[ExI] The most precious essence

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2022 at 03:17, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 7:28 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On 08/02/2022 01:46, BillK wrote:
>> > If a mind can be run on hardware -
>>
>> Well, it's the hardware we have now that has made minds possible. What
>> is the brain, if not hardware? Ok, it's squishy, but that's not what we
>> mean when we distinguish between hardware and software. You could say
>> "non-organic hardware", but who's to say that we have to use non-organic
>> hardware to construct future mind substrates? Polymer brains might well
>> be possible. It could be that going down a silicon and electrons route
>> wouldn't be such a good idea, given how vulnerable that would be to
>> cosmic rays and such.
>>
>
> It is a fact of the matter that all information in our current
> "non-organic" systems is abstract, like the word "red", composed of strings
> of ones and zeros.  These are purposely abstracted away from any physical
> properties (i.e. wavelengths of light or the verry different colorness
> qualities like redness) representing them.  You can't know what any of
> those abstract words like red represent without a dictionary.  We on the
> other hand, representing information, like knowledge of red things,
> directly on phenomenal qualities of "squishy" stuff like redness and
> greenness.  The redness quality your squishy stuff uses to represent red
> knowledge with is your definition of red.  It is a fact that my brain could
> be engineered such that my redness would be like your greenness, both of
> which we call red, as illustrated here:
>
> [image: 3_robots_tiny.png]
>
> The only difference in the first two is a red green signal inverter in the
> optic nerve, and a redness/greenness inverted dictionary.
>
> My question is, do you currently disagree with any of these demonstrably
> true facts?  And if not why do you continue to completely ignore facts like
> this, when you talk about "squishy stuff"?
>

You don’t know that what you call abstract qualities and physical qualities
do not both give phenomenal consciousness.

> --
Stathis Papaioannou
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