[ExI] Qualia blind thinking (Was re: Uploads are self)

Tue Mar 17 19:54:38 UTC 2026

On Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 1:18 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Sorry, there is an issue with that URL I provided:
>
>
> https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/2-Approachable-Via-Science?is_tree_open=0
>
> You need to click the "under review" button to see what will go live in 20
> hours.
>
> Also, check this new video short out:
> https://www.youtube.com/shorts/svzxjUWqX48
>
> Half of that bubble world is in our left hemisphere, and the other half is
> in the right.
> Imagine half of it being 10 primary colors (representing much more of the
> light spectrum) and having significantly higher resolution.
> Wouldn't experiencing both of those at the same time make you want to
> upgrade the still primitive half of your brain?
>

It would. But note that I couldn't think about, report, attend to, reflect
upon, or speak about any change concerning the expanded qualia in one
hemisphere unless there was a functional difference in that upgraded
hemisphere.

This is the primary reason why I find functional accounts of qualia so
compelling. To think otherwise is to accept the reasonableness of huge
qualitative changes that you couldn't talk about or be distracted by.

Jason

> On Tue, Mar 17, 2026 at 10:32 AM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> To me, all this talk is so completely objectivbely observable qualia
>> blind, and ignoring what consciousness is (and how half of your
>> consciousness is in the left hemisphere, and othe in the right.)
>>
>> This statement was in Jason's essay:
>>
>> "The reason is that empirical science, being that which is practiced by
>> way of objective experiments, cannot answer these questions in a
>> satisfactory way. This remains true no matter how advanced technology
>> becomes in the future."
>>
>> And Clark constantly makes similar statements all the time.  But to me,
>> this is evidence of how corrupting the neuro substitution argument
>> (fallacy) is.  Why would you give up faith and hope for consciousness being
>> fully approachable via science?
>>
>> I added a statement to this effect, quoting the above statement, in the
>> highest-level super camp "Approachable via Science."
>>
>> https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/2-Approachable-Via-Science?is_tree_open=0&asof=review
>>
>> You guys are completely ignoring the fact that in the near future we will
>> be doing very significant neurohacking and re-engineering of our brain.
>> One minor example is that most of us are trichromats, while others are
>> tetrachromats, and some of us suffer from achromatopsia and experience no
>> color qualities.  Surely in the near future we will be able to fix issues
>> like this and completely redesign our color knowledge to include 10, or
>> perhaps even one hundred, primary color qualities that no human has
>> experienced before.  And we will be able to freely choose what qualities we
>> use to represent what wavelengths of light on a whm.  To say nothing about
>> being able to increase the phenomenal resolution of our visual knowledge by
>> thousands of times in both our current brains and in any avatar brain we
>> might choose to do subjectivee mind merging with, similar to the way the
>> left hemisphere is subjectively mergeed with the right.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 17, 2026 at 8:34 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 3:56 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Mar 15, 2026 at 9:35 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> *I recently met one of the leading researchers involved in the fruit
>>>>> fly brain scanning effort. He, and others mentioned two common objections
>>>>> people have to the idea of brain preservation (with the eventual goal of
>>>>> uploading):*
>>>>>
>>>>>    - *The first is the idea that silicon computers can't host human
>>>>>    consciousness.*
>>>>>    - *The second is the idea that even if my upload were conscious,
>>>>>    "it wouldn't be me."*
>>>>>
>>>>> *I told him I would prepare a brief essay that uses the latest
>>>>> philosophical arguments to serve as a counter to these objections (written
>>>>> to be understandable to laypersons).*
>>>>>
>>>>> *So if there are people in your life who resist your choice to pursue
>>>>> brain/cryro preservation, this document can help them understand the
>>>>> various reasons for we can expect uploads not only to be conscious, but
>>>>> also capable of extending one's very own subjective self and identity.*
>>>>>
>>>>> *Here is the document:*
>>>>>
>>>>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/103wDTRC7-AA6mHVzRj1JptqeulBRXinzvIdfC1Z50t8/edit?usp=sharing
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *I read your document and I thought it was excellent.*
>>>>
>>>
>>> Thank you!
>>>
>>> * I do have a few comments on the subject of personal identity and the
>>>> soul, all of them are, I think, in harmony with your views. *
>>>>
>>>
>>>> *If what are you call "Empty Individualism" is true then I will not
>>>> survive an upload, but then I have not been "surviving" from one second to
>>>> the next since the day I was born, my brain changes to a different quantum
>>>> state many trillions of times a second and I have become a different person
>>>> each time.*
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes empty individualism might say we are each trapped in a single moment
>>> forever. But such a theory is incompatible with all decision theories, and
>>> even empiricism in science, so it's not a very useful theory to live by,
>>> even if it were true.
>>>
>>>
>>> * And yet here I am, all those deaths have certainly not bothered me
>>>> very much! That's not to say there might be an element of truth in the
>>>> idea, I don't think survival is an all or nothing matter, after all the six
>>>> year old John Clark no longer exists, although there are similarities we
>>>> are different people. But if that is what is meant by "death" then death is
>>>> not a big deal. And subjective consciousness is always continuous, although
>>>> the objective outside world can jump discontinuously. *
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes it certainly seems as though it can. Our sense of time leaves is
>>> with a powerful impression that empty individualism is false, though I
>>> don't think we can rely on our personal experience to decide which theory
>>> of personal identity is true. After all relativity shows the subjective
>>> flow of time to be an illusion, and yet we still feel as though things
>>> constantly change. A similar sort of illusion could be behind our belief
>>> that we're not eternally stuck in a single moment.
>>>
>>>
>>>> *As for the "soul", it is a word that means the essential part that
>>>> makes you be you and me be me, and I agree there must be something that
>>>> causes that, but the religious claim it can never be understood so we might
>>>> as well give up even trying, and I disagree with that part.  I can only
>>>> conceive of 3 things existing in the universe, matter, energy, and
>>>> information. Atoms are interchangeable, energy is fungible, so information
>>>> must be the thing that causes you and I to be different people.*
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes I saw a good argument for this last night. If we accept any theory
>>> besides empty individualism, then we must equate two different observer
>>> moments with the same person. This the same person is maintained between
>>> these two experiences, and thus there is some "Identity Carrier" that
>>> preserves the same person from moment to moment. Understand the workings of
>>> this Identity Carrier, and under what conditions it preserves an
>>> individual, is in my view a way of better understanding what most people
>>> mean by the word "soul".
>>>
>>> If we use this Identity Carrier idea to analyze a split brain patient
>>> who develops two independent conscious minds, then we have a situation
>>> where the person before the surgery "A" has their identity carried to their
>>> left hemisphere "B" and the right hemisphere "C".
>>>
>>> If there is an identity between A and B, and there is an identity
>>> between A and C, then by the  transitivity of the identity relation, then B
>>> is also identical to C. So we have a case where the same mind is now in two
>>> locations at once!
>>>
>>> I saw this argument last night here:
>>> https://youtu.be/hhoqz4PEtkU
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> *I think information is as close as you can get to the traditional
>>>> concept of the soul and still remain within the scientific method. *
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, I agree.
>>>
>>>
>>> *The soul is non material and so is information. It's difficult to pin
>>>> down a unique physical location for the soul, and the same is true for
>>>> information. The soul is the essential, must have, part of consciousness,
>>>> exactly the same situation is true for information. The soul is immortal
>>>> and so, potentially, is information.   *
>>>>
>>>
>>> There are many parallels.
>>>
>>> The information is distinct from any material organization, so it leads
>>> to a sort of "dualism" in that then the soul is distinct from the body,
>>> just as a story is distinct from a book.
>>>
>>> Information can be copied between universes. Think about how we simulate
>>> and look at gliders in the game of life. A more powerful intelligence,
>>> could in principle simulate our universe and see all the conscious entities
>>> that evolve in it. If it had access to unlimited computational resources in
>>> its universe, then this intelligence might choose to "save the souls" of
>>> beings in this universe, by copying their information patterns (their
>>> souls) into computer simulations it ran in its universe.
>>>
>>> In this way, the soul (as an informal pattern) is not only immaterial,
>>> but non physical it can in principle leave this universe and travel to
>>> another, where it can survive and continue as before. The other universe
>>> need not even have matter as we know it, even the game of life universe can
>>> support the building of computers, and that is the only physical
>>> requirement for a universe to host your consciousness (according to
>>> functionalism).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> *But there are also important differences. A soul is unique but
>>>> information, at least conventional non-quantum information, can be
>>>> duplicated. The soul is and will  always remain unfathomable,
>>>> however information is understandable, in fact you might even argue that
>>>> information is the ONLY thing that is understandable. *
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes it is for this reason that I have titled my book "The Science of the
>>> Soul." The soul is comprehensible and science is uncovering this but by
>>> bit. It would not be the first time science has shed light on what was
>>> previously considered divine and beyond human comprehension (it happened
>>> with "the heavens" and the "mystery of life").
>>>
>>> *And  Information unambiguously exists, I don't think even the most
>>>> religious would deny that, but even if the soul exists it's existence it
>>>> will never be proven.  *
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think instead of trying to prove an unprovable idea, we will over
>>> time, reform our understanding of what then word soul means. We'll keep the
>>> word but update our conception, just as we've done with words like "heat",
>>> "sunrise", "energy", "element", "atom", etc.
>>>
>>> Jason
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