[ExI] Why stop at glutamate?

Tue Apr 11 07:33:32 UTC 2023

Brent,
The insistence of Jason, I, and others in "PATTERNS is all what there is"
has its foundation in our training as physical scientists.
It is clear from studying modern science patterns are what is fundamental
in nature. In physics, we go further and in fact, we say everything is
fields which is an even more abstract concept.
You bang on the table and say "but it is hard" and I tell you it is all EM
fields in the table that repel fields in your hand. Y

You are looking for something concrete when it is all abstract fields. You
can measure them, you can manipulate them but there is nothing solid. Also,
patterns are where the information is. When we insist that redness is just
a neural pattern we really mean it.
This is important, VERY IMPORTANT, because as I said before it is about
modeling. If you know how to model something you can recreate it. I gave
the example of the experiments of Berger where he could reproduce memory in
a chip by reproducing the patterns (he calls them spatio-temporal patterns)
that memory consists of.

Models also tend to be as simple as possible. If I can get the same result
with fewer components then that is a great model.
Human physiology is often a Goldberg machine, physiological processes are
overcomplicated, they go in a roundabout way to get some desired
results, and very inefficient. We can improve the efficiency of some
processes, for example, memory or even consciousness by understanding what
is essential and eliminating the rest. That is what modeling is about.

Can you stop for a moment and reflect on that and tell us how that
understanding of what brain stuff really fits in your understanding of
"quality of redness"? To me is completely incompatible because it is not
about glutamate or any other physical substance but just the patterns, just
the relations. These relations can be recreated digitally and you can
re-create any brain stuff including the sensation of color.
Do you understand why this is a big deal? It is a completely different
vision of how the universe works. This is why we believe computers can be
conscious because it doesn't matter what they are made of. If they have the
right patterns then they can do whatever the human brain does.

Giovanni

On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 8:47 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> We are just talking about two different things.
> You guys are talking about an abstract code word "red" which is, by
> design, independent of whatever changing physical property is representing
> it at any time, or in any different brain, of any age, as long as the
> grounding dictionary for the abstract term is updated appropriately.
>
> Giovani mentioned:
>
> > As we experience
> > red in early childhood, and throughout life, we create a different
> > perception of red that can be refined or sometimes degraded. It is not
> > a fixed forever thing in the brain but it is always changing and
> > modifying. This again destroys completely Brent's misconception about
> > what redness is.
>
> You said "redness" in that last line but didn't you mean to say code word
> "red" instead of redness, it's referent?   At least using  my unambiguous
> and well grounded terminology, it would be more clear.
>
> Others have also talked about how knowledge of colors can change, due to
> language and tastes can grow and expand based on practice and experience.
>
> It is THESE changes that I am talking about.  What are the physical
> changes that are responsible for these subjective changes, and what are
> they like before and after those changes?
>
> On the other thread Jason also indicated:  "I still think qualities are
> encoded in neural patterns."  completely misunderstanding that a redness
> quality is a physical fact, that does not need decoding like a code word.
>
> The question that "destroys completely" your ability to understand what
> qualities are (resulting in all kinds of 'hard problems' and ineffability)
> is:  How do you decode that encoding?
> How do you find out what a person's redness is like when they were younger
> and how is it different, now that they are now older?
>
> The way you guys are talking, it is all perceptions of interpretations of
> perceptions.  Since you guys have no grounding, people point out that you
> suffer from a symbol grounding problem.  That is the only reason you think
> subjective qualities are ineffable.
>
> It's no wonder you say you don't know what I'm talking about, when I use
> the term quality.  There are no qualities in abstract text and codes.  You
> simply need to ground your abstract codes with a pointer to a particular
> physical property in a color image.  You need to point to a particular
> physical redness quality and say  THAT is what redness was like when he was
> young, and it has now changed to this different quality now that he is
> older.  That is grounded, unambiguous terminology, enabling effing of what
> is, for you guys, ineffable.
>
> Who did you say is the one using confusing, ambiguous, non grounded
> ineffable terminology that has no meaning?
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 1:11 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 09/04/2023 23:50, Giovanni Santostasi wrote:
>> > Let me elaborate on a point. When I say the pattern matters it doesn't
>> > mean that a particular pattern matters. This is very relevant to
>> > dismantle Brent's position. I can use any pattern I want to represent
>> > red. In fact, let me expand on my previous statement: what matters is
>> > the pattern AND the association with a given visual stimuli (in the
>> > case of red) or a given thought or memory or whatever. If I associate
>> > this pattern with seeing red (probably a given number of times) then
>> > that is red in my brain. Given we have similar makeup and there is a
>> > lot of software we inherit from our progenitors the association
>> > process (basically we come with a lot of NN weights that are
>> > pre-trained) is somehow pre-programmed up to a point. As we experience
>> > red in early childhood, and throughout life, we create a different
>> > perception of red that can be refined or sometimes degraded. It is not
>> > a fixed forever thing in the brain but it is always changing and
>> > modifying. This again destroys completely Brent's misconception about
>> > what redness is.
>>
>>
>> Thank-you Giovanni.
>>
>> You have put, much more clearly and concisely, what I've been trying, on
>> and off, to say for years.
>>
>> And without a single mention of 'quality', 'knowledge of' or 'abstract'
>> to confuse things.
>> Well done.
>>
>> Ben
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