[ExI] Science or Scientism?

[William Flynn Wallace]

I have twice proven the undecidability of consciousness on this list,
first as a consequence of Russell's Paradox and then later as a corollary
to Rice's Theorem so I am halfway on board here.  stuart

I obviously don't have the math or philosophy background to understand
these things, but if reality shows me one thing and logic and math another,
I'll go with reality.  Consciousness is a physical reality with which you
can do experiments with testable hypotheses.

bill w

On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 1:33 PM Stuart LaForge <avant at sollegro.com> wrote:

> John Clark wrote:
>
> > If you don't use my axiom the phantom limb syndrome tell you nothing
> > about consciousness, all it tells you is if you cut off somebody's toe
> > sometimes they make noises with their mouth that sounds like "I don't
> > have a toe but it hunts anyway".
>
> I have twice proven the undecidability of consciousness on this list,
> first as a consequence of Russell's Paradox and then later as a corollary
> to Rice's Theorem so I am halfway on board here.
>
> The problem is that unless ALL Turing machines are intelligent or NO
> Turing machines are intelligent, then intelligence is undecidable in
> Turing machines. In other words intelligence is either trivial property or
> undecidable as well.
>
> So your axiom would require two undecidable properties to be correlated.
> Which they certainly appear to be experientially. We certainly use the
> correlation to infer consciousness in our pets for example.
>
> The caution flags go up, however, because the combination of these two
> undecidable properties is undecidable also. Your axiom is very likely only
> a heuristic that would work on roughly human scales +/- 3 orders of
> magnitude or so.
>
> This is because differences in scale limit communication and for large
> differences limit even perception. You can't infer the intelligence of
> something you can't see for example. And even if the galaxy was
> axiomatically intelligent,  would take millions of years for you to notice
> any "intelligent behavior". Which is time most humans don't have. Time
> passes very differently for brains at different size scales.
>
> Therefore your axiom will be subject to false positives, where you see one
> off illusory patterns in random phenomena like faces in the clouds that
> you think imply intelligence.
>
> And you will also have false negatives where you underestimate or fail to
> notice the intelligence of beings very much larger or smaller than you are
> or equivalently beings very much faster or slower than you.
>
> But all in all, I find your axiom a useful heuristic so long as you keep
> in mind its limitations and ultimate undecidability.
>
> Stuart LaForge
>
>
>
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