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

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis,


You, and john are completely missing the point, and making obvious 
mistakes (as it seems to me) by doing so, and not modeling things with 
anything in your theory that is redness, such that it is distinguishable 
from greenness.  Can you not see that everything you are talking about 
is removing the ability to distinguish between anything that is redness 
and greenness. Remember, for Stathis, every time I use the word 
"glutamate" you should think of a pattern of neurons firing in a 
particular "functional" way, that is a redness experience.  And you have 
a binding neuron that can detect the function that is redness, and tell 
when it is different than the a different set of neurons, functioning as 
a greenness experience.  Remember, that nothing but this particular set 
of neurons, firing in exactly the right functional way, outputting the 
correct neurotransmitter at the right time will convince the binding 
neuron/system that it is redness, which is different than greenness.  
So, when you are representing redness with a 0 (anything that does not 
have redness), you must interpret this zero, back into the correct set 
of neurotransmitters being fed to the detecting neuron, in the right 
functional pattern.  And all ones, anything that is not greeness, must 
be translated back to the identical functional set of synapses 
neurotransmitter firings, before the not yet replaced binding neuron 
will say: "Yes that is still redness".  In other words, when you replace 
all the redness functions with ones, and all the greenness functions 
with zeros, they all must be translated back to the right set of 
functional synapses firing, and fed to the binding neuron, for it to 
say:  That compost experience is made up of redness and greenness.


The mistake in Stathis logic is revealed when he says things like: " It 
cannot possibly say "wait, back up, that glycine isn't anything like its 
neighbouring redness glutamate", because the neurons controlling speech 
will all be firing in exactly the same way as before."  Can you not see 
how this is removing any necessary functionality required to distinguish 
between redness and greenness?  The binding system, whatever you 
theorize it might be, must be able to detect the difference between 
whatever it is that is doing the greenness function, and whatever is 
doing the gredness function, and whatever is doing a oneness function, 
and whatever it is that is doing the zeroness function.  If you present 
anything to the binding system, without the proper interpretation 
mechanism, converting back to the real redness it can detect, it must be 
able to fire differently, saying that is not real redness.  Otherwise 
you are removing the ability to distinguish between redness and 
greenness, whatever it is.


Once you replace simple glutamate and glycene, with very complected 
things like sets of functioning neurons firing in a particular 
functional way, things become so complicated, you can't see the 
theoretical qualitative mistakes you are making.  You must remember that 
your continued arguments against glutamate not being redness do not 
apply.  As they only are redness and greenness in the idealized 
simplified theoretical world.  As I've said many times, this has nothing 
to do with the obviously much more complex real world.  It is just meant 
as a simplistic model, so you can think about the fact that there must 
be something that is doing the redness function and there must be 
something that is doing the greenness function.  And there must be 
womething that can bind these two together into a composit qualitative 
experience that can say: "Yes, those are qualitatively different" - not 
fire in the same way, when they are substituted out and replaced with 
something else.


Earlier, Stathis claimed: "But the comparison of redness and greenness, 
or anything else whatsoever that the system does, will necessarily occur 
provided only that the substituted part is behaviourally identical"  In 
other words, you are saying that there is a way to distinguish between 
redness and greenness, as long as it is behaviorally identical. But you 
can't see the mistake you are making with this.  If you swap anything 
being presented to the binding system, with anything that is not 
redness, especially a 1, it must say: "that is not redness"  it cannot 
say it is redness, or behave in the same way.  It must behave 
differently, otherwise it is not functioning correctly and not able to 
distinguish qualitative differences.


Brent





On 3/24/2017 8:36 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> On Sat., 25 Mar. 2017 at 9:07 am, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com 
> <mailto:brent.allsop at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     Hi Status,
>
>
>     On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 2:50 PM, Stathis Papaioannou
>     <stathisp at gmail.com <mailto:stathisp at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>         I think you imagine that if glutamate is changed and glutamate
>         is responsible for red qualia, then distal parts of the system
>         (such as those reporting red qualia) will change even if all
>         the physical interactions of the glutamate substitute are the
>         same. But that is impossible.
>
>
>
>     Ha, with this I think I’ve caught you in another clear example of
>     the isolationist mistake you are making.
>
>     If glutamate was redness, then the one neuron representing the one
>     voxel element representing the one spot on the surface of the
>     strawberry, would be firing on all of its many, maybe even tens of
>     thousands of its downstream synapses with glutamate.And if you
>     changed glutamate, with glycene in any one of those synapses, the
>     entire system would be screaming: “Wait, back up, that glycine
>     isn’t anything like it’s neighboring redness glutamate, until you
>     replace that incorrect glycine in that one synapse, and
>     interpreted it qualitatively correctly, by interpreting it back to
>     real redness, um I mean real glutamate.Then you would have to
>     repeat this same problem, until you replace all the glutamate, um
>     a mean redness detectors in the entire brain, all in one big
>     substitution step, and only then replace the entire comparison
>     system, including all memory of glutamate, I mean redness, with
>     glycine.And only then, with that massive substitution (it sucks
>     how this massive substitution requirement always gets left out of
>     your simplistic example), would you finally be able to have it
>     substituted to be a qualia (or oneness and zeroness) invert where
>     greenness, and all memory of such, has been replaced with redness,
>     (or oneness) and visa versa.
>
>
> If you replace glutamate with glycine then yes, the whole system would 
> be screaming that something was terribly wrong,  because glycine will 
> have no effect on glutamate receptors. Not only will any redness 
> detection function fail, but the whole brain will probably stop 
> working and the subject will die. That is why you have to do a more 
> elaborate replacement: glutamate with glycine, glutamate receptors 
> with glycine receptors (simplistically - you have to also make sure 
> that the glycine receptors operate the same ion channels etc. as the 
> glutamate receptors). Once you do this, the whole brain will work in 
> the same way as before the substitution. It cannot possibly say "wait, 
> back up, that glycine isn't anything like its neighbouring redness 
> glutamate", because the neurons controlling speech will all be firing 
> in exactly the same way as before.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20170326/b9dc458d/attachment.html>