On Wednesday, September 26, 2012 11:45:08 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: > > On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 Craig Weinberg <[email protected] <javascript:>>wrote: > > >>> There is no information literally in the wire. >>>> >>> >>> >>Then why are you wasting your money paying for internet service, if >>> its not information then what do you call it, what are you getting for your >>> money? >>> >> >> > I'm getting conduits for the automated assembly of forms >> > > Other than the level of pomposity how does "automated assembly of forms" > differ from information? >
If I can read Chinese, then Chinese writing informs me. If I can't read Chinese, my visual sense informs me *that* there is Chinese-looking writing, but my cognitive sense can't inform me what is is supposed to mean. Nothing about the writing changes whether I know how to read it or not. The thing itself is just a formation, of pixels, ink, whatever, but it doesn't inform the universe in general of it's content. Even the formation is not an absolute reality, it's just a sub-personal level of being informed. Without the existence of visual sense, there wouldn't be much use in illuminated pixels or ink in trying to inform someone. Without human users, the internet isn't anything but warm equipment exchanging a lot of orderly nothing in the dark. > > Information is your word for God. >> > > I don't believe that information is a intelligent omnipotent being that > created the universe so it follows logically that I don't think information > is God and it follows logically that I would not use the two words > interchangeably because I think they mean different things. So no, > information is not my word for God. > I meant more 'your answer to God' - the universal principle of automatic functionality which allows you to believe that no being or creation need exist. > > > A wire is good at imitating a stumulus with high fidelity. >> > > Yes, and so is a nerve. > Sure. Which begs the question, why have a nerve cell at all? Why not just have one cell produce sturdy bones filled with potassium and calcium ionic microfilaments, and then die? Why not put the conscious part in the skull? > > >>and according to you the ability to do this interpretation has something >>> to do with digestion and the physiological ability to produce flatulence. >>> >> >> > Only if what is being interpreted is a text that requires first hand >> experience of being an animal. >> > > And according to your deep philosophy what makes a animal a animal and be > able to do this marvelous interpretation is not the ability to think but > the ability to fart. > What makes an animal an animal is having the capacities to experience the world as an animal does. Farting is part of that. It's not an isolated function that causes animal-ness, it is a symptom of the overall sense of how animal experience differs from that of other organisms and inorganisms. A whoopee cushion is not an animal, but since animals digest food with a stomach, and that process releases gas, farting is a natural consequence of a whole history of biological developments and their associated experiences. None of which a computer could have, and all of which could easily inform a living organism. Farting doesn't need to be explained to an animal, but a computer can't understand it even if it is programmed to retrieve all the knowledge in the world about it. > > > All of human consciousness would require that level of experience as a >> minimum pre-requisite. Why wouldn't it? Otherwise you would see >> refrigerators and boulders having conversations with each other >> > > Not all animals can engage in conversation and not all machines can either. > It may be the case that all animals to engage in some form of conversation. It may be the case that no machines engage in conversation. We can't say the reverse. > > >> There are fundamental differences between males and females and you are >>> a male, so do you think that women are conscious, and if so why? And there >>> is no fundamental difference between you and your twin brother in a deep >>> sleep under anesthesia, do you believe he's conscious, and if not why not? >>> >> >> > Because I have a sense of proportion about the differences. >> > > That "sense of proportion" was caused exclusively by what you're > accustomed to, in particular what you've come to expect to behave > intelligently and what you have come to expect to behave stupidly; and it > is entirely a historical accident that we are not living in a world that is > very different, but you in your parochialism believe that the way things > are now is the only way things could be. > Not at all. Every experience is a unique event in the cosmos which impacts the direction of future events. Why do you think I have said that the way things are now is the only way they could be? To the contrary, I have a whole framework that I call 'perceptual inertia', and how experience accumulates outside of direct experience to frame and inform future experiences. > It's not. If from the time you were born all the women you met or heard > about were in a coma and all the computers you met engaged you it > interesting witty philosophical conversation you would have an entirely > different "sense of proportion". > Of course. But if I were human, I would still know that the difference between being male and female is of a different order of magnitude than the difference between being a person or a brick wall. > > There are women that are much smarter and much dumber than you, and there > are women who say they have a radically different philosophy than you, and > yet you believe all of them are conscious; but a computer could have the > same level of intelligence as you and say they have a identical philosophy > as you and you would still insist that the computer is not conscious. Why? > Because the computer doesn't have gas. That shows how huge your "sense of > proportion" has distorted reality. > Even if the computer had gas it would not be conscious. Even if a computer fooled every living person there would still be a way to tell that it was only a computer and not really conscious. If you made a computer out of something that could be conscious, you would not be able to control it and it would almost certainly kill you and all living organisms on the planet as soon as it figured out how it could. > > > Both men and women are living beings >> > > Not all men and women are living beings, dead ones aren't. > Oh, I hadn't picked up on that. So glad you could enlighten me. > Other than a somewhat different aroma the primary distinction between a > living man or woman and a dead one is their behavior, dead people don't > seem very smart, their behavior is a bit of a bore. > You talk as if you have never had the experience of being alive. There are people who have been injured to the extent that they appeared to be almost completely paralyze or in a coma but were able to later report having full sensory experience and understanding. Your insistence on death being not much different than life is sophistry at best, psychopathy at worst. But you say how things act is not important, so if it's not behavior > exactly why do you believe a cadaver is not conscious? Is it because you > think they've lost the ability to fart? > In the past people have thought that cadavers were conscious. It makes it harder to get rid of them though. Cadavers do fart, from what I have heard. My assumption of dead bodies as being unconscious is probably almost completely a cultural expectation, but it is one that makes sense to me. I know that I miss experiences in the outside world when I am asleep, so it isn't much of a stretch to project that onto a corpse. If I had a computer mover a cadaver's mouth and voice box, I wouldn't think that the computer has resurrected the person...but you don't really make much of a distinction. Moving mouth + words that match the conversation = living person. > > > Being dead comes in very low on the taxonomic ladder. >> > > Dead people are only low on the intelligent behavior ladder, and again you > don't think that's important, that's why you're totally unimpressed by a > computer's smart behavior or what brilliant new ideas it creates. Now if > they could just figure out a way to make computers fart then you might > change your mind. > It's not that computers aren't impressive, it's that they are impressive as service mechanisms, but I don't imagine that a billion Pinocchios add up to a real boy. > > Without free will it makes no difference what you say or think. >> > > Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII characters "free will" mean. > Cannot accept tiresome fake denial, knows what sophistry means. > > >> I have written many many times about the limits of logic as found by >>> Godel and Turing but I have never tried to convince somebody that my >>> philosophical ideas are worthwhile even though they are logically >>> contradictory as you have done. Nobody, absolutely nobody, would embrace a >>> theory that they knew to be logically inconsistent unless it gave them so >>> much pleasure that they just couldn't stand to give it up, and that's no >>> way to find the truth. >>> >> >> > I don't know where you get this assumption about pleasure from. >> > > Then I will tell you. If there was a idea that somebody thought was > frighting or disturbing in some way but upon examining it they found it was > not logically self consistent then they would instantly abandon the idea > with joy, > Would a computer do that? What kind of logic relies on fright and joy to compute? It sounds like you are giving me completely different capacities and a free will to motivate my decisions rather than logical 'reasons'. > but if the idea gave that person pleasure (like the idea that computers > are inherently inferior to humans and so can never take over the world) > then things might be very different. You have admitted that your ideas are > not logically self consistent but you continue to believe in them anyway, > it doesn't take a genius to figure out why. > My ideas are logically self-consistent, but what my ideas explain - concsiousness, is beyond logic. It is beyond logic by definition since logic is a category of thought, but all the logical thought in the world has no use for consciousness. > > When one develops a personal philosophy the very first question you need > to ask yourself is: which is more important, that your ideas be pleasant or > that your ideas be true? You've made your choice and I've made mine. > Looks like you believe in choices based on personal preferences and qualia rather than evolved determinism. > > > Living cells matter. >> > > Once again I ask what's the fundamental difference between living and dead > cells? > If you get frostbite, you can find out for yourself. The main difference is that some living cells *are you* and dead cells are not. > And once again I know that it can't be that living cells behave in a > vastly more complex manner as you don't believe that behavior is important. > Complexity is important, but it doesn't make any difference between life and death or unconsciousness and consciousness. Life is simple, it just begins on a cellular level of description, not a molecular one. > > >> Consciousness is very much in question when the human being in question >>> is sleeping or under anesthesia or dead. Why? Because when they are in that >>> state they don't behave intelligently. >>> >> >> > They behave the same as an intelligent person behaves when they are >> deeply asleep. >> > > You're ducking the question. Again. My question was: If your twin brother > is in a deep sleep under anesthesia, do you believe he's conscious, and if > not why not? But don't feel too bad, if I had your beliefs I'd duck that > question too. > I'm not ducking anything. I'll answer these questions for a thousand more hours if you want. I like clarifying my understanding. If my twin brother is under anesthesia, he is likely to be unconscious at the personal level, but his life continues at the sub-personal and super-personal levels (posted this yesterday if anyone is interested - http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_maxawpbuDl1qeenqko1_500.jpg) . Sometimes it doesn't work though, and anesthetic doesn't turn the personal level off despite all appearances to the contrary (locked in syndrome I think they call it). Ultimately only my brother knows for sure whether he is personally conscious. Craig > John K Clark > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/Eiyjixk5zywJ. 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