As my tablet can be deceptive about the length of emails, I actually stopped reading the first time round before this part of yours Matt, I thought you left those other authors do the "debunking". Now, of course I would have some ad hominem observations, and there are people who have written books along the lines of "why smart people believe they do not exist". Because undoubtedly, and what a major distraction this is, "qualia" is really the level at which we exist, and if I had your qualia too then clearly I would not exist but Mattanastasios would be the name of the game, and if evolution hit some major optimizations then why didn't it go all the way and convince us that our selfish genes exist, a-la-Dawkins, while "we" don't.
It could, however, be you that are committing mistakes here, at least my point of view a priori is non dualistic, meaning it don't think qualia have to be non physical to play a magical role, just like superstrings and even electrons don't need to be physical to actually do their magic. And regarding the prevalence of qualia, let's be upfront and admit that for a lot of us, certainly for me, the entire animal kingdom is populated with qualia, after all why would the rat brain or lizard brain be exempt from your alleged evolution into qualia-perpetuating-pleasure-and-especially-food-sex-child care. I can't believe I have become a Gurdjieff and can only express myself with unwieldy compounds and hyphens :) . I presume that most of us would not blend frogs the way we blend our coffee or our watercolours. One has to observe of course that in a way plants "want" to be blended/eaten, it is totally part of their lifecycle. I admit that I attributed qualia to plants long before reading of the controversial experiments on the electrical/Kirlian life of plants, of water etc. I don't consider such phenomena as proven, but I consider them likely in certain contexts. I also find it plausible that plants may be more involved in our evolution than even Terence McKenna would acknowledge. I remain of course totally mystified by existential questions such as why/if I exist and how can anything exist etc. obviously here multiple meanings of "exist" come into play. But I am not so naive as to join all major theologies to believe that qualia are "so physical" that I will be rewarded by perfect chocolate and tight virgins, or that out there my perfect face and body exists in a platonic qualiaverse. What does this all mean about the measurement of consciousness or AGI? Not much. We think we are more conscious than a salivating dog in front of a steak, but we have indeed no fxxxxxing idea! AT > On 08.09.2014, at 19:45, "Matt Mahoney via AGI" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > What we should be asking instead about consciousness is why a > collection of neurons that obeys physical laws would model itself as > having some property that exists outside of physics. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
