<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">On Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 10:32 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><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-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt">The term “elemental” is simply to
contrast an idea with the different composite qualitative experiences.</span><br></p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The term "elemental" suggests there is some fundamental physical thing - as opposed to a pattern of information - that is redness. You keep linking it to glutamate.</div><div><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 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">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…..</span></p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>So far, so true.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><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">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></p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>This is where you fail.</div><div><br></div><div>He means that you keep insisting on terminology that suggests there is some discrete protein - some molecular unit - that encapsulates "redness" in the brain. "Redness" is a pattern of information. It has a physical substrate, but it is distinct from that substrate. In the same manner, a computer program is distinct from the silicon upon which it runs. It is true that if one exactly duplicated this physical substrate - including all its energy states, and specifically the patterns - then one would have duplicated the program as well. But it is not the case that just duplicating the CPU - without regard for the energy states in its transistors and memory - is sufficient to duplicate the program.</div><div><br></div><div>The way you have been using "elemental" suggests the latter, incorrect approach. That is his and my objection.</div><div><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 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">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" target="_blank">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?</span></p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Of course he can. So can I.</div><div><br></div><div>If you want to wrestle it down to a single pixel, what happens is that one or more photoreceptors in the eye stop giving the signal they give when a photon of about 570 nanometers is received, and start giving the signal they give when a photon of wavelength about 540 nanometers is received. This signal is then transmitted via the optical nerve to the brain's sensory cortex, whereupon a previously learned association (memory) is triggered, noting that the sensation previously labeled "red" has stopped for this pixel and the sensation previously labeled "green" has started for this pixel.</div><div><br></div><div>It is these previously learned associations - the patterns that form the memories - that matter.</div><div><br></div><div>This has been tested thoroughly and found true. Humans in different societies, with different language terminology, perceive color differently - same basic human wetware, different learned associations. Even the difference in male vs. female color perception within the same Western societies appears to be more nurture (learned associations) than nature (actual genetic differences).</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><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">
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" target="_blank">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></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>These constituents are informational, just like the painting's pixels. It is true that they have a physical representation at any given time, but what is important is the information. The information can be represented in different physical forms, and remains the same information.</div><div><br></div><div>For instance, this provides the possibility of silicon, or similar computational substrates, emulating the energy states, hormone levels, and other informational qualities in a human brain (a concept commonly termed "uploading"). This emulation could then be run without the long-term degradation that biological solutions fall to, allowing the (emulated) brain a much longer run time (which is commonly termed "longevity" or "immortality").</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><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">Part of what “<a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Approachable-Via-Science/2#statement" style="color:blue" target="_blank">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" target="_blank">the
video</a>.</span></p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>That video only demonstrates that the inputs can be rewired, such that greenness can be triggered off of something that is actually red. That seems to be a distinct concept from actually inverting the qualia.</div><div><br></div><div>Further, "inverted" implies there are only two states, and that they are both pre-existing. Does your brain have qualia for infraredness or ultravioletness? Probably not, as infrared and ultraviolet are colors that you can not directly perceive. If your eyes were to grow photoreceptors that could trigger off these colors, your brain would have to figure out what to do with these stimuli, and then you might gain those qualia.</div><div><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 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">You must be able to say
things like: “My redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red.</span></p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Not really. Not in the general case truth that that phrasing implies, anyway. My redness is what I call red; your redness is what you call red. That's the definition. Perhaps "my redness is like your greenness right now, since your redness inputs and greenness inputs have just been switched" would be defensible, though.</div><div><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 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"> 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></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Sure they can - if that person knew what the physical stuff mapped to. The person whose brain it is has an intuitive knowledge of this, even if no one (yet) has a complete physical map of how it all works - but there is no reason to believe that such a map can not be made, at least to a useful general purpose level. Just recently, such a map was published for how a certain insect species' brain works.</div><div><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 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">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.</span></p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Because they see no value in engaging with Canonizer. It's the inverse network effect: you have so few users that Canonizer fails to be worth the time to even look at, let alone vote in or write opinions for, for most people. This says nothing about the validity of their logic.</div><div><br></div><div>And yes, you have very few users. A quick check suggests you do not even have a thousand users yet, let alone a million. (As of right now you seem to have about 402 users, the most recently signed up user having a <a href="http://gmail.com">gmail.com</a> email address and having only given name and email for biographic info - a typical low-engagement user, but then, this is the most recently signed up so there might not have been time for much engagement yet.) Just last year I was working on (moonlighting side job) a system with a few hundred million users.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><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">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" target="_blank">Representational
Qualia Theory</a>” and concisely state what you are trying to say here?</span></p></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Why bother?</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><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">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></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>No, we don't. We also don't believe that any significant reputation would be risked by doing so. More reputation can be gained or lost - trivially - by debating on this list. (Granted, this list doesn't have even a thousand members either - I think; Spike can correct me if needed. But active and relevant participation on this list is currently well in excess of what Canonizer seems to offer.)</div><div><br></div><div><div>I sympathize: you have this thing that you want to be of value, so you promote it, only for people to dismiss it because it isn't already being used by lots of people so they don't see value in it. This is quite similar to getting a startup corporation through the valley of death, which I have done many times. It takes a lot of work to get something through that stage.</div><div><br></div><div>Before you plead, beg, and whine like so many others have: I am not going to do that work for you for Canonizer, nor am I going to hold your hand and give you a walkthrough that I don't have. The process is different for each such effort, and it must be done by the people who are passionate about it. In this case, that's you, not me. I can tell you that pretending that you are already through that phase and that it thus has the value it would have when it has a lot of users, is a quick way to turn off would-have-been early adopters. You need to find some other way to attract and sustain initial participation.</div></div><div><br></div><div>I have seen the ruins of countless social media efforts, infrastructure there but participation low and then zeroing out, virtual ghost towns built for people who never came. When I encounter them, unless I care, the only useful use of my time is to move along.</div></div></div>