<div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div>On Sat., 25 Mar. 2017 at 6:02 am, Brent Allsop <<a href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com">brent.allsop@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_msg">
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">Hi Ben,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">I apologize for not responding to
some of your questions, I need to try to be more diligent in this.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>I appreciate your patience, and I hope if I’m
failing to answer any questions, you’ll repeat it till I do.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>But you should have heard me trying to
describe this stuff 10 or 20 years ago, I think I’ve improved lots, thanks to
patient help from people like all of you.<span class="gmail_msg">
</span>In the past, most people just dismissed what I was trying to say, rather
than trying to understand it enough to ask more questions.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>So at least I’ve gotten a few people
understanding enough to ask more questions till they understand it fully.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>It seems that communication of this stuff is
harder than the subject, itself.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>It
seems harder than trying to eff what people falsely think is ineffable.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">I think you have it right, about
what is the crux of the matter.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>What
internal operations are important to include as necessary for qualitative
experience behavior, and what is not?<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>I
think we would all agree that inverted or diversity of qualia is possible.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>In other words, two people behaving the same,
saying something is “red” could be modified to be inverted from each
other.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>One’s person’s redness could be engineered
to be more like another’s greenness.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">So, it’s critical to try to find
effing of the ineffable ways to know what is really going on qualitative
experience wise, in people’s brains, compared to our own.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">For example, with a large flat panel
TV display, much of what that is, and how it functions, doesn’t matter.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>You can have a metal back plate, or a glass
back plate…<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>You could be using plasma
pixel elements, or LCD pixel elements, or for that matter, you could be using
oil paints – all producing the same set of what is required to build a color
picture we can have unified composite qualitative knowledge of.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">The important thing to keep in mind
with a picture compared to knowledge of a picture, is how the knowledge is all
bound together so we can be aware of it, qualitatively, all at once, as a
composite qualitative experience.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>And
there is much more semantic info bound into the knowledge than just the colored
pixel elements.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>You can recognize
people, fruit, mountains, and lots of information about what is going on.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>All this is bound together so all of it is
interacting with all the rest.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>This kind
of large scale interaction is what makes us so intelligent, and why evolution
uses it over isolated, easily swappable, bits which can be neuro substituted in
incorrect ways.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">The large screen TV picture pixels
are very different.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>One pixel has no
relation to any other pixels at all.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>Let
alone the most lower left pixel being related to the upper right most
pixel.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>But with us, all that stuff is
related, and bound together, so that when one pixel changes, or becomes broken
or black, it sticks out in comparison with all the others, like a sore thumb.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>To the TV, when one pixel dies, it has no
effect on the rest of the TV.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">With a simplistic system that we
normally think of neuro substituting, no matter what or how you do it, you can
reproduce large flat screen TV like functionality.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>But, if you do it incorrectly, you can lose
the ability for the lower left most pixel to interact with the upper right most
pixel, so that you can tell if any of them are miss behaving or broken.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">That’s why I try to use the
simplistic qualitative world, where the pixels can be represented with
something simple, like glutamate, and glycine, and the binding mechanism can be
a single neuron that connects to every single pixel.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>Objectively, it is something that works like
a key, in a lock, knowing that when something is broken, or not the right color,
the lock is failing, compared to all the other thousands of qualitative keys in
qualitative locks which are working and distinguishing from each other.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">This kind of simplistic system
includes the necessary functionality.<span class="gmail_msg">
</span>Multiple pixels that can take on divers qualities, and something that
binds them all together (a single neuron in the simplistic case), enabling the
system to detect, and be aware of incorrect changes in any of them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:107%;font-family:"times new roman",serif" class="gmail_msg">Stathis, and so many other brilliant
people, can’t get beyond: “</span>But you *cannot* substitute a component
preserving its interactions with its neighbors and end up changing the
qualitative experience of redness and greenness”.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>But it is easy to do this kind of neuro
substitution in an insufficient system, in an incorrect way, where you remove
the critical functionality of distinguishing between anything like redness and
greenness or glycine and glutamate, or for that matter any possible “redness
function” compared to a “greenness function” – again, if done correctly</p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think you imagine that if glutamate is changed and glutamate is responsible for red qualia, then distal parts of the system (such as those reporting red qualia) will change even if all the physical interactions of the glutamate substitute are the same. But that is impossible.</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_msg"><p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt">You must do
the neuro substitution on some type of system or some type of theory, like my
simplistic theory, that includes the required ability to distinguish between
physical things like glutamate and glycine (in an objective sense) or redness
and greenness (in a subjective sense).<span class="gmail_msg">
</span>If you do a neuro substitution on a sufficient system, that can
distinguish things on a large scale like this, then it becomes obvious how you
can easily do a nero substitution on an inadequate system, in a way that makes
you think there are “hard problems” and that there are no qualia, including
“functional qualia” anywhere in the system that you are neuro substituting.<span class="gmail_msg"> </span>And you can also see, with the neuro substitution
on an adequate system, how it can be done, resulting in necessary things like inverted
qualia equivalent appearing behavior – and it also includes in your sufficient
theory or testable system, ways to “eff the ineffable” in various week and
strong ways, the way our left hemisphere surely does with our right.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt">Please tell
me again, what other questions you have, or if I haven’t answered any of them
with this attempt.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt">Thanks,</p></div><div class="gmail_msg">
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt">Brent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal gmail_msg" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt"> </p>
</div><div class="gmail_extra gmail_msg"><br class="gmail_msg"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_msg">On Thu, Mar 23, 2017 at 3:36 PM, Ben <span class="gmail_msg"><<a href="mailto:bbenzai@yahoo.com" class="gmail_msg" target="_blank">bbenzai@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br class="gmail_msg"><blockquote class="gmail_quote gmail_msg" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">John Clark <<a href="mailto:johnkclark@gmail.com" class="gmail_msg" target="_blank">johnkclark@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
> Am I correct in saying you are arguing if the internal operation of a neuron has changed then that counts as a change in behaviour even if the neuron as a whole behaves the same way with other external neurons, and even if the person as a whole behaves the same way with other external people?<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
I suspect that this is the crux of the matter. That Brent thinks it makes a difference what goes on inside a black box, so that two different black boxes with different internal processing but the same interfaces, are somehow producing different behaviour, even though that is demonstrably false.<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
> I sometimes have trouble following you ...<br class="gmail_msg">
You and me both. I await his response to your question with interest. He seems to show no inclination to respond to my questions, but perhaps you'll have better luck.<br class="gmail_msg">
<br class="gmail_msg">
Ben Zaiboc<div class="m_2158134890229067114HOEnZb gmail_msg"><div class="m_2158134890229067114h5 gmail_msg"><br class="gmail_msg">
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</blockquote></div></div><div dir="ltr">-- <br></div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Stathis Papaioannou</div>