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> My strong intuitive hunch is that we'll never build something electronic that can experience things (that it feels like something to be that device). The Bek

> My strong intuitive hunch is that we'll never build something electronic that can experience things (that it feels like something to be that device). The Bekenstein Bound tells that us that any finite volume has finite information. That means our brain is describable by finite information, including our feelings. So why can't that information be translated into an electronic form? The only way out of this conclusion is to assert that "experience" cannot be captured by physics. Is that your position?

BoardsOfCanada 4y ago
Yes. I used to be a hardcore materialist, I studied applied physics at university as a young know-it-all, and never reflected on how absolutely weird "experience"/quale is until years later and changed my mind. But if anyone can explain how to get from matter to experience I would be relieved :) What do you think?
- naasking 4y ago
  I suggest reading the following paper for how neuroscience is starting to tackle this: A conceptual framework for consciousness, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119#fig01 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119#fig01
  - BoardsOfCanada 4y ago
    Thanks for the link. It seems to me though, that it's no easier to explain having the illusion of experience than to explain actual experience (and vice versa). I've heard Joshua Bach talk in similar terms and I frankly do not get it.
    - naasking 4y ago
      > It seems to me though, that it's no easier to explain having the illusion of experience than to explain actual experience (and vice versa). The paper goes over that too: 1. The brain uses information to build models, 2. all brain models are necessarily inaccurate. Therefore quale are inaccurate models of perceptions and/or models of perceptual memory, where some information has been thrown away, as we do with all models. The redness of an apple is a distorted sense memory of the apple, just with all the "appleness" thrown away leaving only the "redness", which is why they seem so vague and ephemeral.
      - BoardsOfCanada 4y ago
        I don't see how we're one step closer to qualia. I'm pretty sure I'm missing the main point of the paper and I'll read it again tomorrow. If I and some other people would follow a certain algorithm, the one in the paper, but refined and perfected for a thousand years... Calculating with pen and paper the progression of states from a suitable initial state... Would an illusion of experience/qualia appear somewhere just from our calculations? Would it feel like something to be the state represented in the numbers? Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
        naasking 4y ago
        > Calculating with pen and paper the progression of states from a suitable initial state... Would an illusion of experience/qualia appear somewhere just from our calculations? Would it feel like something to be the state represented in the numbers? No, why would some data scribbled on paper describing qualia in a model of a brain reproduce that qualia in your brain? If you write code on a piece of paper, does your laptop suddenly execute that code? If your laptop takes a picture of that scribbled code, does it then execute that code? If you take a picture of it and then OCR it, does it execute that code? If you take a picture of it, OCR it, and then feed it to the right compiler/runtime does it execute the code? As you can see, there are numerous layers of translation to get the information in the right form and in the right place. "The right form" for our qualia is the form we evolved to perceive. I'm not sure why one would expect information in any other form to produce quale.
        BoardsOfCanada 4y ago
        Not in my brain, in some context within the numbers. It seems that it's purely about measurement, modeling, errors, and other things that can be expressed as a computer program. I only chose pen and paper for the whole process to seem less magical. Suitable inputs from the programs "environment" would be incorporated in the updates of the state.
        naasking 4y ago

BoardsOfCanada 4y ago

Yes. I used to be a hardcore materialist, I studied applied physics at university as a young know-it-all, and never reflected on how absolutely weird "experience"/quale is until years later and changed my mind. But if anyone can explain how to get from matter to experience I would be relieved :) What do you think?

naasking 4y ago
I suggest reading the following paper for how neuroscience is starting to tackle this: A conceptual framework for consciousness, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119#fig01 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119#fig01
- BoardsOfCanada 4y ago
  Thanks for the link. It seems to me though, that it's no easier to explain having the illusion of experience than to explain actual experience (and vice versa). I've heard Joshua Bach talk in similar terms and I frankly do not get it.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > It seems to me though, that it's no easier to explain having the illusion of experience than to explain actual experience (and vice versa). The paper goes over that too: 1. The brain uses information to build models, 2. all brain models are necessarily inaccurate. Therefore quale are inaccurate models of perceptions and/or models of perceptual memory, where some information has been thrown away, as we do with all models. The redness of an apple is a distorted sense memory of the apple, just with all the "appleness" thrown away leaving only the "redness", which is why they seem so vague and ephemeral.
    - BoardsOfCanada 4y ago
      I don't see how we're one step closer to qualia. I'm pretty sure I'm missing the main point of the paper and I'll read it again tomorrow. If I and some other people would follow a certain algorithm, the one in the paper, but refined and perfected for a thousand years... Calculating with pen and paper the progression of states from a suitable initial state... Would an illusion of experience/qualia appear somewhere just from our calculations? Would it feel like something to be the state represented in the numbers? Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
      - naasking 4y ago
        > Calculating with pen and paper the progression of states from a suitable initial state... Would an illusion of experience/qualia appear somewhere just from our calculations? Would it feel like something to be the state represented in the numbers? No, why would some data scribbled on paper describing qualia in a model of a brain reproduce that qualia in your brain? If you write code on a piece of paper, does your laptop suddenly execute that code? If your laptop takes a picture of that scribbled code, does it then execute that code? If you take a picture of it and then OCR it, does it execute that code? If you take a picture of it, OCR it, and then feed it to the right compiler/runtime does it execute the code? As you can see, there are numerous layers of translation to get the information in the right form and in the right place. "The right form" for our qualia is the form we evolved to perceive. I'm not sure why one would expect information in any other form to produce quale.
        BoardsOfCanada 4y ago
        Not in my brain, in some context within the numbers. It seems that it's purely about measurement, modeling, errors, and other things that can be expressed as a computer program. I only chose pen and paper for the whole process to seem less magical. Suitable inputs from the programs "environment" would be incorporated in the updates of the state.
        naasking 4y ago