[ExI] Canonizer 2.0

[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 25, 2018 at 12:03 PM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
wrote:


> > How do you know what it is like to be a bat,
>

That is easily answered, you can't. To do that you'd have to turn into a
bat and even then you wouldn't know because you wouldn't be you, you'd be a
bat that didn't know what it's like to be a human.


> *> what did Mary learn, when she experienced red for the first time even
> though she knew, abstractly, everything about red, before she experienced
> it for the first time?  How do you “eff the ineffable” and all that.  In my
> opinion, this is the only hard problem. *
>

And suppose I gave you answers to all these questions, why would you
believe me? What sort of supporting evidence could I give that would make
anyone say "yes you must be correct"? I don't see how there could be
anything. That's why I think the "easy" problem is far more profound than
the hard one. If I have a idea and say if matter and energy are arranged in
a certain way it will behave intelligently you can try it for yourself and
see if it works. If it does then I'm right, if it doesn't then I'm wrong. It
is impossible to do the same thing or anything close to it with
consciousness, even in theory.


> > *what is required to bridge the explanatory gap, is to discover which
> set of our abstract descriptions of physics in the brain should be
> interpreted as a redness, and a greenness physical quality, and so on. *
>

Once the "easy" problem is solved you could explain why red and green
objects cause an intelligent being to behave differently, and that's as
good as it's ever going to be if its a brute fact that consciousness is the
way data feels when it is being processed. And I don't think a chain of
iterated "why?" questions can continue for infinity, I think eventually you
reach a fundamental level and the sequence terminates in a brute fact.
Every event need not have a cause.


> *> Once an experimentalist does this, we will then be able to “eff the
> ineffable” or bridge the explanatory gap.  *
>

Even if the explanation the experimentalist gives is correct there is no
what for him to prove it is correct even to himself. Solving the so called
hard problem would be equivalent to proving that solipsism is untrue, and I
see no way to ever do that even theoretically.

*> In other words, the prediction being made in the “Representational
> Qualia Theory” camp needs to be verified by experimentalists, as the theory
> predicts is about to happen, before it will be a real solution to the
> qualitative hard problem.*
>

If you could do that then you'd have proof the "easy" problem had been
solved, not the hard one.

John K Clark






>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 25, 2018 at 9:29 AM William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> coming up with a theory of consciousness is easy but coming up with a
>> theory of intelligence is not.   John Clark
>>
>> Just what sort of theory do you want, John?  Any abstract entity like
>> intelligence, love, hate, creativity, has to be dragged down to operational
>> definitions involving measurable things.  For many years the operational
>> definition of intelligence has been the scores on an intelligence test, and
>> of course there are many different opinions as to what tests are
>> appropriate, meaning in essence that people differ on just what
>> intelligence is.
>>
>> The problem is that it is not anything.  Oh, it is reducible in theory to
>> actions in the brain - neurons and hormones and who knows what from the
>> glia.  So is love those actions as well, and every other thing you can
>> think of.  But people have generally resisted reductionism in this area.
>> Me too, until someone can find a use for it.
>>
>> Look up the word 'nice' and you will find a trail of very different
>> meanings.  Just what meaning is correct?  All of them - at least they were
>> true at the time a particular use occurred.
>>
>> Intelligence is that way too - it is whatever we want to mean by the
>> word.  Most want to use it in a way that means one thing (usually
>> determined by factor analysis).  Some want to call it several things which
>> may intercorrelate to some extent.  The first idea usually wins out.
>>
>> Whatever it is, it is the most useful test in existence because it
>> correlates with and thus predicts more things than any other test in
>> existence.
>>
>> So - the best theory is the one which predicts more things in the 'real'
>> world than any other, and the operational definition wins.  And nobody is
>> really happy with that.  I can't understand it.
>>
>> bill w
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 25, 2018 at 9:29 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 12:08 PM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> >  *we've launched Canonizer 2.0.*
>>>> *My Partner Jim Bennett just put together this video:*
>>>>
>>>> https://vimeo.com/307590745
>>>>
>>>
>>> I notice that the third most popular topic on the Canonizer is "the hard
>>> problem" (beaten only by theories of consciousness and God). Apparently
>>> this too has something to do with consciousness but it would seem to me the
>>> first order of business should be to state exactly what general sort of
>>> evidence would be sufficient to consider the problem having been solved. I
>>> think the evidence from biological Evolution is overwhelming that if you'd
>>> solved the so called "easy problem" which deals with intelligence then
>>> you've come as close to solving the "hard problem" as anybody is ever going
>>> to get.
>>>
>>> I also note there is no listing at all for "theories of intelligence"
>>>  and I think I know why, coming up with a theory of consciousness is easy
>>> but coming up with a theory of intelligence is not. It takes years of
>>> study to become an expert in the field of AI but anyone can talk about
>>> consciousness.
>>>
>>> However I think the  Canonizer does a good job on specifying what
>>> "friendly AI" means, in fact it's the best definition of it I've seen:
>>>
>>> "*It means that the entity isn't blind to our interests. Notice that I
>>> didn't say that the entity has our interests at heart, or that they are its
>>> highest priority goal. Those might require intelligence with a human shape.
>>> But an SI that was ignorant or uncaring of our interests could do us
>>> enormous damage without intending it.*"
>>>
>>>  John K Clark
>>>
>>
> e <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>
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