<div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, 22 Dec 2019 at 04:02, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Thanks for this version, Stathis. I think I can better understand and work with this.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">I think the problem is you are only
talking about functionality. There must also
be something in the system that instantiates the data coming from the
senses. There must be something,
physical, that is the knowledge that will control whether we want to pick the strawberry or not. In an abstract system there
is a dictionary that maps a 1 to both the word “red” (what to say) and “ripe”
(the strawberries to pick). The what to
pick functionality is driven or specified, based on these dictionaries.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In the glutamate version of the system, there must be a dictionary that maps the glutamate to the 1. And in order for the physically different hardware
instantiation to work, this dictionary must be changed to map glycine to 1 –
so the system that knows we want to pick the 1 strawberries (as John was
saying) can work, in a substrate independent way.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt">Again, we on the other hand, run directly
on physical qualities. In other words,
we don’t have the additional abstraction dictionary from glutamate to 1. We instead map glutamate directly to “red”
and “that’s the one we pick”. So, in
order for the functionally different robot to be able to pick the right </span><span style="font-size:16px">strawberry and say it is red</span><span style="font-size:12pt">, both these dictionaries need to change when the physics of knowledge change. It is now glycine that we interpret as the strawberry
to pick, where as the former version definned glutamate to be knowledge of the ones to pick.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">You are describing
two systems that are functionally the same but physically different. That is just another way to say “<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YnTMoU2LKER78bjVJsGkxMsSwvhpPBJZvp9e2oJX9GA/edit" target="_blank">3 robots that are functionally the same but qualitatively different.</a>”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br></p><br><div class="gmail_quote"></div></div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">---------- Forwarded message ---------<br>From: <strong class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">Stathis Papaioannou</strong> <span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:stathisp@gmail.com" target="_blank">stathisp@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 5:25 PM<br>Subject: Re: [ExI] Fwd: Chalmers<br>To: Brent Allsop <<a href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com" target="_blank">brent.allsop@gmail.com</a>><br></div><br><div>Here is another, more physiological thought experiment. I notice that some neurons, when triggered, release glutamate into the synapse connecting them with other neurons. The downstream neurons have glutamate receptors, which detect the glutamate and then trigger an action potential. I have no idea what the purpose of any of this is, but I do have very advanced molecular manipulation techniques. I decide to alter all the glutamate secreting neurons so that they secrete glycine instead, and all the glutamate detecting neurons do that they have glycine receptors instead which trigger an action potential in the presence of glycine. Given this change, do you see that the brain will behave the same? Do you still think that the qualia might be different despite the brain behaving the same?<br></div><div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"></span></p></div></div>
</blockquote></div></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Stathis Papaioannou</div></div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I understand what you are saying with the three robots example, but you are missing the problem I am presenting. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">1. If glutamate is swapped for glycine and glutamate receptors for glycine receptors in half the neurons in your brain, all the neurons in your brain will continue firing in the same sequence, and all the muscles in your body will continue contracting in the same sequence.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">2. If qualia were dependent on a particular substrate, such as red requires glutamate and green requires glycine, the change in (1) would result in a change in qualia. Something that was previously all red would now look partly red and partly green, or perhaps a new colour combining red and green.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">3. But if all the muscles in your body are contracting in the same sequence, you will say that everything looks exactly the same as before.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">4. How can your qualia radically change but you either do not notice the change or cannot communicate that there has been a change?</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"></div></div></div>
</blockquote></div></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Stathis Papaioannou</div>