[ExI] The relevance of glutamate in color experience

[Brent Allsop]

On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 6:28 PM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 3:35 PM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Rafal,
>> We're still talking about completely different things.  I'm just saying
>> that when you look at a strawberry, and if a pixel on the surface of that
>> strawberry is changing from redness to grenness, there must be something,
>> physical, that is responsible for that change in the one pixel.  The
>> prediction is, nothing but that physics will be able to duplicate the
>> redness quality of that one pixel, especially not some abstract function.
>> This redness quality, and what it must be, has nothing to do with what you
>> are talking about.
>>
>
> ### Do you acknowledge that your answer to Jason's post was incorrect?
>
> Your claim that the substitution scenario would only be true if neurons
> were acting as logical gates is logically incorrect. If you refuse to
> acknowledge and withdraw your claim, it would be impossible to continue a
> discussion, since discussions where logically untrue statements are made
> are not worth having.
>

There are surely still mistakes in most sets of consensus knowledge (and in
my knowledge), even though those supporting said mistaken consensus don't
yet see those mistakes.  Giving up on the other side and refusing to move
forward like this, everyone pushing into their own polarized bubble, is
part of the problem.  Consensus building and tracking systems are all about
pulling this back together and tracking all this, and measuring the
progress towards fewer mistakes.  It is designed to enable the first person
who sees a mistake in the consensus to be able to start a new camp, and
from there more effectively get everyone on board with seeing those
mistakes, revolutionizing the consensus as fast as possible.  That is why
the "Start new camp here" is the most important operation any individual
can do, facilitating these kinds of revolutions.

I think I can see what you are talking about in this mistake of mine you
are pointing out.  I will need to adjust my models, and descriptions of
stuff to account for this, possibly including jumping camps.  If you look
at the history, using the as-of mechanism on the side bar, you can see
multiple times where I, and others have made such realizations, and
jumped camps.  I appreciate your help with accelerating this process.  You
can see what camp I'm in, it'd be nice to definitively know what camp you
are currently in, that is if you are also willing to admit you could be
mistaken or missing something, also.

On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 7:16 PM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> So how stupid is it to say that "glutamate has a redness quality"?. There
> are over twenty thousand distinct molecular species present in the
> color-perception cortex. Why not the redness quality of any other molecule?
> Why not say the water in the brain has a redness quality? What about the
> redness quality of glutamate in your Chinese takeout?
>

The fact that glutamate is so easily falsifiable, the way you are
describing here, is the entire point of why I pick glutamate.  If anyone
experiences redness, without glutamate present, the theory that it is
glutamate that has the redness will be falsified.  We're trying to
illustrate how to falsify things in the simplest possible way.  So, just as
you say when you illustrate other possibilities, if you falsify glutamate =
redness, you simply substitute glutamate with a description of something
else in the brain, and repeat the experiment, till you find a set of
necessary and sufficient physical stuff which can no longer be falsified.
THEN we will know the necessary and sufficient set of physics which will
result in a redness experience, giving us the required dictionary.
Glutamate is just a temporary (intentionally easily falsifiable)
placeholder for whatever it is we will discover which does have the
intrinsic redness quality.  Any theory that hasn't yet been falsified is
valid, and we should start with the simplest examples which are the easiest
to be falsified first, before we move onto more difficult yet more capable
theories.
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