[ExI] Fwd: Fwd: Chalmers

[Brent Allsop]

Hi John,



Oh no.  I was only disagreeing with your comments like:



“We can not directly detect consciousness in anybody except for ourselves”



I Completely agree with everything else you are saying including what you
are saying about volition, choice…, You’ve even converted me to the camp
that says the term AGI is bad.  Long live the term AI!



“I don't see how such a neural ponytail could falsify solipsism”



Are you saying that the left hemisphere of your brain does not know,
absolutely, that it is *NOT* the only hemisphere in existence?  These twins
<https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/the-hogan-twins-share-a-brain-and-see-out-of-each-others-eyes?fbclid=IwAR24WaZJuZFucfU41DRX3zgmuWwYhiYL2MfINsctVKgah4PFLoCtL_Zx4Fga2LwRIxXHI9-jg5bX7WvaHeuiloko3WZ-jfzl3i1Cdbxv3HfHZCNhyg>
know, directly and absolutely that their twin’s brain and consciousness
exist, don’t you think?



“you wouldn't be Brent Allsop anymore, you'd be John Clark.”



When I’m talking about effing the ineffable, I’m only talking about at the
elemental redness level, not the composite qualia level.  When you
experience the redness of the strawberry there is a huge amount of other
phenomenal ideas (including memories like red is warm, and sweet, tastes
great…) that are computationally bound to make up that composite
qualitative experience.  For every single piece of such a composite qualitative
experience, there must be something physical that is that elemental
piece.  Some
people think of qualia as everything but the elemental redness (they think
red is a quality of the strawberry).  Given that, again, I pretty much
agree with you on how difficult it would be to eff an entire composite
qualitative experiences.



“I have yet to hear even a hint of a reason why humans can be intelligent
and conscious but computers can only be conscious[intelligent?]”



It’s as simple as the abstract word red isn’t red.  You need a dictionary
to know what red means.  While glutamate (or at least something in our
brain) is what you should find in that dictionary as that definition.



I can't see how Darwinian Evolution managed to come up with a conscious
creature like me



Darwinian evolution decided to run your consciousness directly on physical
qualities, because it is more efficient and it didn’t need the extra
hardware required to make you substrate independent.



Brent


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Fwd: Chalmers
To: Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>


Brent, I don't see how that changes what I said, everything that you do and
everything a AI does and everything anything does either happens for a
reason and thus is subject to cause and effect or it doesn't happen for a
reason and thus is random. So you're doomed to failure if you try to imbue
words like "volition" or "choice" with some sort of mystical power that
only something that is wet and squishy like humans have but something that
is dry and hard like a computer never could.

And a Avatar style neural ponytail would certainly be an interesting gadget
but I don't see how it could solve and of the philosophical problems you're
talking about. I don't see how such a neural ponytail could falsify
solipsism, if I used it to merge with a worm the human/worm hybrid might be
conscious but it could be argued that it was the human part that was doing
all the heavy lifting and making all of the magical conscious mojo juice. I
might also use it with a bat as in the famous thought experiment and learn
what it's like to be a bat/human hybrid, but I still wouldn't know what
it's like to be a pure non-hybrid 100% bat living in the wild in a cave.
And you and I might try it and then John Allsop would know what it's like
to be Brent Clark, but Brent Allsop still wouldn't know what it's like to
be John Clark, to do that you'd have to change your brain so it's identical
to John Clark's but then you wouldn't be Brent Allsop anymore, you'd be
John Clark.

I have yet to hear even a hint of a reason why humans can be intelligent
and conscious but computers can only be conscious; and if you can have one
without the other I can't see how Darwinian Evolution managed to come up
with a conscious creature like me because Evolution can only see
intelligence, it can't directly detect consciousness any better than you or
I can so natural selection can't produce it unless it's the byproduct of
something that it can see.  Something like intelligence.

 John K Clark
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