From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat May 1 15:35:03 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 1 May 2021 10:35:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] wisdom from Calvin Message-ID: '"They say that the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time. But since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure that trick is to find the right place and just hang around." bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Sat May 1 21:07:18 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sat, 01 May 2021 14:07:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bird using Alexa Message-ID: <20210501140718.Horde.LSkrdxtC_CLVWUp4xDrEii2@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> An African grey parrot named Petra has learned to use Alexa to control her environment and entertain herself: https://youtu.be/ewptevBIqNk Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 1 22:03:42 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 1 May 2021 23:03:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Talk to GPT-3 via Philosopher AI website In-Reply-To: <581458B1-0F56-4718-8D45-AE469D585859@gmail.com> References: <581458B1-0F56-4718-8D45-AE469D585859@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 13:43, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: > > Didn?t work that well for me: > https://philosopherai.xyz/2c1b0c9c-d448-411e-a05c-532ed501f613 > It seems to be a personal website, sometimes too busy, please try later. :) > What is substantivalism? > > Substantivalism is a position in the philosophy of mathematics. > It states that numbers and mathematical objects have real existence. > _______________________________________________ I now get different results for substantivalism. Wonder why it changes??? ---------------- What is substantivalism? The term substantivalism describes a broad category of metaphysics where an object's properties and nature determine its identity. In this school of thought, objects are distinct and separate from the outside world. It is contrasted by Relationalism which argues that objects have relational identities. Modern physics supports Relationalism, with Quantum Mechanics arguing that particles have a wave-particle duality and strings having a shape and direction but only when observed. ________________________ This response seems to relate to "According to Newton?s substantivalism, space and time are entities in their own right, existing independently of things. Leibniz?s relationism, on the other hand, describes space and time as systems of relations that exist between objects". BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat May 1 22:24:25 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 1 May 2021 17:24:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Talk to GPT-3 via Philosopher AI website In-Reply-To: References: <581458B1-0F56-4718-8D45-AE469D585859@gmail.com> Message-ID: Ignorant and/or stupid question: Modern physics supports Relationalism, with Quantum Mechanics arguing that particles have a wave-particle duality and strings having a shape and direction but only when observed. How do they know what it is doing when not observed? bill w On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 5:07 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 13:43, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > wrote: > > > > Didn?t work that well for me: > > https://philosopherai.xyz/2c1b0c9c-d448-411e-a05c-532ed501f613 > > > > It seems to be a personal website, sometimes too busy, please try later. > :) > > > What is substantivalism? > > > > Substantivalism is a position in the philosophy of mathematics. > > It states that numbers and mathematical objects have real existence. > > _______________________________________________ > > > I now get different results for substantivalism. Wonder why it changes??? > > ---------------- > What is substantivalism? > > The term substantivalism describes a broad category of metaphysics > where an object's properties and nature determine its identity. In > this school of thought, objects are distinct and separate from the > outside world. > > It is contrasted by Relationalism which argues that objects have > relational identities. Modern physics supports Relationalism, with > Quantum Mechanics arguing that particles have a wave-particle duality > and strings having a shape and direction but only when observed. > ________________________ > > This response seems to relate to < > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationalism> > "According to Newton?s substantivalism, space and time are entities in > their own right, existing independently of things. Leibniz?s > relationism, on the other hand, describes space and time as systems of > relations that exist between objects". > > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 1 23:01:06 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 2 May 2021 00:01:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Talk to GPT-3 via Philosopher AI website In-Reply-To: References: <581458B1-0F56-4718-8D45-AE469D585859@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 1 May 2021 at 23:28, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > Ignorant and/or stupid question: > > Modern physics supports Relationalism, with > Quantum Mechanics arguing that particles have a wave-particle duality > and strings having a shape and direction but only when observed. > > How do they know what it is doing when not observed? bill w > _______________________________________________ That reminds me of an incident from my schooldays. Our class were in a physics lesson and the teacher was explaining about alternating electric current and how the incandescent light bulbs were actually flickering faster than our eyes could see. There was a short pause, then from the back of the class, the class wit shouted out - "Sir, sir! If you blink quickly you can see it!" (Applause from class!) :) BillK From danust2012 at gmail.com Sun May 2 00:32:26 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sat, 1 May 2021 17:32:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Talk to GPT-3 via Philosopher AI website In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8B02E7FD-741E-48CF-86F8-446FA4904DE8@gmail.com> On May 1, 2021, at 3:07 PM, BillK via extropy-chat wrote: > ?On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 13:43, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > wrote: >> >> Didn?t work that well for me: >> https://philosopherai.xyz/2c1b0c9c-d448-411e-a05c-532ed501f613 >> > > It seems to be a personal website, sometimes too busy, please try later. :) It answered my question, though with an answer I found wrong. So this wasn?t so much it being busy as it being incorrect. >> What is substantivalism? >> >> Substantivalism is a position in the philosophy of mathematics. >> It states that numbers and mathematical objects have real existence. >> ________________________________________ > > I now get different results for substantivalism. Wonder why it changes??? It might be ?learning?? I didn?t look over the site, so I missed any explanations offered. > ---------------- > What is substantivalism? > > The term substantivalism describes a broad category of metaphysics > where an object's properties and nature determine its identity. In > this school of thought, objects are distinct and separate from the > outside world. > > It is contrasted by Relationalism which argues that objects have > relational identities. Modern physics supports Relationalism, with > Quantum Mechanics arguing that particles have a wave-particle duality > and strings having a shape and direction but only when observed. It really depends. If you?re in a room full of people familiar with philosophy of physics, I think they?d disagree with your last two sentences ? at least as the terms tend to be used inside philosophy of physics. The relational-substantival debate usually centers on space and time and spacetime, and in that vein the debate is about whether they exist or if they?re only relations between physical objects (like stars, people, or subatomic particles). Field theory of any sort might be seen, at first blush, weighing in favor of substantivalism. How so? The field can be taken to exist rather than being merely a relation between other things (like charged particles or gravitational bodies). Thus, Maxwell?s electromagnetic field theory, GTR, and QFT can be interpreted as supporting substantivalism. Of course, the debate rages on. If you?re interested, check out Jill North?s ?The Structure of Spacetime: A New Approach to the Spacetime Ontology Debate?: http://jillnorth.org/2018_ST_Structure_Oxford.pdf > ________________________ > This response seems to relate to > "According to Newton?s substantivalism, space and time are entities in > their own right, existing independently of things. Leibniz?s > relationism, on the other hand, describes space and time as systems of > relations that exist between objects". > > BillK Yeah, almost. It?s confusing another form of relationalism though. Leibniz was taking the view that the objects exist, but that space and time don?t really or only have a secondary existence. I kind of agree with Lawrence Sklar (in his 1974 book _Space, Time and Spacetime_) here: Newton?s scholium kind of showed in classical physics that there?s something there. Maybe, though, not exactly what Newton thought. But the debate rages on? maybe rages isn?t an accurate way to put it. ;) I merely wanted to test out the site with what I thought would be an easy if obscure subject. Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 2 05:23:15 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 1 May 2021 22:23:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] where's the robocar races? Message-ID: <000a01d73f13$41437f30$c3ca7d90$@rainier66.com> It's a fun time to be a controls engineer, but there is something I am disappointed in how long it is taking: robocar racing. Well cool, it looks like it is here now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDS3c4lwy_o spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ExiMod at protonmail.com Sun May 2 20:40:46 2021 From: ExiMod at protonmail.com (ExiMod) Date: Sun, 02 May 2021 20:40:46 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Test post after updates Message-ID: Test ExiMod Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun May 2 21:05:25 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 2 May 2021 14:05:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test post after updates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Test passed. On Sun, May 2, 2021 at 1:43 PM ExiMod via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Test > > ExiMod > > > Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 2 21:30:46 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 2 May 2021 22:30:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Talk to GPT-3 via Philosopher AI website In-Reply-To: <8B02E7FD-741E-48CF-86F8-446FA4904DE8@gmail.com> References: <8B02E7FD-741E-48CF-86F8-446FA4904DE8@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 2 May 2021 at 01:36, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: > > Yeah, almost. It?s confusing another form of relationalism though. Leibniz was taking the view that the objects exist, but that space and time don?t really or only have a secondary existence. I kind of agree with Lawrence Sklar (in his 1974 book _Space, Time and Spacetime_) here: Newton?s scholium kind of showed in classical physics that there?s something there. Maybe, though, not exactly what Newton thought. But the debate rages on? maybe rages isn?t an accurate way to put it. ;) > > I merely wanted to test out the site with what I thought would be an easy if obscure subject. > > Regards, Dan > _______________________________________________ > I've tried a few more times. I think these tests make the point that GPT-3 is not intelligent. It does not understand what it writes. It is searching through its (very large!) training data files and selecting and rewriting into sensible-sounding sentences. So replies are generally random associations of sentences that it links to each query. As shown by the wide variety of responses to substantivalism. It is a tremendous computing achievement, but I think it would be risky to treat it as an oracle of wisdom. BillK From danust2012 at gmail.com Sun May 2 22:59:25 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sun, 2 May 2021 15:59:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Talk to GPT-3 via Philosopher AI website Message-ID: <1A0BCBA6-FBC6-4C0D-B695-53A349AC569B@gmail.com> ?On May 2, 2021, at 2:34 PM, BillK via extropy-chat wrote: > ?On Sun, 2 May 2021 at 01:36, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > wrote: >> Yeah, almost. It?s confusing another form of relationalism though. Leibniz was taking the view that the objects exist, but that space and time don?t really or only have a secondary existence. I kind of agree with Lawrence Sklar (in his 1974 book _Space, Time and Spacetime_) here: Newton?s scholium kind of showed in classical physics that there?s something there. Maybe, though, not exactly what Newton thought. But the debate rages on? maybe rages isn?t an accurate way to put it. ;) >> I merely wanted to test out the site with what I thought would be an easy if obscure subject. >> Regards, Dan >> _________________________________________ > > I've tried a few more times. I think these tests make the point that GPT-3 > is not intelligent. It does not understand what it writes. > It is searching through its (very large!) training data files and selecting > and rewriting into sensible-sounding sentences. So replies are generally > random associations of sentences that it links to each query. > As shown by the wide variety of responses to substantivalism. > It is a tremendous computing achievement, but I think it would be > risky to treat it as an oracle of wisdom. I was thinking about it during one of my perambulations as a sort of glorified ELIZA. I also asked it What is exdurance? (Another example where I have some knowledge about it, so I can judge how well it does.) The result was worse than with substantivalism: ? Excursion is an out-of-body experience in which the soul of a person leaves their body and enters the spirit realm. A person under the influence of excursion typically enters a semi-conscious state and becomes susceptible to suggestion. ?In the context of a religion, excursion is the state between life and death. In this state, the soul of a deceased person is judged by the god of that religion. If they are accepted into heaven, their afterlife will be pleasant. If they are rejected, they are reincarnated under some stricter circumstances. If they are cursed, they will live a miserable existence and eventually perish.? This is a bit more obscure, but first page of googling reveals a decent article on the subject: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25471891?seq=1 Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Mon May 3 09:00:21 2021 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 3 May 2021 11:00:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Terasem Space Day (July 20) and more space stuff Message-ID: Terasem Space Day (July 20) and more space stuff The Terasem Space Day Colloquium 2021 will take place on July 20. Among the confirmed speakers, Namrata Goswami and Steven Wolfe... https://turingchurch.net/terasem-space-day-july-20-and-more-space-stuff-ca4ef6d2caa2 From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 4 01:38:07 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 3 May 2021 18:38:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bond. james bond. Message-ID: <003301d74086$22dca5c0$6895f140$@rainier66.com> If this isn't the coolest thing you ever saw, you have seen some damn cool stuff. https://twitter.com/i/status/1389285493439860744 spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue May 4 01:49:59 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 3 May 2021 18:49:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] bond. james bond. In-Reply-To: <003301d74086$22dca5c0$6895f140$@rainier66.com> References: <003301d74086$22dca5c0$6895f140$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <5BBFB1E3-929F-4971-8CB2-572871A95B69@gmail.com> On May 3, 2021, at 6:41 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > If this isn?t the coolest thing you ever saw, you have seen some damn cool stuff. > > https://twitter.com/i/status/1389285493439860744 > > spike It?s whisper quiet. What? It?s whisper quiet! I still can?t hear you. Let me shut off this thing. No, what was that? Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at zaiboc.net Tue May 4 16:40:11 2021 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 17:40:11 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Pascal's wager In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 01/05/2021 23:04, Spike commented: > Perhaps you know of Pascal?s Wager, where the philosopher (who > discovered a whole buttload of cool math (and so is forever on my list > of people who can do no wrong)) expounded on how humans make a > win-draw bet on the existence of god.? If they choose to believe and > are right, then good.? If they choose to believe and are wrong, then > nothing happens, so what the ?hell? difference does it make?? It?s a > win-draw bet, ja? Nein. It's a non-starter, because first, which god do you choose to believe in? Choosing the wrong one could be just as disastrous as choosing none, if there were a god or gods. And considering how many gods we've invented over the millennia (a LOT), the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of choosing the wrong one. Additionally, being a believer almost always comes along with restrictive rules on how you should live your life, so depending on which religion you bet on, you could lose a lot in the way of enjoyable, educational and otherwise positive experiences, and gain a lot in the way of miserable, guilty and fearful ones. Not to mention being an active contributor to holding back human development generally (this applies whether gods exist or not). But I'm sure most of us on this list know this already. -- Ben Zaiboc From tara at taramayastales.com Tue May 4 16:52:04 2021 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 09:52:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pascal's wager In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The argument works better with unicorns. As far as I know, there are no downsides to believing in unicorns. > On May 4, 2021, at 9:40 AM, Ben via extropy-chat wrote: > > On 01/05/2021 23:04, Spike commented: >> Perhaps you know of Pascal?s Wager, where the philosopher (who discovered a whole buttload of cool math (and so is forever on my list of people who can do no wrong)) expounded on how humans make a win-draw bet on the existence of god. If they choose to believe and are right, then good. If they choose to believe and are wrong, then nothing happens, so what the ?hell? difference does it make? It?s a win-draw bet, ja? > > Nein. > > It's a non-starter, because first, which god do you choose to believe in? Choosing the wrong one could be just as disastrous as choosing none, if there were a god or gods. And considering how many gods we've invented over the millennia (a LOT), the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of choosing the wrong one. > > Additionally, being a believer almost always comes along with restrictive rules on how you should live your life, so depending on which religion you bet on, you could lose a lot in the way of enjoyable, educational and otherwise positive experiences, and gain a lot in the way of miserable, guilty and fearful ones. Not to mention being an active contributor to holding back human development generally (this applies whether gods exist or not). > > But I'm sure most of us on this list know this already. > > -- > Ben Zaiboc > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue May 4 16:59:16 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 11:59:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Pascal's wager In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Some good points, Ben. Notice that people just seem to love hurting themselves, sometimes physically (incl. flagellation), when they take on a religion. Give up alcohol and drugs, give up having mistresses, give up a good bit of your money, give up your whole life (nums, monks, foreign missionaries). These things make many people feel good. They 'know' that they are full of sin and deserve to suffer, asceticism being one way to do that. Another way is to find sinners and either convert them or torture and kill them (Christianity and Islam). These are goals that appeal to billions, whereas atheism has no goals to offer people. bill w On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 11:43 AM Ben via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On 01/05/2021 23:04, Spike commented: > > Perhaps you know of Pascal?s Wager, where the philosopher (who > > discovered a whole buttload of cool math (and so is forever on my list > > of people who can do no wrong)) expounded on how humans make a > > win-draw bet on the existence of god. If they choose to believe and > > are right, then good. If they choose to believe and are wrong, then > > nothing happens, so what the ?hell? difference does it make? It?s a > > win-draw bet, ja? > > Nein. > > It's a non-starter, because first, which god do you choose to believe > in? Choosing the wrong one could be just as disastrous as choosing none, > if there were a god or gods. And considering how many gods we've > invented over the millennia (a LOT), the odds are overwhelmingly in > favour of choosing the wrong one. > > Additionally, being a believer almost always comes along with > restrictive rules on how you should live your life, so depending on > which religion you bet on, you could lose a lot in the way of enjoyable, > educational and otherwise positive experiences, and gain a lot in the > way of miserable, guilty and fearful ones. Not to mention being an > active contributor to holding back human development generally (this > applies whether gods exist or not). > > But I'm sure most of us on this list know this already. > > -- > Ben Zaiboc > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue May 4 17:00:21 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 12:00:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Pascal's wager In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well, Tara, it depends on whether you share your beliefs with others - tell others your belief and see if you can hold on to rational friends. bill w On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 11:55 AM Tara Maya via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The argument works better with unicorns. As far as I know, there are no > downsides to believing in unicorns. > > > On May 4, 2021, at 9:40 AM, Ben via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > On 01/05/2021 23:04, Spike commented: > >> Perhaps you know of Pascal?s Wager, where the philosopher (who > discovered a whole buttload of cool math (and so is forever on my list of > people who can do no wrong)) expounded on how humans make a win-draw bet on > the existence of god. If they choose to believe and are right, then good. > If they choose to believe and are wrong, then nothing happens, so what the > ?hell? difference does it make? It?s a win-draw bet, ja? > > > > Nein. > > > > It's a non-starter, because first, which god do you choose to believe > in? Choosing the wrong one could be just as disastrous as choosing none, if > there were a god or gods. And considering how many gods we've invented over > the millennia (a LOT), the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of choosing > the wrong one. > > > > Additionally, being a believer almost always comes along with > restrictive rules on how you should live your life, so depending on which > religion you bet on, you could lose a lot in the way of enjoyable, > educational and otherwise positive experiences, and gain a lot in the way > of miserable, guilty and fearful ones. Not to mention being an active > contributor to holding back human development generally (this applies > whether gods exist or not). > > > > But I'm sure most of us on this list know this already. > > > > -- > > Ben Zaiboc > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at zaiboc.net Tue May 4 20:09:18 2021 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 21:09:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 212, Issue 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 04/05/2021 18:00, Tara Maya wrote: > he argument works better with unicorns. As far as I know, there are no downsides to believing in unicorns. Weeeel, I'm not so sure. Ever read 'Equoid' by Charles Stross? https://readfrom.net/charles-stross---laundry/132167-equoid.html -- Ben Zaiboc From ben at zaiboc.net Tue May 4 20:23:35 2021 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 21:23:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> On 04/05/2021 18:00, bill w wrote: > atheism has no goals to offer people Not so sure about that, either. I'd call achieving an unblinkered, rational view of the world a goal. A very worthy one, too. I'd call combating the evils of religion in a non-violent way a worthy goal as well. Many atheists still have what I call a 'crypto-dualist' worldview, which is betrayed in their language. They may say they have no beliefs in the supernatural, but then say things which reveal some kind of conviction that there is something non-natural about the mind, for instance. Look a the number of atheists who can't take the final step to fully embrace materialism, and as a consequence deny that uploading can work, for instance ("it would 'only' be a copy!!"). I'd say that an important goal of atheism is to divest oneself of any trace of non-materialism, to fully accept that the mind is a result of physical processes, and all the consequences of that view. And yes, I know how difficult that can be. For many people, atheism is just as much a challenge as any religious path. But far more rewarding, in my view. -- Ben Zaiboc From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue May 4 22:13:27 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 17:13:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> References: <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: I am a materialist, but believe the mind will never be uploaded because it is too complex. Every day it seems that new studies find new kinds of neurons or some such. The deeper we go the more complex it gets. I believe that eventually they will be able to copy something resulting in the copy's acknowledgement that it is a person. And you have to factor in the brain's interactions with the rest of the body, such as the heart and gut. And of course I could be very, very wrong. I'll never know. What if each copy has the worst possible phantom limb/phantom body syndrome ever? Will they be able to duplicate the actions of antipsychotic medicines on a digital person? For many people atheism is a loss of security in what humans are and what we are doing here and how we should act. You are now alone in the universe. People love to be part of something: a club or clan, a family, a team. Atheists do feel a camaraderie with other atheists, just as I as a psychologist feel a closeness with other psychologists, but that seems to pale next to being a member of a religion who will meet one another in Heaven. Atheists clearly feel superior to others. We are the smart ones, the rational ones, the ones who have dumped religious myths. This to me is not much reward compared to what religions promise. But I am not an atheist for the rewards. And I have to tolerate the punishments and write them off as misguided. bill w On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 3:26 PM Ben via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On 04/05/2021 18:00, bill w wrote: > > atheism has no goals to offer people > > Not so sure about that, either. > > I'd call achieving an unblinkered, rational view of the world a goal. A > very worthy one, too. > I'd call combating the evils of religion in a non-violent way a worthy > goal as well. > > Many atheists still have what I call a 'crypto-dualist' worldview, which > is betrayed in their language. They may say they have no beliefs in the > supernatural, but then say things which reveal some kind of conviction > that there is something non-natural about the mind, for instance. Look a > the number of atheists who can't take the final step to fully embrace > materialism, and as a consequence deny that uploading can work, for > instance ("it would 'only' be a copy!!"). > > I'd say that an important goal of atheism is to divest oneself of any > trace of non-materialism, to fully accept that the mind is a result of > physical processes, and all the consequences of that view. And yes, I > know how difficult that can be. For many people, atheism is just as much > a challenge as any religious path. But far more rewarding, in my view. > > -- > Ben Zaiboc > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 4 22:42:31 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 08:42:31 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> References: <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 06:25, Ben via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On 04/05/2021 18:00, bill w wrote: > > atheism has no goals to offer people > > Not so sure about that, either. > > I'd call achieving an unblinkered, rational view of the world a goal. A > very worthy one, too. > I'd call combating the evils of religion in a non-violent way a worthy > goal as well. > > Many atheists still have what I call a 'crypto-dualist' worldview, which > is betrayed in their language. They may say they have no beliefs in the > supernatural, but then say things which reveal some kind of conviction > that there is something non-natural about the mind, for instance. Look a > the number of atheists who can't take the final step to fully embrace > materialism, and as a consequence deny that uploading can work, for > instance ("it would 'only' be a copy!!"). > > I'd say that an important goal of atheism is to divest oneself of any > trace of non-materialism, to fully accept that the mind is a result of > physical processes, and all the consequences of that view. And yes, I > know how difficult that can be. For many people, atheism is just as much > a challenge as any religious path. But far more rewarding, in my view. Atheism does not entail materialism. Atheists just believe that there are no gods, either material or non-material. Most atheists are probably materialists, but they don?t have to be in order to consistently be atheists. Moreover, a materialist could claim that computers cannot be conscious because there is a certain material quality that biological systems possess that computers lack. It requires some careful argument to refute this position. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue May 4 22:54:04 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 17:54:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: References: <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: To say that something can or cannot be conscious implies that we know what it is and how to measure it. We don't. Other than crudely bill w On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 5:46 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 06:25, Ben via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On 04/05/2021 18:00, bill w wrote: >> > atheism has no goals to offer people >> >> Not so sure about that, either. >> >> I'd call achieving an unblinkered, rational view of the world a goal. A >> very worthy one, too. >> I'd call combating the evils of religion in a non-violent way a worthy >> goal as well. >> >> Many atheists still have what I call a 'crypto-dualist' worldview, which >> is betrayed in their language. They may say they have no beliefs in the >> supernatural, but then say things which reveal some kind of conviction >> that there is something non-natural about the mind, for instance. Look a >> the number of atheists who can't take the final step to fully embrace >> materialism, and as a consequence deny that uploading can work, for >> instance ("it would 'only' be a copy!!"). >> >> I'd say that an important goal of atheism is to divest oneself of any >> trace of non-materialism, to fully accept that the mind is a result of >> physical processes, and all the consequences of that view. And yes, I >> know how difficult that can be. For many people, atheism is just as much >> a challenge as any religious path. But far more rewarding, in my view. > > > Atheism does not entail materialism. Atheists just believe that there are > no gods, either material or non-material. Most atheists are probably > materialists, but they don?t have to be in order to consistently be > atheists. Moreover, a materialist could claim that computers cannot be > conscious because there is a certain material quality that biological > systems possess that computers lack. It requires some careful argument to > refute this position. > >> -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gadersd at gmail.com Tue May 4 23:07:21 2021 From: gadersd at gmail.com (Hermes Trismegistus) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 19:07:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Pascal's wager In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: <478AD4E6-239E-4D65-BC25-A0E9B4621C9F@hxcore.ol> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gadersd at gmail.com Tue May 4 23:09:40 2021 From: gadersd at gmail.com (Hermes Trismegistus) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 19:09:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Pascal's wager In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: <9EF1912A-B2AE-42EB-AD6F-5F20DB480801@hxcore.ol> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gadersd at gmail.com Tue May 4 23:33:06 2021 From: gadersd at gmail.com (Hermes Trismegistus) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 19:33:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> References: , <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: <4EF553D3-F4A0-4736-ACCD-A6EA8837D397@hxcore.ol> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 5 00:17:07 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 10:17:07 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: <4EF553D3-F4A0-4736-ACCD-A6EA8837D397@hxcore.ol> References: <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> <4EF553D3-F4A0-4736-ACCD-A6EA8837D397@hxcore.ol> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 09:34, Hermes Trismegistus via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The only way to scientifically test a theory regarding consciousness, such > as the uploading theory, is to have a consciousness perform the > observations of tests on itself or entities that are similar enough. If the > consciousness cannot detect any effect or change whatsoever, then > scientifically one must conclude that there was no effect on consciousness. > If uploading was performed gradually such that simulated neurons gradually > replace the biological ones through some connection, then the consciousness > could observe any noticeable changes. In a proper upload(correctly > simulates all the neurons and accompanying molecules), the subject cannot > notice a change because a proper upload preserves behavior. Therefore there > cannot be any observation that gives evidence that a proper upload does not > preserve consciousness. > > > > The belief that uploading does not preserve consciousness then must stem > from a conviction that there is some attribute to consciousness that is not > observable, even to the subject herself. This is of course an unscientific > belief, but many, even seemingly rational, people believe in such ethereal > things. I think people like attaching mysterious attributes to > consciousness because it makes them feel special, that they transcend the > material world. > The most serious problem with the idea that there is an aspect of consciousness which is not observable even to the subject herself is not scientific, it is logical. A difference that is neither objective nor subjective us no difference at all. If I had an injury requiring a part of my brain to be replaced and I had the choice of an electronic implant for $5000 or a magical implant for $6000, and knew that neither I nor anyone else would be able to tell any difference between them, why would I choose the more expensive option? > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gadersd at gmail.com Wed May 5 01:14:02 2021 From: gadersd at gmail.com (Hermes Trismegistus) Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 21:14:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: References: <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> <4EF553D3-F4A0-4736-ACCD-A6EA8837D397@hxcore.ol>, Message-ID: <27CA4C6F-F9A7-41CC-B8F7-7308B3911C2B@hxcore.ol> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 5 02:44:11 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 12:44:11 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: <27CA4C6F-F9A7-41CC-B8F7-7308B3911C2B@hxcore.ol> References: <850f9ddb-005f-1838-cde9-c391665c6143@zaiboc.net> <4EF553D3-F4A0-4736-ACCD-A6EA8837D397@hxcore.ol> <27CA4C6F-F9A7-41CC-B8F7-7308B3911C2B@hxcore.ol> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 11:15, Hermes Trismegistus via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > And yet many philosophers would disagree with you. I forget their exact > arguments, something about souls? > It is the same analysis if our consciousness is due to a physical brain or a magical soul. If there is no objective and no subjective difference, there is no difference at all. *From: *Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat > > *Sent: *Tuesday, May 4, 2021 8:20 PM > *To: *ExI chat list > *Cc: *Stathis Papaioannou > *Subject: *Re: [ExI] Pascals wager > > > > > > > > On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 09:34, Hermes Trismegistus via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > The only way to scientifically test a theory regarding consciousness, such > as the uploading theory, is to have a consciousness perform the > observations of tests on itself or entities that are similar enough. If the > consciousness cannot detect any effect or change whatsoever, then > scientifically one must conclude that there was no effect on consciousness. > If uploading was performed gradually such that simulated neurons gradually > replace the biological ones through some connection, then the consciousness > could observe any noticeable changes. In a proper upload(correctly > simulates all the neurons and accompanying molecules), the subject cannot > notice a change because a proper upload preserves behavior. Therefore there > cannot be any observation that gives evidence that a proper upload does not > preserve consciousness. > > > > The belief that uploading does not preserve consciousness then must stem > from a conviction that there is some attribute to consciousness that is not > observable, even to the subject herself. This is of course an unscientific > belief, but many, even seemingly rational, people believe in such ethereal > things. I think people like attaching mysterious attributes to > consciousness because it makes them feel special, that they transcend the > material world. > > The most serious problem with the idea that there is an aspect of > consciousness which is not observable even to the subject herself is not > scientific, it is logical. A difference that is neither objective nor > subjective us no difference at all. If I had an injury requiring a part of > my brain to be replaced and I had the choice of an electronic implant for > $5000 or a magical implant for $6000, and knew that neither I nor anyone > else would be able to tell any difference between them, why would I choose > the more expensive option? > > -- > > Stathis Papaioannou > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 5 13:24:01 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 06:24:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tornados and google maps Message-ID: <002e01d741b1$ea455c70$bed01550$@rainier66.com> Tornados touch down and wreck stuff in random locations, but fortunately they don't really cover a lot of area like a hurricane. We only hear of it when it happens where there are news agencies. Fun experiment: Google on any populated country, such as USA, go into satellite view. Zoom out a long ways where you can't see cities, then take the hand icon and mix it up a little, so that you are over any random spot. Now play tornado and zoom in right there. Try it several times. I touched down in a farm field with no structures nearby, then an undeveloped area with nothing nearby (where no one might ever notice that one came in), then another field, then a fourth time where I came down near enough to a barn to take out that structure, but nothing else, insurance guy out the next day, a month later, new barn, like nothing ever happened. I might repeat that experiment and see how long it takes for me to land near enough to any developed area, then recognize that even if I land there, it is not certain that the path will be toward that populated area. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 5 13:35:39 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 06:35:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tornados and google maps In-Reply-To: <002e01d741b1$ea455c70$bed01550$@rainier66.com> References: <002e01d741b1$ea455c70$bed01550$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003701d741b3$8a1a2680$9e4e7380$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com Subject: tornados and google maps >.Tornados touch down and wreck stuff in random locations, but fortunately they don't really cover a lot of area like a hurricane. We only hear of it when it happens where there are news agencies. then a fourth time where I came down near enough to a barn to take out that structure, but nothing else, insurance guy out the next day, a month later, new barn, like nothing ever happened. spike Then it occurred to me. why it is that insurance companies make such good money: they sell insurance to people based on perceived risk rather than actual risk. I played six more rounds of the Google Maps tornado game, and of the ten total, only two landed anywhere near structures, and two others might have cost the insurance guy something, but not all that much. There are tornados in the USA south this week, big exciting news. It sells clicks like nobody's business, gets the proles to buy underground storm cellars and insurance and such. But if you look at the insurance company's balance sheet, tornados are a gift, a huge gift. Those are perceived as a great risk to life and property, but they really aren't. Insurance companies sell the perception of risk, whereas they know the reality of the risk, because they hafta pay for it. Great profit. After doing the Google tornado game, I am convinced proles should not buy storm insurance. Damn there hasta be a way to cash in on that insight, spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 5 15:01:06 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 16:01:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] tornados and google maps In-Reply-To: <003701d741b3$8a1a2680$9e4e7380$@rainier66.com> References: <002e01d741b1$ea455c70$bed01550$@rainier66.com> <003701d741b3$8a1a2680$9e4e7380$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 14:39, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > After doing the Google tornado game, I am convinced proles should not > buy storm insurance. Damn there hasta be a way to cash in on that insight, > > spike > _______________________________________________ Err, umm, perhaps first do a search for tornado insurance claims? Quote: In 2018, insurance claims related to tornado and thunderstorm damage cost $14.1 billion. Tornado damage can be incredibly costly to fix, and a severe tornado can easily destroy a home in minutes. ------------- It looks like much of the tornado damage would be covered by a normal home insurance policy. But the small print may mean that additional policies could be required, depending on claim limits and exactly what is covered. (In the UK, tornado damage means a few roof tiles blown off, or a garden trampoline blown down the street) :) BillK From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 5 15:31:01 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 08:31:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tornados and google maps In-Reply-To: References: <002e01d741b1$ea455c70$bed01550$@rainier66.com> <003701d741b3$8a1a2680$9e4e7380$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005c01d741c3$a7f10e20$f7d32a60$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] tornados and google maps On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 14:39, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > After doing the Google tornado game, I am convinced proles should not > buy storm insurance. Damn there hasta be a way to cash in on that > insight, > > spike > _______________________________________________ >...Err, umm, perhaps first do a search for tornado insurance claims? Quote: >...In 2018, insurance claims related to tornado and thunderstorm damage cost $14.1 billion. Tornado damage can be incredibly costly to fix, and a severe tornado can easily destroy a home in minutes... The insurance companies price in their expected payout, then rake in the profit. 14.1 billion isn't that much money. ------------- >...It looks like much of the tornado damage would be covered by a normal home insurance policy. But the small print may mean that additional policies could be required, depending on claim limits and exactly what is covered. (In the UK, tornado damage means a few roof tiles blown off, or a garden trampoline blown down the street) :) BillK The homes in Jolly Olde are bigger than in the USA, but they are spread far apart: https://www.google.com/search?q=highclere+castle&sxsrf=ALeKk02dGfAyY279tEnzB AYA-E_eQHiI7A:1620228053376&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwii_83s67LwA hVOqp4KHaXdDJkQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1161&bih=849 Let's try the Google tornado game in the UK. Trial 1: Undeveloped area, no cost to the insurance company Trial 2: Sparse suburbia, in outer Buckingham. One wonders if Lindsey Buckingham was from there. Trial 3: Moderate density suburb near Billesley, probably cost the insurance company some bucks for roof tiles and trampolines Trial 4: Farm field. Trial 5: Farm field. Trial 6: Moderately dense suburb near Lenton. Trial 7: Farm field. Trial 8: Forest. Trial 9: Fallow field. Trial 10: Farm field, a few structures kinda nearby. Very well, the UK experiment had 2 moderately dense suburbs that woulda cost the insurance company money, on sparse suburb and the rest nearly negligible expense. I heard the tornados in UK are not very sincere in any case. spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed May 5 16:21:10 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 11:21:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] odds and psychology Message-ID: Here is what you guys are not getting: after 9/11 thousands of people died because they drove instead of flying. The odds meant nothing to them. Planes meant terrorists. And let's face it: you are off the ground - crash and goodbye. Tornados are extremely scary things. Again, odds are not the story - scary is the story - death, total destruction, etc. In any case, people do not understand odds, as we all know and have known for quite a while. No one on this list is comparable to the average person, so quit putting yourself in their shoes and start thinking about odds. bill w bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Wed May 5 16:22:26 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 09:22:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? Message-ID: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf Abstract: Most philosophers of science do philosophy ?on? science. By contrast, others do philosophy ?in? science (?PinS?), i.e., they use philosophical tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific journals (?intervention?), cited in scientific journals (?visibility?) and sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (?contribution?). We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ?specialized? in this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. ?????? CHT William Gillis Haven?t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised. Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Wed May 5 16:37:15 2021 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 12:37:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] tornados and google maps Message-ID: ? ?A tornado surprisingly came through Western Mass almost exactly ten years ago. Here?s the path it left, to the left of the interstate, after passing through West Springfield and Springfield: More pics and such here https://www.wwlp.com/weather/weather-news/remembering-the-2011-tornado-that-hit-western-massachusetts-9-years-ago/ In my case my roof was damaged by wind and my was car damaged by hail. I got a new roof out of the deal through my homeowners insurance. I had coworkers that needed serious remodeling of their homes which occurred through their homeowners insurance. Tornadoes are so rare in New England that no one has storm insurance. I could have put an auto insurance claim in for my car but never did. My hood still has golf ball sized golf ball dimples. Not sure I would have benefitted from storm insurance, but I?ve never read such a policy. -Henry > On May 5, 2021, at 11:02 AM, BillK via extropy-chat wrote: > ?On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 14:39, spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: > >> After doing the Google tornado game, I am convinced proles should not >> buy storm insurance. Damn there hasta be a way to cash in on that insight, >> >> spike >> _______________________________________________ > > > Err, umm, perhaps first do a search for tornado insurance claims? > > > Quote: > In 2018, insurance claims related to tornado and thunderstorm damage > cost $14.1 billion. Tornado damage can be incredibly costly to fix, > and a severe tornado can easily destroy a home in minutes. > ------------- > > It looks like much of the tornado damage would be covered by a normal > home insurance policy. But the small print may mean that additional > policies could be required, depending on claim limits and exactly what > is covered. > (In the UK, tornado damage means a few roof tiles blown off, or a > garden trampoline blown down the street) :) > > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image0.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 94776 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed May 5 17:27:51 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 12:27:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] tornados and google maps In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: My hood still has golf ball sized golf ball dimples. Henry My very first car, bought in 1964 for $200 was a 1953 Olds 98. Boy was I proud of it. I went to Wichita Falls, Texas to play golf with a friend. We went to the course and then came a storm. I had to stand inside and see my precious car get dimples all over it - also broke the windshield. I drove back to Baton Rouge and got a windshield from a junk yard. I spent all day putting it in myself - truly a busted knuckle job - finally got it in without breaking it, but never did get the chrome around it in. I was driving this doomed car North of Baton Rouge when one of several vultures along side the road decided not to go with his friends but fly into my windshield. I picked out glass from the space by the back window. I was driving my wife's car in the opposite direction along the same road a year later when the exact same thing happened: vulture into windshield. What are the odds of that? Even one time. Flash forward to 1971 - Montevallo Al. An enormous tornado came through and destroyed a seven mile stretch along a highway. You can still see damage from it. (Youtube: Centreville tornado) I was living in a single wide trailer at the time near that highway. Seeing some warnings, I stuck my head out the door: a thousand railroad trains plus zillions of bees was what it sounded like. I stood there in my underwear while the tornado came by. When the trailer started shaking I considered jumping in the ditch but decided that I would rather die dry. A questionable decision, that. It took out a trailer (empty) just where the landowner had wanted me to put mine, about 50 yards up the hill, but I wanted the place down from it and got it. You just never know when a small decision like that can save your life. It saved mine. So it passed by with no damage to me or my stuff. Must have been a really strong and wide one. bill w On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 11:40 AM Henry Rivera via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > ? > ?A tornado surprisingly came through Western Mass almost exactly ten years > ago. > > Here?s the path it left, to the left of the interstate, after passing > through West Springfield and Springfield: > > > More pics and such here > https://www.wwlp.com/weather/weather-news/remembering-the-2011-tornado-that-hit-western-massachusetts-9-years-ago/ > > In my case my roof was damaged by wind and my was car damaged by hail. I > got a new roof out of the deal through my homeowners insurance. I had > coworkers that needed serious remodeling of their homes which occurred > through their homeowners insurance. Tornadoes are so rare in New England > that no one has storm insurance. I could have put an auto insurance claim > in for my car but never did. My hood still has golf ball sized golf ball > dimples. > > Not sure I would have benefitted from storm insurance, but I?ve never read > such a policy. > > -Henry > > On May 5, 2021, at 11:02 AM, BillK via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > ?On Wed, 5 May 2021 at 14:39, spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: > > > After doing the Google tornado game, I am convinced proles should not > > buy storm insurance. Damn there hasta be a way to cash in on that insight, > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > > > > Err, umm, perhaps first do a search for tornado insurance claims? > > > Quote: > In 2018, insurance claims related to tornado and thunderstorm damage > cost $14.1 billion. Tornado damage can be incredibly costly to fix, > and a severe tornado can easily destroy a home in minutes. > ------------- > > It looks like much of the tornado damage would be covered by a normal > home insurance policy. But the small print may mean that additional > policies could be required, depending on claim limits and exactly what > is covered. > (In the UK, tornado damage means a few roof tiles blown off, or a > garden trampoline blown down the street) :) > > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image0.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 94776 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ben at zaiboc.net Wed May 5 18:02:35 2021 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 19:02:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1b141e46-30b2-28ae-6375-74e4ef068fb1@zaiboc.net> On 05/05/2021 14:35, Stathis wrote: > Atheists just believe that there are no gods Aargh, not this one again! Atheists do NOT /believe there are no gods/. That is not atheism. Atheists /don't believe there are gods/ instead. Big difference. Yes, I'm sure there are people who call themselves atheists and say they have a belief in the non-existence of gods, but that is not what atheism is defined as. It's non-belief in the existence of gods. They look similar ideas, but if you look at them properly, you can see they are worlds apart. Believing that something is not true is a different thing to not believing that something is. -- Ben Zaiboc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 5 18:08:28 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 11:08:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: <1b141e46-30b2-28ae-6375-74e4ef068fb1@zaiboc.net> References: <1b141e46-30b2-28ae-6375-74e4ef068fb1@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 11:05 AM Ben via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Atheists do NOT *believe there are no gods*. That is not atheism. > Atheists *don't believe there are gods* instead. Big difference. > > Yes, I'm sure there are people who call themselves atheists and say they > have a belief in the non-existence of gods, but that is not what atheism is > defined as. It's non-belief in the existence of gods. They look similar > ideas, but if you look at them properly, you can see they are worlds apart. > Believing that something is not true is a different thing to not believing > that something is. > I don't suppose you could explain the difference? I can easily see how people would see "believe there are no gods" and "don't believe there are gods" as logically equivalent. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Wed May 5 20:24:28 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 13:24:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pascals wager In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > On May 5, 2021, at 11:13 AM, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat wrote: > ? >> On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 11:05 AM Ben via extropy-chat wrote: > >> Atheists do NOT believe there are no gods. That is not atheism. Atheists don't believe there are gods instead. Big difference. >> >> Yes, I'm sure there are people who call themselves atheists and say they have a belief in the non-existence of gods, but that is not what atheism is defined as. It's non-belief in the existence of gods. They look similar ideas, but if you look at them properly, you can see they are worlds apart. Believing that something is not true is a different thing to not believing that something is. > > I don't suppose you could explain the difference? I can easily see how people would see "believe there are no gods" and "don't believe there are gods" as logically equivalent. I would parse atheism into negative and positive types. The former is bluntly to lack a belief in god/gods. Think of it as if you were to look into someone?s mind and could see they simply didn?t have such a belief ? in the same manner that someone who doesn?t know about high energy physics theories might lack any beliefs about, say, gluons. The latter holds a belief there are no gods. Looking into their mind, you?d see a belief there with regard to gods, albeit one that there are none. In the same, imagine someone who knows high energy physics theories but believes that they?re wrong about gluons ? that, in fact, the model is wrong about them existing and being strong force carriers. In this way, the two varieties are not logically equivalent. (George H. Smith has argued that without being clear on just what the concept of god is, it?s often uncertain just what one is supposed to believe or disbelieve.) Anyhow, cf. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Wed May 5 23:42:43 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Wed, 05 May 2021 16:42:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Talk to GPT-3 via Philosopher AI website Message-ID: <20210505164243.Horde.GoCOKmbwIDEIrbMhRfPdDGw@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting Bill W and Bill K: > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 1 May 2021 17:24:25 -0500 > From: William Flynn Wallace > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Talk to GPT-3 via Philosopher AI website > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Ignorant and/or stupid question: > > Modern physics supports Relationalism, with > Quantum Mechanics arguing that particles have a wave-particle duality > and strings having a shape and direction but only when observed. > > How do they know what it is doing when not observed? bill w We don't. All we know is the wave function which encapsulates everything it CAN do whether we watch it or not. > > On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 5:07 PM BillK via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 at 13:43, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat >> wrote: >>> >>> Didn?t work that well for me: >>> https://philosopherai.xyz/2c1b0c9c-d448-411e-a05c-532ed501f613 >>> >> >> It seems to be a personal website, sometimes too busy, please try later. >> :) >> >>> What is substantivalism? >>> >>> Substantivalism is a position in the philosophy of mathematics. >>> It states that numbers and mathematical objects have real existence. >>> _______________________________________________ >> >> >> I now get different results for substantivalism. Wonder why it changes??? I think part of the problem is confusing the raw algorithm with the fully trained model or even a model that updates itself on a regular basis. As someone who has dabbled with neural networks and their training, I can tell you that the raw algorithm is a tabula rasa in every way and the process of training a neural network starts out with random values for every neuron's weight. I have done experiments that show that you can take different instances of the very same neural network and train them identically, yet at the end of training you get different distinct networks from the very same data that have slightly different weights for the various neurons. If properly trained, the neural network will still get the right answer, but the last few decimal digits will differ for each neuronal weight, and different "trainings" will result in AIs that might give different answers in the gray areas where the answers are not absolute. Also in the specific case of GPT-3 there are four different models with different parameters and levels of training. The models are Ada, Babbage, Curie, Davinci. Open-AI charges the most for API calls to Davinci, which is the smartest model and the least for API calls to Ada which is the least-well trained model. The website you link to sounds like it running off of Ada. Stuart LaForge >> ---------------- >> What is substantivalism? >> >> The term substantivalism describes a broad category of metaphysics >> where an object's properties and nature determine its identity. In >> this school of thought, objects are distinct and separate from the >> outside world. >> >> It is contrasted by Relationalism which argues that objects have >> relational identities. Modern physics supports Relationalism, with >> Quantum Mechanics arguing that particles have a wave-particle duality >> and strings having a shape and direction but only when observed. >> ________________________ >> >> This response seems to relate to < >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationalism> >> "According to Newton?s substantivalism, space and time are entities in >> their own right, existing independently of things. Leibniz?s >> relationism, on the other hand, describes space and time as systems of >> relations that exist between objects". >> >> >> BillK From avant at sollegro.com Thu May 6 00:04:22 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Wed, 05 May 2021 17:04:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pascal's wager Message-ID: <20210505170422.Horde.wq0JVgPe6MdAzLzbS5nFlov@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting Tara Maya: > Message: 13 > Date: Tue, 4 May 2021 09:52:04 -0700 > From: Tara Maya > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Pascal's wager > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > The argument works better with unicorns. As far as I know, there are > no downsides to believing in unicorns. Despite his pious intentions, Pascal's wager is less about God or unicorns than it is about the physical existence of mathematical infinity. If mathematical infinities are physically real in the same sense that real physical circles exist that correspond to mathematical circles, then that opens a whole can of worms and anything that is is at all possible like gods, unicorns, dragons, and fairies, as well as unnamed things yet to be imagined, exist in some universe somewhere. That being said, based on the lack of credible evidence, your odds of living in the same universe as unicorns is vanishingly small. Stuart LaForge From danust2012 at gmail.com Thu May 6 01:06:13 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 18:06:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pascal's wager In-Reply-To: <9EF1912A-B2AE-42EB-AD6F-5F20DB480801@hxcore.ol> References: <9EF1912A-B2AE-42EB-AD6F-5F20DB480801@hxcore.ol> Message-ID: <662E9251-FFEF-49CE-89C8-3C61A93A133C@gmail.com> There?s some stuff to unpack here. First, it depends on what is meant by ?unicorn? and what?s acceptable as close enough. The mythical unicorns have some variation, but a big problem is they tend to have magical/supernatural properties. In which case, it might not matter how vast the universe is or what diverse paths evolution (or bioengineering) has taken elsewhere (or in the future), they might be ruled out. This might be taken to mean mythical unicorns are nomologically impossible. That is, they?re impossible because they go against the laws of nature (or physics). Second, when someone says they believe in unicorns, one has to go further than just asking if unicorns are possible anywhere or at any time. One has to ask, so they believe they exist as I the myths in our world age relatively recently or even now. In which case, it can?t help if there are unicorn-like beings in a far off galaxy or that they?ll arise in the distant future ? say, a billion years from now. (This goes along with contingent impossibility. For instance, it?s contingently impossible that JFK could run for Senate now because he?s king dead.) It?s kind of like the Loch Ness monster. It?s no help knowing that giant swimming reptiles existed back in the Mesozoic. People who believe there?s one in Loch Ness aren?t believing there were, say, plesiosaurs 65 million years ago. They?re believing there are such animals right now (or at least in the last several decades) in that lake. Regards, Dan > On May 4, 2021, at 4:17 PM, Hermes Trismegistus via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > If the universe is vast enough and life is common enough, then surely there are creatures that resemble our mythical unicorns on other planets. I hold to a healthy faith in unicorns, though I may never see one. > > From: William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > Sent: Tuesday, May 4, 2021 1:11 PM > To: ExI chat list > Cc: William Flynn Wallace > Subject: Re: [ExI] Pascal's wager > > Well, Tara, it depends on whether you share your beliefs with others - tell others your belief and see if you can hold on to rational friends. bill w > > On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 11:55 AM Tara Maya via extropy-chat wrote: > The argument works better with unicorns. As far as I know, there are no downsides to believing in unicorns. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 6 03:02:12 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 20:02:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tornados and google maps In-Reply-To: <003701d741b3$8a1a2680$9e4e7380$@rainier66.com> References: <002e01d741b1$ea455c70$bed01550$@rainier66.com> <003701d741b3$8a1a2680$9e4e7380$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 6:38 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > After doing the Google tornado game, I am convinced proles should not buy > storm insurance. > Or perhaps that storm insurance is overpriced? > Damn there hasta be a way to cash in on that insight, > Such as by running an insurance company? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 6 03:39:15 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 5 May 2021 20:39:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] tornados and google maps In-Reply-To: References: <002e01d741b1$ea455c70$bed01550$@rainier66.com> <003701d741b3$8a1a2680$9e4e7380$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001e01d74229$63d0a730$2b71f590$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] tornados and google maps On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 6:38 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: After doing the Google tornado game, I am convinced proles should not buy storm insurance. >?Or perhaps that storm insurance is overpriced? Ja, I think it is. Most of us have experienced some kind of extreme weather event at some point in our lives. BillW?s bad hailstorm, I was in a hell of a flood on 15 August 1984. But both of us lads have lived a long time. We don?t really think about all those nice days where there was no weather event. Our minds are drawn to that scary time. This creates the illusion that weather is more dangerous than it really is. Money to be made on that. Damn there hasta be a way to cash in on that insight, >?Such as by running an insurance company? Well ja, I was thinking in terms of betting with the house. I suppose buying their stock would be the equivalent of that concept. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Thu May 6 15:23:15 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 09:23:15 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: I've always considered the difference between scientific and philosophical claims to be experimental falsifiability. Is that not right? On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf > > Abstract: > > Most philosophers of science do philosophy ?on? science. By contrast, > others do philosophy ?in? science (?PinS?), i.e., they use philosophical > tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful > proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this > nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and > articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be > likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific > journals (?intervention?), cited in scientific journals (?visibility?) and > sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (?contribution?). > We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been > involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ?specialized? in > this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a > process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using > philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and > we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these > conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial > trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a > methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. > ?????? > CHT William Gillis > > Haven?t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised. > > Regards, > > Dan > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu May 6 15:29:44 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 10:29:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: What I don't get out of that quote by Gillis is whether the philosophers proceed to do the actual research their proposal suggests. bill w On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:26 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > I've always considered the difference between scientific and philosophical > claims to be experimental falsifiability. > Is that not right? > > > > On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf >> >> Abstract: >> >> Most philosophers of science do philosophy ?on? science. By contrast, >> others do philosophy ?in? science (?PinS?), i.e., they use philosophical >> tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful >> proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this >> nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and >> articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be >> likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific >> journals (?intervention?), cited in scientific journals (?visibility?) and >> sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (?contribution?). >> We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been >> involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ?specialized? in >> this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a >> process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using >> philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and >> we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these >> conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial >> trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a >> methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. >> ?????? >> CHT William Gillis >> >> Haven?t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised. >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Thu May 6 16:02:49 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 10:02:49 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: For example, can any one give me any examples of ANY peer reviewed "philosophy of mind" claims which are falsifiable? That is other than what we are describing in our "Consciousness: Not a hard problem, just a color problem ". Basically, all the supporters of "Representational Qualia theory", and all sub camps, are predicting that if experimentalists can discover and demonstrate which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of redness, only one camp can remain standing, only the one making the correct prediction about the nature of qualia, all others being falsified by such a demonstration. Stathis, even functionalists must agree with this, right? In other words, if someone could demonstrate that nobody could ever experience redness if, and only if that redness was glutamate reacting in the correct set of computationally bound synapses, and that if no neuro substitution of any kind, or anything else, could produce even a pixel of conscious redness experience... In other words, what we have is theoretical physical science, each competing camp describing the experiments required to falsify the camps they support. Doing the actual experiments is now up to the experimentalists, right? With my Ether earnings, I could now afford to fund some significant experimental research to discover this. Does anyone have any idea of how I might go about funding such experimental work? Maybe we could help fund some of the work going on at Neuralink or something, along this direction? Elon once was involved in this list, right? Any idea how I could propose putting a few $ million towards something like this to Neuralink, or any other neuroscience experimental institutions? On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:32 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > What I don't get out of that quote by Gillis is whether the philosophers > proceed to do the actual research their proposal suggests. bill w > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:26 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> I've always considered the difference between scientific and >> philosophical claims to be experimental falsifiability. >> Is that not right? >> >> >> >> On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf >>> >>> Abstract: >>> >>> Most philosophers of science do philosophy ?on? science. By contrast, >>> others do philosophy ?in? science (?PinS?), i.e., they use philosophical >>> tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful >>> proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this >>> nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and >>> articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be >>> likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific >>> journals (?intervention?), cited in scientific journals (?visibility?) and >>> sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (?contribution?). >>> We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been >>> involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ?specialized? in >>> this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a >>> process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using >>> philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and >>> we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these >>> conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial >>> trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a >>> methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. >>> ?????? >>> CHT William Gillis >>> >>> Haven?t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised. >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> Dan >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 6 16:46:39 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 09:46:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: The first step is to define your terms in ways that Neuralink et al can work with. In other words: stop using jargon. What exactly is "qualia"? What exactly is "redness"? These are not terms that Neuralink or other such researchers can define experiments around, since the definitions are - at best - loose. Define what you are looking for, using only words that you can find in commonly accepted dictionaries. For instance, instead of "qualia" you might use "perceived sensation", if that 100% captures what you are looking to measure here. Neuralink might be able to measure the neurological underpinnings of sensation. Is "redness", "the sensation of seeing light of roughly 700 nanometer wavelength"? If not, what is it? Remember that "red" is "light of roughly 700 nanometer wavelength" (red is a color of light, and that is where red falls on the spectrum), so "the sensation of seeing red", which seems to be what you mean, is by definition "the sensation of seeing light of roughly 700 nanometer wavelength". The problem of jargon isn't specific to you. Jargon is a problem in many scientific fields. People inside a field get used to using such shorthand, then when they try to relate their concepts to related fields which might offer insight, they find that shorthand (specifically that those in the related fields don't know it, and are often too polite or too uninterested to point out that this is why they do not understand what is being asked of them) becomes a barrier to communication - even when the shorthand is well-defined, and in this case I'm not entirely certain it is. I have found that the best solution is, when talking in cases where this shorthand might not already be understood, is to swap in equivalent terms that are understood by the audience (which also helps me make sure that my jargon is well-defined). On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:06 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > For example, can any one give me any examples of ANY peer reviewed > "philosophy of mind" claims which are falsifiable? > That is other than what we are describing in our "Consciousness: Not a > hard problem, just a color problem > ". > Basically, all the supporters of "Representational Qualia theory", and all > sub camps, are predicting that if experimentalists can discover and > demonstrate which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a > description of redness, only one camp can remain standing, only the one > making the correct prediction about the nature of qualia, all others being > falsified by such a demonstration. Stathis, even functionalists must agree > with this, right? In other words, if someone could demonstrate that nobody > could ever experience redness if, and only if that redness was glutamate > reacting in the correct set of computationally bound synapses, and that if > no neuro substitution of any kind, or anything else, could produce even a > pixel of conscious redness experience... > > In other words, what we have is theoretical physical science, each > competing camp describing the experiments required to falsify the camps > they support. Doing the actual experiments is now up to the > experimentalists, right? > > With my Ether earnings, I could now afford to fund some significant > experimental research to discover this. Does anyone have any idea of how I > might go about funding such experimental work? Maybe we could help fund > some of the work going on at Neuralink or something, along this direction? > Elon once was involved in this list, right? Any idea how I could propose > putting a few $ million towards something like this to Neuralink, or any > other neuroscience experimental institutions? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:32 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> What I don't get out of that quote by Gillis is whether the philosophers >> proceed to do the actual research their proposal suggests. bill w >> >> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:26 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> I've always considered the difference between scientific and >>> philosophical claims to be experimental falsifiability. >>> Is that not right? >>> >>> >>> >>> On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf >>>> >>>> Abstract: >>>> >>>> Most philosophers of science do philosophy ?on? science. By contrast, >>>> others do philosophy ?in? science (?PinS?), i.e., they use philosophical >>>> tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful >>>> proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this >>>> nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and >>>> articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be >>>> likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific >>>> journals (?intervention?), cited in scientific journals (?visibility?) and >>>> sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (?contribution?). >>>> We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been >>>> involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ?specialized? in >>>> this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a >>>> process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using >>>> philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and >>>> we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these >>>> conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial >>>> trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a >>>> methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. >>>> ?????? >>>> CHT William Gillis >>>> >>>> Haven?t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> Dan >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Thu May 6 17:14:40 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 11:14:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Adrian, thanks for the help! I'm so close to all this stuff, I don't realize all these issues you are pointing out. Does the following help at all? You simply achieve an ability to do something like implant a neural ink into someone, wired in such a way, that when you put someone in front of a white screen, then you stimulate their neuralink, it causes at least one pixel of the white screen to change color, then say something like that different color you are now experiencing on that white screen is what most people would call 'redness'. Some people might say: "Oh wow, no, that is my greenness." or maybe: "Oh wow, I've never experienced that color before in my life.... Of course, it would be more complex, and have many subtle shade differences, and so on, but that is the general idea. In other words, if we know which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of redness, then when you reproduce that same thing in other brains, they can then directly apprehend what it is like for glutamate to react in a the correct set of synapse (or whatever it is that is redness). Also, you could measure if you had achieved success (at which time the prize would be rewarded) by having one of the sub camps of RQT achieving greater than 90% "mind expert" consensus, and greater than 1000 experts weighing in. Of course, eventually, neuralink wants to be able to completely recreate visual knowledge in people's brains, right? Both at higher resolutions, and using large groups of new colors nobody has ever experienced before (i.e. making biochromatic color blind people tetrachromats, or better), and giving people visual knowledge of what is behind them (or on mars...)... Exactly the above is going to be the critical first step before anything like that is possible. On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:48 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The first step is to define your terms in ways that Neuralink et al can > work with. In other words: stop using jargon. > > What exactly is "qualia"? What exactly is "redness"? These are not terms > that Neuralink or other such researchers can define experiments around, > since the definitions are - at best - loose. > > Define what you are looking for, using only words that you can find in > commonly accepted dictionaries. For instance, instead of "qualia" you > might use "perceived sensation", if that 100% captures what you are looking > to measure here. Neuralink might be able to measure the neurological > underpinnings of sensation. > > Is "redness", "the sensation of seeing light of roughly 700 nanometer > wavelength"? If not, what is it? Remember that "red" is "light of roughly > 700 nanometer wavelength" (red is a color of light, and that is where red > falls on the spectrum), so "the sensation of seeing red", which seems to be > what you mean, is by definition "the sensation of seeing light of roughly > 700 nanometer wavelength". > > The problem of jargon isn't specific to you. Jargon is a problem in many > scientific fields. People inside a field get used to using such shorthand, > then when they try to relate their concepts to related fields which might > offer insight, they find that shorthand (specifically that those in the > related fields don't know it, and are often too polite or too uninterested > to point out that this is why they do not understand what is being asked of > them) becomes a barrier to communication - even when the shorthand is > well-defined, and in this case I'm not entirely certain it is. I have > found that the best solution is, when talking in cases where this shorthand > might not already be understood, is to swap in equivalent terms that are > understood by the audience (which also helps me make sure that my jargon is > well-defined). > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:06 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> For example, can any one give me any examples of ANY peer reviewed >> "philosophy of mind" claims which are falsifiable? >> That is other than what we are describing in our "Consciousness: Not a >> hard problem, just a color problem >> ". >> Basically, all the supporters of "Representational Qualia theory", and >> all sub camps, are predicting that if experimentalists can discover and >> demonstrate which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a >> description of redness, only one camp can remain standing, only the one >> making the correct prediction about the nature of qualia, all others being >> falsified by such a demonstration. Stathis, even functionalists must agree >> with this, right? In other words, if someone could demonstrate that nobody >> could ever experience redness if, and only if that redness was glutamate >> reacting in the correct set of computationally bound synapses, and that if >> no neuro substitution of any kind, or anything else, could produce even a >> pixel of conscious redness experience... >> >> In other words, what we have is theoretical physical science, each >> competing camp describing the experiments required to falsify the camps >> they support. Doing the actual experiments is now up to the >> experimentalists, right? >> >> With my Ether earnings, I could now afford to fund some significant >> experimental research to discover this. Does anyone have any idea of how I >> might go about funding such experimental work? Maybe we could help fund >> some of the work going on at Neuralink or something, along this direction? >> Elon once was involved in this list, right? Any idea how I could propose >> putting a few $ million towards something like this to Neuralink, or any >> other neuroscience experimental institutions? >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:32 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> What I don't get out of that quote by Gillis is whether the philosophers >>> proceed to do the actual research their proposal suggests. bill w >>> >>> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:26 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> I've always considered the difference between scientific and >>>> philosophical claims to be experimental falsifiability. >>>> Is that not right? >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf >>>>> >>>>> Abstract: >>>>> >>>>> Most philosophers of science do philosophy ?on? science. By contrast, >>>>> others do philosophy ?in? science (?PinS?), i.e., they use philosophical >>>>> tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful >>>>> proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this >>>>> nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and >>>>> articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be >>>>> likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific >>>>> journals (?intervention?), cited in scientific journals (?visibility?) and >>>>> sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (?contribution?). >>>>> We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been >>>>> involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ?specialized? in >>>>> this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a >>>>> process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using >>>>> philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and >>>>> we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these >>>>> conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial >>>>> trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a >>>>> methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. >>>>> ?????? >>>>> CHT William Gillis >>>>> >>>>> Haven?t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised. >>>>> >>>>> Regards, >>>>> >>>>> Dan >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu May 6 17:21:14 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 12:21:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Adrian - I am with you nearly all the way. Psychology is certainly one of the worst at creating jargon. But - sometimes there is an effort to take a common concept and subject it to study. If we use common definitions we run a great risk of vagueness and ambiguity, and 'you know what I mean'. So we create a jargon word and give it an operational definition to separate it from the ambiguity of common definitions (and common people will not understand operational definitions "You are defining intelligence as that which is measured by an IQ test? Isn't that completely circular?"). Then people in our field will know what we mean by it, though the average person will not. So how do we translate the term so it can be understood? This can be difficult. For example, 'ego' is used commonly to mean 'pride', often overblown. That is not the way psychiatrists and psychologists use it. Einstein was wrong: there are just some things that you cannot explain in any language to a six year old (or whatever age he was using). One problem is that psychologists get a big kick out of creating a term that catches on, a meme. I assume this is common in other science areas, as well as the general culture. But we will never get over the problem of common words having ambiguous meanings, so we must continue to try to make things more 'scientific'. bill w On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 11:50 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The first step is to define your terms in ways that Neuralink et al can > work with. In other words: stop using jargon. > > What exactly is "qualia"? What exactly is "redness"? These are not terms > that Neuralink or other such researchers can define experiments around, > since the definitions are - at best - loose. > > Define what you are looking for, using only words that you can find in > commonly accepted dictionaries. For instance, instead of "qualia" you > might use "perceived sensation", if that 100% captures what you are looking > to measure here. Neuralink might be able to measure the neurological > underpinnings of sensation. > > Is "redness", "the sensation of seeing light of roughly 700 nanometer > wavelength"? If not, what is it? Remember that "red" is "light of roughly > 700 nanometer wavelength" (red is a color of light, and that is where red > falls on the spectrum), so "the sensation of seeing red", which seems to be > what you mean, is by definition "the sensation of seeing light of roughly > 700 nanometer wavelength". > > The problem of jargon isn't specific to you. Jargon is a problem in many > scientific fields. People inside a field get used to using such shorthand, > then when they try to relate their concepts to related fields which might > offer insight, they find that shorthand (specifically that those in the > related fields don't know it, and are often too polite or too uninterested > to point out that this is why they do not understand what is being asked of > them) becomes a barrier to communication - even when the shorthand is > well-defined, and in this case I'm not entirely certain it is. I have > found that the best solution is, when talking in cases where this shorthand > might not already be understood, is to swap in equivalent terms that are > understood by the audience (which also helps me make sure that my jargon is > well-defined). > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:06 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> For example, can any one give me any examples of ANY peer reviewed >> "philosophy of mind" claims which are falsifiable? >> That is other than what we are describing in our "Consciousness: Not a >> hard problem, just a color problem >> ". >> Basically, all the supporters of "Representational Qualia theory", and >> all sub camps, are predicting that if experimentalists can discover and >> demonstrate which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a >> description of redness, only one camp can remain standing, only the one >> making the correct prediction about the nature of qualia, all others being >> falsified by such a demonstration. Stathis, even functionalists must agree >> with this, right? In other words, if someone could demonstrate that nobody >> could ever experience redness if, and only if that redness was glutamate >> reacting in the correct set of computationally bound synapses, and that if >> no neuro substitution of any kind, or anything else, could produce even a >> pixel of conscious redness experience... >> >> In other words, what we have is theoretical physical science, each >> competing camp describing the experiments required to falsify the camps >> they support. Doing the actual experiments is now up to the >> experimentalists, right? >> >> With my Ether earnings, I could now afford to fund some significant >> experimental research to discover this. Does anyone have any idea of how I >> might go about funding such experimental work? Maybe we could help fund >> some of the work going on at Neuralink or something, along this direction? >> Elon once was involved in this list, right? Any idea how I could propose >> putting a few $ million towards something like this to Neuralink, or any >> other neuroscience experimental institutions? >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:32 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> What I don't get out of that quote by Gillis is whether the philosophers >>> proceed to do the actual research their proposal suggests. bill w >>> >>> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:26 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> I've always considered the difference between scientific and >>>> philosophical claims to be experimental falsifiability. >>>> Is that not right? >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf >>>>> >>>>> Abstract: >>>>> >>>>> Most philosophers of science do philosophy ?on? science. By contrast, >>>>> others do philosophy ?in? science (?PinS?), i.e., they use philosophical >>>>> tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful >>>>> proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this >>>>> nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and >>>>> articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be >>>>> likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific >>>>> journals (?intervention?), cited in scientific journals (?visibility?) and >>>>> sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (?contribution?). >>>>> We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been >>>>> involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ?specialized? in >>>>> this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a >>>>> process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using >>>>> philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and >>>>> we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these >>>>> conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial >>>>> trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a >>>>> methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. >>>>> ?????? >>>>> CHT William Gillis >>>>> >>>>> Haven?t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised. >>>>> >>>>> Regards, >>>>> >>>>> Dan >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Thu May 6 17:40:30 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 11:40:30 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Yes, it's all about terminology. And the change simply needs to be using more than one word for all things red or terminology, and reporting of scientific results in a way that is not qualia blind, or in a way that differentiates between reality and knowledge of reality . Right now, the best they have is the Utah array, implanted in the visual cortex, which can cause a few hundred "sprites" or white pixels of white in the visual field, barely enough pixels to enable blind people to see a doorway or window. Neuralink surely needs to not only increase the number of pixels, but add the right color (do you want your redness to be like my greenness....?) On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 11:24 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Adrian - I am with you nearly all the way. Psychology is certainly one of > the worst at creating jargon. But - sometimes there is an effort to take a > common concept and subject it to study. If we use common definitions we > run a great risk of vagueness and ambiguity, and 'you know what I mean'. > So we create a jargon word and give it an operational definition to > separate it from the ambiguity of common definitions (and common people > will not understand operational definitions "You are defining intelligence > as that which is measured by an IQ test? Isn't that completely > circular?"). Then people in our field will know what we mean by it, though > the average person will not. So how do we translate the term so it can be > understood? This can be difficult. For example, 'ego' is used commonly to > mean 'pride', often overblown. That is not the way psychiatrists and > psychologists use it. Einstein was wrong: there are just some things that > you cannot explain in any language to a six year old (or whatever age he > was using). > > One problem is that psychologists get a big kick out of creating a term > that catches on, a meme. I assume this is common in other science areas, > as well as the general culture. But we will never get over the problem of > common words having ambiguous meanings, so we must continue to try to make > things more 'scientific'. > > bill w > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 11:50 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> The first step is to define your terms in ways that Neuralink et al can >> work with. In other words: stop using jargon. >> >> What exactly is "qualia"? What exactly is "redness"? These are not >> terms that Neuralink or other such researchers can define experiments >> around, since the definitions are - at best - loose. >> >> Define what you are looking for, using only words that you can find in >> commonly accepted dictionaries. For instance, instead of "qualia" you >> might use "perceived sensation", if that 100% captures what you are looking >> to measure here. Neuralink might be able to measure the neurological >> underpinnings of sensation. >> >> Is "redness", "the sensation of seeing light of roughly 700 nanometer >> wavelength"? If not, what is it? Remember that "red" is "light of roughly >> 700 nanometer wavelength" (red is a color of light, and that is where red >> falls on the spectrum), so "the sensation of seeing red", which seems to be >> what you mean, is by definition "the sensation of seeing light of roughly >> 700 nanometer wavelength". >> >> The problem of jargon isn't specific to you. Jargon is a problem in many >> scientific fields. People inside a field get used to using such shorthand, >> then when they try to relate their concepts to related fields which might >> offer insight, they find that shorthand (specifically that those in the >> related fields don't know it, and are often too polite or too uninterested >> to point out that this is why they do not understand what is being asked of >> them) becomes a barrier to communication - even when the shorthand is >> well-defined, and in this case I'm not entirely certain it is. I have >> found that the best solution is, when talking in cases where this shorthand >> might not already be understood, is to swap in equivalent terms that are >> understood by the audience (which also helps me make sure that my jargon is >> well-defined). >> >> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:06 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> For example, can any one give me any examples of ANY peer reviewed >>> "philosophy of mind" claims which are falsifiable? >>> That is other than what we are describing in our "Consciousness: Not a >>> hard problem, just a color problem >>> ". >>> Basically, all the supporters of "Representational Qualia theory", and >>> all sub camps, are predicting that if experimentalists can discover and >>> demonstrate which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a >>> description of redness, only one camp can remain standing, only the one >>> making the correct prediction about the nature of qualia, all others being >>> falsified by such a demonstration. Stathis, even functionalists must agree >>> with this, right? In other words, if someone could demonstrate that nobody >>> could ever experience redness if, and only if that redness was glutamate >>> reacting in the correct set of computationally bound synapses, and that if >>> no neuro substitution of any kind, or anything else, could produce even a >>> pixel of conscious redness experience... >>> >>> In other words, what we have is theoretical physical science, each >>> competing camp describing the experiments required to falsify the camps >>> they support. Doing the actual experiments is now up to the >>> experimentalists, right? >>> >>> With my Ether earnings, I could now afford to fund some significant >>> experimental research to discover this. Does anyone have any idea of how I >>> might go about funding such experimental work? Maybe we could help fund >>> some of the work going on at Neuralink or something, along this direction? >>> Elon once was involved in this list, right? Any idea how I could propose >>> putting a few $ million towards something like this to Neuralink, or any >>> other neuroscience experimental institutions? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:32 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> What I don't get out of that quote by Gillis is whether the >>>> philosophers proceed to do the actual research their proposal suggests. >>>> bill w >>>> >>>> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:26 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> I've always considered the difference between scientific and >>>>> philosophical claims to be experimental falsifiability. >>>>> Is that not right? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf >>>>>> >>>>>> Abstract: >>>>>> >>>>>> Most philosophers of science do philosophy ?on? science. By contrast, >>>>>> others do philosophy ?in? science (?PinS?), i.e., they use philosophical >>>>>> tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful >>>>>> proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this >>>>>> nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and >>>>>> articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be >>>>>> likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific >>>>>> journals (?intervention?), cited in scientific journals (?visibility?) and >>>>>> sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (?contribution?). >>>>>> We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been >>>>>> involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ?specialized? in >>>>>> this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a >>>>>> process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using >>>>>> philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and >>>>>> we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these >>>>>> conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial >>>>>> trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a >>>>>> methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. >>>>>> ?????? >>>>>> CHT William Gillis >>>>>> >>>>>> Haven?t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised. >>>>>> >>>>>> Regards, >>>>>> >>>>>> Dan >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 6 18:25:54 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 11:25:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: > I'm so close to all this stuff, I don't realize all these issues you are pointing out. Yeah, that's typically how it goes. (I say, having run into this more than once in my own head.) > You simply achieve an ability to do something like implant I suggest reducing that to, "You implant". The modifiers between those words don't help convey your meaning. > then you stimulate their neuralink I suggest "then you stimulate their neural link" or just "then you stimulate their link", since Neuralink is a potential party to what you're proposing, and Neuralink the corporation is not itself the neural link. > then say something like that different color you are now experiencing on that white screen is what most people would call 'redness'. Some people might say: "Oh wow, no, that is my greenness." or maybe: "Oh wow, I've never experienced that color before in my life.... Okay! That is certainly an experiment that Neuralink could in theory perform: stimulate a neuron in a person and change a pixel on the white screen in front of the person, and ask them if they are perceiving redness or if they are perceiving something else. Note that "stimulate the neuron" and "change the pixel" would be unconnected unless there is some control mechanism from the neuron back to the screen. You may want to be clear about that. If there is such a control mechanism, it would need to be set up and calibrated before the stimulation. > Of course, eventually, neuralink wants to be able to completely recreate visual knowledge in people's brains, right? Both at higher resolutions, and using large groups of new colors nobody has ever experienced before (i.e. making biochromatic color blind people tetrachromats, or better), and giving people visual knowledge of what is behind them (or on mars...)... Exactly the above is going to be the critical first step before anything like that is possible. You could point this out to Neuralink when proposing the experiment. So, once you have a description of the experiment that you would like Neuralink to perform, and the money for them to do so, you can call them and ask if they would be willing to conduct and publish the results of the experiment in exchange for funding. If they say no, then you might look around for universities with good neural science programs - or you might try universities first, since this sort of funded research is exactly what they do (more often for governments or large institutions, since they more often have money for this, but your money spends as well as theirs). For instance, Stanford University has a Neurology department that I believe has done similar research before; see https://med.stanford.edu/artificial-retina/team.html for some people you might contact. Even if they are not set up to actually do the experiment, often times professors love to talk about their field of research. If you emphasize that you want help designing an experiment that you could fund, they will probably be quite willing to give advice as to how such an experiment would work and what things you need to look out for, such as specific legal barriers designed to make sure such research is conducted in an ethical manner. Note that "publish the results": think through your desired form of output, and make sure that is agreed to before you provide funding. Again I speak from experience here, though on a nanotech investigation in my case. At a minimum, you want access to the results yourself. You may want to make the data publicly accessible (so you or anyone could access it as a member of the public) - as much as you can: medical investigations have all sorts of privacy laws restricting what can be published. On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:17 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Adrian, thanks for the help! I'm so close to all this stuff, I don't > realize all these issues you are pointing out. Does the following help at > all? > > You simply achieve an ability to do something like implant a neural ink > into someone, wired in such a way, that when you put someone in front of a > white screen, then you stimulate their neuralink, it causes at least one > pixel of the white screen to change color, then say something like that > different color you are now experiencing on that white screen is what most > people would call 'redness'. Some people might say: "Oh wow, no, that is > my greenness." or maybe: "Oh wow, I've never experienced that color before > in my life.... > > Of course, it would be more complex, and have many subtle > shade differences, and so on, but that is the general idea. In other > words, if we know which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a > description of redness, then when you reproduce that same thing in other > brains, they can then directly apprehend what it is like for glutamate to > react in a the correct set of synapse (or whatever it is that is redness). > > Also, you could measure if you had achieved success (at which time the > prize would be rewarded) by having one of the sub camps of RQT achieving > greater than 90% "mind expert" > consensus, and greater > than 1000 experts weighing in. > > Of course, eventually, neuralink wants to be able to completely recreate > visual knowledge in people's brains, right? Both at higher resolutions, > and using large groups of new colors nobody has ever experienced before > (i.e. making biochromatic color blind people tetrachromats, or better), and > giving people visual knowledge of what is behind them (or on mars...)... > Exactly the above is going to be the critical first step before anything > like that is possible. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:48 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> The first step is to define your terms in ways that Neuralink et al can >> work with. In other words: stop using jargon. >> >> What exactly is "qualia"? What exactly is "redness"? These are not >> terms that Neuralink or other such researchers can define experiments >> around, since the definitions are - at best - loose. >> >> Define what you are looking for, using only words that you can find in >> commonly accepted dictionaries. For instance, instead of "qualia" you >> might use "perceived sensation", if that 100% captures what you are looking >> to measure here. Neuralink might be able to measure the neurological >> underpinnings of sensation. >> >> Is "redness", "the sensation of seeing light of roughly 700 nanometer >> wavelength"? If not, what is it? Remember that "red" is "light of roughly >> 700 nanometer wavelength" (red is a color of light, and that is where red >> falls on the spectrum), so "the sensation of seeing red", which seems to be >> what you mean, is by definition "the sensation of seeing light of roughly >> 700 nanometer wavelength". >> >> The problem of jargon isn't specific to you. Jargon is a problem in many >> scientific fields. People inside a field get used to using such shorthand, >> then when they try to relate their concepts to related fields which might >> offer insight, they find that shorthand (specifically that those in the >> related fields don't know it, and are often too polite or too uninterested >> to point out that this is why they do not understand what is being asked of >> them) becomes a barrier to communication - even when the shorthand is >> well-defined, and in this case I'm not entirely certain it is. I have >> found that the best solution is, when talking in cases where this shorthand >> might not already be understood, is to swap in equivalent terms that are >> understood by the audience (which also helps me make sure that my jargon is >> well-defined). >> >> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:06 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> For example, can any one give me any examples of ANY peer reviewed >>> "philosophy of mind" claims which are falsifiable? >>> That is other than what we are describing in our "Consciousness: Not a >>> hard problem, just a color problem >>> ". >>> Basically, all the supporters of "Representational Qualia theory", and >>> all sub camps, are predicting that if experimentalists can discover and >>> demonstrate which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a >>> description of redness, only one camp can remain standing, only the one >>> making the correct prediction about the nature of qualia, all others being >>> falsified by such a demonstration. Stathis, even functionalists must agree >>> with this, right? In other words, if someone could demonstrate that nobody >>> could ever experience redness if, and only if that redness was glutamate >>> reacting in the correct set of computationally bound synapses, and that if >>> no neuro substitution of any kind, or anything else, could produce even a >>> pixel of conscious redness experience... >>> >>> In other words, what we have is theoretical physical science, each >>> competing camp describing the experiments required to falsify the camps >>> they support. Doing the actual experiments is now up to the >>> experimentalists, right? >>> >>> With my Ether earnings, I could now afford to fund some significant >>> experimental research to discover this. Does anyone have any idea of how I >>> might go about funding such experimental work? Maybe we could help fund >>> some of the work going on at Neuralink or something, along this direction? >>> Elon once was involved in this list, right? Any idea how I could propose >>> putting a few $ million towards something like this to Neuralink, or any >>> other neuroscience experimental institutions? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:32 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> What I don't get out of that quote by Gillis is whether the >>>> philosophers proceed to do the actual research their proposal suggests. >>>> bill w >>>> >>>> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:26 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> I've always considered the difference between scientific and >>>>> philosophical claims to be experimental falsifiability. >>>>> Is that not right? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf >>>>>> >>>>>> Abstract: >>>>>> >>>>>> Most philosophers of science do philosophy ?on? science. By contrast, >>>>>> others do philosophy ?in? science (?PinS?), i.e., they use philosophical >>>>>> tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful >>>>>> proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this >>>>>> nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and >>>>>> articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be >>>>>> likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific >>>>>> journals (?intervention?), cited in scientific journals (?visibility?) and >>>>>> sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (?contribution?). >>>>>> We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been >>>>>> involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ?specialized? in >>>>>> this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a >>>>>> process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using >>>>>> philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and >>>>>> we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these >>>>>> conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial >>>>>> trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a >>>>>> methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. >>>>>> ?????? >>>>>> CHT William Gillis >>>>>> >>>>>> Haven?t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised. >>>>>> >>>>>> Regards, >>>>>> >>>>>> Dan >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 6 23:01:19 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 09:01:19 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 7 May 2021 at 02:05, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > For example, can any one give me any examples of ANY peer reviewed > "philosophy of mind" claims which are falsifiable? > That is other than what we are describing in our "Consciousness: Not a > hard problem, just a color problem > ". > Basically, all the supporters of "Representational Qualia theory", and all > sub camps, are predicting that if experimentalists can discover and > demonstrate which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a > description of redness, only one camp can remain standing, only the one > making the correct prediction about the nature of qualia, all others being > falsified by such a demonstration. Stathis, even functionalists must agree > with this, right? In other words, if someone could demonstrate that nobody > could ever experience redness if, and only if that redness was glutamate > reacting in the correct set of computationally bound synapses, and that if > no neuro substitution of any kind, or anything else, could produce even a > pixel of conscious redness experience... > Functionalism is a logical position, that IF the correct substitution could be made THEN redness would be preserved. It may well be the case that the correct substitution cannot be made, for technical reasons. That does not pose a problem for functionalism. However, if the correct substitution can be made and redness is not preserved, that poses a serious problem with the very concept of consciousness, since it would mean that there could be an arbitrarily large change in consciousness without the subject noticing. I have repeatedly made this point, but I believe you haven?t understood it, since you keep talking about the empirical aspects of the substitution when the issue is about logic. In other words, what we have is theoretical physical science, each > competing camp describing the experiments required to falsify the camps > they support. Doing the actual experiments is now up to the > experimentalists, right? > > With my Ether earnings, I could now afford to fund some significant > experimental research to discover this. Does anyone have any idea of how I > might go about funding such experimental work? Maybe we could help fund > some of the work going on at Neuralink or something, along this direction? > Elon once was involved in this list, right? Any idea how I could propose > putting a few $ million towards something like this to Neuralink, or any > other neuroscience experimental institutions? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:32 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> What I don't get out of that quote by Gillis is whether the philosophers >> proceed to do the actual research their proposal suggests. bill w >> >> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:26 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> I've always considered the difference between scientific and >>> philosophical claims to be experimental falsifiability. >>> Is that not right? >>> >>> >>> >>> On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf >>>> >>>> Abstract: >>>> >>>> Most philosophers of science do philosophy ?on? science. By contrast, >>>> others do philosophy ?in? science (?PinS?), i.e., they use philosophical >>>> tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful >>>> proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this >>>> nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and >>>> articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be >>>> likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific >>>> journals (?intervention?), cited in scientific journals (?visibility?) and >>>> sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (?contribution?). >>>> We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been >>>> involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ?specialized? in >>>> this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a >>>> process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using >>>> philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and >>>> we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these >>>> conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial >>>> trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a >>>> methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science. >>>> ?????? >>>> CHT William Gillis >>>> >>>> Haven?t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> >>>> Dan >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu May 6 23:01:52 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 18:01:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] keystrokes Message-ID: Occasionally I hit a key and get something weird. Sometimes that erases everything I have just written. What I need: a program or something that will tell me the keystrokes I have made so I will know what I did and try to avoid it next time. I know businesses have such a thing for employees. Is there a simple, cheap way to do this? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 7 10:21:21 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 11:21:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] IBM's new 2-nm chips have transistors smaller than a strand of DNA Message-ID: By Michael Irving May 06, 2021 Quotes: In a shining example of the inexorable march of technology, IBM has unveiled new semiconductor chips with the smallest transistors ever made. The new 2-nanometer (nm) tech allows the company to cram a staggering 50 billion transistors onto a chip the size of a fingernail. The current industry standard is chips with 7-nm transistors, with some high-end consumer devices, such as Apple?s M1 processors, beginning to make the move to 5 nm. And experimental chips have shrunk as small as 2.5 nm. IBM?s new chips pip them all, with transistors now measuring just 2 nm wide ? for reference, that's narrower than a strand of human DNA. That, of course, means the tiny transistors can be squeezed onto a chip far more densely than ever before, boosting the device?s processing power and energy efficiency in the process. The company claims that, when compared to current 7-nm chips, the new 2-nm chips can reach 45 percent higher performance or 75 percent lower energy use. It?s likely that we won?t see these 2-nm chips in consumer electronics until 2023 at the earliest, so for now go enjoy the benefits of the still-impressive 5-nm chips. ------------------- BillK From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 7 10:33:25 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 11:33:25 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Latest Search For Alien Civilizations Detects No Signals Message-ID: Latest Search For Alien Civilizations Looked At 60 Million Stars, Detects No Signals Quotes: The Breakthrough Listen project has delivered the first results of its massive new SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) survey in search of alien civilizations. And when we say massive, we mean massive. The observations looked at 60 million stars towards the galactic center, a region where stars are more tightly packed. The team did not find any signals, but it's important to note that they were looking at purposely emitted signals, known as technosignatures ? optical or microwave signals, laser emissions, even "megastructures" ? in this search; some sort of alien beacon that says ?Hey, we are here!? or given the distances involved, ?Hey, we were here thousands of years ago!? -------------- That's the snag - the distances involved. Thousands of years for light speed travel. "Never" - for any short-lived species to visit. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 7 11:00:59 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 12:00:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] where's the robocar races? In-Reply-To: <000a01d73f13$41437f30$c3ca7d90$@rainier66.com> References: <000a01d73f13$41437f30$c3ca7d90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 2 May 2021 at 06:28, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > It?s a fun time to be a controls engineer, but there is something I am disappointed in how long it is taking: robocar racing. > > Well cool, it looks like it is here now: > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDS3c4lwy_o > > spike > _______________________________________________ Formula E races on full historic Monaco circuit for the first time this weekend Jameson Dow - May. 7th 2021 Quotes: Formula E returns to Monaco this weekend, but it?s different this time. Rather than racing on an abridged version of the track as they?ve done before, they will finally race on the full version of the most famous racetrack in the world. Previous Formula E races have cut off almost half of the track ? rather than going up the hill, around the casino, and down through the tunnel, they turned right after the start/finish straight and rejoined the track at the marina. This offers Formula E a unique opportunity, one we?ve never seen before ? we are now going to see a direct comparison between Formula E and Formula 1 cars for the first time. --------------------- BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 7 16:17:28 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 11:17:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] IBM's new 2-nm chips have transistors smaller than a strand of DNA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Are these chips put in my hand? It would seem to take a long time. bill w On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 5:25 AM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > By Michael Irving May 06, 2021 > > Quotes: > In a shining example of the inexorable march of technology, IBM has > unveiled new semiconductor chips with the smallest transistors ever > made. The new 2-nanometer (nm) tech allows the company to cram a > staggering 50 billion transistors onto a chip the size of a > fingernail. > > The current industry standard is chips with 7-nm transistors, with > some high-end consumer devices, such as Apple?s M1 processors, > beginning to make the move to 5 nm. And experimental chips have shrunk > as small as 2.5 nm. > > > > IBM?s new chips pip them all, with transistors now measuring just 2 nm > wide ? for reference, that's narrower than a strand of human DNA. > That, of course, means the tiny transistors can be squeezed onto a > chip far more densely than ever before, boosting the device?s > processing power and energy efficiency in the process. The company > claims that, when compared to current 7-nm chips, the new 2-nm chips > can reach 45 percent higher performance or 75 percent lower energy > use. > > It?s likely that we won?t see these 2-nm chips in consumer electronics > until 2023 at the earliest, so for now go enjoy the benefits of the > still-impressive 5-nm chips. > ------------------- > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From guessmyneeds at yahoo.com Fri May 7 18:58:36 2021 From: guessmyneeds at yahoo.com (Sherry Knepper) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 18:58:36 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] where's the robocar races? In-Reply-To: References: <000a01d73f13$41437f30$c3ca7d90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1258704317.1138672.1620413916805@mail.yahoo.com> I read about an upcoming autonomous car race involving school students.? Is there another? Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 7:09 AM, BillK via extropy-chat wrote: On Sun, 2 May 2021 at 06:28, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > It?s a fun time to be a controls engineer, but there is something I am disappointed in how long it is taking: robocar racing. > > Well cool, it looks like it is here now: > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDS3c4lwy_o > > spike > _______________________________________________ Formula E races on full historic Monaco circuit for the first time this weekend Jameson Dow? ? - May. 7th 2021 Quotes: Formula E returns to Monaco this weekend, but it?s different this time. Rather than racing on an abridged version of the track as they?ve done before, they will finally race on the full version of the most famous racetrack in the world. Previous Formula E races have cut off almost half of the track ? rather than going up the hill, around the casino, and down through the tunnel, they turned right after the start/finish straight and rejoined the track at the marina. This offers Formula E a unique opportunity, one we?ve never seen before ? we are now going to see a direct comparison between Formula E and Formula 1 cars for the first time. --------------------- BillK _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 7 19:28:48 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 20:28:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] where's the robocar races? In-Reply-To: <1258704317.1138672.1620413916805@mail.yahoo.com> References: <000a01d73f13$41437f30$c3ca7d90$@rainier66.com> <1258704317.1138672.1620413916805@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 7 May 2021 at 20:09, Sherry Knepper via extropy-chat wrote: > > I read about an upcoming autonomous car race involving school students. Is there another? > Yes. Roborace. Quote: Roborace is a competition with autonomously driving, electrically powered vehicles. Founded in 2015, it aims to be the first global championship for autonomous cars. ---------------- Formula E is electrically powered cars with human drivers. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 7 20:35:23 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 13:35:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] where's the robocar races? In-Reply-To: References: <000a01d73f13$41437f30$c3ca7d90$@rainier66.com> <1258704317.1138672.1620413916805@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <002e01d74380$825f0860$871d1920$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Sent: Friday, May 7, 2021 12:29 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] where's the robocar races? On Fri, 7 May 2021 at 20:09, Sherry Knepper via extropy-chat wrote: > > I read about an upcoming autonomous car race involving school students. Is there another? > Yes. Roborace. Quote: Roborace is a competition with autonomously driving, electrically powered vehicles. Founded in 2015, it aims to be the first global championship for autonomous cars. ---------------- >...Formula E is electrically powered cars with human drivers. BillK _______________________________________________ Ja, I am looking to get away from human drivers, regardless of the format. I do think the whole notion of electric car racing is cool and want to see that too. In 2005 they set up a Grand Prix course in downtown San Jose. There was a young female driver who was attracting a lot of attention to the sport, Danica Patrick, perhaps because she was (and still is) drop dead gorgeous, so that series brought in a lotta consumers even though the track was a long ways from optimal: too many railroad tracks and such. It was a fun race however: the roar of the engines, oh my. I knew what it was going to be like and brought ear protection, but a prole could have made a cool fortune by going around selling those foamy ear plugs for a coupla bucks a pair. I try to not ponder how tragic it was that I didn't do it. Electric cars: granted those are way cool and fast, but I still want to see the robocars do their thing. We know formula One cars cost a forch, so my notion is to take older cars worth about 5k or less, such as old Crown Vics and Lincolns and Grand Marquis and stuff like that, cars you can afford to risk, retrofit them with the robocar stuff and race them stock: no engine or suspension mods, then let amateurs play. You could have them in classes by model and year, so the competition is between software developers. If someone could put together a LIDAR kit a prole could buy for a coupla K, I would be willing to build a car and run it. It sounds like a hell of a lotta fun, zero risk to the racers except of course the financial risk. We could do solo time trials around a big open space around cones such as out at Moffett, so you wouldn't even need to risk your car. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 7 20:41:52 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 15:41:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] where's the robocar races? In-Reply-To: <002e01d74380$825f0860$871d1920$@rainier66.com> References: <000a01d73f13$41437f30$c3ca7d90$@rainier66.com> <1258704317.1138672.1620413916805@mail.yahoo.com> <002e01d74380$825f0860$871d1920$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Robocars would be great for demolition derby - no danger to the drivers. bill w On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 3:38 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of > BillK via extropy-chat > Sent: Friday, May 7, 2021 12:29 PM > To: ExI chat list > Cc: BillK > Subject: Re: [ExI] where's the robocar races? > > On Fri, 7 May 2021 at 20:09, Sherry Knepper via extropy-chat > wrote: > > > > I read about an upcoming autonomous car race involving school students. > Is there another? > > > > Yes. Roborace. > > Quote: > Roborace is a competition with autonomously driving, electrically powered > vehicles. Founded in 2015, it aims to be the first global championship for > autonomous cars. > ---------------- > > > > >...Formula E is electrically powered cars with human drivers. > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > > > Ja, I am looking to get away from human drivers, regardless of the format. > I do think the whole notion of electric car racing is cool and want to see > that too. > > In 2005 they set up a Grand Prix course in downtown San Jose. There was a > young female driver who was attracting a lot of attention to the sport, > Danica Patrick, perhaps because she was (and still is) drop dead gorgeous, > so that series brought in a lotta consumers even though the track was a > long > ways from optimal: too many railroad tracks and such. > > It was a fun race however: the roar of the engines, oh my. I knew what it > was going to be like and brought ear protection, but a prole could have > made > a cool fortune by going around selling those foamy ear plugs for a coupla > bucks a pair. I try to not ponder how tragic it was that I didn't do it. > > Electric cars: granted those are way cool and fast, but I still want to see > the robocars do their thing. We know formula One cars cost a forch, so my > notion is to take older cars worth about 5k or less, such as old Crown Vics > and Lincolns and Grand Marquis and stuff like that, cars you can afford to > risk, retrofit them with the robocar stuff and race them stock: no engine > or > suspension mods, then let amateurs play. > > You could have them in classes by model and year, so the competition is > between software developers. If someone could put together a LIDAR kit a > prole could buy for a coupla K, I would be willing to build a car and run > it. It sounds like a hell of a lotta fun, zero risk to the racers except > of > course the financial risk. We could do solo time trials around a big open > space around cones such as out at Moffett, so you wouldn't even need to > risk > your car. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Fri May 7 20:54:05 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 14:54:05 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Stathis, On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 5:03 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Functionalism is a logical position, that IF the correct substitution > could be made THEN redness would be preserved. > Despite the problems with this you continually ignore, even IF some correct substitution could be made, you also seem to always insist that everyone must accept that this IF condition will be true. This is clearly simply a prediction about nature, which experimentation could clearly falsify, the counter prediction being that nobody will every be able to find any kind of substrate independent function which could be substituted for an elemental redness substrate out of which consciousness is composed and depends on. And in response to this you always seem to reply that functionally it must "logically" be possible, but this "logical" claim is also dependent on what Steven Lehar refers to as the current "Neuron Doctrine" which assumes neurons are: "quasi-independent computational elements that communicate by electrical signals propagated down axons and collaterals and transmitted to other neurons through chemical synapses." this is at 1:37 in where he also points out: *"This Paradigm is Wrong!"* and then he points out why. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 7 20:55:34 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 13:55:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] where's the robocar races? In-Reply-To: References: <000a01d73f13$41437f30$c3ca7d90$@rainier66.com> <1258704317.1138672.1620413916805@mail.yahoo.com> <002e01d74380$825f0860$871d1920$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001201d74383$540e2970$fc2a7c50$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] where's the robocar races? >?Robocars would be great for demolition derby - no danger to the drivers. bill w Ja I suppose so, however I like the notion of opening up car racing to people of ordinary means rather than those who can afford a million dollar car and a professional driver. I like the notion of being able to drive your race car to the track rather than trailer it there. Then you get to drive it back home afterwards. That in itself would save the cost of the car and would mean you don?t need a truck capable of hauling your racer to the track. This could be so cool, we could do dirt oval stuff so you wouldn?t even tear up tires much. This could be the lowest cost racing series anywhere. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Fri May 7 21:11:58 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 15:11:58 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Oh, sorry, forgot the link to Steven Lehars latest and greatest video: http://slehar.com/wwwRel/HarmonicGestalt.mp4 On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 2:54 PM Brent Allsop wrote: > Hi Stathis, > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 5:03 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Functionalism is a logical position, that IF the correct substitution >> could be made THEN redness would be preserved. >> > > Despite the problems with this you continually ignore, even IF some > correct substitution could be made, you also seem to always insist that > everyone must accept that this IF condition will be true. This is > clearly simply a prediction about nature, which > experimentation could clearly falsify, the counter prediction being that > nobody will every be able to find any kind of substrate independent > function which could be substituted for an elemental redness substrate out > of which consciousness is composed and depends on. > > And in response to this you always seem to reply that functionally it must > "logically" be possible, but this "logical" claim is also dependent on > what Steven Lehar refers to as the current "Neuron Doctrine" which assumes > neurons are: > > "quasi-independent computational elements that communicate by electrical > signals propagated down axons and collaterals and transmitted to other > neurons through chemical synapses." > > this is at 1:37 in where he also points out: > *"This Paradigm is Wrong!"* > and then he points out why. > > > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hibbard at wisc.edu Fri May 7 22:01:48 2021 From: hibbard at wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 22:01:48 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] keystrokes Message-ID: <2275c7e6-841a-ccb0-8659-863d4bccc87@wisc.edu> > Occasionally I hit a key and get something weird. > Sometimes that erases everything I have just written. This could be caused by your thumb brushing a touchpad beneath your keyboard. The brushing gesture selects some text and the next keystroke replaces that text. I have disbaled my touchpad to avoid this problem. Just a guess. Bill From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 7 22:37:44 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 08:37:44 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 8 May 2021 at 06:56, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Hi Stathis, > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 5:03 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Functionalism is a logical position, that IF the correct substitution >> could be made THEN redness would be preserved. >> > > Despite the problems with this you continually ignore, even IF some > correct substitution could be made, you also seem to always insist that > everyone must accept that this IF condition will be true. This is > clearly simply a prediction about nature, which > experimentation could clearly falsify, the counter prediction being that > nobody will every be able to find any kind of substrate independent > function which could be substituted for an elemental redness substrate out > of which consciousness is composed and depends on. > I have always agreed that it is an empirical matter whether or not a correct substitution could be made, but the consequent is not an empirical matter. It is like saying that IF I had 100 kg of gold and then someone gave me another 100 kg, THEN I would have 200 kg of gold. Rather than accepting this as true, you are focussing on how hard it would be for me to get all that gold, and then saying that even if I did get it, until we did the experiment we would not know if it weighed 200 kg or not. And in response to this you always seem to reply that functionally it must > "logically" be possible, but this "logical" claim is also dependent on > what Steven Lehar refers to as the current "Neuron Doctrine" which assumes > neurons are: > > "quasi-independent computational elements that communicate by electrical > signals propagated down axons and collaterals and transmitted to other > neurons through chemical synapses." > > this is at 1:37 in where he also points out: > *"This Paradigm is Wrong!"* > and then he points out why. > There is no attached link, but Lehar believes in harmonic resonance theory. It doesn?t make any difference to the argument, which is that IF the function could be replicated (using some exotic fluid that supports the standing waves, or whatever) THEN the consciousness would also be replicated. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 7 22:44:04 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 08:44:04 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 8 May 2021 at 06:56, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Hi Stathis, > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 5:03 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Functionalism is a logical position, that IF the correct substitution >> could be made THEN redness would be preserved. >> > > Despite the problems with this you continually ignore, even IF some > correct substitution could be made, you also seem to always insist that > everyone must accept that this IF condition will be true. This is > clearly simply a prediction about nature, which > experimentation could clearly falsify, the counter prediction being that > nobody will every be able to find any kind of substrate independent > function which could be substituted for an elemental redness substrate out > of which consciousness is composed and depends on. > > And in response to this you always seem to reply that functionally it must > "logically" be possible, but this "logical" claim is also dependent on > what Steven Lehar refers to as the current "Neuron Doctrine" which assumes > neurons are: > > "quasi-independent computational elements that communicate by electrical > signals propagated down axons and collaterals and transmitted to other > neurons through chemical synapses." > > this is at 1:37 in where he also points out: > *"This Paradigm is Wrong!"* > and then he points out why. > Actually my gold example is too weak, since it is possible that when you add 100 kg and 100 kg of gold together some new physical effect kicks in and the result weighs 201 kg, which we wouldn?t know about until we did the experiment. So to improve the analogy, I would have to specify that no as yet unknown physical laws are at play. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Sat May 8 01:54:47 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 7 May 2021 19:54:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Stathis, I see no evidence that you are understanding the objections I am making to your arguments, you just ignore them, or prove you don't understand them. For example you do precisely this when you said. On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 4:39 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I have always agreed that it is an empirical matter whether or not a > correct substitution could be made, but the consequent is not an empirical > matter. > Which is precisely what I predicted you would say in the previous post (proving at best I failed to communicate this to you) with: Brent Allsop Said in the prior post to this: >> > And in response to this you always seem to reply that functionally it must >> "logically" be possible, >> > then you completely ignored the rest (admittedly, probably my fault since I left out the reference to the video (added again, in this version), till the follow up): > but this "logical" claim is also dependent on an assumption. Steven Lehar >> refers to this assumption (at 1:37 into his latest and greatest video >> ) as the "Current Neuron >> Doctrine" which assumes neurons are: >> > >> "quasi-independent computational elements that communicate by electrical >> signals propagated down axons and collaterals and transmitted to other >> neurons through chemical synapses." >> >> this is at 1:37 in where he also points out: >> *"This Paradigm is Wrong!"* >> and then he points out why. >> > > There is no attached link, but Lehar believes in harmonic resonance > theory. It doesn?t make any difference to the argument, which is that IF > the function could be replicated (using some exotic fluid that supports the > standing waves, or whatever) THEN the consciousness would also be > replicated. > Hopefully watching the video, and understanding his argument as to why the "Current Neuron Doctrine", on which your logic depends, is wrong, will help with this miss understanding? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sat May 8 04:43:57 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 04:43:57 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 3:35 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > What I don't get out of that quote by Gillis is whether the philosophers proceed to do the actual research their proposal suggests. bill w The quote is not by William Gillis. CHT means 'complimentary hat tip.' I was merely acknowledging Gillis has brought the paper to my attention. The quote is of the abstract from the paper itself: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf If you read it closely, you'll see that this is more a matter of philosophers publishing works in science journals that are seen by scientists as having contributed to advancing science. So, my guess would be, No, they don't necessarily carry out the proposals. An analogy might be like a theoretical physicist (like Higgs) proposing something to look for (like the boson named after Higgs) and others carry out the observations and experiments. Regards, Dan From danust2012 at gmail.com Sat May 8 05:03:24 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 05:03:24 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: > On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat wrote: >> >> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf >> [snip of abstract to the above paper] On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 3:23 PM Brent Allsop wrote: > I've always considered the difference between scientific and philosophical claims to be experimental falsifiability. > Is that not right? Falsifiability is often used to draw a line between science and everything else. I'm not sure it works that well. (Why? There is where it might be good to look at philosophy of science rather than just throwing around slogans.:) Anyhow, the authors come to the conclusion 'that philosophy and science belong to a continuum than to the view that they are different activities.' (p30) Anyhow, the issue would be whether a given claim -- wherever it comes from -- is falsifiable and the broader context. Why would seem at all odd that philosophers, especially ones working closely with scientists, might not come up with claims that might advance science -- e.g., that might suggest specific research like field work or lab experiments? Regards, Dan From danust2012 at gmail.com Sat May 8 05:05:42 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 05:05:42 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 4:06 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat wrote: > For example, can any one give me any examples of ANY peer reviewed "philosophy of mind" claims which are falsifiable? > That is other than what we are describing in our "Consciousness: Not a hard problem, just a color problem". > Basically, all the supporters of "Representational Qualia theory", and all sub camps, are predicting that if experimentalists can discover and demonstrate which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of redness, only one camp can remain standing, only the one making the correct prediction about the nature of qualia, all others being falsified by such a demonstration. Stathis, even functionalists must agree with this, right? In other words, if someone could demonstrate that nobody could ever experience redness if, and only if that redness was glutamate reacting in the correct set of computationally bound synapses, and that if no neuro substitution of any kind, or anything else, could produce even a pixel of conscious redness experience... > > In other words, what we have is theoretical physical science, each competing camp describing the experiments required to falsify the camps they support. Doing the actual experiments is now up to the experimentalists, right? > > With my Ether earnings, I could now afford to fund some significant experimental research to discover this. Does anyone have any idea of how I might go about funding such experimental work? Maybe we could help fund some of the work going on at Neuralink or something, along this direction? Elon once was involved in this list, right? Any idea how I could propose putting a few $ million towards something like this to Neuralink, or any other neuroscience experimental institutions? Why not simply read or even just skim the paper? They give examples of papers from different sciences. Regards, Dan From ben at zaiboc.net Sat May 8 10:32:28 2021 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 11:32:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Latest Search For Alien Civilizations Detects No Signals In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Seems an odd thing to do, looking towards the galactic centre for signs of alien civilisations, when we know that it's an inhospitable place, due to very reason it's possible to survey 60 million stars: the stars are so closely-packed. Rather like the old joke about looking for your car keys under a streetlight. It might be easier to look there, but surely the most productive place to look would be in the same zone of the galaxy as we are, right out towards the rim, where the chances of sterilising supernovae etc., are much lower. I don't think we can read much into this result at all. Not that I think we'll find signs of alien civilisations anyway, no matter where we look. -- Ben Zaiboc From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 8 13:45:27 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 23:45:27 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 8 May 2021 at 11:56, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Hi Stathis, > I see no evidence that you are understanding the objections I am making to > your arguments, you just ignore them, or prove you don't understand them. > For example you do precisely this when you said. > > On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 4:39 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> I have always agreed that it is an empirical matter whether or not a >> correct substitution could be made, but the consequent is not an empirical >> matter. >> > > Which is precisely what I predicted you would say in the previous post > (proving at best I failed to communicate this to you) with: > > Brent Allsop Said in the prior post to this: >>> >> And in response to this you always seem to reply that functionally it >>> must "logically" be possible, >>> >> > then you completely ignored the rest (admittedly, probably my fault since > I left out the reference to the video (added again, in this version), till > the follow up): > > >> but this "logical" claim is also dependent on an assumption. Steven >>> Lehar refers to this assumption (at 1:37 into his latest and greatest >>> video ) as the "Current >>> Neuron Doctrine" which assumes neurons are: >>> >> >>> "quasi-independent computational elements that communicate by electrical >>> signals propagated down axons and collaterals and transmitted to other >>> neurons through chemical synapses." >>> >>> this is at 1:37 in where he also points out: >>> *"This Paradigm is Wrong!"* >>> and then he points out why. >>> >> >> There is no attached link, but Lehar believes in harmonic resonance >> theory. It doesn?t make any difference to the argument, which is that IF >> the function could be replicated (using some exotic fluid that supports the >> standing waves, or whatever) THEN the consciousness would also be >> replicated. >> > > Hopefully watching the video, and understanding his argument as to why > the "Current Neuron Doctrine", on which your logic depends, is wrong, will > help with this miss understanding? > The link takes me to the video, but then the video doesn?t play, perhaps because I am using a mobile device. Anyway, as I explained, the logical argument is independent of any particular physical theory. We could say that the brain works via magic from the god Zeus. If the behaviour of the brain could be replicated via different magic from the god Apollo, then the associated consciousness would necessarily also be replicated. It isn?t possible to fix consciousness to a particular substrate, a particular physics or a particular process. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat May 8 14:29:22 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 09:29:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] keystrokes In-Reply-To: <2275c7e6-841a-ccb0-8659-863d4bccc87@wisc.edu> References: <2275c7e6-841a-ccb0-8659-863d4bccc87@wisc.edu> Message-ID: All guesses welcome! Thanks. bill w On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 5:04 PM Bill Hibbard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Occasionally I hit a key and get something weird. > > Sometimes that erases everything I have just written. > > This could be caused by your thumb brushing a touchpad > beneath your keyboard. The brushing gesture selects > some text and the next keystroke replaces that text. > I have disbaled my touchpad to avoid this problem. > > Just a guess. > > Bill > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Sat May 8 16:33:38 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 10:33:38 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Stathis, On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 7:46 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The link takes me to the video, but then the video doesn?t play, perhaps > because I am using a mobile device. Anyway, as I explained, the logical > argument is independent of any particular physical theory. We could say > that the brain works via magic from the god Zeus. If the behavior of the > brain could be replicated via different magic from the god Apollo, then the > associated consciousness would necessarily also be replicated. It isn?t > possible to fix consciousness to a particular substrate, a particular > physics or a particular process. > Yes http://slehar.com/wwwRel/HarmonicGestalt.mp4 is just an mp4 file, best downloaded, then watched. The entire substitution argument, and your logic, is most definitely dependent on the assumption that the neurons being replaced, one at a time, via the method described, are: "independent computational elements that communicate by electrical signals propagated down axons and collaterals and transmitted to other neurons through chemical synapses." The "classic neuron doctrine" This is the simple definition of what abstract computers of today are "independent computational elements that communicate by electrical signals transmitted down wires to other neurons through chemical synapses." any such system requires interpretation or transuding systems from any one representation, to something different representing the downstream link, in order to preserve the same abstract meaning, otherwise it wouldn't be "substrate independent". THAT is what the neuro substitution is working on, and it can't work on anything different than that type of computation. There is nothing it is intrinsically like for any such abstracted away from physical reality computational system, by design The prediction is that consciousness computation is something completely different. It is "computationally bound elemental intrinsic qualities like redness and greenness" There must be something that has an intrinsic redness quality (let's call whatever it is a red Lego block) and something with a different greenness intrinsic quality (a green Lego block) and you must be able to bind these together into some kind of computational standing wave, representing information in a substrate quality dependent way. The system must be able to be consciously aware of when one of the red Lego blocks changes to a green Lego block, in a way that it is dependent on those particular qualities, otherwise it isn't functioning correctly. By definition, it is simply a logic impossibility to do any kind of neuro substitution on any such system, and your "logical" argument simply doesn't apply, or at best isn't logically possible, by definition. *"This Paradigm is Wrong!"* -- Steven Lehar -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 8 16:55:06 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 17:55:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Latest Search For Alien Civilizations Detects No Signals In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, 8 May 2021 at 11:36, Ben via extropy-chat wrote: > > Seems an odd thing to do, looking towards the galactic centre for signs > of alien civilisations, when we know that it's an inhospitable place, > due to very reason it's possible to survey 60 million stars: the stars > are so closely-packed. Rather like the old joke about looking for your > car keys under a streetlight. It might be easier to look there, but > surely the most productive place to look would be in the same zone of > the galaxy as we are, right out towards the rim, where the chances of > sterilising supernovae etc., are much lower. > > I don't think we can read much into this result at all. > > Not that I think we'll find signs of alien civilisations anyway, no > matter where we look. > > -- > Ben Zaiboc > _______________________________________________ The astronomers discuss why they think near to the Galactic Centre is the most likely place to find habitable planets and their reasons for choosing to search in that direction. Section 2 of their paper. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 8 17:04:23 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 03:04:23 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 9 May 2021 at 02:35, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Hi Stathis, > > On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 7:46 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> The link takes me to the video, but then the video doesn?t play, perhaps >> because I am using a mobile device. Anyway, as I explained, the logical >> argument is independent of any particular physical theory. We could say >> that the brain works via magic from the god Zeus. If the behavior of the >> brain could be replicated via different magic from the god Apollo, then the >> associated consciousness would necessarily also be replicated. It isn?t >> possible to fix consciousness to a particular substrate, a particular >> physics or a particular process. >> > > Yes http://slehar.com/wwwRel/HarmonicGestalt.mp4 is just an mp4 file, > best downloaded, then watched. > > The entire substitution argument, and your logic, is most definitely > dependent on the assumption that the neurons being replaced, one at a time, > via the method described, are: "independent computational elements that > communicate by electrical signals propagated down axons and collaterals and > transmitted to other neurons through chemical synapses." The "classic > neuron doctrine" > It is presented that way in Chalmers? paper, but the argument applies to any brain process. It is an argument from the definition of consciousness, showing that if consciousness is substrate dependent, then the idea of consciousness is absurd, because it would be logically possible to change it radically without the subject or anyone else realising. This is the simple definition of what abstract computers of today are "independent > computational elements that communicate by electrical signals transmitted > down wires to other neurons through chemical synapses." any such system > requires interpretation or transuding systems from any one representation, > to something different representing the downstream link, in order to > preserve the same abstract meaning, otherwise it wouldn't be "substrate > independent". THAT is what the neuro substitution is working on, and it > can't work on anything different than that type of computation. There is > nothing it is intrinsically like for any such abstracted away from physical > reality computational system, by design > There is no necessity to preserve any abstract meaning anywhere in the chain as long as the output is identical for all inputs. The internal processing can be mangled a million ways, like one operating system emulating another operating system, and the consciousness will be preserved provided the emulation is done properly. The only empirical test we could do is to confirm that the emulation is actually done properly: that the consciousness is preserved is a deduction, not separately subject to experimental confirmation. The prediction is that consciousness computation is something completely > different. It is "computationally bound elemental intrinsic qualities like > redness and greenness" There must be something that has an intrinsic > redness quality (let's call whatever it is a red Lego block) and something > with a different greenness intrinsic quality (a green Lego block) and you > must be able to bind these together into some kind of computational > standing wave, representing information in a substrate quality dependent > way. The system must be able to be consciously aware of when one of the > red Lego blocks changes to a green Lego block, in a way that it is > dependent on those particular qualities, otherwise it isn't functioning > correctly. > The standing wave must have some ultimate effect on the output of the system, i.e. on the muscles. If this is replicated on some other way, the consciousness will also be replicated. So you would have to claim that it is logically impossible to remove locate the effect of the standing wave (or whatever it may be) on the muscles. Logical impossibility is a very strong restriction, meaning that not even a miracle could do it. By definition, it is simply a logic impossibility to do any kind of neuro > substitution on any such system, and your "logical" argument simply doesn't > apply, or at best isn't logically possible, by definition. > > *"This Paradigm is Wrong!"* > -- Steven Lehar > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 8 17:26:12 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 10:26:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] cross country tesla Message-ID: <004001d7442f$3e7b2b10$bb718130$@rainier66.com> I had a wacky idea after hearing my neighbor discuss cross country trips in his Tesla (he has two of them.) There are enough charging stations you can do trips in California, but those rigs take a while to charge. I hatched an idea to create a trailer with a generator on board, so a prole could tow that with IC engine running, do a real cross country trip with it, see what kind of mileage could be achieved. Then of course before I started, I needed to see if some reprehensible blister had already stolen my idea before I thought of it. Someone had! Fortunately the goofball did it wrong. I can see he used a generator which is waaaaay oversized for this purpose, this one by a factor of at least 5. A Tesla going at highway speed only uses about 20 kW, even with a generator the size of a luxury yacht mainsail. I will give the blighter points for that nice 38 Windsor in the background. I know that Chrysler is pre-war because they dropped the suicide door notion after they went back into production. In any case. a small generator, possibly even a home-brew, on a trailer designed to go behind a motorcycle, would be enough to keep your Tesla charged out on the western freeway: https://www.saferwholesale.com/Motorcycle-Car-Pull-Behind-Trailer-60-X-28-X- 19-p/gsi-black-trailer.htm?vfsku=GSI.Black.Trailer &Click=35179&vfsku=GSI.Black.Trailer&gpla=pla&gclid=CjwKCAjw7diEBhB-EiwAskVi 14xxZMfvMVWFJboMy1aGoVD8Rmvb33xYgJk0Ed7RxeZavChx1h0PmhoCUxgQAvD_BwE A prole could rig up a nice generator based on a small light motorcycle engine, easily capable of generating a steady 20kW or 30 if you wanted some margin. It doesn't need to charge fast (as this guy's experiment does) or even need to maintain a steady state really. One could drain the Tesla gradually while the generator is running, then charge up at night at the hotel for instance. I can get an older Tesla, one that looks a little tired and the batteries need replacement, but the owner isn't sure those early Teslas are worth the cost of a battery renewal. I have a motorcycle engine in a bike I am willing to sacrifice for a fun engineering experiment. I already own a dynamo I can rig to the bike engine, I can get a cheap tow-behind trailer from my biker club friends, rig that up to an older Tesla and we might have a cool low-cost tow-behind cross country Tesla but one that is done right. Nice 38 Windsor back there though. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 30835 bytes Desc: not available URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Sat May 8 17:31:20 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 11:31:20 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Steve, On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 11:05 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The standing wave must have some ultimate effect on the output of the > system, i.e. on the muscles. If this is replicated on some other way, the > consciousness will also be replicated. So you would have to claim that it > is logically impossible to remove locate the effect of the standing wave > (or whatever it may be) on the muscles. Logical impossibility is a very > strong restriction, meaning that not even a miracle could do it. > The intrinsic quality of your knowledge of red is simply a fact about reality. This quality must have some ultimate effect on the output of the system, otherwise it isn't knowledge represented by your particular intrinsic redness quality, and isn't qualitatively like your conscious knowledge of redness, by definition. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jasonresch at gmail.com Sat May 8 17:41:56 2021 From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 12:41:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: To support Stathis's position: Functionalism requires 2 things: 1. that the physics used by the brain is computable 2. That nothing in the brain requires an infinite amount of information For 1: No known law of physics is uncomputable. Some argue wave function collapse is incomputable, but you can simulate all possibilities (i.e. many worlds) either on a quantum computer or on a classical computer with exponential slowdown. For 2: The brain (and rest of the body) is created from the finite information of the DNA (~700 MB) together with information learned through the senses which is also finite (~Gigabit / second). Moreover, quantum mechanics imposes a strict upper bound (The Bekenstein bound) on the information content of physical systems if finite energy and volume. So the only argument against the logical possibility of function requires posing some new non-computable physics (Like Penrose), or suggesting that the brain contains an infinite amount of information. If physics is computable and the brain's information content is finite, then in principle an appropriately programmed computer could perfectly emulate the behavior of the brain. This appears confirmed so far, as detailed brain simulations using existing knowledge of the biochemical properties of neurons have replicated behaviors and patterns of firing across large brain regions. See, for example, the Human Brain Project's results with mouse brains and whisker stimulation: https://youtu.be/ldXEuUVkDuw Jason On Sat, May 8, 2021, 12:05 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Sun, 9 May 2021 at 02:35, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> Hi Stathis, >> >> On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 7:46 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> The link takes me to the video, but then the video doesn?t play, perhaps >>> because I am using a mobile device. Anyway, as I explained, the logical >>> argument is independent of any particular physical theory. We could say >>> that the brain works via magic from the god Zeus. If the behavior of the >>> brain could be replicated via different magic from the god Apollo, then the >>> associated consciousness would necessarily also be replicated. It isn?t >>> possible to fix consciousness to a particular substrate, a particular >>> physics or a particular process. >>> >> >> Yes http://slehar.com/wwwRel/HarmonicGestalt.mp4 is just an mp4 file, >> best downloaded, then watched. >> >> The entire substitution argument, and your logic, is most definitely >> dependent on the assumption that the neurons being replaced, one at a time, >> via the method described, are: "independent computational elements that >> communicate by electrical signals propagated down axons and collaterals and >> transmitted to other neurons through chemical synapses." The "classic >> neuron doctrine" >> > > It is presented that way in Chalmers? paper, but the argument applies to > any brain process. It is an argument from the definition of consciousness, > showing that if consciousness is substrate dependent, then the idea of > consciousness is absurd, because it would be logically possible to change > it radically without the subject or anyone else realising. > > This is the simple definition of what abstract computers of today are "independent >> computational elements that communicate by electrical signals transmitted >> down wires to other neurons through chemical synapses." any such system >> requires interpretation or transuding systems from any one representation, >> to something different representing the downstream link, in order to >> preserve the same abstract meaning, otherwise it wouldn't be "substrate >> independent". THAT is what the neuro substitution is working on, and it >> can't work on anything different than that type of computation. There is >> nothing it is intrinsically like for any such abstracted away from physical >> reality computational system, by design >> > > There is no necessity to preserve any abstract meaning anywhere in the > chain as long as the output is identical for all inputs. The internal > processing can be mangled a million ways, like one operating system > emulating another operating system, and the consciousness will be preserved > provided the emulation is done properly. The only empirical test we could > do is to confirm that the emulation is actually done properly: that the > consciousness is preserved is a deduction, not separately subject to > experimental confirmation. > > The prediction is that consciousness computation is something completely >> different. It is "computationally bound elemental intrinsic qualities like >> redness and greenness" There must be something that has an intrinsic >> redness quality (let's call whatever it is a red Lego block) and something >> with a different greenness intrinsic quality (a green Lego block) and you >> must be able to bind these together into some kind of computational >> standing wave, representing information in a substrate quality dependent >> way. The system must be able to be consciously aware of when one of the >> red Lego blocks changes to a green Lego block, in a way that it is >> dependent on those particular qualities, otherwise it isn't functioning >> correctly. >> > > The standing wave must have some ultimate effect on the output of the > system, i.e. on the muscles. If this is replicated on some other way, the > consciousness will also be replicated. So you would have to claim that it > is logically impossible to remove locate the effect of the standing wave > (or whatever it may be) on the muscles. Logical impossibility is a very > strong restriction, meaning that not even a miracle could do it. > > By definition, it is simply a logic impossibility to do any kind of neuro >> substitution on any such system, and your "logical" argument simply doesn't >> apply, or at best isn't logically possible, by definition. >> >> *"This Paradigm is Wrong!"* >> -- Steven Lehar >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat May 8 21:22:19 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 16:22:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] simplified epistemology Message-ID: So I got a book on that subject and found it truly tedious, and requiring a background in other philosophy courses. So HELP! Here is my version of a simplified epistemology: 1 - rationalism - using reason and logic - math here of course 2 - empiricism - we all know this one 3 - authoritarianism - Bible, gurus - based on authority's opinions which are not necessarily based on anything 4 - intuition, gut feelings, instincts, common sense and whatnot including every bias known to us What am I missing? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 8 21:22:29 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 07:22:29 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 9 May 2021 at 03:35, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Hi Steve, > > On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 11:05 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> The standing wave must have some ultimate effect on the output of the >> system, i.e. on the muscles. If this is replicated on some other way, the >> consciousness will also be replicated. So you would have to claim that it >> is logically impossible to remove locate the effect of the standing wave >> (or whatever it may be) on the muscles. Logical impossibility is a very >> strong restriction, meaning that not even a miracle could do it. >> > > The intrinsic quality of your knowledge of red is simply a fact about > reality. This quality must have some ultimate effect on the output of the > system, otherwise it isn't knowledge represented by your particular > intrinsic redness quality, and isn't qualitatively like your conscious > knowledge of redness, by definition. > The intrinsic quality of your red knowledge will be preserved if the output of the system is preserved. Equivalently, the intrinsic quality of your red knowledge cannot change unless the output of the system changes. You are claiming that the output of the system cannot be replicated by any means other than the original, not even if we allow miracles. It?s not a scientifically testable claim. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 8 21:34:23 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 07:34:23 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 9 May 2021 at 03:43, Jason Resch via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > To support Stathis's position: Functionalism requires 2 things: 1. that the physics used by the brain is computable 2. That nothing in the brain requires an infinite amount of information For 1: No known law of physics is uncomputable. Some argue wave function collapse is incomputable, but you can simulate all possibilities (i.e. many worlds) either on a quantum computer or on a classical computer with exponential slowdown. For 2: The brain (and rest of the body) is created from the finite information of the DNA (~700 MB) together with information learned through the senses which is also finite (~Gigabit / second). Moreover, quantum mechanics imposes a strict upper bound (The Bekenstein bound) on the information content of physical systems if finite energy and volume. So the only argument against the logical possibility of function requires posing some new non-computable physics (Like Penrose), or suggesting that the brain contains an infinite amount of information. If physics is computable and the brain's information content is finite, then in principle an appropriately programmed computer could perfectly emulate the behavior of the brain. This appears confirmed so far, as detailed brain simulations using existing knowledge of the biochemical properties of neurons have replicated behaviors and patterns of firing across large brain regions. See, for example, the Human Brain Project's results with mouse brains and whisker stimulation: https://youtu.be/ldXEuUVkDuw Penrose?s position is at least logical, even if scientifically wrong. However, it is an argument against computationalism, a type of functionalism. Functionalism can still be preserved if the brain involves non-computable physics by imagining the use of a hypercomputer that can handle these calculations. The likely non-existence of such a device does not invalidate the logical argument. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Sun May 9 11:29:17 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 05:29:17 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Jason, Thanks for jumping in, fun to have another participant, and thanks, Stathis, for posting this here, as evidently I would have missed it? I wouldn't have wanted to miss it, so wondering why I did. On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 3:39 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Sun, 9 May 2021 at 03:43, Jason Resch via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> To support Stathis's position: > > Functionalism requires 2 things: > 1. that the physics used by the brain is computable > 2. That nothing in the brain requires an infinite amount of information > this entire post is a completely qualia blind, especially this list of requirements. In other words, you are missing THE most important qualitative nature of consciousness and how we represent things like knowledge of colors. 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you must be able to observe these computational differences. For example, by observe, if there is one pixels of visual knowledge switching from redness to greenness, and nothing else about you conscious state is changing, You of course must be able to directly apprehend the qualitative changes in that pixel, and also must be able to objectively observe from afar, whatever it is in your brain responsible for that subjective change in experience. And you must be able to do it in a way so that you can tell if two people you are objectively observing have been engineered to have inverted red green qualia, as depicted in this image from Wikipedia. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jasonresch at gmail.com Sun May 9 14:05:22 2021 From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 09:05:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 9, 2021, 6:31 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Hi Jason, > Thanks for jumping in, fun to have another participant, and thanks, > Stathis, for posting this here, as evidently I would have missed it? I > wouldn't have wanted to miss it, so wondering why I did. > > On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 3:39 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> On Sun, 9 May 2021 at 03:43, Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> To support Stathis's position: >> >> Functionalism requires 2 things: >> 1. that the physics used by the brain is computable >> 2. That nothing in the brain requires an infinite amount of information >> > > this entire post is a completely qualia blind, especially this list of > requirements. In other words, you are missing THE most important > qualitative nature of consciousness and how we represent things like > knowledge of colors. > I acknowledge that my post did not address qualia. Allow me to do so I this post. If the "bio-brain" is conscious, and the "compu-brain" preserves all the relevant interrelationships of the bio-brain in an isomorphic manner, then all externally visible behavior will likewise be the same. The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still say there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still describe their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person with the bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the compu-brain will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness and qualia. In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you could do to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective behaviors are identical. Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are logically impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be conscious, in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is not consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases for assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, self-reports, non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural prosthesis, the anti-zombie principle). > 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the intrinsic > qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you must be > able to observe these computational differences. > Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when you say you must be able to observer computational differences? I would say that there are many different ways one could write an equivalent program/function, so it might not always be obvious in a third person view when a different computation results in different consciousness. This is an aspect of all functionalist approaches, it results in a feature (or bug) called "multiple realizability". The problem arises even in bio-brains. A dolphin has different brain structures from humans, but most would admit both dolphins and humans can feel pain, despite these differences in their brains. So two different brain states result in similar conscious states. > For example, by observe, if there is one pixels of visual knowledge > switching from redness to greenness, and nothing else about you conscious > state is changing, You of course must be able to directly apprehend the > qualitative changes in that pixel, and also must be able to objectively > observe from afar, whatever it is in your brain responsible for that > subjective change in experience. And you must be able to do it in a way so > that you can tell if two people you are objectively observing have been > engineered to have inverted red green qualia, as depicted in this image > from Wikipedia. > > > > > > I agree that inverted qualia could only come about through functionally different organizations of the brain. The idea that you could flip a metaphysical switch and invert someone's qualia I think makes the same error as assuming zombies are possible. Jason -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 9 16:16:23 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 09:16:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] downscaled robocar racing Message-ID: <007501d744ee$a81c9670$f855c350$@rainier66.com> A search reveals that robocar racing has been going on for several years, but it is under-publicized. I attended the first big robocar race, the cross country event in 2004 in the Las Vegas area, in which all the AVs either crashed or otherwise failed. Five AVs eventually crossed the finish line, none in under 5 hours needed to collect the million bucks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge This video was made five years ago, a Georgia Tech experiment (cool!) They managed to teach this rig to drift and power-slide (they claim it taught itself to do that.) Take a look: https://youtu.be/1AR2-OHCxsQ If we go with the downscaled cars, the tires can be changed with only hand tools, so it makes it practical for hobbyists of ordinary means to play the game. I still have no idea what a Lidar system costs or if there is a cheaper way to do guidance if it is a closed flat track like the one in the video. It wouldn't cost all that much to make a short dirt flat track. I bet if a prole were to find a place close to the Silly Clone Valley here where a lotta single geeky engineers have more money than they know what to do with, build a short dirt track and charge them a modest (well, ok outrageous) fee to race on it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Sun May 9 17:29:06 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 09 May 2021 10:29:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pascal's wager Message-ID: <20210509102906.Horde.RlUi2-w9n7B8mqVgEz6G_Qd@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting Dan: > There's some stuff to unpack here. > Mythical unicorns have some variation, but a big problem is they > tend to have magical/supernatural properties. Are the magical properties of mythical unicorns beyond the capability of fully-realized nanotech? What are properties anyway? Supernatural, magical, emergent, measurable, or mundane: do any such properties actually exist? If so, then where do they exist? Are these properties in the things that exhibit those properties or in the mind that perceives them? > In which case, it might not matter how vast the universe is or what > diverse paths evolution (or bioengineering) has taken elsewhere (or > in the future), they might be ruled out. This might be taken to mean > mythical unicorns are nomologically impossible. That is, they?re > impossible because they go against the laws of nature (or physics). So by "universe" do you mean everything that is which exists, commonly referred to as the multiverse these days, or everything that we observers can perceive and are causally connected to? Our local big bang has a finite horizon that we cannot see beyond but very few physicists these days think that this is all that exists. This distinction is important because in cosmology and string theory, Alan Guth's eternal inflation is very popular. It suggests that approximately 10^500 varieties of pocket universes exist, each with their own big bang and set of distinct physical laws. Big bangs are merely the decay of an inflaton field that is expanding faster than it is decaying, therefore big bangs are happening all over all the time. Therefore infinite numbers of each of these types of pocket universes exist where every possible permutation of events allowed by the physical laws specific to that type of universe are played out. Is there anything truly "impossible" in such a eternally inflating multiverse? Besides, nothing ever lives up to the hype, why would unicorns be any different? > Second, when someone says they believe in unicorns, one has to go > further than just asking if unicorns are possible anywhere or at any > time. One has to ask, so they believe they exist as I the myths in > our world age relatively recently or even now. In which case, it > can?t help if there are unicorn-like beings in a far off galaxy or > that they?ll arise in the distant future ? say, a billion years from > now. (This goes along with contingent impossibility. For instance, > it?s contingently impossible that JFK could run for Senate now > because he?s king dead.) If string theory and eternal inflation are right, JFK is only dead in this Everett branch of this bubble universe and he lives on in countless others. > It?s kind of like the Loch Ness monster. It?s no help knowing that > giant swimming reptiles existed back in the Mesozoic. People who > believe there?s one in Loch Ness aren?t believing there were, say, > plesiosaurs 65 million years ago. They?re believing there are such > animals right now (or at least in the last several decades) in that > lake. Belief and reality are largely independent of one another until empirically tested. If we drained the Loch, we would have conclusive evidence one way or another. Until we do, people will continue harbor opinions and doubts one way or another. Stuart LaForge > Regards, > > Dan > >> On May 4, 2021, at 4:17 PM, Hermes Trismegistus via extropy-chat >> wrote: >> >> ? >> If the universe is vast enough and life is common enough, then >> surely there are creatures that resemble our mythical unicorns on >> other planets. I hold to a healthy faith in unicorns, though I may >> never see one. >> >> From: William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat >> Sent: Tuesday, May 4, 2021 1:11 PM >> To: ExI chat list >> Cc: William Flynn Wallace >> Subject: Re: [ExI] Pascal's wager >> >> Well, Tara, it depends on whether you share your beliefs with >> others - tell others your belief and see if you can hold on to >> rational friends. bill w >> >> On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 11:55 AM Tara Maya via extropy-chat >> wrote: >> The argument works better with unicorns. As far as I know, there >> are no downsides to believing in unicorns. > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > From brent.allsop at gmail.com Sun May 9 17:33:27 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 11:33:27 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Jason, Sounds like you know your stuff, and have been studying the field for some time, so fun to have an additional challenger, even if your just another person in the currently leading consensus "functionalism" camp, which I believe is dead wrong. On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 8:07 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > If the "bio-brain" is conscious, and the "compu-brain" preserves all the > relevant interrelationships of the bio-brain in an isomorphic manner, then > all externally visible behavior will likewise be the same. > Still not accounting for qualia in any significant way. For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to be red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like for you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly better, in any way you care to define better. For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, and any functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully account for qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always completely avoid any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in any of the beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro substitution'.... To me, this is very strong evidence that any functionalists has no grasp at all on the qualitative nature of consciousness, and the assumptions they are making. They just ignore it all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted for. > The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still say > there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still describe > their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person with the > bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the compu-brain > will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness and qualia. > > In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you could do to > rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective behaviors > are identical. > > Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are logically > impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be conscious, > in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." > > I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is not > consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases for > assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, self-reports, > non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural prosthesis, the > anti-zombie principle). > > 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the intrinsic >> qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you must be >> able to observe these computational differences. >> > > Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when you > say you must be able to observer computational differences? > Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, reacting in a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. Given that, here is the answer: We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a redness quality of subjective experience (first person) We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific instruments, and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it behaves. (third person) Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing of the colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know that. For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and knowledge of reality " chapter of our video. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 9 19:05:06 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 12:05:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready Message-ID: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> I am a fan of the pre-war Chrysler Windsor, so I did a Google search, found there was one available locally. The ad said it was all original, ready for restoration: spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 69240 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jasonresch at gmail.com Sun May 9 20:08:28 2021 From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 15:08:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 12:38 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Hi Jason, > Sounds like you know your stuff, and have been studying the field for some > time, so fun to have an additional challenger, even if your just another > person in the currently leading consensus "functionalism" camp, which I > believe is dead wrong. > Thank you Brent. I have been researching the field for many years, and am working on a book on the subject. I am currently in the midst of writing an article on the topic of "What is consciousness?" so I am again deep into the subject. > > On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 8:07 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> If the "bio-brain" is conscious, and the "compu-brain" preserves all the >> relevant interrelationships of the bio-brain in an isomorphic manner, then >> all externally visible behavior will likewise be the same. >> > > Still not accounting for qualia in any significant way. > I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought it was well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia given either. My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that qualia relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our third-person ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information can only capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand gestures to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your senses, but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as done by your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from first-person experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she sees red for the first time: she activates new forms of processing information by her brain. She could read all the books in the world on what red is like without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas that make her experience red. > For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to be > red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like for > you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are > describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly > better, in any way you care to define better. > I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be identical for a qualia-inverted being, especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the scope of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get inverted qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be a third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. > > For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, and any > functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully account for > qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always completely avoid > any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in any of the > beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro substitution'.... To me, > this is very strong evidence that any functionalists has no grasp at all on > the qualitative nature of consciousness, and the assumptions they are > making. They just ignore it all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted > for. > Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious of qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the most simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. For example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so you can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being touched in that particular location. Qualia are just certain forms of knowledge. The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of information. Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely having knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, and interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think there are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. > > >> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still say >> there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still describe >> their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person with the >> bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the compu-brain >> will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness and qualia. >> >> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you could do >> to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >> behaviors are identical. >> >> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are logically >> impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be conscious, >> in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >> >> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is not >> consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases for >> assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, self-reports, >> non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural prosthesis, the >> anti-zombie principle). >> >> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the intrinsic >>> qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you must be >>> able to observe these computational differences. >>> >> >> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when you >> say you must be able to observer computational differences? >> > > Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, reacting in a > synapse, is a description of your redness quality. > If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever > description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. > Given that, here is the answer: > > We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a redness > quality of subjective experience (first person) > We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific instruments, > and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it behaves. (third > person) > Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing of the > colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know that. > > I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural transmitter or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on the basis of the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible perceptions (even just considering possible perceived colors) than there are chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the variety of our perception. > For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and > knowledge of reality > " > chapter of our video. > If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your theory say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the quark-lepton level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, glutamate particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie world, with non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia and the mysterious nature of the redness of red? While there are many reasons to doubt functionalism/computationalism, there is strong indirect observational evidence supporting it, which is that if we assume computationalism is true, we can directly explain many of the observed properties of our physical world. I have written about this here: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory Jason -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 9 20:17:22 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 16:17:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 9, 2021, 3:08 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The ad said it was all original, ready for restoration: > You might need more than one can of WD40 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun May 9 22:18:45 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 17:18:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] lichens Message-ID: Yes, I am into another field: fungi. More interesting than cod, Spike. Trivia: Some lichens can live through 24 thousands times the gamma radiation that humans can. Maybe a trip to Mars will be in a craft covered with lichens. Who in our groups is working in biology? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Sun May 9 23:02:25 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 17:02:25 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Jason, On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought it was > well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia given > either. > Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. You certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia Theory " each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. RQT is basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. > My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that qualia > relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our third-person > ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information can only > capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand gestures > to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your senses, > but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as done by > your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from first-person > experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she sees red for > the first time: she activates new forms of processing information by her > brain. She could read all the books in the world on what red is like > without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas that make her > experience red. > > >> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to be >> red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like for >> you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are >> describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >> better, in any way you care to define better. >> > > I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be identical for > a qualia-inverted being, > Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact that if two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: "What is your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must give different answers, since they each represent red with different qualities. This pictures basically shows each of the different answers each of these people would give to the question: "What is redness like for you?" [image: image.png] > especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the scope of > externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get inverted > qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be a > third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable > difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that > if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the > observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and > forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a > difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. > > >> >> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, and any >> functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully account for >> qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always completely avoid >> any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in any of the >> beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro substitution'.... To me, >> this is very strong evidence that any functionalists has no grasp at all on >> the qualitative nature of consciousness, and the assumptions they are >> making. They just ignore it all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted >> for. >> > > Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious of > qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the most > simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. For > example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so you > can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say > about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being > touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain forms of > knowledge*. > Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of qualia this way. Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge of red, your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that matter, a bat could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives from echolocation while hunting. > The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of information. > Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely having > knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, and > interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think there > are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. > > >> >> >>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still say >>> there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still describe >>> their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person with the >>> bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the compu-brain >>> will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness and qualia. >>> >>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you could do >>> to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>> behaviors are identical. >>> >>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are logically >>> impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be conscious, >>> in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>> >>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is not >>> consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases for >>> assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, self-reports, >>> non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural prosthesis, the >>> anti-zombie principle). >>> >>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the intrinsic >>>> qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you must be >>>> able to observe these computational differences. >>>> >>> >>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when you >>> say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>> >> >> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, reacting in a >> synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever >> description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >> Given that, here is the answer: >> >> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a redness >> quality of subjective experience (first person) >> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific instruments, >> and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it behaves. (third >> person) >> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing of the >> colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know that. >> >> > I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural transmitter > or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on the basis of > the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible perceptions (even > just considering possible perceived colors) than there are > chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive > around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision > enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare > humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. > This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so > it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So > it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher > level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the > variety of our perception. > Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so easily falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once you falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective with the objective. The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's lost and distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the important principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color world, The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine for the other) and so on. Then once you understand the important principle of how the objective and subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about more complex theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more complex world. For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and >> knowledge of reality >> " >> chapter of our video. >> > > If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your theory > say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the quark-lepton > level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, glutamate > particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie world, with > non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia and the > mysterious nature of the redness of red? > Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of different ways all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing which of these thousands I should be thinking you mean. Redness can be represented and simulated by most anything. It can be represented by greenness, or it can be represented by +5 volts on a line (as we indicated in the video) or anything else. The only important thing to realize is that anything that is NOT redness, which is representing redness, needs a dictionary to know what that thing is representing. While redness, itself, is simply a physical fact about the quality of you knowledge of red things, no dictionary required. The prediction is that no functionalist will ever be able to produce a redness quality experience with ANY function, no matter what it is, or no matter what is running it. I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly falsifiable function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate falsifiable example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x cubed is greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give you that blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of them, they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction that any particular function could in any way result in a physical redness quality really is. > While there are many reasons to doubt functionalism/computationalism, > there is strong indirect observational evidence supporting it, which is > that if we assume computationalism is true, we can directly explain many of > the observed properties of our physical world. I have written about this > here: > > https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory > We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different ways, and I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. It'd sure be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp in the "Theories of Cons consciousness " topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized with the other theories we've collected to date? FYI, as you can see, Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism , and mine is "Molecular Materialism ". It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional Property Dualism ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 9 23:14:59 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 09:14:59 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 10 May 2021 at 09:04, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Hi Jason, > > > On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought it was >> well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia given >> either. >> > > Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. You > certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost > every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about > qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to > pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the > description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia > Theory > " > each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. RQT > is > basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way > all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. > > >> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that qualia >> relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our third-person >> ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information can only >> capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand gestures >> to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your senses, >> but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as done by >> your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from first-person >> experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she sees red for >> the first time: she activates new forms of processing information by her >> brain. She could read all the books in the world on what red is like >> without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas that make her >> experience red. >> >> >>> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to be >>> red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like for >>> you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are >>> describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >>> better, in any way you care to define better. >>> >> >> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be identical >> for a qualia-inverted being, >> > > Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact that if > two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: "What is > your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must give > different answers, since they each represent red with different qualities. > This pictures basically shows each of the different answers each of these > people would give to the question: "What is redness like for you?" > > [image: image.png] > > >> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the scope >> of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get inverted >> qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be a >> third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable >> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that >> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the >> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and >> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a >> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. >> > >> >>> >>> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, and any >>> functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully account for >>> qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always completely avoid >>> any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in any of the >>> beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro substitution'.... To me, >>> this is very strong evidence that any functionalists has no grasp at all on >>> the qualitative nature of consciousness, and the assumptions they are >>> making. They just ignore it all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted >>> for. >>> >> >> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious of >> qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the most >> simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. For >> example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so you >> can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say >> about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being >> touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain forms of >> knowledge*. >> > > Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of qualia > this way. Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume > functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. > As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge of red, > your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that matter, a bat > could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives from > echolocation while hunting. > > >> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of information. >> Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely having >> knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, and >> interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think there >> are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. >> >> >>> >>> >>>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still say >>>> there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still describe >>>> their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person with the >>>> bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the compu-brain >>>> will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness and qualia. >>>> >>>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you could do >>>> to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>>> behaviors are identical. >>>> >>>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are logically >>>> impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be conscious, >>>> in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>>> >>>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is not >>>> consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases for >>>> assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, self-reports, >>>> non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural prosthesis, the >>>> anti-zombie principle). >>>> >>>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the >>>>> intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you >>>>> must be able to observe these computational differences. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when you >>>> say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>>> >>> >>> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, reacting in >>> a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >>> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever >>> description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >>> Given that, here is the answer: >>> >>> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a redness >>> quality of subjective experience (first person) >>> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific instruments, >>> and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it behaves. (third >>> person) >>> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing of the >>> colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know that. >>> >>> >> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural transmitter >> or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on the basis of >> the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible perceptions (even >> just considering possible perceived colors) than there are >> chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive >> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision >> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare >> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. >> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so >> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So >> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher >> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the >> variety of our perception. >> > > Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so easily > falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once you > falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of > something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will > have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective > with the objective. > > The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's lost and > distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the important > principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color world, > The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or > anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a > description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description > of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a > simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the > subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand > how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = > greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is > redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine > for the other) and so on. > > Then once you understand the important principle of how the objective and > subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about more complex > theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more complex world. > > > For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and >>> knowledge of reality >>> " >>> chapter of our video. >>> >> >> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your theory >> say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the quark-lepton >> level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, glutamate >> particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie world, with >> non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia and the >> mysterious nature of the redness of red? >> > > Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of different ways > all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing which of > these thousands I should be thinking you mean. Redness can be represented > and simulated by most anything. It can be represented by greenness, or it > can be represented by +5 volts on a line (as we indicated in the video) or > anything else. The only important thing to realize is that anything that > is NOT redness, which is representing redness, needs a dictionary to know > what that thing is representing. While redness, itself, is simply a > physical fact about the quality of you knowledge of red things, no > dictionary required. The prediction is that no functionalist will ever be > able to produce a redness quality experience with ANY function, no matter > what it is, or no matter what is running it. > > I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly falsifiable > function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate falsifiable > example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x cubed is > greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give you that > blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of them, > they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction that any > particular function could in any way result in a physical redness quality > really is. > The function is the package deal: when Brent walks throught the world talking about red and green in the way he normally does, he experiences red and green. > While there are many reasons to doubt functionalism/computationalism, >> there is strong indirect observational evidence supporting it, which is >> that if we assume computationalism is true, we can directly explain many of >> the observed properties of our physical world. I have written about this >> here: >> >> >> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory >> > > We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different ways, and > I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. It'd sure > be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp in the "Theories > of Cons consciousness > " > topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise > statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized > with the other theories we've collected to date? FYI, as you can see, > Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism > , > and mine is "Molecular Materialism > ". > It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional > Property Dualism > > ? > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sun May 9 23:22:14 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 23:22:14 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Pascal's wager In-Reply-To: <20210509102906.Horde.RlUi2-w9n7B8mqVgEz6G_Qd@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20210509102906.Horde.RlUi2-w9n7B8mqVgEz6G_Qd@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 5:32 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat wrote: > Quoting Dan: > > There's some stuff to unpack here. > > Mythical unicorns have some variation, but a big problem is they > > tend to have magical/supernatural properties. > > Are the magical properties of mythical unicorns beyond the capability > of fully-realized nanotech? What are properties anyway? Supernatural, > magical, emergent, measurable, or mundane: do any such properties > actually exist? If so, then where do they exist? Are these properties > in the things that exhibit those properties or in the mind that > perceives them? I think they (the magical properties) are because then it's not magical, right? Anyhow, leave that aside. I was thinking of simply offering up a horse with a single horn on its head as a unicorn. There's a lot more to it than that -- at least according to the lore. > > In which case, it might not matter how vast the universe is or what > > diverse paths evolution (or bioengineering) has taken elsewhere (or > > in the future), they might be ruled out. This might be taken to mean > > mythical unicorns are nomologically impossible. That is, they?re > > impossible because they go against the laws of nature (or physics). > > So by "universe" do you mean everything that is which exists, commonly > referred to as the multiverse these days, or everything that we > observers can perceive and are causally connected to? Our local big > bang has a finite horizon that we cannot see beyond but very few > physicists these days think that this is all that exists. > > This distinction is important because in cosmology and string theory, > Alan Guth's eternal inflation is very popular. It suggests that > approximately 10^500 varieties of pocket universes exist, each with > their own big bang and set of distinct physical laws. Big bangs are > merely the decay of an inflaton field that is expanding faster than it > is decaying, therefore big bangs are happening all over all the time. > > Therefore infinite numbers of each of these types of pocket universes > exist where every possible permutation of events allowed by the > physical laws specific to that type of universe are played out. Is > there anything truly "impossible" in such a eternally inflating > multiverse? > > Besides, nothing ever lives up to the hype, why would unicorns be any > different? It depends on that being true, and also, as I've said below, when someone says they believe in unicorns, I take it they don't -- unless they specify this -- mean it happens somewhere in the multiverse, i.e., basically in an alternate reality. I take they means here and now or at least close by and recently. And this applies to Loch Ness, etc. Loch Ness believers (or JFK stuff too) don't think there's a planet somewhere in the visible universe in the last 13.7 billion years (or in the future) or somewhere in the multiverse that has someplace like Scotland with a lake with a big sea reptile living in it. They're saying there's one there now -- or at least there has been one there in the last hundred years. > > Second, when someone says they believe in unicorns, one has to go > > further than just asking if unicorns are possible anywhere or at any > > time. One has to ask, so they believe they exist as I the myths in > > our world age relatively recently or even now. In which case, it > > can?t help if there are unicorn-like beings in a far off galaxy or > > that they?ll arise in the distant future ? say, a billion years from > > now. (This goes along with contingent impossibility. For instance, > > it?s contingently impossible that JFK could run for Senate now > > because he?s king dead.) > > If string theory and eternal inflation are right, JFK is only dead in > this Everett branch of this bubble universe and he lives on in > countless others. My point was not in this branch.:) And I was trying to make the distinction to give what a contingent impossibility is in contradistinction to a logical (conceptually inconsistent) and a nomological (laws of physics violation) ones are. >> It?s kind of like the Loch Ness monster. It?s no help knowing that >> giant swimming reptiles existed back in the Mesozoic. People who >> believe there?s one in Loch Ness aren?t believing there were, say, >> plesiosaurs 65 million years ago. They?re believing there are such >> animals right now (or at least in the last several decades) in that >> lake. > > Belief and reality are largely independent of one another until > empirically tested. If we drained the Loch, we would have conclusive > evidence one way or another. Until we do, people will continue harbor > opinions and doubts one way or another. My point was that I was trying to specify what they believe -- as given above. If you told them that in another branch universe there was a Loch Ness monster, but not in this one, I think they'd say, 'No, we mean there's a big reptile living in the Loch now, dammit!' I wasn't trying to figure out how to settle the matter (given that it seems very unlikely their belief is true, regardless of the Loch being drained) or what ultimately should determine their beliefs. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst From brent.allsop at gmail.com Sun May 9 23:33:23 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 17:33:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Thank you Stathis, On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 5:16 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The function is the package deal: when Brent walks through the world > talking about red and green in the way he normally does, he experiences red > and green. > I couldn't have provided a better example to prove my point. The definition of qualia blind is any language that uses one word for all things red. This statement clearly fits that definition. It is completely ambiguous, has thousands of different ways it could be interpreted, and as far as quail are concerned, it conveys no qualitative information, whatsoever. At best it refers to my language that is not qualia blind, if you're trying to claim that means your statement isn't qualia blind, but pleeeese... give me something, anything, in your theory that definitively falsifies my belief that your way of thinking about qualia, and all your claims and assumptions are qualia blind. All of it only uses one abstract word that isn't red, for all things red. Brent -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jasonresch at gmail.com Mon May 10 04:06:31 2021 From: jasonresch at gmail.com (Jason Resch) Date: Sun, 9 May 2021 23:06:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 9, 2021, 6:04 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Hi Jason, > > > On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought it was >> well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia given >> either. >> > > Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. You > certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost > every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about > qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to > pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the > description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia > Theory > " > each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. RQT > is > basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way > all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. > I mean I didn't see any additional explanation or resolution offered concerning the problem(s) of explaining qualia. All theories of consciousness struggle with this "hard problem". What new does RQT have to say about it? > >> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that qualia >> relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our third-person >> ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information can only >> capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand gestures >> to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your senses, >> but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as done by >> your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from first-person >> experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she sees red for >> the first time: she activates new forms of processing information by her >> brain. She could read all the books in the world on what red is like >> without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas that make her >> experience red. >> >> >>> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to be >>> red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like for >>> you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are >>> describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >>> better, in any way you care to define better. >>> >> >> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be identical >> for a qualia-inverted being, >> > > Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact that if > two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: "What is > your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must give > different answers, since they each represent red with different qualities. > This pictures basically shows each of the different answers each of these > people would give to the question: "What is redness like for you?" > How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the question differently? What would they say when asked to explain "What is your redness like?" And how would there answer be different from someone without inverted qualia? > [image: image.png] > > >> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the scope >> of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get inverted >> qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be a >> third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable >> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that >> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the >> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and >> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a >> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. >> > >> >>> >>> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, and any >>> functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully account for >>> qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always completely avoid >>> any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in any of the >>> beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro substitution'.... To me, >>> this is very strong evidence that any functionalists has no grasp at all on >>> the qualitative nature of consciousness, and the assumptions they are >>> making. They just ignore it all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted >>> for. >>> >> >> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious of >> qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the most >> simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. For >> example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so you >> can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say >> about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being >> touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain forms of >> knowledge*. >> > > Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of qualia > this way. > Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states? Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume > functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. > Knowledge requires a knower. A punch card or hard drive can't know anything. Knowledge requires (information+a system to be informed). As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge of red, > your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that matter, a bat > could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives from > echolocation while hunting. > Given dreaming, we know conscious states can also be entirely cut off from an external world. The brain alone has everything it needs to create the experience of redness, even in total darkness and an absence of any light with a wavelength of ~700nm. Redness is a property of the structures and relationships embodied by the brain, and nothing else. > >> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of information. >> Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely having >> knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, and >> interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think there >> are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. >> >> >>> >>> >>>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still say >>>> there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still describe >>>> their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person with the >>>> bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the compu-brain >>>> will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness and qualia. >>>> >>>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you could do >>>> to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>>> behaviors are identical. >>>> >>>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are logically >>>> impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be conscious, >>>> in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>>> >>>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is not >>>> consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases for >>>> assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, self-reports, >>>> non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural prosthesis, the >>>> anti-zombie principle). >>>> >>>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the >>>>> intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you >>>>> must be able to observe these computational differences. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when you >>>> say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>>> >>> >>> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, reacting in >>> a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >>> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever >>> description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >>> Given that, here is the answer: >>> >>> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a redness >>> quality of subjective experience (first person) >>> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific instruments, >>> and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it behaves. (third >>> person) >>> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing of the >>> colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know that. >>> >>> >> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural transmitter >> or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on the basis of >> the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible perceptions (even >> just considering possible perceived colors) than there are >> chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive >> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision >> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare >> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. >> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so >> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So >> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher >> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the >> variety of our perception. >> > > Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so easily > falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once you > falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of > something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will > have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective > with the objective. > > The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's lost and > distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the important > principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color world, > The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or > anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a > description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description > of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a > simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the > subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand > how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = > greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is > redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine > for the other) and so on. > Even in a world with simple conscious states I think we could find reasons to doubt mind-brain identity theories. If we encountered space aliens or robots with different neurochemistry that behaved or claimed to be conscious, for instance. This is in my view, the main appeal of functionalism. > Then once you understand the important principle of how the objective and > subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about more complex > theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more complex world. > Could you explain your view of how the subjective and objective are connected? > > For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and >>> knowledge of reality >>> " >>> chapter of our video. >>> >> >> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your theory >> say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the quark-lepton >> level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, glutamate >> particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie world, with >> non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia and the >> mysterious nature of the redness of red? >> > > Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of different ways > all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing which of > these thousands I should be thinking you mean. > What I mean to ask is: imagine a vast computer simulation that simulated the entire observable universes down to the detail if the smallest fundamental particles and field theories. Would the simulated humans in the simulated Earth in the simulated Milly Way be conscious? Redness can be represented and simulated by most anything. It can be > represented by greenness, or it can be represented by +5 volts on a line > (as we indicated in the video) or anything else. The only important thing > to realize is that anything that is NOT redness, which is representing > redness, needs a dictionary to know what that thing is representing. > I don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red. While redness, itself, is simply a physical fact about the quality of you > knowledge of red things, no dictionary required. The prediction is that no > functionalist will ever be able to produce a redness quality experience > with ANY function, no matter what it is, or no matter what is running it. > What is your rational for reaching this conclusion? > I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly falsifiable > function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate falsifiable > example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x cubed is > greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give you that > blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of them, > they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction that any > particular function could in any way result in a physical redness quality > really is. > A function whose information content is less than the information content of the conscious experience could be falsified. Whatever function is responsible for red experience is probably not simple. Multiple layers of processing by various brain regions, involving a total of some 30% of our cortex is involved in creating our visual experience. I would think the function is vastly complex and also may involve relationships with other non visual areas of the brain. It's not clear to me you could have a red experience without considering the whole brain. > >> While there are many reasons to doubt functionalism/computationalism, >> there is strong indirect observational evidence supporting it, which is >> that if we assume computationalism is true, we can directly explain many of >> the observed properties of our physical world. I have written about this >> here: >> >> >> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory >> > > We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different ways, and > I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. > Ask away if anything I have said us unclear. It'd sure be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp in the "Theories > of Cons consciousness > " > topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise > statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized > with the other theories we've collected to date? > I don't know that my view is any different from standard digital mechanism / computationalism. It's just functionalism with an assumption of finiteness and computability, which I understand is the standard computational theory of mind. FYI, as you can see, Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism > , > and mine is "Molecular Materialism > ". > It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional > Property Dualism > > ? > I'll check out these definitions and let you know. Thanks! This site is a noble effort serving and important purpose. Jason -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 10 15:56:20 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 10:56:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] simplified epistemology In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "Rationalism means this." "No it means that." "It should be included under...." "No I disagree." Nothing says 'philosophy' like the 12 men and the elephant metaphor. I think since no one actually added any epistemologies I'll go with what I have. bill w On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 5:34 PM Dan TheBookMan wrote: > On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 11:55 AM Lawrence Crowell > wrote: > > I would consider deduction, the use of formal rules, and induction, a > proposition based > > on a large number of outcomes or calculations, as two forms of > rationalism. > > Rationalism is usually more about the source of knowledge (intuitions, > innate ideas, concepts) and the structure (it's usually > foundationalist, meaning it views knowledge as a hierarchical > structure kind of like a building) than about purely the use of forms > of reasoning. In fact, rival epistemologies also use forms of > reasoning too. So that's not the differentiating feature here. > Descartes is usually seen as a Rationalist and he mostly held you > moved from innate ideas to further developments of these. Locke, often > seen as the Empiricist wasn't against using logic (though his ideas on > logic are a wee confused). And perhaps the arch-empiricist is J. S. > Mill who actually came up with Mill's methods: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill%27s_Methods > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my Kindle books via: > http://author.to/DanUst > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "extropolis" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CACB7g27n_P6B3cnbPPJ7BjkZQV39J-CNSdHMNyJR4S3kK3xiDw%40mail.gmail.com > . > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Mon May 10 16:08:45 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 10:08:45 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Jason, I believe you are interpreting everything I'm saying, into your model of consciousness. As long as you do this, you will fail to understand the different model I'm trying to describe and fail to see the answers I'm providing. You asked: "Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states?" This indicates you are asking how I interpret what I am saying into you model. That is the problem. I'm trying to describe a different model, so as long as you are asking how I map, what I'm saying, into your model, you will fail to understand the different model I'm trying to describe. If there is +5 volts, on a line, that is simply an observable physical fact. If there is a hole in a punch card, again, that state of matter is simply a physical fact. Neither of these physical facts "transcend knowledge". If you have a dictionary, both +5 volts, or a particular hole on a punch card, both of these physical facts can be defined to represent information, like a digital "1" or the word "red". Redness is a similar physical fact about the intrinsic quality of something in physical reality. If you have a dictionary for the word 'red', which points to something that has an intrinsic redness quality and say "THAT is red" that redness quality can then represent "red" information. For example, I explicitly answered the question: "How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the question differently? " with this image, showing the two different answers each would provide: > [image: image.png] > Then you proved you didn't understand how this is the answer to that exact question, by yet again, re asking the question, again, while you are looking at the answer: "How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the question differently?" Another question you asked, after I've provided the answer is: "I don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red." What does the word "red" mean? Without a dictionary, it means nothing. The word 'red' isn't intrinsically red! If you described the behavior of a redness quality, similarly, would that description tell you anything about what the quality which had that behavior was like? No. Neither the word red, nor a descript of redness has an intrinsic redness quality. The only way to know what they are describing, or a label of, is with a dictionary. To know what redness means, you point to the knowledge of the person on the left of that picture and say: "That is red". Then you say: "The knowledge of the one on the right is green." these are different answers to the same question: "What is redness like for you?" When we describe the behavior of glutamate, as it reacts in a synapse, for all we know that could be exactly the description of how redness behaves. Of all the descriptions of stuff in our brain, one of those descriptions must be a description of the behavior of redness. Something different than that must be the description of the behavior of greenness. Once you can read through what I've already said, and see that all your questions have been answered then you will know you are understanding the model I'm trying to describe. Until you can do that, restating the answer's I've already provided won't help. Once you start to understand the model, you should watch the video , again, so you can finally understand it, and see how it is describing a non qualia blind model, a model which answers all your questions. Brent On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 10:08 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Sun, May 9, 2021, 6:04 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> Hi Jason, >> >> >> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought it was >>> well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia given >>> either. >>> >> >> Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. You >> certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost >> every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about >> qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to >> pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the >> description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia >> Theory >> " >> each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. RQT >> is >> basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way >> all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. >> > > I mean I didn't see any additional explanation or resolution offered > concerning the problem(s) of explaining qualia. All theories of > consciousness struggle with this "hard problem". What new does RQT have to > say about it? > > >> >>> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that qualia >>> relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our third-person >>> ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information can only >>> capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand gestures >>> to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your senses, >>> but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as done by >>> your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from first-person >>> experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she sees red for >>> the first time: she activates new forms of processing information by her >>> brain. She could read all the books in the world on what red is like >>> without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas that make her >>> experience red. >>> >>> >>>> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to be >>>> red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like for >>>> you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are >>>> describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >>>> better, in any way you care to define better. >>>> >>> >>> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be identical >>> for a qualia-inverted being, >>> >> >> Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact that >> if two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: "What >> is your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must give >> different answers, since they each represent red with different qualities. >> This pictures basically shows each of the different answers each of these >> people would give to the question: "What is redness like for you?" >> > > How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the question > differently? What would they say when asked to explain "What is your > redness like?" And how would there answer be different from someone without > inverted qualia? > > > >> [image: image.png] >> >> >>> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the scope >>> of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get inverted >>> qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be a >>> third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable >>> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that >>> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the >>> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and >>> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a >>> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. >>> >> >>> >>>> >>>> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, and >>>> any functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully >>>> account for qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always >>>> completely avoid any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in >>>> any of the beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro >>>> substitution'.... To me, this is very strong evidence that any >>>> functionalists has no grasp at all on the qualitative nature of >>>> consciousness, and the assumptions they are making. They just ignore it >>>> all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted for. >>>> >>> >>> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious of >>> qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the most >>> simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. For >>> example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so you >>> can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say >>> about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being >>> touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain forms of >>> knowledge*. >>> >> >> Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of qualia >> this way. >> > > Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states? > > Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume >> functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. >> > > Knowledge requires a knower. A punch card or hard drive can't know > anything. Knowledge requires (information+a system to be informed). > > As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge of red, >> your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that matter, a bat >> could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives from >> echolocation while hunting. >> > > Given dreaming, we know conscious states can also be entirely cut off from > an external world. The brain alone has everything it needs to create the > experience of redness, even in total darkness and an absence of any light > with a wavelength of ~700nm. Redness is a property of the structures and > relationships embodied by the brain, and nothing else. > > >> >>> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of information. >>> Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely having >>> knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, and >>> interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think there >>> are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. >>> >>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still say >>>>> there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still describe >>>>> their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person with the >>>>> bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the compu-brain >>>>> will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness and qualia. >>>>> >>>>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you could >>>>> do to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>>>> behaviors are identical. >>>>> >>>>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are logically >>>>> impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be conscious, >>>>> in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>>>> >>>>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is not >>>>> consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases for >>>>> assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, self-reports, >>>>> non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural prosthesis, the >>>>> anti-zombie principle). >>>>> >>>>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the >>>>>> intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you >>>>>> must be able to observe these computational differences. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when >>>>> you say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>>>> >>>> >>>> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, reacting in >>>> a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >>>> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever >>>> description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >>>> Given that, here is the answer: >>>> >>>> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a redness >>>> quality of subjective experience (first person) >>>> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific instruments, >>>> and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it behaves. (third >>>> person) >>>> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing of >>>> the colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know that. >>>> >>>> >>> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural transmitter >>> or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on the basis of >>> the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible perceptions (even >>> just considering possible perceived colors) than there are >>> chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive >>> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision >>> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare >>> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. >>> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so >>> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So >>> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher >>> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the >>> variety of our perception. >>> >> >> Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so easily >> falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once you >> falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of >> something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will >> have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective >> with the objective. >> >> The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's lost >> and distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the >> important principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color >> world, The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or >> anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a >> description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description >> of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a >> simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the >> subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand >> how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = >> greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is >> redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine >> for the other) and so on. >> > > Even in a world with simple conscious states I think we could find reasons > to doubt mind-brain identity theories. If we encountered space aliens or > robots with different neurochemistry that behaved or claimed to be > conscious, for instance. This is in my view, the main appeal of > functionalism. > > >> Then once you understand the important principle of how the objective and >> subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about more complex >> theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more complex world. >> > > Could you explain your view of how the subjective and objective are > connected? > > >> >> For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and >>>> knowledge of reality >>>> " >>>> chapter of our video. >>>> >>> >>> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your theory >>> say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the quark-lepton >>> level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, glutamate >>> particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie world, with >>> non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia and the >>> mysterious nature of the redness of red? >>> >> >> Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of different ways >> all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing which of >> these thousands I should be thinking you mean. >> > > What I mean to ask is: imagine a vast computer simulation that simulated > the entire observable universes down to the detail if the smallest > fundamental particles and field theories. Would the simulated humans in the > simulated Earth in the simulated Milly Way be conscious? > > > Redness can be represented and simulated by most anything. It can be >> represented by greenness, or it can be represented by +5 volts on a line >> (as we indicated in the video) or anything else. The only important thing >> to realize is that anything that is NOT redness, which is representing >> redness, needs a dictionary to know what that thing is representing. >> > > I don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red. > > > While redness, itself, is simply a physical fact about the quality of you >> knowledge of red things, no dictionary required. The prediction is that no >> functionalist will ever be able to produce a redness quality experience >> with ANY function, no matter what it is, or no matter what is running it. >> > > What is your rational for reaching this conclusion? > > >> I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly falsifiable >> function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate falsifiable >> example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x cubed is >> greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give you that >> blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of them, >> they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction that any >> particular function could in any way result in a physical redness quality >> really is. >> > > A function whose information content is less than the information content > of the conscious experience could be falsified. > > Whatever function is responsible for red experience is probably not > simple. Multiple layers of processing by various brain regions, involving a > total of some 30% of our cortex is involved in creating our visual > experience. I would think the function is vastly complex and also may > involve relationships with other non visual areas of the brain. It's not > clear to me you could have a red experience without considering the whole > brain. > > >> >>> While there are many reasons to doubt functionalism/computationalism, >>> there is strong indirect observational evidence supporting it, which is >>> that if we assume computationalism is true, we can directly explain many of >>> the observed properties of our physical world. I have written about this >>> here: >>> >>> >>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory >>> >> >> We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different ways, and >> I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. >> > > Ask away if anything I have said us unclear. > > > It'd sure be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp in the >> "Theories of Cons consciousness >> " >> topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise >> statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized >> with the other theories we've collected to date? >> > > I don't know that my view is any different from standard digital mechanism > / computationalism. It's just functionalism with an assumption of > finiteness and computability, which I understand is the standard > computational theory of mind. > > > FYI, as you can see, Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism >> , >> and mine is "Molecular Materialism >> ". >> It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional >> Property Dualism >> >> ? >> > > > I'll check out these definitions and let you know. Thanks! This site is a > noble effort serving and important purpose. > > Jason > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 10 17:00:03 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 12:00:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] simplified epistemology In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The problem with direct experience is that it can be misinterpreted, especially overgeneralized. Marry one woman, get taken for an expensive ride, and forever after hate women. This is what brains do: try to develop 'laws' based on personal experience to be used in other cases which might not be similar. bill w On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 11:53 AM John Clark wrote: > On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:33 PM William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > > > I think of direct experience and common sense as being part of >> empiricism. >> > > I think common sense is either the product of induction (X has always > occurred in the past therefore X will always continue into the future) or > is the product of the way genes happen to hardwired our brains (perhaps > that's why most people feel the concepts of up-and-down are a fundamental > part of reality, even a great physicist probably couldn't help feeling that > emotion if he's standing close to the edge of a cliff). Common sense can > be wrong and often is, but direct experience never can be. If direct > experience tells us something we need neither induction nor deduction nor > empiricism to know it is true. > > John K Clark > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "extropolis" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv2obXc03%2BML8En1QdbY0tUxah7X1vRYSgx0E7Mvcp%2BGww%40mail.gmail.com > > . > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at zaiboc.net Mon May 10 17:05:47 2021 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 18:05:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] , lichens In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/05/2021 00:02, bill w wrote: > Yes, I am into another field:? fungi.? More interesting than cod, > Spike. Trivia: > > Some lichens can live through 24 thousands times the gamma radiation > that humans can. > > Maybe a trip to Mars will be in a craft covered with lichens.? Who in > our groups is working in biology? I doubt that covering a spacecraft with lichens would help the astronauts inside. Lichens might be good at surviving high radiation, but that doesn't mean they would absorb it (that would damage them more, not less). Ben -- Ben Zaiboc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 10 18:27:15 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 04:27:15 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 02:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Hi Jason, > I believe you are interpreting everything I'm saying, into your model of > consciousness. As long as you do this, you will fail to understand the > different model I'm trying to describe and fail to see the answers I'm > providing. > > You asked: "Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states?" > > This indicates you are asking how I interpret what I am saying into you > model. That is the problem. I'm trying to describe a different model, so > as long as you are asking how I map, what I'm saying, into your model, you > will fail to understand the different model I'm trying to describe. > > If there is +5 volts, on a line, that is simply an observable > physical fact. If there is a hole in a punch card, again, that state of > matter is simply a physical fact. Neither of these physical facts > "transcend knowledge". If you have a dictionary, both +5 volts, or a > particular hole on a punch card, both of these physical facts can be > defined to represent information, like a digital "1" or the word "red". > Redness is a similar physical fact about the intrinsic quality of something > in physical reality. If you have a dictionary for the word 'red', which > points to something that has an intrinsic redness quality and say "THAT is > red" that redness quality can then represent "red" information. > > For example, I explicitly answered the question: "How do you propose > someone with inverted qualia would answer the question differently? " > with this image, showing the two different answers each would provide: > > > >> [image: image.png] >> > I think you?re suggesting one person will say he sees red and the other he sees green, but that would mean there is a functional difference between them, whereas functionalism holds that they would only necessarily have the same qualia if there is no functional difference between them. > Then you proved you didn't understand how this is the answer to that exact > question, by yet again, re asking the question, again, while you are > looking at the answer: > > "How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the question > differently?" > > > Another question you asked, after I've provided the answer is: "I don't > see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red." > > What does the word "red" mean? Without a dictionary, it means nothing. > The word 'red' isn't intrinsically red! If you described the behavior of a > redness quality, similarly, would that description tell you anything about > what the quality which had that behavior was like? No. Neither the word > red, nor a descript of redness has an intrinsic redness quality. The only > way to know what they are describing, or a label of, is with a dictionary. > To know what redness means, you point to the knowledge of the person on the > left of that picture and say: "That is red". Then you say: "The knowledge > of the one on the right is green." these are different answers to the same > question: "What is redness like for you?" > > When we describe the behavior of glutamate, as it reacts in a synapse, for > all we know that could be exactly the description of how redness behaves. > Of all the descriptions of stuff in our brain, one of those descriptions > must be a description of the behavior of redness. Something different than > that must be the description of the behavior of greenness. > > Once you can read through what I've already said, and see that all > your questions have been answered then you will know you are understanding > the model I'm trying to describe. Until you can do that, restating the > answer's I've already provided won't help. Once you start to understand > the model, you should watch the video > , again, so you can finally > understand it, and see how it is describing a non qualia blind model, a > model which answers all your questions. > > Brent > > > On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 10:08 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> On Sun, May 9, 2021, 6:04 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> Hi Jason, >>> >>> >>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought it >>>> was well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia given >>>> either. >>>> >>> >>> Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. You >>> certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost >>> every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about >>> qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to >>> pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the >>> description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia >>> Theory >>> " >>> each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. RQT >>> is >>> basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way >>> all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. >>> >> >> I mean I didn't see any additional explanation or resolution offered >> concerning the problem(s) of explaining qualia. All theories of >> consciousness struggle with this "hard problem". What new does RQT have to >> say about it? >> >> >>> >>>> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that qualia >>>> relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our third-person >>>> ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information can only >>>> capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand gestures >>>> to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your senses, >>>> but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as done by >>>> your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from first-person >>>> experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she sees red for >>>> the first time: she activates new forms of processing information by her >>>> brain. She could read all the books in the world on what red is like >>>> without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas that make her >>>> experience red. >>>> >>>> >>>>> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to be >>>>> red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like for >>>>> you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are >>>>> describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >>>>> better, in any way you care to define better. >>>>> >>>> >>>> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be identical >>>> for a qualia-inverted being, >>>> >>> >>> Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact that >>> if two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: "What >>> is your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must give >>> different answers, since they each represent red with different qualities. >>> This pictures basically shows each of the different answers each of these >>> people would give to the question: "What is redness like for you?" >>> >> >> How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the question >> differently? What would they say when asked to explain "What is your >> redness like?" And how would there answer be different from someone without >> inverted qualia? >> >> >> >>> [image: image.png] >>> >>> >>>> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the scope >>>> of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get inverted >>>> qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be a >>>> third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable >>>> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that >>>> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the >>>> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and >>>> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a >>>> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. >>>> >>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, and >>>>> any functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully >>>>> account for qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always >>>>> completely avoid any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in >>>>> any of the beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro >>>>> substitution'.... To me, this is very strong evidence that any >>>>> functionalists has no grasp at all on the qualitative nature of >>>>> consciousness, and the assumptions they are making. They just ignore it >>>>> all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted for. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious of >>>> qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the most >>>> simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. For >>>> example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so you >>>> can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say >>>> about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being >>>> touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain forms of >>>> knowledge*. >>>> >>> >>> Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of qualia >>> this way. >>> >> >> Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states? >> >> Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume >>> functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. >>> >> >> Knowledge requires a knower. A punch card or hard drive can't know >> anything. Knowledge requires (information+a system to be informed). >> >> As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge of >>> red, your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that matter, a >>> bat could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives from >>> echolocation while hunting. >>> >> >> Given dreaming, we know conscious states can also be entirely cut off >> from an external world. The brain alone has everything it needs to create >> the experience of redness, even in total darkness and an absence of any >> light with a wavelength of ~700nm. Redness is a property of the structures >> and relationships embodied by the brain, and nothing else. >> >> >>> >>>> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of information. >>>> Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely having >>>> knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, and >>>> interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think there >>>> are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still say >>>>>> there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still describe >>>>>> their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person with the >>>>>> bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the compu-brain >>>>>> will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness and qualia. >>>>>> >>>>>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you could >>>>>> do to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>>>>> behaviors are identical. >>>>>> >>>>>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are logically >>>>>> impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be conscious, >>>>>> in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>>>>> >>>>>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is not >>>>>> consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases for >>>>>> assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, self-reports, >>>>>> non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural prosthesis, the >>>>>> anti-zombie principle). >>>>>> >>>>>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the >>>>>>> intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you >>>>>>> must be able to observe these computational differences. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when >>>>>> you say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, reacting >>>>> in a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >>>>> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever >>>>> description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >>>>> Given that, here is the answer: >>>>> >>>>> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a redness >>>>> quality of subjective experience (first person) >>>>> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific >>>>> instruments, and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it >>>>> behaves. (third person) >>>>> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing of >>>>> the colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know that. >>>>> >>>>> >>>> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural >>>> transmitter or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on >>>> the basis of the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible >>>> perceptions (even just considering possible perceived colors) than there >>>> are chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive >>>> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision >>>> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare >>>> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. >>>> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so >>>> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So >>>> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher >>>> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the >>>> variety of our perception. >>>> >>> >>> Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so easily >>> falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once you >>> falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of >>> something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will >>> have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective >>> with the objective. >>> >>> The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's lost >>> and distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the >>> important principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color >>> world, The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or >>> anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a >>> description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description >>> of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a >>> simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the >>> subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand >>> how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = >>> greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is >>> redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine >>> for the other) and so on. >>> >> >> Even in a world with simple conscious states I think we could find >> reasons to doubt mind-brain identity theories. If we encountered space >> aliens or robots with different neurochemistry that behaved or claimed to >> be conscious, for instance. This is in my view, the main appeal of >> functionalism. >> >> >>> Then once you understand the important principle of how the objective >>> and subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about more >>> complex theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more >>> complex world. >>> >> >> Could you explain your view of how the subjective and objective are >> connected? >> >> >>> >>> For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and >>>>> knowledge of reality >>>>> " >>>>> chapter of our video. >>>>> >>>> >>>> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your >>>> theory say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the >>>> quark-lepton level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, >>>> glutamate particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie >>>> world, with non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia >>>> and the mysterious nature of the redness of red? >>>> >>> >>> Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of different ways >>> all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing which of >>> these thousands I should be thinking you mean. >>> >> >> What I mean to ask is: imagine a vast computer simulation that simulated >> the entire observable universes down to the detail if the smallest >> fundamental particles and field theories. Would the simulated humans in the >> simulated Earth in the simulated Milly Way be conscious? >> >> >> Redness can be represented and simulated by most anything. It can be >>> represented by greenness, or it can be represented by +5 volts on a line >>> (as we indicated in the video) or anything else. The only important thing >>> to realize is that anything that is NOT redness, which is representing >>> redness, needs a dictionary to know what that thing is representing. >>> >> >> I don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red. >> >> >> While redness, itself, is simply a physical fact about the quality of you >>> knowledge of red things, no dictionary required. The prediction is that no >>> functionalist will ever be able to produce a redness quality experience >>> with ANY function, no matter what it is, or no matter what is running it. >>> >> >> What is your rational for reaching this conclusion? >> >> >>> I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly falsifiable >>> function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate falsifiable >>> example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x cubed is >>> greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give you that >>> blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of them, >>> they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction that any >>> particular function could in any way result in a physical redness quality >>> really is. >>> >> >> A function whose information content is less than the information content >> of the conscious experience could be falsified. >> >> Whatever function is responsible for red experience is probably not >> simple. Multiple layers of processing by various brain regions, involving a >> total of some 30% of our cortex is involved in creating our visual >> experience. I would think the function is vastly complex and also may >> involve relationships with other non visual areas of the brain. It's not >> clear to me you could have a red experience without considering the whole >> brain. >> >> >>> >>>> While there are many reasons to doubt functionalism/computationalism, >>>> there is strong indirect observational evidence supporting it, which is >>>> that if we assume computationalism is true, we can directly explain many of >>>> the observed properties of our physical world. I have written about this >>>> here: >>>> >>>> >>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory >>>> >>> >>> We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different ways, and >>> I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. >>> >> >> Ask away if anything I have said us unclear. >> >> >> It'd sure be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp in >>> the "Theories of Cons consciousness >>> " >>> topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise >>> statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized >>> with the other theories we've collected to date? >>> >> >> I don't know that my view is any different from standard digital >> mechanism / computationalism. It's just functionalism with an assumption of >> finiteness and computability, which I understand is the standard >> computational theory of mind. >> >> >> FYI, as you can see, Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism >>> , >>> and mine is "Molecular Materialism >>> ". >>> It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional >>> Property Dualism >>> >>> ? >>> >> >> >> I'll check out these definitions and let you know. Thanks! This site is a >> noble effort serving and important purpose. >> >> Jason >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Mon May 10 18:37:02 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 12:37:02 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Yay, Stathis, a bit more of a hint of almost considering qualia, even though you seem to be working as hard as you can to continue to ignore it, only focusing on the function, ignoring any real qualities those functions may be describing. So, the next stop: There must be some objectively detectable qualitative internal difference between the two, right? On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:28 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 02:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> Hi Jason, >> I believe you are interpreting everything I'm saying, into your model of >> consciousness. As long as you do this, you will fail to understand the >> different model I'm trying to describe and fail to see the answers I'm >> providing. >> >> You asked: "Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states?" >> >> This indicates you are asking how I interpret what I am saying into you >> model. That is the problem. I'm trying to describe a different model, so >> as long as you are asking how I map, what I'm saying, into your model, you >> will fail to understand the different model I'm trying to describe. >> >> If there is +5 volts, on a line, that is simply an observable >> physical fact. If there is a hole in a punch card, again, that state of >> matter is simply a physical fact. Neither of these physical facts >> "transcend knowledge". If you have a dictionary, both +5 volts, or a >> particular hole on a punch card, both of these physical facts can be >> defined to represent information, like a digital "1" or the word "red". >> Redness is a similar physical fact about the intrinsic quality of something >> in physical reality. If you have a dictionary for the word 'red', which >> points to something that has an intrinsic redness quality and say "THAT is >> red" that redness quality can then represent "red" information. >> >> For example, I explicitly answered the question: "How do you propose >> someone with inverted qualia would answer the question differently? " >> with this image, showing the two different answers each would provide: >> >> >> >>> [image: image.png] >>> >> > I think you?re suggesting one person will say he sees red and the other he > sees green, but that would mean there is a functional difference between > them, whereas functionalism holds that they would only necessarily have the > same qualia if there is no functional difference between them. > > >> Then you proved you didn't understand how this is the answer to that >> exact question, by yet again, re asking the question, again, while you are >> looking at the answer: >> >> "How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >> question differently?" >> >> >> Another question you asked, after I've provided the answer is: "I don't >> see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red." >> >> What does the word "red" mean? Without a dictionary, it means nothing. >> The word 'red' isn't intrinsically red! If you described the behavior of a >> redness quality, similarly, would that description tell you anything about >> what the quality which had that behavior was like? No. Neither the word >> red, nor a descript of redness has an intrinsic redness quality. The only >> way to know what they are describing, or a label of, is with a dictionary. >> To know what redness means, you point to the knowledge of the person on the >> left of that picture and say: "That is red". Then you say: "The knowledge >> of the one on the right is green." these are different answers to the same >> question: "What is redness like for you?" >> >> When we describe the behavior of glutamate, as it reacts in a synapse, >> for all we know that could be exactly the description of how redness >> behaves. Of all the descriptions of stuff in our brain, one of those >> descriptions must be a description of the behavior of redness. Something >> different than that must be the description of the behavior of greenness. >> >> Once you can read through what I've already said, and see that all >> your questions have been answered then you will know you are understanding >> the model I'm trying to describe. Until you can do that, restating the >> answer's I've already provided won't help. Once you start to understand >> the model, you should watch the video >> , again, so you can finally >> understand it, and see how it is describing a non qualia blind model, a >> model which answers all your questions. >> >> Brent >> >> >> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 10:08 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> On Sun, May 9, 2021, 6:04 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Hi Jason, >>>> >>>> >>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought it >>>>> was well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia given >>>>> either. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. You >>>> certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost >>>> every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about >>>> qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to >>>> pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the >>>> description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia >>>> Theory >>>> " >>>> each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. RQT >>>> is >>>> basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way >>>> all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. >>>> >>> >>> I mean I didn't see any additional explanation or resolution offered >>> concerning the problem(s) of explaining qualia. All theories of >>> consciousness struggle with this "hard problem". What new does RQT have to >>> say about it? >>> >>> >>>> >>>>> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that qualia >>>>> relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our third-person >>>>> ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information can only >>>>> capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand gestures >>>>> to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your senses, >>>>> but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as done by >>>>> your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from first-person >>>>> experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she sees red for >>>>> the first time: she activates new forms of processing information by her >>>>> brain. She could read all the books in the world on what red is like >>>>> without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas that make her >>>>> experience red. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to be >>>>>> red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like for >>>>>> you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are >>>>>> describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >>>>>> better, in any way you care to define better. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be identical >>>>> for a qualia-inverted being, >>>>> >>>> >>>> Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact that >>>> if two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: "What >>>> is your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must give >>>> different answers, since they each represent red with different qualities. >>>> This pictures basically shows each of the different answers each of these >>>> people would give to the question: "What is redness like for you?" >>>> >>> >>> How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>> question differently? What would they say when asked to explain "What is >>> your redness like?" And how would there answer be different from someone >>> without inverted qualia? >>> >>> >>> >>>> [image: image.png] >>>> >>>> >>>>> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the >>>>> scope of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get >>>>> inverted qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be >>>>> a third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable >>>>> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that >>>>> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the >>>>> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and >>>>> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a >>>>> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. >>>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, and >>>>>> any functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully >>>>>> account for qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always >>>>>> completely avoid any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in >>>>>> any of the beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro >>>>>> substitution'.... To me, this is very strong evidence that any >>>>>> functionalists has no grasp at all on the qualitative nature of >>>>>> consciousness, and the assumptions they are making. They just ignore it >>>>>> all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted for. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious of >>>>> qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the most >>>>> simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. For >>>>> example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so you >>>>> can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say >>>>> about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being >>>>> touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain forms >>>>> of knowledge*. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of qualia >>>> this way. >>>> >>> >>> Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states? >>> >>> Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume >>>> functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. >>>> >>> >>> Knowledge requires a knower. A punch card or hard drive can't know >>> anything. Knowledge requires (information+a system to be informed). >>> >>> As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge of >>>> red, your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that matter, a >>>> bat could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives from >>>> echolocation while hunting. >>>> >>> >>> Given dreaming, we know conscious states can also be entirely cut off >>> from an external world. The brain alone has everything it needs to create >>> the experience of redness, even in total darkness and an absence of any >>> light with a wavelength of ~700nm. Redness is a property of the structures >>> and relationships embodied by the brain, and nothing else. >>> >>> >>>> >>>>> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of >>>>> information. Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely >>>>> having knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, >>>>> and interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think >>>>> there are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still say >>>>>>> there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still describe >>>>>>> their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person with the >>>>>>> bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the compu-brain >>>>>>> will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness and qualia. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you could >>>>>>> do to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>>>>>> behaviors are identical. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are >>>>>>> logically impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be >>>>>>> conscious, in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is >>>>>>> not consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases >>>>>>> for assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, >>>>>>> self-reports, non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural >>>>>>> prosthesis, the anti-zombie principle). >>>>>>> >>>>>>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the >>>>>>>> intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you >>>>>>>> must be able to observe these computational differences. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when >>>>>>> you say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, reacting >>>>>> in a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >>>>>> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever >>>>>> description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >>>>>> Given that, here is the answer: >>>>>> >>>>>> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a redness >>>>>> quality of subjective experience (first person) >>>>>> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific >>>>>> instruments, and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it >>>>>> behaves. (third person) >>>>>> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing of >>>>>> the colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know that. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural >>>>> transmitter or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on >>>>> the basis of the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible >>>>> perceptions (even just considering possible perceived colors) than there >>>>> are chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive >>>>> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision >>>>> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare >>>>> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. >>>>> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so >>>>> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So >>>>> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher >>>>> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the >>>>> variety of our perception. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so easily >>>> falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once you >>>> falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of >>>> something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will >>>> have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective >>>> with the objective. >>>> >>>> The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's lost >>>> and distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the >>>> important principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color >>>> world, The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or >>>> anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a >>>> description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description >>>> of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a >>>> simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the >>>> subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand >>>> how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = >>>> greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is >>>> redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine >>>> for the other) and so on. >>>> >>> >>> Even in a world with simple conscious states I think we could find >>> reasons to doubt mind-brain identity theories. If we encountered space >>> aliens or robots with different neurochemistry that behaved or claimed to >>> be conscious, for instance. This is in my view, the main appeal of >>> functionalism. >>> >>> >>>> Then once you understand the important principle of how the objective >>>> and subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about more >>>> complex theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more >>>> complex world. >>>> >>> >>> Could you explain your view of how the subjective and objective are >>> connected? >>> >>> >>>> >>>> For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and >>>>>> knowledge of reality >>>>>> " >>>>>> chapter of our video. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your >>>>> theory say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the >>>>> quark-lepton level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, >>>>> glutamate particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie >>>>> world, with non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia >>>>> and the mysterious nature of the redness of red? >>>>> >>>> >>>> Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of different >>>> ways all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing >>>> which of these thousands I should be thinking you mean. >>>> >>> >>> What I mean to ask is: imagine a vast computer simulation that simulated >>> the entire observable universes down to the detail if the smallest >>> fundamental particles and field theories. Would the simulated humans in the >>> simulated Earth in the simulated Milly Way be conscious? >>> >>> >>> Redness can be represented and simulated by most anything. It can be >>>> represented by greenness, or it can be represented by +5 volts on a line >>>> (as we indicated in the video) or anything else. The only important thing >>>> to realize is that anything that is NOT redness, which is representing >>>> redness, needs a dictionary to know what that thing is representing. >>>> >>> >>> I don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red. >>> >>> >>> While redness, itself, is simply a physical fact about the quality of >>>> you knowledge of red things, no dictionary required. The prediction is >>>> that no functionalist will ever be able to produce a redness quality >>>> experience with ANY function, no matter what it is, or no matter what is >>>> running it. >>>> >>> >>> What is your rational for reaching this conclusion? >>> >>> >>>> I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly falsifiable >>>> function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate falsifiable >>>> example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x cubed is >>>> greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give you that >>>> blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of them, >>>> they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction that any >>>> particular function could in any way result in a physical redness quality >>>> really is. >>>> >>> >>> A function whose information content is less than the information >>> content of the conscious experience could be falsified. >>> >>> Whatever function is responsible for red experience is probably not >>> simple. Multiple layers of processing by various brain regions, involving a >>> total of some 30% of our cortex is involved in creating our visual >>> experience. I would think the function is vastly complex and also may >>> involve relationships with other non visual areas of the brain. It's not >>> clear to me you could have a red experience without considering the whole >>> brain. >>> >>> >>>> >>>>> While there are many reasons to doubt functionalism/computationalism, >>>>> there is strong indirect observational evidence supporting it, which is >>>>> that if we assume computationalism is true, we can directly explain many of >>>>> the observed properties of our physical world. I have written about this >>>>> here: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory >>>>> >>>> >>>> We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different ways, >>>> and I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. >>>> >>> >>> Ask away if anything I have said us unclear. >>> >>> >>> It'd sure be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp in >>>> the "Theories of Cons consciousness >>>> " >>>> topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise >>>> statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized >>>> with the other theories we've collected to date? >>>> >>> >>> I don't know that my view is any different from standard digital >>> mechanism / computationalism. It's just functionalism with an assumption of >>> finiteness and computability, which I understand is the standard >>> computational theory of mind. >>> >>> >>> FYI, as you can see, Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism >>>> , >>>> and mine is "Molecular Materialism >>>> ". >>>> It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional >>>> Property Dualism >>>> >>>> ? >>>> >>> >>> >>> I'll check out these definitions and let you know. Thanks! This site is >>> a noble effort serving and important purpose. >>> >>> Jason >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 10 18:58:46 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 04:58:46 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 04:42, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Yay, Stathis, a bit more of a hint of almost considering qualia, even > though you seem to be working as hard as you can to continue to ignore it, > only focusing on the function, ignoring any real qualities those functions > may be describing. > > So, the next stop: There must be some objectively detectable qualitative > internal difference between the two, right? > If they say different things about their qualia then they may have different qualia. If they say the same things, or if the same individual says the same things after an internal modification, then they may have the same qualia. On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:28 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 02:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> Hi Jason, >>> I believe you are interpreting everything I'm saying, into your model of >>> consciousness. As long as you do this, you will fail to understand the >>> different model I'm trying to describe and fail to see the answers I'm >>> providing. >>> >>> You asked: "Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states?" >>> >>> This indicates you are asking how I interpret what I am saying into you >>> model. That is the problem. I'm trying to describe a different model, so >>> as long as you are asking how I map, what I'm saying, into your model, you >>> will fail to understand the different model I'm trying to describe. >>> >>> If there is +5 volts, on a line, that is simply an observable >>> physical fact. If there is a hole in a punch card, again, that state of >>> matter is simply a physical fact. Neither of these physical facts >>> "transcend knowledge". If you have a dictionary, both +5 volts, or a >>> particular hole on a punch card, both of these physical facts can be >>> defined to represent information, like a digital "1" or the word "red". >>> Redness is a similar physical fact about the intrinsic quality of something >>> in physical reality. If you have a dictionary for the word 'red', which >>> points to something that has an intrinsic redness quality and say "THAT is >>> red" that redness quality can then represent "red" information. >>> >>> For example, I explicitly answered the question: "How do you propose >>> someone with inverted qualia would answer the question differently? " >>> with this image, showing the two different answers each would provide: >>> >>> >>> >>>> [image: image.png] >>>> >>> >> I think you?re suggesting one person will say he sees red and the other >> he sees green, but that would mean there is a functional difference between >> them, whereas functionalism holds that they would only necessarily have the >> same qualia if there is no functional difference between them. >> >> >>> Then you proved you didn't understand how this is the answer to that >>> exact question, by yet again, re asking the question, again, while you are >>> looking at the answer: >>> >>> "How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>> question differently?" >>> >>> >>> Another question you asked, after I've provided the answer is: "I >>> don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red." >>> >>> What does the word "red" mean? Without a dictionary, it means nothing. >>> The word 'red' isn't intrinsically red! If you described the behavior of a >>> redness quality, similarly, would that description tell you anything about >>> what the quality which had that behavior was like? No. Neither the word >>> red, nor a descript of redness has an intrinsic redness quality. The only >>> way to know what they are describing, or a label of, is with a dictionary. >>> To know what redness means, you point to the knowledge of the person on the >>> left of that picture and say: "That is red". Then you say: "The knowledge >>> of the one on the right is green." these are different answers to the same >>> question: "What is redness like for you?" >>> >>> When we describe the behavior of glutamate, as it reacts in a synapse, >>> for all we know that could be exactly the description of how redness >>> behaves. Of all the descriptions of stuff in our brain, one of those >>> descriptions must be a description of the behavior of redness. Something >>> different than that must be the description of the behavior of greenness. >>> >>> Once you can read through what I've already said, and see that all >>> your questions have been answered then you will know you are understanding >>> the model I'm trying to describe. Until you can do that, restating the >>> answer's I've already provided won't help. Once you start to understand >>> the model, you should watch the video >>> , again, so you can >>> finally understand it, and see how it is describing a non qualia blind >>> model, a model which answers all your questions. >>> >>> Brent >>> >>> >>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 10:08 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021, 6:04 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> Hi Jason, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought it >>>>>> was well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia given >>>>>> either. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. You >>>>> certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost >>>>> every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about >>>>> qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to >>>>> pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the >>>>> description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia >>>>> Theory >>>>> " >>>>> each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. RQT >>>>> is >>>>> basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way >>>>> all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. >>>>> >>>> >>>> I mean I didn't see any additional explanation or resolution offered >>>> concerning the problem(s) of explaining qualia. All theories of >>>> consciousness struggle with this "hard problem". What new does RQT have to >>>> say about it? >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>>> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that >>>>>> qualia relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our >>>>>> third-person ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information >>>>>> can only capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand >>>>>> gestures to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your >>>>>> senses, but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as >>>>>> done by your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from >>>>>> first-person experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she >>>>>> sees red for the first time: she activates new forms of processing >>>>>> information by her brain. She could read all the books in the world on what >>>>>> red is like without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas >>>>>> that make her experience red. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to be >>>>>>> red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like for >>>>>>> you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are >>>>>>> describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >>>>>>> better, in any way you care to define better. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be >>>>>> identical for a qualia-inverted being, >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact >>>>> that if two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: >>>>> "What is your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must >>>>> give different answers, since they each represent red with different >>>>> qualities. This pictures basically shows each of the different answers >>>>> each of these people would give to the question: "What is redness like for >>>>> you?" >>>>> >>>> >>>> How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>>> question differently? What would they say when asked to explain "What is >>>> your redness like?" And how would there answer be different from someone >>>> without inverted qualia? >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> [image: image.png] >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the >>>>>> scope of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get >>>>>> inverted qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be >>>>>> a third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable >>>>>> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that >>>>>> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the >>>>>> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and >>>>>> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a >>>>>> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, and >>>>>>> any functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully >>>>>>> account for qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always >>>>>>> completely avoid any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in >>>>>>> any of the beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro >>>>>>> substitution'.... To me, this is very strong evidence that any >>>>>>> functionalists has no grasp at all on the qualitative nature of >>>>>>> consciousness, and the assumptions they are making. They just ignore it >>>>>>> all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted for. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious of >>>>>> qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the most >>>>>> simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. For >>>>>> example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so you >>>>>> can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say >>>>>> about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being >>>>>> touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain forms >>>>>> of knowledge*. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of qualia >>>>> this way. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states? >>>> >>>> Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume >>>>> functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Knowledge requires a knower. A punch card or hard drive can't know >>>> anything. Knowledge requires (information+a system to be informed). >>>> >>>> As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge of >>>>> red, your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that matter, a >>>>> bat could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives from >>>>> echolocation while hunting. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Given dreaming, we know conscious states can also be entirely cut off >>>> from an external world. The brain alone has everything it needs to create >>>> the experience of redness, even in total darkness and an absence of any >>>> light with a wavelength of ~700nm. Redness is a property of the structures >>>> and relationships embodied by the brain, and nothing else. >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>>> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of >>>>>> information. Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely >>>>>> having knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, >>>>>> and interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think >>>>>> there are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still >>>>>>>> say there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still >>>>>>>> describe their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person >>>>>>>> with the bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the >>>>>>>> compu-brain will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness >>>>>>>> and qualia. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you >>>>>>>> could do to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>>>>>>> behaviors are identical. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are >>>>>>>> logically impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be >>>>>>>> conscious, in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is >>>>>>>> not consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases >>>>>>>> for assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, >>>>>>>> self-reports, non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural >>>>>>>> prosthesis, the anti-zombie principle). >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the >>>>>>>>> intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you >>>>>>>>> must be able to observe these computational differences. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when >>>>>>>> you say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, reacting >>>>>>> in a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >>>>>>> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever >>>>>>> description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >>>>>>> Given that, here is the answer: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a redness >>>>>>> quality of subjective experience (first person) >>>>>>> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific >>>>>>> instruments, and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it >>>>>>> behaves. (third person) >>>>>>> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing of >>>>>>> the colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know that. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural >>>>>> transmitter or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on >>>>>> the basis of the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible >>>>>> perceptions (even just considering possible perceived colors) than there >>>>>> are chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive >>>>>> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision >>>>>> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare >>>>>> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. >>>>>> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so >>>>>> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So >>>>>> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher >>>>>> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the >>>>>> variety of our perception. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so easily >>>>> falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once you >>>>> falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of >>>>> something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will >>>>> have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective >>>>> with the objective. >>>>> >>>>> The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's lost >>>>> and distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the >>>>> important principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color >>>>> world, The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or >>>>> anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a >>>>> description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description >>>>> of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a >>>>> simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the >>>>> subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand >>>>> how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = >>>>> greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is >>>>> redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine >>>>> for the other) and so on. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Even in a world with simple conscious states I think we could find >>>> reasons to doubt mind-brain identity theories. If we encountered space >>>> aliens or robots with different neurochemistry that behaved or claimed to >>>> be conscious, for instance. This is in my view, the main appeal of >>>> functionalism. >>>> >>>> >>>>> Then once you understand the important principle of how the objective >>>>> and subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about more >>>>> complex theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more >>>>> complex world. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Could you explain your view of how the subjective and objective are >>>> connected? >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>> For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and >>>>>>> knowledge of reality >>>>>>> " >>>>>>> chapter of our video. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your >>>>>> theory say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the >>>>>> quark-lepton level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, >>>>>> glutamate particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie >>>>>> world, with non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia >>>>>> and the mysterious nature of the redness of red? >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of different >>>>> ways all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing >>>>> which of these thousands I should be thinking you mean. >>>>> >>>> >>>> What I mean to ask is: imagine a vast computer simulation that >>>> simulated the entire observable universes down to the detail if the >>>> smallest fundamental particles and field theories. Would the simulated >>>> humans in the simulated Earth in the simulated Milly Way be conscious? >>>> >>>> >>>> Redness can be represented and simulated by most anything. It can be >>>>> represented by greenness, or it can be represented by +5 volts on a line >>>>> (as we indicated in the video) or anything else. The only important thing >>>>> to realize is that anything that is NOT redness, which is representing >>>>> redness, needs a dictionary to know what that thing is representing. >>>>> >>>> >>>> I don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of >>>> red. >>>> >>>> >>>> While redness, itself, is simply a physical fact about the quality of >>>>> you knowledge of red things, no dictionary required. The prediction is >>>>> that no functionalist will ever be able to produce a redness quality >>>>> experience with ANY function, no matter what it is, or no matter what is >>>>> running it. >>>>> >>>> >>>> What is your rational for reaching this conclusion? >>>> >>>> >>>>> I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly falsifiable >>>>> function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate falsifiable >>>>> example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x cubed is >>>>> greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give you that >>>>> blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of them, >>>>> they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction that any >>>>> particular function could in any way result in a physical redness quality >>>>> really is. >>>>> >>>> >>>> A function whose information content is less than the information >>>> content of the conscious experience could be falsified. >>>> >>>> Whatever function is responsible for red experience is probably not >>>> simple. Multiple layers of processing by various brain regions, involving a >>>> total of some 30% of our cortex is involved in creating our visual >>>> experience. I would think the function is vastly complex and also may >>>> involve relationships with other non visual areas of the brain. It's not >>>> clear to me you could have a red experience without considering the whole >>>> brain. >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>>> While there are many reasons to doubt functionalism/computationalism, >>>>>> there is strong indirect observational evidence supporting it, which is >>>>>> that if we assume computationalism is true, we can directly explain many of >>>>>> the observed properties of our physical world. I have written about this >>>>>> here: >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different ways, >>>>> and I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Ask away if anything I have said us unclear. >>>> >>>> >>>> It'd sure be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp in >>>>> the "Theories of Cons consciousness >>>>> " >>>>> topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise >>>>> statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized >>>>> with the other theories we've collected to date? >>>>> >>>> >>>> I don't know that my view is any different from standard digital >>>> mechanism / computationalism. It's just functionalism with an assumption of >>>> finiteness and computability, which I understand is the standard >>>> computational theory of mind. >>>> >>>> >>>> FYI, as you can see, Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism >>>>> , >>>>> and mine is "Molecular Materialism >>>>> ". >>>>> It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional >>>>> Property Dualism >>>>> >>>>> ? >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> I'll check out these definitions and let you know. Thanks! This site is >>>> a noble effort serving and important purpose. >>>> >>>> Jason >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Mon May 10 19:13:53 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 13:13:53 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Great, another step forward. Can we take another stop forward? So, there must be some redness or greenness substrate, which the two are using to represent their knowledge of the strawberry with. The quality of this substrate they are representing their knowledge of the strawberry with is critically important to what that strawberry is like for them, right? I.e, abstractly they can both say the strawberry is "red", but subjectively, there experience of 'red' is substrate dependent on each different quality of their knowledge. On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 1:00 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 04:42, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> Yay, Stathis, a bit more of a hint of almost considering qualia, even >> though you seem to be working as hard as you can to continue to ignore it, >> only focusing on the function, ignoring any real qualities those functions >> may be describing. >> >> So, the next stop: There must be some objectively detectable qualitative >> internal difference between the two, right? >> > > If they say different things about their qualia then they may have > different qualia. If they say the same things, or if the same individual > says the same things after an internal modification, then they may have the > same qualia. > > On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:28 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 02:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Hi Jason, >>>> I believe you are interpreting everything I'm saying, into your model >>>> of consciousness. As long as you do this, you will fail to understand the >>>> different model I'm trying to describe and fail to see the answers I'm >>>> providing. >>>> >>>> You asked: "Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states?" >>>> >>>> This indicates you are asking how I interpret what I am saying into you >>>> model. That is the problem. I'm trying to describe a different model, so >>>> as long as you are asking how I map, what I'm saying, into your model, you >>>> will fail to understand the different model I'm trying to describe. >>>> >>>> If there is +5 volts, on a line, that is simply an observable >>>> physical fact. If there is a hole in a punch card, again, that state of >>>> matter is simply a physical fact. Neither of these physical facts >>>> "transcend knowledge". If you have a dictionary, both +5 volts, or a >>>> particular hole on a punch card, both of these physical facts can be >>>> defined to represent information, like a digital "1" or the word "red". >>>> Redness is a similar physical fact about the intrinsic quality of something >>>> in physical reality. If you have a dictionary for the word 'red', which >>>> points to something that has an intrinsic redness quality and say "THAT is >>>> red" that redness quality can then represent "red" information. >>>> >>>> For example, I explicitly answered the question: "How do you propose >>>> someone with inverted qualia would answer the question differently? " >>>> with this image, showing the two different answers each would provide: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> [image: image.png] >>>>> >>>> >>> I think you?re suggesting one person will say he sees red and the other >>> he sees green, but that would mean there is a functional difference between >>> them, whereas functionalism holds that they would only necessarily have the >>> same qualia if there is no functional difference between them. >>> >>> >>>> Then you proved you didn't understand how this is the answer to that >>>> exact question, by yet again, re asking the question, again, while you are >>>> looking at the answer: >>>> >>>> "How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>>> question differently?" >>>> >>>> >>>> Another question you asked, after I've provided the answer is: "I >>>> don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red." >>>> >>>> What does the word "red" mean? Without a dictionary, it means >>>> nothing. The word 'red' isn't intrinsically red! If you described the >>>> behavior of a redness quality, similarly, would that description tell you >>>> anything about what the quality which had that behavior was like? No. >>>> Neither the word red, nor a descript of redness has an intrinsic redness >>>> quality. The only way to know what they are describing, or a label of, is >>>> with a dictionary. To know what redness means, you point to the knowledge >>>> of the person on the left of that picture and say: "That is red". Then you >>>> say: "The knowledge of the one on the right is green." these are different >>>> answers to the same question: "What is redness like for you?" >>>> >>>> When we describe the behavior of glutamate, as it reacts in a synapse, >>>> for all we know that could be exactly the description of how redness >>>> behaves. Of all the descriptions of stuff in our brain, one of those >>>> descriptions must be a description of the behavior of redness. Something >>>> different than that must be the description of the behavior of greenness. >>>> >>>> Once you can read through what I've already said, and see that all >>>> your questions have been answered then you will know you are understanding >>>> the model I'm trying to describe. Until you can do that, restating the >>>> answer's I've already provided won't help. Once you start to understand >>>> the model, you should watch the video >>>> , again, so you can >>>> finally understand it, and see how it is describing a non qualia blind >>>> model, a model which answers all your questions. >>>> >>>> Brent >>>> >>>> >>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 10:08 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021, 6:04 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi Jason, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought it >>>>>>> was well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia given >>>>>>> either. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. You >>>>>> certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost >>>>>> every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about >>>>>> qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to >>>>>> pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the >>>>>> description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia >>>>>> Theory >>>>>> " >>>>>> each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. RQT >>>>>> is >>>>>> basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way >>>>>> all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I mean I didn't see any additional explanation or resolution offered >>>>> concerning the problem(s) of explaining qualia. All theories of >>>>> consciousness struggle with this "hard problem". What new does RQT have to >>>>> say about it? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that >>>>>>> qualia relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our >>>>>>> third-person ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information >>>>>>> can only capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand >>>>>>> gestures to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your >>>>>>> senses, but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as >>>>>>> done by your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from >>>>>>> first-person experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she >>>>>>> sees red for the first time: she activates new forms of processing >>>>>>> information by her brain. She could read all the books in the world on what >>>>>>> red is like without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas >>>>>>> that make her experience red. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to >>>>>>>> be red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like >>>>>>>> for you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are >>>>>>>> describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >>>>>>>> better, in any way you care to define better. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be >>>>>>> identical for a qualia-inverted being, >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact >>>>>> that if two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: >>>>>> "What is your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must >>>>>> give different answers, since they each represent red with different >>>>>> qualities. This pictures basically shows each of the different answers >>>>>> each of these people would give to the question: "What is redness like for >>>>>> you?" >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>>>> question differently? What would they say when asked to explain "What is >>>>> your redness like?" And how would there answer be different from someone >>>>> without inverted qualia? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> [image: image.png] >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the >>>>>>> scope of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get >>>>>>> inverted qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be >>>>>>> a third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable >>>>>>> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that >>>>>>> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the >>>>>>> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and >>>>>>> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a >>>>>>> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, >>>>>>>> and any functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully >>>>>>>> account for qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always >>>>>>>> completely avoid any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in >>>>>>>> any of the beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro >>>>>>>> substitution'.... To me, this is very strong evidence that any >>>>>>>> functionalists has no grasp at all on the qualitative nature of >>>>>>>> consciousness, and the assumptions they are making. They just ignore it >>>>>>>> all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted for. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious >>>>>>> of qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the >>>>>>> most simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. >>>>>>> For example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so >>>>>>> you can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say >>>>>>> about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being >>>>>>> touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain forms >>>>>>> of knowledge*. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of >>>>>> qualia this way. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states? >>>>> >>>>> Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume >>>>>> functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Knowledge requires a knower. A punch card or hard drive can't know >>>>> anything. Knowledge requires (information+a system to be informed). >>>>> >>>>> As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge of >>>>>> red, your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that matter, a >>>>>> bat could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives from >>>>>> echolocation while hunting. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Given dreaming, we know conscious states can also be entirely cut off >>>>> from an external world. The brain alone has everything it needs to create >>>>> the experience of redness, even in total darkness and an absence of any >>>>> light with a wavelength of ~700nm. Redness is a property of the structures >>>>> and relationships embodied by the brain, and nothing else. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of >>>>>>> information. Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely >>>>>>> having knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, >>>>>>> and interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think >>>>>>> there are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still >>>>>>>>> say there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still >>>>>>>>> describe their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person >>>>>>>>> with the bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the >>>>>>>>> compu-brain will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness >>>>>>>>> and qualia. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you >>>>>>>>> could do to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>>>>>>>> behaviors are identical. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are >>>>>>>>> logically impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be >>>>>>>>> conscious, in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is >>>>>>>>> not consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases >>>>>>>>> for assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, >>>>>>>>> self-reports, non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural >>>>>>>>> prosthesis, the anti-zombie principle). >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the >>>>>>>>>> intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you >>>>>>>>>> must be able to observe these computational differences. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint >>>>>>>>> when you say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, >>>>>>>> reacting in a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >>>>>>>> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever >>>>>>>> description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >>>>>>>> Given that, here is the answer: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a >>>>>>>> redness quality of subjective experience (first person) >>>>>>>> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific >>>>>>>> instruments, and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it >>>>>>>> behaves. (third person) >>>>>>>> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing >>>>>>>> of the colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know >>>>>>>> that. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural >>>>>>> transmitter or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on >>>>>>> the basis of the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible >>>>>>> perceptions (even just considering possible perceived colors) than there >>>>>>> are chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive >>>>>>> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision >>>>>>> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare >>>>>>> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. >>>>>>> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so >>>>>>> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So >>>>>>> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher >>>>>>> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the >>>>>>> variety of our perception. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so easily >>>>>> falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once you >>>>>> falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of >>>>>> something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will >>>>>> have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective >>>>>> with the objective. >>>>>> >>>>>> The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's >>>>>> lost and distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the >>>>>> important principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color >>>>>> world, The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or >>>>>> anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a >>>>>> description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description >>>>>> of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a >>>>>> simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the >>>>>> subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand >>>>>> how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = >>>>>> greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is >>>>>> redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine >>>>>> for the other) and so on. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Even in a world with simple conscious states I think we could find >>>>> reasons to doubt mind-brain identity theories. If we encountered space >>>>> aliens or robots with different neurochemistry that behaved or claimed to >>>>> be conscious, for instance. This is in my view, the main appeal of >>>>> functionalism. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> Then once you understand the important principle of how the objective >>>>>> and subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about more >>>>>> complex theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more >>>>>> complex world. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Could you explain your view of how the subjective and objective are >>>>> connected? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and >>>>>>>> knowledge of reality >>>>>>>> " >>>>>>>> chapter of our video. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your >>>>>>> theory say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the >>>>>>> quark-lepton level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, >>>>>>> glutamate particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie >>>>>>> world, with non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia >>>>>>> and the mysterious nature of the redness of red? >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of different >>>>>> ways all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing >>>>>> which of these thousands I should be thinking you mean. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> What I mean to ask is: imagine a vast computer simulation that >>>>> simulated the entire observable universes down to the detail if the >>>>> smallest fundamental particles and field theories. Would the simulated >>>>> humans in the simulated Earth in the simulated Milly Way be conscious? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Redness can be represented and simulated by most anything. It can be >>>>>> represented by greenness, or it can be represented by +5 volts on a line >>>>>> (as we indicated in the video) or anything else. The only important thing >>>>>> to realize is that anything that is NOT redness, which is representing >>>>>> redness, needs a dictionary to know what that thing is representing. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of >>>>> red. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> While redness, itself, is simply a physical fact about the quality of >>>>>> you knowledge of red things, no dictionary required. The prediction is >>>>>> that no functionalist will ever be able to produce a redness quality >>>>>> experience with ANY function, no matter what it is, or no matter what is >>>>>> running it. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> What is your rational for reaching this conclusion? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly falsifiable >>>>>> function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate falsifiable >>>>>> example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x cubed is >>>>>> greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give you that >>>>>> blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of them, >>>>>> they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction that any >>>>>> particular function could in any way result in a physical redness quality >>>>>> really is. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> A function whose information content is less than the information >>>>> content of the conscious experience could be falsified. >>>>> >>>>> Whatever function is responsible for red experience is probably not >>>>> simple. Multiple layers of processing by various brain regions, involving a >>>>> total of some 30% of our cortex is involved in creating our visual >>>>> experience. I would think the function is vastly complex and also may >>>>> involve relationships with other non visual areas of the brain. It's not >>>>> clear to me you could have a red experience without considering the whole >>>>> brain. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> While there are many reasons to doubt >>>>>>> functionalism/computationalism, there is strong indirect observational >>>>>>> evidence supporting it, which is that if we assume computationalism is >>>>>>> true, we can directly explain many of the observed properties of our >>>>>>> physical world. I have written about this here: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different ways, >>>>>> and I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Ask away if anything I have said us unclear. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> It'd sure be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp in >>>>>> the "Theories of Cons consciousness >>>>>> " >>>>>> topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise >>>>>> statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized >>>>>> with the other theories we've collected to date? >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I don't know that my view is any different from standard digital >>>>> mechanism / computationalism. It's just functionalism with an assumption of >>>>> finiteness and computability, which I understand is the standard >>>>> computational theory of mind. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> FYI, as you can see, Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism >>>>>> , >>>>>> and mine is "Molecular Materialism >>>>>> ". >>>>>> It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional >>>>>> Property Dualism >>>>>> >>>>>> ? >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I'll check out these definitions and let you know. Thanks! This site >>>>> is a noble effort serving and important purpose. >>>>> >>>>> Jason >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> -- >>> Stathis Papaioannou >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 10 19:41:58 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 14:41:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] simplified epistemology In-Reply-To: <3B952F1D-A64F-4534-A0AA-D5FF1766D2F3@gmail.com> References: <3B952F1D-A64F-4534-A0AA-D5FF1766D2F3@gmail.com> Message-ID: I have read a bit of Peirce and James but cannot say that I fully understand pragmatism. So I will deal with it as a nonphilosopher: it seems to me that being pragmatic uses the knowledge you have rather than being a source of knowledge. bill w On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:09 PM Dan TheBookMan wrote: > I added pragmatism, but maybe you missed my post where I responded > directly to yours. > > The problem with the term rationalism is it?s like materialism: there?s a > use inside philosophy that isn?t exactly as the same outside philosophy. > Rationalism doesn?t mean just using reason and logic in philosophy, though > that is how it?s used in everyday talk. I mean if someone unschooled in > philosophy were to say she?s a rationalist, you probably wouldn?t presume > she was a follower of Descartes and believed in innate ideas. (Likewise, in > everyday use, a materialist is someone who chases after wealth and values > that more than friendships, family, etc. In philosophy, it means someone > who believe that physical reality is really all there is. That person might > be an ascetic in personal life and be a people person who feels their time > volunteering to build homes for the poor is more important than having a > big bank account.) > > Anyhow, you might be better served by reading this: > > https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/ > > It goes over stuff I mentioned and more and in more detail and is by two > professional philosophers. > > Regards, > > Dan > > On May 10, 2021, at 8:56 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > > "Rationalism means this." "No it means that." "It should be included > under...." "No I disagree." Nothing says 'philosophy' like the 12 men and > the elephant metaphor. > > I think since no one actually added any epistemologies I'll go with what I > have. bill w > > On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 5:34 PM Dan TheBookMan > wrote: > >> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 11:55 AM Lawrence Crowell >> wrote: >> > I would consider deduction, the use of formal rules, and induction, a >> proposition based >> > on a large number of outcomes or calculations, as two forms of >> rationalism. >> >> Rationalism is usually more about the source of knowledge (intuitions, >> innate ideas, concepts) and the structure (it's usually >> foundationalist, meaning it views knowledge as a hierarchical >> structure kind of like a building) than about purely the use of forms >> of reasoning. In fact, rival epistemologies also use forms of >> reasoning too. So that's not the differentiating feature here. >> Descartes is usually seen as a Rationalist and he mostly held you >> moved from innate ideas to further developments of these. Locke, often >> seen as the Empiricist wasn't against using logic (though his ideas on >> logic are a wee confused). And perhaps the arch-empiricist is J. S. >> Mill who actually came up with Mill's methods: >> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill%27s_Methods >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> Sample my Kindle books via: >> http://author.to/DanUst >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "extropolis" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/3B952F1D-A64F-4534-A0AA-D5FF1766D2F3%40gmail.com > > . > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 10 19:51:39 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 14:51:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Stanford link by Dan Message-ID: Keep in mind, Dan, that I am looking for a simple way to explain epistemology (to two 13 year old girls, in fact, who are also my gardeners and piano students), not sending them to professional essays. That sort of article is what just about halted my investigations into philosophy. Unnecessarily verbose (to the point of logorrhea (a better term than diarrhea of the mouth/brain) ), picky about definitions and yet often vague etc etc. Some of it reminds me of Freud: on page 12 he would introduce a concept in a very tentative form, but by page 18 it was a proven fact. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 10 19:59:33 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 14:59:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Human beings are not entirely peaceful. Lawrence Thanks for that - biggest laugh of the week. In my fungus book I read where traditional agriculture leaves fields nearly sterile of fungi and many other creatures . Too many assets that fungi bring to raising crops to list here, but people are working on it. I am highly encouraged - more later. bill w On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:42 PM Lawrence Crowell < goldenfieldquaternions at gmail.com> wrote: > On January 6, 2021, a disorganized mob of Trump supporters batter-rammed > their way into the Capital building of the United States and forced > Congress to flee. Those supporting this action, and there are plenty still > out there, saw this as the next ?Spirit of 1776? revolution by true > patriots. The image and parallels I get from this are far more disturbing. > I might compare this to the first sacking of Rome in 410AD; an event that > saw the beginning of the end of a civilization that over the next 66 years > unraveled and collapsed. Even deeper though, this may suggest something far > more deeply flawed about the entire human species and our prospects. > > Most interested in space and astronomy are familiar with Enrico Fermi?s > question ?Where are they?? concerning intelligent life. This so-called > Fermi paradox poses the Copernican Principle, that any region of the > universe is not unique and so life must be universal, conflicts with the > lack of any evidence of intelligent life. So far, the SETI program has > found radio noise and silence after several decades of looking. Of course, > so far only a small segment of this galaxy has been searched, so the > prospect is maybe still open. Yet, Fermi?s paradox remains, because if any > form of intelligent life were to persist it suggests they, or maybe their > robotic emissaries or successors, would move through the galaxy within a > period of a million years or so. So far astronomical evidence reveals no > instance of some intelligent life modifying a stellar system in any large > manner. So, where are they? > > It is best to consider what we mean by intelligent life. Cetaceans are > clearly intelligent in some way, even if very different from human > intelligent. However, they do not modify their environment by controlling > energy and materials. Humans do, and this started with a branch of Homo > erectus called Homo ergaster that emerged around 600 thousand years ago. > This species in the hominid lineage learned to control fire. At this point > a life form on this planet learned to use energy outside of its metabolic > needs, and to grow this energy use far beyond metabolic needs. Also, the > manufacture of flint axes and stone tools began to accelerate. To make a > stone axe requires a considerable amount of neural processing to know from > the appearance of a flint the planes of crystallization and how it will > fracture. With these developments it is evident hominids began to modify > their environment and evolution was a coordinated selection process that > saw modification of species and the ability to modify their immediate > environment. With the evolution of Homo sapiens some 100 to 150 thousand > years ago the adaptation of the environment by intelligent thought > surpassed biological evolution. We now life in conditions where this has > exponentially accelerated to extreme dimensions. > > Some conservative politicians complain we are on a Ponzi game. Sure, we > have been in a Ponzi game for at least the last half million years with > using ever more energy and environment. > > What does this have to do with Fermi?s paradox? Life on Earth, and > presumably this would hold with life on other planets as well, evolves by > natural selection. The white noise or Markovian statistics with single > nucleotide polymorphisms and other mutations is run through a filter of > fitness. The output is then a form of pink noise or sub-Markovian > statistics that have structure. This is a remarkable process, and one that > I think has deeper aspects in physics. In this way life evolves into forms > that have greater complexity. Compare the complexity of an advanced mammal > such as a human, whale, elephant and even a dog, with that of a fish. Or > for that matter compare an insect with a bacillus. Such life forms evolve > to fit an environment, and while such evolution does modify the environment > as well, such species do not engineer their environment. We humans engineer > our environment and in doing so we set ourselves in an environment that > becomes ever more different than what we evolved to fit within. It is > plausible that any form of intelligent life in the universe that engineers > its environment may do much the same. > There are several examples of this. Human beings are not entirely > peaceful. As much as we want to think we are creatures of peace, there are > plenty examples of subsistence or tribal cultures that engage in warfare. > In fact, the African slave trade emerged from a practice of tribal raids > that captured individuals for slaves. Archeological finds in the American > southwest have found kivas filled with burned remains of people, who were > evidently burned alive by people from another tribe or culture. Of course, > our history is packed with examples of wars. Then with the end of World War > II came the atomic bomb and the realization that total war is not possible, > However, humans persist in building or trying to acquire nuclear weapons. > It may only be a matter of time before something goes terribly wrong. > Another example to this is our impact on the planetary environment. Humans > are erasing arable land and active biology on this planet by an area equal > to about one Belgium per year. Human populations are growing, and declining > arable land is a problem. The oceans are dying off at an alarming rate and > at end of this decade the mass of plastic in the oceans will exceed that of > ocean life. Of course, then comes the warming of the climate by our burning > of fossil fuels that produce CO_2. This may in time render this planet > uninhabitable, and already regions are becoming difficult with fires. > > We might think that we can solve these things. However, increasingly we > seem paralyzed by ourselves. Of course, a part of this is the massive > denial of any problem with the environment, and in particular climate > change. There has been a growing ?alt-science? cult development, and this > extends in general to what Trump?s spokeswoman Kelly Ann Conway said with, > ?We have our alternative facts.? We have seen the rise of anti-vaccination > movements, at a time of a nasty pandemic, and the rise of increasingly > tribalistic politics that seeks to raise conflicts between people. These > things are becoming ever more political. > > This rise of denialism saw its first rise with the creationist movement > with fundamentalist or evangelical Christians in the United States. The > rejection of biological evolution, something that began to rise in force in > the 1970s, saw the social rejection of a branch of scientific work. > Biological evolution has a massive amount of data to support it, and this > extends from the paleontological work with fossils to molecular biology of > genes. Yet fully 50% of American refuse to admit evolution, and this trend > is being proselytized into the rest of the world. This ?alt-science? > denialism has found other expressions from anti-vaxxers, climate denialism, > geocentrism and in recent years the ultimate absurdism with flat-Earth > ideas. This reflects very possibly the advance of mythic based psychology > over reasoning, and this is finding a wide variety of forms. It is also > being promoted most successfully by the computer, which is ironically a > device developed by the epitome of rational thinking. > > The idea human intelligence evolved primarily to solve rational problems > is probably false. It probably mostly evolved to promote communications > between members of any group. Think of this as the evolution of language. > The evolution of language probably came about to communicate information > about the environment. This involved probably the projection of the human > mind onto the world combined with the ability to express this in a > narrative format. Projection is a power psychological tool, and the young > Einstein in effect projected his mind onto a reference frame moving at the > speed of light to realize a paradox. We do this in fiction with structuring > fictional characters, and we project our minds onto the world in the form > of spirits or gods. This may have had a survival advantage in communicating > information about the environment in a story format. > > With this has come religions and narratives about supernatural beings, > that in late ancient periods of history and religions from the iron age > involved an infinite being. By the medieval period monotheist religions had > a firm grip on societies from the Indus Valley to Ireland. This changed > with the rise of science, where with Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo the > culminating in Newton saw a world view completely at odds with theology. > The return of Halley?s comet in the later 18th century saw calculation as a > predictor work, while prophesy waned. The age of enlightenment came and > brought about the idea that reasoning, measurement and phenomenology were > the basis of the world. Even Christianity amongst the educated turned into > deism, a shadow of its former self. > > In modern times this has shifted again. With the rise of monotheism was > the rise of alpha-numerical formats. Paleo-Hebrew and the Greek linear-b > script were a part of a transition from pictograms to complete symbolic > forms. The Commandment ?Though shall have no graven image? in its strict > form means there are to be no pictures, certainly not of people and even > more against images of God. It takes little thought to realize with > television and now computers this has been overturned utterly. While > Christians obeyed this commandment in serious breech, consider the barrage > of pictures of Jesus, at least most information was communicated by > writing. Now in this age of the internet and social media we have utterly > turned about. We may in fact be approaching a post-literate age or culture. > > With this has come the rise of what I might call cybermythos, or the > emergence of world views that are very specific, even tribal with tribes > defined ideologically, and not based on reasoning or evidence. There is a > fragmentation of cultish tribes, from reptilian-people ideas, to > flat-Earth, to QAnon and of course traditional religion. We should be aware > how this all involves a lot of magical thinking. The book of Revelations > has Jesus coming back and sweeping all the clouds away, and the story of > Cinderella has her ?wish upon a star? and her fairy godmother comes to turn > a pumpkin and mice into a horse drawn carriage that in the end takes her to > ?happily ever after.? The thinking is really the same. Magical thinking, > where we might at least cite the story of Cinderella as honest in admitting > it is a fairy tale, while the second coming of Jesus keeps being hustled > off as ontological or truth. The rise of conspiracy narratives, I avoid the > term ?theory? because these are not theories, is a sort of magical > suspension of reasoning and the belief in some guru, Alex Jones comes to > mind, and a focus on there being a ?plot? we must all beware of. > > Maybe we are backing away from this, if at least in a temporary and > halting way. The electoral defeat of Donald Trump, where there is a sizable > cult following saying he was in fact elected, may be some response to this. > However, there are problems with the political left as well. George Orwell > in his treatise on the psychology of totalitarian power, written in > fictional form 1984, warned of the compression of language and its > reduction to tiny, fragmented terms, and we see this on both the left and > the right. Trumpism brought us MAGA, Stop the Steal and Q (amazing a > political ideal can be compressed into one letter), but on the left we have > BLM and Defund Police and other calls. The whole language is reduced to the > smallest possible, and it reflect our trajectory into a post literate > culture, which has a pernicious effect of leading us into a post-truth > culture, > > What does this have to do with the Fermi paradox? It points to how we are > emerging into conditions that are impossible to sustain. I have done a fair > amount of computer programming in my time, and a post-symbolic or > post-literate culture will fail to cultivate people who can actually > program computers. Will AI ever get to the point it can program itself? > That remains to be seen, and the short science fiction video ?PETS? makes > some point about this prospect. This might mean the format for promoting > this cybermythos may not be long lived in the future. Further, if humans > are thinking this way, we will become ever less capable of solving > problems. Through my lifetime there is only one environmental problem that > was nearly completely solved, the CFC induced ozone hole problem. With > everything else we have honestly not really solved anything. We still have > nuclear weapons, and this contradicts our warring tendencies. Curiously, > this inability to solve much corresponds a lot with the rise of right > winged politics. We have in effect developed an environment that we are not > adapted to or have evolved to fit into. This in various ways may occur to > intelligent life in the rest of the universe. > > The late comedian George Carlin has a routine, ?Saving Planet Earth.? It > starts out as an anti-environmental rant, where George was cleverly > prepping the audience. He then transitions with the line ?Earth is not > going anywhere. WE ARE! Pack your shit folks, we are going away.? He then > makes the point that Earth will survive. 20 million years from now life on > Earth will probably be carrying on very well. We will not be here. He > further makes some interesting comments of a cosmic nature. Is there any > cosmological reason for us being here? Maybe John Wheeler was onto > something with his idea of a self-excited universe, this is maybe a > possibility. Wheeler also proposed how a measurement made at one time can > select states at an earlier time, the so called Wheeler Delayed Choice > Experiment. This has been experimentally demonstrated. Possibly, if we > measure neutrinos or even gravitons from the early universe, we may select > the quantum states or even the strength of coupling constants that make the > observable universe possible. Think of this as a cosmological Wheeler > Delayed Choice experiment. It might be possible, though I have no idea how > we can ever know we end up playing this role. Maybe intelligent life in the > universe forms a statistical sample space of such outcomes that in some > average selects the quantum states of the observable universe. > > It might be that George Carlin?s ?big electron? or this sort of > self-excited cosmology are real. It though does not seem as likely > intelligent life develops in most science fiction paths as star faring > beings. If this happens for even a significant fraction of them, we would > probably know it. I suspect intelligent life in the vast majority of cases > develops an environment they are not really evolved for and then snuffs > themselves out. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "extropolis" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/bf8a02f9-0768-4b5a-8dd4-4d61db01471cn%40googlegroups.com > > . > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 10 21:48:43 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 22:48:43 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 10 May 2021 at 21:03, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > Human beings are not entirely peaceful. Lawrence > > Thanks for that - biggest laugh of the week. In my fungus book I read where traditional agriculture leaves fields nearly sterile of fungi and many other creatures . Too many assets that fungi bring to raising crops to list here, but people are working on it. I am highly encouraged - more later. bill w > > On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:42 PM Lawrence Crowell wrote: >> <> >> >> It might be that George Carlin?s ?big electron? or this sort of self-excited cosmology are real. It though does not seem as likely intelligent life develops in most science fiction paths as star faring beings. If this happens for even a significant fraction of them, we would probably know it. I suspect intelligent life in the vast majority of cases develops an environment they are not really evolved for and then snuffs themselves out. >> > _______________________________________________ That's one of the big questions generated by the Fermi Paradox silence. Is the Great Filter behind us or still waiting to hit us in the future? The rarity of life developing could be the big early Filter. Intelligent life destroying itself because the Evolution necessary for development leads to destruction could be the late Filter. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 10 21:49:32 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 07:49:32 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 05:16, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Great, another step forward. > Can we take another stop forward? > So, there must be some redness or greenness substrate, which the two are > using to represent their knowledge of the strawberry with. The quality of > this substrate they are representing their knowledge of the strawberry with > is critically important to what that strawberry is like for them, right? > I.e, abstractly they can both say the strawberry is "red", but > subjectively, there experience of 'red' is substrate dependent on each > different quality of their knowledge. > No, one may have glutamate making him see redness and the other may have punch cards making him see redness. On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 1:00 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 04:42, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> Yay, Stathis, a bit more of a hint of almost considering qualia, even >>> though you seem to be working as hard as you can to continue to ignore it, >>> only focusing on the function, ignoring any real qualities those functions >>> may be describing. >>> >>> So, the next stop: There must be some objectively detectable >>> qualitative internal difference between the two, right? >>> >> >> If they say different things about their qualia then they may have >> different qualia. If they say the same things, or if the same individual >> says the same things after an internal modification, then they may have the >> same qualia. >> >> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:28 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 02:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> Hi Jason, >>>>> I believe you are interpreting everything I'm saying, into your model >>>>> of consciousness. As long as you do this, you will fail to understand the >>>>> different model I'm trying to describe and fail to see the answers I'm >>>>> providing. >>>>> >>>>> You asked: "Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states?" >>>>> >>>>> This indicates you are asking how I interpret what I am saying into >>>>> you model. That is the problem. I'm trying to describe a different model, >>>>> so as long as you are asking how I map, what I'm saying, into your model, >>>>> you will fail to understand the different model I'm trying to describe. >>>>> >>>>> If there is +5 volts, on a line, that is simply an observable >>>>> physical fact. If there is a hole in a punch card, again, that state of >>>>> matter is simply a physical fact. Neither of these physical facts >>>>> "transcend knowledge". If you have a dictionary, both +5 volts, or a >>>>> particular hole on a punch card, both of these physical facts can be >>>>> defined to represent information, like a digital "1" or the word "red". >>>>> Redness is a similar physical fact about the intrinsic quality of something >>>>> in physical reality. If you have a dictionary for the word 'red', which >>>>> points to something that has an intrinsic redness quality and say "THAT is >>>>> red" that redness quality can then represent "red" information. >>>>> >>>>> For example, I explicitly answered the question: "How do you propose >>>>> someone with inverted qualia would answer the question differently? " >>>>> with this image, showing the two different answers each would provide: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> [image: image.png] >>>>>> >>>>> >>>> I think you?re suggesting one person will say he sees red and the other >>>> he sees green, but that would mean there is a functional difference between >>>> them, whereas functionalism holds that they would only necessarily have the >>>> same qualia if there is no functional difference between them. >>>> >>>> >>>>> Then you proved you didn't understand how this is the answer to that >>>>> exact question, by yet again, re asking the question, again, while you are >>>>> looking at the answer: >>>>> >>>>> "How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>>>> question differently?" >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Another question you asked, after I've provided the answer is: "I >>>>> don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red." >>>>> >>>>> What does the word "red" mean? Without a dictionary, it means >>>>> nothing. The word 'red' isn't intrinsically red! If you described the >>>>> behavior of a redness quality, similarly, would that description tell you >>>>> anything about what the quality which had that behavior was like? No. >>>>> Neither the word red, nor a descript of redness has an intrinsic redness >>>>> quality. The only way to know what they are describing, or a label of, is >>>>> with a dictionary. To know what redness means, you point to the knowledge >>>>> of the person on the left of that picture and say: "That is red". Then you >>>>> say: "The knowledge of the one on the right is green." these are different >>>>> answers to the same question: "What is redness like for you?" >>>>> >>>>> When we describe the behavior of glutamate, as it reacts in a synapse, >>>>> for all we know that could be exactly the description of how redness >>>>> behaves. Of all the descriptions of stuff in our brain, one of those >>>>> descriptions must be a description of the behavior of redness. Something >>>>> different than that must be the description of the behavior of greenness. >>>>> >>>>> Once you can read through what I've already said, and see that all >>>>> your questions have been answered then you will know you are understanding >>>>> the model I'm trying to describe. Until you can do that, restating the >>>>> answer's I've already provided won't help. Once you start to understand >>>>> the model, you should watch the video >>>>> , again, so you can >>>>> finally understand it, and see how it is describing a non qualia blind >>>>> model, a model which answers all your questions. >>>>> >>>>> Brent >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 10:08 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021, 6:04 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Hi Jason, >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought >>>>>>>> it was well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia >>>>>>>> given either. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. You >>>>>>> certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost >>>>>>> every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about >>>>>>> qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to >>>>>>> pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the >>>>>>> description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia >>>>>>> Theory >>>>>>> " >>>>>>> each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. RQT >>>>>>> is >>>>>>> basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way >>>>>>> all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I mean I didn't see any additional explanation or resolution offered >>>>>> concerning the problem(s) of explaining qualia. All theories of >>>>>> consciousness struggle with this "hard problem". What new does RQT have to >>>>>> say about it? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that >>>>>>>> qualia relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our >>>>>>>> third-person ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information >>>>>>>> can only capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand >>>>>>>> gestures to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your >>>>>>>> senses, but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as >>>>>>>> done by your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from >>>>>>>> first-person experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she >>>>>>>> sees red for the first time: she activates new forms of processing >>>>>>>> information by her brain. She could read all the books in the world on what >>>>>>>> red is like without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas >>>>>>>> that make her experience red. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to >>>>>>>>> be red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like >>>>>>>>> for you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are >>>>>>>>> describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >>>>>>>>> better, in any way you care to define better. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be >>>>>>>> identical for a qualia-inverted being, >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact >>>>>>> that if two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: >>>>>>> "What is your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must >>>>>>> give different answers, since they each represent red with different >>>>>>> qualities. This pictures basically shows each of the different answers >>>>>>> each of these people would give to the question: "What is redness like for >>>>>>> you?" >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>>>>> question differently? What would they say when asked to explain "What is >>>>>> your redness like?" And how would there answer be different from someone >>>>>> without inverted qualia? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> [image: image.png] >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the >>>>>>>> scope of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get >>>>>>>> inverted qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be >>>>>>>> a third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable >>>>>>>> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that >>>>>>>> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the >>>>>>>> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and >>>>>>>> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a >>>>>>>> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, >>>>>>>>> and any functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully >>>>>>>>> account for qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always >>>>>>>>> completely avoid any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in >>>>>>>>> any of the beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro >>>>>>>>> substitution'.... To me, this is very strong evidence that any >>>>>>>>> functionalists has no grasp at all on the qualitative nature of >>>>>>>>> consciousness, and the assumptions they are making. They just ignore it >>>>>>>>> all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted for. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious >>>>>>>> of qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the >>>>>>>> most simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. >>>>>>>> For example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so >>>>>>>> you can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say >>>>>>>> about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being >>>>>>>> touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain >>>>>>>> forms of knowledge*. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of >>>>>>> qualia this way. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states? >>>>>> >>>>>> Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume >>>>>>> functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Knowledge requires a knower. A punch card or hard drive can't know >>>>>> anything. Knowledge requires (information+a system to be informed). >>>>>> >>>>>> As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge of >>>>>>> red, your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that matter, a >>>>>>> bat could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives from >>>>>>> echolocation while hunting. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Given dreaming, we know conscious states can also be entirely cut off >>>>>> from an external world. The brain alone has everything it needs to create >>>>>> the experience of redness, even in total darkness and an absence of any >>>>>> light with a wavelength of ~700nm. Redness is a property of the structures >>>>>> and relationships embodied by the brain, and nothing else. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of >>>>>>>> information. Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely >>>>>>>> having knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, >>>>>>>> and interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think >>>>>>>> there are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still >>>>>>>>>> say there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still >>>>>>>>>> describe their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person >>>>>>>>>> with the bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the >>>>>>>>>> compu-brain will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness >>>>>>>>>> and qualia. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you >>>>>>>>>> could do to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>>>>>>>>> behaviors are identical. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are >>>>>>>>>> logically impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be >>>>>>>>>> conscious, in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is >>>>>>>>>> not consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases >>>>>>>>>> for assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, >>>>>>>>>> self-reports, non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural >>>>>>>>>> prosthesis, the anti-zombie principle). >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the >>>>>>>>>>> intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you >>>>>>>>>>> must be able to observe these computational differences. >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint >>>>>>>>>> when you say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, >>>>>>>>> reacting in a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >>>>>>>>> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever >>>>>>>>> description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >>>>>>>>> Given that, here is the answer: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a >>>>>>>>> redness quality of subjective experience (first person) >>>>>>>>> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific >>>>>>>>> instruments, and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it >>>>>>>>> behaves. (third person) >>>>>>>>> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing >>>>>>>>> of the colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know >>>>>>>>> that. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural >>>>>>>> transmitter or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on >>>>>>>> the basis of the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible >>>>>>>> perceptions (even just considering possible perceived colors) than there >>>>>>>> are chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive >>>>>>>> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision >>>>>>>> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare >>>>>>>> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. >>>>>>>> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so >>>>>>>> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So >>>>>>>> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher >>>>>>>> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the >>>>>>>> variety of our perception. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so easily >>>>>>> falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once you >>>>>>> falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of >>>>>>> something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will >>>>>>> have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective >>>>>>> with the objective. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's >>>>>>> lost and distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the >>>>>>> important principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color >>>>>>> world, The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or >>>>>>> anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a >>>>>>> description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description >>>>>>> of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a >>>>>>> simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the >>>>>>> subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand >>>>>>> how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = >>>>>>> greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is >>>>>>> redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine >>>>>>> for the other) and so on. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Even in a world with simple conscious states I think we could find >>>>>> reasons to doubt mind-brain identity theories. If we encountered space >>>>>> aliens or robots with different neurochemistry that behaved or claimed to >>>>>> be conscious, for instance. This is in my view, the main appeal of >>>>>> functionalism. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> Then once you understand the important principle of how the >>>>>>> objective and subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about >>>>>>> more complex theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more >>>>>>> complex world. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Could you explain your view of how the subjective and objective are >>>>>> connected? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and >>>>>>>>> knowledge of reality >>>>>>>>> " >>>>>>>>> chapter of our video. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your >>>>>>>> theory say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the >>>>>>>> quark-lepton level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, >>>>>>>> glutamate particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie >>>>>>>> world, with non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia >>>>>>>> and the mysterious nature of the redness of red? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of different >>>>>>> ways all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing >>>>>>> which of these thousands I should be thinking you mean. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> What I mean to ask is: imagine a vast computer simulation that >>>>>> simulated the entire observable universes down to the detail if the >>>>>> smallest fundamental particles and field theories. Would the simulated >>>>>> humans in the simulated Earth in the simulated Milly Way be conscious? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Redness can be represented and simulated by most anything. It can be >>>>>>> represented by greenness, or it can be represented by +5 volts on a line >>>>>>> (as we indicated in the video) or anything else. The only important thing >>>>>>> to realize is that anything that is NOT redness, which is representing >>>>>>> redness, needs a dictionary to know what that thing is representing. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of >>>>>> red. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> While redness, itself, is simply a physical fact about the quality of >>>>>>> you knowledge of red things, no dictionary required. The prediction is >>>>>>> that no functionalist will ever be able to produce a redness quality >>>>>>> experience with ANY function, no matter what it is, or no matter what is >>>>>>> running it. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> What is your rational for reaching this conclusion? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly falsifiable >>>>>>> function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate falsifiable >>>>>>> example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x cubed is >>>>>>> greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give you that >>>>>>> blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of them, >>>>>>> they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction that any >>>>>>> particular function could in any way result in a physical redness quality >>>>>>> really is. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> A function whose information content is less than the information >>>>>> content of the conscious experience could be falsified. >>>>>> >>>>>> Whatever function is responsible for red experience is probably not >>>>>> simple. Multiple layers of processing by various brain regions, involving a >>>>>> total of some 30% of our cortex is involved in creating our visual >>>>>> experience. I would think the function is vastly complex and also may >>>>>> involve relationships with other non visual areas of the brain. It's not >>>>>> clear to me you could have a red experience without considering the whole >>>>>> brain. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> While there are many reasons to doubt >>>>>>>> functionalism/computationalism, there is strong indirect observational >>>>>>>> evidence supporting it, which is that if we assume computationalism is >>>>>>>> true, we can directly explain many of the observed properties of our >>>>>>>> physical world. I have written about this here: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different ways, >>>>>>> and I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Ask away if anything I have said us unclear. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> It'd sure be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp >>>>>>> in the "Theories of Cons consciousness >>>>>>> " >>>>>>> topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise >>>>>>> statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized >>>>>>> with the other theories we've collected to date? >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I don't know that my view is any different from standard digital >>>>>> mechanism / computationalism. It's just functionalism with an assumption of >>>>>> finiteness and computability, which I understand is the standard >>>>>> computational theory of mind. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> FYI, as you can see, Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism >>>>>>> , >>>>>>> and mine is "Molecular Materialism >>>>>>> ". >>>>>>> It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional >>>>>>> Property Dualism >>>>>>> >>>>>>> ? >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I'll check out these definitions and let you know. Thanks! This site >>>>>> is a noble effort serving and important purpose. >>>>>> >>>>>> Jason >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>> >>>> -- >>>> Stathis Papaioannou >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From interzone at gmail.com Mon May 10 22:18:17 2021 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 18:18:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Unless some radical evidence is introduced, I am sadly now working under the assumption that this is the most likely scenario. I'm guessing intelligent life that can use tools to the extent we can is EXCEEDINGLY rare in the universe, and is likely a very rare fluke on Earth. Evolution makes no guarantees regarding the developments we see in our species. I would suspect pond scum level life is exceedingly common in the universe though. On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 5:50 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > The rarity of life developing could be the big early Filter. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Tue May 11 00:10:39 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 18:10:39 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 3:58 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 05:16, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Great, another step forward. >> Can we take another stop forward? >> So, there must be some redness or greenness substrate, which the two are >> using to represent their knowledge of the strawberry with. The quality of >> this substrate they are representing their knowledge of the strawberry with >> is critically important to what that strawberry is like for them, right? >> I.e., abstractly they can both say the strawberry is "red", but >> subjectively, there experience of 'red' is substrate dependent on each >> different quality of their knowledge. >> > > No, one may have glutamate making him see redness and the other may have > punch cards making him see redness. > I didn't say anything about glutamate, just the quality of their knowledge. I recall asking if you agreed with the following statement from our video, and you said you did agree: 1. There is no interpretation of a quale, the quality of our conscious knowledge is just a fact. 2. It might be a physical fact, or spiritual fact, or functional fact, depending on our preferred yet to be falsified theory. But in all cases the quality of our knowledge remains a fact about reality. If that is a fact, over space and time, as you agreed. Then what each person's consciousness knowledge of the strawberry is qualitatively like is important, and we must be able to recognize when at least one pixel factually changes from one quality to the other. And we must be able to say the two are qualitatively different, as they are reporting. > On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 1:00 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 04:42, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Yay, Stathis, a bit more of a hint of almost considering qualia, even >>>> though you seem to be working as hard as you can to continue to ignore it, >>>> only focusing on the function, ignoring any real qualities those functions >>>> may be describing. >>>> >>>> So, the next stop: There must be some objectively detectable >>>> qualitative internal difference between the two, right? >>>> >>> >>> If they say different things about their qualia then they may have >>> different qualia. If they say the same things, or if the same individual >>> says the same things after an internal modification, then they may have the >>> same qualia. >>> >>> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:28 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 02:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi Jason, >>>>>> I believe you are interpreting everything I'm saying, into your model >>>>>> of consciousness. As long as you do this, you will fail to understand the >>>>>> different model I'm trying to describe and fail to see the answers I'm >>>>>> providing. >>>>>> >>>>>> You asked: "Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states? >>>>>> " >>>>>> >>>>>> This indicates you are asking how I interpret what I am saying into >>>>>> you model. That is the problem. I'm trying to describe a different model, >>>>>> so as long as you are asking how I map, what I'm saying, into your model, >>>>>> you will fail to understand the different model I'm trying to describe. >>>>>> >>>>>> If there is +5 volts, on a line, that is simply an observable >>>>>> physical fact. If there is a hole in a punch card, again, that state of >>>>>> matter is simply a physical fact. Neither of these physical facts >>>>>> "transcend knowledge". If you have a dictionary, both +5 volts, or a >>>>>> particular hole on a punch card, both of these physical facts can be >>>>>> defined to represent information, like a digital "1" or the word "red". >>>>>> Redness is a similar physical fact about the intrinsic quality of something >>>>>> in physical reality. If you have a dictionary for the word 'red', which >>>>>> points to something that has an intrinsic redness quality and say "THAT is >>>>>> red" that redness quality can then represent "red" information. >>>>>> >>>>>> For example, I explicitly answered the question: "How do you >>>>>> propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the question differently? >>>>>> " >>>>>> with this image, showing the two different answers each would provide: >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> [image: image.png] >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> I think you?re suggesting one person will say he sees red and the >>>>> other he sees green, but that would mean there is a functional difference >>>>> between them, whereas functionalism holds that they would only necessarily >>>>> have the same qualia if there is no functional difference between them. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> Then you proved you didn't understand how this is the answer to that >>>>>> exact question, by yet again, re asking the question, again, while you are >>>>>> looking at the answer: >>>>>> >>>>>> "How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>>>>> question differently?" >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Another question you asked, after I've provided the answer is: "I >>>>>> don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red." >>>>>> >>>>>> What does the word "red" mean? Without a dictionary, it means >>>>>> nothing. The word 'red' isn't intrinsically red! If you described the >>>>>> behavior of a redness quality, similarly, would that description tell you >>>>>> anything about what the quality which had that behavior was like? No. >>>>>> Neither the word red, nor a descript of redness has an intrinsic redness >>>>>> quality. The only way to know what they are describing, or a label of, is >>>>>> with a dictionary. To know what redness means, you point to the knowledge >>>>>> of the person on the left of that picture and say: "That is red". Then you >>>>>> say: "The knowledge of the one on the right is green." these are different >>>>>> answers to the same question: "What is redness like for you?" >>>>>> >>>>>> When we describe the behavior of glutamate, as it reacts in a >>>>>> synapse, for all we know that could be exactly the description of how >>>>>> redness behaves. Of all the descriptions of stuff in our brain, one of >>>>>> those descriptions must be a description of the behavior of redness. >>>>>> Something different than that must be the description of the behavior of >>>>>> greenness. >>>>>> >>>>>> Once you can read through what I've already said, and see that all >>>>>> your questions have been answered then you will know you are understanding >>>>>> the model I'm trying to describe. Until you can do that, restating the >>>>>> answer's I've already provided won't help. Once you start to understand >>>>>> the model, you should watch the video >>>>>> , again, so you can >>>>>> finally understand it, and see how it is describing a non qualia blind >>>>>> model, a model which answers all your questions. >>>>>> >>>>>> Brent >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 10:08 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021, 6:04 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Hi Jason, >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought >>>>>>>>> it was well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia >>>>>>>>> given either. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. >>>>>>>> You certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost >>>>>>>> every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about >>>>>>>> qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to >>>>>>>> pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the >>>>>>>> description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia >>>>>>>> Theory >>>>>>>> " >>>>>>>> each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. >>>>>>>> RQT >>>>>>>> is >>>>>>>> basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way >>>>>>>> all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I mean I didn't see any additional explanation or resolution offered >>>>>>> concerning the problem(s) of explaining qualia. All theories of >>>>>>> consciousness struggle with this "hard problem". What new does RQT have to >>>>>>> say about it? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that >>>>>>>>> qualia relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our >>>>>>>>> third-person ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information >>>>>>>>> can only capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand >>>>>>>>> gestures to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your >>>>>>>>> senses, but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as >>>>>>>>> done by your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from >>>>>>>>> first-person experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she >>>>>>>>> sees red for the first time: she activates new forms of processing >>>>>>>>> information by her brain. She could read all the books in the world on what >>>>>>>>> red is like without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas >>>>>>>>> that make her experience red. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to >>>>>>>>>> be red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness like >>>>>>>>>> for you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you are >>>>>>>>>> describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >>>>>>>>>> better, in any way you care to define better. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be >>>>>>>>> identical for a qualia-inverted being, >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact >>>>>>>> that if two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: >>>>>>>> "What is your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must >>>>>>>> give different answers, since they each represent red with different >>>>>>>> qualities. This pictures basically shows each of the different answers >>>>>>>> each of these people would give to the question: "What is redness like for >>>>>>>> you?" >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>>>>>> question differently? What would they say when asked to explain "What is >>>>>>> your redness like?" And how would there answer be different from someone >>>>>>> without inverted qualia? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> [image: image.png] >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the >>>>>>>>> scope of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get >>>>>>>>> inverted qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be >>>>>>>>> a third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable >>>>>>>>> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that >>>>>>>>> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the >>>>>>>>> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and >>>>>>>>> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a >>>>>>>>> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, >>>>>>>>>> and any functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully >>>>>>>>>> account for qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always >>>>>>>>>> completely avoid any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in >>>>>>>>>> any of the beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro >>>>>>>>>> substitution'.... To me, this is very strong evidence that any >>>>>>>>>> functionalists has no grasp at all on the qualitative nature of >>>>>>>>>> consciousness, and the assumptions they are making. They just ignore it >>>>>>>>>> all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted for. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious >>>>>>>>> of qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the >>>>>>>>> most simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. >>>>>>>>> For example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so >>>>>>>>> you can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say >>>>>>>>> about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being >>>>>>>>> touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain >>>>>>>>> forms of knowledge*. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of >>>>>>>> qualia this way. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume >>>>>>>> functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Knowledge requires a knower. A punch card or hard drive can't know >>>>>>> anything. Knowledge requires (information+a system to be informed). >>>>>>> >>>>>>> As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge >>>>>>>> of red, your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that >>>>>>>> matter, a bat could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives >>>>>>>> from echolocation while hunting. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Given dreaming, we know conscious states can also be entirely cut >>>>>>> off from an external world. The brain alone has everything it needs to >>>>>>> create the experience of redness, even in total darkness and an absence of >>>>>>> any light with a wavelength of ~700nm. Redness is a property of the >>>>>>> structures and relationships embodied by the brain, and nothing else. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of >>>>>>>>> information. Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely >>>>>>>>> having knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, >>>>>>>>> and interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think >>>>>>>>> there are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still >>>>>>>>>>> say there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still >>>>>>>>>>> describe their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person >>>>>>>>>>> with the bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the >>>>>>>>>>> compu-brain will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness >>>>>>>>>>> and qualia. >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you >>>>>>>>>>> could do to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>>>>>>>>>> behaviors are identical. >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are >>>>>>>>>>> logically impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be >>>>>>>>>>> conscious, in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain >>>>>>>>>>> is not consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational >>>>>>>>>>> bases for assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, >>>>>>>>>>> self-reports, non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural >>>>>>>>>>> prosthesis, the anti-zombie principle). >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the >>>>>>>>>>>> intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you >>>>>>>>>>>> must be able to observe these computational differences. >>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint >>>>>>>>>>> when you say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, >>>>>>>>>> reacting in a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >>>>>>>>>> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with >>>>>>>>>> whichever description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >>>>>>>>>> Given that, here is the answer: >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a >>>>>>>>>> redness quality of subjective experience (first person) >>>>>>>>>> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific >>>>>>>>>> instruments, and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it >>>>>>>>>> behaves. (third person) >>>>>>>>>> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing >>>>>>>>>> of the colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary to know >>>>>>>>>> that. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural >>>>>>>>> transmitter or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on >>>>>>>>> the basis of the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible >>>>>>>>> perceptions (even just considering possible perceived colors) than there >>>>>>>>> are chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive >>>>>>>>> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision >>>>>>>>> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare >>>>>>>>> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. >>>>>>>>> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so >>>>>>>>> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So >>>>>>>>> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher >>>>>>>>> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the >>>>>>>>> variety of our perception. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so easily >>>>>>>> falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once you >>>>>>>> falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of >>>>>>>> something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will >>>>>>>> have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective >>>>>>>> with the objective. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's >>>>>>>> lost and distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the >>>>>>>> important principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color >>>>>>>> world, The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or >>>>>>>> anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a >>>>>>>> description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description >>>>>>>> of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a >>>>>>>> simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the >>>>>>>> subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand >>>>>>>> how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = >>>>>>>> greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is >>>>>>>> redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine >>>>>>>> for the other) and so on. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Even in a world with simple conscious states I think we could find >>>>>>> reasons to doubt mind-brain identity theories. If we encountered space >>>>>>> aliens or robots with different neurochemistry that behaved or claimed to >>>>>>> be conscious, for instance. This is in my view, the main appeal of >>>>>>> functionalism. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Then once you understand the important principle of how the >>>>>>>> objective and subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about >>>>>>>> more complex theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more >>>>>>>> complex world. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Could you explain your view of how the subjective and objective are >>>>>>> connected? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and >>>>>>>>>> knowledge of reality >>>>>>>>>> " >>>>>>>>>> chapter of our video. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your >>>>>>>>> theory say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the >>>>>>>>> quark-lepton level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, >>>>>>>>> glutamate particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie >>>>>>>>> world, with non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia >>>>>>>>> and the mysterious nature of the redness of red? >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of different >>>>>>>> ways all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing >>>>>>>> which of these thousands I should be thinking you mean. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> What I mean to ask is: imagine a vast computer simulation that >>>>>>> simulated the entire observable universes down to the detail if the >>>>>>> smallest fundamental particles and field theories. Would the simulated >>>>>>> humans in the simulated Earth in the simulated Milly Way be conscious? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Redness can be represented and simulated by most anything. It can >>>>>>>> be represented by greenness, or it can be represented by +5 volts on a line >>>>>>>> (as we indicated in the video) or anything else. The only important thing >>>>>>>> to realize is that anything that is NOT redness, which is representing >>>>>>>> redness, needs a dictionary to know what that thing is representing. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of >>>>>>> red. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> While redness, itself, is simply a physical fact about the quality >>>>>>>> of you knowledge of red things, no dictionary required. The prediction is >>>>>>>> that no functionalist will ever be able to produce a redness quality >>>>>>>> experience with ANY function, no matter what it is, or no matter what is >>>>>>>> running it. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> What is your rational for reaching this conclusion? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly >>>>>>>> falsifiable function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate >>>>>>>> falsifiable example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x >>>>>>>> cubed is greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give >>>>>>>> you that blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of >>>>>>>> them, they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction >>>>>>>> that any particular function could in any way result in a physical redness >>>>>>>> quality really is. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> A function whose information content is less than the information >>>>>>> content of the conscious experience could be falsified. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Whatever function is responsible for red experience is probably not >>>>>>> simple. Multiple layers of processing by various brain regions, involving a >>>>>>> total of some 30% of our cortex is involved in creating our visual >>>>>>> experience. I would think the function is vastly complex and also may >>>>>>> involve relationships with other non visual areas of the brain. It's not >>>>>>> clear to me you could have a red experience without considering the whole >>>>>>> brain. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> While there are many reasons to doubt >>>>>>>>> functionalism/computationalism, there is strong indirect observational >>>>>>>>> evidence supporting it, which is that if we assume computationalism is >>>>>>>>> true, we can directly explain many of the observed properties of our >>>>>>>>> physical world. I have written about this here: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different >>>>>>>> ways, and I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Ask away if anything I have said us unclear. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> It'd sure be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp >>>>>>>> in the "Theories of Cons consciousness >>>>>>>> " >>>>>>>> topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise >>>>>>>> statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized >>>>>>>> with the other theories we've collected to date? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I don't know that my view is any different from standard digital >>>>>>> mechanism / computationalism. It's just functionalism with an assumption of >>>>>>> finiteness and computability, which I understand is the standard >>>>>>> computational theory of mind. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> FYI, as you can see, Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism >>>>>>>> , >>>>>>>> and mine is "Molecular Materialism >>>>>>>> ". >>>>>>>> It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional >>>>>>>> Property Dualism >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> ? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I'll check out these definitions and let you know. Thanks! This site >>>>>>> is a noble effort serving and important purpose. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Jason >>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>>>> >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> Stathis Papaioannou >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> -- >>> Stathis Papaioannou >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 11 00:24:43 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 10:24:43 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 10:13, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 3:58 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 05:16, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> Great, another step forward. >>> Can we take another stop forward? >>> So, there must be some redness or greenness substrate, which the two are >>> using to represent their knowledge of the strawberry with. The quality of >>> this substrate they are representing their knowledge of the strawberry with >>> is critically important to what that strawberry is like for them, right? >>> I.e., abstractly they can both say the strawberry is "red", but >>> subjectively, there experience of 'red' is substrate dependent on each >>> different quality of their knowledge. >>> >> >> No, one may have glutamate making him see redness and the other may have >> punch cards making him see redness. >> > > I didn't say anything about glutamate, just the quality of their > knowledge. I recall asking if you agreed with the following statement from > our video, and you said you did agree: > > 1. > > There is no interpretation of a quale, the quality of our conscious > knowledge is just a fact. > 2. > > It might be a physical fact, or spiritual fact, or functional fact, > depending on our preferred yet to be falsified theory. But in all cases the > quality of our knowledge remains a fact about reality. > > If that is a fact, over space and time, as you agreed. Then what each > person's consciousness knowledge of the strawberry is qualitatively like is > important, and we must be able to recognize when at least one pixel > factually changes from one quality to the other. And we must be able to > say the two are qualitatively different, as they are reporting. > Yes, I agree that it is a fact that one person experiences (is conscious of, has the quale of) redness and another experiences greenness. If the qualia invert due to some change in the brain, then the subject may report that they have inverted, or at least that something looks a bit different. Even if the subject does not report a difference, we might be able to observe a difference by subjection him to colour testing. But if the subject notices no difference despite going through extensive testing, and we can observe no difference with the testing either, then it dies not make sense to say that the qualia have changed. Do you agree with that? On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 1:00 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 04:42, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> Yay, Stathis, a bit more of a hint of almost considering qualia, even >>>>> though you seem to be working as hard as you can to continue to ignore it, >>>>> only focusing on the function, ignoring any real qualities those functions >>>>> may be describing. >>>>> >>>>> So, the next stop: There must be some objectively detectable >>>>> qualitative internal difference between the two, right? >>>>> >>>> >>>> If they say different things about their qualia then they may have >>>> different qualia. If they say the same things, or if the same individual >>>> says the same things after an internal modification, then they may have the >>>> same qualia. >>>> >>>> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:28 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 02:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Hi Jason, >>>>>>> I believe you are interpreting everything I'm saying, into your >>>>>>> model of consciousness. As long as you do this, you will fail to >>>>>>> understand the different model I'm trying to describe and fail to see the >>>>>>> answers I'm providing. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> You asked: "Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge >>>>>>> states?" >>>>>>> >>>>>>> This indicates you are asking how I interpret what I am saying into >>>>>>> you model. That is the problem. I'm trying to describe a different model, >>>>>>> so as long as you are asking how I map, what I'm saying, into your model, >>>>>>> you will fail to understand the different model I'm trying to describe. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> If there is +5 volts, on a line, that is simply an observable >>>>>>> physical fact. If there is a hole in a punch card, again, that state of >>>>>>> matter is simply a physical fact. Neither of these physical facts >>>>>>> "transcend knowledge". If you have a dictionary, both +5 volts, or a >>>>>>> particular hole on a punch card, both of these physical facts can be >>>>>>> defined to represent information, like a digital "1" or the word "red". >>>>>>> Redness is a similar physical fact about the intrinsic quality of something >>>>>>> in physical reality. If you have a dictionary for the word 'red', which >>>>>>> points to something that has an intrinsic redness quality and say "THAT is >>>>>>> red" that redness quality can then represent "red" information. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> For example, I explicitly answered the question: "How do you >>>>>>> propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the question differently? >>>>>>> " >>>>>>> with this image, showing the two different answers each would >>>>>>> provide: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> [image: image.png] >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>> I think you?re suggesting one person will say he sees red and the >>>>>> other he sees green, but that would mean there is a functional difference >>>>>> between them, whereas functionalism holds that they would only necessarily >>>>>> have the same qualia if there is no functional difference between them. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> Then you proved you didn't understand how this is the answer to that >>>>>>> exact question, by yet again, re asking the question, again, while you are >>>>>>> looking at the answer: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> "How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>>>>>> question differently?" >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Another question you asked, after I've provided the answer is: "I >>>>>>> don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience of red." >>>>>>> >>>>>>> What does the word "red" mean? Without a dictionary, it means >>>>>>> nothing. The word 'red' isn't intrinsically red! If you described the >>>>>>> behavior of a redness quality, similarly, would that description tell you >>>>>>> anything about what the quality which had that behavior was like? No. >>>>>>> Neither the word red, nor a descript of redness has an intrinsic redness >>>>>>> quality. The only way to know what they are describing, or a label of, is >>>>>>> with a dictionary. To know what redness means, you point to the knowledge >>>>>>> of the person on the left of that picture and say: "That is red". Then you >>>>>>> say: "The knowledge of the one on the right is green." these are different >>>>>>> answers to the same question: "What is redness like for you?" >>>>>>> >>>>>>> When we describe the behavior of glutamate, as it reacts in a >>>>>>> synapse, for all we know that could be exactly the description of how >>>>>>> redness behaves. Of all the descriptions of stuff in our brain, one of >>>>>>> those descriptions must be a description of the behavior of redness. >>>>>>> Something different than that must be the description of the behavior of >>>>>>> greenness. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Once you can read through what I've already said, and see that all >>>>>>> your questions have been answered then you will know you are understanding >>>>>>> the model I'm trying to describe. Until you can do that, restating the >>>>>>> answer's I've already provided won't help. Once you start to understand >>>>>>> the model, you should watch the video >>>>>>> , again, so you can >>>>>>> finally understand it, and see how it is describing a non qualia blind >>>>>>> model, a model which answers all your questions. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Brent >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 10:08 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021, 6:04 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Hi Jason, >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat < >>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought >>>>>>>>>> it was well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia >>>>>>>>>> given either. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video. >>>>>>>>> You certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this. Almost >>>>>>>>> every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about >>>>>>>>> qualia. everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to >>>>>>>>> pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the >>>>>>>>> description of a few of the many camps which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia >>>>>>>>> Theory >>>>>>>>> " >>>>>>>>> each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways. >>>>>>>>> RQT >>>>>>>>> is >>>>>>>>> basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way >>>>>>>>> all the supporters of all sub camps agree with. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I mean I didn't see any additional explanation or resolution >>>>>>>> offered concerning the problem(s) of explaining qualia. All theories of >>>>>>>> consciousness struggle with this "hard problem". What new does RQT have to >>>>>>>> say about it? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that >>>>>>>>>> qualia relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our >>>>>>>>>> third-person ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information >>>>>>>>>> can only capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand >>>>>>>>>> gestures to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your >>>>>>>>>> senses, but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as >>>>>>>>>> done by your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from >>>>>>>>>> first-person experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she >>>>>>>>>> sees red for the first time: she activates new forms of processing >>>>>>>>>> information by her brain. She could read all the books in the world on what >>>>>>>>>> red is like without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas >>>>>>>>>> that make her experience red. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> For example, wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered >>>>>>>>>>> to be red/green qualia inverted. With questions like: "What is redness >>>>>>>>>>> like for you, they will behave very different, but on everything else you >>>>>>>>>>> are describing in your post, they will behave identically, even possibly >>>>>>>>>>> better, in any way you care to define better. >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be >>>>>>>>>> identical for a qualia-inverted being, >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Again, not sure how you can think this. It would simply be a fact >>>>>>>>> that if two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: >>>>>>>>> "What is your redness like." It is simply a logical fact that they must >>>>>>>>> give different answers, since they each represent red with different >>>>>>>>> qualities. This pictures basically shows each of the different answers >>>>>>>>> each of these people would give to the question: "What is redness like for >>>>>>>>> you?" >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> How do you propose someone with inverted qualia would answer the >>>>>>>> question differently? What would they say when asked to explain "What is >>>>>>>> your redness like?" And how would there answer be different from someone >>>>>>>> without inverted qualia? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> [image: image.png] >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the >>>>>>>>>> scope of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get >>>>>>>>>> inverted qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be >>>>>>>>>> a third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable >>>>>>>>>> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that >>>>>>>>>> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the >>>>>>>>>> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and >>>>>>>>>> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a >>>>>>>>>> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, >>>>>>>>>>> and any functionalists I have ever seen, the same. They never fully >>>>>>>>>>> account for qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always >>>>>>>>>>> completely avoid any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in >>>>>>>>>>> any of the beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro >>>>>>>>>>> substitution'.... To me, this is very strong evidence that any >>>>>>>>>>> functionalists has no grasp at all on the qualitative nature of >>>>>>>>>>> consciousness, and the assumptions they are making. They just ignore it >>>>>>>>>>> all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted for. >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most >>>>>>>>>> contentious of qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the >>>>>>>>>> quale of the most simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single >>>>>>>>>> tactile nerve. For example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the >>>>>>>>>> top of a pen so you can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we >>>>>>>>>> can really say about this quale is that it is nothing more than the >>>>>>>>>> knowledge of being touched in that particular location. *Qualia >>>>>>>>>> are just certain forms of knowledge*. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of >>>>>>>>> qualia this way. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Can you articulate how qualia transcend knowledge states? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume >>>>>>>>> functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Knowledge requires a knower. A punch card or hard drive can't know >>>>>>>> anything. Knowledge requires (information+a system to be informed). >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge >>>>>>>>> of red, your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that >>>>>>>>> matter, a bat could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives >>>>>>>>> from echolocation while hunting. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Given dreaming, we know conscious states can also be entirely cut >>>>>>>> off from an external world. The brain alone has everything it needs to >>>>>>>> create the experience of redness, even in total darkness and an absence of >>>>>>>> any light with a wavelength of ~700nm. Redness is a property of the >>>>>>>> structures and relationships embodied by the brain, and nothing else. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of >>>>>>>>>> information. Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely >>>>>>>>>> having knowledge of information. There are infinite forms of information, >>>>>>>>>> and interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think >>>>>>>>>> there are also infinite varieties of possible qualia. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, >>>>>>>>>>>> still say there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still >>>>>>>>>>>> describe their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person >>>>>>>>>>>> with the bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the >>>>>>>>>>>> compu-brain will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness >>>>>>>>>>>> and qualia. >>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you >>>>>>>>>>>> could do to rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective >>>>>>>>>>>> behaviors are identical. >>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are >>>>>>>>>>>> logically impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be >>>>>>>>>>>> conscious, in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious." >>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain >>>>>>>>>>>> is not consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational >>>>>>>>>>>> bases for assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, >>>>>>>>>>>> self-reports, non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural >>>>>>>>>>>> prosthesis, the anti-zombie principle). >>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the >>>>>>>>>>>>> intrinsic qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you >>>>>>>>>>>>> must be able to observe these computational differences. >>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint >>>>>>>>>>>> when you say you must be able to observer computational differences? >>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, >>>>>>>>>>> reacting in a synapse, is a description of your redness quality. >>>>>>>>>>> If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with >>>>>>>>>>> whichever description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness. >>>>>>>>>>> Given that, here is the answer: >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a >>>>>>>>>>> redness quality of subjective experience (first person) >>>>>>>>>>> We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific >>>>>>>>>>> instruments, and we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it >>>>>>>>>>> behaves. (third person) >>>>>>>>>>> Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you >>>>>>>>>>> nothing of the colorness quality of that behavior. You need a dictionary >>>>>>>>>>> to know that. >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural >>>>>>>>>> transmitter or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on >>>>>>>>>> the basis of the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible >>>>>>>>>> perceptions (even just considering possible perceived colors) than there >>>>>>>>>> are chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive >>>>>>>>>> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision >>>>>>>>>> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare >>>>>>>>>> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors. >>>>>>>>>> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so >>>>>>>>>> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So >>>>>>>>>> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher >>>>>>>>>> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the >>>>>>>>>> variety of our perception. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Of course. but that IS the point. That fact that you can so >>>>>>>>> easily falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point. Once >>>>>>>>> you falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of >>>>>>>>> something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified. Then you will >>>>>>>>> have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective >>>>>>>>> with the objective. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> The second point is for simplicity's sake. everyone always get's >>>>>>>>> lost and distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the >>>>>>>>> important principle. So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color >>>>>>>>> world, The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or >>>>>>>>> anything. Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a >>>>>>>>> description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description >>>>>>>>> of glycine is a description of greenness. So, given you were in such a >>>>>>>>> simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the >>>>>>>>> subjective and the objective descriptions? Then, once you can understand >>>>>>>>> how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine = >>>>>>>>> greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is >>>>>>>>> redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine >>>>>>>>> for the other) and so on. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Even in a world with simple conscious states I think we could find >>>>>>>> reasons to doubt mind-brain identity theories. If we encountered space >>>>>>>> aliens or robots with different neurochemistry that behaved or claimed to >>>>>>>> be conscious, for instance. This is in my view, the main appeal of >>>>>>>> functionalism. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Then once you understand the important principle of how the >>>>>>>>> objective and subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about >>>>>>>>> more complex theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more >>>>>>>>> complex world. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Could you explain your view of how the subjective and objective are >>>>>>>> connected? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality >>>>>>>>>>> and knowledge of reality >>>>>>>>>>> " >>>>>>>>>>> chapter of our video. >>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your >>>>>>>>>> theory say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the >>>>>>>>>> quark-lepton level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, >>>>>>>>>> glutamate particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie >>>>>>>>>> world, with non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia >>>>>>>>>> and the mysterious nature of the redness of red? >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Your terminology is all so vague. There are thousands of >>>>>>>>> different ways all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles >>>>>>>>> knowing which of these thousands I should be thinking you mean. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> What I mean to ask is: imagine a vast computer simulation that >>>>>>>> simulated the entire observable universes down to the detail if the >>>>>>>> smallest fundamental particles and field theories. Would the simulated >>>>>>>> humans in the simulated Earth in the simulated Milly Way be conscious? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Redness can be represented and simulated by most anything. It can >>>>>>>>> be represented by greenness, or it can be represented by +5 volts on a line >>>>>>>>> (as we indicated in the video) or anything else. The only important thing >>>>>>>>> to realize is that anything that is NOT redness, which is representing >>>>>>>>> redness, needs a dictionary to know what that thing is representing. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I don't see that dictionaries offer anything about the experience >>>>>>>> of red. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> While redness, itself, is simply a physical fact about the quality >>>>>>>>> of you knowledge of red things, no dictionary required. The prediction is >>>>>>>>> that no functionalist will ever be able to produce a redness quality >>>>>>>>> experience with ANY function, no matter what it is, or no matter what is >>>>>>>>> running it. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> What is your rational for reaching this conclusion? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly >>>>>>>>> falsifiable function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate >>>>>>>>> falsifiable example. Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x >>>>>>>>> cubed is greenness? But of course, functionalists just always seem to give >>>>>>>>> you that blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of >>>>>>>>> them, they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction >>>>>>>>> that any particular function could in any way result in a physical redness >>>>>>>>> quality really is. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> A function whose information content is less than the information >>>>>>>> content of the conscious experience could be falsified. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Whatever function is responsible for red experience is probably not >>>>>>>> simple. Multiple layers of processing by various brain regions, involving a >>>>>>>> total of some 30% of our cortex is involved in creating our visual >>>>>>>> experience. I would think the function is vastly complex and also may >>>>>>>> involve relationships with other non visual areas of the brain. It's not >>>>>>>> clear to me you could have a red experience without considering the whole >>>>>>>> brain. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> While there are many reasons to doubt >>>>>>>>>> functionalism/computationalism, there is strong indirect observational >>>>>>>>>> evidence supporting it, which is that if we assume computationalism is >>>>>>>>>> true, we can directly explain many of the observed properties of our >>>>>>>>>> physical world. I have written about this here: >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different >>>>>>>>> ways, and I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Ask away if anything I have said us unclear. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> It'd sure be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp >>>>>>>>> in the "Theories of Cons consciousness >>>>>>>>> " >>>>>>>>> topic. Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise >>>>>>>>> statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized >>>>>>>>> with the other theories we've collected to date? >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I don't know that my view is any different from standard digital >>>>>>>> mechanism / computationalism. It's just functionalism with an assumption of >>>>>>>> finiteness and computability, which I understand is the standard >>>>>>>> computational theory of mind. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> FYI, as you can see, Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism >>>>>>>>> , >>>>>>>>> and mine is "Molecular Materialism >>>>>>>>> ". >>>>>>>>> It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional >>>>>>>>> Property Dualism >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> ? >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I'll check out these definitions and let you know. Thanks! This >>>>>>>> site is a noble effort serving and important purpose. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Jason >>>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>>>> >>>>>> -- >>>>>> Stathis Papaioannou >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>>> >>>> -- >>>> Stathis Papaioannou >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 32978 bytes Desc: not available URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Tue May 11 00:50:17 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 18:50:17 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 6:26 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 10:13, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> I didn't say anything about glutamate, just the quality of their >> knowledge. I recall asking if you agreed with the following statement from >> our video, and you said you did agree: >> >> 1. >> >> There is no interpretation of a quale, the quality of our conscious >> knowledge is just a fact. >> 2. >> >> It might be a physical fact, or spiritual fact, or functional fact, >> depending on our preferred yet to be falsified theory. But in all cases the >> quality of our knowledge remains a fact about reality. >> >> If that is a fact, over space and time, as you agreed. Then what each >> person's consciousness knowledge of the strawberry is qualitatively like is >> important, and we must be able to recognize when at least one pixel >> factually changes from one quality to the other. And we must be able to >> say the two are qualitatively different, as they are reporting. >> > > Yes, I agree that it is a fact that one person experiences (is conscious > of, has the quale of) redness and another experiences greenness. If the > qualia invert due to some change in the brain, then the subject may report > that they have inverted, or at least that something looks a bit different. > Even if the subject does not report a difference, we might be able to > observe a difference by subjection him to colour testing. But if the > subject notices no difference despite going through extensive testing, and > we can observe no difference with the testing either, then it dies not make > sense to say that the qualia have changed. Do you agree with that? > Yes, and let's get rid of this "looks a *BIT* different" stuff. Let's just keep things simple so we don't get distracted with things that don't matter. The pixel either has a redness quality, ,or a greenness quality. If it is a fact that the quality of the knowledge changes, or if the quality doesn't change, over space and time, the person both must be aware of those facts, and they must be able to report those facts of the matter. In other words, the quality of the person's experience of that pixel is dependent on it's particular colourness facts, consistently over space and time, and they will know if they do or don't change, over space and time. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 11 01:00:14 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 11:00:14 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 10:52, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 6:26 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 10:13, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> I didn't say anything about glutamate, just the quality of their >>> knowledge. I recall asking if you agreed with the following statement from >>> our video, and you said you did agree: >>> >>> 1. >>> >>> There is no interpretation of a quale, the quality of our conscious >>> knowledge is just a fact. >>> 2. >>> >>> It might be a physical fact, or spiritual fact, or functional fact, >>> depending on our preferred yet to be falsified theory. But in all cases the >>> quality of our knowledge remains a fact about reality. >>> >>> If that is a fact, over space and time, as you agreed. Then what each >>> person's consciousness knowledge of the strawberry is qualitatively like is >>> important, and we must be able to recognize when at least one pixel >>> factually changes from one quality to the other. And we must be able to >>> say the two are qualitatively different, as they are reporting. >>> >> >> Yes, I agree that it is a fact that one person experiences (is conscious >> of, has the quale of) redness and another experiences greenness. If the >> qualia invert due to some change in the brain, then the subject may report >> that they have inverted, or at least that something looks a bit different. >> Even if the subject does not report a difference, we might be able to >> observe a difference by subjection him to colour testing. But if the >> subject notices no difference despite going through extensive testing, and >> we can observe no difference with the testing either, then it dies not make >> sense to say that the qualia have changed. Do you agree with that? >> > > Yes, and let's get rid of this "looks a *BIT* different" stuff. Let's > just keep things simple so we don't get distracted with things that don't > matter. The pixel either has a redness quality, ,or a greenness quality. > If it is a fact that the quality of the knowledge changes, or if the > quality doesn't change, over space and time, the person both must be aware > of those facts, and they must be able to report those facts of the matter. > In other words, the quality of the person's experience of that pixel is > dependent on it's particular colourness facts, consistently over space and > time, and they will know if they do or don't change, over space and time. > Yes, so if we make some physical change in the brain and the subject does not notice any difference at all, then that physical change in the brain has not altered the qualia. The other possibility is that it has altered the qualia, the subject notices, but is somehow forced to say that there is no difference; but that seems absurd. Even more absurd is to say that the qualia have changed but the subject does not notice, because that would render the idea of qualia meaningless. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Tue May 11 01:08:28 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 19:08:28 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Yes, but again, let's throw out the irrelevant complexity about what the person is reporting, whether he is reporting it mistakenly, being forced or whatever. Let's just focus on the facts of the matter of the quality of the experience. it is ether a fact that the experience is redness, or the experiences is greenness. The facts of the matter are dependent on the quality of the substrate which the subject is experiencing, as knowledge of the strawberry. Everything we care about is simply the quality of the experience, which must remain factually consistent, over space and time. If the quality of the substrate of the experience changes, this must be notice. If not, not noticed, either of which the subject must be aware. On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 7:01 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 10:52, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 6:26 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 10:13, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> I didn't say anything about glutamate, just the quality of their >>>> knowledge. I recall asking if you agreed with the following statement from >>>> our video, and you said you did agree: >>>> >>>> 1. >>>> >>>> There is no interpretation of a quale, the quality of our >>>> conscious knowledge is just a fact. >>>> 2. >>>> >>>> It might be a physical fact, or spiritual fact, or functional fact, >>>> depending on our preferred yet to be falsified theory. But in all cases the >>>> quality of our knowledge remains a fact about reality. >>>> >>>> If that is a fact, over space and time, as you agreed. Then what each >>>> person's consciousness knowledge of the strawberry is qualitatively like is >>>> important, and we must be able to recognize when at least one pixel >>>> factually changes from one quality to the other. And we must be able to >>>> say the two are qualitatively different, as they are reporting. >>>> >>> >>> Yes, I agree that it is a fact that one person experiences (is conscious >>> of, has the quale of) redness and another experiences greenness. If the >>> qualia invert due to some change in the brain, then the subject may report >>> that they have inverted, or at least that something looks a bit different. >>> Even if the subject does not report a difference, we might be able to >>> observe a difference by subjection him to colour testing. But if the >>> subject notices no difference despite going through extensive testing, and >>> we can observe no difference with the testing either, then it dies not make >>> sense to say that the qualia have changed. Do you agree with that? >>> >> >> Yes, and let's get rid of this "looks a *BIT* different" stuff. Let's >> just keep things simple so we don't get distracted with things that don't >> matter. The pixel either has a redness quality, ,or a greenness quality. >> If it is a fact that the quality of the knowledge changes, or if the >> quality doesn't change, over space and time, the person both must be aware >> of those facts, and they must be able to report those facts of the matter. >> In other words, the quality of the person's experience of that pixel is >> dependent on it's particular colourness facts, consistently over space and >> time, and they will know if they do or don't change, over space and time. >> > > Yes, so if we make some physical change in the brain and the subject does > not notice any difference at all, then that physical change in the brain > has not altered the qualia. The other possibility is that it has altered > the qualia, the subject notices, but is somehow forced to say that there is > no difference; but that seems absurd. Even more absurd is to say that the > qualia have changed but the subject does not notice, because that would > render the idea of qualia meaningless. > >> -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 11 01:16:43 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 11:16:43 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 11:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Yes, but again, let's throw out the irrelevant complexity about what the > person is reporting, whether he is reporting it mistakenly, being forced or > whatever. Let's just focus on the facts of the matter of the quality of > the experience. it is ether a fact that the experience is redness, or the > experiences is greenness. The facts of the matter are dependent on the > quality of the substrate which the subject is experiencing, as knowledge of > the strawberry. Everything we care about is simply the quality of the > experience, which must remain factually consistent, over space and time. > If the quality of the substrate of the experience changes, this must be > notice. If not, not noticed, either of which the subject must be aware. > Yes, that?s consistent with everything I have ever said, except for the part about ?the quality of the substrate which the subject is experiencing?, because I think it is possible for the substrate to change but the experience to remain the same. On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 7:01 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 10:52, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 6:26 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 10:13, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I didn't say anything about glutamate, just the quality of their >>>>> knowledge. I recall asking if you agreed with the following statement from >>>>> our video, and you said you did agree: >>>>> >>>>> 1. >>>>> >>>>> There is no interpretation of a quale, the quality of our >>>>> conscious knowledge is just a fact. >>>>> 2. >>>>> >>>>> It might be a physical fact, or spiritual fact, or functional >>>>> fact, depending on our preferred yet to be falsified theory. But in all >>>>> cases the quality of our knowledge remains a fact about reality. >>>>> >>>>> If that is a fact, over space and time, as you agreed. Then what each >>>>> person's consciousness knowledge of the strawberry is qualitatively like is >>>>> important, and we must be able to recognize when at least one pixel >>>>> factually changes from one quality to the other. And we must be able to >>>>> say the two are qualitatively different, as they are reporting. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Yes, I agree that it is a fact that one person experiences (is >>>> conscious of, has the quale of) redness and another experiences greenness. >>>> If the qualia invert due to some change in the brain, then the subject may >>>> report that they have inverted, or at least that something looks a bit >>>> different. Even if the subject does not report a difference, we might be >>>> able to observe a difference by subjection him to colour testing. But if >>>> the subject notices no difference despite going through extensive testing, >>>> and we can observe no difference with the testing either, then it dies not >>>> make sense to say that the qualia have changed. Do you agree with that? >>>> >>> >>> Yes, and let's get rid of this "looks a *BIT* different" stuff. Let's >>> just keep things simple so we don't get distracted with things that don't >>> matter. The pixel either has a redness quality, ,or a greenness quality. >>> If it is a fact that the quality of the knowledge changes, or if the >>> quality doesn't change, over space and time, the person both must be aware >>> of those facts, and they must be able to report those facts of the matter. >>> In other words, the quality of the person's experience of that pixel is >>> dependent on it's particular colourness facts, consistently over space and >>> time, and they will know if they do or don't change, over space and time. >>> >> >> Yes, so if we make some physical change in the brain and the subject does >> not notice any difference at all, then that physical change in the brain >> has not altered the qualia. The other possibility is that it has altered >> the qualia, the subject notices, but is somehow forced to say that there is >> no difference; but that seems absurd. Even more absurd is to say that the >> qualia have changed but the subject does not notice, because that would >> render the idea of qualia meaningless. >> >>> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue May 11 15:52:51 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 10:52:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [Extropolis] Stanford link by Dan In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Anyone interested in word origins, as I am, and often goes to https://www.etymonline.com/, and looks at the changes in meaning over the centuries, knows that if you know Latin and Greek prefixes and suffixes (thousands of them) you often still can't figure a word out as to current meaning. Very often the word has morphed into something far from the original meaning. Words are slippery little devils, like the snails in Pretty Woman. You can tell somebody exactly what something means - now. Next year? Maybe. John I don't get 'a little inaccuracy'. bill w On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 10:44 AM John Clark wrote: > On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 3:51 PM William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > > > That sort of article is what just about halted my investigations into >> philosophy. Unnecessarily verbose (to the point of logorrhea (a better >> term than diarrhea of the mouth/brain) ), picky about definitions and yet >> often vague etc etc. >> > > A little inaccuracy saves tons of explanations. Before you tell me exactly > what something always means first tell me approximately what it usually > means. > > John K Clark > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "extropolis" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv3AcjxQG0yFaWPm0KceFZPOR0rEpfsDT9-1pR%2BsEKsKew%40mail.gmail.com > > . > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue May 11 16:02:18 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 11:02:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] philosophy copied from Quora Message-ID: Before him (Wittgenstein), analytic philosophy was still in its optimistic positivist phase. Analytic philosophers still really believed they could find, for example, a theory of truth, be it correspondence or coherence or whatever. Russell and Whitehead still thought that it would be possible to reduce mathematics to logic and put an end to foundational work on that front. And Wittgenstein himself thought that, with the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he had finally answered whatever philosophical problems there were to be answered. His later work ? referred to as ?Late Wittgenstein?, as if he were a different person then ? reverses all that. If you agree with the late Wittgenstein, you assert that there simply are no philosophical problems. It was all a waste of time and a confusion of language from the beginning. I am beginning to like Wittgenstein. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natashavita-more.com Tue May 11 22:21:17 2021 From: natasha at natashavita-more.com (Natasha natashavita-more.com) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 22:21:17 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Fw: H+ Academy This Sunday! In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: Please remember to reserve your spot! H+ Academy Online Tickets, Sun, May 16, 2021 at 10:00 AM | Eventbrite Participants: featuring author Max Borders and philosopher Max More. Members' Workshops: * Room #1. Natasha Vita-More "Changing What Needs To Change". * Room #2. Jose Cordeiro "Futurist Economics". * Room #3. Didier "Viridian Economics". -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natashavita-more.com Tue May 11 22:14:23 2021 From: natasha at natashavita-more.com (Natasha natashavita-more.com) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 22:14:23 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Fw: H+ Academy This Sunday! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Please remember to reserve your spot! H+ Academy Online Tickets, Sun, May 16, 2021 at 10:00 AM | Eventbrite Participants: featuring author Max Borders and philosopher Max More. [cid:bbfe8e95-15a6-41ac-8961-b977e73383e5] Members' Workshops: * Room #1. Natasha Vita-More "Changing What Needs To Change". * Room #2. Jose Cordeiro "Futurist Economics". * Room #3. Didier "Viridian Economics". -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Roundtable Borders_More_5_21.png Type: image/png Size: 262296 bytes Desc: Roundtable Borders_More_5_21.png URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue May 11 23:17:09 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 18:17:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] pop psychology Message-ID: https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/is-pop-psychology-bad Classification of psych works, mostly of best sellers meant for a wide audience but varying widely in research support. A quick read. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu May 13 17:58:11 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 13 May 2021 12:58:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] book: Entangled Life Message-ID: This book on fungi goes straight into the top ten books of any kind that I have read in my life. And it's a first book! What medical marvels are under our feet? Millions of species largely unknown. Too many things to include. Just get the book. One teaser: DARPA has given a company a grant to develop mycelial barracks which will decompose when unneeded OK, one more for Spike: Adding 1% extract of two species added to bees' sugar water reduced deformed wing virus 80 fold; another fungus reduced levels of Lake sinai virus nearly 90 fold; another fungus reduced it 45K fold The antiviral possibilities for bees and us are enormous. Lamps, furniture from Evocative (400 tons a year), packaging materials replacing plastics, fungi to eat plastics, kits to make snowboards and furniture, fungi that live on radiation (first thing to come to life in Chernobyl), and many many more. Just stunning. How smart? A fungus encountered a bead of glyphosate. It produced enzyme after enzyme for a week until it hit on one that decomposed the glyphosate. Can live happily on used baby diapers and cigarette butts. Most companies use vegetative waste. Just get the damned book! bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Fri May 14 00:36:32 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Thu, 13 May 2021 17:36:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20210513173632.Horde.SgZV3gIYl1p2N068mHty--h@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting BillK: > That's one of the big questions generated by the Fermi Paradox silence. > Is the Great Filter behind us or still waiting to hit us in the future? > The rarity of life developing could be the big early Filter. > Intelligent life destroying itself because the Evolution necessary for > development leads to destruction could be the late Filter. > An alternative hypothesis would be that we live in a galactic Goldilocks zone and that our nearest stellar neighbors are the ones most likely to harbor life. The Bayesian in me wonders if the SETI detection of a radio signal from Proxima Centauri, a mere 4 LY away from earth, and the sudden seriousness of the government and the military about UAP and public disclosure of previously classified video. https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep29692?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents https://www.seti.org/signal-proxima-centauri https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a35904670/pentagon-ufo-reports-objects-breaking-sound-barrier-without-sonic-boom/ I mean taken separately, they are easy to dismiss but taken together having occurred within a few months of eac other? Inquiring minds want to know what you think appropriate priors would be for this application of Bayes law? Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 14 10:05:24 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 14 May 2021 11:05:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: <20210513173632.Horde.SgZV3gIYl1p2N068mHty--h@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20210513173632.Horde.SgZV3gIYl1p2N068mHty--h@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 14 May 2021 at 01:40, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat wrote: > > An alternative hypothesis would be that we live in a galactic > Goldilocks zone and that our nearest stellar neighbors are the ones > most likely to harbor life. > > The Bayesian in me wonders if the SETI detection of a radio signal > from Proxima Centauri, a mere 4 LY away from earth, and the sudden > seriousness of the government and the military about UAP and public > disclosure of previously classified video. > > https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep29692?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents > https://www.seti.org/signal-proxima-centauri > https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a35904670/pentagon-ufo-reports-objects-breaking-sound-barrier-without-sonic-boom/ > > I mean taken separately, they are easy to dismiss but taken together > having occurred within a few months of each other? Inquiring minds want > to know what you think appropriate priors would be for this > application of Bayes law? > > Stuart LaForge > _______________________________________________ Sorry, the odds are very much against this. Proxima Centauri environment appears to be almost impossible for life to survive. Breakthrough now think the signal was interference. Paper to be published soon. Quote: Worden: The key thing for us is that we have gone through the "what if" ? what if it's this, what if it's that? What are the sources of interference? So we're just about completed with that. An internal review team is looking at our papers, one on the approach we've taken, and the other is on the actual data collected. Then we'll submit them to a journal. But we're virtually certain that it was interference. ------------------------ UFO speculation tends to increase at times of political / psychological stress. It is useful for the government to distract the public. Since the mobile phone appeared and everyone now has an instant camera available it is surprising that there has been a huge reduction in general public UFO sightings. BillK From tara at taramayastales.com Fri May 14 17:44:35 2021 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Fri, 14 May 2021 10:44:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] book: Entangled Life In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I read this book, Entangled Lives, while doing research for a science fiction series set in the far future. Most people could enjoy it quite aside from such a goal, however! It's a great read. Tara Maya > On May 13, 2021, at 10:58 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > This book on fungi goes straight into the top ten books of any kind that I have read in my life. And it's a first book! > > What medical marvels are under our feet? Millions of species largely unknown. > > Too many things to include. Just get the book. > > One teaser: DARPA has given a company a grant to develop mycelial barracks which will decompose when unneeded OK, one more for Spike: > > Adding 1% extract of two species added to bees' sugar water reduced deformed wing virus 80 fold; another fungus reduced levels of Lake sinai virus nearly 90 fold; another fungus reduced it 45K fold The antiviral possibilities for bees and us are enormous. > > Lamps, furniture from Evocative (400 tons a year), packaging materials replacing plastics, fungi to eat plastics, kits to make snowboards and furniture, fungi that live on radiation (first thing to come to life in Chernobyl), and many many more. Just stunning. > > How smart? A fungus encountered a bead of glyphosate. It produced enzyme after enzyme for a week until it hit on one that decomposed the glyphosate. Can live happily on used baby diapers and cigarette butts. Most companies use vegetative waste. > > Just get the damned book! bill w > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 14 18:50:16 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 14 May 2021 13:50:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] book: Entangled Life In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: So, Tara and others, why don't all of us share great reads with the groups? Fiction or nonfiction? That's what I spend most of my day doing - reading and trying to find new books. bill w On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 12:48 PM Tara Maya via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I read this book, Entangled Lives, while doing research for a science > fiction series set in the far future. Most people could enjoy it quite > aside from such a goal, however! It's a great read. > > Tara Maya > > On May 13, 2021, at 10:58 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > This book on fungi goes straight into the top ten books of any kind that I > have read in my life. And it's a first book! > > What medical marvels are under our feet? Millions of species largely > unknown. > > Too many things to include. Just get the book. > > One teaser: DARPA has given a company a grant to develop mycelial > barracks which will decompose when unneeded OK, one more for Spike: > > Adding 1% extract of two species added to bees' sugar water reduced > deformed wing virus 80 fold; another fungus reduced levels of Lake sinai > virus nearly 90 fold; another fungus reduced it 45K fold The antiviral > possibilities for bees and us are enormous. > > Lamps, furniture from Evocative (400 tons a year), packaging materials > replacing plastics, fungi to eat plastics, kits to make snowboards and > furniture, fungi that live on radiation (first thing to come to life in > Chernobyl), and many many more. Just stunning. > > How smart? A fungus encountered a bead of glyphosate. It produced enzyme > after enzyme for a week until it hit on one that decomposed the > glyphosate. Can live happily on used baby diapers and cigarette butts. > Most companies use vegetative waste. > > Just get the damned book! bill w > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri May 14 19:47:08 2021 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 14 May 2021 15:47:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] book: Entangled Life In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I haven't read mine yet, but I've heard good things about _Honeybee Democracy_. -Dave On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 2:54 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > So, Tara and others, why don't all of us share great reads with the > groups? Fiction or nonfiction? That's what I spend most of my day doing - > reading and trying to find new books. bill w > > On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 12:48 PM Tara Maya via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> I read this book, Entangled Lives, while doing research for a science >> fiction series set in the far future. Most people could enjoy it quite >> aside from such a goal, however! It's a great read. >> >> Tara Maya >> >> On May 13, 2021, at 10:58 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> This book on fungi goes straight into the top ten books of any kind that >> I have read in my life. And it's a first book! >> >> What medical marvels are under our feet? Millions of species largely >> unknown. >> >> Too many things to include. Just get the book. >> >> One teaser: DARPA has given a company a grant to develop mycelial >> barracks which will decompose when unneeded OK, one more for Spike: >> >> Adding 1% extract of two species added to bees' sugar water reduced >> deformed wing virus 80 fold; another fungus reduced levels of Lake sinai >> virus nearly 90 fold; another fungus reduced it 45K fold The antiviral >> possibilities for bees and us are enormous. >> >> Lamps, furniture from Evocative (400 tons a year), packaging materials >> replacing plastics, fungi to eat plastics, kits to make snowboards and >> furniture, fungi that live on radiation (first thing to come to life in >> Chernobyl), and many many more. Just stunning. >> >> How smart? A fungus encountered a bead of glyphosate. It produced >> enzyme after enzyme for a week until it hit on one that decomposed the >> glyphosate. Can live happily on used baby diapers and cigarette butts. >> Most companies use vegetative waste. >> >> Just get the damned book! bill w >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sat May 15 06:40:32 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 14 May 2021 23:40:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] China's rover touches down on Red Planet Message-ID: https://phys.org/news/2021-05-nihao-mars-china-zhurong-rover.html Another rover on Mars! Hoping they share their data. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Sat May 15 11:21:00 2021 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Sat, 15 May 2021 07:21:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] China's rover touches down on Red Planet In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Battle Bots on Mars! On Sat, May 15, 2021, 2:44 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > https://phys.org/news/2021-05-nihao-mars-china-zhurong-rover.html > > Another rover on Mars! Hoping they share their data. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sat May 15 17:28:52 2021 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 15 May 2021 19:28:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Futurist spaceflight meditations: Book draft for early readers Message-ID: Futurist spaceflight meditations: Book draft for early readers I have completed a first draft of my new book "Futurist spaceflight meditations" (to be published in July 2021). I'll now invite a group of early readers to read the book draft and comment... https://turingchurch.net/futurist-spaceflight-meditations-book-draft-for-early-readers-df4c66ae4698 From giulio at gmail.com Sun May 16 09:13:13 2021 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 16 May 2021 11:13:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Futurist spaceflight meditations: Book draft for early readers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: To clarify: The link I sent does not include a link to the book draft itself, which I don?t want to make publicly available. Please email me if you want to read the book draft and comment, and thanks to those who have done so already. On 2021. May 15., Sat at 19:28, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Futurist spaceflight meditations: Book draft for early readers > > I have completed a first draft of my new book "Futurist spaceflight > meditations" (to be published in July 2021). I'll now invite a group > of early readers to read the book draft and comment... > > > https://turingchurch.net/futurist-spaceflight-meditations-book-draft-for-early-readers-df4c66ae4698 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Mon May 17 16:06:08 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 10:06:08 -0600 Subject: [ExI] New simulation and new god argument chapter for our video. Message-ID: Fellow Transhumanists, The Global Center for Religious Research is interested in presenting our video in an upcoming conference on the simulation hypothesis. They?ve asked that we add a chapter covering how the emerging consensus Representational Qualia Theory relates to the simulation argument , and also, the new god argument . We have now completed the narration for this ?Implications for the ?Simulation Hypothesis?? chapter, starting on page 47 of our working draft of the video narration google doc . If anyone is interested in helping improve the narration for this chapter in the next day or so, before we put it to video, that would be much appreciated. Upward. Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Mon May 17 21:20:01 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 15:20:01 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 7:18 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 11:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> Yes, but again, let's throw out the irrelevant complexity about what the >> person is reporting, whether he is reporting it mistakenly, being forced or >> whatever. Let's just focus on the facts of the matter of the quality of >> the experience. It is ether a fact that the experience is redness, or the >> experiences is greenness. The facts of the matter are dependent on the >> quality of the substrate which the subject is experiencing, as knowledge of >> the strawberry. Everything we care about is simply the quality of the >> experience, which must remain factually consistent, over space and time. >> If the quality of the substrate of the experience changes, this must be >> notice. If not, not noticed, either of which the subject must be aware. >> > > Yes, that?s consistent with everything I have ever said, except for the > part about ?the quality of the substrate which the subject is > experiencing?, because I think it is possible for the substrate to change > but the experience to remain the same. > No, No. Your miss interpreting my words, into you incorrect interpretation of what I'm trying to say. I'm refiring to the quality of the knowledge, that must not change, this quality is the substrate, representing our knowledge, or it is the quality of the substrate, out of which our conscious experience is composed. Redness quality of experience must always be the same redness, throughout space and time, and greenness must be different, again throughout space and time. The fact that you represent red things with knowledge that has a redness quality is a fact about reality. It is the quality of this knowledge that is the substrate to which I am referring. What you consciousness is like, is dependent on the quality of that substrate, representing your knowledge. If it was red/green inverted, you could still behave the same, but it remains a fact that since the quality of the substrate of your knowledge change, you consciousness would be different. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 17 22:14:29 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 18 May 2021 08:14:29 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 07:22, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 7:18 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 11:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> Yes, but again, let's throw out the irrelevant complexity about what the >>> person is reporting, whether he is reporting it mistakenly, being forced or >>> whatever. Let's just focus on the facts of the matter of the quality of >>> the experience. It is ether a fact that the experience is redness, or the >>> experiences is greenness. The facts of the matter are dependent on the >>> quality of the substrate which the subject is experiencing, as knowledge of >>> the strawberry. Everything we care about is simply the quality of the >>> experience, which must remain factually consistent, over space and time. >>> If the quality of the substrate of the experience changes, this must be >>> notice. If not, not noticed, either of which the subject must be aware. >>> >> >> Yes, that?s consistent with everything I have ever said, except for the >> part about ?the quality of the substrate which the subject is >> experiencing?, because I think it is possible for the substrate to change >> but the experience to remain the same. >> > > No, No. Your miss interpreting my words, into you incorrect > interpretation of what I'm trying to say. I'm refiring to the quality of > the knowledge, that must not change, this quality is the substrate, > representing our knowledge, or it is the quality of the substrate, out of > which our conscious experience is composed. Redness quality of experience > must always be the same redness, throughout space and time, and greenness > must be different, again throughout space and time. The fact that you > represent red things with knowledge that has a redness quality is a fact > about reality. It is the quality of this knowledge that is the substrate > to which I am referring. What you consciousness is like, is dependent on > the quality of that substrate, representing your knowledge. If it was > red/green inverted, you could still behave the same, but it remains a fact > that since the quality of the substrate of your knowledge change, you > consciousness would be different. > If the quality of your experience changed through red-green inversion, then your behaviour would change: you would say ?colours look different to me?, which is a change in behaviour. If your behaviour did not change, you would say ?colours look the same to me?. So, assuming you are alert and cooperative, if the quality of your experience changed but your behaviour did not change, that would mean that you did not notice the change in the quality of your experience, because either the change was too small to notice or there was no change. So the rule is: no change in behaviour, no change in the quality of the experience. And THIS is why qualia cannot be substrate dependent! > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Mon May 17 22:27:57 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 16:27:57 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Stathis, This is the problem, you are focusing on everything unrelated to the quality of the experience, like what the brain is reporting, and a gazillion other external behavioral possibilities, causing you to completely miss what I'm trying to talk abou8t. I'm not talking about any of that stuff. We are just talking about the fact of the matter of the quality of the experience. Either it is the same redness, throughout space and time, or it is different, like greenness. A simple fact about reality. We could wire up whether the user lies about what he is experiencing, or not, none of which is relevant to the redness quality of the knowledge, you only focus on all that stuff which doesn't matter. This quality can be considered a substrate quality of conscious knowledge. And if that quality changes, it is simply a fact about reality that the redness quality of that knowledge, of which consciousness is composed, has changed. The system must be able to be aware of these qualities, and it must be able to report if they change, and it is these qualities that I'm talking about, and calling a qualitative substrate. I'm guessing to you, the redness quality could be produced in any physical substrate independent way, but the fact of the matter still remains, even in that case, that redness will always be the same redness quality, through out space and time. AND the system must be able to detect any change in the quality of this conscious knowledge substrate. If redness changes to anything else, the system must be aware of this change (and if you insist, it must be able to report such changes, but ;this fact is just destructing from what is important, the quality of the substrate representing conscious knowledge) On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 4:15 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 07:22, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 7:18 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 11:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Yes, but again, let's throw out the irrelevant complexity about what >>>> the person is reporting, whether he is reporting it mistakenly, being >>>> forced or whatever. Let's just focus on the facts of the matter of the >>>> quality of the experience. It is ether a fact that the experience is >>>> redness, or the experiences is greenness. The facts of the matter are >>>> dependent on the quality of the substrate which the subject is >>>> experiencing, as knowledge of the strawberry. Everything we care about is >>>> simply the quality of the experience, which must remain factually >>>> consistent, over space and time. If the quality of the substrate of the >>>> experience changes, this must be notice. If not, not noticed, either of >>>> which the subject must be aware. >>>> >>> >>> Yes, that?s consistent with everything I have ever said, except for the >>> part about ?the quality of the substrate which the subject is >>> experiencing?, because I think it is possible for the substrate to change >>> but the experience to remain the same. >>> >> >> No, No. Your miss interpreting my words, into you incorrect >> interpretation of what I'm trying to say. I'm refiring to the quality of >> the knowledge, that must not change, this quality is the substrate, >> representing our knowledge, or it is the quality of the substrate, out of >> which our conscious experience is composed. Redness quality of experience >> must always be the same redness, throughout space and time, and greenness >> must be different, again throughout space and time. The fact that you >> represent red things with knowledge that has a redness quality is a fact >> about reality. It is the quality of this knowledge that is the substrate >> to which I am referring. What you consciousness is like, is dependent on >> the quality of that substrate, representing your knowledge. If it was >> red/green inverted, you could still behave the same, but it remains a fact >> that since the quality of the substrate of your knowledge change, you >> consciousness would be different. >> > > If the quality of your experience changed through red-green inversion, > then your behaviour would change: you would say ?colours look different to > me?, which is a change in behaviour. If your behaviour did not change, you > would say ?colours look the same to me?. So, assuming you are alert and > cooperative, if the quality of your experience changed but your behaviour > did not change, that would mean that you did not notice the change in the > quality of your experience, because either the change was too small to > notice or there was no change. So the rule is: no change in behaviour, no > change in the quality of the experience. And THIS is why qualia cannot be > substrate dependent! > >> -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon May 17 08:12:14 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 08:12:14 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The good ol' days... Message-ID: https://medium.com/the-radical-center/the-50s-fairy-tale-memes-are-for-morons-cc114bc692fb Basically, someone got tired of seeing a certain meme, so he did a little research. I was wondering how much censoring TV and films (in the US and other nations) promulgated the idyllic view (of everyone living in a single family home with a nuclear family, nice paycheck, good jobs, etc.) back in previous decades. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 17 23:06:14 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 18 May 2021 09:06:14 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 08:30, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Stathis, > This is the problem, you are focusing on everything unrelated to the > quality of the experience, like what the brain is reporting, and a > gazillion other external behavioral possibilities, causing you to > completely miss what I'm trying to talk abou8t. I'm not talking about any > of that stuff. > We are just talking about the fact of the matter of the quality of the > experience. Either it is the same redness, throughout space and time, or > it is different, like greenness. A simple fact about reality. > We could wire up whether the user lies about what he is experiencing, or > not, none of which is relevant to the redness quality of the knowledge, you > only focus on all that stuff which doesn't matter. > This quality can be considered a substrate quality of > conscious knowledge. And if that quality changes, it is simply a fact > about reality that the redness quality of that knowledge, of which > consciousness is composed, has changed. > The system must be able to be aware of these qualities, and it must be > able to report if they change, and it is these qualities that I'm talking > about, and calling a qualitative substrate. > I'm guessing to you, the redness quality could be produced in any physical > substrate independent way, but the fact of the matter still remains, even > in that case, that redness will always be the same redness quality, through > out space and time. AND the system must be able to detect any change in > the quality of this conscious knowledge substrate. If redness changes to > anything else, the system must be aware of this change (and if you insist, > it must be able to report such changes, but ;this fact is > just destructing from what is important, the quality of the substrate > representing conscious knowledge) > ?The system must be able to be aware of these qualities, and it must be able to report if they change, and it is these qualities that I'm talking about, and calling a qualitative substrate.? Yes, this is what I am saying: if there really is a change in qualia, the system must be able to notice it and report it, which is a behavioural change. If the system cannot notice and report any change, then there hasn?t been any change. If qualia were substrate dependent, it would be possible to change the qualia without the system noticing and reporting the the change in qualia, which is absurd. I think you know it is absurd; you just can?t see how substrate dependence would lead to this absurdity. On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 4:15 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 07:22, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 7:18 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 11:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> Yes, but again, let's throw out the irrelevant complexity about what >>>>> the person is reporting, whether he is reporting it mistakenly, being >>>>> forced or whatever. Let's just focus on the facts of the matter of the >>>>> quality of the experience. It is ether a fact that the experience is >>>>> redness, or the experiences is greenness. The facts of the matter are >>>>> dependent on the quality of the substrate which the subject is >>>>> experiencing, as knowledge of the strawberry. Everything we care about is >>>>> simply the quality of the experience, which must remain factually >>>>> consistent, over space and time. If the quality of the substrate of the >>>>> experience changes, this must be notice. If not, not noticed, either of >>>>> which the subject must be aware. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Yes, that?s consistent with everything I have ever said, except for the >>>> part about ?the quality of the substrate which the subject is >>>> experiencing?, because I think it is possible for the substrate to change >>>> but the experience to remain the same. >>>> >>> >>> No, No. Your miss interpreting my words, into you incorrect >>> interpretation of what I'm trying to say. I'm refiring to the quality of >>> the knowledge, that must not change, this quality is the substrate, >>> representing our knowledge, or it is the quality of the substrate, out of >>> which our conscious experience is composed. Redness quality of experience >>> must always be the same redness, throughout space and time, and greenness >>> must be different, again throughout space and time. The fact that you >>> represent red things with knowledge that has a redness quality is a fact >>> about reality. It is the quality of this knowledge that is the substrate >>> to which I am referring. What you consciousness is like, is dependent on >>> the quality of that substrate, representing your knowledge. If it was >>> red/green inverted, you could still behave the same, but it remains a fact >>> that since the quality of the substrate of your knowledge change, you >>> consciousness would be different. >>> >> >> If the quality of your experience changed through red-green inversion, >> then your behaviour would change: you would say ?colours look different to >> me?, which is a change in behaviour. If your behaviour did not change, you >> would say ?colours look the same to me?. So, assuming you are alert and >> cooperative, if the quality of your experience changed but your behaviour >> did not change, that would mean that you did not notice the change in the >> quality of your experience, because either the change was too small to >> notice or there was no change. So the rule is: no change in behaviour, no >> change in the quality of the experience. And THIS is why qualia cannot be >> substrate dependent! >> >>> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Tue May 18 00:13:42 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 18:13:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge? In-Reply-To: References: <14EB2D68-97E3-449A-8DC5-248074E743F7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Stathis Said: "If qualia were substrate dependent, it would be possible to change the qualia without the system noticing and reporting the change in qualia" No, I've pointed out the multiple errors with this, over and over again, and you just continue to ignore these blatant fallacies. First off, this is only true, if you are using a discrete neuron model, which Steven Lahar points out "is false". Second, if what you say is true, then it is not just true in the substrate dependent case. It is true in all cases. Even if you can describe some function, (a completely absurd idea in and of itself) qualia can't be dependent on that EITHER. It can't be dependent on anything. No matter what you propose, I can use the same absurd argument to say it can't be dependent on that.. There must be something (functional, physical, quantum, spiritual or anything else) in the system, that is responsible for a particular redness, which must have a detectable change to something else, when the redness changes to something else. Your argument simply proves nothing, whatsoever will work, obviously proving that your assumptions are just bonkers, leading to blatant absurdities. IF you can give me an example of any objectively detectable function, quantum weirdness, or anything which enables one to objectively detect redness, and also objectively detect when that changes to greenness, for which you can't use the same neuro substitution argument to prove it can't be that, then I will abandon the materialist camp, and start supporting and fighting for functionalism with the same resolve you do. but you CANT do that. Because the argument, itself, simply proves redness can't be dependent on anything, at all. If you have a different model, which Steven Lehar describes, which he says is possible, then there is something, objectively detectable, which can correspond to redness, which will change in an objectively observable way, when it becomes greenness. On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 5:07 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 08:30, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Stathis, >> This is the problem, you are focusing on everything unrelated to the >> quality of the experience, like what the brain is reporting, and a >> gazillion other external behavioral possibilities, causing you to >> completely miss what I'm trying to talk abou8t. I'm not talking about any >> of that stuff. >> We are just talking about the fact of the matter of the quality of the >> experience. Either it is the same redness, throughout space and time, or >> it is different, like greenness. A simple fact about reality. >> We could wire up whether the user lies about what he is experiencing, or >> not, none of which is relevant to the redness quality of the knowledge, you >> only focus on all that stuff which doesn't matter. >> This quality can be considered a substrate quality of >> conscious knowledge. And if that quality changes, it is simply a fact >> about reality that the redness quality of that knowledge, of which >> consciousness is composed, has changed. >> The system must be able to be aware of these qualities, and it must be >> able to report if they change, and it is these qualities that I'm talking >> about, and calling a qualitative substrate. >> I'm guessing to you, the redness quality could be produced in any >> physical substrate independent way, but the fact of the matter still >> remains, even in that case, that redness will always be the same redness >> quality, through out space and time. AND the system must be able to detect >> any change in the quality of this conscious knowledge substrate. If >> redness changes to anything else, the system must be aware of this change >> (and if you insist, it must be able to report such changes, but ;this fact >> is just destructing from what is important, the quality of the substrate >> representing conscious knowledge) >> > > ?The system must be able to be aware of these qualities, and it must be > able to report if they change, and it is these qualities that I'm talking > about, and calling a qualitative substrate.? > > Yes, this is what I am saying: if there really is a change in qualia, the > system must be able to notice it and report it, which is a behavioural > change. If the system cannot notice and report any change, then there > hasn?t been any change. If qualia were substrate dependent, it would be > possible to change the qualia without the system noticing and reporting the > the change in qualia, which is absurd. I think you know it is absurd; you > just can?t see how substrate dependence would lead to this absurdity. > > On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 4:15 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 07:22, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 7:18 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 11:10, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < >>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Yes, but again, let's throw out the irrelevant complexity about what >>>>>> the person is reporting, whether he is reporting it mistakenly, being >>>>>> forced or whatever. Let's just focus on the facts of the matter of the >>>>>> quality of the experience. It is ether a fact that the experience is >>>>>> redness, or the experiences is greenness. The facts of the matter are >>>>>> dependent on the quality of the substrate which the subject is >>>>>> experiencing, as knowledge of the strawberry. Everything we care about is >>>>>> simply the quality of the experience, which must remain factually >>>>>> consistent, over space and time. If the quality of the substrate of the >>>>>> experience changes, this must be notice. If not, not noticed, either of >>>>>> which the subject must be aware. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Yes, that?s consistent with everything I have ever said, except for >>>>> the part about ?the quality of the substrate which the subject is >>>>> experiencing?, because I think it is possible for the substrate to change >>>>> but the experience to remain the same. >>>>> >>>> >>>> No, No. Your miss interpreting my words, into you incorrect >>>> interpretation of what I'm trying to say. I'm refiring to the quality of >>>> the knowledge, that must not change, this quality is the substrate, >>>> representing our knowledge, or it is the quality of the substrate, out of >>>> which our conscious experience is composed. Redness quality of experience >>>> must always be the same redness, throughout space and time, and greenness >>>> must be different, again throughout space and time. The fact that you >>>> represent red things with knowledge that has a redness quality is a fact >>>> about reality. It is the quality of this knowledge that is the substrate >>>> to which I am referring. What you consciousness is like, is dependent on >>>> the quality of that substrate, representing your knowledge. If it was >>>> red/green inverted, you could still behave the same, but it remains a fact >>>> that since the quality of the substrate of your knowledge change, you >>>> consciousness would be different. >>>> >>> >>> If the quality of your experience changed through red-green inversion, >>> then your behaviour would change: you would say ?colours look different to >>> me?, which is a change in behaviour. If your behaviour did not change, you >>> would say ?colours look the same to me?. So, assuming you are alert and >>> cooperative, if the quality of your experience changed but your behaviour >>> did not change, that would mean that you did not notice the change in the >>> quality of your experience, because either the change was too small to >>> notice or there was no change. So the rule is: no change in behaviour, no >>> change in the quality of the experience. And THIS is why qualia cannot be >>> substrate dependent! >>> >>>> -- >>> Stathis Papaioannou >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Tue May 18 03:20:47 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 20:20:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fermi paradox Message-ID: <20210517202047.Horde.87xYHk1xN518ufF5MUv92uD@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting BillK: > On Fri, 14 May 2021 at 01:40, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat > wrote: >> >> An alternative hypothesis would be that we live in a galactic >> Goldilocks zone and that our nearest stellar neighbors are the ones >> most likely to harbor life. >> >> The Bayesian in me wonders if the SETI detection of a radio signal >> from Proxima Centauri, a mere 4 LY away from earth, and the sudden >> seriousness of the government and the military about UAP and public >> disclosure of previously classified video. >> >> https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep29692?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents >> https://www.seti.org/signal-proxima-centauri >> https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a35904670/pentagon-ufo-reports-objects-breaking-sound-barrier-without-sonic-boom/ >> >> I mean taken separately, they are easy to dismiss but taken together >> having occurred within a few months of each other? Inquiring minds want >> to know what you think appropriate priors would be for this >> application of Bayes law? >> >> Stuart LaForge >> _______________________________________________ > > > Sorry, the odds are very much against this. > > Proxima Centauri environment appears to be almost impossible for life > to survive. > The UAP named the tic tac that has shown up on visual, FLIR, and radar in the Nimitz encounter was estimated to have pulled 10,000 g of acceleration and travelled 60 miles in a second. I can't imagine water-based biologicals withstanding those kind of forces without some crazy technology some kind of post-biological machine intelligence would certainly be more resistant to high g maneuvers. My point is that a post-biological species would be less likely to care if there were frequent solar flares or whatever around Proxima Centauri. Solar flares would probably just amount to power fluctuations in their solar panels. > Breakthrough now think the signal was interference. Paper to be > published soon. > > Quote: > Worden: The key thing for us is that we have gone through the "what > if" ? what if it's this, what if it's that? What are the sources of > interference? So we're just about completed with that. An internal > review team is looking at our papers, one on the approach we've taken, > and the other is on the actual data collected. Then we'll submit them > to a journal. But we're virtually certain that it was interference. > ------------------------ Time will tell. I just hope somebody had the sense to actually record the signal. > UFO speculation tends to increase at times of political / > psychological stress. It is useful for the government to distract the public. > Since the mobile phone appeared and everyone now has an instant > camera available it is surprising that there has been a huge > reduction in general public UFO sightings. Bill. We have stuff flying through our atmosphere and then seamlessly going underwater or into orbit at over Mach 5 without sonic booms trolling our Navy's best jet fighters. These things are showing up on radar, infra-red, and visual bandwidths. There are recordings and videos of them in multiple bandwidths. And the U.S. Navy is close to admitting that they are a genuine national security threat. https://www.google.com/search?q=uap+news&tbm=nws&source=univ&tbo=u&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2nO3oldLwAhVCip4KHcNkBsgQt8YBegQIBhAO&biw=1366&bih=663 There was a reduction all the way up until 2020, when the signal arrived. The pandemic coincided with the most UFO reports in a single year at least in the United States. The press is blaming "clear air" caused by lack of traffic and people having a lot of time alone to look up at the stars or something. https://interestingengineering.com/us-record-number-ufo-sightings-2020 So if they are not ET, then what are they? Historians from the future forbidden to interfere with the past? The simulators' mouse pointers? I do so love a good mystery! Stuart LaForge From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue May 18 06:18:03 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 18 May 2021 06:18:03 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: <20210517202047.Horde.87xYHk1xN518ufF5MUv92uD@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20210517202047.Horde.87xYHk1xN518ufF5MUv92uD@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 3:23 AM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat wrote: > [clipped stuff on the Navy sighting] That's actually one I would look closer at given evidence from different equipment. Have to look closer. The best would be several simultaneous lines of evidence -- FLIR, radar, etc. -- from different angles/locations of the same object. That would give an idea of its location and maybe velocity. > There was a reduction all the way up until 2020, when the signal > arrived. The pandemic coincided with the most UFO reports in a single > year at least in the United States. The press is blaming "clear air" > caused by lack of traffic and people having a lot of time alone to > look up at the stars or something. > > https://interestingengineering.com/us-record-number-ufo-sightings-2020 > > So if they are not ET, then what are they? Historians from the future > forbidden to interfere with the past? The simulators' mouse pointers? > I do so love a good mystery! It's a mystery but the explanation given seems quite plausible. Add to this, people having lots of free time -- and the pandemic has delivered that probably more than any other time in recent history -- who don't know much about basic stuff in the sky and it seems the surprise be if you didn't have many UAP/UFO reports. I wonder if chemtrail sightings are up too. :/ This reminds of someone on another list talking about the Missing-911 stuff. This is where people go missing and often turn up (sadly, often dead) kilometers away from where they were last spotted and how they got there is hard to pin down. The person bringing it up started with something like 'these people go missing in national parks...' and acted as if this were already a mystery! People go missing in national parks? Wow! That's a new one. In fact, if you want to get lost and I mean lost in a way you might never get found, one of the best places is a national park or other wilderness area. Already, I would just expect a high base rate. My personal experience from hiking in national parks and wilderness areas in several countries is it's very easy to get disoriented and then seriously lost before you realize you're lost. You might only be a kilometer or two from where you should be, but in the wrong valley or ridge or patch of forest. And once you're off course, you can get ever more off course and get into serious trouble without even the usual hazard of, say, falling down a ravine or whatnot. To me, it's almost like marveling that people drown in the ocean. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue May 18 17:33:51 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 18 May 2021 12:33:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [Extropolis] simplified epistemology In-Reply-To: References: <3B952F1D-A64F-4534-A0AA-D5FF1766D2F3@gmail.com> Message-ID: I forgot to send this to my other group bill w ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: William Flynn Wallace Date: Tue, May 18, 2021 at 10:44 AM Subject: Re: [Extropolis] simplified epistemology To: This Feynman story really sums up a lot for me. Why are there so many varieties and sub varieties of philosophical schools? Because, it seems, everyone has to be smarter than everyone else, especially at figuring out what someone else said. Their 'take' on concepts then can become a 'school of thought', which will initially attract followers, who then add their own takes, split off and form a new subgroup and so on. Given that there are no facts to support any of the groups, this sort of thing has and will go on forever, providing nothing of importance to society, only to their tenure hopes (which they will get because some places will publish anything, as already demonstrated by that physicist who wrote a nonsense paper and got it published.) Thought experiment: ask philosophers what Kant meant by.............Get a thousand answers, none of which totally agree with any other one. Bring Kant forward in time and ask him: he reads all the interpretations, and say "Well, some of them are nearly correct on that point, but that was what I thought when I wrote that paper, and since then I have changed and now I think................." Total value of philosophy = zero. Natural philosophy turning into science has been their only contribution to actual knowledge. bill w On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 5:45 AM John Clark wrote: > On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 5:10 PM Dan TheBookMan > wrote: > > >> >>> *In philosophy, it *[rationalism] *means someone who believe that >> physical reality is really all there is.* >> >> >> The trouble is in philosophy there's little agreement on what >> constitutes physical reality and what does not. If a car is moving at 11 >> miles an hour the car may be part of physical reality but what about the >> number 11? Is the adjective "speed " part of physical reality, what >> about "slow"? Are only nouns physically real or must we include >> adjectives and adverbs? If you ask 11 philosophers those questions >> you'll get 13 different answers. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> * > This is a case where you trimming someone else's response really >> shifts the meaning around. What I wrote was: '(Likewise, in everyday use, a >> materialist is someone who chases after wealth and values that more than >> friendships, family, etc. In philosophy, it means someone who believe[sic] >> that physical reality is really all there is. That person might be an >> ascetic in personal life and be a people person who feels their time >> volunteering to build homes for the poor is more important than having a >> big bank account.)' Now you chopped that and then added 'rationalism' in >> square brackets to explain my use of 'it.' But it should be obvious by it, >> I mean 'materialist.' :)* > > > Sorry, because the "it" in question came just after the word "philosophy" I > thought we were talking about what philosophers mean not what > non-philosophers mean in everyday life by a certain word. And "*Is > valuing wealth more than friendship or family a good idea?*" is not a > scientific question, it is a matter of taste, and there's no arguing about > matters of taste. > > * > Two further things could be said about your comment. One is that* > > >> * whatever disagreements professional philosophers have, they often still >> agree on some stuff, * > > > Philosophers may agree on some stuff but not much. I love the story > Richard Feynman tells about philosophers when he was in graduate school: > > *"In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit > with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: > It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit > for a week or two in each of the other groups.* > > *When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very > seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using > words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were > saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and > keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, > they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they > invited me to come to their seminar.* > > *They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a > week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would > give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I went to this > seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I > didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to > watch.* > > *What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, > but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is > almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter > to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words "essential > object" in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but > that I didn't understand.* > > > *After some discussion as to what "essential object" meant, the professor > leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things and drew > something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard. "Mr. > Feynman," he said, "would you say an electron is an 'essential object'?"* > *Well, now I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so I > had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to > watch. "But," I said, "I'll try to answer the professor's question if you > will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea of what > 'essential object' means.* > > > *What I had intended to do was to find out whether they thought > theoretical constructs were essential objects. The electron is a theory > that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we > can almost call it real. I wanted to make the idea of a theory clear by > analogy. In the case of the brick, my next question was going to be, "What > about the inside of the brick?" - and I would then point out that no one > has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you > only see the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple theory which > helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous. So > I began by asking, "Is a brick an essential object?"* > *Then the answers came out. One man stood up and said, "A brick as an > individual, specific brick. That is what Whitehead means by an essential > object."* > > *Another man said, "No, it isn't the individual brick that is an essential > object; it's the general character that all bricks have in common - their > 'brickiness' - that is the essential object."* > > Another guy got up and said, "No, it's not in the bricks themselves. > 'Essential object' means the idea in the mind that you get when you think > of bricks."Another guy got up, and another, and I tell you I have never > heard such ingenious different ways of looking at a brick before. And, just > like it should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete > chaos. *In all their previous discussions they hadn't even asked > themselves whether such a simple object as a brick, much less an electron, > is an "essential object*." " > > John K Clark > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "extropolis" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to extropolis+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv26c-OGp_sFGyanfG2A%3DL8y2S4o9JhjvQZqRJcw8FuX9w%40mail.gmail.com > > . > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 19 15:31:03 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 16:31:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors Message-ID: These levitating spheres may appear red, purple or green at first glance, but in actuality, all 12 orbs are the same bland shade of beige. If you see 'red' when it's not red in reality, does this mean that the red qualia is just an artefact created by the brain? If so, then every brain probably creates a slightly different 'red' qualia, sometimes even when not seeing a red object. BillK From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 19 16:05:57 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 09:05:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 8:34 AM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > If you see 'red' when it's not red in reality, does this mean that > the red qualia is just an artefact created by the brain? > Possibly. > If so, then every brain probably creates a slightly different 'red' > qualia, sometimes even when not seeing a red object. > This does not logically follow. It may be true, but not because of that cause. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 19 16:45:30 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 09:45:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 8:34 AM BillK via extropy-chat > wrote: >>If you see 'red' when it's not red in reality, does this mean that the red qualia is just an artefact created by the brain? >?Possibly. >>?If so, then every brain probably creates a slightly different 'red' qualia, sometimes even when not seeing a red object. >?This does not logically follow. It may be true, but not because of that cause? Wouldn?t it be cool to somehow create a device that could measure this? A color can?t really be doing the exact same thing in every brain, ja? Of all the qualia discussion that has gone on for decades here, none of which I understood, this discussion may have triggered a trace of insight. The same red may create slight differences in chemical responses in the brain which operate on very certainly different neural networks, to create an effect all the brains will agree is called red. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 19 16:53:34 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 09:53:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 9:48 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Wouldn?t it be cool to somehow create a device that could measure this? A > color can?t really be doing the exact same thing in every brain, ja? > Indeed, and Brent had the beginnings of the definition of an experiment that could do just that. He also said he had the money to fund such an experiment. I would be curious to know if Brent is following up offlist with the resources I pointed him to, or if he simply abandoned that effort in favor of further unproductive discussions on the meaning of "qualia" (which is one of the reasons why I suggested ceasing use of that word). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 19 17:07:32 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 10:07:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 9:48 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: Wouldn?t it be cool to somehow create a device that could measure this? A color can?t really be doing the exact same thing in every brain, ja? >? unproductive discussions on the meaning of "qualia" (which is one of the reasons why I suggested ceasing use of that word)? The concept of qualia is tricky and always has been. The terminology is going to be as tricky as the concept. Being an engineer and math guy, I like things that are stone cold objective. I like it when steel and engineering meet to create a car that wins a race, which is why I like self-driving race cars even more: it takes the subjectiveness of the human brain out of the picture. Cool! In order to give me some idea (after all this time) what is qualia (or what ARE qualia? (is one qualia a qualium?)) we need some kind of objective instrument or device which somehow measures what a brain is doing. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 19 17:25:17 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 10:25:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:09 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The concept of [CENSORED] is tricky and always has been. The terminology > is going to be as tricky as the concept. > > > > Being an engineer and math guy, I like things that are stone cold > objective. I like it when steel and engineering meet to create a car that > wins a race, which is why I like self-driving race cars even more: it takes > the subjectiveness of the human brain out of the picture. Cool! > > > > In order to give me some idea (after all this time) what is [CENSORED] (or > what ARE [CENSORED]? (is one [CENSORED] a [CENSORED] ?)) we need some kind > of objective instrument or device which somehow measures what a brain is > doing. > I have slightly edited your message to try to make my point clearer. It appears that almost all discussions of that word reduce to unproductive attempts to more precisely define that word. So...maybe it would be better to simply stop using that word, entirely. And don't try to make another shorthand word for the concept, either. Instead, say exactly what one means. It has been amply demonstrated that that word does not mean (to others) what any given person thinks it means, so this precludes using that word. It would be superior if there was a single definition of "qualia" that everyone could agree on. Literal years of discussion have demonstrated that this is difficult, maybe impossible, to achieve for that particular word. Given this status of that word, it seems better to simply stop using that word entirely, and back off to stating the definitions that one would have tried to summarize with that word. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 19 17:30:20 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 03:30:20 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 20 May 2021 at 03:09, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *?*> *On Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different > colors > > > > On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 9:48 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Wouldn?t it be cool to somehow create a device that could measure this? A > color can?t really be doing the exact same thing in every brain, ja? > > >? unproductive discussions on the meaning of "qualia" (which is one of > the reasons why I suggested ceasing use of that word)? > > > > > > The concept of qualia is tricky and always has been. The terminology is > going to be as tricky as the concept. > > > > Being an engineer and math guy, I like things that are stone cold > objective. I like it when steel and engineering meet to create a car that > wins a race, which is why I like self-driving race cars even more: it takes > the subjectiveness of the human brain out of the picture. Cool! > > > > In order to give me some idea (after all this time) what is qualia (or > what ARE qualia? (is one qualia a qualium?)) we need some kind of objective > instrument or device which somehow measures what a brain is doing. > The singular of qualia is quale. Qualia are synonymous with experiences. We can measure what a brain is doing when a human subject says ?I see a red strawberry? and we can measure what a self-driving car is doing when it says ?I see a red light? but we can?t know what they are experiencing. We can guess that if the human subject?s brain processes are similar to our own, their experiences are similar to our own, but we can?t know. Even if we could somehow connect our own brain to the human subject or the car, altering our experiences, all we would know is what the melded being experiences. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 19 18:19:52 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 11:19:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00c901d74cdb$9098f0d0$b1cad270$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:09 AM spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: The concept of [CENSORED] is tricky and always has been. The terminology is going to be as tricky as the concept? Being an engineer and math guy, I like things that are stone cold objective? spike ? >?It appears that almost all discussions of that word reduce to unproductive attempts to more precisely define that word? Adrian OK cool, I have an idea. Adrian I completely get your take on the censored term, and must agree in a sense. If one checks the archives, one will find an absence of the old spikemeister in all discussions of the matter. I am not qualiafied (heeeeheheh) to comment on the matter. When I see the censored term I immediately conclude I will not understand the discussion (and I am right on that prejudice) but perhaps if we find a way to objectivize what has always been subjective, we engineer/math guys have a fleeting chance at insight. Do let me try a thought experiment please. Imagine a shared computer account with a single password but several people briefed and authorized for entry. Let us set that imaginary password to AdminSzmW6 for the sake of argument, so when anyone is on that Admin account, we know that the person entered AdminSzmW6 do we not? No we do not, for the person could have entered AdminSzmW7{delete}6 or perhaps AdminSzmw6{deletedelete}W6 and either of those would work as well. Following that logic, there are infinitely many keystroke series that can unlock that account. By the initial assumption there is only one password, we oversimplify the model in such a way we have set infinity to a value of 1. Cool aside: there are infinitely many keystroke series that will unlock the account, but an infinitely bigger infinity keystroke series which will not. The latter infinite series is infinitely larger than the former infinite series, such that random guessing at the password results in an infinitesimal probability of accidental discovery. So in that case, infinity over infinity approaches zero. Ain?t math fun? But I digress. Perhaps none of that has anything to do with the censored word, but if so, I am tempted (and flatly refuse) to introduce a new term (as you already know I generally have the ability and eagerness to do) which would express the notion that there are infinitely many combinations of sensory signals and neural networks, all different from each other, which would result in a prole seeing red. Hey cool, were we to form a breakout group dedicated to discussing the censored term, that would be a great name: @proles_seeing_red. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 19 18:28:01 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 11:28:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <00c901d74cdb$9098f0d0$b1cad270$@rainier66.com> References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> <00c901d74cdb$9098f0d0$b1cad270$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 11:22 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Perhaps none of that has anything to do with the censored word, but if so, > I am tempted (and flatly refuse) to introduce a new term (as you already > know I generally have the ability and eagerness to do) which would express > the notion that there are infinitely many combinations of sensory signals > and neural networks, all different from each other, which would result in a > prole seeing red. > Indeed, "the experience of seeing red" and "the precise neural pathways that result in the experience of seeing red" are distinct. As I recall, the proposed experiment was to have Neuralink (or, I suggested, some research university) stimulate certain neurons in the brain and for the subject to report on their experience, so as to measure if certain neurons mapped to certain experiences such as redness (the experience of seeing red). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 19 18:36:29 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 19:36:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <00c901d74cdb$9098f0d0$b1cad270$@rainier66.com> References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> <00c901d74cdb$9098f0d0$b1cad270$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 19 May 2021 at 19:24, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Perhaps none of that has anything to do with the censored word, but if so, I am tempted (and flatly refuse) to introduce a new term (as you already know I generally have the ability and eagerness to do) which would express the notion that there are infinitely many combinations of sensory signals and neural networks, all different from each other, which would result in a prole seeing red. > > Hey cool, were we to form a breakout group dedicated to discussing the censored term, that would be a great name: @proles_seeing_red. > > spike >_______________________________________________ Also, in many cases, they may have the experience that they are seeing red, but that may not be the reality. As the original optical illusion demonstrates. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed May 19 20:04:13 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 15:04:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> <00c901d74cdb$9098f0d0$b1cad270$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 1:39 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Also, in many cases, they may have the experience that they are seeing > red, but that may not be the reality. > As the original optical illusion demonstrates. > BillK > If they report seeing red, then they are, regardless of what anyone else > sees or whether it is an illusion and so on. People's auditory > hallucinations are real to them. I had one once: shortly after Mama's > death I was in her house and heard her say 'Bill'. Raised my hairs and I > went into the room where I heard her voice. Very real to me, though > logically I realize that it was not her but some part of my brain which got > triggered for some reason. > For my part, if I never see 'redness' again in a post I will be > delighted! Can we get some closure on it? Qualia will not be a scientific > issue for some time - probably a long time. It is by definition a > subjective experience. bill w > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Thu May 20 01:28:23 2021 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 21:28:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <17DA5BCE-1592-42B4-A74E-01AB97C86810@alumni.virginia.edu> Illusions aside, I?m colorblind. What I see as red is definitely not the same as what normal color-visioned people see as red. ?So they tell me. > On May 19, 2021, at 2:37 PM, BillK via extropy-chat wrote: > > ?On Wed, 19 May 2021 at 19:24, spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >> > >> Perhaps none of that has anything to do with the censored word, but if so, I am tempted (and flatly refuse) to introduce a new term (as you already know I generally have the ability and eagerness to do) which would express the notion that there are infinitely many combinations of sensory signals and neural networks, all different from each other, which would result in a prole seeing red. >> >> Hey cool, were we to form a breakout group dedicated to discussing the censored term, that would be a great name: @proles_seeing_red. >> >> spike >> _______________________________________________ > > > Also, in many cases, they may have the experience that they are seeing > red, but that may not be the reality. > As the original optical illusion demonstrates. > > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From monteluna at protonmail.com Thu May 20 12:21:19 2021 From: monteluna at protonmail.com (JF) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 12:21:19 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Synergetics? Message-ID: Has anyone ever actually read through Fuller's Synergetics? It seems really odd to try and explain scientific phenomenon with geometric arguments. Granted I spent some time studying statistical mechanics in school, I just don't see anything interesting in this book at all that's useful for studying real complex systems. It's almost shocking how bad it is compared to any modern stat mech/complex systems book, and I'm tempted to call it pseudoscience. Does anyone actually like this book? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 20 13:26:07 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 09:26:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <00c901d74cdb$9098f0d0$b1cad270$@rainier66.com> References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> <00c901d74cdb$9098f0d0$b1cad270$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 19, 2021, 2:23 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > for the sake of argument, so when anyone is on that Admin account, we know > that the person entered AdminSzmW6 do we not? > > No we do not, for the person could have entered > > AdminSzmW7{delete}6 > I have many times considered improving "password security" by including delete/tab/arrow/etc keystrokes. > Following that logic, there are infinitely many keystroke series that can > unlock that account. By the initial assumption there is only one password, > we oversimplify the model in such a way we have set infinity to a value of > 1. > Hey now, tossing around 'infinity' in front of fellow math nerds... "dems fightin' words" > Cool aside: there are infinitely many keystroke series that will unlock > the account, but an infinitely bigger infinity keystroke series which will > not. The latter infinite series is infinitely larger than the former > infinite series, such that random guessing at the password results in an > infinitesimal probability of accidental discovery. So in that case, > infinity over infinity approaches zero. > Ain?t math fun? > You use rigorously defined Math terms in a practically undefinable context like English to create cognitive dissonance.. aka fun. > But I digress. > Yes; you should just include that tagline in your email sig. :) tbh, I've missed it. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 20 13:42:04 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 09:42:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Synergetics? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 20, 2021, 8:25 AM JF via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Has anyone ever actually read through Fuller's Synergetics? It seems > really odd to try and explain scientific phenomenon with geometric > arguments. Granted I spent some time studying statistical mechanics in > school, I just don't see anything interesting in this book at all that's > useful for studying real complex systems. It's almost shocking how bad it > is compared to any modern stat mech/complex systems book, and I'm tempted > to call it pseudoscience. > > Does anyone actually like this book? > Never heard of it. I can understand the appeal of so-called 'sacred geometry' since there can be no argument from the premise "triangles have three sides" The number of assumptions between the premise and the conclusion, however, means we have to pay careful attention to find the misstep/over-reach... and it's generally more attention than I want to devote. So I appreciate the art as such, but refuse to accept it as science. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 20 14:29:42 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 07:29:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> <00c901d74cdb$9098f0d0$b1cad270$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004501d74d84$938ef380$baacda80$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat >?Hey now, tossing around 'infinity' in front of fellow math nerds... "dems fightin' words" Ja. All infinities were just lumped together and called infinity back in the olden days. That was before we knew there are different brands of infinity, all of which are still infinite of course. We started giving them names to define what kind of infinity. I shouldn?t say ?we? but rather ?they? screwed it up with that aleph null, aleph one business. Ick! Why not stay with the semitic abjet theme, call the infinities aleph, bet, gimel and so on. I told Euler and his buddies, but did they listen? Nooooo? Hell we could be all the way up to waw by now (as if plain old aleph isn?t mind-blowing enough for ya) we could have a higher-order infinity that has a awesome sound to it: waw. But Leonard and those lads can be stubborn bastards. They think just because they discovered modern math that they know everything. >> Ain?t math fun? >?You use rigorously defined Math terms in a practically undefinable context like English to create cognitive dissonance.. aka fun? Well sure. But how do we know? everyone experiences fun the same? We need some kind of objective measure, an instrument of some kind, to verify and quantize fun, so we can write a system of differential equations and model it. Otherwise we won?t know how to program uploads to have fun. We need to know how to define fun. Sooner or later we will need to collectively figure out whatever qualia is about, or if not that particular term exactly, a concept one hell of a lot like it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Thu May 20 15:45:37 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 09:45:37 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:46 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > *On Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different > colors > > > > On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 8:34 AM BillK via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > >>If you see 'red' when it's not red in reality, does this mean that > the red qualia is just an artefact created by the brain? > > > > >?Possibly. > > > > >>?If so, then every brain probably creates a slightly different 'red' > qualia, sometimes even when not seeing a red object. > > > > >?This does not logically follow. It may be true, but not because of that > cause? > > > > Wouldn?t it be cool to somehow create a device that could measure this? A > color can?t really be doing the exact same thing in every brain, ja? > > > > Of all the qualia discussion that has gone on for decades here, none of > which I understood, this discussion may have triggered a trace of insight. > The same red may create slight differences in chemical responses in the > brain which operate on very certainly different neural networks, to create > an effect all the brains will agree is called red. > > > > spike > > Yay, Spike, You are finally getting it!! this is exactly what we have been attempting to describe. It isn't that hard as long as you distinguishing between reality and knowledge of reality . Subjectively, as Dennett points out, we can "directly apprehend" the qualities of our colored knowledge. But when we objectively observe things, from afar, through our senses, the information is necessarily abstracted away from whatever happens to be representing the colored information at any point in the causal chain that is perception. Notice that each different link in the chain representing the information,which isn't intrinsically redness, needs a custom dictionary or transducing system, to preserve the meaning to the next, different, link in the chain. If any of these transduction systems is red/green inverted, the resulting knowledge is also inverted. In other words, when we objectively perceiving things, from afar, all we get are abstract descriptions an labels of colors. and of course abstract descriptions and labels of colors tell us nothing of the actual intrinsic qualities they represent. But IF we have a dictionary (THIS is redness) which connects the subjective with the objective then it is possible to bridge the explanatory gap, with defined statements that use multiple words (red and redness) which differentiate between red and knowledge of red. And example being my redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red. [image: image.png] The only thing we need to do is connect the subjective, with the objective, with an objective definition, giving us the required dictionary. This is what Mary does, for the first time, when she learns what her objective descriptions of everything about red are describing, when she first steps out of the room and, for the first time, directly apprehends what she has been objectively observing and describing. When we directly apprehend things, we learn colored information that isn't possible to gain, only abstractly, without a dictionary. But IF you have a dictionary, and clearly defined words, it's easy. Consciousness, not a hard problem, just a color problem. We simply need to discover which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of the redness behavior we can directly apprehend. This will give us the required dictionary telling us THAT is red. All you need is a colored dictionary which tells us the true color of things, not just the color things 'seem to be". On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 11:26 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:09 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> The concept of [CENSORED] is tricky and always has been. The terminology >> is going to be as tricky as the concept. >> >> >> >> Being an engineer and math guy, I like things that are stone cold >> objective. I like it when steel and engineering meet to create a car that >> wins a race, which is why I like self-driving race cars even more: it takes >> the subjectiveness of the human brain out of the picture. Cool! >> >> >> >> In order to give me some idea (after all this time) what is [CENSORED] >> (or what ARE [CENSORED]? (is one [CENSORED] a [CENSORED] ?)) we need some >> kind of objective instrument or device which somehow measures what a brain >> is doing. >> > > I have slightly edited your message to try to make my point clearer. > > It appears that almost all discussions of that word reduce to unproductive > attempts to more precisely define that word. > > So...maybe it would be better to simply stop using that word, entirely. > And don't try to make another shorthand word for the concept, either. > > Instead, say exactly what one means. It has been amply demonstrated that > that word does not mean (to others) what any given person thinks it means, > so this precludes using that word. > > It would be superior if there was a single definition of "qualia" that > everyone could agree on. Literal years of discussion have demonstrated > that this is difficult, maybe impossible, to achieve for that particular > word. Given this status of that word, it seems better to simply stop using > that word entirely, and back off to stating the definitions that one would > have tried to summarize with that word. > Adrian, you are justified in not wanting to use the term, till it is objectively defined. And we have done exactly that in the camp where we are building and tracking consensus around the best theories defining qualia. Everyone incorrectly thinks there is no consensus, in this field, whatsoever. But in reality, everyone (even Dennett ) does agree we represent our knowledge of the world with knowledge that has colored (and other phenomenal) qualities or 'qualia'. Also, censoring words like this, and failing to use terminology that distinguishes between reality and knowledge of reality, is exactly the classic definition of being qualia blind. When you use one abstract word for all things 'red', and only ground this in light wavelengths, this is what cases all these problems around the fact that anyone and everyone could be engineered to represent colors with different qualia. All you need to do is add a simple red/green inverter in the objective detection from afar system. We do rigorously define redness, in the clear emerging consensus camp Representational Qualia Theory. And there is still some lack of consensus, for the best term to refer to effing the ineffable, so we are tracking this still lack of consensus for terminology, here . It would help us all if you would help us build consensus around the best term. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 50243 bytes Desc: not available URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Thu May 20 15:50:48 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 09:50:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Thanks for pointing this out, Adian! Yes, we have takin your advice into serious consideration, in our meetings with Steven Lehar (lead peer ranked theoretician in this field ), and others in this field, working on how to push this field forward, to finally discover which of all our descriptions of stiff in our brain is a description of redness. Thank You!! On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:55 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 9:48 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Wouldn?t it be cool to somehow create a device that could measure this? >> A color can?t really be doing the exact same thing in every brain, ja? >> > > Indeed, and Brent had the beginnings of the definition of an experiment > that could do just that. He also said he had the money to fund such an > experiment. > > I would be curious to know if Brent is following up offlist with the > resources I pointed him to, or if he simply abandoned that effort in favor > of further unproductive discussions on the meaning of "qualia" (which is > one of the reasons why I suggested ceasing use of that word). > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 20 16:21:37 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 09:21:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008501d74d94$35d92200$a18b6600$@rainier66.com> From: Brent Allsop Subject: Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:46 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: ? Of all the qualia discussion that has gone on for decades here, none of which I understood, this discussion may have triggered a trace of insight. The same red may create slight differences in chemical responses in the brain which operate on very certainly different neural networks, to create an effect all the brains will agree is called red?spike >?Yay, Spike, You are finally getting it!! this is exactly what we have been attempting to describe. It isn't that hard as long as you distinguishing between reality and knowledge of reality . Hi Brent, I do admire your tenacity pal. You know I think the world of you personally (that dinner at Extro5 was way cool, ja?) However you give me credit for understanding far too soon sir. Your encouragement is perhaps described as being prematurely yayey. I still don?t understand the concept to any depth, and admit that I will not understand it until we find a way to write equations for it. I am an equation guy, not a word guy. In any field of engineering (or any other human endevour) which lacked an equals sign, I was mostly lost and deeply distrustful of any results. I can?t help it: equations never let me down. They tell me the truth. I rely on them. In my freely-acknowledged hardcore objectivist view, any field which has no equations is not sufficiently advanced. IN any subjective area, I don?t pretend to the ability to master it, or even apprentice it. That?s why evolution has given us you. >?Subjectively, as Dennett points out, we can "directly apprehend" the qualities of our colored knowledge. But when we objectively observe things, from afar, through our senses, the information is necessarily abstracted away from whatever happens to be ? Brent I am glad you are here, me lad. We need people who get it on that topic. I am not one of them, but I admire those who are. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at zaiboc.net Thu May 20 17:25:01 2021 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 18:25:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7bdc24b3-cbc3-894e-490c-73fe2da6d67c@zaiboc.net> On 20/05/2021 14:26, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 8:34 AM BillK via extropy-chat > > wrote: > > If you see 'red' when it's not red in reality, does this mean that > the red qualia is just an artefact created by the brain? > > > Possibly Possibly? I disagree. Not 'possibly', absolutely! The red quale (along with all other qualia) /has/ to be created by the brain, what else could it be? A quale can't exist all by itself, any more than a binary digit can. I'd also take issue with the phrase "just an artefact created by the brain". 'Just'? That word implies some kind of inferior status, whereas the artefacts created by our brains are some of the (if not THE) most complex and high-level things that exist in this universe. Don't denigrate them. They are the pinnacle of existence. So far, anyway. -- Ben Zaiboc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 20 18:46:03 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 14:46:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <7bdc24b3-cbc3-894e-490c-73fe2da6d67c@zaiboc.net> References: <7bdc24b3-cbc3-894e-490c-73fe2da6d67c@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 20, 2021, 1:28 PM Ben via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > The red quale (along with all other qualia) /has/ to be created by the > brain, what else could it be? A quale can't exist all by itself, any more > than a binary digit can. > I wasn't sure how to insert binary into this conversation, so thanks for that :) I can't even see 'red' the way colornormative folks do, so imagine instead a five-quale. From what I've seen of this conversation there is some inherent fiveness that all fivey things have... which interested me in how 101 is fivey as much as 5 is fivey and so is the bit pattern for the ascii character 53 (dec) and 35 (hex) - interesting transposition confusion here: 53 (hex) is representative of S which looks so similar to 53 (dec) of 5 that I propose this example as an alternate use-case for how this conversation has to re-check grounding in details. :) Anyway, if on-off-on (101) represents fiveness in binary counting, and is mapped to a corresponding 110101 encoding of 53 (dec)... is there something about sequences ending with 101 that suggests fiveness? I feel like that's pretty absurd. I also feel like identifying 'redness' physical nature is similarly absurd, but don't have a better way to articulate it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 20 18:58:16 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 11:58:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <7bdc24b3-cbc3-894e-490c-73fe2da6d67c@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 11:49 AM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I can't even see 'red' the way colornormative folks do, so imagine instead > a five-quale. > A better analogy would be to some other sense, perhaps sound or scent. Is your "baking bread"ness the same as mine? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 20 19:17:41 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 12:17:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <7bdc24b3-cbc3-894e-490c-73fe2da6d67c@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: <002301d74dac$ce0840c0$6a18c240$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors On Thu, May 20, 2021, 1:28 PM Ben via extropy-chat > wrote: The red quale (along with all other qualia) /has/ to be created by the brain, what else could it be? A quale can't exist all by itself, any more than a binary digit can. >?I wasn't sure how to insert binary into this conversation, so thanks for that :) >?I can't even see 'red' the way colornormative folks do, so imagine instead a five-quale? >?Anyway, if on-off-on (101) represents fiveness in binary counting, and is mapped to a corresponding 110101 encoding of 53 (dec)... is there something about sequences ending with 101 that suggests fiveness? I feel like that's pretty absurd. I also feel like identifying 'redness' physical nature is similarly absurd, but don't have a better way to articulate it. Mike thanks, this is getting into the spirit of the thing. There is an inherent objectiveness to fiveness that I just lose with redness. It feels like home field advantage. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 20 19:39:49 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 15:39:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <002301d74dac$ce0840c0$6a18c240$@rainier66.com> References: <7bdc24b3-cbc3-894e-490c-73fe2da6d67c@zaiboc.net> <002301d74dac$ce0840c0$6a18c240$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:20 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > There is an inherent objectiveness to fiveness that I just lose with > redness. It feels like home field advantage. > I wanted to wait for geometry "pentagon" being an expression of fiveness until we established 'fiveness' Because now we can make a pentagon out of specially configured triangles... ;) "Isn't math fun?" - spike I also enjoyed 'inherent breadness of bread' > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 20 20:08:24 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 16:08:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <002301d74dac$ce0840c0$6a18c240$@rainier66.com> References: <7bdc24b3-cbc3-894e-490c-73fe2da6d67c@zaiboc.net> <002301d74dac$ce0840c0$6a18c240$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:20 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >?Anyway, if on-off-on (101) represents fiveness in binary counting > > Mike thanks, this is getting into the spirit of the thing. > > There is an inherent objectiveness to fiveness that I just lose with > redness. It feels like home field advantage. > I realize this may be far off red quale, but fiveness of five does seem easier for me to think about. I started thinking about a 3 qubit quantum computer seeking fiveness. Starting out [0|1][0|1][0|1]... is 10[0|1] more fivey than [0|1]01? Maybe there's a correspondence to partial redness like what I'm seeing with only 40% of the cones to detect red? That makes the tech nerd think to boost the red signal in the optic nerve (remember composite color cables from before modern hdmi everywhere?) to achieve some perception parity with non-colorblind. Then we might also experience tech-assisted synesthesia by mapping the color signals to sound. Perhaps that's really all that is happening inside the brain: redness patterns in auditory processors sound like red? I think thats the gist of the experiment? To see/hear the "same" experience from a copy/paste of sensory inputs? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Thu May 20 20:10:35 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 14:10:35 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <002a01d74dae$44c2e2f0$ce48a8d0$@rainier66.com> References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <008501d74d94$35d92200$a18b6600$@rainier66.com> <002a01d74dae$44c2e2f0$ce48a8d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Date: Thu, May 20, 2021, 1:28 PM Subject: RE: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors To: Brent Allsop Cc: Cc: Brent you should post this to ExI main list. Your patience is commendable sir. This is a good explanation. spike *From:* Brent Allsop *Sent:* Thursday, May 20, 2021 12:17 PM *To:* spike *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors Hey Spike, Equations, yes, we can do that, in a way that you can trust, and in a way will never fail you, even for hallucinations. And it should be relatively easy since the only mathematical sign we need is the "=" sign, so we can create lookup tables or dictionaries, like this dictionary from hexadecimal RGB values to English words. 0xFF0000 = Red 0x00FF00 = Green. We'll need more tables than this, so it will need to be more complex than our naive intuitive notion of what these mean. But hopefully we can take that step into a world where we distinguish between reality and knowledge of reality. Surely, you can intuitively see that even the word 'red' above, conveys no information of any intrinsic qualities, since we could define red to be anything we want it to be. In order to know what the word "red" means, we need to define something physical, and say THAT is red, with something like this: 0xFF0000 = Red = 0x00FF00 = Green = So, are you still with me, now that we have a physical definition of the word "red"? If so, next we need to define additional different turns, enabling us to distinguish between different intrinsic qualities, since if we only use one abstract word for all things red, that is qualia blind, and can't model differences between reality and knowledge of reality. So, in addition to this physical definition table: red = anything, like the red square above, which reflects or emits red light. green = anything, like the green square above, which reflects or emits green light. Can you see that the above description tells us nothing of the true quality of red? We need to define some different word like this: redness = the intrinsic quality of spike's visual knowledge of red things. greenness = the intrinsic quality of spike's visual knowledge of green things. We can make this more complex model which can now model differences in the qualities of reality and knowledge of reality with this intuitive image: Notice that in this image, the color of the real strawberry you are both looking at is represented as black, since in reality, we are like Mary , and only know how to describe the behavior of the strawberry, in that it behaves in a way that it reflects red light. In reality, knowing this fact tells us nothing of the actual quality of this light reflecting behavior we can describe. OK, the next table further defines this image with: The person on the left = Spike The person on the right = someone identical to spike, looking at the same strawberry, with one important difference. The person on the left has a singe red/green inversion, in any of the transducing mechanisms between any of the different representations of red, anywhere along the causal chain that is perception. In this case, let's say this inversion has been engineered to be immediately after the retina, line in our video, long before his knowledge is rendered into consciousness with phenomenally colored intrinsic qualities, inverted from the qualities rendered by your non inverted brain. This proves why we should represent the strawberry with black. After all, which color is the right color to attribute to the strawberry, if I, from birth, have represented red things with your greenness. The fact is, we don't yet objectively know the intrinsic quality of anything "out there", simply because the only mapping from our words, is to what color the strawberry seems to be to us. But of course, for different people, and for the same people in different contexts, what color it seems to be, or the quality of our knowledge of that stuff, can change. So, now that we have additional terms defined, like Spike's redness and greenness, we can finally bridge the explanatory gap, and eff the ineffable nature of redness, between you and your qualitative invert with: My redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red. That's a bit more complex than our intuitive qualia blind models, but not mathematically that hard, is it? Consciousness: Not a hard problem, just a color problem . On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 10:21 AM wrote: *From:* Brent Allsop *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:46 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: ? Of all the qualia discussion that has gone on for decades here, none of which I understood, this discussion may have triggered a trace of insight. The same red may create slight differences in chemical responses in the brain which operate on very certainly different neural networks, to create an effect all the brains will agree is called red?spike >?Yay, Spike, You are finally getting it!! this is exactly what we have been attempting to describe. It isn't that hard as long as you distinguishing between reality and knowledge of reality . Hi Brent, I do admire your tenacity pal. You know I think the world of you personally (that dinner at Extro5 was way cool, ja?) However you give me credit for understanding far too soon sir. Your encouragement is perhaps described as being prematurely yayey. I still don?t understand the concept to any depth, and admit that I will not understand it until we find a way to write equations for it. I am an equation guy, not a word guy. In any field of engineering (or any other human endevour) which lacked an equals sign, I was mostly lost and deeply distrustful of any results. I can?t help it: equations never let me down. They tell me the truth. I rely on them. In my freely-acknowledged hardcore objectivist view, any field which has no equations is not sufficiently advanced. IN any subjective area, I don?t pretend to the ability to master it, or even apprentice it. That?s why evolution has given us you. >?Subjectively, as Dennett points out, we can "directly apprehend" the qualities of our colored knowledge. But when we objectively observe things, from afar, through our senses, the information is necessarily abstracted away from whatever happens to be ? Brent I am glad you are here, me lad. We need people who get it on that topic. I am not one of them, but I admire those who are. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image002.png Type: image/png Size: 157 bytes Desc: not available URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Thu May 20 23:06:27 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 17:06:27 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 11:34 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Thu, 20 May 2021 at 03:09, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> *?*> *On Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat >> >> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different >> colors >> >> >> >> On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 9:48 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> Wouldn?t it be cool to somehow create a device that could measure this? >> A color can?t really be doing the exact same thing in every brain, ja? >> >> >? unproductive discussions on the meaning of "qualia" (which is one of >> the reasons why I suggested ceasing use of that word)? >> >> >> >> >> >> The concept of qualia is tricky and always has been. The terminology is >> going to be as tricky as the concept. >> >> >> >> Being an engineer and math guy, I like things that are stone cold >> objective. I like it when steel and engineering meet to create a car that >> wins a race, which is why I like self-driving race cars even more: it takes >> the subjectiveness of the human brain out of the picture. Cool! >> >> >> >> In order to give me some idea (after all this time) what is qualia (or >> what ARE qualia? (is one qualia a qualium?)) we need some kind of objective >> instrument or device which somehow measures what a brain is doing. >> > The singular of qualia is quale. Qualia are synonymous with experiences. > We can measure what a brain is doing when a human subject says ?I see a red > strawberry? and we can measure what a self-driving car is doing when it > says ?I see a red light? but we can?t know what they are experiencing. We > can guess that if the human subject?s brain processes are similar to our > own, their experiences are similar to our own,* but we can?t know. Even > if we could somehow connect our own brain to the human subject or the car, > altering our experiences, all we would know is what the melded being > experiences.* > >> -- > Stathis Papaioannou > Spike, now that you understand, maybe you can help me with all this? I can clearly see that other's of you understand. I could use some help with Stathis. Stathis, After all my attempts, I'm still clearly failing to get you to understand how wrong and misleading this kind of faithless popular consensus bleating is. Even if I try again, will you continue to completely ignore all this, and instead of trying to understand it in a non qualia blind way, and just continue to make these kinds of bleating claims? As I've pointed out, so many times, there is the 1. Strong, 2. Stronger, and 3. Strongest methods of effing the ineffable, if achieved this will falsify your bleating claims that we can't eff the ineffable. The strong method is simply having a dictionary, based on non qualia blind observed facts, connecting the subjective to the objective in a way that can't be falsified. to understand this, see my simplified description of qualia to Spike, all using only mathematical lookup tables using the "=" sign. Sure, the fact that something like glutamate = redness (or something else) could be the only thing that has a redness quality isn't absolute truth, but if it can't be falsified, and if no functionalists can ever produce a redness, ever, it will be VERY trustworthy. Beyond that, let me go into more detail about the strongest method of effing the ineffable, which, if achieved, will results in absolute necessary truth. As Steven Lehar describes, we know that there is a "diorama" world in our head, rendered by our perception systems into consciousness, composed of a substrate of phenomenal intrinsic colors like redness and greenness. This Diorama is our knowledge of the world. Half of this diorama is in our left hemisphere, and the other half, in the right hemisphere of our brain. The corpus callosum computationally binds all this stuff together into one composite qualitative experience, defined to be consciousness. The fact that this kind of effing communication happens between hemispheres, outright proves, all by itself, that your "even if we could somehow connect our own brain" to another is blatantly false. But then, you just continue to ignore such facts you don't like, and you continue to mistakenly assume I'm talking about "composite qualia" with: "*all we would know is what the melded being experiences*" while I've attempted, many times, that I'm only talking about elemental qualia, out of which composite qualia or consciousness is composed. In other words, both our left, and our right hemisphere know, absolutely, what redness and greenness are like in our other hemisphere, since the corpus callosum binds all these intrinsic qualities together in both hemispheres so both hemispheres can be directly aware of all of them at the same time, in one unified conscious experience. The prediction is, that when we come up with neural ponytails , which do the same things the corpus callosum is doing, both of our worlds will be computationally bound together into one similarly singular conscious experiences, all of it being directly apprehended by all 4 hemispheres. Our left hemisphere represents visual knowledge of our right field of vision, and the right hemisphere representing the left field of vision. When computationally bound with a neural ponytails , (even if only bound at the elemental level) we will have visual knowledge of what is behind us, bound to the knowledge of what is in front of us, resulting in a sphere of knowledge of everything around us, from the data being collected by our partner's eyes, seeing behind our head. And IF our partner is engineered to be red green inverted, strawberries in front of us will be represented with our redness, and the ones behind us will be represented with our greenness. We will then know, necessarily since we will be directly apprehending both of these facts at the same time, that our parners redness is like our greenness, both of which we call red. If this is achieved, this will simply be necessarily true, as it is already necessarily true, between both of our hemispheres. My prediction for the future about how science historians will judge these kinds of claims of "functionalists" : * "we can?t know. Even if we could somehow connect our own brain to the human subject or the car, altering our experiences, all we would know is what the melded being experiences "* These will be judged as clueless bleating of the popular masses. These functionalists who, instead of trying to understand the above, they just continue to ignore it, believing that being qualia blind is OK, and that their so called "proof" justifies them continuing to make faithless claims like this that lead everyone astray into so called "hard problem" confusion. Stathis, I fully admit that this claim can be falsified in the future. Do you have any similarly valuable falsifiable claims for the future you see, or at least something better than Chalmers' faithless claim that there will forever be "hard" (interpretation: impossible) problems with consciousness, or that your faithless claims of eternal ineffability, will always be true, prefunding to believe your qualia blind 'proof' is justified, despite the myriads of absurd conclusions that result, a few of which are described above, which I continue to attempt to point out? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 20 23:23:03 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 16:23:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002f01d74dcf$158d26a0$40a773e0$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Brent Allsop via extropy-chat >?Spike, now that you understand, maybe you can help me with all this? I can clearly see that other's of you understand. I could use some help ? Hi Brent, you give me far too much credit sir. A glimmer of understanding is all I will claim, while recognizing my particular brand of understanding may be ?mis? variety. I do hope we can find a way to model consciousness and perception. The concept is too far from my narrow field of understanding I fear. Best wishes to you on your field of study. We are wishing you the best, even as we see the concept is extremely difficult to express with our limited vocabulary. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 21 00:08:19 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 20:08:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 20, 2021, 7:10 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Strongest methods of effing the ineffable, if achieved this will falsify > your bleating claims that we can't eff the ineffable. > I will try to help: Stop using this expression. You can't "eff the ineffible." There is no verb 'to eff' Ineffible is literally defined as not possible to define or explain. Every time you use this expression, you undermine any credibility you might have had. Fwiw, refering to people's point as "bleating claim" is also likening them to mindless sheep's 'bleating' - which does not endear them to further discussion. You lose your audience by using words in weird/nonstandard ways. You lose your audience by insulting/offending them (either calling their effort 'bleating' or calling out their 'blindness' - which I know you don't intend, but also don't seem to grasp how/why my advice to you is to be more aware) I have taken shots at your repeated use of "ineffable redness of red" with 'fiveness of five' and 'breadness of bread' - I'm hopeful you take this in the spirit I meant. I really would like to believe I have some insight into how my own perception works... but I humbly admit I don't know. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Fri May 21 03:27:03 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 21:27:03 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Hi Mike, Yea, that makes a lot of sense, and I can better see why some of my tactics are mistaken. So thanks for this help, and I apologize for doing this, I will work to change. As I indicating "eff" the ineffable, in reality, is still, barely, a minority camp .with a score of 2.25, while the leading camp for 'grok ' has 2.5. I'm still not convinced that 'grok' is better the 'eff', but I will put more thought into this, especially if you actually formally support the 'grock' camp, along with that multiple other people, I will join this camp, and agree that that is a better word, for more people. So I will use that one. So thanks for the help, and everyone else, please accept my apologies for these mistakes. Brent On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 6:09 PM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Thu, May 20, 2021, 7:10 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Strongest methods of effing the ineffable, if achieved this will falsify >> your bleating claims that we can't eff the ineffable. >> > > I will try to help: > > Stop using this expression. You can't "eff the ineffible." There is no > verb 'to eff' > > Ineffible is literally defined as not possible to define or explain. > Every time you use this expression, you undermine any credibility you > might have had. > > Fwiw, refering to people's point as "bleating claim" is also likening them > to mindless sheep's 'bleating' - which does not endear them to further > discussion. > > You lose your audience by using words in weird/nonstandard ways. You lose > your audience by insulting/offending them (either calling their effort > 'bleating' or calling out their 'blindness' - which I know you don't > intend, but also don't seem to grasp how/why my advice to you is to be > more aware) > > I have taken shots at your repeated use of "ineffable redness of red" with > 'fiveness of five' and 'breadness of bread' - I'm hopeful you take this in > the spirit I meant. > > I really would like to believe I have some insight into how my own > perception works... but I humbly admit I don't know. > >> _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 21 04:02:43 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 21:02:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002001d74df6$27143bd0$753cb370$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Brent Allsop via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors Hi Mike, >?Yea, that makes a lot of sense, and I can better see why some of my tactics are mistaken. So thanks for this help, and I apologize for doing this, I will work to change?So thanks for the help, and everyone else, please accept my apologies for these mistakes. Brent Brent, even if I never eff or grok or get hip to, I do deeply admire and hope to emulate your gentlemanly ways. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 21 04:44:08 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 14:44:08 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 May 2021 at 09:09, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 11:34 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> On Thu, 20 May 2021 at 03:09, spike jones via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> *?*> *On Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat >>> >>> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different >>> colors >>> >>> >>> >>> On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 9:48 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>> Wouldn?t it be cool to somehow create a device that could measure this? >>> A color can?t really be doing the exact same thing in every brain, ja? >>> >>> >? unproductive discussions on the meaning of "qualia" (which is one of >>> the reasons why I suggested ceasing use of that word)? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> The concept of qualia is tricky and always has been. The terminology is >>> going to be as tricky as the concept. >>> >>> >>> >>> Being an engineer and math guy, I like things that are stone cold >>> objective. I like it when steel and engineering meet to create a car that >>> wins a race, which is why I like self-driving race cars even more: it takes >>> the subjectiveness of the human brain out of the picture. Cool! >>> >>> >>> >>> In order to give me some idea (after all this time) what is qualia (or >>> what ARE qualia? (is one qualia a qualium?)) we need some kind of objective >>> instrument or device which somehow measures what a brain is doing. >>> >> The singular of qualia is quale. Qualia are synonymous with experiences. >> We can measure what a brain is doing when a human subject says ?I see a red >> strawberry? and we can measure what a self-driving car is doing when it >> says ?I see a red light? but we can?t know what they are experiencing. We >> can guess that if the human subject?s brain processes are similar to our >> own, their experiences are similar to our own,* but we can?t know. Even >> if we could somehow connect our own brain to the human subject or the car, >> altering our experiences, all we would know is what the melded being >> experiences.* >> >>> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou >> > > > Spike, now that you understand, maybe you can help me with all this? I > can clearly see that other's of you understand. I could use some help with > Stathis. > > Stathis, > > After all my attempts, I'm still clearly failing to get you to understand > how wrong and misleading this kind of faithless popular consensus bleating > is. > > Even if I try again, will you continue to completely ignore all this, and > instead of trying to understand it in a non qualia blind way, and just > continue to make these kinds of bleating claims? > > As I've pointed out, so many times, there is the 1. Strong, 2. Stronger, > and 3. Strongest methods of effing the ineffable, if achieved this will > falsify your bleating claims that we can't eff the ineffable. > > The strong method is simply having a dictionary, based on non qualia blind > observed facts, connecting the subjective to the objective in a way that > can't be falsified. > to understand this, see my simplified description of qualia to Spike, all > using only mathematical lookup tables using the "=" sign. > Sure, the fact that something like glutamate = redness (or something else) > could be the only thing that has a redness quality isn't absolute truth, > but if it can't be falsified, and if no functionalists can ever produce a > redness, ever, it will be VERY trustworthy. > > Beyond that, let me go into more detail about the strongest method of > effing the ineffable, which, if achieved, will results in absolute > necessary truth. > > As Steven Lehar describes, we know that there is a "diorama" world in our > head, rendered by our perception systems into consciousness, composed of a > substrate of phenomenal intrinsic colors like redness and greenness. > > This Diorama is our knowledge of the world. Half of this diorama is in > our left hemisphere, and the other half, in the right hemisphere of our > brain. > The corpus callosum computationally binds all this stuff together into one > composite qualitative experience, defined to be consciousness. > The fact that this kind of effing communication happens between > hemispheres, outright proves, all by itself, that your "even if we could > somehow connect our own brain" to another is blatantly false. > But then, you just continue to ignore such facts you don't like, and you > continue to mistakenly assume I'm talking about "composite qualia" with: "*all > we would know is what the melded being experiences*" while I've > attempted, many times, that I'm only talking about elemental qualia, out of > which composite qualia or consciousness is composed. > > In other words, both our left, and our right hemisphere know, absolutely, > what redness and greenness are like in our other hemisphere, since the > corpus callosum binds all these intrinsic qualities together in both > hemispheres so both hemispheres can be directly aware of all of them at the > same time, in one unified conscious experience. > But the conscious experience of the two hemispheres is not necessarily the same as the conscious experience of either hemisphere, either elemental or composite. People with cochlear implants have auditory qualia, but that doesn?t mean that they know what it is like to be a cochlear implant, which is an electronic device, or that the cochlear implant knows what it is like to be a human. The prediction is, that when we come up with neural ponytails > , which do the same things the corpus > callosum is doing, both of our worlds will be computationally bound > together into one similarly singular conscious experiences, all of it being > directly apprehended by all 4 hemispheres. Our left hemisphere represents > visual knowledge of our right field of vision, and the right hemisphere > representing the left field of vision. When computationally bound with a neural > ponytails , (even if only bound at > the elemental level) we will have visual knowledge of what is behind us, > bound to the knowledge of what is in front of us, resulting in a sphere of > knowledge of everything around us, from the data being collected by our > partner's eyes, seeing behind our head. > Yes, and it would be a wonderful thing to experience, but we still won?t know what it is like to be the other person. And IF our partner is engineered to be red green inverted, strawberries in > front of us will be represented with our redness, and the ones behind us > will be represented with our greenness. > Maybe, or maybe we will see a new colour, or all red, or all green. We will then know, necessarily since we will be directly apprehending both > of these facts at the same time, that our parners redness is like our > greenness, both of which we call red. > If this is achieved, this will simply be necessarily true, as it is > already necessarily true, between both of our hemispheres. > That may only work if the two connected entities are similar. See the above example of a cochlear implant and a brain. > My prediction for the future about how science historians will judge these > kinds of claims of "functionalists" : > > * "we can?t know. Even if we could somehow connect our own brain to the > human subject or the car, altering our experiences, all we would know is > what the melded being experiences "* > > These will be judged as clueless bleating of the popular masses. These > functionalists who, instead of trying to understand the above, they just > continue to ignore it, believing that being qualia blind is OK, and that > their so called "proof" justifies them continuing to make faithless claims > like this that lead everyone astray into so called "hard problem" confusion. > > Stathis, I fully admit that this claim can be falsified in the future. Do > you have any similarly valuable falsifiable claims for the future you see, > or at least something better than Chalmers' faithless claim that there will > forever be "hard" (interpretation: impossible) problems with consciousness, > or that your faithless claims of eternal ineffability, will always be true, > prefunding to believe your qualia blind 'proof' is justified, despite the > myriads of absurd conclusions that result, a few of which are described > above, which I continue to attempt to point out? > You keep confusing the functionalist claim, that consciousness is multiply realisable, with the "hard problem" claim. They are different. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 21 05:26:48 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 01:26:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 21, 2021, 12:47 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > composite. People with cochlear implants have auditory qualia, but that > doesn?t mean that they know what it is like to be a cochlear implant, which > is an electronic device, or that the cochlear implant knows what it is like > to be a human. > What it is like to be bat, eh? Somehow the bat navigates in space (and time) to find food. From a pure engineering point of view, that's pretty amazing technology. I hadn't really appreciated it that way the first time I read Nagel's question. I wonder if we model higher dimensional navigation for similar goals. Maybe we can reach consensus on what it's like to be a bat... but some will still claim that's not enough to know what it IS to be a bat. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 21 05:45:44 2021 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 15:45:44 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 May 2021 at 15:28, Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Fri, May 21, 2021, 12:47 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> composite. People with cochlear implants have auditory qualia, but that >> doesn?t mean that they know what it is like to be a cochlear implant, which >> is an electronic device, or that the cochlear implant knows what it is like >> to be a human. >> > > What it is like to be bat, eh? Somehow the bat navigates in space (and > time) to find food. From a pure engineering point of view, that's pretty > amazing technology. I hadn't really appreciated it that way the first time > I read Nagel's question. > > I wonder if we model higher dimensional navigation for similar goals. > Maybe we can reach consensus on what it's like to be a bat... but some will > still claim that's not enough to know what it IS to be a bat. > Brent would claim that if we could somehow connect our brain to a bat?s we would know what it is like to be a bat, but it would not. At best, we might know what it is like to have sonar, but the bat might experience sonar very differently to the bat-human hybrid. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 21 06:00:07 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 02:00:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <008901d74cce$615bf770$2413e650$@rainier66.com> <009b01d74cd1$75c7e770$6157b650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 20, 2021, 11:30 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > As I indicating "eff" the ineffable, in reality, is still, barely, a minority > camp .with a > score of 2.25, while the leading camp for 'grok > ' has 2.5. > > I'm still not convinced that 'grok' is better the 'eff', but I will put > more thought into this, especially if you actually formally support the > 'grock' camp, along with that multiple other people, I will join this camp, > and agree that that is a better word, for more people. So I will use that > one. > I smiled at 'grok' - after three attempts to explain why, i realized that's effectively ineffable. Similarly, any attempt to grok the ineffable is doomed to the same failure. So maybe the verb is not the problem; perhaps it is the noun(adjective?). Either the color problem is ineffable and we must abandon any attempt to solve it, or the color problem is merely difficult and does not warrant the moniker 'ineffable' - I believe the latter, fwiw. I also wonder about using canonizer to try to drive word-camps to essential Newspeak. Surely there are nuances in the suburb-camps around any significant city-camp... I think language would lose some expressiveness if we ignore those curvy nuances for a generally "best fit" line. > So thanks for the help, and everyone else, please accept my apologies for > these mistakes. > yw. I feel like a bully for causing you to use the term 'mistake' - i trust that you grok my intent and it's all good. > ps: thanks spike for acknowledging civility in discourse. I don't see it much outside this group either, so yeah... it's nice to have "gentlepeople" to think among. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 21 13:01:28 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 06:01:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors Message-ID: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat >?- i trust that you grok my intent and it's all good? It seemed like it to me. Well done sir. >?ps: thanks spike for acknowledging civility in discourse. I don't see it much outside this group either? I am influenced by another online group which I have stayed around for the last 22 years because of its civility more than its content. Of all things? it was a motorcycle group. >? so yeah... it's nice to have "gentlepeople" to think among? Humanist! What?s this gentle PEOPLE jazz, eh? How do you know we are people? We might be? AIs or? if the I is debatable, just A, or some revolting lifeform from? hey whaddya make of the resurgence of UFO talk in mainstream news? It is as if they are trying to distract us or something. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 21 13:29:04 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 08:29:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: some revolting lifeform spike Have you kept up with the amazing accomplishments of slime molds? No? Well, what are you wasting your time on? bill w On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 8:06 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat > > >?- i trust that you grok my intent and it's all good? > > > > It seemed like it to me. Well done sir. > > > > >?ps: thanks spike for acknowledging civility in discourse. I don't see > it much outside this group either? > > > > I am influenced by another online group which I have stayed around for the > last 22 years because of its civility more than its content. Of all > things? it was a motorcycle group. > > > > >? so yeah... it's nice to have "gentlepeople" to think among? > > > > Humanist! What?s this gentle PEOPLE jazz, eh? How do you know we are > people? We might be? AIs or? if the I is debatable, just A, or some > revolting lifeform from? hey whaddya make of the resurgence of UFO talk in > mainstream news? It is as if they are trying to distract us or something. > > > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 21 14:50:44 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 10:50:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 21, 2021, 9:01 AM wrote: > >? so yeah... it's nice to have "gentlepeople" to think among? > > Humanist! What?s this gentle PEOPLE jazz, eh? How do you know we are > people? We might be? AIs or? if the I is debatable, just A, or some > revolting lifeform from? hey whaddya make of the resurgence of UFO talk in > mainstream news? It is as if they are trying to distract us or something. > I am trying to be more aware of exclusionist gendered language, so replaced "men" with 'people'... but you jest that even that excluded ai, e.t., and possibly tech-enhanced animals. I consider all of them to be people too. To quote Pete from Muppets Take Manhattan: "peoples is peoples" [https://toughpigs.com/peoples-is-peoples] and Kermit finally figured it out in the end: "...That's what we need! More frogs and dogs and bears and chickens and ... and whatever!" Wise words from a frog indeed. :) Seriously though, language shapes how/what we think (and CAN think) and what we think is conveyed by language. I know the vanguards of old ways refuse to accept language evolution. I understand. However, we need to continue evolution in language to keep up with evolution in thought. I think this is oft-overlooked in transhumanist anti aging conversations. Sure, we need to fix the physical breakdown of biology... but after that we might have effectively immortal old-thinking. That is an interesting problem space to consider solutions. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 21 15:26:32 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 08:26:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> From: Mike Dougherty >?"...That's what we need! More frogs and dogs and bears and chickens and ... and whatever!" Wise words from a frog indeed. :) I miss Jim Henson. He voiced many of the early muppets but Kermit was very close to Jim?s normal voice. When you hear an interview with him, his intonation and even attitudes are a lot like when Kermit was the MC of the Muppet Show. >?Seriously though, language shapes how/what we think (and CAN think) and what we think is conveyed by language. I know the vanguards of old ways refuse to accept language evolution. I understand. However, we need to continue evolution in language to keep up with evolution in thought. I think this is oft-overlooked in transhumanist anti aging conversations. Sure, we need to fix the physical breakdown of biology... but after that we might have effectively immortal old-thinking. That is an interesting problem space to consider solutions? Mike Well said, Mike. We have seen how language has failed us repeatedly in many areas of discussion on ExI. To quote the old song, we tried to talk it over but the words got in the way. We know what we math guys and science geeks do: retreat into our safe space, that sublime, supremely unambiguous and well-defined sub-language we geeks know so well, but which also fails to achieve adequacy in some domains of human thought. I admire those who continue to work on those slippery, ethereal concepts, working through the inherent difficulty in having to communicate it over a severely limited bandwidth channel by funneling it into a language unprepared to accommodate its subtleties. We need NewSpeak. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 21 15:39:42 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 08:39:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004201d74e57$8575a540$9060efc0$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com >>?Seriously though, language shapes how/what we think (and CAN think) and what we think is conveyed by language. I know the vanguards of old ways refuse to accept language evolution. I understand. However, we need to continue evolution in language to keep up with evolution in thought ? Mike ? >?We need NewSpeak. ?spike Everything Brent has been thinking about for at least a coupla decades makes perfect sense in this context: he already knew we don?t have existing words for some concepts, so he invented them. This is Brentish NewSpeak. Well OK, fair game. How the heck else can you describe a difficult new concept other than coining terms for it? If you have never read Orwell?s classic, do read the sections on NewSpeak, and see how such a concept can go wrong. Then figure out how such a concept can go right. If you are in that category, please why the heck haven?t you read Orwell?s classic? Unacceptable! Go the heck to the library, note the date which it was written, check it out and read it! That man was the prophet among us. He saw it all. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Fri May 21 15:44:20 2021 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 11:44:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> References: <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <83690BE9-1A84-483C-9BAE-5E569F0DA491@alumni.virginia.edu> Anyone catch 60 Minutes last week?Talked to Luis Elizondo about the AATIP program. Worth searching for if you missed it. -Henry > On May 21, 2021, at 11:26 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > > > From: Mike Dougherty > > > >?"...That's what we need! More frogs and dogs and bears and chickens and ... and whatever!" Wise words from a frog indeed. :) > > I miss Jim Henson. He voiced many of the early muppets but Kermit was very close to Jim?s normal voice. When you hear an interview with him, his intonation and even attitudes are a lot like when Kermit was the MC of the Muppet Show. > > > >?Seriously though, language shapes how/what we think (and CAN think) and what we think is conveyed by language. I know the vanguards of old ways refuse to accept language evolution. I understand. However, we need to continue evolution in language to keep up with evolution in thought. I think this is oft-overlooked in transhumanist anti aging conversations. Sure, we need to fix the physical breakdown of biology... but after that we might have effectively immortal old-thinking. That is an interesting problem space to consider solutions? Mike > > Well said, Mike. We have seen how language has failed us repeatedly in many areas of discussion on ExI. To quote the old song, we tried to talk it over but the words got in the way. We know what we math guys and science geeks do: retreat into our safe space, that sublime, supremely unambiguous and well-defined sub-language we geeks know so well, but which also fails to achieve adequacy in some domains of human thought. > > I admire those who continue to work on those slippery, ethereal concepts, working through the inherent difficulty in having to communicate it over a severely limited bandwidth channel by funneling it into a language unprepared to accommodate its subtleties. > > We need NewSpeak. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 21 16:47:58 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 12:47:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <004201d74e57$8575a540$9060efc0$@rainier66.com> References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> <004201d74e57$8575a540$9060efc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 21, 2021, 11:39 AM wrote: > Everything Brent has been thinking about for at least a coupla decades > makes perfect sense in this context: he already knew we don?t have existing > words for some concepts, so he invented them. This is Brentish NewSpeak. > Well OK, fair game. How the heck else can you describe a difficult new > concept other than coining terms for it? > You know... after suggesting 'eff the ineffable' is a source of confusion and frustration (it is for me) i realized it absolutely is "on brand" for Brentish NewSpeak. I also felt like a hypocrite using Heinlein's made up word 'grok' and not Brent's made up word 'eff'... still, I'd be (and have been) more likely to say 'eff this' in the common colloquial usage/context of eff. So perhaps that expression still encourages the smartass to remain unconvinced. > If you have never read Orwell?s classic, do read the sections on NewSpeak, > and see how such a concept can go wrong. Then figure out how such a > concept can go right. If you are in that category, please why the heck > haven?t you read Orwell?s classic? Unacceptable! Go the heck to the > library, note the date which it was written, check it out and read it! > That man was the prophet among us. He saw it all. > We have jargon that becomes both the good and bad... saves time for those of the in-group, but is a barrier to entry for those in the out-group. I work in medical terms and programmer terms; sometimes those two groups have serious problems getting past their respective jargon to understand each other. I've coined the phrase "words are hard" to acknowledge the problem. It amuses me how often it gets used. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri May 21 16:53:20 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 09:53:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> <004201d74e57$8575a540$9060efc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 9:50 AM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > after suggesting 'eff the ineffable' is a source of confusion and > frustration (it is for me) > If you're looking for reasons to steer away from that term, it should perhaps also be noted that "eff" and "eff the ineffable" are used as semi-polite versions of certain obscene, sex-related terms in certain circles. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 21 16:57:18 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 11:57:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> <004201d74e57$8575a540$9060efc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: There is nothing new about 'eff the ineffable'. bill w On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 11:51 AM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Fri, May 21, 2021, 11:39 AM wrote: > >> Everything Brent has been thinking about for at least a coupla decades >> makes perfect sense in this context: he already knew we don?t have existing >> words for some concepts, so he invented them. This is Brentish NewSpeak. >> Well OK, fair game. How the heck else can you describe a difficult new >> concept other than coining terms for it? >> > You know... after suggesting 'eff the ineffable' is a source of confusion > and frustration (it is for me) i realized it absolutely is "on brand" for > Brentish NewSpeak. I also felt like a hypocrite using Heinlein's made up > word 'grok' and not Brent's made up word 'eff'... still, I'd be (and have > been) more likely to say 'eff this' in the common colloquial usage/context > of eff. So perhaps that expression still encourages the smartass to remain > unconvinced. > >> If you have never read Orwell?s classic, do read the sections on >> NewSpeak, and see how such a concept can go wrong. Then figure out how >> such a concept can go right. If you are in that category, please why the >> heck haven?t you read Orwell?s classic? Unacceptable! Go the heck to the >> library, note the date which it was written, check it out and read it! >> That man was the prophet among us. He saw it all. >> > We have jargon that becomes both the good and bad... saves time for those > of the in-group, but is a barrier to entry for those in the out-group. > > I work in medical terms and programmer terms; sometimes those two groups > have serious problems getting past their respective jargon to understand > each other. I've coined the phrase "words are hard" to acknowledge the > problem. It amuses me how often it gets used. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri May 21 17:11:58 2021 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 13:11:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> <004201d74e57$8575a540$9060efc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 1:06 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > There is nothing new about 'eff the ineffable'. > For example: ?Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.? ? Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 21 17:43:17 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 13:43:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> <004201d74e57$8575a540$9060efc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 21, 2021, 1:14 PM Dave Sill via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > ?Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to > grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.? > ? Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) > In modern UI/UX parlance (jargon) Adams would certainly find another opportunity to do the undoable, undo the undoable, then redo the undoable. As in CTRL+V, CTRL+Z, CTRL+Y (or command for apple users) Another example of "words are hard" that 'undoable' means both that it cannot be done and also that once it is done it can be undone. Douglas Adams famously exploits linguistic wrinkles for fun. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 21 17:50:04 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 10:50:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> <004201d74e57$8575a540$9060efc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00b601d74e69$bb8817f0$329847d0$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 9:50 AM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat > wrote: after suggesting 'eff the ineffable' is a source of confusion and frustration (it is for me) >?If you're looking for reasons to steer away from that term, it should perhaps also be noted that "eff" and "eff the ineffable" are used as semi-polite versions of certain obscene, sex-related terms in certain circles. Adrian Hey, it is better to be obscene than no scene at all. If I may risk going off in a direction having nothing to do with qualia (which I already did anyway) consider please the following 2 scenario thought experiment. Scenario 1: imagine a restaurant meal you like and a setting you enjoy. Get crazy-starving hungry, get that meal take out, go to that location. For instance, our local park is perfectly maintained, Burger King, huge greasy whopper, long salty fries with ranch dressing, tall frosty cola, out to the park, birds chirping, sun shining, pretty girls strolling by displaying their wares, oooooh life? is? goooooood. Scenario 2: Same crazy-starving hungry, same Burger King, but this time stay in the parking lot, throw the whole mess in a portable blender, two minutes on frappe. Drink. >From the point of view of the stomach, either scenario delivers the same materials in the same proportions in roughly the same state more or less. But the brain would perceive those two scenarios very differently. In scenario 2, it would likely compel the stomach to barf, even if it ever got that far. For people who didn?t grow up slamming such delectable viands, the scenario 1 meal might be as distasteful to as the scene 2 frapped version is to me. It is the same food either way, just two different brains. They would even have the same name for it, but the two brains would perceive it very differently. Rather than get to the point I was trying to make, by merely writing the above scenarios, I have made myself lust for a big greasy value meal and the prandial jocularity in the local park for a pleasant scenario 1. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri May 21 17:57:59 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 10:57:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> <004201d74e57$8575a540$9060efc0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 10:14 AM Dave Sill via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 1:06 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> There is nothing new about 'eff the ineffable'. >> > > For example: > > ?Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to > grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.? > > ? Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) > I can't help but be reminded of "do the impossible see the invisible", which is the start of the chorus of the theme song of a certain popular anime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT6LFOIofRE (chorus first starts around 0:30). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 21 18:21:03 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 11:21:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <005001d74e61$3fc55450$bf4ffcf0$@rainier66.com> References: <005001d74e61$3fc55450$bf4ffcf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> Cool! A few days ago, this huge iceberg was formed when A-76 broke off the Ronne Ice Shelf. A-76 has been measured at about 4300 square km, and since about 10% of an iceberg is above water, then the volume of ice is the product of square km of visible ice times the average altitude above sea level of the surface of the ice times ten. Sooo. by that reckoning, this is a bunch of cubic km of ice. California (and the US in general) is going into another damn drought. What if. we could somehow haul A-76 up and park it about 50 km out at sea, then build a pipeline out to it which would bring fresh water from the melting ice over to the mainland. OK so how the heck do we haul a chunk of ice that size? Good chance we can't do it with the little bit of force we can exert with ships, but if we had some kind of anchors which sit still on the sea floor and exert steady force through cables, might that move the ice into the current that flows north along the west coast of South America. Once we hit central America, the current that once helped us is now going hack the other way, so I can imagine two ways from there. One is to break off pieces of perhaps a cubic km and try to haul them against the current or. park the ice off the west coast of Columbia and pipe the fresh water up thru Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico to the USA. Any chance either scheme could work? If so, there is a buttload of money to be made. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 32611 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ben at zaiboc.net Fri May 21 18:28:34 2021 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 19:28:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Language In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1eeec9be-b984-e026-45d9-d0ee700c0e4e@zaiboc.net> On 21/05/2021 18:50, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Seriously though, language shapes how/what we think (and CAN think) > and what we think is conveyed by language.? I know the vanguards of > old ways refuse to accept language evolution.? I understand.? However, > we need to continue evolution in language to keep up with evolution in > thought.? I think this is oft-overlooked in transhumanist anti aging > conversations.? Sure, we need to fix the physical breakdown of > biology... but after that we might have effectively immortal > old-thinking.? That is an interesting problem space to consider > solutions. There are two sides to this. Orwell showed us how important the concept that 'language shapes what we can think' is to certain types of government. Just because something is new doesn't mean it's always good, and evolution can make things simpler and more restricted just as easily as making them more complex and capable. Sometimes old-thinking is free-thinking. And it's not just the obviously repressive regimes that are keen on 'social engineering'. -- Ben Zaiboc From guessmyneeds at yahoo.com Fri May 21 18:40:00 2021 From: guessmyneeds at yahoo.com (Sherry Knepper) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 18:40:00 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> References: <005001d74e61$3fc55450$bf4ffcf0$@rainier66.com> <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <1320764183.2834499.1621622400743@mail.yahoo.com> Spike, can you get what you wrote to someone with ability to make it happen?? If necessary it could be modified to fit current available parts and mechanics. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 2:28 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: ? ? Cool!? A few days ago, this huge iceberg was formed when A-76 broke off the Ronne Ice Shelf. ? ? ? A-76 has been measured at about 4300 square km, and since about 10% of an iceberg is above water, then the volume of ice is the product of square km of visible ice times the average altitude above sea level of the surface of the ice times ten.? ? Sooo? by that reckoning, this is a bunch of cubic km of ice. ? California (and the US in general) is going into another damn drought.? What if? we could somehow haul A-76 up and park it about 50 km out at sea, then build a pipeline out to it which would bring fresh water from the melting ice over to the mainland. ? OK so how the heck do we haul a chunk of ice that size? ? Good chance we can?t do it with the little bit of force we can exert with ships, but if we had some kind of anchors which sit still on the sea floor and exert steady force through cables, might that move the ice into the current that flows north along the west coast of South America. ? Once we hit central America, the current that once helped us is now going hack the other way, so I can imagine two ways from there.? One is to break off pieces of perhaps a cubic km and try to haul them against the current or? park the ice off the west coast of Columbia and pipe the fresh water up thru Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico to the USA. ? Any chance either scheme could work?? If so, there is a buttload of money to be made. ? spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 32611 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 21 19:07:09 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 20:07:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> References: <005001d74e61$3fc55450$bf4ffcf0$@rainier66.com> <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 May 2021 at 19:25, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Cool! A few days ago, this huge iceberg was formed when A-76 broke off the Ronne Ice Shelf. > > A-76 has been measured at about 4300 square km, and since about 10% of an iceberg is above water, then the volume of ice is the product of square km of visible ice times the average altitude above sea level of the surface of the ice times ten. > > Sooo? by that reckoning, this is a bunch of cubic km of ice. > > California (and the US in general) is going into another damn drought. What if? we could somehow haul A-76 up and park it about 50 km out at sea, then build a pipeline out to it which would bring fresh water from the melting ice over to the mainland. > > OK so how the heck do we haul a chunk of ice that size? > > > spike > ______________________________________________ You can't tow an iceberg that big! There is already a lot of expertise in this. Smaller icebergs have to be towed all the time in the Arctic to move them away from oil rigs. 70 to 80 a year. A recent study is here: Apart from how to do the tow, other interesting problems to consider are the amount of melting that will happen during the very slow towing procedure and then how will that amount of ice affect the marine environment and wildlife of wherever it ends up? BillK From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 21 19:18:58 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 12:18:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <1320764183.2834499.1621622400743@mail.yahoo.com> References: <005001d74e61$3fc55450$bf4ffcf0$@rainier66.com> <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> <1320764183.2834499.1621622400743@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001501d74e76$26b20f70$74162e50$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Sherry Knepper via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg >?Spike, can you get what you wrote to someone with ability to make it happen? Sherry Such as Elon Musk? No. He lives and works nearby but I have never met the man. I don?t know the kind of people who could make that idea happen, but if we could, everyone wins. It would be a possible way for the USA to become carbon neutral. We bring in fresh water from a melting iceberg that we managed to somehow herd into location, use that to irrigate otherwise barren land in California, those areas blossom, going from arid wasteland into verdant carbon-sequestering biomass, wildlife is handed a lush new habitat, humanity has new and interesting spaces in which to live and thrive, the atmosphere and the planet are saved, but most important of all, I make a cubic buttload of money. But don?t worry. If I do, I will say nice things about all of you in my memoir. Suggestions welcome on who to contact. Sherry do tell us something about Sherry please. I don?t recall seeing your posts hitherto. spike Cool! A few days ago, this huge iceberg was formed when A-76 broke off the Ronne Ice Shelf. A-76 has been measured at about 4300 square km, and since about 10% of an iceberg is above water, then the volume of ice is the product of square km of visible ice times the average altitude above sea level of the surface of the ice times ten. Sooo? by that reckoning, this is a bunch of cubic km of ice. California (and the US in general) is going into another damn drought. What if? we could somehow haul A-76 up and park it about 50 km out at sea, then build a pipeline out to it which would bring fresh water from the melting ice over to the mainland. OK so how the heck do we haul a chunk of ice that size? Good chance we can?t do it with the little bit of force we can exert with ships, but if we had some kind of anchors which sit still on the sea floor and exert steady force through cables, might that move the ice into the current that flows north along the west coast of South America. Once we hit central America, the current that once helped us is now going hack the other way, so I can imagine two ways from there. One is to break off pieces of perhaps a cubic km and try to haul them against the current or? park the ice off the west coast of Columbia and pipe the fresh water up thru Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico to the USA. Any chance either scheme could work? If so, there is a buttload of money to be made. spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 32611 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 21 19:40:19 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 14:40:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion tricks you into seeing different colors In-Reply-To: <00b601d74e69$bb8817f0$329847d0$@rainier66.com> References: <004401d74e41$6a6ae4b0$3f40ae10$@rainier66.com> <002401d74e55$ae944be0$0bbce3a0$@rainier66.com> <004201d74e57$8575a540$9060efc0$@rainier66.com> <00b601d74e69$bb8817f0$329847d0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Hey, it is better to be obscene than no scene at all. spike "Women should be obscene and not heard." bill w On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 12:54 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *?*> *On Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] ufos and gentle things was: RE: Optical illusion > tricks you into seeing different colors > > > > On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 9:50 AM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > after suggesting 'eff the ineffable' is a source of confusion and > frustration (it is for me) > > > > >?If you're looking for reasons to steer away from that term, it should > perhaps also be noted that "eff" and "eff the ineffable" are used as > semi-polite versions of certain obscene, sex-related terms in certain > circles. Adrian > > > > Hey, it is better to be obscene than no scene at all. > > > > If I may risk going off in a direction having nothing to do with qualia > (which I already did anyway) consider please the following 2 scenario > thought experiment. > > > > Scenario 1: imagine a restaurant meal you like and a setting you enjoy. > Get crazy-starving hungry, get that meal take out, go to that location. > For instance, our local park is perfectly maintained, Burger King, huge > greasy whopper, long salty fries with ranch dressing, tall frosty cola, out > to the park, birds chirping, sun shining, pretty girls strolling by > displaying their wares, oooooh life? is? goooooood. > > > > Scenario 2: Same crazy-starving hungry, same Burger King, but this time > stay in the parking lot, throw the whole mess in a portable blender, two > minutes on frappe. Drink. > > > > From the point of view of the stomach, either scenario delivers the same > materials in the same proportions in roughly the same state more or less. > But the brain would perceive those two scenarios very differently. In > scenario 2, it would likely compel the stomach to barf, even if it ever got > that far. > > > > For people who didn?t grow up slamming such delectable viands, the > scenario 1 meal might be as distasteful to > > as the scene 2 frapped version is to me. It is the same food either way, > just two different brains. They would even have the same name for it, but > the two brains would perceive it very differently. > > > > Rather than get to the point I was trying to make, by merely writing the > above scenarios, I have made myself lust for a big greasy value meal and > the prandial jocularity in the local park for a pleasant scenario 1. > > > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 21 19:43:42 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 14:43:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <001501d74e76$26b20f70$74162e50$@rainier66.com> References: <005001d74e61$3fc55450$bf4ffcf0$@rainier66.com> <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> <1320764183.2834499.1621622400743@mail.yahoo.com> <001501d74e76$26b20f70$74162e50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Why isn't more money spent on desalination tech? bill w On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 2:21 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Sherry Knepper via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > > > > >?Spike, can you get what you wrote to someone with ability to make it > happen? Sherry > > Such as Elon Musk? No. He lives and works nearby but I have never met > the man. I don?t know the kind of people who could make that idea happen, > but if we could, everyone wins. It would be a possible way for the USA to > become carbon neutral. We bring in fresh water from a melting iceberg that > we managed to somehow herd into location, use that to irrigate otherwise > barren land in California, those areas blossom, going from arid wasteland > into verdant carbon-sequestering biomass, wildlife is handed a lush new > habitat, humanity has new and interesting spaces in which to live and > thrive, the atmosphere and the planet are saved, but most important of all, > I make a cubic buttload of money. > > But don?t worry. If I do, I will say nice things about all of you in my > memoir. > > Suggestions welcome on who to contact. > > Sherry do tell us something about Sherry please. I don?t recall seeing > your posts hitherto. > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Cool! A few days ago, this huge iceberg was formed when A-76 broke off > the Ronne Ice Shelf. > > > > > > > > A-76 has been measured at about 4300 square km, and since about 10% of an > iceberg is above water, then the volume of ice is the product of square km > of visible ice times the average altitude above sea level of the surface of > the ice times ten. > > > > Sooo? by that reckoning, this is a bunch of cubic km of ice. > > > > California (and the US in general) is going into another damn drought. > What if? we could somehow haul A-76 up and park it about 50 km out at sea, > then build a pipeline out to it which would bring fresh water from the > melting ice over to the mainland. > > > > OK so how the heck do we haul a chunk of ice that size? > > > > Good chance we can?t do it with the little bit of force we can exert with > ships, but if we had some kind of anchors which sit still on the sea floor > and exert steady force through cables, might that move the ice into the > current that flows north along the west coast of South America. > > > > Once we hit central America, the current that once helped us is now going > hack the other way, so I can imagine two ways from there. One is to break > off pieces of perhaps a cubic km and try to haul them against the current > or? park the ice off the west coast of Columbia and pipe the fresh water up > thru Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico to the USA. > > > > Any chance either scheme could work? If so, there is a buttload of money > to be made. > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 32611 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 21 20:02:07 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 13:02:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: References: <005001d74e61$3fc55450$bf4ffcf0$@rainier66.com> <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> <1320764183.2834499.1621622400743@mail.yahoo.com> <001501d74e76$26b20f70$74162e50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003d01d74e7c$2dac3250$890496f0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Sent: Friday, May 21, 2021 12:44 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg Why isn't more money spent on desalination tech? bill w That technology is mature: we know how to do it. The problem is that it takes a lotta land space and capital if you go the solar route, or a lot of energy if you go with reverse osmosis. If we can somehow harvest ice, we use otherwise wasted solar energy that evaporated water out of the sea. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Fri May 21 21:04:18 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 14:04:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20210521140418.Horde.vzBL_om7LidETuccwObYlhK@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting BillK: > On Fri, 21 May 2021 at 19:25, spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >> >> Cool! A few days ago, this huge iceberg was formed when A-76 broke >> off the Ronne Ice Shelf. >> >> A-76 has been measured at about 4300 square km, and since about 10% >> of an iceberg is above water, then the volume of ice is the product >> of square km of visible ice times the average altitude above sea >> level of the surface of the ice times ten. >> >> Sooo? by that reckoning, this is a bunch of cubic km of ice. >> >> California (and the US in general) is going into another damn >> drought. What if? we could somehow haul A-76 up and park it about >> 50 km out at sea, then build a pipeline out to it which would bring >> fresh water from the melting ice over to the mainland. >> >> OK so how the heck do we haul a chunk of ice that size? > > You can't tow an iceberg that big! There is already a lot of > expertise in this. Smaller icebergs have to be towed all the time in > the Arctic to move them away from oil rigs. 70 to 80 a year. > A recent study is here: > So since the iceberg is so big, how about having some engineers set up camp on it, drill holes all over it, put masts and rigging on the iceberg and use a bunch of sails to move the iceberg like a giant ship? Once the iceberg makes it to warmer latitudes, then one could install Stirling heat exchange engines to power ship screws to propel the iceberg. Just some thoughts, not a boat expert or anything. Stuart LaForge From ben at zaiboc.net Fri May 21 21:45:03 2021 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 22:45:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] RRe: towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3974aba4-70c4-3a4d-a1dd-d298dc9a8138@zaiboc.net> I wonder if anyone has done the calculations on fitting an iceberg with sails? -- Ben Zaiboc From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 21 22:08:08 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 17:08:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <003d01d74e7c$2dac3250$890496f0$@rainier66.com> References: <005001d74e61$3fc55450$bf4ffcf0$@rainier66.com> <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> <1320764183.2834499.1621622400743@mail.yahoo.com> <001501d74e76$26b20f70$74162e50$@rainier66.com> <003d01d74e7c$2dac3250$890496f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: To take Southern California as an example of a place that needs a lot of water, just about all of it is a desert. I simply cannot imagine not having enough land there even if you needed square miles of it, which you probably do. I do like towing ice which I have seen in several books. Are you saying that reverse osmosis is the last, the only tech that could do this job? No more ideas needed? In fact, could you say that about anything else? That no further improvement can exist? "Oh we've got land, lots of land, with the starry skies above - don't fence me in." bill w On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 3:06 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Sent:* Friday, May 21, 2021 12:44 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Cc:* William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > > > > Why isn't more money spent on desalination tech? bill w > > > > > > That technology is mature: we know how to do it. The problem is that it > takes a lotta land space and capital if you go the solar route, or a lot of > energy if you go with reverse osmosis. If we can somehow harvest ice, we > use otherwise wasted solar energy that evaporated water out of the sea. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 21 23:22:05 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 16:22:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <20210521140418.Horde.vzBL_om7LidETuccwObYlhK@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20210521140418.Horde.vzBL_om7LidETuccwObYlhK@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <00bf01d74e98$1d78a3c0$5869eb40$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of Stuart ... >...So since the iceberg is so big, how about having some engineers set up camp on it, drill holes all over it, put masts and rigging on the iceberg and use a bunch of sails to move the iceberg like a giant ship? Once the iceberg makes it to warmer latitudes, then one could install Stirling heat exchange engines to power ship screws to propel the iceberg. Just some thoughts, not a boat expert or anything. Stuart LaForge _______________________________________________ The force that could be exerted by the wind is tiny compared to even slight current. That iceberg is going go wherever the water tells it to. I don't know if anchoring to the bottom of the sea and pulling it with thousands of cables will exert anywhere near enough force. spike From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 21 23:28:54 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 16:28:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: References: <005001d74e61$3fc55450$bf4ffcf0$@rainier66.com> <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> <1320764183.2834499.1621622400743@mail.yahoo.com> <001501d74e76$26b20f70$74162e50$@rainier66.com> <003d01d74e7c$2dac3250$890496f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00c001d74e99$10fc6c20$32f54460$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Sent: Friday, May 21, 2021 3:08 PM To: ExI chat list ; extropolis at googlegroups.com Cc: William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg >?To take Southern California as an example of a place that needs a lot of water, just about all of it is a desert. I simply cannot imagine not having enough land there even if you needed square miles of it, which you probably do? With desalination, the plants need to be near the coast. Seawater is taken in, put in the solar heated containers, some water is extracted, then the remainder is returned to the sea slightly more saline than before. If the plant is too far inland, it requires too much energy to lift the seawater. >? I do like towing ice which I have seen in several books. Are you saying that reverse osmosis is the last, the only tech that could do this job? No more ideas needed? In fact, could you say that about anything else? That no further improvement can exist? You could use nuclear-powered distillation but that hasn?t proven economically viable anywhere. >?"Oh we've got land, lots of land, with the starry skies above - don't fence me in." bill w Land close to the sea is very pricy stuff and very limited. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bronto at pobox.com Sat May 22 22:25:22 2021 From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood) Date: Sat, 22 May 2021 15:25:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <001501d74e76$26b20f70$74162e50$@rainier66.com> References: <005001d74e61$3fc55450$bf4ffcf0$@rainier66.com> <000a01d74e6e$0f8baca0$2ea305e0$@rainier66.com> <1320764183.2834499.1621622400743@mail.yahoo.com> <001501d74e76$26b20f70$74162e50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <3fe6ccc7-5862-ce34-df1f-240b5d0f55f1@pobox.com> On 2021-5-21 12:18, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > We bring in fresh water from a melting iceberg that we managed to > somehow herd into location, use that to irrigate otherwise barren land > in California, those areas blossom, going from arid wasteland into > verdant carbon-sequestering biomass [....] A fantasy of mine is to haul icebergs from beyond the Belt and drop chunks thereof in lonely places ... -- *\\* Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sun May 23 03:30:12 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 22 May 2021 23:30:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] bond. james bond. In-Reply-To: <5BBFB1E3-929F-4971-8CB2-572871A95B69@gmail.com> References: <003301d74086$22dca5c0$6895f140$@rainier66.com> <5BBFB1E3-929F-4971-8CB2-572871A95B69@gmail.com> Message-ID: That better be in the next Bond film! John On Mon, May 3, 2021, 9:53 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On May 3, 2021, at 6:41 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > If this isn?t the coolest thing you ever saw, you have seen some damn cool > stuff. > > > > https://twitter.com/i/status/1389285493439860744 > > > > spike > > > It?s whisper quiet. > > What? > > It?s whisper quiet! > > I still can?t hear you. Let me shut off this thing. No, what was that? > > Regards, > > Dan > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 23 03:41:01 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 22 May 2021 20:41:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> From: John Grigg Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready >?Spike, is this a cryonics joke? ; ) John Hi John, no the link to cryonics never crossed my mind. I expect that cryonics will eventually work, but it is a long ways off. The recent qualia discussion has me deep-thinking it however, for I am pondering what it would be like to be an upload which can think but cannot really feel. Perhaps we would get a situation where we came back in a sense but it would be as far from the original experience as a #1 value meal in the park vs a #1 value meal in the blender after 2 minutes on frappe: same stuff ends up in the stomach, but the experience is just different somehow. As you may know, I like mechanical things, cars, motorcycles and such, particularly quirky old ones. I recently thought of one of the old suicide door Lincolns: There is a local one for sale, a 65 model, and it even has the thirsty (but entertaining) 462 inch V8 whopper. That would be fun to rumble around town in that. I remember how to tweak carburetors and set ignition points, but I don?t necessarily want to do it, and don?t want to hire a feller to do it either. I didn?t buy it. spike On Sun, May 9, 2021, 3:09 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: I am a fan of the pre-war Chrysler Windsor, so I did a Google search, found there was one available locally. The ad said it was all original, ready for restoration: spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 22657 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rxahuja at gmail.com Sun May 23 04:14:44 2021 From: rxahuja at gmail.com (Ranjan Ahuja) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 00:14:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Free half-day summit on open-source vaccine dev, economics, regulation, challenge trials Message-ID: Concerned global citizens: Since the pandemic is at such a critical phase currently, RaDVaC (Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative) decided to quickly organize a short summit, which will also serve as a "brainstorming session" about open-source vaccines and new economic models of vaccine deployment, along with new ways of trialing vaccines (in particular, challenge trials). It is on Tuesday, in two days. Participation/attendance is free, please feel free to disseminate to anywhere and anyone: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/unlocking-vaccines-open-source-vaccine-summit-2021-hosted-by-radvac-tickets-152932247469 Best regards, Ranjan Co-founder, RaDVaC https://radvac.org/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From henrik.ohrstrom at gmail.com Sun May 23 08:57:59 2021 From: henrik.ohrstrom at gmail.com (Henrik Ohrstrom) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 10:57:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] On Consciousness and perception Message-ID: https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality/up-next This guy is making more sense than most (of you and me too). I have always found the qualia discussion featuring red/green qualia quit uninteresting and after looking at this Ted talk again I think I start to understand why it's uninteresting. Red, green, barley or whoopie cushion only matter if it is relevant. The rest of the time the brain compresses reality and store/use a generic quality of colour as in: there is bound to be a colour but it's not relevant and stored as a derived property. IE my mother-in-law has hair. It probably has a colour. If necessary it is brought up to scrutiny and the last stored value for colour is applied. If she is present the colour value stored for her hair might be updated, or not since I generally don't give a rat's arse about her hair. Is her hair colour coded by one glutamate or something else? No. I don't care about it and it is only a implied quality variable that's updated if necessary and ignored the rest of time. It is not coded at all. As is you lot. My qualia experience of you is in toto a very very solipsistic experience. I might have run in to someone at extro3 but for all relevant values you are figments of my imagination. I am however more interested in you than I am in my in-laws hair so do feel appreciated. I do care about interesting hallucinations :-b /Henrik -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun May 23 14:26:32 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 09:26:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Spike, the days of the beautiful, big cars are over. I am driving around and see this little cutoff car and it's a Lincoln! Bah and more Bah. Maybe they will come back as a sort of Replicar movement. The irony is that they did all this downsizing and increasing fuel economy and we don't need to save gas anymore. Anyway, they could be hybrids or all electric if only we could get those great looks and great rides. The only car on the market for typical folks is the Chrysler 300, if you want some size - not too popular, I reckon. I also reckon the car companies are letting other classic cars stay in the past. I'll bet if they put out a 1954 Corvette replica it would sell like pecan waffles. Or a Jag XKE - my favorite sports car. bill w On Sat, May 22, 2021 at 10:44 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > *From:* John Grigg > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > > > > >?Spike, is this a cryonics joke? ; ) > > > > John > > > > > > Hi John, no the link to cryonics never crossed my mind. I expect that > cryonics will eventually work, but it is a long ways off. The recent > qualia discussion has me deep-thinking it however, for I am pondering what > it would be like to be an upload which can think but cannot really feel. > Perhaps we would get a situation where we came back in a sense but it would > be as far from the original experience as a #1 value meal in the park vs a > #1 value meal in the blender after 2 minutes on frappe: same stuff ends up > in the stomach, but the experience is just different somehow. > > > > As you may know, I like mechanical things, cars, motorcycles and such, > particularly quirky old ones. I recently thought of one of the old suicide > door Lincolns: > > > > > > There is a local one for sale, a 65 model, and it even has the thirsty > (but entertaining) 462 inch V8 whopper. That would be fun to rumble around > town in that. > > > > I remember how to tweak carburetors and set ignition points, but I don?t > necessarily want to do it, and don?t want to hire a feller to do it either. > > > > I didn?t buy it. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sun, May 9, 2021, 3:09 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > > > I am a fan of the pre-war Chrysler Windsor, so I did a Google search, > found there was one available locally. > > > > The ad said it was all original, ready for restoration: > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 22657 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ben at zaiboc.net Sun May 23 15:47:17 2021 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 16:47:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Thinking and feeling (was: Re: restoration-ready) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9c87f4b7-6e1c-819b-2ada-d85fa155bbb1@zaiboc.net> On 23/05/2021 07:39, Spike pondered: > ?what it would be like to be an upload which can think but cannot > really feel I don't think that makes any sense. Thinking is an extension of feeling, so if you can't feel, you can't think. We know that the higher cognitive functions of the brain ('thinking') are built on top of the more primitive ones ('feeling'), using the same neural mechanisms. Thinking without feeling would be like music without notes or a meal without food. -- Ben Zaiboc From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 23 16:37:30 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 09:37:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2021 7:27 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready >?Spike, the days of the beautiful, big cars are over. I am driving around and see this little cutoff car and it's a Lincoln! Bah and more Bah. Maybe they will come back as a sort of Replicar movement. The irony is that they did all this downsizing and increasing fuel economy and we don't need to save gas anymore? Billw Indeed sir? This guzzler I passed up is lucky to break into the double digits on fuel economy. The state government and other considerations have pushed the price of fuel well past 4 bucks a gallon, owww? I considered the suicide door Lincoln only because my trips are short. My cross country runs wouldn?t be done in that rig. In addition to their enormous size, the higher end cars in those days had little if any plastic. An all-metal car is very heavy, which causes its own problems with handling, stopping, fuel consumption and so forth. The 65 Linc is a parade car and a fun show-off car, but lacks practicality. Still fun to look at, and if you start it up, you experience that smell cars used to make in the pre-catalytic converter days. For some reason (perhaps the psychology hipsters among us can comment) the sense of smell seems most directly tied to memory. It works that way in dogs too. Certain smells, even unpleasant ones such as pre-cat-con engine exhaust, trigger pleasant memories of a cheerfully misspent childhood. The ice cream truck?s engine is not stressed, so those things never wear out. It has no cat-con, for that rolling freezer of goodies has been sedately jingling around the suburban streets for over half a century completely unchanged. Those rigs still emit that marvelous smell without which sales would plummet, for most of their ice cream is bought by wistfully reminiscing old geezers such as?um? well? I don?t know any old geezers personally, you see, nope, never met em. I and my friends are middle a? eh? late youth geezers, all of us. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bronto at pobox.com Sun May 23 17:20:16 2021 From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 10:20:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <4f87e8fe-19a2-ecda-5829-ceedf33dc14d@pobox.com> On 2021-5-23 07:26, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > I'll bet if they put out a 1954 Corvette replica it would sell like > pecan waffles.? ? Or a Jag XKE - my favorite sports car.? bill w Imagine printing one for yourself in keratin or chitin or some such -- *\\* Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org From rxahuja at gmail.com Sun May 23 17:56:33 2021 From: rxahuja at gmail.com (Ranjan Ahuja) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 13:56:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] addition to RaDVaC vaccine summit extropy-chat Digest, Vol 212, Issue 32 Message-ID: To elaborate, speakers include Professors of Economics Andrew Lo (MIT) and Alex Tabbarok (George Mason University), Bioethicists Nir Eyal (Rutgers University) and Ben Hurlbut (Arizona State University), open-science & regulatory researcher Milena Leybold (University of Innsbruck), Jutta Paulus, pharmacist and Member of European Parliament from Germany (Green Party), and Harvard Professor George Church. And thank you everyone in advance for reposting on social media or other relevant chat groups! Ranjan Co-founder, RaDVaC https://radvac.org/ On Sun, May 23, 2021, 02:49 wrote: > Send extropy-chat mailing list submissions to > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > extropy-chat-owner at lists.extropy.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of extropy-chat digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: towing an iceberg (spike at rainier66.com) > 2. Re: towing an iceberg (Stuart LaForge) > 3. RRe: towing an iceberg (Ben) > 4. Re: towing an iceberg (William Flynn Wallace) > 5. Re: towing an iceberg (spike at rainier66.com) > 6. Re: towing an iceberg (spike at rainier66.com) > 7. Re: towing an iceberg (Anton Sherwood) > 8. Re: bond. james bond. (John Grigg) > 9. Re: restoration-ready (spike at rainier66.com) > 10. Free half-day summit on open-source vaccine dev, economics, > regulation, challenge trials (Ranjan Ahuja) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 13:02:07 -0700 > From: > To: "'ExI chat list'" > Cc: "'Cc:'" > Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > Message-ID: <003d01d74e7c$2dac3250$890496f0$@rainier66.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > > > > > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of > William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > Sent: Friday, May 21, 2021 12:44 PM > To: ExI chat list > Cc: William Flynn Wallace > Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > > > > Why isn't more money spent on desalination tech? bill w > > > > > > That technology is mature: we know how to do it. The problem is that it > takes a lotta land space and capital if you go the solar route, or a lot of > energy if you go with reverse osmosis. If we can somehow harvest ice, we > use otherwise wasted solar energy that evaporated water out of the sea. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210521/56388e3e/attachment-0001.htm > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 14:04:18 -0700 > From: Stuart LaForge > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > Message-ID: > < > 20210521140418.Horde.vzBL_om7LidETuccwObYlhK at secure199.inmotionhosting.com > > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed; DelSp=Yes > > > Quoting BillK: > > On Fri, 21 May 2021 at 19:25, spike jones via extropy-chat > > wrote: > >> > >> Cool! A few days ago, this huge iceberg was formed when A-76 broke > >> off the Ronne Ice Shelf. > >> > >> A-76 has been measured at about 4300 square km, and since about 10% > >> of an iceberg is above water, then the volume of ice is the product > >> of square km of visible ice times the average altitude above sea > >> level of the surface of the ice times ten. > >> > >> Sooo? by that reckoning, this is a bunch of cubic km of ice. > >> > >> California (and the US in general) is going into another damn > >> drought. What if? we could somehow haul A-76 up and park it about > >> 50 km out at sea, then build a pipeline out to it which would bring > >> fresh water from the melting ice over to the mainland. > >> > >> OK so how the heck do we haul a chunk of ice that size? > > > > > You can't tow an iceberg that big! There is already a lot of > > expertise in this. Smaller icebergs have to be towed all the time in > > the Arctic to move them away from oil rigs. 70 to 80 a year. > > A recent study is here: > > < > https://www.whoi.edu/news-insights/content/can-icebergs-be-towed-to-water-starved-cities/ > > > > So since the iceberg is so big, how about having some engineers set up > camp on it, drill holes all over it, put masts and rigging on the > iceberg and use a bunch of sails to move the iceberg like a giant > ship? Once the iceberg makes it to warmer latitudes, then one could > install Stirling heat exchange engines to power ship screws to propel > the iceberg. Just some thoughts, not a boat expert or anything. > > Stuart LaForge > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 22:45:03 +0100 > From: Ben > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [ExI] RRe: towing an iceberg > Message-ID: <3974aba4-70c4-3a4d-a1dd-d298dc9a8138 at zaiboc.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed > > I wonder if anyone has done the calculations on fitting an iceberg with > sails? > > -- > Ben Zaiboc > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 17:08:08 -0500 > From: William Flynn Wallace > To: ExI chat list , > extropolis at googlegroups.com > Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > Message-ID: > < > CAO+xQEba6ZJ5hTByxXxOppd2_tYESxEaaMpVABse3v4NxQdQ+w at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > To take Southern California as an example of a place that needs a lot of > water, just about all of it is a desert. I simply cannot imagine not > having enough land there even if you needed square miles of it, which you > probably do. I do like towing ice which I have seen in several books. Are > you saying that reverse osmosis is the last, the only tech that could do > this job? No more ideas needed? In fact, could you say that about > anything else? That no further improvement can exist? > > "Oh we've got land, lots of land, with the starry skies above - don't fence > me in." > > bill w > > On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 3:06 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > > Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > > *Sent:* Friday, May 21, 2021 12:44 PM > > *To:* ExI chat list > > *Cc:* William Flynn Wallace > > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > > > > > > > > Why isn't more money spent on desalination tech? bill w > > > > > > > > > > > > That technology is mature: we know how to do it. The problem is that it > > takes a lotta land space and capital if you go the solar route, or a lot > of > > energy if you go with reverse osmosis. If we can somehow harvest ice, we > > use otherwise wasted solar energy that evaporated water out of the sea. > > > > > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210521/5f51577f/attachment-0001.htm > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 5 > Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 16:22:05 -0700 > From: > To: "'ExI chat list'" > Cc: "'Cc:'" > Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > Message-ID: <00bf01d74e98$1d78a3c0$5869eb40$@rainier66.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > > > > On Behalf Of Stuart ... > > >...So since the iceberg is so big, how about having some engineers set up > camp on it, drill holes all over it, put masts and rigging on the iceberg > and use a bunch of sails to move the iceberg like a giant ship? Once the > iceberg makes it to warmer latitudes, then one could install Stirling heat > exchange engines to power ship screws to propel the iceberg. Just some > thoughts, not a boat expert or anything. > > Stuart LaForge > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > The force that could be exerted by the wind is tiny compared to even slight > current. That iceberg is going go wherever the water tells it to. I don't > know if anchoring to the bottom of the sea and pulling it with thousands of > cables will exert anywhere near enough force. > > spike > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 6 > Date: Fri, 21 May 2021 16:28:54 -0700 > From: > To: "'ExI chat list'" > Cc: "'Cc:'" > Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > Message-ID: <00c001d74e99$10fc6c20$32f54460$@rainier66.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > > > > > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of > William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > Sent: Friday, May 21, 2021 3:08 PM > To: ExI chat list ; > extropolis at googlegroups.com > Cc: William Flynn Wallace > Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > > > > >?To take Southern California as an example of a place that needs a lot of > water, just about all of it is a desert. I simply cannot imagine not > having enough land there even if you needed square miles of it, which you > probably do? > > > > > > With desalination, the plants need to be near the coast. Seawater is > taken in, put in the solar heated containers, some water is extracted, then > the remainder is returned to the sea slightly more saline than before. If > the plant is too far inland, it requires too much energy to lift the > seawater. > > > > > > >? I do like towing ice which I have seen in several books. Are you > saying that reverse osmosis is the last, the only tech that could do this > job? No more ideas needed? In fact, could you say that about anything > else? That no further improvement can exist? > > > > You could use nuclear-powered distillation but that hasn?t proven > economically viable anywhere. > > > > >?"Oh we've got land, lots of land, with the starry skies above - don't > fence me in." > > > > bill w > > > > Land close to the sea is very pricy stuff and very limited. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210521/c99ce25e/attachment-0001.htm > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 7 > Date: Sat, 22 May 2021 15:25:22 -0700 > From: Anton Sherwood > To: spike jones via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg > Message-ID: <3fe6ccc7-5862-ce34-df1f-240b5d0f55f1 at pobox.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > On 2021-5-21 12:18, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > We bring in fresh water from a melting iceberg that we managed to > > somehow herd into location, use that to irrigate otherwise barren land > > in California, those areas blossom, going from arid wasteland into > > verdant carbon-sequestering biomass [....] > > A fantasy of mine is to haul icebergs from beyond the Belt and drop > chunks thereof in lonely places ... > > -- > *\\* Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 8 > Date: Sat, 22 May 2021 23:30:12 -0400 > From: John Grigg > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] bond. james bond. > Message-ID: > < > CAGSKFy2odHG2QV+gS33cDjoxJ_twDy_MnorTCC-WMyLRC98inw at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > That better be in the next Bond film! > > John > > > > On Mon, May 3, 2021, 9:53 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > On May 3, 2021, at 6:41 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat < > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > If this isn?t the coolest thing you ever saw, you have seen some damn > cool > > stuff. > > > > > > > > https://twitter.com/i/status/1389285493439860744 > > > > > > > > spike > > > > > > It?s whisper quiet. > > > > What? > > > > It?s whisper quiet! > > > > I still can?t hear you. Let me shut off this thing. No, what was that? > > > > Regards, > > > > Dan > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210522/f4117566/attachment-0001.htm > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 9 > Date: Sat, 22 May 2021 20:41:01 -0700 > From: > To: "'Cc:'" , "'ExI chat list'" > > Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > Message-ID: <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > > > From: John Grigg > Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > > > > >?Spike, is this a cryonics joke? ; ) > > > > John > > > > > > Hi John, no the link to cryonics never crossed my mind. I expect that > cryonics will eventually work, but it is a long ways off. The recent > qualia discussion has me deep-thinking it however, for I am pondering what > it would be like to be an upload which can think but cannot really feel. > Perhaps we would get a situation where we came back in a sense but it would > be as far from the original experience as a #1 value meal in the park vs a > #1 value meal in the blender after 2 minutes on frappe: same stuff ends up > in the stomach, but the experience is just different somehow. > > > > As you may know, I like mechanical things, cars, motorcycles and such, > particularly quirky old ones. I recently thought of one of the old suicide > door Lincolns: > > > > > > > > There is a local one for sale, a 65 model, and it even has the thirsty > (but entertaining) 462 inch V8 whopper. That would be fun to rumble around > town in that. > > > > I remember how to tweak carburetors and set ignition points, but I don?t > necessarily want to do it, and don?t want to hire a feller to do it either. > > > > I didn?t buy it. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sun, May 9, 2021, 3:09 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > wrote: > > > > > > > > I am a fan of the pre-war Chrysler Windsor, so I did a Google search, > found there was one available locally. > > > > The ad said it was all original, ready for restoration: > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210522/0c398dee/attachment-0001.htm > > > -------------- next part -------------- > A non-text attachment was scrubbed... > Name: image001.jpg > Type: image/jpeg > Size: 22657 bytes > Desc: not available > URL: < > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210522/0c398dee/attachment-0001.jpg > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 10 > Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 00:14:44 -0400 > From: Ranjan Ahuja > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [ExI] Free half-day summit on open-source vaccine dev, > economics, regulation, challenge trials > Message-ID: > < > CAKBn2DcOw0WW9SnMeNzD0gp-Dkg1y1p_85We4SzkkmXhNcdjbA at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Concerned global citizens: Since the pandemic is at such a critical phase > currently, RaDVaC (Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative) decided to > quickly organize a short summit, which will also serve as a "brainstorming > session" about open-source vaccines and new economic models of vaccine > deployment, along with new ways of trialing vaccines (in particular, > challenge trials). It is on Tuesday, in two days. > > Participation/attendance is free, please feel free to disseminate to > anywhere and anyone: > > https://www.eventbrite.com/e/unlocking-vaccines-open-source-vaccine-summit-2021-hosted-by-radvac-tickets-152932247469 > > Best regards, > Ranjan > Co-founder, RaDVaC > https://radvac.org/ > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: < > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210523/d0ccabd5/attachment.htm > > > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > ------------------------------ > > End of extropy-chat Digest, Vol 212, Issue 32 > ********************************************* > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun May 23 18:30:17 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 13:30:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Replicar Jags can be made of fiberglass, plastics, Buckyballs, or whatever you like. It's the appearance that matters (well, the ride too). Without asking me, you can look long and hard but rarely find a white-walled tire on a car. What happened? I tried but settled for black. $4 for gas - $1.60 here - has nothing to do with availability in the long term. Purely political. We, this group, are a good bit richer than the average European, who is paying well over $6 a gallon (yes, I looked it up), so don't tell me you can't afford $4, you old pinchpenny. Yes, we both remember 25 cents a gallon, but then ribeyes cost that much way back when as well. Freud, who may actually be right about this one, said that humans lost most of their sense of smell when they began to walk upright. Think of cats and dogs: their noses are close to the earth and earthy smells, which are useful to them ("That damned Butch been peeing on my fire hydrant again!") Earthy smells is exactly what we don't like - we have a human-wide obsession with feces - being forced to eat them, like dogs and other animals do, is among our worst nightmares. (cue in Lonesome Dove and the pigs who faithfully followed the cook, who had the diet they liked) There is a book called Disgust which will tell you a lot more about this subject. I couldn't finish it. Apparently losing our sense of smell did not damage our survivability. We began to rely more on vision. bill w On Sun, May 23, 2021 at 11:40 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Sent:* Sunday, May 23, 2021 7:27 AM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Cc:* William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > > > > >?Spike, the days of the beautiful, big cars are over. I am driving > around and see this little cutoff car and it's a Lincoln! Bah and more > Bah. Maybe they will come back as a sort of Replicar movement. The irony > is that they did all this downsizing and increasing fuel economy and we > don't need to save gas anymore? Billw > > > > Indeed sir? This guzzler I passed up is lucky to break into the double > digits on fuel economy. The state government and other considerations have > pushed the price of fuel well past 4 bucks a gallon, owww? I considered > the suicide door Lincoln only because my trips are short. My cross country > runs wouldn?t be done in that rig. > > > > In addition to their enormous size, the higher end cars in those days had > little if any plastic. An all-metal car is very heavy, which causes its > own problems with handling, stopping, fuel consumption and so forth. The > 65 Linc is a parade car and a fun show-off car, but lacks practicality. > Still fun to look at, and if you start it up, you experience that smell > cars used to make in the pre-catalytic converter days. > > > > For some reason (perhaps the psychology hipsters among us can comment) the > sense of smell seems most directly tied to memory. It works that way in > dogs too. Certain smells, even unpleasant ones such as pre-cat-con engine > exhaust, trigger pleasant memories of a cheerfully misspent childhood. The > ice cream truck?s engine is not stressed, so those things never wear out. > It has no cat-con, for that rolling freezer of goodies has been sedately > jingling around the suburban streets for over half a century completely > unchanged. Those rigs still emit that marvelous smell without which sales > would plummet, for most of their ice cream is bought by wistfully > reminiscing old geezers such as?um? well? I don?t know any old geezers > personally, you see, nope, never met em. I and my friends are middle a? > eh? late youth geezers, all of us. > > > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun May 23 18:31:42 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 13:31:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] p.s. price of gas Message-ID: 12 cents a gallon in Venezuela. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 23 18:50:36 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 11:50:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2021 11:30 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready >? rarely find a white-walled tire on a car. What happened? Disk brakes. They are far more competent at actually stopping the car, and far safer because they aren?t nearly as likely to fade or fail catastrophically, but? they are metal (the disk) on metal composite (the pads.) The pads are softer than the disk, and they vaporize, which causes that hard to clean filmy crud to appear on your rims. You can put big showy whitewalls on your disk-brake car, but after about a week of around-town driving, they will be orange walls. ? >? so don't tell me you can't afford $4? But it is so annoyin? to pay that much. >?you old pinchpenny? I resemble that comment! I tend to think of myself as a late-youth pinchpenny. >? Yes, we both remember 25 cents a gallon, but then ribeyes cost that much way back when as well? I didn?t eat ribeyes back in those days. Lucky to get hamburger I was. Randomly rearranging sentences for effect I am. >?Freud, who may actually be right about this one, said that humans lost most of their sense of smell when they began to walk upright? Billw Ja, but why is it so directly wired to our memories? Grandma?s house for instance. It had that fragrance my entire life. Every time I went in there, even decades later, it evoked those memories, even though the visuals had changed. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bronto at pobox.com Sun May 23 19:00:15 2021 From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 12:00:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] addition to RaDVaC vaccine summit extropy-chat Digest, Vol 212, Issue 32 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <87ad1bfc-223e-c792-87b3-f031f0939b51@pobox.com> Please don't include a whole digest in a reply. Imagine if everyone did so! -- *\\* Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org From ExiMod at protonmail.com Sun May 23 19:42:49 2021 From: ExiMod at protonmail.com (ExiMod) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 19:42:49 +0000 Subject: [ExI] addition to RaDVaC vaccine summit extropy-chat Digest, Vol 212, Issue 32 In-Reply-To: <87ad1bfc-223e-c792-87b3-f031f0939b51@pobox.com> References: <87ad1bfc-223e-c792-87b3-f031f0939b51@pobox.com> Message-ID: <2JuY0x2mBCXA87CmkctNCVT8s5QD8XsNT0xO-VwDssQHhQ9B-7U4wRz_gV57_5Avlo1xXF812NgQMHzv47X2UEDDMR-ix5oj4reMFbQWN-I=@protonmail.com> Ranjan has replied that gmail made the reply text look as though it had disappeared. He won't make that mistake again. ExiMod ??????? Original Message ??????? On Sunday, 23 May 2021 20:00, Anton Sherwood via extropy-chat wrote: > Please don't include a whole digest in a reply. > Imagine if everyone did so! > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > \\ Anton Sherwood \\ www.bendwavy.org > > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun May 23 20:17:09 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 15:17:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: > So why aren't my black tires orange? > > ? > > > > >? so don't tell me you can't afford $4? > > > > But it is so annoyin? to pay that much. You are a pluto hiding behind a > prole mask. > > > > > > Lucky to get hamburger I was. Randomly rearranging sentences for effect > I am. > > > > 'Younger than Springtime, am I.........' source? > > > Ja, but why is it so directly wired to our memories? Grandma?s house for > instance. It had that fragrance my entire life. Every time I went in > there, even decades later, it evoked those memories, even though the > visuals had changed. spike > > I imagine that the nerve pathways did not change even though the > reliance on them did. Remembering that smell of tiger scat was important > to survival. We now have large areas devoted to visual memories, as you > know. Another curious thing: you look at the auditory system, the visual > system, the nerves run rather strictly to various areas, whereas the nerves > from the nose run all over the brain. Humans still relied a lot on smell > to detect, mainly, bitterness, a highlight of poisonous plants. Also > remember that once upon a time, sexual interest was (mainly?) evident by > smell (lacking the rather outrageous means of certain baboons), and still > is to a certain extent, studies show. Perfumes and such thus had dual > purposes: to cover up a lack of bathing, and to cover up any sexual > interest. > All of which doesn't really answer the Grandma's house smell question. > bill w > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 23 20:36:17 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 13:36:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005e01d75013$4900d130$db027390$@rainier66.com> >?So why aren't my black tires orange? They are. Go out there to Mister Lincoln with a wet cloth, preferably white, scrub one of your front tires. Away comes dead rubber and that grimy orange iron oxide. The black rubber hides it a lot better. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 23 20:46:19 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 13:46:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> 'Younger than Springtime, am I.........' source? South Pacific, the musical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmOcn159K6w Do try to catch the collection of Michener short stories upon which it was mostly based: Tales of the South Pacific. >? look at the auditory system, the visual system, the nerves run rather strictly to various areas, whereas the nerves from the nose run all over the brain? Billw That explains most of it right there. I have known of stroke victims who went blind or lost their hearing or lost a specific function such as balance, motion, even speech. But I have never heard of a stroke victim suddenly losing the ability to smell and taste. Conclusion: perhaps there is massively redundant circuitry on that, where parts of the brain not otherwise occupied get used for that function. I would prefer my brain?s otherwise idle regions be wired for additional smartness rather than smell, as it apparently is in the head of Anders Sandberg, but for me, it is what it is: smelly rather than smart. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun May 23 21:56:00 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 16:56:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Unusual case - friend of mine was hit by a car. He and his wife were walking and he pushed her out of the way. Once recovered from concussion, etc., he was left with no sense of smell. He sued and won. After the verdict the judge called him to the bench and told him that he had heard that zinc might help. He started taking zinc and two weeks later while walking in Birmingham he smelled a hotdog- most wonderful thing on earth, he said at the time. He experimented: after going off the zinc he lost it; back on zinc, he got it back. We have a lot to learn about the brain. bill w On Sun, May 23, 2021 at 3:49 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > 'Younger than Springtime, am I.........' source? > > > > South Pacific, the musical: > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmOcn159K6w > > > > Do try to catch the collection of Michener short stories upon which it was > mostly based: Tales of the South Pacific. > > > > >? look at the auditory system, the visual system, the nerves run rather > strictly to various areas, whereas the nerves from the nose run all over > the brain? Billw > > > > That explains most of it right there. I have known of stroke victims who > went blind or lost their hearing or lost a specific function such as > balance, motion, even speech. But I have never heard of a stroke victim > suddenly losing the ability to smell and taste. > > > > Conclusion: perhaps there is massively redundant circuitry on that, where > parts of the brain not otherwise occupied get used for that function. I > would prefer my brain?s otherwise idle regions be wired for additional > smartness rather than smell, as it apparently is in the head of Anders > Sandberg, but for me, it is what it is: smelly rather than smart. > > > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 23 22:39:00 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 15:39:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2021 2:56 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready >?Unusual case - friend of mine was hit by a car. He and his wife were walking and he pushed her out of the way. Once recovered from concussion, etc., he was left with no sense of smell. He sued and won. After the verdict the judge called him to the bench and told him that he had heard that zinc might help. He started taking zinc and two weeks later while walking in Birmingham he smelled a hotdog- most wonderful thing on earth, he said at the time. He experimented: after going off the zinc he lost it; back on zinc, he got it back. We have a lot to learn about the brain. bill w This may have had nothing to do with the concussion or the brain. An impact to the head would be completely consistent with localized swelling of the nasal cavities, resulting in loss of access to the olfactory receptors. This is what causes loss of smell when you suffer from that stuffy-nose feeling associated with a head cold. Zinc may act to reduce swelling of these delicate nasal tissues, restoring his sense of smell. I had an acquaintance who had never had much of an olfactory sense. In his late 50s, his doctor convinced him that his olfactory receptor cells and nerves were intact, but the configuration of the tissues in his head were the cause of his inability to smell anything. This could be treated with surgery. After much consideration, he decided to go forward with it. The surgery changed the sound of his voice, which he liked. He was rather disappointed to discover that most of the smells in the world which he was experiencing for the first time at age 60, were unpleasant. He didn?t want to undo the surgery, but spent much time and effort trying to find those few odors he considered pleasant, which were about one in ten. After the surgery, he could taste food for the first time as well, and likewise was disappointed to find that many, if not most foods, tasted somewhat unpleasant. We spoke soon after he had it done. Since then the matter was not discussed. I need to ask him if the situation improved. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun May 23 23:05:44 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 18:05:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Our Constitution: I have read Amar's book on the Bill of Rights, the one on the Constitution (1760-1840) called The Words that Made Us, and am now into America's Unwritten Constitution. All of them are amazing. I probably knew less than 1% of the happenings of history re Revolutionary War, Continental Congress and all that followed. The Constitution does not mean what it says - it means a whole lot more, as this latter book on the unwritten constitution examines in detail. No one can read it and figure out what it means just from the printed words, which in any case were for publication and perusal by the people of the states who were to vote on it. It is just a few pages long (and the original parchment, in D. C. has been declared to have no legal standing!). If you have not read these books or their equivalent, which I doubt exists, you will find ins and outs you never thought of. Extensive coverage of the Warren Court and afterwards (Roe versus Wade, for ex.). (author says John Marshall and Warren are acknowledged as the two greatest judges). Bottom line: I will mail these to you if desired. Criticism (but not really ) - hatchet jobs on Jefferson and Adams and many more. I began to wonder why we have a Jefferson Memorial. So, very straightforward. Oh, Washington is treated like a God who could do no wrong (except for some military moves that he made; he had no formal military training). Far, far more important than I had imagined. Next, biographies of him and Hamilton, who apparently was a playboy and a genius. Many criticisms of the Supreme Court in detail. I'd better quit here. Bottom line: I will mail these to you if desired. Author Amar law professor at Yale. bill w On Sun, May 23, 2021 at 5:42 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Sent:* Sunday, May 23, 2021 2:56 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Cc:* William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > > > > >?Unusual case - friend of mine was hit by a car. He and his wife were > walking and he pushed her out of the way. Once recovered from concussion, > etc., he was left with no sense of smell. He sued and won. After the > verdict the judge called him to the bench and told him that he had heard > that zinc might help. He started taking zinc and two weeks later while > walking in Birmingham he smelled a hotdog- most wonderful thing on earth, > he said at the time. He experimented: after going off the zinc he lost > it; back on zinc, he got it back. We have a lot to learn about the > brain. bill w > > > > > > This may have had nothing to do with the concussion or the brain. An > impact to the head would be completely consistent with localized swelling > of the nasal cavities, resulting in loss of access to the olfactory > receptors. This is what causes loss of smell when you suffer from that > stuffy-nose feeling associated with a head cold. Zinc may act to reduce > swelling of these delicate nasal tissues, restoring his sense of smell. > > > > I had an acquaintance who had never had much of an olfactory sense. In > his late 50s, his doctor convinced him that his olfactory receptor cells > and nerves were intact, but the configuration of the tissues in his head > were the cause of his inability to smell anything. This could be treated > with surgery. After much consideration, he decided to go forward with it. > > > > The surgery changed the sound of his voice, which he liked. He was rather > disappointed to discover that most of the smells in the world which he was > experiencing for the first time at age 60, were unpleasant. He didn?t want > to undo the surgery, but spent much time and effort trying to find those > few odors he considered pleasant, which were about one in ten. > > > > After the surgery, he could taste food for the first time as well, and > likewise was disappointed to find that many, if not most foods, tasted > somewhat unpleasant. > > > > We spoke soon after he had it done. Since then the matter was not > discussed. I need to ask him if the situation improved. > > > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rxahuja at gmail.com Mon May 24 04:23:23 2021 From: rxahuja at gmail.com (Ranjan Ahuja) Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 00:23:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] addition to RaDVaC vaccine summit extropy-chat Digest, Vol 212, Issue 32 In-Reply-To: <87ad1bfc-223e-c792-87b3-f031f0939b51@pobox.com> References: <87ad1bfc-223e-c792-87b3-f031f0939b51@pobox.com> Message-ID: Whoops - sorry all! Chat digest newbie here. Thanks for pointing this out Anton. Best, Ranjan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 24 21:36:21 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 14:36:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] no-cash wagers Message-ID: <000601d750e4$d7201ad0$85605070$@rainier66.com> A long time ago we had play-money ideas futures, set up by one of our own. That was a lotta fun, but it eventually went away after the real-money ideas betting came along. I liked the play money version better: people took it more seriously. Whaddya bet (in micro-prophets) that we find out covid-19 originated in the Wuhan lab? Whaddya bet that we find out the USA partially funded viral gain of function research at that site? I think both of these are true. More precisely: I fear both of these are true. spike From sen.otaku at gmail.com Mon May 24 21:43:47 2021 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 17:43:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Isn?t the silence easily explained away by the fact that the farther we look, the farther into the past we are seeing? If any intelligent life lived there, if they are more than about 200 ly away, we wouldn?t have any intelligent life either. I honestly see it as a non-issue. SR Ballard From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 24 21:52:42 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 14:52:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <000701d750e7$20033eb0$6009bc10$@rainier66.com> >...> On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Fermi paradox >...Isn?t the silence easily explained away by the fact that the farther we look, the farther into the past we are seeing? >...If any intelligent life lived there, if they are more than about 200 ly away, we wouldn?t have any intelligent life either. >...I honestly see it as a non-issue. >...SR Ballard _______________________________________________ Hi SR, welcome back. We are recent intelligence, but intelligence in a galaxy far far away could have evolved long long ago. spike From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 24 22:48:46 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 23:48:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: <000701d750e7$20033eb0$6009bc10$@rainier66.com> References: <000701d750e7$20033eb0$6009bc10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 24 May 2021 at 22:56, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Hi SR, welcome back. > > We are recent intelligence, but intelligence in a galaxy far far away could have evolved long long ago. > > spike > _______________________________________________ Some of the stars in the Milky Way are almost as old as the creation of the universe, so our galaxy formed early. But our Solar System did indeed form much later. However, the period of time when an intelligent species is broadcasting signals / signs that might be detectable elsewhere could be very brief indeed. Either because they find better ways to communicate or they hit a late-time filter which ends their civilisation. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 24 22:50:18 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 17:50:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] no-cash wagers In-Reply-To: <000601d750e4$d7201ad0$85605070$@rainier66.com> References: <000601d750e4$d7201ad0$85605070$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I fear that China will not let us find out. Bad PR bill w On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 4:39 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > A long time ago we had play-money ideas futures, set up by one of our own. > That was a lotta fun, but it eventually went away after the real-money > ideas > betting came along. > > I liked the play money version better: people took it more seriously. > > Whaddya bet (in micro-prophets) that we find out covid-19 originated in the > Wuhan lab? > > Whaddya bet that we find out the USA partially funded viral gain of > function > research at that site? > > I think both of these are true. More precisely: I fear both of these are > true. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 24 23:10:09 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 16:10:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] no-cash wagers In-Reply-To: References: <000601d750e4$d7201ad0$85605070$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <000f01d750f1$f1e02ce0$d5a086a0$@rainier66.com> On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 4:39 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: >>?Whaddya bet (in micro-prophets) that we find out covid-19 originated in the Wuhan lab? >>?Whaddya bet that we find out the USA partially funded viral gain of function research at that site? ?> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] no-cash wagers >?I fear that China will not let us find out. Bad PR bill w Ja. We could end up where the lab leak theory is not falsifiable, other than to label it a conspiracy theory. That isn?t sufficient counter-evidence. I notice the lab leak theory is experiencing a resurgence. I am seeing the notion being bunked everywhere, even in mainstream news sources now. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Tue May 25 02:39:30 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 19:39:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20210524193930.Horde.M6i4TKv4CAkBKfFdotzv_wq@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting Spike: > The force that could be exerted by the wind is tiny compared to even slight > current. That iceberg is going go wherever the water tells it to. I don't > know if anchoring to the bottom of the sea and pulling it with thousands of > cables will exert anywhere near enough force. > Ok so we can't use the wind to propel the iceberg, so then can we use it to steer the iceberg? Apply small but constant force orthogonal to the current to guide the iceberg to warmer latitudes where we can use the temperature difference between the water and the iceberg to power a heat engine to propel the iceberg to the highest bidder? Stuart LaForge From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 25 03:06:13 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 20:06:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <20210524193930.Horde.M6i4TKv4CAkBKfFdotzv_wq@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20210524193930.Horde.M6i4TKv4CAkBKfFdotzv_wq@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <000a01d75112$ecbab840$c63028c0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat Sent: Monday, May 24, 2021 7:40 PM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Cc: Stuart LaForge Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg Quoting Spike: > The force that could be exerted by the wind is tiny compared to even > slight current. That iceberg is going go wherever the water tells it > to. I don't know if anchoring to the bottom of the sea and pulling it > with thousands of cables will exert anywhere near enough force. > Ok so we can't use the wind to propel the iceberg, so then can we use it to steer the iceberg? Apply small but constant force orthogonal to the current to guide the iceberg to warmer latitudes where we can use the temperature difference between the water and the iceberg to power a heat engine to propel the iceberg to the highest bidder? Stuart LaForge _______________________________________________ What I had in mind is a scheme which takes advantage of the Von Karman vortex street: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_vortex_street If the iceberg is stationary, anchored to the ocean floor at a thousand points and the natural current forms a vortex street, the flow is alternately more laminar on one side and more turbulent on the other, according to that Reynolds number equation shown in the link above. I have in mind taking advantage of the resulting rocking motion caused by the von Karman vortex street to rock the ice forward, not so much by pulling it with cables but by anchoring it with cables on one side as we reel it in on the other as it naturally rocks that direction, then anchoring that side when it swings back the other way. I realize that isn't a good description of the process, but imagine a long ship in a river where we create a kind of rudder on the front. We steer it side to side while it is cable-anchored to the bottom, then continually reel in slack on the loosest cable. I don't know if that would work or not, but if so, it takes advantage of wave action and turbulent vs laminar flow. I have never seen that idea in a paper or any sane publication, but if the idea is ever used, remember you saw it first here. spike From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 25 03:22:44 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 20:22:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <000a01d75112$ecbab840$c63028c0$@rainier66.com> References: <20210524193930.Horde.M6i4TKv4CAkBKfFdotzv_wq@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> <000a01d75112$ecbab840$c63028c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <000001d75115$3aecf5d0$b0c6e170$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: spike at rainier66.com ... _______________________________________________ >...What I had in mind is a scheme which takes advantage of the Von Karman vortex street: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_vortex_street >...If the iceberg is stationary, anchored to the ocean floor at a thousand points and the natural current forms a vortex street, the flow is alternately more laminar on one side and ...spike Oy vey, I made a total mess of that previous egregiously amateurish attempt at expressing an idea. Do allow me to try again. Imagine a long iceberg like the recently-formed shelf. Imagine the prevailing current west to east (it isn't hard to do (because that is the direction of the prevailing current down there.) Once we get it in close to a land mass, the job becomes easier because we can use the current to our advantage then. But getting across the sea between Antarctica and South America is tough. So... west to east current. Imagine anchoring the ice with the long direction oriented east-west, anchored to the bottom of the sea with the attachments to the ice near the front (if we define front is upstream in the current.) The idea is that the Von Karman vortex street would cause the "stern" to move north and south, pivoting about the bow. If we were to get clever, perhaps we could re-anchor when the stern shifts northward, then use the same effect to cause the bow to shift northward. Repeat, rocking the whole snowball north a few km with each cycle. Note that it might not be fast enough to get us across that gulf before the ice melts. spike From sen.otaku at gmail.com Tue May 25 06:02:15 2021 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Tue, 25 May 2021 02:02:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Rectal Breathing in Mammals and Potential Medical Applications Message-ID: <02C71795-9E64-4A5A-8453-0C20C3557BBA@gmail.com> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/mammals-can-breathe-through-their-intestines Exerpt: ?But no one knew whether oxygen could enter the bloodstream via mammalian intestines. To find out, Takanori Takebe, a gastroenterologist from Cincinnati Children?s Hospital, and his colleagues tested several approaches to ventilating the intestines of mice and pigs that were deprived briefly of oxygen. In one group of 11 mice, four had their intestines scrubbed to thin the mucosal lining and improve oxygen absorption. Next, the researchers injected pure, pressurized oxygen into the rectums of the scrubbed mice and four of the seven unscrubbed ones. Then, the researchers withdrew oxygen from the animals, making them ?hypoxic.? The three unscrubbed mice that received no intestinal oxygen survived for a median of 11 minutes. Mice with unscrubbed intestines that received oxygen through their anuses lasted 18 minutes. Only the ventilated mice with brushed intestines lived through the hourlong experiment, with a survival rate of 75%, the researchers report today in Med. But Takebe and colleagues wanted to ditch the onerous?and dangerous?process of intestinal scrubbing. So they replaced the pressurized oxygen with fluids known as perfluorocarbons, which can carry large amounts of oxygen and are often used as a substitute for blood during surgery. Because they are highly dense, perfluorocarbons can also help flush mucus out of the intestine. The researchers injected oxygen-rich perfluorocarbons into the anuses of three hypoxic mice and seven hypoxic pigs; as a control, they flushed saline solution into the intestines of two hypoxic mice and five hypoxic pigs. Whereas blood-oxygen levels in the control groups plummeted, oxygen levels in the ventilated mice steadied to normal levels. In the treated pigs, blood oxygen saturation increased by about 15%, relieving them of hypoxic symptoms. Color and warmth returned to their skin and extremities in minutes.? SR Ballard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sen.otaku at gmail.com Tue May 25 06:13:09 2021 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Tue, 25 May 2021 02:13:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: <000701d750e7$20033eb0$6009bc10$@rainier66.com> References: <000701d750e7$20033eb0$6009bc10$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <04329CC6-5B8B-4353-AE67-DF48CC7B877C@gmail.com> We might be able to suppose that a solar system would need to contain a 3rd+ generation star in order to contain the ingredients essential for the type of life we understand. That would limit it in a significant way, per my understanding. And besides that, due to the eternal shrinking of our causal cell, it is also possible that life exists but is not observable to us, due to that limitation as well. We might also consider that some living conditions of organisms (aquatic, subterranean) might not lend themselves to either space travel or radio. Perhaps we already do receive alien signals but fail to understand their meaning. Perhaps we are receiving a form of alien morse code on the span of decades. Or nano-seconds. Aliens are not obligated to display intelligence in the way we perceive it. For example, we currently have 4 (3?) types of primates which have entered the stone age. Perhaps we are ahead of the curve, if only slightly. There are a million possible explanations and I find the majority of them to be extremely satisfying. SR Ballard > On May 24, 2021, at 5:55 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? >> ...> On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] Fermi paradox > >> ...Isn?t the silence easily explained away by the fact that the farther we look, the farther into the past we are seeing? > >> ...If any intelligent life lived there, if they are more than about 200 ly away, we wouldn?t have any intelligent life either. > >> ...I honestly see it as a non-issue. > >> ...SR Ballard > _______________________________________________ > > > > Hi SR, welcome back. > > We are recent intelligence, but intelligence in a galaxy far far away could have evolved long long ago. > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From sen.otaku at gmail.com Tue May 25 06:16:03 2021 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Tue, 25 May 2021 02:16:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <20210524193930.Horde.M6i4TKv4CAkBKfFdotzv_wq@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20210524193930.Horde.M6i4TKv4CAkBKfFdotzv_wq@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <16526A1C-8A1C-412D-81EC-A3084FDC6B8A@gmail.com> Wouldn?t it be easier to put ?fins? on the iceberg? And just adjust them as needed, the same way you do a J stroke on a canoe? SR Ballard > On May 24, 2021, at 10:42 PM, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > Quoting Spike: > >> The force that could be exerted by the wind is tiny compared to even slight >> current. That iceberg is going go wherever the water tells it to. I don't >> know if anchoring to the bottom of the sea and pulling it with thousands of >> cables will exert anywhere near enough force. >> > > Ok so we can't use the wind to propel the iceberg, so then can we use it to steer the iceberg? Apply small but constant force orthogonal to the current to guide the iceberg to warmer latitudes where we can use the temperature difference between the water and the iceberg to power a heat engine to propel the iceberg to the highest bidder? > > Stuart LaForge > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 25 12:45:21 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 25 May 2021 05:45:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] towing an iceberg In-Reply-To: <16526A1C-8A1C-412D-81EC-A3084FDC6B8A@gmail.com> References: <20210524193930.Horde.M6i4TKv4CAkBKfFdotzv_wq@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> <16526A1C-8A1C-412D-81EC-A3084FDC6B8A@gmail.com> Message-ID: <002e01d75163$d3c11ea0$7b435be0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of SR Ballard via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] towing an iceberg Wouldn?t it be easier to put ?fins? on the iceberg? And just adjust them as needed, the same way you do a J stroke on a canoe? SR Ballard Perhaps. We could imagine thousands of devices with individual vertical pivot shafts that move together like the vent control on the air conditioner vent in your car. Anchor the iceberg longways with the current as before, then use the multiple rudders to try that stepwise rocking motion sideways to the current. Any scheme that seems plausible so far involves anchoring to the sea floor and using the existing current rather than trying to propel against it. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue May 25 20:06:37 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 25 May 2021 15:06:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Remembrance of futures past In-Reply-To: <9D.F4.04626.8462DA06@ax.mta2vrest.cc.prd.sparkpost> References: <9D.F4.04626.8462DA06@ax.mta2vrest.cc.prd.sparkpost> Message-ID: disappointing tech ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Paul Krugman Date: Tue, May 25, 2021 at 11:31 AM Subject: Remembrance of futures past To: Why does technology so often disappoint? View in browser |nytimes.com Continue reading the main story <#m_-7693481013255914721_a11y-skip-ad-marquee> [image: Paul Krugman] May 25, 2021 [image: Author Headshot] By Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist Last week I wrote about cryptocurrency , which is sort of becoming the monetary equivalent of the old joke about Brazil: ?It?s the country of the future, and always will be.? The article drew a predictable wave of outrage from crypto fanatics ? and there are no fanatics like crypto fanatics. What probably offended them most was my observation that this ?revolutionary? technology is actually getting kind of old ? Bitcoin was invented in 2009 ? and has yet to find significant legitimate uses. Cryptocurrency isn?t the only technology to disappoint. Self-driving cars were supposed to be ruling the road by now. And basically nothing in the 1968 movie ?2001: A Space Odyssey ? has happened yet; neither the space hotel nor the homicidal computer. (OK, we do have video calls.) Not everything has fallen short. Solar and wind power have made incredible progress . And I assume I?m not the only person who, forced into trying new things during quarantine, discovered that you can produce some pretty amazing meals in an electronic pressure cooker. Still, the data bear out the general sense that the real-world utility of new technology has fallen far short of the hype. Labor productivity ? real output per person hour ? has risen only about half as fast since 2007 as it did in the generation after World War II. Why measure from 2007? Well, it was the eve of the financial crisis; but it also happens to be the year Apple introduced the original iPhone . So much technoglitz; so little G.D.P. Why? Continue reading the main story <#m_-7693481013255914721_a11y-skip-0> ADVERTISEMENT A new paper by Erik Brynjolfsson, Seth Benzell and Daniel Rock tries to answer that question; to their credit, given that Brynjolfsson in particular has built a career emphasizing the revolutionary changes technology is bringing, one of their options is that when all is said and done, new technologies, while eye-catching, aren?t all that. Their favored explanation, however, boils down to: just you wait. The idea is that it takes a while for businesses to figure out how to make the best use of radical new technologies, and that you shouldn?t expect big things until they do. I like this argument, and I would find it persuasive ? if I hadn?t heard it all before. You see, this isn?t the first time information technology has disappointed. During the 70s and 80s computers proliferated with astonishing speed; you young whippersnappers have no idea how big a deal it was to have your own screen and keyboard sitting on your desk. Yet the economy remained mired in a long stretch of productivity stagnation. As the great M.I.T. economist Robert Solow remarked , ?You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.? Enter the economic historian Paul David, with a fascinating 1990 paper titled ?The Dynamo and the Computer.? David showed that it took decades before the advantages of electrification really showed up in economic growth, because it took time before, to take one example, manufacturers realized that replacing overhead shafts and pullies with electric motors meant that factories could be sprawling structures with wide aisles, not cramped multistory buildings with a steam engine in the basement. Continue reading the main story <#m_-7693481013255914721_a11y-skip-1> ADVERTISEMENT David?s point was that we could expect something similar with computers: eventually businesses would learn what to do with them, and productivity would surge. Sure enough, around 1995 U.S. productivity growth really did take off, beginning a rocket-like ascent. Which lasted for around a decade, then stalled out. Maybe this time is different. But so far the fact is that in an era when we talk constantly about technology and glamorize techies, the actual economic payoffs have been largely ? not universally, but largely ? disappointing. And because we?ve been through this kind of disappointment before, it?s hard to avoid feeling a bit cynical. Quick Hits The technologies that seemed ?highly likely? in the 60s; most didn?t make it. Whatever happened to supersonic travel ? Weren?t we supposed to have virtual reality by now? Unless Pelotons count. Continue reading the main story <#m_-7693481013255914721_a11y-skip-2> ADVERTISEMENT Feedback If you?re enjoying what you?re reading, please consider recommending it to friends. They can sign up here . If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week?s newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at krugman-newsletter at nytimes.com . Facing the Music Thinking about the futureYouTube OK, what about my technology ? IN THE TIMES TikTok, the Fastest Way on Earth to Become a Food Star The app offers explosive growth for content creators. Gen Z cooks are taking advantage. By Taylor Lorenz [image: Article Image] N.Y.C. Will Eliminate Remote Learning for Next School Year All students and staff members will be back in school buildings full time come September, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday. By Eliza Shapiro [image: Article Image] Why Students Are Logging In to Class From 7,000 Miles Away Students are joining remote classes from outside the country. In one New Jersey school district, computers were traced to 24 countries on a day last month. By Tracey Tully [image: Article Image] Global Cactus Traffickers Are Cleaning Out the Deserts A recent raid in Italy involving rare Chilean species highlights the growing scale of a black market in the thorny plants. By Rachel Nuwer [image: Article Image] Thank you for your support. Want to share The New York Times? Friends and family can enjoy unlimited digital access to our journalism with this special offer. Continue reading the main story <#m_-7693481013255914721_a11y-skip-3> Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for Paul Krugman from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences . Subscribe to The Times Get The New York Times app Connect with us on: [image: facebook] [image: twitter] [image: instagram] Change Your Email Privacy Policy Contact Us California Notices [image: LiveIntent Logo] [image: AdChoices Logo] The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Wed May 26 00:22:48 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Tue, 25 May 2021 17:22:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fermi paradox Message-ID: <20210525172248.Horde.fCSeO8PT-1eJz8xpP2Y8hE2@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting SR Ballard: > ------------------------------ > Isn?t the silence easily explained away by the fact that the farther > we look, the farther into the past we are seeing? > > If any intelligent life lived there, if they are more than about 200 > ly away, we wouldn?t have any intelligent life either. > > I honestly see it as a non-issue. I agree. Like foolish youth, we started out the age of radio by doing more talking than than we did listening. As you point out, our entire SETI light cone has been less than +/-200 years past and future. And we led off with "I Love Lucy". What if that was the galactic equivalent of a loud and bizarrely long belch at a cocktail party, and the "great silence" is just that awkward pause where everybody is just too embarrassed to say anything? ;) Incidentally now that Arecibo is gone, who if anyone is listening for a return signal to the 1974 message? Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 26 08:14:18 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 09:14:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fermi paradox In-Reply-To: <20210525172248.Horde.fCSeO8PT-1eJz8xpP2Y8hE2@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20210525172248.Horde.fCSeO8PT-1eJz8xpP2Y8hE2@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 26 May 2021 at 01:26, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat wrote: > > > Incidentally now that Arecibo is gone, who if anyone is listening for > a return signal to the 1974 message? > > Stuart LaForge > _______________________________________________ Heh! :) >From Wikipedia-- Because globular cluster M13, at which the message was aimed, is more than 25,000 light-years from Earth, the message, traveling at approximately the speed of light, will take at least 25,000 years to arrive there. ---------- It was just a technical demo, to show that humans could send such a message. BillK From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 26 12:45:55 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 20:45:55 +0800 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: William Wallace wrote: >Spike, the days of the beautiful, big cars are over. I am driving around and see this little cutoff car and it's a >Lincoln! Bah and more Bah. What about the massive SUV's which I see everywhere? I can't get over how popular they are here in the Philippines. In this country they lovingly build copies of the classic U.S. Army WW2 jeep, and I just may buy one for just a few thousand dollars. They are known to last forever! John On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 7:09 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Our Constitution: I have read Amar's book on the Bill of Rights, the one > on the Constitution (1760-1840) called The Words that Made Us, and am now > into America's Unwritten Constitution. All of them are amazing. I > probably knew less than 1% of the happenings of history re Revolutionary > War, Continental Congress and all that followed. > > The Constitution does not mean what it says - it means a whole lot more, > as this latter book on the unwritten constitution examines in detail. No > one can read it and figure out what it means just from the printed words, > which in any case were for publication and perusal by the people of the > states who were to vote on it. It is just a few pages long (and the > original parchment, in D. C. has been declared to have no legal > standing!). > > If you have not read these books or their equivalent, which I doubt > exists, you will find ins and outs you never thought of. Extensive > coverage of the Warren Court and afterwards (Roe versus Wade, for ex.). > (author says John Marshall and Warren are acknowledged as the two greatest > judges). > > Bottom line: I will mail these to you if desired. > > Criticism (but not really ) - hatchet jobs on Jefferson and Adams and many > more. I began to wonder why we have a Jefferson Memorial. So, very > straightforward. Oh, Washington is treated like a God who could do no > wrong (except for some military moves that he made; he had no formal > military training). Far, far more important than I had imagined. Next, > biographies of him and Hamilton, who apparently was a playboy and a > genius. Many criticisms of the Supreme Court in detail. > > I'd better quit here. Bottom line: I will mail these to you if desired. > Author Amar law professor at Yale. > > bill w > > > > On Sun, May 23, 2021 at 5:42 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf >> Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat >> *Sent:* Sunday, May 23, 2021 2:56 PM >> *To:* ExI chat list >> *Cc:* William Flynn Wallace >> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] restoration-ready >> >> >> >> >?Unusual case - friend of mine was hit by a car. He and his wife were >> walking and he pushed her out of the way. Once recovered from concussion, >> etc., he was left with no sense of smell. He sued and won. After the >> verdict the judge called him to the bench and told him that he had heard >> that zinc might help. He started taking zinc and two weeks later while >> walking in Birmingham he smelled a hotdog- most wonderful thing on earth, >> he said at the time. He experimented: after going off the zinc he lost >> it; back on zinc, he got it back. We have a lot to learn about the >> brain. bill w >> >> >> >> >> >> This may have had nothing to do with the concussion or the brain. An >> impact to the head would be completely consistent with localized swelling >> of the nasal cavities, resulting in loss of access to the olfactory >> receptors. This is what causes loss of smell when you suffer from that >> stuffy-nose feeling associated with a head cold. Zinc may act to reduce >> swelling of these delicate nasal tissues, restoring his sense of smell. >> >> >> >> I had an acquaintance who had never had much of an olfactory sense. In >> his late 50s, his doctor convinced him that his olfactory receptor cells >> and nerves were intact, but the configuration of the tissues in his head >> were the cause of his inability to smell anything. This could be treated >> with surgery. After much consideration, he decided to go forward with it. >> >> >> >> The surgery changed the sound of his voice, which he liked. He was >> rather disappointed to discover that most of the smells in the world which >> he was experiencing for the first time at age 60, were unpleasant. He >> didn?t want to undo the surgery, but spent much time and effort trying to >> find those few odors he considered pleasant, which were about one in ten. >> >> >> >> After the surgery, he could taste food for the first time as well, and >> likewise was disappointed to find that many, if not most foods, tasted >> somewhat unpleasant. >> >> >> >> We spoke soon after he had it done. Since then the matter was not >> discussed. I need to ask him if the situation improved. >> >> >> >> spike >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 26 12:57:03 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 20:57:03 +0800 Subject: [ExI] Nikola Tesla: 5G Network Could Realize His Dream of Wireless Electricity Message-ID: "At the height of his career, the pioneering electrical engineer Nikola Tesla became obsessed with an idea. He theorized that electricity could be transmitted wirelessly through the air at long distances?either via a series of strategically positioned towers, or hopping across a system of suspended balloons. Things didn?t go to plan , and Tesla?s ambitions for a wireless global electricity supply were never realized. But the theory itself wasn?t disproved: it would have simply required an extraordinary amount of power, much of which would have been wasted. Now, a research paper has suggested that the architects of the 5G network may have unwittingly built what Tesla failed to construct at the turn of the twentieth century: a ?wireless power grid? that could be adapted to charge or power small devices embedded in cars, homes, workplaces, and factories." https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/23/nikola-tesla-5g-network-could-realize-his-dream-of-wireless-electricity/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 26 13:04:21 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 21:04:21 +0800 Subject: [ExI] Google Is Developing a Hologram-Like 3D Video Conferencing Tool Called Project Starline Message-ID: "Surprisingly, Starline wasn?t conceived of during the pandemic as a frenzied attempt to keep socially-distanced and locked-down humans connected; as reported by *Wired* , Google?s head of augmented and virtual reality, Clay Bavor, said the project has been in motion for over five years. Bavor sees Starline as being in a different league than tools like Zoom. ?I know that the person I?m sitting across from is not checking his phone during the meeting, and that?s nice,? he told *Wired* . ?But the crazy thing is, I would wake up the next morning and have the memory of, ?Oh, I saw Steve yesterday.? Not like, ?I had a video call with Steve yesterday.? And there?s just something different about how our memories are laid down.? The imagery in Project Starline?s sample video does look impressively realistic. However, the technology isn?t close to being ready for widespread use; there are still glitches to be ironed out and improvements to be made, not to mention a cost that?s undoubtedly prohibitively high (details of cost haven?t been released)." https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/20/google-is-developing-a-hologram-like-3d-video-conferencing-tool-called-project-starline/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 26 13:07:08 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 21:07:08 +0800 Subject: [ExI] A New Brain Implant Turns Thoughts Into Text With 90 Percent Accuracy Message-ID: "Texting might not be faster than speech, but for many of us it?s a natural way to communicate. Thanks to a new brain-computer interface (BCI), people with paralysis can now do the same?with a twist. By imagining the motions of writing letters, a man with spinal injury was able to translate thoughts into text, at a speed that rivals thumb typing on a smartphone. At 90 characters per minute and an accuracy of over 90 percent after autocorrect, the system leapfrogs every record previously accomplished using neural implants. The crux is an algorithm based on a popular and very powerful neural network?recurrent neural network (RNN)?plus a few tricks from the machine learning community. The result is a neural implant that uses AI to convert electrical brain signals, generated as someone imagines handwriting into text that?s displayed onto a computer in real time. ?This ? could help restore communication in people who are severely paralyzed, or ?locked-in,?? said study author Dr. Frank Willett at Stanford?s Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory. ?It should help people express themselves and share their thoughts. It?s very exciting.? https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/18/a-new-brain-implant-turns-thoughts-into-text-with-90-percent-accuracy/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 26 13:09:22 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 21:09:22 +0800 Subject: [ExI] SpaceX Rocket Flies 10 Times as Reusability Gets Surprisingly Routine Message-ID: "Industry pioneer SpaceX has hit a significant milestone after one of its Falcon 9 rockets completed its 10th mission. The ability to reuse its launch vehicles has been at the heart of the company?s recent successes, and it seems others are starting to take note. For decades, space rockets have been a single-use technology left to burn up on re-entry to the atmosphere once their mission is done. While a single-use approach might make sense for packaging material, in retrospect it seems like a crazy proposition for a highly engineered multi-million-dollar piece of equipment. Trying to change that has been a core plank of SpaceX?s mission to slash the cost of spaceflight since its earliest days. And after a few dramatic failures, the company finally managed to land one of its rockets in 2015, followed by the first reuse in 2017. Since then, the landing and reuse of the Falcon 9 has become standard practice for the company, and in 2018 founder Elon Musk set a goal of flying each rocket 10 times before having to carry out serious maintenance. On May 9th SpaceX hit that target for the first time when its B1051 booster landed safely after completing its 10th flight. That?s an impressive milestone that means the only vehicles that have made more spaceflights than this rocket are the NASA space shuttles Discovery, Atlantis, Columbia, and Endeavor. But it?s not just the number of launches that?s impressive, it?s also the speed with which it has achieved them. While Discovery still has an impressive lead with a total of 39 missions, it built that up over 27 years. SpaceX?s booster hit 10 missions in just 26 months, and in that period it was only one launch shy of the total number of missions flown by all rockets from its main competitor, United Launch Alliance." https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/17/spacex-milestone-signals-reusable-rockets-are-becoming-mainstream/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 26 13:39:00 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 21:39:00 +0800 Subject: [ExI] World's largest iceberg breaks off of Antarctica Message-ID: "An enormous iceberg, a little bigger than the state of Rhode Island, has broken off of *Antarctica* . The finger-shaped chunk of ice, which is roughly 105 miles (170 kilometers) long and 15 miles (25 kilometers) wide, was spotted by satellites as it calved from the western side of Antarctica's Ronne Ice Shelf, according to the *European Space Agency* . The berg is now floating freely on the Weddell Sea, a large bay in the western Antarctic where explorer Ernest Shackleton once lost his ship, the Endurance, to pack ice. The 1,667-square-mile (4,320 square kilometers) iceberg ? which now the world?s biggest and has been called A-76, after the Antarctic quadrant where it was first spotted ? was captured by the European Union's Copernicus Sentinel, a two-satellite constellation that orbits Earth's poles. The satellites confirmed an earlier observation made by the British Antarctic Survey, which was the first organization to notice the breakaway." https://www.livescience.com/biggest-iceberg-breaks-free.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 26 13:42:51 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 21:42:51 +0800 Subject: [ExI] A student's physics project could make quantum computers twice as reliable Message-ID: "A student's tweak in quantum computing code could double its ability to catch errors, piquing the interest of Amazon's quantum computing program. The new code could be used to build quantum computers that live up to the promises of lightning-fast processing time and the ability to solve more complex problems than traditional computers could handle. So far, *only two computers have reached "quantum supremacy,"* or the ability to complete a quantum calculation faster than the fastest supercomputer. But neither of those computers used error correction codes that will be necessary to scale up quantum computing for widespread, reliable use, the researchers on the new study said." https://www.livescience.com/quantum-error-correcting-code.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 26 13:46:01 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 21:46:01 +0800 Subject: [ExI] Spherical UFO plunges into the ocean in US Navy footage Message-ID: "A spherical *unidentified flying object* (UFO) hovers in midair, moves side to side like a ball in the "Pong" video game and then seems to dive into the ocean, in footage that was recently released online by a filmmaker who produces documentaries about UFOs. Though a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the U.S. Navy did capture the footage, the spokesperson did not comment on where and when it was filmed. On May 14, Jeremy Corbell described the mysterious object *on his website* , writing that "the US Navy photographed and filmed 'spherical' shaped UFOs and advanced transmedium vehicles" ? craft that can travel through air and water ? in 2019. Corbell also shared the footage on *Instagram* and *YouTube* . In the clip, which appears to have been shot off a monitor and has several edits, a dark, round blob sits above the horizon. Male voices are audible in the footage; one says "took off, bookin' it," as the object moves horizontally in the screen's crosshairs. The scene "reached a crescendo" with the blob entering the water, and one of the off-screen voices says, "Whoa, it splashed!" as the UFO disappears, Corbell wrote." https://www.livescience.com/ufo-flies-and-dives-navy-footage.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed May 26 13:41:53 2021 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 09:41:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Eliezer Yudkowsky on FB about why we're all doomed Message-ID: Back in the golden days of this list, Eliezer was a regular contributor. *The global economy finally got shut down for a year by a human-boosted pathogen and it wasn't done by a military faction, an evil corporation bent on profit, one suicidal researcher, or done deliberately at all. We'll probably never know for certain, but it's now looking 80% probable to me (and eg Nate Silver says he's at 60%): Covid-19 was accidentally released from a US-funded Chinese laboratory doing gain-of-function studies. Presumably, this accident was carried out by researchers looking for a good paper they could get into a journal; as incentivized by journal editors trying to play the role of scientists, and not otherwise incentivized to guard the earth from harms that they didn't imagine would be traced back to them personally.* *And the journal editors were right: even after it has become known as the dominant probability, to those who can know probabilities, that Covid-19 was a human-produced catastrophe, the journal editors and funding agencies and promotion panels (who are the closest thing to a locus of responsibility short of voters) will get off scott-free just the way their hindbrains anticipated. Except for those journal editors having to spend a year in lockdown along with the rest of us, of course. But that's not a positional loss, a status loss, so I doubt it registers much with them as a regret even in retrospect. Unless any close friends of theirs died of Covid, and in that case I expect they managed to avoid mental pain through denying all responsibility - it wasn't them who spilled the beaker, after all! In fact, I'd guess that the journal editors who published gain-of-function studies have yet to think that it might be their locus of responsibility at all - how is it *their* fault for incentivizing a wide-enough group of applicants that the research would inevitably be carried out?* *Could this disaster have been avoided? Not in this Earth or any of its close counterfactual neighbors. You can imagine petty hindsight-based time-travel interventions like stepping into the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the right moment and preventing one spill, one animal bite. But to prevent the disaster without a time machine or benefit of hindsight, you'd have to shut down the journal editors providing a distributed community of scientists with prestige incentives for doing gain-of-function research. Prohibiting this type of research inside the USA simply resulted in US funding agencies moving the work to China under lower biosafety conditions, which is itself an exemplar of how people doing symbolic stands against problems are unable to solve them (and don't really care).* *This is not something that effective altruists could have prevented even with a billion dollars in funding, as I read it. The journal editors incentivizing distributed attempts at gain-of-function research were not set up in a way where effective altruists could stop them from doing what they do. Earth is just not set up to make it easy or even possible to channel "concern over human-made pathogens" into anything effective, rather than various symbolic regulatory stances and ethics pronouncements that didn't prevent the accident even though they looked like they were "doing something". And of course the collective vague notion and practice of "bioethics" was an active hindrance to vaccine testing, economical vaccine scaling, and rapid Covid testing early in the pandemic.* *The fundamental flaw, I would say, is that even the people "doing things" about pandemics were not running an algorithm where they stopped and checked "But will this actually effectively prevent ?" and instead just did things and called that their proud day's work. It's very uncomfortable and unnatural for people to think like that, since even after you've prohibited a form of the research inside the USA, somebody just comes back and says "Okay it's going to move to China under lower biosafety conditions, the problem is not solved and your moral stance didn't even help with it" and you don't get to feel good about all that hard work you did.* *And almost nobody thinks like that, unless their personal status or existing wealth is on the line in a very direct way. Before the planetary lockdown actually happens, it hardly seems like a thing that actually happens to you in the real world, as opposed to the words "biotech disaster" being a political football for political games. A biotech accident putting the world on lockdown for a year? Ha ha, lol, says the brain; it just gets processed as a fanciful tale (or morality-tale if you're more sympathetic). It doesn't seem real until it goes and actually happens. I suspect that it doesn't seem real even after it happens.* *The Covid-19 pandemic was caused by an accidental release by a US-funded Chinese lab doing gain-of-function studies on human transmission, and there is no way in this Earth that this Earth could have decided to instead not do that, even if every effective altruist in the world had focused on biosafety alone.* *Even with the global economy having been partially shuttered for a year and best-estimates of 10 million excess dead, I will be pleasantly surprised (though not shocked) if gain-of-function research gets shut down even *now*, well after it's become clear that the costs far exceeded the actual gains. All the gain-of-function research on coronaviruses helped little or not at all with Covid-19, so far as I can tell. And of course nobody will learn any lessons at all that generalize beyond biology. I mostly don't expect them to learn the lesson about biology, narrow as that one may be. Maybe we'll see gain-of-function studies stopped for coronaviruses in particular, though this is more generated by the thought "What would be the least dignified response we could see" rather than a prediction per se.* *Now, you may wonder: why am I bothering to post about an issue this trivial?* *And of course the answer is: because of the way in which it stands as an enormous blatant case-in-point for AGI ruin. All this is not *exactly* how I expect Artificial General Intelligence to wipe out all life on Earth, one day (or rather one minute) in the future after an unknowable number of preceding days. But it is a useful exemplar of how these things play out in life as opposed to morality. The world will end, in the end, because some researchers and philanthropists and journal editors have local prestige incentives for AGI gain-of-capability studies; and don't imagine, while most of the event is playing out, up until the very end and maybe not even then, that they personally will wipe out all life on Earth, or be held accountable for its extermination. The notion of all life being wiped out won't sound like a positional status loss, so won't really register with them. Maybe if they have kids - but probably not even then, because all mental pain can be avoided by telling themselves they won't do it or won't be at fault. It won't be processed inside the genre of reality before it actually happens, and that part will be brief.* *If you have any fantasies about better collective decision-making than that, compare them to how people in real life actually acted about human challenge trials of vaccines (namely not doing them despite the idea being very clear and obvious and spoken up early) or doing earlier scaling of more vaccines for mass production. Oh, to be sure, some individuals in the AGI ruin industry are a little smarter than that, and have a little more concentrated power; but also to be sure, averting AGI ruin is far far technically harder. In AGI alignment there is not actually any equivalent of "Deploy rapid tests immediately without medical gatekeepers, run human challenge trials of all the vaccines, immediately invest massive amounts into scaling vaccine production at the $500/dose price level instead of the $10/dose price level because shutting down the economy is so much more expensive than that". There is not a thing we know how to do that would solve the problem, which just needs to actually be done. So expect symbolic acts of ethics that are not actually effective, that do not pass the test of "but does this actually prevent the ruination"; including from the relatively smarter empowered individuals in the field, and from the effective altruists hovering nervously around the oncoming death.* *As for the notion that AGI ruin will be enacted by the military, by a corporation bent on dirty profit, by evil terrorists, by $hatedoutgroup, by a deliberately suicidal group - those are fairytales. It is a thought born of wanting there to be a moral lesson in dire prophecies rather than a neutral causal extrapolation of what the future will look like if it resembles past stories. Contrast the fairytales about biotech global catastrophic risks to the actual biotech global catastrophe, which happened not in the most dramatic way it could happen, but in the easiest and in some sense saddest and least dignified way it could happen. The part where it's "a US-funded Chinese laboratory" is oddly symbolic of how much real history ends up not sounding like the story that any particular ideological storyteller would invent. Notice the difference between the morality-tales of futurism meant to elevate or lower the status of particular groups, or impel people to symbolic acts of fake prevention; versus the sad little farces of unsteerable reality, where the world economy gets shut down by an accident, and the perpetrators didn't even want that or buy Zoom stock as they did it.* *The social, organizational, political story of the future will look much like the past, I expect, up until the last end. Here then is the past, if you care to generalize from it at all.* *(#long #essay #AGI #AGIruin #Covid19)* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 26 14:03:01 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 07:03:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00a901d75237$d80b7f30$88227d90$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of John Grigg via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready William Wallace wrote: >Spike, the days of the beautiful, big cars are over. I am driving around and see this little cutoff car and it's a >Lincoln! Bah and more Bah. >>?What about the massive SUV's which I see everywhere? I can't get over how popular they are here in the Philippines? John I think part of their appeal is that SUVs can be used as temporary homes. I see plenty of people using them for that purpose around here. But it isn?t just the usual suspects doing it. With Tesla and the other mover and shaker companies, we have plenty of cases where a contractor sends people, often a ranking person to work out a deal or do a temporary engineering assignment. In today?s Silicon Valley pace of life, a prole lives at the office anyway: waking hours are working hours. Hotels around here are crazy expensive, so they are comped a couple hundred bucks a day for an assignment that might go on for a few weeks. A typical office has a kitchen, a gym, showers and a place to hang one?s work clothes. The SUV with a sleeping arrangement is cheap temporary housing for urban campers, and it is super versatile, because it is right out there in the parking lot whenever needed. Whenever I see a SUV with the windows blacked out, parked in an inconspicuous place, I have a pretty good idea what is going on there. >? In this country they lovingly build copies of the classic U.S. Army WW2 jeep, and I just may buy one for just a few thousand dollars. They are known to last forever! John Classic jeeps were made for repairability and manufacturabilty, because they needed to stamp them out by the skerjillions quickly. They are very easy to repair, and anyone with a few basic metal-working skills can make body parts for them, since they are all nearly all flat-panel with no compound curves on the Willys MB. If you do repair work on one of those, you will wonder why modern cars aren?t built like the Willys. Parting shot: I used to belong to a 4WD club in southern Cal (China Lake Naval base.) After the war, the Defense Department stored several thousand jeeps out there which had never been deployed. After a year or two, they auctioned them off for a few hundred bucks each. They were practically new, street legal and pristine except for having spent a coupla years enduring being exposed to the elements, which Jeeps do very well. I talked to my friend who says the local shop which rebuilds the 2.2 liter inline 4 is still there and there are STILL some of those 75 year old Willys MBs rolling around with olive drab paint and the white star on the hood. The last original owner has passed on now. They are worth a lot more than a few hundred bucks now. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 26 15:02:28 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 16:02:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Eliezer Yudkowsky on FB about why we're all doomed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, 26 May 2021 at 15:00, Dave Sill via extropy-chat wrote: > > Back in the golden days of this list, Eliezer was a regular contributor. > > The global economy finally got shut down for a year by a human-boosted pathogen and it wasn't done by a military faction, an evil corporation bent on profit, one suicidal researcher, or done deliberately at all. We'll probably never know for certain, but it's now looking 80% probable to me (and eg Nate Silver says he's at 60%): Covid-19 was accidentally released from a US-funded Chinese laboratory doing gain-of-function studies. Presumably, this accident was carried out by researchers looking for a good paper they could get into a journal; as incentivized by journal editors trying to play the role of scientists, and not otherwise incentivized to guard the earth from harms that they didn't imagine would be traced back to them personally. > > _______________________________________________ Fermi paradox solved............ I have been worrying for a while that the idea that multi-million dollar fines can somehow be thought of as a fix for misbehaviour is mistaken. It doesn't restore lives ruined, deaths caused, years of unhappiness. It just becomes a cost of doing business. And we get more of the same behaviour. The incentives of modern civilisation have gone wrong somewhere along the line. BillK From dsunley at gmail.com Wed May 26 16:28:13 2021 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 10:28:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Eliezer Yudkowsky on FB about why we're all doomed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It's all right there in the name "Limited Liability Corporation". They enable relatively normal people to attempt Great and Risky endeavors with the understanding that some of those attempts will fail horribly, and that amnesty for those risks is a reasonable price to pay for the increases in innovation and achievement thereby allowed, but it seems unlikely that the originators of the idea would have approved of the sheer size of the failures that have been allowed to go unpunished under that umbrella. On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 9:05 AM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Wed, 26 May 2021 at 15:00, Dave Sill via extropy-chat > wrote: > > > > Back in the golden days of this list, Eliezer was a regular contributor. > > > > The global economy finally got shut down for a year by a human-boosted > pathogen and it wasn't done by a military faction, an evil corporation bent > on profit, one suicidal researcher, or done deliberately at all. We'll > probably never know for certain, but it's now looking 80% probable to me > (and eg Nate Silver says he's at 60%): Covid-19 was accidentally released > from a US-funded Chinese laboratory doing gain-of-function studies. > Presumably, this accident was carried out by researchers looking for a good > paper they could get into a journal; as incentivized by journal editors > trying to play the role of scientists, and not otherwise incentivized to > guard the earth from harms that they didn't imagine would be traced back to > them personally. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Fermi paradox solved............ > > I have been worrying for a while that the idea that multi-million > dollar fines can somehow be thought of as a fix for misbehaviour is > mistaken. It doesn't restore lives ruined, deaths caused, years of > unhappiness. It just becomes a cost of doing business. And we get more > of the same behaviour. The incentives of modern civilisation have gone > wrong somewhere along the line. > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From john at ziaspace.com Wed May 26 20:32:14 2021 From: john at ziaspace.com (John Klos) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 20:32:14 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] META: server maintenance Message-ID: Hello, all, The list server will be undergoing some maintenance for the next half hour to hour. Anything sent to the list while the main server is unavailable will be queued by one of the backup servers. Thanks! John From ExiMod at protonmail.com Wed May 26 23:09:26 2021 From: ExiMod at protonmail.com (ExiMod) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 23:09:26 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Test Message-ID: Testing ExiMod Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 26 23:31:38 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 16:31:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004001d75287$4728ae70$d57a0b50$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of ExiMod via extropy-chat Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2021 4:09 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: ExiMod Subject: [ExI] Test Testing ExiMod Passing! spike Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 27 00:07:15 2021 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 20:07:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Test In-Reply-To: <004001d75287$4728ae70$d57a0b50$@rainier66.com> References: <004001d75287$4728ae70$d57a0b50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 26, 2021, 7:35 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > Testing > > ExiMod > > Passing! > Without more context. I'd say Inconclusive. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu May 27 00:29:15 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 19:29:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Test In-Reply-To: References: <004001d75287$4728ae70$d57a0b50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: got it - bill w On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 7:11 PM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Wed, May 26, 2021, 7:35 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> Testing >> >> ExiMod >> >> Passing! >> > Without more context. I'd say Inconclusive. > >> _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sen.otaku at gmail.com Thu May 27 00:51:02 2021 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 20:51:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Recieved SR Ballard > On May 26, 2021, at 7:12 PM, ExiMod via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > Testing > > ExiMod > > > Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bronto at pobox.com Thu May 27 03:45:23 2021 From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 20:45:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test In-Reply-To: References: <004001d75287$4728ae70$d57a0b50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On 2021-5-26 17:07, Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat wrote: > Without more context. I'd say Inconclusive. Indeed. Can we be sure what was tested? -- *\\* Anton Sherwood *\\* www.bendwavy.org From ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com Thu May 27 05:00:35 2021 From: ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com (ilsa) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 22:00:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yes, smile, ilsa On Wed, May 26, 2021, 4:10 PM ExiMod via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Testing > > ExiMod > > > Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 27 05:02:36 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 22:02:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test In-Reply-To: References: <004001d75287$4728ae70$d57a0b50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 9:40 PM Anton Sherwood via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On 2021-5-26 17:07, Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat wrote: > > Without more context. I'd say Inconclusive. > > Indeed. Can we be sure what was tested? > Does ExiMod live in a convent? Because I hear nuns shall pass. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu May 27 06:59:00 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 14:59:00 +0800 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <00a901d75237$d80b7f30$88227d90$@rainier66.com> References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> <00a901d75237$d80b7f30$88227d90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Spike wrote: >With Tesla and the other mover and shaker companies, we have plenty of cases where a contractor sends >people, often a ranking person to work out a deal or do a temporary engineering assignment. In today?s >Silicon Valley pace of life, a prole lives at the office anyway: waking hours are working hours. Hotels around >here are crazy expensive, so they are comped a couple hundred bucks a day for an assignment that might >go on for a few weeks. A typical office has a kitchen, a gym, showers and a place to hang one?s work >clothes. The SUV with a sleeping arrangement is cheap temporary housing for urban campers, and it is >super versatile, because it is right out there in the parking lot whenever needed. Whenever I see a SUV with >the windows blacked out, parked in an inconspicuous place, I have a pretty good idea what is going on there. I envision "mini rv" suv's that will be like a classic VW camper van, which will also be self-driving. A living room/office/bathroom/dinette on wheels, where you can focus on your work, because an AI is doing the driving. >Classic jeeps were made for repairability and manufacturabilty, because they needed to stamp them out by >the skerjillions quickly. They are very easy to repair, and anyone with a few basic metal-working skills can >make body parts for them, since they are nearly all flat-panel with no compound curves on the Willys MB. >If you do repair work on one of those, you will wonder why modern cars aren?t built like the Willys. I look forward to developing some basic skills as a mechanic of such an owner friendly automobile! I can remember the rise of modern cars which have so many electronics inside that often a certified technician with expensive equipment is a must for any serious repair. I had a local friend rain on my enthusiasm for the jeep by saying that they are difficult to drive, and not really made for dense bumper to bumper modern traffic. He claimed they have more accidents than other cars in the Philippines because they can be hard to control. I confess to having never learned how to use a stick. Oh, I just found a Youtube video hosted by a lovely young woman with prodigious cleavage who does a tutorial! Lol >I talked to my friend who says the local shop which rebuilds the 2.2 liter inline 4 is still there and there are >STILL some of those 75 year old Willys MBs rolling around with olive drab paint and the white star on the >hood. The last original owner has passed on now. Wow! They were truly built to last. What an anachronism in our age of planned obsolescence... The flamboyant Filipinos like their jeep reproductions to be a glossy silver! Lol But as long as it has five passenger seats I am set for family excursions. John : ) On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 10:08 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *John Grigg via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > > > > William Wallace wrote: > > > > > > >Spike, the days of the beautiful, big cars are over. I am driving around > and see this little cutoff car and it's a >Lincoln! Bah and more Bah. > > > > >>?What about the massive SUV's which I see everywhere? I can't get over > how popular they are here in the Philippines? > > > > John I think part of their appeal is that SUVs can be used as temporary > homes. I see plenty of people using them for that purpose around here. > But it isn?t just the usual suspects doing it. > > > > With Tesla and the other mover and shaker companies, we have plenty of > cases where a contractor sends people, often a ranking person to work out a > deal or do a temporary engineering assignment. In today?s Silicon Valley > pace of life, a prole lives at the office anyway: waking hours are working > hours. Hotels around here are crazy expensive, so they are comped a couple > hundred bucks a day for an assignment that might go on for a few weeks. A > typical office has a kitchen, a gym, showers and a place to hang one?s work > clothes. The SUV with a sleeping arrangement is cheap temporary housing > for urban campers, and it is super versatile, because it is right out there > in the parking lot whenever needed. Whenever I see a SUV with the windows > blacked out, parked in an inconspicuous place, I have a pretty good idea > what is going on there. > > > > >? In this country they lovingly build copies of the classic U.S. Army WW2 > jeep, and I just may buy one for just a few thousand dollars. They are > known to last forever! > > > > John > > > > Classic jeeps were made for repairability and manufacturabilty, because > they needed to stamp them out by the skerjillions quickly. They are very > easy to repair, and anyone with a few basic metal-working skills can make > body parts for them, since they are all nearly all flat-panel with no > compound curves on the Willys MB. If you do repair work on one of those, > you will wonder why modern cars aren?t built like the Willys. > > > > Parting shot: I used to belong to a 4WD club in southern Cal (China Lake > Naval base.) After the war, the Defense Department stored several thousand > jeeps out there which had never been deployed. After a year or two, they > auctioned them off for a few hundred bucks each. They were practically > new, street legal and pristine except for having spent a coupla years > enduring being exposed to the elements, which Jeeps do very well. I talked > to my friend who says the local shop which rebuilds the 2.2 liter inline 4 > is still there and there are STILL some of those 75 year old Willys MBs > rolling around with olive drab paint and the white star on the hood. The > last original owner has passed on now. They are worth a lot more than a > few hundred bucks now. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu May 27 07:04:32 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 15:04:32 +0800 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Wuhan_Coronavirus_Lab_Leak_No_Longer_a_=E2=80=9C?= =?utf-8?q?Conspiracy_Theory=E2=80=9D?= Message-ID: "It was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. But now the coronavirus lab leak theory?that the coronavirus accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is gaining traction. And there are some disturbing connections between US doctors, like Peter Daszak and Anthony Fauci, to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and it's lead researcher Dr. Shi Zhengli." An excellent presentation to make the case... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h2h3HNTnIc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu May 27 07:09:41 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 15:09:41 +0800 Subject: [ExI] One CRISPR Treatment Lowered Cholesterol in Monkeys by 60 Percent Message-ID: "More than one in three American adults have high cholesterol , which can lead to serious health problems like heart disease and stroke. The best remedies we have right now are cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins , a diet rich in vegetables and low in fat, and good old-fashioned exercise. But in the future, there may be another way to reduce our cholesterol levels. A study published last week in *Nature* described how a team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and biotech company Verve Therapeutics used the gene editing tool CRISPR to lower LDL cholesterol in monkeys by 60 percent in just one week. *And*, the monkeys? cholesterol levels stayed low for over eight months after a single dose of the treatment." https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/26/one-crispr-treatment-lowered-cholesterol-in-monkeys-by-60-percent/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu May 27 07:19:01 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 15:19:01 +0800 Subject: [ExI] The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill Message-ID: "All pandemic long, scientists brawled over how the virus spreads. *Droplets! No, aerosols!* At the heart of the fight was a teensy error with huge consequences." "...There was just one literally tiny problem: ?The physics of it is all wrong,? Marr says. That much seemed obvious to her from everything she knew about how things move through air. Reality is far messier, with particles much larger than 5 microns staying afloat and behaving like aerosols, depending on heat, humidity, and airspeed. ?I?d see the wrong number over and over again, and I just found that disturbing,? she says. The error meant that the medical community had a distorted picture of how people might get sick." https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu May 27 07:21:07 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 15:21:07 +0800 Subject: [ExI] AI Could Soon Write Code Based on Ordinary Language Message-ID: "In recent years, researchers have used artificial intelligence to improve translation between programming languages or automatically fix problems . The AI system DrRepair, for example, has been shown to solve most issues that spawn error messages. But some researchers dream of the day when AI can write programs based on simple descriptions from non-experts. On Tuesday, Microsoft and OpenAI shared plans to bring GPT-3, one of the world?s most advanced models for generating text, to programming based on natural language descriptions. This is the first commercial application of GPT-3 undertaken since Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI last year and gained exclusive licensing rights to GPT-3. ?If you can describe what you want to do in natural language, GPT-3 will generate a list of the most relevant formulas for you to choose from,? said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a keynote address at the company?s Build developer conference. ?The code writes itself.? https://www.wired.com/story/ai-write-code-ordinary-language/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu May 27 07:25:46 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 15:25:46 +0800 Subject: [ExI] This 'Post-Soviet Sad 3D' Game Is Not About Having Fun Message-ID: "Sandbox game *It?s Winter* is set in a *khrushchyovka,* a mass housing unit in the USSR. It's a lonely, haunting ode to Eastern ennui." "For an indie vignette, this level of detail is absurd?you can rummage through your neighbor?s trash for indications about his life, or you can keep it simple and microwave a tomato. If you?re anything like myself, though, you?ll quickly tire of mucking around inside. The real draw lies in heading out into the night, and exploring the neighborhood in all its dystopian glory. That?s about all *It?s Winter* offers?and, if you?re into that sort of thing, it hits the nail on the head. Playgrounds, stairwells, shopfronts ? each scene is more derelict and depressing than the last. It?s ruin porn at its most primal?snapshots of a world that was, for so long, sealed off from Western eyes. According to the game?s army of local fans, it?s the real deal. ?It?s a very accurate representation of a typical Russian house, on a typical Russian street,? claims one player. ?If you're from a First World country, play this game. Play it, embrace its atmosphere, and be happy that you weren't born into this cold, lifeless ghetto.? I've had enough Russian friends over the years (I'm originally from Alaska) that this game sounds fascinating to me... https://www.wired.com/story/its-winter-post-soviet-walking-simulator/ John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sen.otaku at gmail.com Thu May 27 08:04:49 2021 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 04:04:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Wuhan_Coronavirus_Lab_Leak_No_Longer_a_=E2=80=9C?= =?utf-8?q?Conspiracy_Theory=E2=80=9D?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I say, leave this one to the history books. It?s still too soon to know. 2 years after all the covid strains are under control before I?ll take any of this reporting seriously. SR Ballard > On May 27, 2021, at 3:05 AM, John Grigg via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > "It was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. But now the coronavirus lab leak theory?that the coronavirus accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is gaining traction. And there are some disturbing connections between US doctors, like Peter Daszak and Anthony Fauci, to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and it's lead researcher Dr. Shi Zhengli." > > An excellent presentation to make the case... > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h2h3HNTnIc > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Thu May 27 10:37:15 2021 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 06:37:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Wuhan_Coronavirus_Lab_Leak_No_Longer_a_=E2=80=9C?= =?utf-8?q?Conspiracy_Theory=E2=80=9D?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 4:08 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I say, leave this one to the history books. It?s still too soon to know. 2 > years after all the covid strains are under control before I?ll take any of > this reporting seriously. > We'll likely never know with certainty. Any physical evidence at the Wuhan lab is surely history. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 27 13:12:02 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 06:12:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> <00a901d75237$d80b7f30$88227d90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00a001d752f9$e27dab60$a7790220$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of John Grigg via extropy-chat >?Oh, I just found a Youtube video hosted by a lovely young woman with prodigious cleavage who does a tutorial! Lol Taunting us he is. He makes that lead in, then refuses to offer the URL! Oh wait, retract, I already know how to drive a stick shift. I was nearly 40 before I ever owned a car with automatic. I would still like to view the buxom stick rider. Hey what a concept! Drivers? Education taught by bikini beauties! John you are onto an idea with huge moneymaking potential. >>?STILL some of those 75 year old Willys MBs rolling around with olive drab paint and the white star on the >hood?. >?Wow! They were truly built to last. What an anachronism in our age of planned obsolescence... John : ) Not so much built to last, but rather built to survive and built to be repaired. If you go to a car show where you can see one, ask to gawk under the hood. Notice how simple it is. Private Leonard Lawrence could rebuild one. All metal (a few with wood parts in places but no plastic) generous tolerances on the bolt holes, relatively few welds, sturdy frames, suspension dampers are a maybe. People who own them realize that everything doesn?t break at the same time. You can have a minor simple repair every coupla years or less, and have it go seven decades. If you put it in a car show, you don?t even need to wash it: judges like authenticity. I would agree with your friend in that they are not traffic friendly: drum brakes and power nothing. You steer it with your muscles. They are not as safe as a motorcycle: no side protection. You crash, you die. So don?t crash. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu May 27 14:23:50 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 09:23:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <00a001d752f9$e27dab60$a7790220$@rainier66.com> References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> <00a901d75237$d80b7f30$88227d90$@rainier66.com> <00a001d752f9$e27dab60$a7790220$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I dispute 'safe as a motorcycle'. When I had one I noticed right away that cars would pull in front of me as if they did not see me No 'as if' - they didn't. They were looking for big vehicles. I saw this numerous times in the short time I had the bike. Aside: can you drive a Jeep in California without any exhaust treatment? bill w On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 8:16 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *John Grigg via extropy-chat > > > > *>?*Oh, I just found a Youtube video hosted by a lovely young woman with > prodigious cleavage who does a tutorial! Lol > > > > Taunting us he is. He makes that lead in, then refuses to offer the URL! > > > > Oh wait, retract, I already know how to drive a stick shift. I was nearly > 40 before I ever owned a car with automatic. I would still like to view > the buxom stick rider. > > > > Hey what a concept! Drivers? Education taught by bikini beauties! John > you are onto an idea with huge moneymaking potential. > > > > >>?STILL some of those 75 year old Willys MBs rolling around with olive > drab paint and the white star on the >hood?. > > > > >?Wow! They were truly built to last. What an anachronism in our age of > planned obsolescence... John : ) > > > > > > Not so much built to last, but rather built to survive and built to be > repaired. If you go to a car show where you can see one, ask to gawk under > the hood. Notice how simple it is. Private Leonard Lawrence could rebuild > one. All metal (a few with wood parts in places but no plastic) generous > tolerances on the bolt holes, relatively few welds, sturdy frames, > suspension dampers are a maybe. > > > > People who own them realize that everything doesn?t break at the same > time. You can have a minor simple repair every coupla years or less, and > have it go seven decades. > > > > If you put it in a car show, you don?t even need to wash it: judges like > authenticity. > > > > I would agree with your friend in that they are not traffic friendly: drum > brakes and power nothing. You steer it with your muscles. They are not as > safe as a motorcycle: no side protection. You crash, you die. So don?t > crash. > > > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 27 14:46:24 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 07:46:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> <00a901d75237$d80b7f30$88227d90$@rainier66.com> <00a001d752f9$e27dab60$a7790220$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00b401d75307$11a5bd30$34f13790$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready >?I dispute 'safe as a motorcycle'. When I had one I noticed right away that cars would pull in front of me as if they did not see me No 'as if' - they didn't. They were looking for big vehicles. I saw this numerous times in the short time I had the bike. Aside: can you drive a Jeep in California without any exhaust treatment? bill w Those have no exhaust treatment. California cannot require you to modify your car, nor can it make a street legal car non-street legal retroactively. By safe as a motorcycle, I meant there is very little crash protection. The old Willys MBs don?t even have doors really. You can get a canvas top with those? I don?t even know what to call them exactly? door-like appendages which are soft, no glass. The old jeeps are buyer beware. On the other hand, jeeps are noisy, so that might help warn drivers of your presence. spike w On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 8:16 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: From: extropy-chat > On Behalf Of John Grigg via extropy-chat >?Oh, I just found a Youtube video hosted by a lovely young woman with prodigious cleavage who does a tutorial! Lol Taunting us he is. He makes that lead in, then refuses to offer the URL! Oh wait, retract, I already know how to drive a stick shift. I was nearly 40 before I ever owned a car with automatic. I would still like to view the buxom stick rider. Hey what a concept! Drivers? Education taught by bikini beauties! John you are onto an idea with huge moneymaking potential. >>?STILL some of those 75 year old Willys MBs rolling around with olive drab paint and the white star on the >hood?. >?Wow! They were truly built to last. What an anachronism in our age of planned obsolescence... John : ) Not so much built to last, but rather built to survive and built to be repaired. If you go to a car show where you can see one, ask to gawk under the hood. Notice how simple it is. Private Leonard Lawrence could rebuild one. All metal (a few with wood parts in places but no plastic) generous tolerances on the bolt holes, relatively few welds, sturdy frames, suspension dampers are a maybe. People who own them realize that everything doesn?t break at the same time. You can have a minor simple repair every coupla years or less, and have it go seven decades. If you put it in a car show, you don?t even need to wash it: judges like authenticity. I would agree with your friend in that they are not traffic friendly: drum brakes and power nothing. You steer it with your muscles. They are not as safe as a motorcycle: no side protection. You crash, you die. So don?t crash. spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu May 27 15:12:07 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 10:12:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <00b401d75307$11a5bd30$34f13790$@rainier66.com> References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> <00a901d75237$d80b7f30$88227d90$@rainier66.com> <00a001d752f9$e27dab60$a7790220$@rainier66.com> <00b401d75307$11a5bd30$34f13790$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I remember a guy who was so into safety for his kids that he had railroad ties put in the side doors. I wonder what that car weighed. bill w On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 9:50 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *?*> *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > > > > >?I dispute 'safe as a motorcycle'. When I had one I noticed right away > that cars would pull in front of me as if they did not see me No 'as if' - > they didn't. They were looking for big vehicles. I saw this numerous > times in the short time I had the bike. Aside: can you drive a Jeep in > California without any exhaust treatment? bill w > > > > Those have no exhaust treatment. California cannot require you to modify > your car, nor can it make a street legal car non-street legal retroactively. > > > > By safe as a motorcycle, I meant there is very little crash protection. > The old Willys MBs don?t even have doors really. You can get a canvas top > with those? I don?t even know what to call them exactly? door-like > appendages which are soft, no glass. The old jeeps are buyer beware. > > > > On the other hand, jeeps are noisy, so that might help warn drivers of > your presence. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > w > > > > On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 8:16 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *John Grigg via extropy-chat > > > > *>?*Oh, I just found a Youtube video hosted by a lovely young woman with > prodigious cleavage who does a tutorial! Lol > > > > Taunting us he is. He makes that lead in, then refuses to offer the URL! > > > > Oh wait, retract, I already know how to drive a stick shift. I was nearly > 40 before I ever owned a car with automatic. I would still like to view > the buxom stick rider. > > > > Hey what a concept! Drivers? Education taught by bikini beauties! John > you are onto an idea with huge moneymaking potential. > > > > >>?STILL some of those 75 year old Willys MBs rolling around with olive > drab paint and the white star on the >hood?. > > > > >?Wow! They were truly built to last. What an anachronism in our age of > planned obsolescence... John : ) > > > > > > Not so much built to last, but rather built to survive and built to be > repaired. If you go to a car show where you can see one, ask to gawk under > the hood. Notice how simple it is. Private Leonard Lawrence could rebuild > one. All metal (a few with wood parts in places but no plastic) generous > tolerances on the bolt holes, relatively few welds, sturdy frames, > suspension dampers are a maybe. > > > > People who own them realize that everything doesn?t break at the same > time. You can have a minor simple repair every coupla years or less, and > have it go seven decades. > > > > If you put it in a car show, you don?t even need to wash it: judges like > authenticity. > > > > I would agree with your friend in that they are not traffic friendly: drum > brakes and power nothing. You steer it with your muscles. They are not as > safe as a motorcycle: no side protection. You crash, you die. So don?t > crash. > > > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 27 15:29:45 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 08:29:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> <00a901d75237$d80b7f30$88227d90$@rainier66.com> <00a001d752f9$e27dab60$a7790220$@rainier66.com> <00b401d75307$11a5bd30$34f13790$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00d401d7530d$1fd17560$5f746020$@rainier66.com> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready >?I remember a guy who was so into safety for his kids that he had railroad ties put in the side doors. I wonder what that car weighed. bill w Hard to say, but he is fooling himself if he thinks that would make the car safer. It is likely to make the retrofitted ride more dangerous. In a side impact, the passengers would be severely injured and perhaps expire from the blunt trauma of hitting the railroad ties. The creosote offgassing on a hot day into the passenger compartment could scarcely be beneficial. Billw, our beloved Lincolns have side airbags, which provide a much softer landing than a railroad tie. Those rigs can be procured for very modest sums with pleeeenty of wear left in them, plenty. If you are still acquainted with the misinformed safety guy, do offer him a clue por favor. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu May 27 16:24:49 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 11:24:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <00d401d7530d$1fd17560$5f746020$@rainier66.com> References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> <00a901d75237$d80b7f30$88227d90$@rainier66.com> <00a001d752f9$e27dab60$a7790220$@rainier66.com> <00b401d75307$11a5bd30$34f13790$@rainier66.com> <00d401d7530d$1fd17560$5f746020$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Excuse me - not railroad ties - rails - heavy steel things. bill w On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 10:32 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > > > > >?I remember a guy who was so into safety for his kids that he had > railroad ties put in the side doors. I wonder what that car weighed. bill > w > > > > > > Hard to say, but he is fooling himself if he thinks that would make the > car safer. It is likely to make the retrofitted ride more dangerous. In a > side impact, the passengers would be severely injured and perhaps expire > from the blunt trauma of hitting the railroad ties. The creosote > offgassing on a hot day into the passenger compartment could scarcely be > beneficial. > > > > Billw, our beloved Lincolns have side airbags, which provide a much softer > landing than a railroad tie. Those rigs can be procured for very modest > sums with pleeeenty of wear left in them, plenty. > > > > If you are still acquainted with the misinformed safety guy, do offer him > a clue por favor. > > > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 27 16:35:12 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 09:35:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <001b01d74506$39cd11a0$ad6734e0$@rainier66.com> <003801d74f85$738d8c60$5aa8a520$@rainier66.com> <00a701d74ff1$ecf99050$c6ecb0f0$@rainier66.com> <002e01d75004$85729810$9057c830$@rainier66.com> <006c01d75014$aff5f9a0$0fe1ece0$@rainier66.com> <001a01d75024$6d63a2d0$482ae870$@rainier66.com> <00a901d75237$d80b7f30$88227d90$@rainier66.com> <00a001d752f9$e27dab60$a7790220$@rainier66.com> <00b401d75307$11a5bd30$34f13790$@rainier66.com> <00d401d7530d$1fd17560$5f746020$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <011901d75316$44addd70$ce099850$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready >?Excuse me - not railroad ties - rails - heavy steel things. bill w Cool no worries. I was struggling to imagine how a railroad tie could be integrated into a door, but either way, side airbags are the right answer. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sen.otaku at gmail.com Thu May 27 16:39:20 2021 From: sen.otaku at gmail.com (SR Ballard) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 12:39:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <011901d75316$44addd70$ce099850$@rainier66.com> References: <011901d75316$44addd70$ce099850$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: SR Ballard > On May 27, 2021, at 12:38 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > ? > > > ?> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > > >?Excuse me - not railroad ties - rails - heavy steel things. bill w > > > Cool no worries. I was struggling to imagine how a railroad tie could be integrated into a door, but either way, side airbags are the right answer. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Thu May 27 17:24:36 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 10:24:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <00d401d7530d$1fd17560$5f746020$@rainier66.com> References: <00d401d7530d$1fd17560$5f746020$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <3094A398-12D0-42C4-8CC6-72C76EEFF194@gmail.com> > On May 27, 2021, at 8:32 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > > >?I remember a guy who was so into safety for his kids that he had railroad ties put in the side doors. I wonder what that car weighed. bill w > > Hard to say, but he is fooling himself if he thinks that would make the car safer. It is likely to make the retrofitted ride more dangerous. In a side impact, the passengers would be severely injured and perhaps expire from the blunt trauma of hitting the railroad ties. The creosote offgassing on a hot day into the passenger compartment could scarcely be beneficial. I believe you?re thinking of the sleepers outgassing? not the ties (or rails). Actually, wooden railroad track sleepers might not be such a bad thing for cushioning an impact. The wood would likely splinter or crumble or collapse absorbing some of the force. Well, more than a tie or a rail would, no? Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Thu May 27 17:26:58 2021 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 10:26:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <3094A398-12D0-42C4-8CC6-72C76EEFF194@gmail.com> References: <3094A398-12D0-42C4-8CC6-72C76EEFF194@gmail.com> Message-ID: On May 27, 2021, at 10:24 AM, Dan TheBookMan wrote:? >>> On May 27, 2021, at 8:32 AM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: >>> >> > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat >> Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready >> >> >?I remember a guy who was so into safety for his kids that he had railroad ties put in the side doors. I wonder what that car weighed. bill w >> >> Hard to say, but he is fooling himself if he thinks that would make the car safer. It is likely to make the retrofitted ride more dangerous. In a side impact, the passengers would be severely injured and perhaps expire from the blunt trauma of hitting the railroad ties. The creosote offgassing on a hot day into the passenger compartment could scarcely be beneficial. > > I believe you?re thinking of the sleepers outgassing? not the ties (or rails). Actually, wooden railroad track sleepers might not be such a bad thing for cushioning an impact. The wood would likely splinter or crumble or collapse absorbing some of the force. Well, more than a tie or a rail would, no? Retract that! My mistake. I was confusing ties with spikes. ;) Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 27 18:04:26 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 11:04:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <3094A398-12D0-42C4-8CC6-72C76EEFF194@gmail.com> References: <00d401d7530d$1fd17560$5f746020$@rainier66.com> <3094A398-12D0-42C4-8CC6-72C76EEFF194@gmail.com> Message-ID: <016b01d75322$bbd7bb30$33873190$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready >>? The creosote offgassing on a hot day into the passenger compartment could scarcely be beneficial. >?I believe you?re thinking of the sleepers outgassing? not the ties (or rails). Actually, wooden railroad track sleepers might not be such a bad thing for cushioning an impact. The wood would likely splinter or crumble or collapse absorbing some of the force. Well, more than a tie or a rail would, no? Regards, Dan Ja Dan we are talking about the same thing: I call them railroad ties, as in BillW?s original post. They are also called sleepers. https://www.railway-technology.com/contractors/engineering/agico/pressreleases/presstypical-railway-track-components/#:~:text=Rail%20sleepers%20are%20an%20important,between%20the%20two%20rail%20tracks. ??Rail sleepers are an important part of railway components. In general, they are also called railroad ties, railway ties or crossties. In order to keep the correct distance of gauge, the rail sleeper usually lays between the two rail tracks?? The wooden parts contain creosote. This whole thing is something for which I must guard against confirmation bias. During the time I was cheerfully squandering my tragically misspent childhood, a huge stir arose which served as an object lesson in statistics for the proletariat. A SCIENTIST had discovered a correlation between telephone poles and lung cancer. The correlation coefficient went magically above that mysterious but canonical 95% confidence interval which we were confidently told meant that correlation was true. Those poles were somehow related to lung cancer. Well, OK then what about a telephone pole would cause lung cancer? Those are just wood, pressure treated with? creosote! A derivative of coal tar it is. Surely evil it must be. Lung cancer you know. Well, that notion sold like hotcakes. The tobacco companies in those days (the 60s (yes dammit NINETEEN sixties (sheesh))) were still struggling to deny what was obvious as hell to anyone with at least one functional eye and at least two functional brain cells: of course tobacco smoke was causing cancer. A lotta guys smoked back in those days, and some didn?t. It wasn?t a bit difficult to tell a health difference between those who did and those who did not. But I digress. This SCIENTIST (almighty in those days) had found a 95% correlation between telephone poles and lung cancer, and everyone knew that below 95% confidence: discard theory as coincidence. Above 95%: accept as fact. We still didn?t have 95% confidence in lung cancer vs smoking, but we had 95% with telephone poles and cancer. Panic ensued. Cities started opting at great expense for steel telephone poles (at some point it occurs to a prole to recognize that many of his readers are too young to know the definition of ?telephone pole? (and perhaps some have never seen one.)) While all this was going on, many of us began to wonder why 95% was the magic number. If it is 2 sigma, why 2? Why not 94% or 96? Who proclaimed 95 percent confidence the arbiter of truth? Turns out? a correlation between metal poles and lung cancer was every bit as high (slightly higher (both achieving the magic rank of statistically significant)) between the metal poles and lung cancer. Simultaneously it was reported that workers who spent their entire careers hoisting railroad sleepers and bathed every day to remove creosote had no elevated lung cancer risk. What was eventually reported is that we were seeing a classic case of correlation without causation: both the telephone poles and the lung cancer in developing suburban areas were the result of the common cause of increasing numbers of lungs. Problem solved. Proles wiser. Scientists really don?t know everything. To this day, I recall having been told to avoid touching wooden telephone poles for it was associated with lung cancer. It didn?t seem right to me even then, in my elementary school years. Eventually of course the notion was exaggerated all the way down until the children were convinced that should a young miscreant merely brush against one, she will be dead when she hits the ground. I was ethically forced to demonstrate to the locals to the contrary, by putting my nose against the pole and sniffing deeply. Such a thespian I am, for it made for some fine drama as I dramatically feigned a coughing fit, followed by death, soon followed my a miraculous resurrection, as several of the more gullible ones fled in terror at my apparent demise. Eh, we kids are so stupid. I know, I used to be one. I had fun. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 27 18:09:36 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 11:09:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <3094A398-12D0-42C4-8CC6-72C76EEFF194@gmail.com> Message-ID: <017a01d75323$748bf8d0$5da3ea70$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat >?Retract that! My mistake. I was confusing ties with spikes. ;) Regards, Dan With spikes what? Dan I don?t own any railroad ties. They cause cancer donchaknow. My friends, I must do something about myself. I have far too much fun here. I need to see my doctor, have her prescribe Despondex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd4tugPM83c spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu May 27 19:14:55 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 14:14:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <017a01d75323$748bf8d0$5da3ea70$@rainier66.com> References: <3094A398-12D0-42C4-8CC6-72C76EEFF194@gmail.com> <017a01d75323$748bf8d0$5da3ea70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Oh, don't tell me - you are one of 'those' - sunny disposition people, making everyone around them sick of you (and with envy as well, I reckon). Think of the people in AFrica, in Bangladesh, in downtown San Francisco - get your empathy going and try to think like them. Eat bad food, TAke up smoking cigars, make your wife mad at you. Probably won't work. bill w On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 1:15 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > > > > > > >?Retract that! My mistake. I was confusing ties with spikes. ;) Regards, > Dan > > > > > > With spikes what? Dan I don?t own any railroad ties. They cause cancer > donchaknow. > > > > My friends, I must do something about myself. I have far too much fun > here. I need to see my doctor, have her prescribe Despondex: > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd4tugPM83c > > > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 27 20:29:02 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 13:29:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <017a01d75323$748bf8d0$5da3ea70$@rainier66.com> References: <3094A398-12D0-42C4-8CC6-72C76EEFF194@gmail.com> <017a01d75323$748bf8d0$5da3ea70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 11:15 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat > >?Retract that! My mistake. I was confusing ties with spikes. ;) Regards, > Dan > > > > With spikes what? Dan I don?t own any railroad ties. > What about railroads? Wasn't it "railroad, Spike's" (punctuation & capitalization fixed)? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 27 20:43:35 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 13:43:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: References: <3094A398-12D0-42C4-8CC6-72C76EEFF194@gmail.com> <017a01d75323$748bf8d0$5da3ea70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008401d75338$f745cde0$e5d169a0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2021 12:15 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] restoration-ready Oh, don't tell me - you are one of 'those' - sunny disposition people, making everyone around them sick of you (and with envy as well, I reckon). Think of the people in AFrica, in Bangladesh, in downtown San Francisco - get your empathy going and try to think like them. Eat bad food, TAke up smoking cigars, make your wife mad at you. Probably won't work. bill w Billw, she knew how I am when she married me. We are Eeyore and Tigger. I had a thought on this today after I wrote the Despondex post. Recently I posted about a worry I have had about uploading: what if an upload can think but not feel? Someone here posted that these two cannot be separated: a thinking being is a feeling being. I see those two types of thinking as being more orthogonal to each other, but I might be wrong on that. An idea occurred to me. We know that sometimes two separate traits co-evolve in such a way as to reinforce each other or drive each other. Perhaps human intellect drove emotion, then emotion drove intellect. It could even be fashioned into a mate selection scenario: deeply feeling people were more desirable as mates, and the offspring of deeply feeling people were capable of higher intellect. Another take: what if? we go with the well-known observation that comfortable people accomplish nothing. Uncomfortable people writhe and squirm, changing things trying to be comfortable. If humans were becoming the moodiest of beasts, then humans would be the most restless, which might drive technology, in order to increase the likelihood that our offspring would survive. Technology enabled humans to expand territory and produce more food, then later to preserve food, which enabled more developed brains, more intellect, more emotion. In that view, three human characteristics co-evolved: emotion, intellect and mastery of technology. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu May 27 21:37:51 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 16:37:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] restoration-ready In-Reply-To: <008401d75338$f745cde0$e5d169a0$@rainier66.com> References: <3094A398-12D0-42C4-8CC6-72C76EEFF194@gmail.com> <017a01d75323$748bf8d0$5da3ea70$@rainier66.com> <008401d75338$f745cde0$e5d169a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: A very interesting case came up: a man with brain damage (reported by Damasio, I think) between his frontal cortex and his amygdala (big emotional center). He was of high intelligence but could not hold a job - got distracted a lot and so on. But the main thing is that he could not make the simplest decision. Keep working or work on something else or stop. Coffee offers threw him into a dither which he could just not get out of. Bottom line: some emotional input has to happen to make a decision, even a simple one. Hume was right. Emotions drive behavior more than reason does. We seem to always worry about emotions taking over and making us make irrational decisions. Of course that can happen. No system is perfect. But without it we are lost. No, not orthogonal between reason and emotion. Have you ever had a situation arise where decision A looked better than B, but something told you that B was going to work better? You can call this intuition or whatever you choose, but what is happening is that your emotional center likes B better and you may never know the 'reason' for that emotion. Also, think of Thinking, Fast and Slow, which I hope you have read. Much data seem to point at this: our unconscious acts and our conscious notices that and gives it a reason even if the behavior that comes out makes little sense to us ('Why did I say/do that?") . The reason appears after the fact. That puts our ego in the position of just being a follower of our unconscious. Free Will? Hmmm. fMRI studies show that the beginning of an action taken by our motor cortex happens before we are aware of it. Ergo - we are not in control. Did you ever listen to the Austin Lounge Lizards? (bunch of lawyers who played at a bluegrass festival I attended) They have a little tune called 'We are in control' - maybe that's a bit like whistling through the graveyard. bill w On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 3:47 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Sent:* Thursday, May 27, 2021 12:15 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Cc:* William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] restoration-ready > > > > Oh, don't tell me - you are one of 'those' - sunny disposition people, > making everyone around them sick of you (and with envy as well, I reckon). > Think of the people in AFrica, in Bangladesh, in downtown San Francisco - > get your empathy going and try to think like them. Eat bad food, TAke up > smoking cigars, make your wife mad at you. Probably won't work. bill w > > > > > > > > Billw, she knew how I am when she married me. We are Eeyore and Tigger. > > > > I had a thought on this today after I wrote the Despondex post. Recently > I posted about a worry I have had about uploading: what if an upload can > think but not feel? > > > > Someone here posted that these two cannot be separated: a thinking being > is a feeling being. I see those two types of thinking as being more > orthogonal to each other, but I might be wrong on that. > > > > An idea occurred to me. We know that sometimes two separate traits > co-evolve in such a way as to reinforce each other or drive each other. > Perhaps human intellect drove emotion, then emotion drove intellect. It > could even be fashioned into a mate selection scenario: deeply feeling > people were more desirable as mates, and the offspring of deeply feeling > people were capable of higher intellect. > > > > Another take: what if? we go with the well-known observation that > comfortable people accomplish nothing. Uncomfortable people writhe and > squirm, changing things trying to be comfortable. If humans were becoming > the moodiest of beasts, then humans would be the most restless, which might > drive technology, in order to increase the likelihood that our offspring > would survive. Technology enabled humans to expand territory and produce > more food, then later to preserve food, which enabled more developed > brains, more intellect, more emotion. In that view, three human > characteristics co-evolved: emotion, intellect and mastery of technology. > > > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Fri May 28 03:28:42 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 20:28:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Spherical UFO plunges into the ocean in US Navy footage Message-ID: <20210527202842.Horde.yEgors1vIK6AZQXUTV6VbG-@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9627489/Moment-USS-Omaha-SWARMED-14-UFOs-radar-2019.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed&ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed Here is a good compilation of the leaked videos from both the Atlantic and Pacific incidents, including a new one taken in the Combat Information Center (CIC) of the USS Omaha. The new footage shows the radar screen and chatter in the CIC as the USS Omaha is surrounded by between 9 and 14 of the spherical objects of the coast of San Diego. Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 28 09:03:26 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 10:03:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Spherical UFO plunges into the ocean in US Navy footage In-Reply-To: <20210527202842.Horde.yEgors1vIK6AZQXUTV6VbG-@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20210527202842.Horde.yEgors1vIK6AZQXUTV6VbG-@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 28 May 2021 at 04:33, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat wrote: > > https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9627489/Moment-USS-Omaha-SWARMED-14-UFOs-radar-2019.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed&ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed > > Here is a good compilation of the leaked videos from both the Atlantic > and Pacific incidents, including a new one taken in the Combat > Information Center (CIC) of the USS Omaha. The new footage shows the > radar screen and chatter in the CIC as the USS Omaha is surrounded by > between 9 and 14 of the spherical objects of the coast of San Diego. > > Stuart LaForge > _______________________________________________ For a contrary opinion ------ UFOs Are Back ? And They Are Still Nothing Published by Steven Novella May 24 2021 Quotes: We have not seen a single piece of compelling evidence, only the UFO equivalent of blobsquatch ? blurry blobs, shapes, and dots with no real context for size, distance, or speed. We basically have the same level of evidence (and the same errors in analysis) we had 60 years ago. There is a reason none of the video is in focus ? because the in focus images are clearly not anything interesting. They are aircraft, balloons, birds, even insects. When they are out of focus, then suddenly they are mysterious. and On the 60 Minutes piece (which was terribly gullible) one pilot said that such UAP encounters were daily. This was meant to be impressive, but it actually undermines the hypothesis that these are something not mundane. A phenomenon so common and frequent that a pilot could encounter them on a daily basis would be difficult to hide. You would think by now we would have a single piece of clear evidence. This is a general principle that crops up in very different fields. If the observed phenomenon you are seeing is extremely common then the cause must be equally common, or something systematic like an artifact. ------------------ BillK From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 28 20:38:48 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 21:38:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] ElliQ - AI companion robot for the elderly Message-ID: First I've heard about this Alexa-like robot from Intuition Robotics, but it seems popular. This type of AI companion has become almost essential for single old people during lockdown. Quote: Unlike anything they've experienced before, ElliQ? is a friendly, intelligent, inquisitive presence in older adults? daily lives ? there for them, in their corner, offering tips and advice, responding to questions, surprising them with suggestions ? a dedicated sidekick on their journey through this remarkable part of life. ----------- Enthusiastic user review video (17 mins) with text. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 28 23:24:34 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 18:24:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] ElliQ - AI companion robot for the elderly In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This type of AI companion has become almost essential for single old people during lockdown. bill k I find this truly an incredible statement. It suggests that a vast majority of us elders cannot find something to do without help. My problem is finding enough time to do all the things I want to do, like make further dents in my pile of books. And enough time to find new good ones to order. I would probably find one very interesting, but very far from a necessity. Am I really in a small minority? bill w On Fri, May 28, 2021 at 3:43 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > First I've heard about this Alexa-like robot from Intuition Robotics, > but it seems popular. This type of AI companion has become almost > essential for single old people during lockdown. > > > > Quote: > Unlike anything they've experienced before, ElliQ? is a friendly, > intelligent, inquisitive presence in older adults? daily lives ? there > for them, in their corner, offering tips and advice, responding to > questions, surprising them with suggestions ? a dedicated sidekick on > their journey through this remarkable part of life. > ----------- > > Enthusiastic user review video (17 mins) with text. > < > https://blog.elliq.com/whats-it-like-to-live-with-elliq-video-interview-with-user-deanna > > > > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 28 23:38:57 2021 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 16:38:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ElliQ - AI companion robot for the elderly In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <003e01d7541a$a1817de0$e48479a0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Sent: Friday, May 28, 2021 4:25 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] ElliQ - AI companion robot for the elderly This type of AI companion has become almost essential for single old people during lockdown. bill k I find this truly an incredible statement. It suggests that a vast majority of us elders cannot find something to do without help. My problem is finding enough time to do all the things I want to do, like make further dents in my pile of books. And enough time to find new good ones to order. I would probably find one very interesting, but very far from a necessity. Am I really in a small minority? bill w Ja, you sure are billw. Plenty of seniors can?t see well enough to read their books, or anything else. You still have your mate. Cognitive decline is common in one?s later years. Plenty of others would trade places with you in a heartbeat. We should all think regularly on all the stuff we still have that continues to work right. We don?t need to thank evolution or any supernatural being, but thank anyway. Gratitude is a powerful and positive emotion. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat May 29 00:19:13 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 19:19:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] ElliQ - AI companion robot for the elderly In-Reply-To: <003e01d7541a$a1817de0$e48479a0$@rainier66.com> References: <003e01d7541a$a1817de0$e48479a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I would never deny that I am a special and wonderful person who can do many things without help, or that millions of the elderly would find such a thing a wonder and a miracle. Perhaps one day they will come in many different personalities and intelligence levels. I just object to the scope of the want implied (never a need). I am going to research that. I hope Medicare covers it. It covers my several thousand dollar hearing aid, so why not? I'll bet it costs more than my aid. (I have no idea - I didn't click on the link). bill w On Fri, May 28, 2021 at 6:41 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Sent:* Friday, May 28, 2021 4:25 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Cc:* William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] ElliQ - AI companion robot for the elderly > > > > This type of AI companion has become almost > essential for single old people during lockdown. bill k > > > > I find this truly an incredible statement. It suggests that a vast > majority of us elders cannot find something to do without help. My problem > is finding enough time to do all the things I want to do, like make further > dents in my pile of books. And enough time to find new good ones to > order. I would probably find one very interesting, but very far from a > necessity. Am I really in a small minority? bill w > > > > > > > > > > > > Ja, you sure are billw. Plenty of seniors can?t see well enough to read > their books, or anything else. You still have your mate. Cognitive > decline is common in one?s later years. Plenty of others would trade > places with you in a heartbeat. We should all think regularly on all the > stuff we still have that continues to work right. We don?t need to thank > evolution or any supernatural being, but thank anyway. Gratitude is a > powerful and positive emotion. > > > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat May 29 00:36:14 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 19:36:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] dementia Message-ID: About 3.4 million people, or 13.9 *percent* of the population age 71 and *older*, have some form of *dementia*, the study found. As expected, the prevalence of *dementia* increased dramatically with age, from five *percent* of those aged 71 to 79 to 37.4 *percent* of those age 90 and *older*. How about them 90 year olds? Almost 2/3rds functioning well. Of course one does not get to be 90 without being in good health, as a general rule. Surely the percentages would be higher if those with simple cognitive decline, such as mild memory problems were included. (I am assuming that 'dementia' does not include those.) bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Sat May 29 02:15:48 2021 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 19:15:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] All the king's forces Message-ID: <20210528191548.Horde.Yi1DrkolEmufciOR6Km4Q6U@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/aXjDpRmjfWZXA9LnNHdXbK-970-80.jpg Chandra Xray photograph of Sgr-A* holding court in the center of the galaxy. The colored threads are plasma in the magnetic field lines of stars being whipped around in the black hole's twisted space-time as the try to reconnect. The sheer magnitude of the forces depicted in this picture is mind-boggling. You can clearly see some interesting lensing also. Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 30 19:48:42 2021 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 30 May 2021 20:48:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Humans will go crazy in space travel Message-ID: Slate have an article up about how humans will find it very difficult to cope with space travel and living on other planets or asteroids. The Spacefaring Paradox Deep-space human travel is a lose-lose proposition. By Christopher Schaber May 25, 2021 Quotes: If there?s one collective lesson gleaned from the COVID pandemic so far, it may be the shared difficulty of being isolated in one?s own home?whether alone or with family members or roommates. When space closes in, humans tend not to thrive. It can drive us to the brink of craziness. ---- If the dream of space travel involves new horizons and feelings of unbound freedom?to explore, to discover, to spread humanity?a nightmare lurks just around the corner of consciousness. There will be no real ?arrival? on this fantasy trip: It?s enclosures and pressurized chambers all the way down. When it comes to human space travel, the destination really is the journey. And the journey will be long, and claustrophobic. ------------------- I think I mostly agree. Humans are designed for the wide-open spaces of Earth. Space is interesting to visit for a while, but I wouldn't much want a life spent in a tin can. I vote to send the robots instead. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun May 30 20:22:42 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 30 May 2021 15:22:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Humans will go crazy in space travel In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I hope that I live to see the day when solitary confinement is declared to be cruel punishment. Even 24 hours of it can seriously unhinge someone. bill w On Sun, May 30, 2021 at 2:52 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Slate have an article up about how humans will find it very difficult to > cope with space travel and living on other planets or asteroids. > > < > https://slate.com/technology/2021/05/spacex-starship-space-travel-paradox.html > > > > The Spacefaring Paradox > Deep-space human travel is a lose-lose proposition. > > By Christopher Schaber May 25, 2021 > > Quotes: > If there?s one collective lesson gleaned from the COVID pandemic so > far, it may be the shared difficulty of being isolated in one?s own > home?whether alone or with family members or roommates. > When space closes in, humans tend not to thrive. It can drive us to > the brink of craziness. > ---- > If the dream of space travel involves new horizons and feelings of > unbound freedom?to explore, to discover, to spread humanity?a > nightmare lurks just around the corner of consciousness. There will be > no real ?arrival? on this fantasy trip: It?s enclosures and > pressurized chambers all the way down. When it comes to human space > travel, the destination really is the journey. And the journey will be > long, and claustrophobic. > ------------------- > > I think I mostly agree. Humans are designed for the wide-open spaces > of Earth. Space is interesting to visit for a while, but I wouldn't > much want a life spent in a tin can. > I vote to send the robots instead. > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Mon May 31 00:36:13 2021 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 30 May 2021 18:36:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Humans will go crazy in space travel In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: No, going to space, before we solve these kinds of problems, including redesigning the body so it doesn't need space suites, can be backed up and so on, is just bass ackwards, On Sun, May 30, 2021 at 1:50 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Slate have an article up about how humans will find it very difficult to > cope with space travel and living on other planets or asteroids. > > < > https://slate.com/technology/2021/05/spacex-starship-space-travel-paradox.html > > > > The Spacefaring Paradox > Deep-space human travel is a lose-lose proposition. > > By Christopher Schaber May 25, 2021 > > Quotes: > If there?s one collective lesson gleaned from the COVID pandemic so > far, it may be the shared difficulty of being isolated in one?s own > home?whether alone or with family members or roommates. > When space closes in, humans tend not to thrive. It can drive us to > the brink of craziness. > ---- > If the dream of space travel involves new horizons and feelings of > unbound freedom?to explore, to discover, to spread humanity?a > nightmare lurks just around the corner of consciousness. There will be > no real ?arrival? on this fantasy trip: It?s enclosures and > pressurized chambers all the way down. When it comes to human space > travel, the destination really is the journey. And the journey will be > long, and claustrophobic. > ------------------- > > I think I mostly agree. Humans are designed for the wide-open spaces > of Earth. Space is interesting to visit for a while, but I wouldn't > much want a life spent in a tin can. > I vote to send the robots instead. > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tara at taramayastales.com Mon May 31 00:46:15 2021 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Sun, 30 May 2021 17:46:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Humans will go crazy in space travel In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It's not enclosure that is unbearable, it's a lack of freedom. A monk and a prisoner live in the same size cell, with an experience that is worlds apart. > On May 30, 2021, at 5:36 PM, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat wrote: > > > No, going to space, before we solve these kinds of problems, including redesigning the body so it doesn't need space suites, can be backed up and so on, is just bass ackwards, > > > On Sun, May 30, 2021 at 1:50 PM BillK via extropy-chat > wrote: > Slate have an article up about how humans will find it very difficult to > cope with space travel and living on other planets or asteroids. > > > > > The Spacefaring Paradox > Deep-space human travel is a lose-lose proposition. > > By Christopher Schaber May 25, 2021 > > Quotes: > If there?s one collective lesson gleaned from the COVID pandemic so > far, it may be the shared difficulty of being isolated in one?s own > home?whether alone or with family members or roommates. > When space closes in, humans tend not to thrive. It can drive us to > the brink of craziness. > ---- > If the dream of space travel involves new horizons and feelings of > unbound freedom?to explore, to discover, to spread humanity?a > nightmare lurks just around the corner of consciousness. There will be > no real ?arrival? on this fantasy trip: It?s enclosures and > pressurized chambers all the way down. When it comes to human space > travel, the destination really is the journey. And the journey will be > long, and claustrophobic. > ------------------- > > I think I mostly agree. Humans are designed for the wide-open spaces > of Earth. Space is interesting to visit for a while, but I wouldn't > much want a life spent in a tin can. > I vote to send the robots instead. > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From guessmyneeds at yahoo.com Mon May 31 06:02:23 2021 From: guessmyneeds at yahoo.com (Sherry Knepper) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 06:02:23 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] Humans will go crazy in space travel In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <742702018.1241952.1622440943043@mail.yahoo.com> At some point we may need to leave earth to survive something similar to the scorched earth.? The author didn't mention any good alternative. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Sun, May 30, 2021 at 3:57 PM, BillK via extropy-chat wrote: Slate have an article up about how humans will find it very difficult to cope with space travel and living on other planets or asteroids. The Spacefaring Paradox Deep-space human travel is a lose-lose proposition. By Christopher Schaber? ? ? May 25, 2021 Quotes: If there?s one collective lesson gleaned from the COVID pandemic so far, it may be the shared difficulty of being isolated in one?s own home?whether alone or with family members or roommates. When space closes in, humans tend not to thrive. It can drive us to the brink of craziness. ---- If the dream of space travel involves new horizons and feelings of unbound freedom?to explore, to discover, to spread humanity?a nightmare lurks just around the corner of consciousness. There will be no real ?arrival? on this fantasy trip: It?s enclosures and pressurized chambers all the way down. When it comes to human space travel, the destination really is the journey. And the journey will be long, and claustrophobic. ------------------- I think I mostly agree. Humans are designed for the wide-open spaces of Earth. Space is interesting to visit for a while, but I wouldn't much want a life spent in a tin can. I vote to send the robots instead. BillK _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From guessmyneeds at yahoo.com Mon May 31 06:08:16 2021 From: guessmyneeds at yahoo.com (Sherry Knepper) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 06:08:16 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] Humans will go crazy in space travel In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <999891606.1238060.1622441296991@mail.yahoo.com> I wanted to stay in my 2700 sq ft.house for the duration of the pandemic.? I didn't even want to go out onto the grounds.? I have had to force myself to go out for medical visits and trips to stores.? Except for my lack of risk tolerance the article implies someone like me would make a good spacefarer.? However I wouldn't want to live like this for more than about 2 years. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Sun, May 30, 2021 at 9:09 PM, Tara Maya via extropy-chat wrote: _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon May 31 12:19:13 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 20:19:13 +0800 Subject: [ExI] Japan Wants to Build Intercontinental Passenger Spaceships by the Early 2040s Message-ID: "A booming space industry is making it easier than ever to get into orbit, but Japan is betting that it could revolutionize terrestrial travel, too. The country?s science ministry has unveiled a plan to develop intercontinental passenger spaceships by the early 2040s. The idea of using spaceships to travel from one point on the Earth?s surface to another has been around since at least the 1960s, but the cost and complexity of the idea have meant it?s been little more than a pipe dream. In principle, the approach isn?t that different from the one used by intercontinental ballistic missiles. A rocket is used to blast the payload, be it a nuclear weapon or a passenger spaceship, on a big looping trajectory into space before re-entering the atmosphere on the other side of the planet. The approach could make it possible to travel between continents in under an hour, and now Japan has outlined it s vision for how to make the idea a reality. In a roadmap unveiled at an expert panel earlier this month, its science ministry put forward a two-phase plan it predicts could support a 5 trillion yen ($46 billion) market for spaceships departing from and arriving in Japan. Local reports on the strategy are light on detail, but it seems to rely on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) achieving dramatic reductions in the cost of launching vehicles into space. The country?s next-generation H3 rocket , which is due for a maiden flight this year, costs roughly five billion yen, and the roadmap predicts that tactics like reusing rocket parts will allow them to halve that cost by 2030, and get it down to as low as 10 percent by the early 2040s. They will then rely on private companies to develop transport vehicles that can carry passengers. They envisage two different kinds of spaceships: a spaceplane similar to the space shuttle that can land on a runway like a normal aircraft, and one that lands vertically like SpaceX ?s reusable rockets." https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/30/japan-wants-to-build-intercontinental-passenger-spaceships-by-the-early-2040s/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon May 31 12:21:10 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 20:21:10 +0800 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?A_Cave_Site_in_Kenya=E2=80=99s_Forests_Reveals_t?= =?utf-8?q?he_Oldest_Human_Burial_in_Africa?= Message-ID: "Africa is often referred to as the cradle of humankind, the birthplace of our species, *Homo sapiens*. There is evidence of the development of early symbolic behaviors such as pigment use and perforated shell ornaments in Africa, but so far most of what we know about the development of complex social behaviors such as burial and mourning has come from Eurasia. However, the remains of a child buried almost 80,000 years ago under an overhang at Panga ya Saidi cave in Kenya is providing important new details. Working with a team of researchers from Kenya, Germany, Spain, France, Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we studied the burial. Our results, published in *Nature* earlier this month , reveal valuable insights into human cultural evolution, including how Middle Stone Age populations interacted with the dead. A Child Called ?Mtoto? Around 78,000 years ago, a small child was carefully placed on their right side in a shallow pit in a cave near Kenya?s coast. Their legs were raised to their chest in a flexed position, and their body wrapped in a special cloth, perhaps an animal skin. The child?s head was placed gently on some kind of perishable support, a pillow in readiness for the long sleep. As a final act, the child was deliberately covered over with dirt from the cave floor and left for thousands of years, slowly becoming buried under another three meters of soil. Our team later nicknamed this person ?Mtoto,? meaning ?child? in Kenya?s Swahili language." https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/28/a-cave-site-in-kenyas-forests-reveals-the-oldest-human-burial-in-africa / -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon May 31 12:25:02 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 20:25:02 +0800 Subject: [ExI] Scientists Added a Sense of Touch to a Mind-Controlled Robotic Arm Message-ID: "Most people probably underestimate how much our sense of touch helps us navigate the world around us. New research has made it crystal clear after a robotic arm with the ability to feel was able to halve the time it took for the user to complete tasks. In recent years, rapid advances in both robotics and neural interfaces have brought the dream of bionic limbs (like the one sported by Luke Skywalker in the *Star Wars* movies) within touching distance. In 2019, researchers even unveiled a robotic prosthetic arm with a sense of touch that the user could control with their thoughts alone. But so far, these devices have typically relied on connecting to nerves and muscles in the patient?s residual upper arm. That has meant the devices don?t work for those who have been paralyzed or whose injuries have caused too much damage to those tissues. That may be about to change, though. For the first time, researchers have allowed a patient to control a robotic arm using a direct connection to their brain while simultaneously receiving sensory information from the device. And by closing the loop, the patient was able to complete tasks in half the time compared to controlling the arm without any feedback. ?The control is so intuitive that I?m basically just thinking about things as if I were moving my own arm,? patient Nathan Copeland, who has been working with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh for six years, told *NPR* *.* The results, reported in *Science* *,* build on previous work from the same team that showed they could use implants in Copeland?s somatosensory cortex to trigger sensations localized to regions of his hand, despite him having lost feeling and control thanks to a spinal cord injury. The 28-year-old had also previously controlled an external robotic arm using a neural interface wired up to his motor cortex, but in the latest experiment the researchers combined the two strands of research, with impressive results." https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/24/scientists-added-a-sense-of-touch-to-a-mind-controlled-robotic-arm/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon May 31 12:29:31 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 20:29:31 +0800 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?See_the_Wild_Plans_for_N=C3=BCwa=2C_a_Proposed_C?= =?utf-8?q?ity_on_Mars_Built_Inside_a_Giant_Cliff?= Message-ID: Elon Musk and Kanye West shall lead them... "Despite being able to land rovers on Mars and fly helicopters there, it seems humans are still somewhat far away from actually setting foot on the red planet. But for an endeavor as unprecedented as colonizing another planet, you have to dream big?and plan ahead. That?s what an international team of scientists and other experts are doing, and they?ve come up with not just a design, but a full-fledged plan to build the first Martian city, complete with sustainable housing, food, transportation, and energy. Described in a paper published in March, the city is the brainchild of architecture firm ABIBOO Studio and a multidisciplinary group of space experts from academia and the private sector called SONet (short for Sustainable Offworld Network). The Mars Society solicited plans for a Martian city in 2020, and this design, called N?wa, was one of several finalists. A video that looks like it could?ve come straight out of a Hollywood sci-fi movie gives a glimpse of the design. N?wa would be the capital in a design made up of five linked cities, each housing 200,000 to 250,000 people. N?wa?s location, Tempe Mensa, was chosen because its geography will act as a natural shield from radiation; the area contains an expansive mesa bordered by tall sheer cliffs, and the idea is to excavate those cliffs and build the city inside. The location and design would also give residents indirect access to sunlight, protect them from meteorites if one were to strike nearby, and help minimize the difference in atmospheric pressure between the inside and outside of the buildings. ?If we were to construct the buildings as on Earth, the buildings would tend to explode from the pressure. The solar and gamma radiation on Mars forced us to build spaces that are not directly exposed to the sky,? said Alfredo Mu?oz, founder of ABIBOO Studio, in a press release. The ?macro-buildings? designed for the city are modular and in the shape of huge tubes (10 meters wide by 60 meters long), with different models meant for living and working. The modules would be linked by tunnels and elevators, not unlike those found in urban areas on Earth. All the modules include space for green areas, as well as areas called ?snow domes? that would help dissipate heat and clean the air through condensation. Each macro-building would have an air shower at its entrance, which visitors would use to sterilize microbes and other potentially harmful matter." https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/19/nuwa-a-proposed-city-on-mars-would-be-built-in-a-giant-cliff-face-and-house-1-million-people/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon May 31 12:31:25 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 20:31:25 +0800 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?The_US_Just_Approved_Its_First_Big_Offshore_Wind?= =?utf-8?q?_Farm=2C_and_It=E2=80=99s_a_Breakthrough_for_the_Industr?= =?utf-8?q?y?= Message-ID: "The United States? offshore wind industry is tiny, with just seven wind turbines operating off Rhode Island and Virginia . The few attempts to build large-scale wind farms like Europe?s have run into long delays, but that may be about to change. On May 11, 2021, the US government issued the final federal approval for the Vineyard Wind project, a utility-scale wind farm that has been over a decade in the planning. The wind farm?s developers plan to install 62 giant turbines in the Atlantic Ocean about 15 miles off Martha?s Vineyard , Massachusetts, with enough capacity to power 400,000 homes with clean energy. The project is the first approved since the Biden administration announced a goal in March to develop 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity this decade and promised to accelerate the federal review process. To put that goal in perspective, the US has just 42 megawatts today. Vineyard Wind expects to add 800 megawatts in 2023 . So, are we finally seeing the launch of a thriving offshore wind industry in the North America?" https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/12/the-us-just-approved-its-first-big-offshore-wind-farm-and-its-a-breakthrough-for-the-industry/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon May 31 12:34:13 2021 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 20:34:13 +0800 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?How_One_Round_of_Gene_Therapy_Fixed_48_Kids?= =?utf-8?q?=E2=80=99_Immune_Systems?= Message-ID: "Gene therapy has shown promise in recent years for treating a range of diseases, including sickle-cell anemia , hemophilia , various forms of inherited blindness , mesothelioma , and Duchenne muscular dystrophy . A new success story may soon be added to this list, with the publication yesterday of the outcomes of a clinical trial that used gene therapy to cure a rare immune system disorder in infants. The study, described in the *New England Journal of Medicine ,* was carried out by researchers from UCLA and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London over the course of five years, beginning in 2012." https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/13/how-one-round-of-gene-therapy-repaired-a-dysfunction-in-48-kids-immune-systems/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 31 16:36:28 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 11:36:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] china's babies Message-ID: They just raised the number of allowable children to three, saying that the future was threatened. Other countries are also concerned about low birth rates. What is the world supposed to do, just get bigger and bigger no end? I understand about fewer young people to support old peoples' social programs, but growth and more growth is unsustainable. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon May 31 17:22:38 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 10:22:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] china's babies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 9:39 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Other countries are also concerned about low birth rates. What is the > world supposed to do, just get bigger and bigger no end? > > I understand about fewer young people to support old peoples' social > programs, but growth and more growth is unsustainable. > Incorrect - at least over the next few centuries. Lots of people confuse "to INFINITY" with "realistic near-term growth". More people confuse "we've never had this many before" with "we can only have at most roughly this many". The carrying capacity of the Earth - not even getting into space colonization, which will take decades to develop but seems likely to start being available later this century - seems to be much larger than current use, given the vast majority of Earth's surface that is currently essentially unused by humanity, especially the potential to expand sustainable aquaculture. (If you've ever read sci-fi where a bunch of food came from algae - well, kelp are algae, with many varieties already under extensive commercial production, with uses including food. And that's just kelp.) Granted, infrastructure (including mining & energy) will need to expand to support more people - but there will be more people to expand it with. More importantly, there will also be more automation, over time, to expand it with. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 31 18:10:45 2021 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 13:10:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] china's babies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Adrian, I think that I am just too emotional about this issue. I have no doubt that tech can keep up with growth. I just hate it. I don't want any more jungles and trees and habitats of our fellow creatures to give way to concrete and condos. I wish we would just stop growing now. Maybe people can live in or on the ocean - that would really help. We already have the vestigial gills. Maybe it would be easy to activate them. I knew a girl who had an infection in her gills. bill w On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 12:25 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 9:39 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Other countries are also concerned about low birth rates. What is the >> world supposed to do, just get bigger and bigger no end? >> >> I understand about fewer young people to support old peoples' social >> programs, but growth and more growth is unsustainable. >> > > Incorrect - at least over the next few centuries. Lots of people confuse > "to INFINITY" with "realistic near-term growth". More people confuse > "we've never had this many before" with "we can only have at most roughly > this many". The carrying capacity of the Earth - not even getting into > space colonization, which will take decades to develop but seems likely to > start being available later this century - seems to be much larger than > current use, given the vast majority of Earth's surface that is currently > essentially unused by humanity, especially the potential to expand > sustainable aquaculture. (If you've ever read sci-fi where a bunch of food > came from algae - well, kelp are algae, with many varieties already under > extensive commercial production, with uses including food. And that's just > kelp.) > > Granted, infrastructure (including mining & energy) will need to expand to > support more people - but there will be more people to expand it with. > More importantly, there will also be more automation, over time, to expand > it with. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lostmyelectron at protonmail.com Mon May 31 18:36:26 2021 From: lostmyelectron at protonmail.com (Gabe Waggoner) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 18:36:26 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Sources of metformin for longevity Message-ID: <28iH7UpEmK3poNG0sMLYQHHLtMo7BQQnhv-xdTtJ-iVZJ9t01kyCM97N6YHcFC3jb7CGOFqEnSIuI6zJsEnTMAXU6LDr-Pxl5vCtHqx_BMg=@protonmail.com> Hello, all, I consider the contributors to this list a treasured resource, and I'm hoping to consult your collective wisdom. I recall metformin's being discussed on this list, but my mail program has practically no search functionality. I apologize if, as seems likely, I'm asking something already covered. I'm reading David Sinclair's _Lifespan: Why We Age?And Why We Don't Have To_, which has only strengthened my resolve to investigate metformin for longevity. Would anyone comfortable doing so kindly share ideas (on- or offlist) for getting metformin as a nondiabetic? My HMO doctor would never prescribe it to me?like many, he would not consider aging a disease but rather the inevitable result of entropy. I've found several outfits online through which I could supposedly get a prescription, but I'm unsure of their credibility. Several have less-than-stellar ratings from LegitScript (though for all I know, even LegitScript isn't legit). I would be delighted to use the same approach as one of you. I'm also curious about dosage and whether regular or extended-release metformin is more appropriate, though I figure the screening process by any reputable prescriber would take those factors into account. Great thanks in advance? Gabe ? Gabe Waggoner, MS, ELS Science Writer?Editor 7318 Edmonston Rd. College Park, MD 20740-3018 lostmyelectron at protonmail.com www.nasw.org/users/rgwaggoner/ Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com/) Secure Email. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon May 31 18:45:55 2021 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 11:45:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] china's babies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: And/or live in what is currently empty sky, as urban cores build upward. There are developments in urban agriculture, too; the main currently limiting factor is pure economics. If you have the distribution setup to make it profitable, and suitable building space, you can just buy farming units and start making money. It is not inconceivable that some future skyscrapers will be primarily agricultural in this fashion - perhaps tall enough to reach most clouds and harvesting water from them (so as to not have to spend their own energy pumping water up). And there is the potential for lunar-made solar power satellites, eventually delivering power for lower cost than all current alternatives - and "outpriced by alternatives" has been the most effective means to shut down power plants so far, if one wished to e.g. completely dismantle the fossil fuel power plant industry worldwide, eliminating their impact on our environment. Sourcing minerals from the Moon and asteroids would significantly lower mining environmental impacts on Earth, too. It would not be a complete panacea, but it would certainly help lower the impact of additional population. Perhaps extraterrestrial mining, vertical/indoor farming, and solar power satellites supporting 100 billion people on Earth might have a lower impact than we do today...and I think everyone on this list can agree, given current slowing trends in population growth, having a lower impact through 100 billion people would buy quite some time for us to deal with other problems. On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 11:13 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Adrian, I think that I am just too emotional about this issue. I have no > doubt that tech can keep up with growth. I just hate it. I don't want any > more jungles and trees and habitats of our fellow creatures to give way to > concrete and condos. I wish we would just stop growing now. Maybe people > can live in or on the ocean - that would really help. We already have the > vestigial gills. Maybe it would be easy to activate them. I knew a girl > who had an infection in her gills. bill w > > On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 12:25 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 9:39 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> Other countries are also concerned about low birth rates. What is the >>> world supposed to do, just get bigger and bigger no end? >>> >>> I understand about fewer young people to support old peoples' social >>> programs, but growth and more growth is unsustainable. >>> >> >> Incorrect - at least over the next few centuries. Lots of people confuse >> "to INFINITY" with "realistic near-term growth". More people confuse >> "we've never had this many before" with "we can only have at most roughly >> this many". The carrying capacity of the Earth - not even getting into >> space colonization, which will take decades to develop but seems likely to >> start being available later this century - seems to be much larger than >> current use, given the vast majority of Earth's surface that is currently >> essentially unused by humanity, especially the potential to expand >> sustainable aquaculture. (If you've ever read sci-fi where a bunch of food >> came from algae - well, kelp are algae, with many varieties already under >> extensive commercial production, with uses including food. And that's just >> kelp.) >> >> Granted, infrastructure (including mining & energy) will need to expand >> to support more people - but there will be more people to expand it with. >> More importantly, there will also be more automation, over time, to expand >> it with. >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Mon May 31 18:59:08 2021 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 14:59:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Sources of metformin for longevity In-Reply-To: <28iH7UpEmK3poNG0sMLYQHHLtMo7BQQnhv-xdTtJ-iVZJ9t01kyCM97N6YHcFC3jb7CGOFqEnSIuI6zJsEnTMAXU6LDr-Pxl5vCtHqx_BMg=@protonmail.com> References: <28iH7UpEmK3poNG0sMLYQHHLtMo7BQQnhv-xdTtJ-iVZJ9t01kyCM97N6YHcFC3jb7CGOFqEnSIuI6zJsEnTMAXU6LDr-Pxl5vCtHqx_BMg=@protonmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Gabe- I can't vouch for them personally, but I'm aware of these guys who focus on life extension and will write RXs for metformin https://www.agelessrx.com/. Additionally, for those not in the EU, it is possible to order directly without a RX from the below site. I've used them frequently in the past for other harder to find life extension meds and they are completely legitimate and ship high quality generics. Payment methods in the past have sometimes been a pain in the neck though as they sometimes have issues with credit card processing and you only have a bank wire as an alternative. They're worth at least checking out if you can't find a doctor somewhere else and are willing to pay the full cost without insurance: https://theantiaging.store/product/met-pro-metformin/ As far as formulation, I would strongly recommend going with the extended release formulation. Metformin, especially in the first few weeks of regular treatment, often causes some fairly unpleasant GI issues including diarrhea. These side effects go away in a few weeks for most people, but the XR formulation helps alleviate them in a lot of people. I've tried both standard and XR personally and found the XR much better in minimizing the GI unpleasantness. Good luck with your search! On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 2:37 PM Gabe Waggoner via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Hello, all, > > I consider the contributors to this list a treasured resource, and I'm > hoping to consult your collective wisdom. I recall metformin's being > discussed on this list, but my mail program has practically no search > functionality. I apologize if, as seems likely, I'm asking something > already covered. > > I'm reading David Sinclair's _*Lifespan: Why We Age?And Why We Don't Have > To*_, which has only strengthened my resolve to investigate metformin for > longevity. Would anyone comfortable doing so kindly share ideas (on- or > offlist) for getting metformin as a nondiabetic? My HMO doctor would never > prescribe it to me?like many, he would not consider aging a disease but > rather the inevitable result of entropy. I've found several outfits online > through which I could supposedly get a prescription, but I'm unsure of > their credibility. Several have less-than-stellar ratings from LegitScript > (though for all I know, even LegitScript isn't legit). I would be delighted > to use the same approach as one of you. I'm also curious about dosage and > whether regular or extended-release metformin is more appropriate, though I > figure the screening process by any reputable prescriber would take those > factors into account. > > Great thanks in advance? > Gabe > > ? > Gabe Waggoner, MS, ELS > Science Writer?Editor > 7318 Edmonston Rd. > College Park, MD 20740-3018 > lostmyelectron at protonmail.com > www.nasw.org/users/rgwaggoner/ > > Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From guessmyneeds at yahoo.com Mon May 31 21:49:27 2021 From: guessmyneeds at yahoo.com (Sherry Knepper) Date: Mon, 31 May 2021 21:49:27 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] china's babies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <996614353.1405663.1622497768003@mail.yahoo.com> Bill w, a girl has gills? Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 2:19 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: