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'The stuff you said about the laws of physics and computation is a complete and utter red herring.' You can't argue with math. There are functions that are sim

'The stuff you said about the laws of physics and computation is a complete and utter red herring.' You can't argue with math. There are functions that are simply not computable on Turing machines. The canonical example is the Halting function, that in finite time reports whether another function will halt on a given input. It is easy to show that this function cannot be computed. There is no justification a priori for discarding the possibility that simulation of the substrate of qualia is outside of the realm of computable functions. Or to discard the hypothesis that qualia itself may be not Turing computable. Intriguingly, Cabessa and Siegelman (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a112/4aca43b60b1e5777ae9a9c9a34695f247a30.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a112/4aca43b60b1e5777ae9a9c...) proved that recurrent neural networks with rational time evolving weights are super-Turing. Whether or not synaptic weights are actually rational is another story... but the point is you can't just state that it's possible to simulate qualia. We simply don't know. On the other hand, since I (and you presumably) experience qualia, it's clear the physical substrate supports it and that it is in theory possible to create something that experiences qualia. And of course given our shared lineage and shared physical substrate it's ridiculous to assume that shrimp don't experience pain. You have to at least consider that they might have sensations; all of the ingredients are there. Not to mention animals even closer to us - it seems almost certain that your dog does experience and almost as richly as you too. Finally - shrimp don't have a central nervous system. So chopping their head off probably doesn't block their sensation, whatever form that may take.

logicallee 10y ago
your discussion of non-computable functions is a distracting red herring. it derails the discussion. Remember: when you talk about qualia not being computable, you are like someone saying "heavier than air flight is impossible", meanwhile birds are flying around merrily.... "well yeah but they're like biological, not metal." Not much of an argument for why flight is impossible. So what. Qualia are an emergent property of the behavior of quite well-defined physical systems. They can be simulated. they don't have a connection with something that can't be simulated. end of discussion. it's just a waste of our time to talk about it and distracts us from addressing what to do when someone makes a pain-sensing simulation, especially if that simulation has human neural structure and certainly if it reports having experiences. that is far-fetched today but will happen without any chance otherwise. It's simply impossible that it wouldn't. when I was a child I told someone that checkers will "obviously" be solved completely (i.e. is it a win for black, light-colored, or a draw) -- since there were just so few possible states, it was well within what would be computed very shortly. They called me crazy, I gave an upper bounds on number of states, and if you look at the math and compare it to the computation that was available it was simply impossible that it wouldn't be solved. it was brute-forced, and we know the outcome for perfect play. (i.e. I was "right".) simulation of a whole brain that reports qualia (the same as you do or I do) is obviously within what will be computed. It's simply something that will be done. I don't want to waste a second of my life entertaining any red herrings to the contrary. Your point about shrimp and central nervous systems is well-placed, I missed that. Here is an article on Wikipedia that discusses this in detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_crustaceans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_crustaceans That is a good article and mentions many of the points. However, on the balance I would be inclined to think that if something clearly behaves and indeed communicates as though it were feeling pain, then we should assign a probability that it likely does experience it, given that evolutionarily our qualia (which every person has an intuitive grasp of, since they experience it) has the same structural source. (I mean the exact wiring.) While today's reality characters might also "behave as though" they experience qualia (I mean flailing around on screen and so forth), they do not have the same structural evolutionary source (no neural net or anything), so for this reason I would not assign the idea of pain to them with certainty today. later it will be problematic (if there's machine learning for getting video game characters to flail around in pain, realistically), but that's not the case today. The end-game however is very problematic, as it will for sure be human. there is no question about this. We have the complete source code!!! Like, absolutely, we have the complete source code for how humans are wired (in the form of DNA, which has been sequenced), and in terms of emulating it with some simplifications (instead of on a molecular/atomic level) we know that the end-game is just not that many cells in the human body or the brain. the conclusion is set in stone. it's a waste of time to even talk about anything else. the question is what this means for us and how we deal with this when it happens. What do we do if someone makes a neural net and reports that they have created pain? It will be a huge problem and issue.

logicallee 10y ago

your discussion of non-computable functions is a distracting red herring. it derails the discussion. Remember: when you talk about qualia not being computable, you are like someone saying "heavier than air flight is impossible", meanwhile birds are flying around merrily.... "well yeah but they're like biological, not metal." Not much of an argument for why flight is impossible. So what. Qualia are an emergent property of the behavior of quite well-defined physical systems. They can be simulated. they don't have a connection with something that can't be simulated. end of discussion. it's just a waste of our time to talk about it and distracts us from addressing what to do when someone makes a pain-sensing simulation, especially if that simulation has human neural structure and certainly if it reports having experiences. that is far-fetched today but will happen without any chance otherwise. It's simply impossible that it wouldn't. when I was a child I told someone that checkers will "obviously" be solved completely (i.e. is it a win for black, light-colored, or a draw) -- since there were just so few possible states, it was well within what would be computed very shortly. They called me crazy, I gave an upper bounds on number of states, and if you look at the math and compare it to the computation that was available it was simply impossible that it wouldn't be solved. it was brute-forced, and we know the outcome for perfect play. (i.e. I was "right".) simulation of a whole brain that reports qualia (the same as you do or I do) is obviously within what will be computed. It's simply something that will be done. I don't want to waste a second of my life entertaining any red herrings to the contrary. Your point about shrimp and central nervous systems is well-placed, I missed that. Here is an article on Wikipedia that discusses this in detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_crustaceans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_crustaceans That is a good article and mentions many of the points. However, on the balance I would be inclined to think that if something clearly behaves and indeed communicates as though it were feeling pain, then we should assign a probability that it likely does experience it, given that evolutionarily our qualia (which every person has an intuitive grasp of, since they experience it) has the same structural source. (I mean the exact wiring.) While today's reality characters might also "behave as though" they experience qualia (I mean flailing around on screen and so forth), they do not have the same structural evolutionary source (no neural net or anything), so for this reason I would not assign the idea of pain to them with certainty today. later it will be problematic (if there's machine learning for getting video game characters to flail around in pain, realistically), but that's not the case today. The end-game however is very problematic, as it will for sure be human. there is no question about this. We have the complete source code!!! Like, absolutely, we have the complete source code for how humans are wired (in the form of DNA, which has been sequenced), and in terms of emulating it with some simplifications (instead of on a molecular/atomic level) we know that the end-game is just not that many cells in the human body or the brain. the conclusion is set in stone. it's a waste of time to even talk about anything else. the question is what this means for us and how we deal with this when it happens. What do we do if someone makes a neural net and reports that they have created pain? It will be a huge problem and issue.