On Fri, May 10, 2019 at 5:22 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> > > On 5/10/2019 6:59 AM, Jason Resch wrote: > > > > On Thu, May 9, 2019 at 7:54 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> On 5/9/2019 5:18 PM, Jason Resch wrote: >> > >> > That all subjectively indistinguishable computations going through >> > that state are a possibility means the consciousness cannot identify >> > itself with any one particular thread of computation. In this sense >> > that consciousness is not the same as one of the programs passing >> > through that state. But to say the consciousness is not identical >> > with one of the computations is different from saying that computation >> > is not conscious. If none of the threads of computation resulted in >> > consciousness, you wouldn't magically get consciousness once you >> > reached an infinite number of them. The only thing you gain with the >> > infinite number of all the computations going through that state is >> > the correct statistics regarding the future evolution of that conscious. >> >> "The state" seems a problematic concept to me. It tries to roughly >> equate a state of consciousness, a thought, with a state of a Turing >> machine (plus tape). > > > > I would distinguish between thoughts and machine states. Consider a > physical brain, with many interacting neurons running in parallel. To > represent some unit of time of neuronal interaction would require for a > conventional von Neumann architecture computer, a long string of > processing. Or more simply, if you imagine computing the next state of a > 100x100 Game of Life universe, it requires a Turing machine to process many > steps in a sequence before it produces the next Game of Life state. I > think it is similar with thoughts, a thought involves much more than a > simple arithmetical operation applied to a single 64-bit register. > > >> But saying yes to the doctor implies a much lower >> level of substitution than "a thought". > > > To be clear the doctor is replacing part of your brain (e.g. let's say a > cluster of 1,000,000 neurons with some digital machinery. Rather than > replacing a single thought of yours. It is up to the continuing operation > of your brain, working with this digital part, to maintain your stream of > consciousness. > > > Here you are working in physical time. But in Bruno's arithmetical world > physical time is another simulated variable, not related to computational > steps in thread. > > I am not sure what you mean by working in. I was just trying to provide an example of how a thought may be composed of many individual steps of computation. It's worth note: that our practical von neumann machines in common use work in small steps over time is just an artifact of their design. An alternate computing architecture could be highly parallel, such as the updates of cells in Game of Life, where you might view each cell as both a simple computer and a memory unit. We shouldn't read in too much into the physics based on how our conventional computers happen to operate in practice. It need not be sequential single updates to a long tape, a Turing machine could likewise be many parallel updates to a grid of cells, or to voxels in a volume, etc. > > >> Thoughts come from perceptions, >> among other things, which are not complete thoughts or "states of >> consciousness". So it is not at all clear what it means for >> "computations going thru that state" when the state may refer to >> thousands of steps of the Turing machine. Is a computation thread that >> share 999 of the states "going thru the state"? > > > I view "computations going though my state" as those computations which > exceed the level of accuracy necessary for my consciousness to continue > uninterrupted. > > > What's significant about "uninterrupted"? > Nothing really; you could elide that word and the sentence would still make sense. > I've had my consciousness interrupted several times and, in the words of > Mark Twain, suffered no inconvenience there from. "Interrupted" can only > be understood relative to a physical world." > > For example, say there was a Mark I neuronal cluster chip which simulates > only the inputs and outputs of the 1M neurons using a lookup table, then > there is a Mark II which simulates the neurons, a Mark III model which > simulates the neurons glial cells and some of the biochemistry, and a Mark > IV which simulates the molecules and proteins, and a Mark V that simulates > all the atoms of those neurons. It may be that Mark I - Mark III are > insufficient, and would lead to perceptibly different states of > consciousness for me. > > > How would you know, even if they were drastically different? How would > you ever have a "state of consciousness" which was not "for you"?...i it > included inconsistent memories...as happens with people suffering > multiple-personality disorder. > That's the scary thing, I'm not sure you would or could know. However, I think Chalmers argument concerning fading qualia provides some basis for the idea that if behaviors are maintained, it would be difficult to conclude that qualia are radically different or absent. This requires being wrong about your own internal thoughts and beliefs, which is strange to say the least. > > Are these simulations responding to unconscious inputs from...what? the > physical world? > Whether the inputs are conscious or not, I can't say, but the idea is the neurons are responding either to externally received inputs or inputs from other surviving neurons they are wired into. > > While Mark IV - V are accurate enough that they preserve my > consciousness. In this case the computations of the Mark IV and Mark V > chips, while different, both support my conscious state. > > >> And to further >> complicate this mapping between thoughts and machine states, there >> sequence of machine states is the same at the temporal order of thoughts. >> >> > It can add confusion, it is best to view that as coincidental. Though > there may be a deep relation, between our existence in a universe having > the property of time, and our existence as computations. > > > My mistake. I meant to write "..is NOT the same as the temporal order of > thoughts." > > > Ahh okay. 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