[ExI] Frank Jackson's brilliant color scientist Mary

[John Clark]

On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 1:11 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> 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/>. *


Maybe it's because it's not finished but I don't see what the point was
that the video was trying to convey. If your qualia of red and green are
inverted (zero and one are inverted as symbols that stand for those 2
qualia) and if the inversion is consistent and includes memories of those
qualia then I objectively can not notice any change in your behavior that
resulted from the inversion, and you subjectively can not tell that
anything has changed either. As a result I would humbly suggest that if
objectively it makes no difference and subjectively it makes no difference
then it would be safe to say it just makes no difference.

And of course if the inversion happened twice, as seems to be the case in
the video, then no effective change of any sort has been made and you're
right back where you started.


> *> Again, once we have neural ponytails
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ru9fw7szQw>, that computationally bind
> like the corpus callosum,*
>

I saw the movie too and I thought it was fun but as I explained in a
previous post I don't see how that could help Brent Allsop figure out what
it's like for John Clark to experience the red qualia.

*> This will be as undeniable as “I think, therefor I am.” Direct
> experience cannot be mistaken/inverted like “perception” can.*


If the inversion has not fooled objectivity and it has not fooled
subjectivity either then direct experience has not been inverted at all,
only the arbitrary symbolic convention that stands for them has. Suppose I
could snap  my fingers and make just one change to the entire world, the
words "cat" and "dog" are now reversed, that means it's changed in every
book in the world and in everybody's memory of ever having used those two
words. Nobody would notice a thing after I snapped my fingers and the world
would continue to chug along exactly as it always has.

In fact I actually have that superpower and have just snapped my fingers.
Did you notice any difference? I am Reverse Cat Dog Man, considering that I
have such an awesome power and look great in tights I don't understand why
The Avengers won't let me join.

 John K Clark
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