[ExI] Quantum consciousness, quantum mysticism, and transhumanist engineering

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Sat Mar 18 17:36:07 UTC 2017


will respond when i get my left hand back -  cat scratch infection-  nearly
had to be in hospital - may yet

bill w

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 2:27 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 2:03 PM, William Flynn Wallace <
> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ​>> ​
>>> Since my brain works that way it is a reasonable hypothesis that your
>>> brain does too, but I'm not able to prove that and never will be able to.
>>>  john
>>
>>
>>
>> ​> ​
>> 'Prove' must mean something different to you than it does to me.
>>
>
> ​I don't think so.​
>
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> To me it just means test
>>
>
> ​You can't test for consciousness, you can only test for observable
> behavior.​
>
>
> ​> ​
>> My point is that you can do the same test thousands of times with
>> different subjects and keep getting the same results.
>>
>
> ​And none of those results will tell you anything about consciousness
> unless you use the axiom that consciousness is a unavoidable byproduct of
> intelligence, because unlike consciousness I can directly detect
> intelligence in people and things other than myself.
>
> ​> ​
>> Say you show them a red rose.  All except the male color blind will
>> respond 'red'.  A fMRI will show much the same firings in their brains
>> from the same areas.  Thus prediction of what they say and what went on in
>> their brains is nearly 100% accurate.
>>
>
> ​And if I type R-E-D into a Speak and Spell from the 1980's it ​
> ​will say "red", maybe you're no more conscious than that old toy was. I
> will never be able to find any evidence for or against such a theory. Or
> maybe that old Speak and Spell was as conscious as I am.  I will never be
> able to find any evidence for or against that theory either.
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> A fMRI will show much the same firings in their brains from the same
>> areas.  Thus prediction of what they say and what went on in their brains
>> is nearly 100% accurate.
>>
>
> ​I don't see how a fMRI machine would be any better at directly detecting
> consciousness than we are. And I can predict what a Speak and Spell will
> say nearly 100% of the time, but that is no evidence it's conscious.
>
> ​> ​
>>  Now I agree that one cannot show that the experience is exactly the
>> same (but similar, that I would assume),
>>
>
> ​Your brain is similar to mine but it is not identical, if it were then
> you would be me. My working assumption is that those differences are not
> critical for the formation of consciousness but I don't know that for a
> fact. So although my hunch is that its not true the possibility remains
> that John K Clark is the only conscious being in the universe; I would
> estimate that possibility to be about the same as the possibility a
> computer will never pass the Turing Test.    ​
>
>
> ​ John K Clark​
>
>
>
>
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