<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br><div>Hi Jason,</div><div><br></div><div>Let me define things this way:</div><div><br></div><div> 1. Intelligent system: Anything that can represent and compute with information.</div><div> 2. Consciousness: Any intelligent system that represents and computes with information directly on qualities.</div><div> 3. Computer or Abstract intelligence: Any system that represents its knowledge in a way that is abstracted away from whatever quality or property is representing it.</div><div><br></div><div>Notice that with this, there is no such thing as "abstract consciousness" (you asked me to define this) because that is like saying things that are different, are the same.</div><div><br></div><div>That's a brilliant idea to come up with a picture like you are describing. Dalle-2 can't seem to take a description this long, so I'm sending this off to my video editor.</div><div><br></div><div>"<span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:11pt">Create a black and white picture
of 3 people all looking at the same black and white strawberry.</span><br></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Have their heads transparent, so
you can see a colored strawberry inside their heads, representing what they see.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">One person has a red strawberry
inside its head.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">The second person is looking through
a set of glasses that swaps redness for greenness, so the strawberry in his head is green.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">The third person looks more like a
robot. Instead of a colored strawberry
inside its head, there is just the word ‘red’.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">There are text bubbles coming from
all of them all saying the same: 'The strawberry is red.'</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br></p><div>And yes, I added "physical" quality because I am in the camp that predicts <a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/7-Qualia-are-Physical-Qualities">redness is just a physical quality</a>. Most of the time I leave the "physical" off, for precisely this reason, so I apologize for giving into the temptation in this case. From now on, I'll try to only sasy quality.</div><div><br></div><div>And notice that Darin is being the perfect straight man in this case saying:</div><div><br></div><div> <b><font color="#0000ff">"I think I'm prepared to bite the bullet on qualia being immaterial and aphysical."</font></b></div><div><br></div><div>Yes, functionalists and substance dualists all seperate qualia from physical reality like this.</div><div>But even if qualia are some quality of some neither world stuff, separate from physical reality, or whatever.....</div><div><br></div><div>He also said:</div><div><br></div><div> <b><font color="#0000ff">"there are almost certainly facts of the matter that govern their behavior,"</font></b></div><div><br></div><div>And the causality needs to go in the other direction, they need to cause us to say: "That 'spiritual' experience of mine is redness."</div><div><br></div><div>And if that is the case, why would whatever that objectively observable and engineerable stuff is, why would it not be included in all that is "physical"?</div><div><br></div><div>Don't you guys see you are the ones as crazy as the religious nutcases saying qualia proves their crazy religious beliefs?</div><div><br></div><div>They are just color qualities, and something in the world has, and behaves the way it does, because of those color qualities.</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 3:47 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"><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 3:54 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="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Great, thanks so much for this!!</div><div dir="ltr"><br><div>Yes, Gordon, and Adrian are getting it, even extending the idea to other implications, like things may appear to be grey in dark light, even though they can know it is still red.</div><div>And Jason understands the fundamental issue, he just has some remaining questions.</div><div><br></div><div>The fundamental idea is that the redness you experience is just a physical fact. </div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">What is the reason for including the word physical here before fact? I could understand if you said it is just a fact, or a brute fact, or an unexplained fact, or even an unexplainable fact. But I by saying it's a "physical fact" adds to my confusion.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div dir="ltr"><div> Redness is a property of your knowledge of a strawberry. </div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I agree with this. In that the manner in which a quale feels depends on the structure and potential of one's mind to accept and relate different sets of knowledge.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div dir="ltr"><div>And properties can represent information.</div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">It's not very clear to me what this sentence means, but I would say redness, like all qualia, are informative.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>Jason was asking about the dictionary.</div><div>This has to do with the way we represent information in a substrate independent way.</div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Information can be encoded in many ways I agree: groves in a record, holes in cardboard, magnetic tape, optical disks, magnetized zones on a spinning plate, charges in a flash drive, etc.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div dir="ltr"><div>For example, anything that is not a redness property can still represent redness, if you have a dictionary. </div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I would say any information channel can be used to inform a system in a way that it would interpret to mean red. Consciousness requires not only information, but a system to be informed. The information can take any form, and if the computational theory of mind is correct, then the system to be informed can also take any form (due to the substrate independence of information processing systems): electro mechanical, relay switches, vacuum tubes, integrated circuits, photonic circuits, ropes and pulleys, marbles and wood, water and pipes, etc.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div dir="ltr"><div>+5 volts can be thought of as representing red, a punch in a paper tape can be thought of as representing red. Even a greenness property can be thought of as representing red, if you have a dictionary that tells you this. But the transducing system that detects the +5 volts operates as the dictionary, and it sends the correct meaning to whatever next property will be representing that same 1 not 0 or red not green meaning.</div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I can agree with this. (If I interpret it correctly that you you are only pointing to the substrate independence of information.)</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>A transducer can interpret +5 volts to represent 1. Then a series of transducers detecting voltages on wires can represent a string of 1s and 0s.</div><div>A dictionary can specify that a particular string of 1s and 0s represents the letters "Red."</div><div>A further dictionary can say that the referent of the word 'Red' is the quality your brain uses to represent red things with.</div><div><br></div><div>On Sat, Apr 8, 2023 at 1:02 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></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 dir="auto"><div>My questions related to the diagram:<br></div><div dir="auto">1. Why is the strawberry gray, is it supposed to be gray to signal that photons are colorless? Are all three seeing the same strawberry?</div></div></blockquote><div> </div><div>They are all looking at the same strawberry. The fact that it is grey is because all we know of the object is that it reflects 700 nm light. But this abstract description of that behavior of the strawberry tells us nothing about what it is like. It is something in your brain that has your redness property, not the strawberry reflecting 700 nm light. The strawberry just seems to be red, because our brain falsely colors our conscious knowledge of it to be red, to tell us that is the one we want to pick. Nobody knows the colorness quality of anything out there. All we know are the false colors things seem to be. All we need to do to know the true colors of things, is discover which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain, is a description of redness, so we will then have the required dictionary.</div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I might suggest an improved visual then:</div><div dir="auto">Showing in one scene all three surrounding the same gray strawberry, having three lines, with each going from the strawberry to each of their eyes with a label 700nm light, and have the human who sees green be wearing some funky looking glasses/electronics.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">You can ask Dalle-2 or Midjourney to draw this for you.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div class="gmail_quote"><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="auto"><div dir="auto">2. The image file is called "functionally equal machines", but how are they functionally equal when they each have a different mental state from the same stimulus?</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>They all know the strawberry reflects 700 nm light. And they will all tell you the strawberry is red. And they can all be equally intelligent. They just represent their information in different ways.</div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">You might then also add a speech bubble, to clarify that all three are saying "I see a red strawberry" (assuming the second person is meant to, as if they have been wearing the inverter since birth).</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div class="gmail_quote"><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="auto"><div dir="auto">3. Why is the same person seeing a green strawberry? Is it meant be the same person or a different person with inverted qualia?</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The only difference between the first two, is the second one has a red / green signal inverter between his retina and the optic nerve. This changes the dictionary of which property it uses to represent red strawberries with. The first one represents red knowledge with redness, the second one, because of the inverted dictionary, represents red knowledge with greenness.</div><div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Okay that makes sense. I think then adding a speech bubble would help, as would some indication of the person having a signal inverter in their brain.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br></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="auto"><div dir="auto">4. What do you mean by a dictionary conveying the meaning of red? Dictionaries say nothing of the quale of red. They can only refer to things that look red, but we have no proof people even see colors the same as each other.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Let me know if what I've said above doesn't answer this question.</div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I think I understand now, but I think dictionary is a word apt to cause confusion. It might be clearer to say: within each mind there is a process able to convert a stimulus to a particular perception/quale/experience/mental state (whatever you think is the best term). And then you can say different minds may have different mappings between stimuli and mental states such that the same stimulus can lead two different minds to have entirely different perceptions/qualia/experiences/mental states.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br></div><div>And finally, there is more to it than just there are different ways to represent information (1: directly on physical properties, or 2: in a substrate independent way, which requires a dictionary)<br></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">This makes zero sense to me. How do you know physics isn't at the bottom, nothing other than information? It seems to me you think different physical objects somehow directly relate to qualia. But this is disproven by Chalmers dancing qualia argument applied to two switchable but functionally equivalent neural circuits made from different material substrates. No difference in experience can be reported or noticed, even if switching and inverting color qualia every second. A qualia change that can't be noticed is a contradiction in terms (in my view). I think if you see that the substrate independence of information does not end at the optic nerve but follows all the way through to all the nerves of the entire brain, you will see my point.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div class="gmail_quote"><div></div><div><br></div><div>There are also different ways of doing computation. First, there is computing directly on physical qualities, <a href="http://www.izhikevich.org/publications/pwc.pdf" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">using some kind of waves</a>, or quantum entanglement that computationally binds the qualities into one composite qualitative computational experience. Second, there is computing with abstract binary 1s, and 0s (it doesn't matter what physical properties are representing the 1s or the 0s because you always have a transducing dictionary which tells you which is which.</div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">If you are saying there are many ways to build computers and the substrate makes no difference to what they can compute, then we agree.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><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"><div class="gmail_quote"><div> And you computationally bind groups of 1s and 0s in a CPU where registers can be computationally bound with discrete logic gates. Both of these systems can do computation, and both can be intelligent. But what they are like, and the way they compute are very different.</div><div>One is phenomenally conscious, and the other is, though equally intelligent, abstractly so.</div></div></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Why can't both be phenomenally conscious?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Could you please:</div><div dir="auto">1. Define consciousness</div><div dir="auto">2. Define phenomenal consciousness</div><div dir="auto">3. Define abstract consciousness</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">This would help immensely.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Jason</div></div>
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