Richard Loosemore wrote:
Colin Hales wrote:
Richard Loosemore wrote:
Colin Hales wrote:
Dear Richard,
I have an issue with the 'falsifiable predictions' being used as
evidence of your theory.
The problem is that right or wrong...I have a working physical
model for consciousness. Predictions 1-3 are something that my
hardware can do easily. In fact that kind of experimentation is in
my downstream implementation plan. These predictions have nothing
whatsoever to do with your theory or mine or anyones. I'm not sure
about prediction 4. It's not something I have thought about, so
I'll leave it aside for now. In my case, in the second stage of
testing of my chips, one of the things I want to do is literally
'Mind Meld', forming a bridge of 4 sets of compared, independently
generated qualia. Ultimately the chips may be implantable, which
means a human could experience what they generate in the first
person...but I digress....
Your statement "This theory of consciousness can be used to make
some falsifiable predictions" could be replaced by "ANY theory of
consciousness can be used to make falsifiable predictions 1..4 as
follows.". Which basically says they are not predictions that
falsify anything at all. In which case the predictions cannot be
claimed to support your theory. The problem is that the evidence of
predictions 1-4 acts merely as a correlate. It does not test any
particular critical dependency (causality origins). The predictions
are merely correlates of any theory of consciousness. They do not
test the causal necessities. In any empirical science paper the
evidence could not be held in support of the claim and they would
be would be discounted as evidence of your mechanism. I could cite
10 different computationalist AGI knowledge metaphors in the
sections preceding the 'predictions' and the result would be the same.
So....If I was a reviewer I'd be unable to accept the claim that
your 'predictions' actually said anything about the theory
preceding them. This would seem to be the problematic issue of the
paper. You might want to take a deeper look at this issue and try
to isolate something unique to your particular solution - which
has a real critical dependency in it. Then you'll have an
evidence base of your own that people can use independently. In
this way your proposal could be seen to be scientific in the dry
empirical sense.
By way of example... a computer program is not scientific evidence
of anything. The computer materials, as configured by the program,
actually causally necessitate the behaviour. The program is a
correlate. A correlate has the formal evidentiary status of
'hearsay'. This is the sense in which I invoke the term 'correlate'
above.
BTW I have fallen foul of this problem myself...I had to look
elsewhere for real critical dependency, like I suggested above. You
never know, you might find one in there someplace! I found one
after a lot of investigation. You might, too.
Regards,
Colin Hales
Okay, let me phrase it like this: I specifically say (or rather I
should have done... this is another thing I need to make more
explicit!) that the predictions are about making alterations at
EXACTLY the boundary of the "analysis mechanisms".
So, when we test the predictions, we must first understand the
mechanics of human (or AGI) cognition well enough to be able to
locate the exact scope of the analysis mechanisms.
Then, we make the tests by changing things around just outside the
reach of those mechanisms.
Then we ask subjects (human or AGI) what happened to their
subjective experiences. If the subjects are ourselves - which I
strongly suggest must be the case - then we can ask ourselves what
happened to our subjective experiences.
My prediction is that if the swaps are made at that boundary, then
things will be as I state. But if changes are made within the scope
of the analysis mechanisms, then we will not see those changes in
the qualia.
So the theory could be falsified if changes in the qualia are NOT
consistent with the theory, when changes are made at different
points in the system. The theory is all about the analysis
mechanisms being the culprit, so in that sense it is extremely
falsifiable.
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but is there anywhere else in the
literature where you have you seen anyone make a prediction that the
qualia will be changed by the alteration of a specific mechanism,
but not by other, fairly similar alterations?
Richard Loosemore
At the risk of lecturing the already-informed ---Qualia generation
has been highly localised into specific regions in *cranial *brain
material already. Qualia are not in the periphery. Qualia are not in
the spinal CNS, Qualia are not in the cranial periphery eg eyes or
lips. Qualia are generated in specific CNS cortex and basal regions.
You are assuming that my references to the *foreground* periphery
correspond to the physical brain's periphery.
That is not so.
In fact, Trevor Harley and I have described a neural implementation of
the framework in a paper that is forthcoming, and which you can find
on my web site.
If you follow that neural implementation idea, you come up with a
foreground periphery that could be anywhere on the cortex.
So anyone who thinks
they have a mechanism consistent with physiological knowledge could
conceive of alterations reconnecting periphery and cranial CNS
processes or merging brains and thereby swap/alter/share qualia or
make new qualia in the manner you describe. One kind of 'swap' of
the kind you speak of is the surgical cross-over of your right index
and middle finger nerves. You touch your middle finger.. you feel
like your index finger was touched. This is very old physiology.
But you are still not sticking to my actual prediction, if you look
closely.
What I say is that IF you do swaps anywhere beyond the edge of the
foreground, you get *obvious* changes in qualia .... like the one you
described above, these are trivial and uninteresting.
But that is not my prediction at all. What I predict is that you
*must* specifically look for the edge of the foreground (the limits of
scope of the analysis mechanism) and then do the swaps at that point.
I predict that if you carefully do the rearrangements that I propose,
AT THAT POINT, then you can get the qualia inversion (for example),
but that if you go into the foreground and mess around with the
concept-atoms in some other way, the qualia changes will not occur.
That is a specific, head-on-the-block prediction, surely?
The kinds of qualia swapping and merging effects you use are old news
in the sense of a plethora of thought experiments in the
literature....The uniqueness of your proposal is that you are at
least attempting to connect real physical phenomena in brain material
to an AGI outcome. You are also directly forcing the AGI discipline
to deal with qualia properly and explicitly. All this is good.
BUT...
If you are going to do this then you need to make sure it makes
sense. The predictions are blurry in that it is not clear where
alterations to a real brain are subsequently examined with some
claimed equivalence in an AGI. You start with "they will have to
await the development of the kind of nanotechnology that lets us
rewire our brains on the fly"... where we are clearly talking about
brain material... then in the predictions underneath you speak of
'concept atoms' where we are cannot be in a real brain...so I assume
someplace in the testing we are now actually testing an AGI based on
the 'concept atom' metaphor? Exactly what is it that is being tested
and when and who is judging what?
Can you clarify? Then I might be able to make sense of it. The more I
look the more confused I get.
There is aproblem here, and I freely confess it. I say that we will
find this "analysis mechanism" when we understand the brain well
enough. But we are not in that position yet.
There is more material about ow these concept-atoms might be
implemented if you read the Loosemore and Harley paper, but for the
moment all I am saying is that I predict that we will find the
equivalent of these concept atoms, and the equivalent of the analysis
mechanism, and that once we find those two, we can test that the
qualia manpipulations work at precisely the boundary.
But I will put more thought into whether we can do tests earlier than
the day that we have nanotech rewiring techniques. It might be
possible....
Richard Loosemore
What I have is genuine confusion about test circumstances when I read
your predictions section.
If we confine ourselves to testing an AGI where you fiddle at/around a
'boundary' in the manner you suggest, then you are fundamentally dealing
with correlates, not causation. That's OK. It just has to be explicit
and clear.
What I like is that you actually intend to test your AGI in manner that
actually targets qualia in some way. You are facing up to them in a way
that, if your testing works, you may be forced to admit that your
approach does not produce qualia. This is refreshing because you are
open to being wrong in the spotlight of a real test, even if the test,
at first pass, has trouble pointing at a critical dependency. There are
signs of real science here.
Your testing can be generalised and the AGI version need not await
nanotech. You simply need to structure your AGI so that, at least in its
tested configuration, the 'boundaries' are empirically accessible in
some way....they don't have to be as accessible in the final
deliverables. I can't tell how tricky that might be.
I'd like the birth of testing frameworks in the AGI literature to be
coherent in the critical eyes of armed and dangerous crusty empiricists
from other fields, including physics and neuroscience. I am glad you
wrote the paper. It's an encouraging sign. You have my concerns. I'll
leave it there. I'll check out your other papers.
regards,
Colin
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agi
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