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There is no way you disprove solipsism. I could be typing this into the void, believing that there are actual conscious human beings on the other side who are

There is no way you disprove solipsism. I could be typing this into the void, believing that there are actual conscious human beings on the other side who are going to read this. But then again, there might not be and I have no way of knowing. It's a disturbing thought that it's all just in my mind. > But lately I’ve been haunted by the ubiquity of competence without comprehension. Even without comprehension, there would be consciousness. The examples of brushing ones teeth or driving a car, which allow people to "zone out" without comprehension, doesn't mean they are suddenly unconscious.

wildermuthn 6y ago
I disagree. Disproving solipsism is the same task as proving that a Philosophical Zombie (a non-conscious human that behaves no different than a conscious version of itself) is a logical impossibility. This proof only requires demonstrating a single scenario where it would be logically impossible for a p-zombie to behave in the same way as a non-p-zombie. It comes down to data. A conscious entity has data about “what it is like to have consciousness.” A p-zombie doesn’t. A p-zombie’s mind lacks the data that enables it to comprehend the very idea of solipsism. We can replicate this here. Tell me, what is it like to have a yargabizad? Do you think you might be the only person on earth to have a yargabizad? What if they are just pretending to have a yargabizad, and are just going through the motions of having a yargabizad without really having the experience of a having a yargabizad?
- EMM_386 6y ago
  > A conscious entity has data about “what it is like to have consciousness.” A p-zombie doesn’t. A p-zombie’s mind lacks the data that enables it to comprehend the very idea of solipsism. What about a computer that can pass the Turing Test and can make you believe it knows all about experiencing consciousness? I can tell you whatever you might want to hear about my experience of consciousness, but how do you know I'm actually conscious? What if it is just an elaborate ruse?
  - wildermuthn 6y ago
    My assertion is that it would be impossible for a non-conscious entity to speak convincingly about consciousness. But to be more specific, I think of qualia as a kind of combinator. You can combine qualia together to produce new qualia. So for example, combine the number 5 with the color yellow. Now you see a yellow 5 in your imagination. Now think of combining yellow with blue. You see green? Now think of adding a yellow 5 to a blue 2. You see a green 7? As simple as this little-thought experiment is, training a non-conscious program to follow along would require teaching it the patterns involved in math and color combination. But because any qualia can be combined with any other qualia, you have infinite patterns that cannot be captured in any training set. Ultimately what this means is that qualia, creativity, and intelligence are the same thing.

wildermuthn 6y ago

I disagree. Disproving solipsism is the same task as proving that a Philosophical Zombie (a non-conscious human that behaves no different than a conscious version of itself) is a logical impossibility. This proof only requires demonstrating a single scenario where it would be logically impossible for a p-zombie to behave in the same way as a non-p-zombie. It comes down to data. A conscious entity has data about “what it is like to have consciousness.” A p-zombie doesn’t. A p-zombie’s mind lacks the data that enables it to comprehend the very idea of solipsism. We can replicate this here. Tell me, what is it like to have a yargabizad? Do you think you might be the only person on earth to have a yargabizad? What if they are just pretending to have a yargabizad, and are just going through the motions of having a yargabizad without really having the experience of a having a yargabizad?

EMM_386 6y ago
> A conscious entity has data about “what it is like to have consciousness.” A p-zombie doesn’t. A p-zombie’s mind lacks the data that enables it to comprehend the very idea of solipsism. What about a computer that can pass the Turing Test and can make you believe it knows all about experiencing consciousness? I can tell you whatever you might want to hear about my experience of consciousness, but how do you know I'm actually conscious? What if it is just an elaborate ruse?
- wildermuthn 6y ago
  My assertion is that it would be impossible for a non-conscious entity to speak convincingly about consciousness. But to be more specific, I think of qualia as a kind of combinator. You can combine qualia together to produce new qualia. So for example, combine the number 5 with the color yellow. Now you see a yellow 5 in your imagination. Now think of combining yellow with blue. You see green? Now think of adding a yellow 5 to a blue 2. You see a green 7? As simple as this little-thought experiment is, training a non-conscious program to follow along would require teaching it the patterns involved in math and color combination. But because any qualia can be combined with any other qualia, you have infinite patterns that cannot be captured in any training set. Ultimately what this means is that qualia, creativity, and intelligence are the same thing.