[ExI] Frank Jackson's brilliant color scientist Mary

[Brent Allsop]

Very nice poem Spike thanks for jumping in.  I so enjoyed the commentary on
being interested in this, over politics, and all that. Our local newspaper
has only two sections, today.  Politics on in the small front section, and
a second larger sports section.  Nothing else.  Also, last night at a
neighborhood Christmas party, I asked why the US needs more than 10
aircraft carriers (they have 11).  But that just opened a flood gate of
fear mongering, worshipping how things used to be (evidently everything
today is worn out) and a bunch of fear about China (as if they are going to
invade the US and militarily force us to be communist.  (LOL, they were
saying all this fear mongering about china, while at the same time talking
about how we can’t even force puny Afghanistan to adopt our form of
government.)  It is often very draining to be in Utah.  You guys make it
possible, even enjoyable to survive.



Now back to the good stuff.  we must remember to distinguish between color
and knowledge of color (Requires a different term to not be qualia blind so
“colorness”).  I wasn’t going to do this as it is still broken and not
finished, but part of the a video we are creating on this topic showing how
knowledge of color, or colorness, can be inverted from color is now here
<https://canonizer.com/videos/consciousness/>.  But at least the play
button works.  This shows how “perception” can be inverted at any point in
the long perception chain, resulting in inverted qualia
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_spectrum>.



This shows how all objectively perceived information, even all poetry, is
abstracted away from any physical qualities.  The only way to know what a
word like “redness” means, physically, is to experience it
directly/subjectively, so you can build your own internal dictionary
definition for the word redness.  Again, glutamate has both a color
property and a colorness property.  Since it reflects white light, its
color is “white”.  But when we are directly aware of it reacting in a
synapse, we are directly aware of its colorness property which is redness.
We have abstract descriptions (even poetry?) of how glutamate reacts in a
synapse, but nothing, yet to tell us the colorness those poetic
descriptions are describing.



John made this very falsifiable (consciousness is not approachable via
science <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Approachable-Via-Science/2>)
statement:



“Except for their own qualia EVERYBODY is qualia blind even poets, the
handicap is not limited to physicists and neuroscientists. And *that will
never change*.”



Again, once we have neural ponytails
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ru9fw7szQw>, that computationally bind
like the corpus callosum, we will direct experience all of the experiences,
not just half.  With that we will directly experience whether or not
someone else’s redness is like our greenness or not, just as surely as we
know that physical redness is the same physical redness in both the left
and right hemispheres of our brain.  This will be as undeniable as “I
think, therefor I am.” Direct experience cannot be mistaken/inverted like
“perception” can.

On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 8:47 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
> Of *John Clark via extropy-chat
>
>
>
> Except for their own qualia EVERYBODY is qualia blind even poets, the
> handicap is not limited to physicists and neuroscientists. And that will
> never change.
>
> …
>
>
>
> John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Indeed sir?  Ye of little faith.  John I can see your qualia, me lad.
> Only recently in history can we do it.  We can all go right now into excel
> or something equivalent to it, go into your color wheel where it says “more
> colors” set the red to 255, the green and blue to zero, and there my
> friends, is the absolute objective definition of RED!  What you see there
> is red.  No subjectivity left, no wiggle room, the computer people have
> handed us a great gift.
>
>
>
> Do let me go on that for a minute before I dispute John’s notion in
> verse.
>
>
>
> Yesterday was the winter solstice, which is always a time of great
> rejoicing because the darkest days are behind us for the year.  Now each
> day, more sunshine returns, lifting our spirits, minute by minute of
> increased access to that glorious fusion reactor in the sky, oh what a
> marvelous time.  So we are at the time of the year in which the sun begins
> its annual return, we are at a point in history where mankind is undergoing
> a great awakening, LIGO results are blowing our minds every few weeks, our
> childrens is learnin, we are here, we are alive, and oh life is good.
>
>
>
> John claims even the poets are qualia blind.  No way Jose!  Set your color
> wheel to 255, 0, 0 and there it is, in all its refulgent glory!  Here’s a
> poet’s view for ya:
>
>
>
> There once was a young man named Clark
>
> In science he made his life’s mark
>
> He would often see red
>
> And so it was said
>
> It’s clear he is not in the dark.
>
>
>
> We have been with extropians so long
>
> We knew this routine like a song,
>
> We could see his red qualia
>
> So the notion was folly, a
>
> Lot of us knew it was wrong.
>
>
>
> But we’d rather talk about that
>
> Than some dreary political spat
>
> So they all played along
>
> And sang the old song
>
> Though some were sharp and some flat.
>
>
>
> There ya go John, proof.  Poets can see your qualia.  Set that color wheel
> as specified, 255, 0,0 then what you see and what I see are the SAME!  By
> definition!  Perhaps one must be a poet like your old pal spike to eff this
> ineffable concept.  But I see it.  I have the eye of a POET!
>
>
>
> I fear the ExI discussion at this merry Newtonmas season has been far not
> silly enough for our standards, so I invite some annual silliness or
> failing that, just some cheerful winter solstice greetings are in order
> such as the one I send to all of you, from the poet laureate of… my house.
>
>
>
> May the new year bring you every happiness, may the joy of fresh LIGO
> results bless your home and family, may the spirit of dynamic optimism move
> your soul, may science and technology infuse your being and lift your
> spirits and we grow together in new understanding.
>
>
>
> spike
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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