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

[William Flynn Wallace]

 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.  spike

Now Spike, why would we need something as sophisticated as an AI to measure
the wavelength of some stimulus and render 'red' as its output?  Similarly
with sound.

We can see color when we are able to see.  That suggests that the visual
cortex is already wired to perceive different colors (different sounds,
different degrees of skin pressure, and so on for all the senses).  Why a
chip cannot be programmed to do the same would be a mystery if it were not
so easy to do.  While in different people the exact location in that cortex
might be a bit different, it won't be different by a lot (millimeters?  a
centimeter or so?  of course I don't know that but I'll bet experts in
vision do).  I don't know about 'perceive'.   That is the realm of
philosophers.   I skipped the 'Perception and Sensation course in grad
school.  bill w

On Sat, Jun 18, 2022 at 11:32 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> *…*> *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Fwd: New article: EM Field Theory of Consciousness
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> 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)
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> bill w
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> Billw as I understand it, the two brains perceive something different but
> both know to call that perception red.
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> I leave it to the qualia hipsters to debate that, for I don’t know enough
> about qualia to contribute.
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> 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?
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> spike
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