[ExI] Fwd: after upload, what?

[Keith Henson]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Mar 25, 2024 at 5:29 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] after upload, what?
To: Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>


On Sun, Mar 24, 2024 at 3:04 PM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Hi Keith,
> OK, got it.
> I think you've indicated in the past you agree the subjective experience contains qualities like redness and greenness.  Functionalists predict that qualities are "substrate independent" and can arise from anything "functioning" correctly.  Whereas materialists think there is something physically real which has those qualities, or in other words subjective experience, or the qualities of which it is composed is dependent on whatever substrate it is, that has a redness quality, for example.  If it was glutamate, reacting in a synapse that has a redness quality, then without said glutamate, no ability to experience redness.
>
> I guess I'm asking for more details about how something like this might be achieved:
> "Her consciousness was continuous as the reactivated brain cells took over from the slowed
> down swarm of nano computers that had been simulating them."
>
> You seem to be saying that there would be a kind of switching between the two.

Yes.

> The neurons would be replaced by computers simulating them, and visa versa for the other direction.  But I think of the all important "computational binding".

I have no clue what you mean by "computational binding".
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> Half of our visual knowledge could be represented by something in our right hemisphere, the other in the left hemisphere.  Somehow these two hemispheres of knowledge are computationally bound into one unified experience of everything we see before us.  But why could you take a simulated set of knowledge of what is behind us, and bind that into the same two hemispheres, so one could have a 360 degree set of visual knowledge of not just what is in front of us, but in a way so we would be seeing what is behind us, all as one unified 360 degrees of visual experience.

I suppose this could be done in a simulation, but not in an unmodified
physical state human.

> In other words, since you could experience the real neurons, together with the simulated ones, all at the same time through computational binding, not only could you say if the simulated stuff was  "Better?  Worse?" you would know how it was qualitatively different.  (i.e. in addition to your knowledge of what is behind you  possibly being composed of qualities you had never experienced before, redness and greenness could be inverted, from what you see in front of you, and so on.)

I suppose you could do this if you wanted, but I have no interest.
Life is complicated enough.

Keith
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> On Sun, Mar 24, 2024 at 11:18 AM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 24, 2024 at 5:34 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat
>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>> snip
>>
>> > Keith, I think we will eventually get to what you are describing, but I also think you are missing a few things which will be possible on the way there.
>> >
>> > Would you consider yourself a functionalist, like most people here, in that things like subjective color quality experience can arise from any simulation "functioning" the same?
>>
>> I am not sure what you mean.
>>
>> > And what do you imagine "going both ways" would be like?  How could this be done?
>> >
>> I wrote about what happened to Zaba in considerable high level detail.
>> I posted the whole story last week.  And in the post you are replying
>> to I quoted the paragraphs describing how Zabe went into and came out
>> of the uploaded state.
>>
>> Go back and reread the post you are replying to.  If you did, I have
>> no idea why you are asking these questions.
>>
>> Keith
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > extropy-chat mailing list
>> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat