed by a tornado
> in some pocket universe,
>

​It's not a pocket universe, it's as real as this one, and
​It's not magic it's just statistics. Even very very rare events will
happen if the sample size is large enough. A astronomically large number
​raised ​
to a astronomically large
​power​
 is still finite, so if the number of worlds involved is infinite
​then ​
the conclusion is obvious.

A "fully functional" "747" ready to "fly" means NOTHING without an observer
> who understands these criteria.
>

​You are a observer, and there is a low but nonzero probability that
tomorrow morning YOU will will observe a tornado enter a junkyard and
assemble a
fully functional
​ ​
747
​from the junk ​that is
ready to fly
​.
And if Everett is right about Many Worlds there is a 100% chance that
tomorrow morning
​
Will Steinberg
​ will see exactly that, and it will be the ​
Will Steinberg
​ who remembers reading this very post the previous night.


​> ​
> I really don't understand how so many of you don't understand that you're
> making the huge assumption that the creator of these thought experiments is
> around to assign meaning to their contents.
>

​The creator of the Chinese room thought experiment was ​
John Searle
​, he thought it had meaning, he thought he was doing something clever, but
he was wrong.​

​> ​
> Meaning comes from consciousness,
>

​That's because intelligent conscious beings are in the meaning conferring
business, but not everything that exists has a meaning or needs one. ​


​John K Clark ​
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