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> But is there anything subjective left if all information is accessible and available to observation, study and even replay on other simulated brains? It's im

> But is there anything subjective left if all information is accessible and available to observation, study and even replay on other simulated brains? It's impossible to objectively study what it feels like to be another being. One of the canonical examples from the philosophy literature is on what it feels like to be a bat. We can't ever observe what it feels like to be a bat because the only way to know for sure what it feels like to be a bat is to actually BE a bat. But you can't be a bat. Consequently, you cannot know for sure what it feels like to be a bat. Another example from the philosophy literature is the "inverted spectrum hypothesis". Let's say that we make a robot duplicate of you. The robot duplicate of you behaves exactly as you would in all situations. Now let's say that we show the robot a ripe tomato. When you look at this ripe tomato, you will experience a feeling of redness. But for all we know, the robot duplicate of you might feel blueness instead. I.e., it might feel what you feel when you look at the sky on a beautiful summer day. There's no way for us to know the answer to this question. There are also philosophers who argue that a robot duplicate of you would feel nothing at all. E.g., no redness, no blueness. If you want to know more about why someone would believe this, look up Searle's Chinese Room argument. Philosophers who take this point of view believe that any robot will be a "zombie". I.e., it will have all the other sorts of consciousness that we might talk about, but it wouldn't have phenomenal consciousness. This is also sometimes referred to as the "absent spectrum hypothesis".

the8472 7y ago
All those things you mention represent information. Information encoded in matter. Information that can be compared. We could hypothetically compare two neural circuits that respond to red and thus see if they have the same activation profiles for redness. Batness could similarly be simulated and then made available to a human brain as read-only stream, perhaps as a dream-like experience. This is entirely speculative, handwavy and would take fantastic levels of technology, but it does not seem information-theoretically impossible unless you assume that there is something immaterial, at which point things just turn into religion. Thus it is within the realm of scientific study, albeit it requiring currently hypothetical instruments. But so does the study of quantum mechanics in strongly curved spacetime. > If you want to know more about why someone would believe this lookup Searle's Chinese Room argument. I am familiar with it and agree with the position that the (turing-complete) chinese room is simply a way to describe an AGI which speaks chinese and the operator of the room is the computational substrate of the AI and thus a red herring. It's really just an anachronistic analogy.
- nessus42 7y ago
  You're arguing that there is no "hard problem of consciousness". You're wrong. But at least you have plenty of company. Philosophers have been debating this issue rabidly for decades. Huge tomes have been written on the subject, arguing both for and against the "hard problem" being real. We are not going to settle this issue here. I suggest that we come back in a millennium and see if any progress has been made. I don't have high hopes.
  - the8472 7y ago
    You're making it sound more and more like that problem is an invisible pink unicorn.
    - nessus42 7y ago
      > You're making it sound more and more like that problem is an invisible pink unicorn. You might have a point if philosophers had been arguing for decades and written huge tomes on whether or not there is an invisible pink unicorn. But they haven't. The academic philosophy community isn't made up of dimwits. You don't do anyone a service by implying that they are.
      - the8472 7y ago
        I'm not calling anyone a dimwit. Great minds can erect complex thought edifices containing clever arguments but ultimately rest on shaky foundations. E.g. methodically respectable, rigorous studies are made on parapsychology. Newton was studying the occult, european scientists were chasing N-rays. To me qualia, subjective experience, p-zombies and so on either appear to be arguments from insufficient information or require non-material (read: supernatural) phenomena. The former would crumble under sufficiently advanced study, the latter are invisible pink unicorns with people arguing over the exact spectral distribution of pink.
        nessus42 7y ago
        (1) You are being extremely dismissive, indicating that your mind is closed on the topic, so there is really no point in any further discussion. (2) As I mentioned previously, we are not going to settle this debate here anyway. There's a huge amount of literature on the issue. And even just "getting" what the issues are often requires attending a Philosophy of Mind class for weeks or months and doing lots of reading and discussing and philosophizing with an open mind. (3) If your mind is less closed than it seems, and you don't have access to a good Philosophy of Mind class, you might read this book by David Chalmers: https://www.amazon.com/Character-Consciousness-Philosophy-Mind-ebook/dp/B004FPYKW0/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=chalmers&qid=1569536602&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.com/Character-Consciousness-Philosophy-Mi... I'm guessing it'll be kind of a slog, though. And I don't agree with much of what he says, but it's a start at least. He's also the most famous proponent of "the hard problem" (or at least he was when I was actively studying Philosophy of Mind). He's also the person who coined the term "hard problem of consciousness". Or you could start with the Wikipedia page, but I doubt that anyone would be convinced by it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

the8472 7y ago

All those things you mention represent information. Information encoded in matter. Information that can be compared. We could hypothetically compare two neural circuits that respond to red and thus see if they have the same activation profiles for redness. Batness could similarly be simulated and then made available to a human brain as read-only stream, perhaps as a dream-like experience. This is entirely speculative, handwavy and would take fantastic levels of technology, but it does not seem information-theoretically impossible unless you assume that there is something immaterial, at which point things just turn into religion. Thus it is within the realm of scientific study, albeit it requiring currently hypothetical instruments. But so does the study of quantum mechanics in strongly curved spacetime. > If you want to know more about why someone would believe this lookup Searle's Chinese Room argument. I am familiar with it and agree with the position that the (turing-complete) chinese room is simply a way to describe an AGI which speaks chinese and the operator of the room is the computational substrate of the AI and thus a red herring. It's really just an anachronistic analogy.

nessus42 7y ago
You're arguing that there is no "hard problem of consciousness". You're wrong. But at least you have plenty of company. Philosophers have been debating this issue rabidly for decades. Huge tomes have been written on the subject, arguing both for and against the "hard problem" being real. We are not going to settle this issue here. I suggest that we come back in a millennium and see if any progress has been made. I don't have high hopes.
- the8472 7y ago
  You're making it sound more and more like that problem is an invisible pink unicorn.
  - nessus42 7y ago
    > You're making it sound more and more like that problem is an invisible pink unicorn. You might have a point if philosophers had been arguing for decades and written huge tomes on whether or not there is an invisible pink unicorn. But they haven't. The academic philosophy community isn't made up of dimwits. You don't do anyone a service by implying that they are.
    - the8472 7y ago
      I'm not calling anyone a dimwit. Great minds can erect complex thought edifices containing clever arguments but ultimately rest on shaky foundations. E.g. methodically respectable, rigorous studies are made on parapsychology. Newton was studying the occult, european scientists were chasing N-rays. To me qualia, subjective experience, p-zombies and so on either appear to be arguments from insufficient information or require non-material (read: supernatural) phenomena. The former would crumble under sufficiently advanced study, the latter are invisible pink unicorns with people arguing over the exact spectral distribution of pink.
      - nessus42 7y ago
        (1) You are being extremely dismissive, indicating that your mind is closed on the topic, so there is really no point in any further discussion. (2) As I mentioned previously, we are not going to settle this debate here anyway. There's a huge amount of literature on the issue. And even just "getting" what the issues are often requires attending a Philosophy of Mind class for weeks or months and doing lots of reading and discussing and philosophizing with an open mind. (3) If your mind is less closed than it seems, and you don't have access to a good Philosophy of Mind class, you might read this book by David Chalmers: https://www.amazon.com/Character-Consciousness-Philosophy-Mind-ebook/dp/B004FPYKW0/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=chalmers&qid=1569536602&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.com/Character-Consciousness-Philosophy-Mi... I'm guessing it'll be kind of a slog, though. And I don't agree with much of what he says, but it's a start at least. He's also the most famous proponent of "the hard problem" (or at least he was when I was actively studying Philosophy of Mind). He's also the person who coined the term "hard problem of consciousness". Or you could start with the Wikipedia page, but I doubt that anyone would be convinced by it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness