[ExI] Canonizer 2.0

[John Clark]

On Tue, Dec 25, 2018 at 10:07 PM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
wrote:

>> 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.
>>
>
> > *I agree.  The theory predicts that you would need to become a bat, or
> at least become (or merge with as) a superset of a bat,*
>

If you merged you wouldn't know what it's like to be just a bat or just a
human.


> > *The theory also predicts that consciousness, including likely, that of
> a bat, is composed of elemental qualia, like redness and grenness, out of
> which composite conscious experience is composed.  *
>

If so then whatever the bat's (or our) qualia generating system may be the
key to it is the ability to recognize the difference between a red qualia
and a green qualia, which at the fundamental level is no different than
recognizing the difference between a one and a zero or the difference
between on or off or the difference between a microscopic capacitor on a
RAM chip that contains an electrical charge and a capacitor that contains
no charge.


> *> There is a chance that a bat could be using an elemental redness and
> grennes qualia to represent an elemental level of some of what it is
> sensing.  This elemental level is what the theory is talking about.  And of
> course, you are making a very testable claim.*
>

I see no way that claim could ever be tested,

 > *and the theory predicts we will eff the ineffable, on at least an
> elemental level - falsifying your claims.*


You may be able to eff something but there is no way to prove the thing
you're effing is anything like what the bat is effing or even that the bat
is effing anything. And whatever the effing theory presented you're never
going to be satisfied with it, even if by some miracle you proved that if
matter and energy are put into configuration X it will always produce
qualia Y you will then demand to know why that is true because matter
configuration X is not qualia Y anymore than electromagnetic waves with a
wavelength of 700 nanometers is the red qualia.


> > *Just as Descartes could not doubt his existence, since he thinks, and
> just like we cannot doubt the physical qualities of our elemental redness
> and greenness knowledge, and how they are different, the strongest form of
> effing the ineffable would be similarly undeniable, because we would be
> directly experiencing the redness and greenness in another's brain,*
>

I would not doubt I was experiencing the red qualia but I already know I
can do that, however I would doubt that my brain's interpretation of your
brain's interpretation of electromagnetic waves with a wavelength of 700
nanometer was correct. And even if it was correct I'd have no way of ever
proving it.


> *> just as our two hemispheres can experience redness in one hemisphere,
> and grenness in the other, in a way you can not doubt. *
>

That could only happen if the corpus callosum that connects the 2
hemispheres is severed and the right eye is shown a red light and the left
eye a green light. And in that case one hemisphere does not know what the
other hemisphere is experiencing.


> *> And just the way conjoined twins have already disproved solipsism,
> since each of the twins knows, in a way that is undeniable, that the other
> mind exists,*
>

 Conjoined twins? I see no reason why they'd know more about solipsism than
anybody else.

>  They can both look out of each other's eyes, in some cases.
>

I never heard of that! But even if true the signals in the optic nerve
produced by a red light are no more the qualia of red than electromagnetic
waves with a wavelength of 700 nanometers are.


> *> I can't understand what you could mean by THE easy problem, as there is
> thousands and thousands of very difficult problems that still need to be
> figured out,*
>

That's not my terminology it's your's. In fact I don't think solving the
"easy" problem (figuring out how intelligence works) is very easy at all
but I think we will accomplish it well before 2100 and it will be the last
discovery the human race will ever make.

 John K Clark



>
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