[ExI] Subjective/Objective

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2026 at 8:41 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 14/07/2026 23:59, Jason Resch wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 14, 2026, 3:33 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote (in response to Brent):
> >
> >
> > >     And again, you're saying that there is a type of message that is
> not abstract. This is an extraordinary claim, as I've already said. Please
> give us some extraordinary evidence for this physics-breaking new kind of
> message. If you can't, then you shouldn't be saying that such a thing
> exists. If I said that we see colours because tiny unicorns charge around
> in our brains with coloured horns, and jab them into the parts of our
> visual cortex that make us see colours, I would only expect to be
> challenged for proof, and if I couldn't provide any, I could only expect to
> be told to shut up and come back when I had some. That's fair, isn't it?
> >
> >
> >
> > >     I tell you what, let's drop the requirement for extraordinary
> evidence. Just /some/ evidence. Just give us one example. One single
> example of a message that carries within it its own meaning. A message that
> can be understood without context, without having to use some method of
> decoding it. I've been racking my brains trying to disprove this hypothesis
> that all messages are abstract (that's what scientists do, and while I'm
> not actually a scientist, I'm a big fan of the scientific method), and have
> so far drawn a blank, so that's still my default position. Even ".  ..
> ..." is not an unambiguous message, needing no context to decode. So that's
> a second hypothesis you are invited to disprove.
> >
> >
> > There are two tracks that lead in opposite directions.
> >
> > In the first track, it can be proved that any message can be interpreted
> in any way, and this is a result from cryptography, in particular the OTP
> encryption method allows any message to be encrypted to any other message
> with equal probability. In this sense, every message can be viewed as
> entirely abstracted from its meaning and interpretation.
> >
> > In the second track, which I think you were alluding to with ". .. ..."
> I think you are showing that some messages inherently convey meaning, even
> without any pre-existing shared context. Think about the Arecebo message
> broadcast to aliens, or deciphering an ancient language, or how LLMs learn
> about the world given only a large corpus of text.
> >
> > This I think can be proved about messages that are compressible. For any
> string that is compressible has inherent discoverable patterns within it.
> Discovering the patterns in the text can allow someone, even who has no
> prior context, to understand the meaning of the message. Consider that in
> the massive text corpus are all kinds of measured data about the world, say
> the positions of the planets at various days across many years. Given
> enough analysis, a compression algorithm could figure out that these
> positions correspond to elliptical orbits that follow Kepler's law and as
> viewed from one of the orbiting bodies. So from merely a list of numbers, a
> sufficient analysis can reveal all kinds of things about the universe in
> which this list of numbers was generated.
>
>
> I wasn't trying to say that some messages inherently convey meaning, just
> the opposite. The ". .. ..." message is one that's familiar to us,
> precisely because of our SETI efforts and our attempts to create
> unambiguous messages that aliens might be able to understand. We are
> familiar with a context, so can make a guess at the meaning (which would be
> wrong, in this case).
>

It is true that short of well-defined protocols of the type programs
follow, there is always some degree of guess work and room for
misinterpretation when it comes to an interpreter attempting to interpret a
message. Even when two people speak the same language, each word for each
person, is surrounded by a different set of associations and connotations
of various strengths. It is a bit of a miracle that language works as well
as it does to enable two minds to synchronize on more or less, similar
lines of thought.


>
> Someone with a mathematical background would probably assume that the
> message says something about prime numbers, or maybe Pascal's triangle, or
> some other mathematical structure. And they'd be wrong.
>

The longer the message, however, the more probable it becomes that a string
of digits that perfectly matches the leading digits of Pi is actually meant
to mean the digits of Pi, rather than some other thing that by chance,
happens to follow the same pattern of Pi's digits.


>
> What I had in mind (the actual meaning of the message) wasn't any of
> those. My point is that nobody can know what I intended those dots to mean,
> and no system can derive the meaning, without knowing my intention or
> having some decoding system that assumes that intention.
>
> I'm sure you're right about compressible strings and discoverable patterns.
>
> Where my idea possibly breaks down is, as you say, when there are large
> amounts of information. The example of LLMs is probably the best one.
>

Yes, I agree with you that short messages are always ambiguous. But when it
comes to something large, complex, self-referential, like the total English
text of wikipedia, then even an alien from another universe, having no
context, or understanding of the characters, could ultimately come to
understand the meaning of this text. They might start by recognizing
symbols for numbers, which appear in so many lists, and then come to
understand the meaning of our symbols like +, -, and =, after seeing
numerous examples of numbers added and the results. Then they would see
patterns in language, like "a" and "the" always proceeding some types of
words, but not others (the nouns), and then by seeing the pattern "an X is
a Y" (e.g. "a dog is a mammal", "a mammal is an animal", etc.) it could
generate a hierarchical classification, and come to realize the meaning of
"thing" and "object" being the most general type of noun. Then they might
notice the pattern "X is made of Y", and they could discover that atoms are
more basic than molecules, and fundamental particles more basic than atoms,
than then with its understanding of numbers, math, and knowing the basic
equations that desctibe the fundamrntal particles that make up everything
described in Wikipedia, these aliens from another universe, could have a
pretty good idea of the stuff in our world, and how it behaves. No Rosetta
stone is needed, the message (when large enough, and redundant enough) is
self-describing (like the digits of Pi are when there enough of them).


>
> When there is a very large amount of information, probably spread across
> many messages, it's probably possible to find patterns that correspond to
> patterns from another source, like the real world, and guess that there's
> some real link, and keep going on that basis until the messages can be
> deciphered to make sense with respect to the other source. It's very
> unlikely that, with enough information, this process will give false
> results.
>

Yes.


>
> That's not the same thing, though, as a message that contains its own
> meaning, without any context. That's many messages, correlated with a
> guessed context (like the elliptical orbits example), and probably many
> attempts to fit the data to the context.
>

Well there is no limit on message size. The entire multi-PB text-corpus
used to train ChatGPT could be considered a single message, as one single
(very long) string of 1s and 0s.


>
> So while what you say is correct, I don't think it invalidates my claim,
> which after all is actually quite modest. If those dots are fed into a
> nerve axon, in isolation, there's no way that whatever the axon leads to
> will be able to interpret my intended meaning. It will use its own pre-set
> mechanisms and context to interpret the message, and it will come up with
> the wrong answer. The meaning of the message is what is heard, not what is
> said (to quote one of the Assumptions of NLP).
>

But consider the mostly blank state of a newborn's brain. All its brain
receives are timing signals of nerve firings. And from these timing signals
alone (a message without context), the brain builds an entire model of the
external world, and imbues those mere timing signals with meaning. The list
of all nerve impulses and their times, can be considered as one long
message, that's gradually processed. And yet, somehow, from these
"meaningless neural spikes" the whole meaningful world emerges. This, I
believe, is accomplibhsed by the neural networ's capacity to learn to
recognize, interpret, and predict patterns.


>
> What interests me is Brent's claim that there exists some other kind of
> messaging (what he's calling 'Non-causal messages', I think), and what that
> could possibly be (especially as it would, as far as I know, break the laws
> of physics). I suspect it's a figment of his imagination, but it's up to
> him to demonstrate that it actually exists.
>

Brent, like I think all of us, struggle to understand how it is the brain
accomplishes its great feat of producing qualia. It seems impossible.
Carrying on with the assumption that it is impossible to create something
like qualia, from a physical thing that doesn't have it, Brent reasons that
the qualia must be intrinsic to the physical thing from the start.

As I see it, however, this is the same mistake of those who thought dead
matter is missing some "elan vital" and only special matter imbued with
this elan vital property could build life. Their thinking was "life can't
come from matter that lacks a vital force." much as Brent believes qualia
(like the experience of red) cannot come from matter that lacks intrinsic
qualities like redness. But today we understand the concept of emergence.
Living things can be made of dead matter. New properties emerge when a
bunch of smaller things are put together to interoperate in new ways. As
difficult as it is for us to believe that a red experience can come from
things that have no innate or intrinsic redness property, it seems this
must be the case.

The bridge to seeing this is to consider simple processes which have basic
knowledge states. Think of a simple sensation like the knowledge that you
feel the smallest touch on the back of your hand. What does this feel like
beyond the mere knowledge of the location of where on your hand you feel
this touch? That is ultimately what all conscious states are: knowledge
states. For any process that is in a state of possessing knowledge, there
is "something it is like" to be that process. For a process that can
discriminate red from green blue and yellow, where red is the complement of
green+blue (cyan), there is something it is like to be that process when it
is in a state of having discriminated red from those other colors which
hold those relations to the other colors. Knowing this doesn't reveal the
"what it is like" as that knowledge is private to those processes which
happen to be in those states having made those discriminations. It is
frustrating that private subjectivity can't be described
publicly/objectively, but that is the way of things. It logically cannot be
any other way.

Jason



>
> --
> Ben
>
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