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

Wed Mar 22 16:32:06 UTC 2017

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 5:21 AM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 
> Well, there you have it.  I'm guessing that you still can't see how this
> is what I've been trying to say all along.  You must include this
> comparison behavior when you do any type of neural substitution correctly.
>

Am I correct in saying you are arguing if the internal operation of a
neuron has changed then that counts as a change in behavior even if the
neuron as a whole behaves the same way with other external neurons, and
even if the person as a whole behaves the same way with other external
people?

I sometimes have trouble following you so I don't want to say more about
that until I get confirmation that is indeed what you are saying.

> 
> If you provide a qualitative theory that
>  [...]
>

No 
qualitative theory
 of the mind can ever be proven wrong, so no 
qualitative theory
 of the mind can ever be worth more than a bucket of warm spit.

> > 
> You will be able to do this again, to blackness and whiteness.  And again
> to oneness and zeroness.  All of them still correctly proclaiming: "I know
> what red and green is like for me."
>

I don't need to trust it or for it to say anything, if a machine can
correctly tell me if there is one marble in a tray or zero marbles in a
tray, and sort black marbles from white marbles, and sort red marbles from
green marbles, then I must conclude it knows what zero and one is, what
white and black is, and what red and green is as well as you do because
I've seen both of you pass those tests. Of course I will never prove for
certain that either of you are conscious of one or zero or experience color
qualia as I do, so I must just learn to live with some slight uncertainty
in my life. I think I can do that because the uncertainty is pretty slight.

> > 
> the only way to keep them "Behaviorally identical" is to keep each of
> these neural substituted conscious entities qualia blind and
>

There is no way, absolutely positively no

way, to directly test for qualia or consciousness in other people and
there never will be, so any theory that uses those words is no more a
scientific theory than speculating on how many angels can dance on the head
of a pin.

> 
> There is a scene in the British TV series "Humans" season 2 where one of
> the "Synths" that has become "conscious" recollects that life was very
> different before he become "conscious".
>

I'm not a Synths but it's exactly the same with me. I was not conscious in
1492 but I was in 2002, so my life in 2002 was very different from my life
in 1492,
and my memory of Christopher Columbus is qualitatively different from my
life and memory of George W Bush.

> > 
> If they were "behaving the same", they wouldn't have that astonished look
> on their face, after they walk outside, once they become qualitatively
> "conscious."
>

Use yourself as a test vehicle, 13.8 billion years went by when you were
not conscious, don't you find that vast stretch of time astonishingly
different than the last few decades when you were conscious? I certainly
do, proving to my satisfaction that there is indeed a difference between
consciousness and non-consciousness. Or at least it is for me.

  John K Clark  

>
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