[ExI] Frank Jackson's brilliant color scientist Mary

[Brent Allsop]

John, I just realized that when you said: “That will never change”, you may
have been meaning to say: “The abstract objective will *never *be able to
eff the ineffable without physical qualitative definitions of the terms
being used.”  If you meant that, I apologize.

On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 11:08 AM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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