On 23 Feb 2012, at 23:49, Terren Suydam wrote:
On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 4:12 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 22 Feb 2012, at 23:07, Terren Suydam wrote:
Here was the "aha!" moment. I get it now. Thanks to you and Quentin.
Even though I am well aware of the consequences of MGA, I was
focusing
on the "physical activity" of the simulation because "I" was running
it.
Yes, that's why reasoning and logic is important. It is
understandable that
evolution could not have prepared us to the possibly true 'big
picture", nor
for fundamental science, nor for quickly developing technologies.
So it
needs some effort to abstract us from build-in prejudices. Nature,
a bit
like bandits, is opportunist. At the same time we don't have to
brush away
that intuition, because it is real, and it has succeeded to bring
us here
and now, and that has to be respected somehow too.
Note that the math confirms this misunderstanding between the
heart/intuition/first-person/right-brain (modeled by Bp & p) and the
scientist/reasoner/left-brain (modeled by Bp). The tension appears
right at
the start, when a self-aware substructure begin to differentiate
itself from
its neighborhood.
The fascinating thing for me is, if instead of a scan of Mary, we run
an AGI that embodies a cognitive architecture that satisfies a theory
of consciousness (the kind of theory that explains why a particular
UM
is conscious) so that if we assume the theory, it entails that the
AGI
is conscious. The AGI will therefore have 1p indeterminacy even if
the
sim is deterministic, for the same reason Mary does, because there
are
an infinity of divergent computational paths that go through the
AGI's
1p state in any given moment. Trippy!
Yeah. "Trippy" is the word.
Many people reacts to comp in a strikingly similar way than other
numerous
people react to the very potent Salvia divinorum hallucinogen.
People needs
a very sincere interest in the fundamentals to appreciate the comp
consequence, or to appreciate potent dissociative hallucinogen.
I should not insist on this. Some would conclude we should make comp
illegal. Like "thinking by oneself" is never appreciated in the
neighborhood
of those who want to think for the others, and control/manipulate
them.
As wild or counter-intuitive as it may be though, it really has no
consequences to speak of in the ordinary, mundane living of life.
Not direct. But it might help to adapt our mentality. It reminds us of
many of our possible prejudice, even of comp is revealed false one
day. And then it will help in fundamental physics, which can also have
indirect repercussion.
It can change also the conception of death, and that has always
repercussion on life, for the best and the worth.
To
paraphrase Eliezer Yudkowsky, "it has to add up to normal". On the
other hand, once AGIs start to appear, or we begin to merge more
explicitly with machines, then the theories become more important.
Yes, and no. Fundamental theology is negative. It will just warn to
people to be cautious with their "Gödel number". better to encrypt
them, perhaps quantum mechanically, because if you lost some of your
number, you might be reconstituted in unexpected places. It warns also
on the difficulty and difficulties of afterlife, and some of them will
depend on our ability to transmits values to our descendants.
Perhaps then comp will be made illegal, so as to constrain freedoms
given to machines. I could certainly see there being significant
resistance to humans augmenting their brains with computers... maybe
that would be illegal too, in the interest of control or keeping a
level playing field. Is that what you mean?
When liars take power, nothing free is legal, and prohibition rules.
It never works on the long run, but people can make enormous benefits
in the short run. Prohibition is a gangster technic to steal
everybody, by selling fears and lie. It is made possible by that
mentality which makes some human accepting that other humans can think
for them in the matter of their own happiness. It is the case of many
(pseudo) religion and medicine. We have to separate church and state,
but also health and state, that's possible with simple and reasonable
laws, but the manipulators hate all this.
When a government steals your money, it does not like some much that
people can think. Not talking about thinking machine, which for them
can only be a sort mexicans or something. I mean a foreigner.
The unavoidable tension between freedom and security will always
incite the fear selling business, so that freedom asks for perpetual
vigilance and resistance, out of the net and on internet, actually.
Prohibition can never work, unless you send *all* universal numbers in
camps.
Concretely, starting from a rich position, prohibition always works
for some time, because its hidden goal consists in managing untaxed
underground mafia economy, not to, prohibit anything, just to sell
them uncontrollably to the kids ...
But we might go out of topic here ...
Bruno
Terren
This I disagree with (or don't understand) because if we acknowledge
that as you said "even just one emulation can be said involving
consciousness" then interacting with even a "single" Mary is an
interaction with her "soul" in platonia. I think the admission of any
zombie in any context (assuming comp) is a refutation of comp.
You are right. That's why I prefer to say that comp entails non
zombie. But
let me give you a thought experience which *seems* to show that a
notion of
zombie looks possible with comp, and let us see what is wrong with
that.
Let us start from the beginning of MGA, or quite similar. You have
a teacher
doing a course in math (say). Then, by some weird event, his brain
vanishes,
but a cosmic explosion, by an extreme luck, send the correct
information,
with respect to that very particular math lesson, at the entry of
the motor
nerves interfaces to the muscles of the teacher, so that the lesson
continue
like normal. The students keep interrupting the teacher, asking
questions,
and everything is fine; the teacher provides the relevant answers
(by luck).
Is the teacher-without-brain a zombie? At first sight, it looks
like one,
even with comp. He behaves like a human, but the processing in the
brain is
just absent. He acts normal by pure chance, with a very small
amount of
peripheral interface brain activity. So what?
Again, the solution is that the consciousness should not be
attributed to
the body activity, but to the teaching person and its logically
real genuine
computation (distributed in Platonia). The "concrete brain" just
interfaces
the person in a relative correct way, unlike the "absent brain +
lucky
cosmic ray", which still attaches it, in this experience, but by
pure luck.
In both case, with "real brain" or "without a brain", the
consciousness is
attached to the computations, not a particular implementation of it
which in
fine is a building of your mind itself attached to an infinity of
computation.
We might say that the teacher was a zombie, because he has no brain
activity
at all, but then we might say that even with a brain, he is a zombie.
The comp plausible truth is better described, as you say, by
negating the
presence of a zombie, by attributing the consciousness to the
abstract
person, be it interfaced with a counterfactually correct brain or
by a lucky
accident. Obviously, in practice, a relatively counterfactually
correct
machine will, in general, be much more efficacious in implementing,
on
"earth" the consciousness of the person, which is in Platonia-
Heaven, than a
cosmic explosion which needs an unaffordable amount of luck to
succeed.
Bruno
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