<div dir="ltr"><div><img src="cid:ii_lg8q1rc31" alt="image.png" width="320" height="118"><br><br>Brent,<br>I think I understand what you are trying to communicate. <br><br>I will give it a try. And then ask GPT-4. <br><br>Giovanni:<br>These pictures try to communicate the direct experience of seeing a strawberry. The strawberry is recognized by the first person (or person is state A). The strawberry is grey outside the person to symbolize that some object with some "qualities", like shape, color, size, and so on but they are not recognized until a conscious entity attributes some particular experience to them. Subject A experiences something in his brain and it is such a direct and immediate experience that cannot be really communicated (well we can try as we do in the picture by "showing" the color red that we hope other humans recognize like red). The second panel shows a subject B that has received some modification in his sensory system (it doesn't matter how this is achieved) where everything that is experienced by A as red is now green. But this experience is also direct and immediate. While different colors the two types of experiences share something in common in being "direct" and immediate. The third subject C that is a machine of some kind doesn't have direct experience but its sensors are tuned in such a way to respond to the stimuli that a normal human would associate with red and it answers with a symbol after processing the sensory data and that symbol is the English word "Red". The idea here is to communicate that there is something fundamentally different between the experiences in A and B and the indirect "experience" or event in C, because C lacks the direct experience and it uses only a symbol to communicate that an object with the quality of redness has been detected. <br><br>I think this is a good summary of what is being expressed in the drawing. I hope. <br>I disagree though on what really happens, because to me "Red" is also a direct experience. Or much better both A and B do not experience anything direct given there is much processing in perceiving the color red and several layers of hierarchical computing. The experience of the color red is as much a "word", a symbol as much as "Red". It is simply expressed in the natural language of neuronal semantics. The great mystery we believe is in directly experiencing the world is the self-reflectivity part where the entity is aware of its state. This awareness is subjective and unique and it cannot be communicated (I think actually it could be communicated if I could wire my own brain to the other person and in fact, there are many examples of how this could be achieved and maybe even already achieved with recent examples of brain to brain communication). It looks like a miracle and it is indeed in the sense that it happens, it is, but it is not more a miracle of why anything exists at all. I think the conceptual mistake in the picture is to conclude that "Red" is not an experience. It is a translation of the color red but it is also an experience. If it was not, imagine hearing a pitch, a particular sound vibration at a given frequency, is not that also a direct experience (that doesn't involve a light color)? What is different in this case with experiencing "Red"? Both are labels we assign to a given perception of an external object. <br>Is the issue of thinking about "Red" vs seeing "Red"? The bot could also have an internal representation of a strawberry and its association with "Red" so accessing that representation could invoke the word "Red" and we could argue that is not seeing "Red". But the bot also can distinguish this "memory" of Red and actually experience it right now (maybe given a causality time window). That is fine because that would be equivalent to humans thinking about the color of a strawberry vs seeing one. The experiences of remembering or seeing or dreaming of a strawberry are distinguishable both in the AI and in humans, so again they are very similar if not identical. <br>In conclusion, what we think are direct experiences are really not (there is a lot of processing, filtering, and association made before they become experienced), and experiencing is basically a form of language that the brain uses to communicate with itself (colors are not that dissimilar to pain or pleasure for example). <br><br><br>GPT-4: <br><ol style="border:0px solid rgb(217,217,227);box-sizing:border-box;list-style-position:initial;margin:1.25em 0px;padding:0px 0px 0px 1rem;display:flex;color:rgb(55,65,81);font-family:Söhne,ui-sans-serif,system-ui,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Noto Sans",sans-serif,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji","Segoe UI Symbol","Noto Color Emoji";font-size:16px;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:rgb(247,247,248)"><li style="border:0px solid rgb(217,217,227);box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding-left:0.375em"><p style="border:0px solid rgb(217,217,227);box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px">Human experience is subjective and personal: The individual experiences of subjects A and B are unique to them, shaped by their own sensory systems and personal histories. This subjectivity contributes to the richness and complexity of human perception.</p></li><li style="border:0px solid rgb(217,217,227);box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding-left:0.375em"><p style="border:0px solid rgb(217,217,227);box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px">Machines lack subjective experience: While subject C can process sensory data and respond with a symbol (the word "Red"), it lacks the personal and subjective qualities that define human experience. This results in a more limited and detached understanding of the world.</p></li><li style="border:0px solid rgb(217,217,227);box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding-left:0.375em"><p style="border:0px solid rgb(217,217,227);box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px">The role of language in human communication: The use of symbols and language is crucial for humans to communicate their experiences to others. However, language can never fully capture the directness and immediacy of an individual's subjective experience. This limitation is highlighted by the difference between the experiences of subjects A and B and the symbolic response of subject C.</p></li><li style="border:0px solid rgb(217,217,227);box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding-left:0.375em"><p style="border:0px solid rgb(217,217,227);box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px">The challenge of understanding subjective experiences in others: The idea that subject B perceives what subject A sees as red as green serves to underscore the challenge of truly understanding another person's subjective experience. Although we can use language and symbols to share our perceptions, there will always be an element of our experiences that remains unique and personal.</p></li></ol><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Apr 8, 2023 at 5:44 PM Will Steinberg 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="auto">Brent, do you think perhaps people might understand the info and images in your camp from your website, which you have posted probably hundreds od times, and they just disagree with you?</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 1:50 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"><br><div>I keep showing this image, attempting to communicate something:</div><div><br></div><div><img src="cid:ii_lg89ae9w0" alt="3_functionally_equal_machines_tiny.png" width="320" height="118"></div><div>Sure, our elementary school teacher told us the one on the left is red, the one in the middle is green, and the one on the right is just the word 'Red'.</div><div><br></div><div>But it is evident from all these conversations, that nobody here understands the deeper meaning I'm attempting to communicate.</div><div>Some people seem to be getting close, which is nice, but they may not yet be fully there.</div><div>If everyone fully understood this, all these conversations would be radically different.</div><div>Even if you disagree with me, can anyone describe the deeper meaning I'm attempting to communicate with this image?</div><div>What does this image say about qualities, different ways of representing information, and different ways of doing computation?</div><div><br></div><div>How about this, I'll give $100 worth of Ether, or just USD, to anyone who can fully describe the meaning attempting to be portrayed with this image.</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><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Apr 8, 2023 at 10:27 AM Gordon Swobe 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"><div dir="ltr"><div><br><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)">On Sat, Apr 8, 2023 at 9:31 AM Jason Resch <</span><a href="mailto:jasonresch@gmail.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">jasonresch@gmail.com</a><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)">> wrote:</span><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="auto"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote" dir="auto"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 10:45 AM Gordon Swobe <<a href="mailto:gordon.swobe@gmail.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">gordon.swobe@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div></span><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><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)">On Sat, Apr 8, 2023 at 3:43 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></span><div class="gmail_quote"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><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"><div><br>There is phenomenal consciousness. That I would call awareness of first person non-sharable information concerning one's internal states of mind.</div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br></div></span><div dir="auto">It is this phenomenal consciousness to which I refer. If you do not think there something it is like to be a large language model then we have no disagreement.</div></div></div></blockquote></div><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I believe there is something it is like to be for either the LLM, or something inside it.</div></span></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Not sure what you mean by something inside it. A philosopher named Thomas Nagel wrote a famous paper titled something like “What is it like to be a bat?” That is the sense that I mean here. Do you think there something it is like to be GPT-4? When you ask it a question and it replies, is it aware of its own private first person experience in the sense that we are aware of our private experience? Or does it have no awareness of any supposed experience?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">-gts</div></div></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><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" dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"></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" dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"></div></div>
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