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Re: UD* and consciousness
by terren
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On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 4:12 AM, Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> 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. 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.
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?
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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>
> 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. 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.
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?
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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