<div dir="ltr">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt">Hi Stathis
and John,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt">It seems to
me that there is a clear reason you guys are struggling with all this, and I
can’t understand why you guys can’t see (or at least you don’t show any
evidence of understanding) what seems so obvious to me.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt">A critical
part of consciousness intelligence is the ability to be simultaneously aware of
lots of diverse qualitative experiences.<span>
</span>In addition to redness and greenness, we are also aware of lots of other
qualitative pieces of information, such as sweet good tasting strawberries are
red(the ones we want to pick), and green ones are bitter/not yet ripe (the ones
we don’t want)…<span> </span>The only way to do
equivalent things with not bound together discretely binary components is to
have large inefficient rapid search mechanisms that can do the same kind of functionality
through lots of isolated digital data, to perform the same kind of intelligent behavior.<span> </span>Not only is the way we consciously do it, by
being aware of all of it at once, much more efficient, it’s easy to see why
evolution used this much more efficiently intelligent system that is aware of
everything bound together instead of large searches over large sets of discretely
isolated data representations, the way we need to inefficiently do it with current computers..</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt">Again, as I’ve
been saying, a minimal example of this kind of efficiently powerfully
intelligent qualitative conscious functionally is something that is doing a
redness function, something that is doing a greenness function, and something
that is able to functionally bind these two (and lots of other stuff) so we can
be aware of both of them at the same time.<span>
</span>And if you provide any such minimal set of functionality in any proposed
theoretical system, whether the theoretical redness experience is substrate
independent or not, how to do all three types of week, strung and strongest forms
of effing of the ineffable, will also be obvious.<span> </span>(John, I know you’ll object to this so see
below)<span> </span>And also, if you provide such
minimal necessary qualitative functionality in your theory, how you can do
neural substitution in such a way that you can swap out the redness, for greenness,
or redness for abstracted representations of the same (i.e. a qualia less
abstracted computer that only falsely claims it knows what red is, as can be
proven to all by effing the ineffable.<span>
</span>Stathis, I don’t see any evidence that you understand any of this, nor
the implications it has on the how it is possible to do neural substitution in
an incorrect way (resulting all the “hard problems” some of which you and John
are struggling with), and how you can do it in a correct way, where there are
no hard problems and everything is expected, understandable, sufficiently
accounted for, effable and provable, and no hard problems.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt">Oh, and
John, I anticipate that you are going to still object to any kind of “effing the
ineffable”, but this doesn’t work for me.<span>
</span>Because even if your theory doesn’t have any type of elemental levels of
qualitative experience that would be “easy” to eff as I predict, you will still
be able to “eff the ineffable” by binding two brains together in a kind of meta
conscious system that is bound together (similar to the way your right and left
hemispheres are bound) that can both fully experience “Johns redness”, and “Brent’s
redness” in the same kind of bound together way so you can qualitatively completely
compare the two, in a way allowing you to know which parts of the qualitative experiences are similar,
and which parts are not.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt">Brent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 9:46 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:stathisp@gmail.com" target="_blank">stathisp@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><div><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="gmail_quote m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg">On Fri., 10 Mar. 2017 at 12:56 pm, John Clark <<a href="mailto:johnkclark@gmail.com" class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" target="_blank">johnkclark@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg">On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 Stathis Papaioannou <<a href="mailto:stathisp@gmail.com" class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" target="_blank">stathisp@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><blockquote class="gmail_quote m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">> The point I was making is that the implausible idea that evolution chanced upon the only way to produce consciousness<br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"></blockquote><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"></div><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><font class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" size="4">Even<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>if Evolution just got lucky and came up with a consciousness gene by<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>accident it wouldn't have been able to keep it for long<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>if consciousness is not a byproduct of intelligence;<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>it would be lost by genetic drift. All genes experience mutation but if the gene is vital and the mutation renders it inoperative then<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>that nonfunctional gene<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>will not be passed<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>on<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>into the next generation<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">; </div>but the <div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"></div>consciousness gene has no effect o<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">n</div> behavior<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>so there would be no way for natural selection to even notice it was missing<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> much less select against it</div>. So in just a few generations humans would be a race of zombies<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>with a mutated consciousness gene that no longer worked<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">.</div> And yet I know for a fact that I am conscious.</font><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><font class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" size="4">There are only 3 ways out of this contradiction:</font><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><font class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" size="4">1) Darwin was dead wrong.<br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg">2) I am unique, I am the last conscious being in the universe<br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg">3)<div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>Consciousness is the unavoidable byproduct of intelligence because consciousness is just the way data feel when it is being processed.</font><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><font class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" size="4"><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"></font></div><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><font class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" size="4"><div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">I don't think Darwin was wrong so it's got to be #2 or 3.</div></font></div></div></blockquote><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="gmail_quote m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg">I think it's 3, but the other possibility is that consciousness is tied to organic chemistry, and if evolution had electric circuits to play with, for example, then the world would have been filled with zombie robots instead of conscious animals. On the face of it this is implausible but not absurd; but if true it leads to absurdity, as below.</div></div></div></div><span class=""><div><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="gmail_quote m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><font class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" size="4"><div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"></div></font></div></div><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><blockquote class="gmail_quote m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">> leads to the even more implausible idea that consciousness is independent of brain function.</blockquote><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"></div></div><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><font class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" size="4">A change in the physical chemistry <div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">of my brain </div>leads to a change <div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">in my</div> consciousness, and <div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">my</div> conscious experience, such as a itch, leads to a change in a physical object, such as <div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">my</div> hand scratching <div class="gmail_default m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">my</div> nose. I just don't understand what more evidence the skeptics of a physics-consciousness link need. </font></div></div></blockquote><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><br class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"></div></div></div></div></span><div><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="gmail_quote m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg">The proponents of the idea that consciousness is tied to organic chemistry would say that swapping biological parts for non-biological functionally equivalent parts would lead to zombies, or at least differently conscious beings. At first glance, that seems to be correct. But with a little further thought it becomes evident that this would mean either that consciousness and behaviour are decoupled, or that it would be possible to have an arbitrarily large change in your consciousness and not notice. these bizarre situations can be avoided if consciousness is, as you say, a necessary side-effect of intelligent behaviour, regardless of how it is generated.</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><blockquote class="gmail_quote m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><div class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg"><font class="m_-2935685609943531667gmail_msg" size="4"></font></div></div>
</blockquote></font></span></div></div></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div dir="ltr">-- <br></div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Stathis Papaioannou</div>
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