On Mar 8, 6:48 pm, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > On 3/8/2011 9:36 AM, 1Z wrote: > > > > > > > On Mar 8, 4:45 pm, Brent Meeker<[email protected]> wrote: > > >> On 3/8/2011 6:21 AM, 1Z wrote: > > >>>> Up to a point. But if the faking deviated very far from perceptions of > > >>>>> this world the BIV would no longer be able to process them. We > >>>>> casually > >>>>> talk of "white rabbits" on this list, which are perfectly > >>>>> understandable > >>>>> things and are really of this world (e.g. in Walt Disney pictures). > >>>>> But > >>>>> they are just tiny derivative, deviations from reality. Even things > >>>>> as > >>>>> real as optical illusions become difficult to process (which is why > >>>>> they > >>>>> produce illusions). If your BIV was a human brain and was provided > >>>>> the > >>>>> perceptions of, say, a bird it would probably be unable to process > >>>>> them > >>>>> - it would be as cut off as if you provided white noise. My point is > >>>>> that human brains evolve and learn in this world and it's the only > >>>>> kind > >>>>> of world they can be conscious of. You can fiddle a little with > >>>>> inputs > >>>>> to the BIV, but unless your inputs are just variants on this world, > >>>>> they'll mean nothing. > > >>>>> Brent > > >>> I think you can have gorss deviations from physics that are perfectly > >>> easy to process > >>> perceptually. In fact that is quite common in movie FX, games etc. > >>> There is no > >>> problem seeing a hovering rock. > > >> We're using very different ideas of "gross deviations". I'd say a > >> hovering rock is just a variation of this world: a variation that allows > >> us to identify the rock and hovering. > > > It's a good enough WR, especially if you see stuff that can't be > > stitched into a single coherent alternative physics > > I agree it's a WR. But my point was that you can't have a consciousness > without a world to be conscious of. And if you create that world in a > simulation or in for a BIV then either it's a familiar world, a variant > of ours, or, if it's unfamiliar, you won't know whether the BIV is > conscious or not because you won't know how to interpret the > interactions between the BIV and simulated world.
But if you know enough to write a consciousness programme, then you know whether or not it is conscious. > You can simulate a world like ours for yourself, plus white rabbits, and > be conscious of it. Or you can simulate a world like ours for a BIV > like ours and infer its consciousness. But if you simulate a world > unlike ours (really unlike, not just a variation), or a brain unlike > ours, or both you have no basis for inferring consciousness. This > radical uninterperability is the theme of several Stanislaw Lem's stories. > > How muddled the physics would have to be in order to scramble your > consciousness of it is an empirical question. Obviously computer games > muddle it quite a bit without preventing your conscious perception of > them. But if I created a collage of games which switched from one to > the other every 0.2sec you'd probably either stop paying attention or > literally lose consciousness. > > Brent > "If a lion could speak we couldn't understand him." > --- Darwin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
