[ExI] Red

[Brent Allsop]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 5:03 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 7:42 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>
>> * > nor can you doubt that your knowledge of the pencil has your
>> yellowness quality.*
>>
>
> *You can objectively observe your own "yellowness quality" but you are the
> only conscious being in the universe that can do that; meanwhile I have my
> own "yellowness quality" that you will never be able to objectively
> observe. *
>

This assertion is obviously falsified by the simple fact that your left
hemesphere knows infallably, what redness in the right hemesphere is like.


*> we must remember that subjective qualities must have causal properties*
>>
>
> *Yellow light causes X to undergo certain changes, but if X≠Y then yellow
> light will cause changes to Y that are different from the changes it made
> to X.*
>
>
>> *> It's just that cause and effect observation doesn't tell you what they
>> are like. **An example of wrong physics would be that glutamate behaves
>> the way it does, because of its redness quality.  But that may be the wrong
>> set of physics.  It might be glycine, that has the redness quality.
>> Glutamate might have your grenness quality. *
>>
>
> *Yes and that is the fundamental problem you will never be able to
> overcome, there is a limit to what cause-and-effect can tell you, and
> therefore there is a limit to what science can tell you. Quantum Mechanics
> can say why some molecules reflect red light and other molecules reflect
> green light but that's not what you're talking about, you're talking about
> color qualia. You could maintain it's a brute fact that Glutamate has the
> green quality and glycine has the red quality; but both those molecules are
> extremely complicated objects and yet they produce an extremely narrow very
> specific qualia, so to explain the entire conscious experience with your
> theory you're going to need an astronomical number of brute facts, perhaps
> even an infinite number of them. But my theory only needs 2 brute facts:*
>
> *1) On is different from off. *
> *2) Consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed
> intelligently. *
>
> *Therefore William of Ockham would say that my theory is superior to your
> theory. *
>
>
>> *> We simply need nature to tell us, through direct apprehension, which
>> one is which, so we can have our grounded dictionary of the physical
>> qualities of what we are objectively observing.*
>>
>
> *This dictionary you keep talking about is going to be huge, perhaps going
> beyond huge and merging with the infinite; even if by some miracle you
> possessed such a monstrosity would you really feel that the consciousness
> problem had been solved? Wouldn't you want to know WHY one molecule has the
> happiness property while another slightly different molecule has this
> sadness property? *
>
>
> *I'd  be interested to know if you read the paper that Jason mentioned: *
>
> *https://www.anthropic.com/research/global-workspace
> <https://www.anthropic.com/research/global-workspace> *
>


Interesting video, yes.  I haven't made it all the way through yet.

>
>
> *We're getting to the point where maintaining that AIs are not conscious
> is becoming indistinguishable from maintaining that solipsism is true. *
>
> *John K Clark *
>
>>
>>>
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