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> How will you move from this objective description to the actual experience of these feelings and states of mind? I'm sorry, but that question still sounds to

by acqq 8y ago

> How will you move from this objective description to the actual experience of these feelings and states of mind? I'm sorry, but that question still sounds to me exactly the same like "how many fairies can dance on the top of the needle." It's a thing of your imagination: for me, you just imagine that there is anything more than the electrical and chemical reactions, and there isn't anything. You are just using empty words that mean something to you, but not to me. Just like fairies don't exist, but many believed. And I've already written enough how I consider that, what you believe is "something special" just an emerging property of these electrical and chemical reactions, produced in the humans by the evolutionary forces, not different to what any other animal has in order to function. Including the worms. I know too much math, computing and physics, that I do believe that I can actually write a program that can give exactly the same answers like you do here relatively easily, because you give that little actual arguments. Moreover, I know too much math, computing and physics and have too much experience that you can't convince me that something like that is not possible, as I saw how with my own hands I can replicate a lot of "emerging properties" that were just "uniquely human" only some decades ago, and now there are programs that do that, today. So the computation can explain everything, no need to invoke anything beyond that. Everything is information, which can be stored and processed in many different ways. The physical laws are completely consistent with and sufficient for all the computation needed for all the emerging properties that we observe. If somebody would believe you, he would have to consider impossible most of what we already produced since we have the computers. Including the, simple as it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life which is, as you can see: "undecidable, which means that given an initial pattern and a later pattern, no algorithm exists that can tell whether the later pattern is ever going to appear." That means that there is no shortcut for it, you have to compute it to see what happens in some future moment. What your claim boils down to is that "you know" that "what happens in the future of Conway's Game of Life can't be explained by the statement 'you just have to compute it'." Which is obviously false. So for me you are just confused by the fact that some emerging property is undecidable, and attribute that property to something coming from "outside."

egjerlow 8y ago
Ok, I think we either have some communication issues or philosophical differences (if I understand you correctly, you're saying that subjective experience is an illusion? Which to me just shows the absurd lengths one has to go to in order to rule out any question that cannot be answered by science. Your own subjective experience is literally the starting point for any investigative endeavor you might attempt in this world, so I'd be careful with claiming it is only your imagination) or a combination of both, so maybe we should recognize this and leave it here. You have provided ample examples of emergent properties, which are interesting in their own right for sure, but if you really imagine that Conway's game of life and the unknowable future of that game is analogous to the phenomenon of subjective experience, we either are miscommunicating or there is a quite insurmountable barrier of understanding between us. Either way, thanks for engaging!
- acqq 8y ago
  > if you really imagine that Conway's game of life and the unknowable future of that game is analogous to the phenomenon of subjective experience No. Convay's Game of Life does not include all the physical rules that govern the physical world. The actual rules are much, much more complex, but even they can be condensed to a single equation: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/04/the-world-of-everyday-experience-in-one-equation/ http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/04/the-worl... Conway's game is just a minuscule subset of those, but it is, just like the fractal formulas are, completely enough to demonstrate that the emerging properties are never "intuitive" by looking at the rules themselves, and that for the outcomes of most of the rules there are no "shortcuts" -- you have to calculate all the steps, not skipping anything. So I see your claim of "uniqueness" of your "subjective experience" nothing more than a claim that you are unable or not willing to accept that the given rules can produce such emerging properties (and additionally being confused by that property of the rule's application being undecidable for any interesting set of rules and outcomes). As I see it, it's completely obvious, from many examples I've given which show that the emerging properties produced by the application of much more minimal rules were absolutely beyond what people were able to accept. But the "non-intuitive" emerging properties do exist, and the property of undecidability effectively guarantees that nobody can predict them in advance, or imagine an easy "shortcut" to some outcome, and also that you can't claim what you claim (that the outcome you "experience" is impossible) and remain intellectually honest, now after you were made aware of how the emerging properties actually work and what are the properties of most of the applications of the rules. More precisely, to remain intellectually honest, you must admit that the emerging properties you consider "unique" can be the result of the given rules. Your only consistent claim can then be "even if they can, I don't like to think about them as such." Nothing more. On the other side, we can, once we calculate enough, be certain that the application of the rules is enough for any property we observe in any such experiment. Which is what we did with all the simple examples I've demonstrated. But like I've said, there's no shortcut for many steps (for some subsets we do have some, like Newton's laws for exactly two bodies, but see what happens with three already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem -- "Unlike two-body problems, no closed-form solution exists for all sets of initial conditions, and numerical methods are generally required" meaning, again, you have to do all the calculation steps to know what is going to happen), so you not being able to find one shortcut exactly where you'd like is also completely normal and trivial, and can not support any claim. It's the property of how the rules work.

by acqq 8y ago

egjerlow 8y ago

Ok, I think we either have some communication issues or philosophical differences (if I understand you correctly, you're saying that subjective experience is an illusion? Which to me just shows the absurd lengths one has to go to in order to rule out any question that cannot be answered by science. Your own subjective experience is literally the starting point for any investigative endeavor you might attempt in this world, so I'd be careful with claiming it is only your imagination) or a combination of both, so maybe we should recognize this and leave it here. You have provided ample examples of emergent properties, which are interesting in their own right for sure, but if you really imagine that Conway's game of life and the unknowable future of that game is analogous to the phenomenon of subjective experience, we either are miscommunicating or there is a quite insurmountable barrier of understanding between us. Either way, thanks for engaging!

acqq 8y ago
> if you really imagine that Conway's game of life and the unknowable future of that game is analogous to the phenomenon of subjective experience No. Convay's Game of Life does not include all the physical rules that govern the physical world. The actual rules are much, much more complex, but even they can be condensed to a single equation: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/04/the-world-of-everyday-experience-in-one-equation/ http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/04/the-worl... Conway's game is just a minuscule subset of those, but it is, just like the fractal formulas are, completely enough to demonstrate that the emerging properties are never "intuitive" by looking at the rules themselves, and that for the outcomes of most of the rules there are no "shortcuts" -- you have to calculate all the steps, not skipping anything. So I see your claim of "uniqueness" of your "subjective experience" nothing more than a claim that you are unable or not willing to accept that the given rules can produce such emerging properties (and additionally being confused by that property of the rule's application being undecidable for any interesting set of rules and outcomes). As I see it, it's completely obvious, from many examples I've given which show that the emerging properties produced by the application of much more minimal rules were absolutely beyond what people were able to accept. But the "non-intuitive" emerging properties do exist, and the property of undecidability effectively guarantees that nobody can predict them in advance, or imagine an easy "shortcut" to some outcome, and also that you can't claim what you claim (that the outcome you "experience" is impossible) and remain intellectually honest, now after you were made aware of how the emerging properties actually work and what are the properties of most of the applications of the rules. More precisely, to remain intellectually honest, you must admit that the emerging properties you consider "unique" can be the result of the given rules. Your only consistent claim can then be "even if they can, I don't like to think about them as such." Nothing more. On the other side, we can, once we calculate enough, be certain that the application of the rules is enough for any property we observe in any such experiment. Which is what we did with all the simple examples I've demonstrated. But like I've said, there's no shortcut for many steps (for some subsets we do have some, like Newton's laws for exactly two bodies, but see what happens with three already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem -- "Unlike two-body problems, no closed-form solution exists for all sets of initial conditions, and numerical methods are generally required" meaning, again, you have to do all the calculation steps to know what is going to happen), so you not being able to find one shortcut exactly where you'd like is also completely normal and trivial, and can not support any claim. It's the property of how the rules work.