[ExI] Why stop at glutamate?

Brent Allsop brent.allsop at gmail.com
Fri Apr 14 20:59:57 UTC 2023 

I'm saying that Galaleo did the right thing, for his time.
And even Dennett is doing the correct thing, when he claims we should
"quine qualia."
"Quine" really means just ignore.  Yet most of the bleaters and tweeters
assume that means dennett says there is no such thing as qualities.
Yet in reality, he has provided the best definition of what qualia are.
All Dennett is saying is that, until we have a way to experimentally verify
things, we should just ignore them.
What we are describing, in the growing consensus RQT petition camp
<https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/6-Representational-Qualia>,
is a way to objectively observe for qualia (by observing the brain in a way
that is not color property blind), so now is the time to start
experimentally looking for the true colors properties of things, not just
the color properties things seem to be.

In other words, once they discover which of all the stuff in our brain is
your redness, and your greenness, they'll be able to objectively observe
that in another brain, and say things like: "That experience you are
experiencing now, is Giovanni's redness."  To which they may reply
something like: "Oh, wow, that is my grenness." and so on.  And terms like
redness will finally be objectively grounded, and so on.
And once we understand what real color properties are, and how they are
computationally bound, I predict this will revolutionize the way
computation is done.  I predict in many ways, it will be far more
efficient than the current type of computation with discrete logic gates.
To say nothing of the fact that this discovery will start the significan
hacking and engineering of the brains.  Once this starts, as we head into
the singularity, conscious life will quickly become unrecognizable from
what it is now, in human bodies.








On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 10:00 PM Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> *We just need to know the true quality of things, not just the qualities
> things seem to be.*Do you realize that science has abandoned this way of
> thinking about reality since Galileo's time?
> That is how pre-scientific "thinkers" where thinking about the universe.
> It was abandoned for a reason, it leads nowhere.
>
> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 8:48 PM Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> *It's just that if we objectively observe it, it doesn't tell us what it
>> is like.*Yeah, the drawing of a pizza doesn't feel my stomach. The
>> sentence above is both trivially right and absurd.
>> What are you trying to say?
>> It drives me nuts.
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 5:46 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi Jason,
>>>
>>> There are many cases where there is conscious awareness, without a
>>> subject.
>>> One example is when Buddhists meditate.   They achieve a state where the
>>> self ceases to exist, and the claim to be "one with the universe"
>>> But of course we know they are jost one with their knowledge of the
>>> universe, all in their head.
>>>
>>> We know, absolutely, that we can have subjective knowledge that has a
>>> redness quality.
>>> There must be something in the brain that is this redness quality.
>>> We can objectively describe everything in the brain, but that tells us
>>> nothing about what the subjective quality of that behavior is like.
>>> One of those descriptions of all the stuff we objectively know, simply
>>> must be that redness.
>>> That redness must be causally active, and there is no reason we can't
>>> objectively observe that causal effect.
>>> It's just that if we objectively observe it, it doesn't tell us what it
>>> is like.
>>>
>>> We simply need to observe the stuff in the brain, in a non quality blind
>>> way,
>>> so we can learn to relate subjective experiences (without mapping them
>>> back to the stimulus that initially caused those experiences) to what we
>>> are objectively observing.
>>>
>>> Once we can reliably predict which objective stuff has your redness
>>> quality, we will have our dictionary.  Hard problem solved.
>>> We just need to know the true quality of things, not just the qualities
>>> things seem to be.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 1:27 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:02 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi Jason,
>>>>> Oh, perhaps that's our communication problem.  You don't yet realize
>>>>> that we redefine color terms.  Traditional color terminology is 'quality
>>>>> blind'.  With traditional ambiguous terminology that only has one term
>>>>> 'red' that represents all the properties that have to do with perception
>>>>> and conscious awareness of red things, you can't tell if the term red is
>>>>> referring to the strawberry or knowledge of the strawberry, or the light.
>>>>> THAT ambiguity is 99% of everyone's problem, and evidently the problem we
>>>>> are suffering from now.
>>>>>
>>>>> This redefinition is specified in the RQT
>>>>> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/6-Representational-Qualia>
>>>>> statement.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    - “*red*” The intrinsic property of objects that are the target of
>>>>>    our observation, the initial cause of the perception process (i.e. when the
>>>>>    strawberry reflects 650 nm (red) light). A label for Anything that reflects
>>>>>    or emits ‘red’ light.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    - “*redNESS*” The different intrinsic property of our knowledge of
>>>>>    red things, the final result of our perception of red.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> With terminology that can represent multiple properties which you can
>>>>> then sufficiently ground to physical properties (subjective and objective),
>>>>> you can make effing of the ineffable statements like:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    - "My redness(glutamate) is like your grenness(also glutamate),
>>>>>    which is what I use to represent what we both call red."
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Does that help?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Not quite. It might be clearer if we instead used language like:
>>>>
>>>> A) 650 nm light
>>>> B) How Bob perceives 650 nm light
>>>> C) How Alice perceives 650 nm light
>>>>
>>>> I grant that all 3 of these things are different things. But note that
>>>> nowhere above is there any definition for an 'objective perception of 650
>>>> nm light'. I don't know what that could mean or be. There must always be a
>>>> subject in question to have a particular perception. How can one define a
>>>> perception in objective terms when perceptions are always relative to some
>>>> subject?
>>>>
>>>> If we accept your theory that particular molecules are associated with
>>>> objective perceptions, how do we prove that? How do we even test for that,
>>>> in principle?
>>>>
>>>> Jason
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 9:02 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 10:21 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 7:23 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 8:38 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 9:51 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 11:30 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 7:45 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 9:20 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 3:21 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 12:05 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Other parts of the brain decode the meaning of the signals
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> they receive.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> They decode it to WHAT?  Decoding from one code, to another
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> code, none of which is like anything
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> You are now theorizing that there is nothing it is like to be
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the process that decodes a signal and reaches some state of having
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> determined which from a broad array of possibilities, that signal
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> represents. That is what qualia are: discriminations within a high
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> dimensionality space.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> nor are they grounded is not yet grounding anything.  It is
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> still just a code with no grounded referent so you can't truly decode them
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> in any meaningful way.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> What does it mean to ground something? Explain how you see
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> grounding achieved (in detail)?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> It is all about what is required (experimentally) to get
>>>>>>>>>>>>> someone to experience stand alone, no grounding dictionary required, "old
>>>>>>>>>>>>> guys redness".  (the requirement for grounding as in: "oh THAT is what old
>>>>>>>>>>>>> guys redness is like.")
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> You need to be the conscious of old guy's brain to ever know
>>>>>>>>>>>> that.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> I've had this identical conversations with multiple other people
>>>>>>>>>>> like John Clark.  Our response is canonized in the RQT camp
>>>>>>>>>>> statement
>>>>>>>>>>> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/6-Representational-Qualia>.
>>>>>>>>>>> In summary, It's the difference between elemental qualities and
>>>>>>>>>>> composite qualities.  Of course, if you consider redness to be like the
>>>>>>>>>>> entire monalisa, it is going to be much more difficult to communicate what
>>>>>>>>>>> all that is like.  And you have to transmit all the pixels to accomplish
>>>>>>>>>>> that.  All that is required, is elemental codes, that are grounded in
>>>>>>>>>>> elemental properties.  And send that grounded code, for each pixel of the
>>>>>>>>>>> monalisa, to that person.
>>>>>>>>>>> P.S.  the person receiving the coded message, could decode the
>>>>>>>>>>> codes, representing the mona lisa, with redness and greenness inverted, if
>>>>>>>>>>> they wanted.  I guess you would consider that to be the same painting?
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> No.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> There is no objective image (i.e. imagining) of the Mona Lisa.
>>>>>>>>>> There just some arrangement of atoms in the Louvre. Each person creates the
>>>>>>>>>> image anew in their head when they look it it, but there's no way of
>>>>>>>>>> sharing or comparing the experiences between any two individuals.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> If you think otherwise could you explain how two people with
>>>>>>>>>> different brains could come to know how the other perceives?
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> There is the weak form of communicating qualities which you can do
>>>>>>>>> if your terms are physically grounded (i.e. redness is glutamate) in a
>>>>>>>>> reliably reproducible way.  so if you objectively detect that objective
>>>>>>>>> description of redness for one brain, is an objective description of
>>>>>>>>> greenness in another brain.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> How can there be an objective description of redness for one brain?
>>>>>>>> Isn't that subjective? How does one determine when glutamate is redness in
>>>>>>>> one brain but greenness in another?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> No, glutamate (or whatever objectively observed physics it turns out
>>>>>>> to be) is always the same subjective quality.  They are the same thing. the
>>>>>>> prediction is you can objectively observe subjective qualities.  We just
>>>>>>> don't currently know which of all the stuff we are objectively observing is
>>>>>>> subjective redness)  One person may use it to represent red visual
>>>>>>> knowledge (they would call it redness) but another person could be
>>>>>>> engineered to use glutamate quality to represent green.  So far that
>>>>>>> person, they would call it greenness.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Just when I thought I understood your theory this last paragraph
>>>>>> above completely undermines that understanding.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In one sentence you say that it always has the same subjective
>>>>>> property, but then in another you say it could be used to represent redness
>>>>>> or greenness. I don't see how to reconcile these two ideas. What is the
>>>>>> common subjective property, is it color of any kind?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Jason
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> That would enable you to ground a sufficiently defined statement
>>>>>>>>> like: "My redness(glutamate) is like your greenness(glycine), both of which
>>>>>>>>> we call red."
>>>>>>>>> Here is a description of the strongest form of effing the
>>>>>>>>> ineffable taken from my "3 Types of Effing the Ineffable
>>>>>>>>> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JKwACeT3b1bta1M78wZ3H2vWkjGxwZ46OHSySYRWATs/edit>"
>>>>>>>>> document.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Half of our visual knowledge is in our left hemisphere, the other
>>>>>>>>> half, in the right.  The Corpus Callosum
>>>>>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosum> computationally
>>>>>>>>> binds these into one unified conscious awareness of everything around us.
>>>>>>>>> If we had a neural ponytail
>>>>>>>>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf9SWvs4beE>, which could
>>>>>>>>> computationally bind like the corpus callosum, this would enable us to
>>>>>>>>> experience all of the experiences, not just half, when we hug someone.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> There's a case of some conjoined twins with a "thalamic bridge"
>>>>>>>> that enables them to hear each other's thoughts and see out of each other's
>>>>>>>> eyes.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It's an interesting question to consider whether this bridge
>>>>>>>> ensures they see the same colors or whether the separate processing by
>>>>>>>> their unique visual cortexes allows them to stil perceive colors
>>>>>>>> differently. The same question would arise with neural ponytails.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yes, exactly.  If people double neural ponytails are possible, and
>>>>>>> they are often VERY shocked to hear of this, and it falsifies their doubt,
>>>>>>> for sure.  Demonstrable proof the 4 hemispheres can be bound just as well
>>>>>>> as 2 hemispheres.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If the first two inverted systems were computationally bound with a
>>>>>>>>> neural ponytail, they would both directly (infallibly) experience the
>>>>>>>>> other's inverted knowledge of the world.  You’d be aware of what is behind
>>>>>>>>> you, as seen through your partner’s eyes, that knowledge being red green
>>>>>>>>> inverted from your knowledge of what is in front of you.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I think it depends on what level of processor the information is
>>>>>>>> shared. If the ponytails shared data from the optic nerves and they had
>>>>>>>> similar retinal behavior, their color experience would likely not change.
>>>>>>>> Oft, however higher level visual information from the visual cortex were
>>>>>>>> shared, then this could present as some kind of inverted qualia.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Are you aware of the experiment were color blind monkeys had their
>>>>>>>> retinas infected with a retro virus that made their cone cells produced new
>>>>>>>> color sensing proteins, and after a few weeks they gained trichromatic
>>>>>>>> vision? The only change to their biology occurred in their retina. How can
>>>>>>>> the "qualia are physical properties" theory account for the results of this
>>>>>>>> experiment?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> No, I wasn't aware of that.  Very interesting.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
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