<div dir="ltr"><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">Hi Ben,</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">The term “elemental” is simply to
contrast an idea with the different composite qualitative experiences. When you experience redness, there are lots
of other things bound into the experience.
The things that we can be aware of at the same time can include the name
‘red’, holidays, how sweet a ‘red ‘strawberry tastes….. A good amount of people think qualia are
everything else but the redness quality.
They think the redness is a property of the strawberry, out there. It is evident that you are thinking in this
qualia blind way when you say things like:</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-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,176,80);background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">“Qualia are not elemental properties of
anything, they are patterns of information.”</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(0,176,80)"></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">So tell me, when a pixel of
knowledge on the surface of a strawberry is switching between redness and greenness,
as <a href="https://canonizer.com/videos/consciousness/" style="color:blue">illustrated here</a>,
what might the change be in this “pattern” of information. And can you tell me anything about the
phsyics, of which such a ‘pattern” might exist?
If not, then your theory isn’t falsifiable, is it? Is inverted qualia even possible in your
theory?</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">“<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Approachable-Via-Science/2#statement" style="color:blue">Representational
Qualia Theory</a>” predicts that consciousness can be ‘painted’ (more accurately:
computationally bound) out of an elemental set of qualities, similar to the way
a painting can be built out of a set of pixels with elemental colors. It points out that it is a necessary fact
that if you know something, there must be something, physical, that is each
piece of that knowledge. At some level,
you need to break down consciousness it’s elemental constituents.</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"> </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-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,176,80);background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">“You talk of 'the physics' of perception, but
the physics is not the important thing. The informatics is. We know this for a
fact, from countless neurology studies and experiments (many of them
unintentional, the results of accidents).”</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">Part of what “<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Approachable-Via-Science/2#statement" style="color:blue">Representational
Qualia Theory</a>” is predicting is that all the peer reviewed journal articles
reporting on all this “neurology studies and experiments” is qualia blind. For example, all of it only uses one word for
all things red. Nothing in any of that
stuff you are pointing to can account for the fact that qualia can easily be inverted,
again as illustrated in <a href="https://canonizer.com/videos/consciousness/" style="color:blue">the
video</a>. You must be able to say
things like: “My redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red. All of the stuff you are referencing is just
abstract descriptions of stuff in the brain.
Nowhere in any of that can anyone tell you the physical color of any of
their abstract descriptions are describing.</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">There are now over 40 experts that are
supporting the general Ideas I’m talking about here in “<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Approachable-Via-Science/2#statement" style="color:blue">Representational
Qualia Theory</a>”. No other theory has
any significant amount of consensus.
Even Dennett’s <a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Dennett-s-PBC-Theory/21" style="color:blue">Predictive Bayesian
Coding Theory</a> is supporting what I’m talking about here.</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’ve run into lots of people that
think the way you do, and disagree with the general ideas now supported by all
these experts. I beg them to canonize
whatever it is they think is wrong with this emerging consensus. But nobody ever does. If you do disagree with all these experts,
could you please create a competing camp to “<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Approachable-Via-Science/2#statement" style="color:blue">Representational
Qualia Theory</a>” and concisely state what you are trying to say here? Don’t you think it would be interesting to
see if anyone else is brave enough to risk their reputation by supporting
competing camps?</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">My prediction is that in the next 10
years experimentalists (finally collecting data in a way that is not qualia
blind) will discover what it is, in the brain, that has a redness quality. This will falsify all the bad camps, and
result in a clear and definitive consensus.
My prediction is that before 10 years, using the “<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/81-Mind-Experts/1" style="color:blue">Mind Expert</a>” canonizer
algorithm it will show a greater than 80% expert consensus for this one camp,
that was initially predicting what redness is, before the experimentalists were
finally able to experimentally prove this.
If you are the first one in the camp that turns out to be the one, that
would be huge, reputation wise. But of
course myself, and now over 40 people are predicting your theory will be one of
the many that will be falsified by science, especially if experimentalists
discover what it is that has an elemental redness quality, out of which
consciousness can be built.</span></p></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 10:02 AM Ben Zaiboc 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:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
On 21/01/2020 19:14, Brent Allsop wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><span>So, Ben, Please. From here on out, whenever
I say glutamate,
please replace that word with a description of whatever physics
you most likely
think is a description of redness</span></blockquote>
<br>
You ask that we substitute whatever we think is responsible for
'elemental redness' for glutamate, but the whole point of my
arguments is that <i>there is no such thing as 'elemental' qualia
at all</i>. It's a nonsense concept. You talk of 'the physics' of
perception, but the physics is not the important thing. The
informatics is. We know this for a fact, from countless neurology
studies and experiments (many of them unintentional, the results of
accidents). We know that even a slight change in the wiring of the
brain (not a change in its biochemistry, note. Not a change in
materials, but a change in structure) can deprive someone of the
ability to perceive or understand certain things, or add perceptions
they never had before. Changes in their qualia. This can't be
explained if these perceptions are somehow 'elemental', tied to
materials, because it's not that all the GABA, for instance, has
been removed from their brain. It's the <i>wiring</i> that has been
changed. The patterns of information have changed, nothing else.<br>
<br>
Qualia are not elemental properties of anything, they are patterns
of information.<br>
<br>
If you can't see that, or simply won't contemplate it, there's
really no point talking any further.<br>
<br>
You're in the position of someone who, when presented with two brick
buildings, one circular and one square, and told that the circular
one is much better at withstanding battering rams, jumps to the
conclusion that the bricks in the circular building must be
stronger, and when told "no, the bricks are the same in both
buildings", refuses to believe it. After all, the 'elemental
strength' must be greater in the round buildings bricks, mustn't it?<br>
<br>
><span>The problem is, everyone gets lost
in the minor details everyone disagrees on, and focuses on that</span><br>
<br>
Not at all. It's the bigger picture that we are disagreeing on. Not
the precise identity of specific qualia, but the very nature of
qualia in general.<br>
<span></span><span></span><br>
And you still haven't said why you think my 'availability argument'
is invalid.<br>
<span></span>
<pre cols="72">--
Ben Zaiboc</pre>
</div>
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