<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 7:51 PM 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:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>Hi Jason,</div>logical/information/mathematical stuff is all abstract.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes, I believe consciousness lies in the abstract informational patterns and relationships, not in any material component that may contribute to an instantiation of that abstraction.</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"> Like the word 'red' you can't know what it means, without a dictionary.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I don't think a dictionary, or any serialized information content for that matter, is capable of communicating such quale as red. The foundation of all meaning rests in ostensive definitions. Two civilizations belonging to two different universes who could only communicate bits back and forth would be unable to communicate the meaning of their units of measure for distance, mass, or time. The meaning of a "meter" would be impossible to communicate as we could do nothing to render it into terms meaningful for those in the other universe. The same limitation exists between two entities in two different simulated realities. And likewise, I think this can explain the incommunicability of qualia between two minds, which are similarly isolated and have no way to share properties internal to their own mental worlds.</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"><div>Redness is just a physical fact. a property of something in nature. </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Nature yes, but I would say physics is the wrong level to attempt a description of it. It would be like trying to explain the operation of a word processor at the level of electric fields in the semiconductors composing a computer's memory and processor. I would also say, redness, like pain, can be different things to different minds and creatures. Does a colorblind person who can distinguish between red and green, but not blue and yellow, experience red the same way a normally sighted person does? Does someone with a higher ratio of red cone cells experience red in the same way as someone with a lower ratio? I would say redness (in terms of the experience) has very little to do with physics and everything to do with minds.</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"><div>It is simply a fact that your brain uses whatever has that redness quality to represent your knowledge of red things with. </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Computers represent everything on your screen right now (buttons, cursor position, pixels, sounds, the time, the software of your e-mail client, etc.) with just two symbols. Likewise, the optic nerve does not send "redness" from your eye to your visual cortex, it sends what are just "dots and dashes" timed pulses of neurons spiking, "ones and zeros", "bits". This signal is all your brain needs and all it uses to create the experience of red. The important quality of these pulses is that they can form different patterns which can be distinguished.</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"><div> Your redness is your definition of red.<br><div>The limiting factor is how many intrinsic coolness qualities we can discover in nature.</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>We know there are a countably infinite number of unique computer programs, each of which can be provided with a countably infinite number of different possible inputs. Across these infinite programs, every computable relation, data structure, knowledge state, information state, and I would say conscious state, could be found. Physics then, would have nothing to do with it, as in any physical universe where it is possible to build a computer, it would be possible to instantiate any conscious state.</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"><div><div>Let's assume there is a new coolness quality we discover which nobody has ever experienced before. let's call it Grue.</div></div><div>Then we can computationally bind it into your consciousness.<br></div><div>Then we throw the switch, at which point you say: "oh THAT is what Grue is like" and you now have your dictionary for 'Grue'.</div><div>Then you augment your eye to detect the new wavelength you want to represent with Grue, and wire it up to represent information collected about that particular wavelength.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>This has actually been done for monkeys:</div><div><a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090916133521.htm">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090916133521.htm</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>My question is: is there any limit to the number of primary colors that in principle could be perceived by a conscious mind, or are there infinitely many distinct primary colors? The experiment with the monkeys suggests if we insert a new functional capacity into the retina, such that it sends a more complex signal to the visual cortex, the visual cortex, within a few weeks, develops new processing structures capable of differentiating and distinguishing new colors which previously could not be distinguished.</div><div><br></div><div>Jason</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"><div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 6:11 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">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 dir="auto">Are there infinitely possible primary colors, given there are infinitely many possible organizations of brains?<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">There're colorblind people and most mammals with two primary colors, primates and fish with three, birds and some tetrachromat humans with four, and I think there's some shrimp with 16. If there's no fundamental limit to the number of primary colors a mind can perceive, then are primary colors physical/chemical/neurological properties, or are they logical/informational/mathematical properties? I lean towards the latter grouping.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Jason</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 7:50 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">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 dir="ltr"><div dir="auto"><div>Hi Darin,</div><div><br></div><div>When say "colors" are you talking about properties of things that reflect a particular pattern of light, the properties of the light, or the intrinsic qualities you brain uses to represent conscious knowledge of red things? All very different things.</div><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 4:17 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">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 dir="ltr">All objects with a specific property are made of arrangements of things that lack that property.<div><br></div><div>Colors are formed by particular arrangements of atoms and particles that are intrinsically colorless.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 4:09 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">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 dir="ltr"><br><div>Yes, any language that uses only one abstract word, for everything that represents 'red' makes that language qualia blind or unable to represent different intrinsic physical qualities which may be representing red.</div><div>All of our peer reviewed physics, in it's entirety does this. so none of it can model different qualities like redness and greenness.</div><div>That is why we use the term 'redness' or colorness intrinsic qualities, to distinguish from red and color intrinsic qualities.</div><div>Something is 'red' if it reflects or emits red light, it has a color.</div><div>Redness, is something entirely different, it is a colorness quality. An intrinsic quality out of which your consciousness is composed.</div><div><br></div><div>A big part of consciousness is the ability to computationally bind elemental qualities like redness and greenness together, to enabl3e computation like: I (represented by something in your brain) intend to eat that strawberry, represented by redness quality, also in your brain.</div><div><br></div><div>Adrian claimed my definition is circular.</div><div><br></div><div>No it isn't circular. If we experimentally demonstrated that our description of glutamate, reacting in a synapse, is your redness, and glycine is your greenness, then these would be saying the same thing.</div><div><br>objective version: My glutamate knowledge is like your glycine knowledge, both of which we call red.</div><div>Subjective version: My redness knowledge is like your greenness knowledge, both of which we call red.</div><div><br></div><div>Just because our brain seems be gray (we represent out knowledge of it with something that has a greyness quality) doesn't mean al that stuff is actually gray.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Another important part of all this, is there are two ways to gain knowledge.</div><div>We can see colors, (can be mistaken, if you get the dictionary wrong) and we directly apprehend colorness qualities (can't be mistaken), representing our knowledge of colored things, the final result of color perception.</div><div>For more detail see our <a href="https://canonizer.com/videos/consciousness/?chapter=differentiate_reality_knowledge" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">Distinguishing between reality and knowledge of reality</a> chapter of our video.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 3:48 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">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><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, 19 Mar 2022 at 08:38, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">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 dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I think that what you see is what you get and that there is no intrinsic color of anything. I don't even know what intrinsic means in this context. bill w</div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I think Brent means the experience of the colour, or colour qualia, as opposed to description of the processes that lead to the experience.</div><div dir="auto"><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"><div style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)" dir="auto"></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 4:21 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">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 dir="ltr"><br><div>Happy color festival, everyone.</div><div><br></div><div>Do you guys realize, nobody knows the true intrinsic color of anything? All we know is the colors things seem to be.</div><div><br></div><div>See <a rel="noreferrer noreferrer">my answer to a question on color on Quora</a>.</div><div><br></div><div>P.S. Thank you Stathis, for your upvote. That is HUGE for me.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>
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