<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 4:05 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"><br><div>Hi Jason,</div><div>We continue to talk past each other. </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Correct. If I raise points, corrections, and ask questions, which you ignore, we are guaranteed to talk past each other.</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> I agree with what you are saying but...</div><div><img src="cid:ii_l2qm13ce1" alt="3_robots_tiny.png" width="320" height="118"><br></div><div>First off, you seem to be saying you don't care about the fact that the first two systems represent the abstract notion of red with different qualities, and that they achieve their Turing completeness in different ways.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>"Turing completeness" refers to programming languages or systems that can realize a Turing machine. This is something different from my claim that physics (and accordingly any physical system or object) is Turing emulable (something that can be perfectly emulated/simulated by a Turing machine having the right program).</div><div><br></div><div>You have shown this image multiple times, but not asked me anything about it. I don't see its relevance to the conversation, unless you have a specific point to make about this image, or a question to ask me about it.</div><div><br></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>If that is the case, why are we talking? I want to know what your redness knowledge is like,</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>That's incommunicable. You would have to possess my brain/mind to know what red is like to me, but then you would be me and not Brent, and so you would be stuck in the same position we are in now, being unable to communicate to someone with Brent's brain what red is like to someone with Jason's brain.</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> you don't seem to care about anything other than all these systems can tell you the strawberry is red, and are all turing complete?</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>If that's what you think then I think you have missed my point. The reason I bring up the Church-Turing thesis is to relay to you the implied independence of the material substrate from the behaviors of an implemented mind. This substrate independence means any effort to link glutamate (or name your molecule/compound) can have nothing to do with the quality of perceptions. If you think otherwise, I can show you how it leads to a contradiction or an absurdity (like dancing qualia).</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><br></div><div>In addition to turing completeness, what I am interested in is the efficiency by which computation can be accomplished by different models. Is the amount of hardware used in one model more than is required in another?<br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>There is a result from computational complexity theory known as the "extended Church-Turing Thesis" which says: "All reasonable computation models can</div>simulate each other with only polynomial slow down." Which is to say that there can be different efficiencies, but generally they will not be significant.</div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">There is, however, a substantial efficiency difference between quantum computers and classical computers. Simulating quantum computers on a classical computer, for some problems, requires an exponential slowdown, to the point where even if all the matter and energy in the universe were used to build a classical computer, it would be unable to keep up with a quantum computer that could fit on top of a table.<br><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>The reason there are only a few registers in a CPU, is because of the extreme brute force way you must do computational operations like addition and comparison when using discrete logic. It takes far too much hardware to have any more than a handful of registers, which can be computationally bound to each other at any one time. </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The way I view it is that a single-threaded CPU spreads out a computation minimally through space, and maximally through time, while a highly parallel computer or a biological brain, spreads out the computation through space, and less across time. In neither case are the time or space dimensions zero, the computation always has some positive dimensionality across the dimensions of space and time. Thus there is no "binding" through time, nor across space, aside from those bounds implied by the logical/computational operation.</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> Whereas if knowledge composed of redness and greenness is a standing wave in neural tissue EM fields, every last pixel of knowledge can be much more efficiently meaningfully bound to all the other pixels in a 3D standing wave. If standing waves require far less hardware to do the same amount of parallel computational binding, this is what I'm interested in. They are both turing complete, one is far more efficient than the other.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>If they're equivalent computationally, then they're equivalent behaviorally, and therefore they must experience the same qualia (e.g. redness or greenness) as to believe otherwise is to accept dancing qualia (being unable to comment on a redness and greenness swapping back and forth in one's field of vision).</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><br></div><div>Similarly, in order to achieve substrate independence, like the 3rd system in the image, you need additional dictionaries</div></div></blockquote><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> to tell you whether redness or greenness or +5 volts, or anything else is representing the binary 1, or the word 'red'. </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div>What are these dictionaries? I don't see how it is possible for any dictionary to specify how a particular quale feels.</div><div>Qualia are first-person properties, while dictionaries concern themselves only with third-person communicable information.</div></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>Virtual machines, capable of running on different lower level hardware, are less efficient than machines running on nacked hardware. This is because they require the additional translation layer to enable virtual operation on different types of hardware. </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>True, but irrelevant.</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>The first two systems representing information directly on qualities does not require the additional dictionaries required to achieve the substrate independence as architected in the 3rd system. So, again, the first two systems are more efficient, since they require less mapping hardware.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I am not able to make any sense of the above paragraph.</div><div><br></div><div>If I understand your example correctly, the three systems:</div><div>A) the conventionally red seeing man</div><div>B) the seeing green when light of 700nm strikes his retina man and</div><div>C) the robot that maps 700nm light to the state of outputting the string "red"</div><div><br></div><div>Each experience '700nm' light differently, they each have different qualia.</div><div><br></div><div>Do we agree so far?</div><div><br></div><div>I have no objection to the possibility of this situation. All I say, is that for this situation to exist, for different systems (A, B, and C) to experience differently, they must process information differently. They "run different programs", or you could say, they have different "high level functional organizations".</div><div><br></div><div>If they ran the same programs, had the same high level functional organizations, processed information equivalently, then they would necessarily have the same quale for 700nm light. This would be true if one functional organization was made of a computer composed of wooden groves and marbles, if one was made of copper wires and electronics, or if made of fiber optic cables and photonics. Each is a computer capable of running the same program, so each will realize the same mind, exhibiting the same behaviors.</div><div><br></div><div>Jason</div><div><br></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><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 11:34 AM 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="ltr"><div>If you agree with the concept of the Church-Turing Thesis, then you should know that "wave computation" cannot be any more capable than the "discrete logic gate" computation we use in CPUs. All known forms of computation are exactly equivalent in what they can compute. If it can be computed by one type, it can be computed by all types. If it can't be computed by one type, it can't be computed by any type.</div><div><br></div><div>This discovery has major implications in the philosophy of mind, especially if one rejects the possibility of zombies. It leads directly to multiple realizability, and substrate independence, as Turing noted 72 years ago:</div><div><br></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div>“The fact that Babbage's Analytical Engine was to be entirely mechanical will help us rid ourselves of a superstition. Importance is often attached to the fact that modern digital computers are electrical, and the nervous system is also electrical. Since Babbage's machine was not electrical, and since all digital computers are in a sense equivalent, we see that this use of electricity cannot be of theoretical importance. [...] If we wish to find such similarities we should look rather for mathematical analogies of function.”</div><div>-- Alan Turing in <a href="https://heidelberg.instructure.com/courses/6068/files/190841/download?download_frd=1" target="_blank">Computing Machinery and Intelligence</a> (1950)</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Further, if you reject the plausibility of absent, fading, or dancing qualia, then equivalent computations (regardless of substrate) must be equivalently aware and conscious. To believe otherwise, is to believe your color qualia could start inverting every other second without you being able to comment on it or in any way "notice" that it was happening. You wouldn't be caught off guard, you wouldn't suddenly pause to notice, you wouldn't alert anyone to your condition. This should tell you that behavior and the underlying functions that can drive behavior, must be directly tied to conscious experience in a very direct way.</div><div><br></div><div>Jason</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 12:11 PM Brent Allsop <<a href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com" target="_blank">brent.allsop@gmail.com</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="ltr"><br><div>OK, let me see if I am understanding this correctly. consider this image:</div><div><img src="cid:ii_l2qef9mr0" alt="3_robots_tiny.png" width="320" height="118"><br></div><div><br></div><div>I would argue that all 3 of these systems are "turing complete", and that they can all tell you the strawberry is 'red'.</div><div>I agree with you on this.</div><div>Which brings us to a different point that they would all answer the question: "What is redness like for you?" differently.</div><div>First: "My redness is like your redness."</div><div>Second: "My redness is like your greenness."</div><div>Third: "I represent knowledge of red things with an abstract word like "red", I need a definition to know what that means."</div><div><br></div><div>You are focusing on the turing completeness, which I agree with, I'm just focusing on something different.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 11:00 AM Jason Resch <<a href="mailto:jasonresch@gmail.com" target="_blank">jasonresch@gmail.com</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="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 11:23 AM 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="ltr"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div>Surely the type of wave computation being done in the brain is far more capable than the discrete logic gates we use in CPUs.</div><div><br></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>This comment above suggests to me that you perhaps haven't come to terms with the full implications of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis" target="_blank">Church-Turing Thesis</a> or the stronger <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing%E2%80%93Deutsch_principle" target="_blank">Church-Turing-Deutsch Principle</a>. </div><div><br></div><div>Jason</div></div></div>
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