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

Wed Mar 22 19:46:42 UTC 2017

Hi John,

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 10:32 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

It sounds like you are asking me a similar thing to what Stathis is asking
me, and making the same incorrect assumption that I mean the opposite of
what I'm attempting to say as an answer over and over again.  Yes  "if the
internal operation of a neuron has changed then that [DOES NOT] count as a
change in behavior [AS LONG AS] the neuron as a whole behaves the same way
with other external neurons,

But also, you are making a very similar mistake in your thinking.  There is
no way to, within a single neuron, change qualitative nature of one voxel
of our visual field of awareness, in a way that that all other neurons,
representing all the other tens of thousands of qualitative voxels interact
with them, sufficiently so they can do any kind of comparison.  There must
be some kind of deferent neural behavior in your theory, to enable
qualitative comparison and awareness on such a large scale.  You can't do
that with one isolated neuron, especially if it is firing the same with ALL
of it's many downstream connections.  Again, as long as you are only
thinking of one neuron, it removes any ability for the system to do any
large or even small scale qualitative comparisons.

>
> > 
>> 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.
>

The theory I am promoting is predicting that there are elemental qualities
that will be relatively easy to "eff" to intelligent scientists.  And that
there is already likely enough knowledge of how neurons handle color
knowledge, for which, if scientists were not qualia blind (i.e. not
incorrectly interpreting their abstracted observation data), they could
discover at least the real neural correlate of such things as elemental
redness, greenness, and so on.

Also, the theory predicts that even if there isn't easily elemental qualia,
that once we start completely re architecting, enhancing and merging
brains, you will be able to create a qualitative meta combined John Brent
that is fully aware of all of John's consciousness and Brent's
consciousness.  Such a metta combined supper brain will be able to
completely experience John's redness, and brent's redness sufficiently to
be able to be aware of and point out, which parts of these two rednesses
are the same, and which are different.

So, if science demonstrates any of this kind of, effing the ineffable in
any way, do you not agree that it will falsify your theory that predicts
redness and greenness are not approachable via science and not objectively
effable, or discoverable, in any way?

>
>
>> > 
>> 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.
>

Really, you think there is no one in the world that has inverted, or maybe
more diverse qualitative experiences from what you have?  Do you want me to
start listing the many evidences that there is quite a bit of qualitative
diversity between humans, that you seem to be completely ignoring?

> > 
>> 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.
>

No, you are misunderstanding what I mean by when a synth is awareness of
color via oneness and zeroness representations.  That is another thing that
such science fiction movies get completely wrong, by think synths only
become "self aware", once they become qualitatively conscious  The non
conscious synths are very "self aware", even likely more self aware than we
are.  The only difference is, their self awareness is composed of patters
of oneness and zeroness.  And when a newly conscious synth uses memory to
compare his redness knowledge of red, with his old oneness knowledge of
red.  This old oneness knowledge of red is much more "self aware" than what
you or I were before we were born, or even when we are asleep and not
dreaming.

Brent
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