[ExI] Fwd: New article: EM Field Theory of Consciousness

[spike at rainier66.com]

…> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] Fwd: New article: EM Field Theory of Consciousness

 

I don't give a pyramid's dust about substrate etc.  But if two people say something is red, they are having similar experiences.  That's the only way we can arrive at general truths accepted by most people.  Are their brains doing identical things? Surely not, but surely they are similar. (only in the case of the red/green blind people will that not be true)

 

bill w

 

 

Billw as I understand it, the two brains perceive something different but both know to call that perception red.

 

I leave it to the qualia hipsters to debate that, for I don’t know enough about qualia to contribute.

 

The substrate question is critically important to me, for if we can get silicon to see whatever we perceive as red and call it red, then it suggests it can learn a bunch of other perceptions and act like a human.

 

Concern: a machine can have abilities we can never have.  It can shine a white light, measure a reflected 430 THz, or 700 nm, call it red, and be perfectly correct while perceiving nada.  

 

One of the biggest challenges in AI is if we create one which convinces us it is conscious but isn’t, any more than Eliza was back in the day.  How many of us here have had a heart to… chip with Eliza?  Plenty I would suppose.  We knew that one wasn’t real, but it was fun to pretend, a great toy.  What if we are no longer sure it isn’t real?

 

spike

 

 

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