3 ms·

You report feeling the punch. Detecting a punch, assessing the damage are all useful things to do evolutionarily speaking. At some point if you live in society,

by exe34 3y ago

You report feeling the punch. Detecting a punch, assessing the damage are all useful things to do evolutionarily speaking. At some point if you live in society, it's useful to build a virtual machine that describes what your neighbour feels when you punch him. Now if you run the same virtual machine but with all the inputs being measured rather than guessed at, you end up with an emphatic tale of how you got punched and how it seemed to feel like to get punched. But the system isn't built to know how it works, it's like asking chat gpt how it got the answer - it'll happily make up a plausible explanation. Just like you.

andoando 3y ago
That just explains how one can make up words to describe their experience. You can certainly explain all the observations that humans or animals do from an outside perspective. It doesn't explain the fact that one does indeed actually feel the pain. I am not just making up a tale after the fact that it did hurt, it did in fact hurt! And neither knowing or not knowing how it works, nor making up explanations has nothing to do with it. A robot as I said could easily just say "When you hit me hard, I dont know why but it gives me an instinct to scream and move out of the way" just as easily I could say "I dont know why but what you said made me never want to talk to you again". Qualia is still something we cant describe, so I am not sure what you mean its like making up some gibberish like an LLM does. If you ask me what red is I cant tell you, I dont go "well its like the frequency of light that resembles autumn and golden leaves". Youve either experienced it yourself or you havent.
- exe34 3y ago
  Yes, I believe your account that this is what it seems like to you. The fact that you believe that doesn't make it so.
  - andoando 3y ago
    What does "doesnt make it so" even mean here. If I experience pain, then I dont "actually" feel pain? I don't understand what youre saying.
    - exe34 3y ago
      That's the whole point of an illusion, yes. There are people who claim to have felt the presence of their own accidentally selected dirty or seen other creatures from their preferred mythology. Would you claim that their experience are genuine, that if they saw and felt the presence of mythical creatures, then these creatures must exist?
      - andoando 3y ago
        I would say their experience of it certainly exists yes. No one is claiming these conscience experiments are material reality. It doesnt matter if you call them illusions or hallucinations. It's intriguing that they exist at all. If they simply did not exist there would be no discussion about this in the first place. I mean do you believe an LLM running is equivalent to you experiencing lucid dreams? Whats the difference? Do you think the difference is simply that I say it's different? That if I added some code for the LLM to say "Yes I really do experience lucid dreams", it would be equivalent to your experience of lucid dreams? Or is there something else, entirely unexplained happening from my experiences and a computer making rudimentary calculations to string words together?
        exe34 3y ago
        An LLM thinks in text tokens. A lucid dream is more images and animations - so it'll be something more functionality equivalent to SOTA or DALL-E, but it's probably not diffusion itself. Yes, it exists as a phenomenon in nature, reported by most, if not all humans. It requires an explanation, but it might not have much to do with consciousness/self-awareness/intelligence or whatever you want to call it.
- naasking 3y ago
  > It doesn't explain the fact that one does indeed actually feel the pain. Nobody denies that you "feel the pain", eliminativism simply denies that "feeling the pain" necessarily has implications for what does and does not fundamentally exist, and therefore, whether your perception of pain necessarily reflects some fundamental reality. There is no "pain" in the standard model after all, so either your pain doesn't really exist, or you're suggesting we add something to fundamental physics literally because of feelings.
  - andoando 3y ago
    Why is it assumed the standard model of physics is all encompassing in the first place?The standard model hasnt managed to explain all of physics even. Unless you can explain consciousness with physics, its only reasonable to assume something additional
    - naasking 3y ago
      > its only reasonable to assume something additional No it's not, just like it wasn't reasonable to posit something more was needed to explain the difference between living and non-living matter. See the history of vitalism. Making assumptions that aren't strictly necessary to explain evidence is almost never warranted.
      - andoando 3y ago
        The model of physics itself has changed multiple times to explain physics, at great reservation mind you. Relativity required massive changes in thinking to what we considered physically possible, as did quantum physics (things can just happen by chance without further reason, whaaat?) And in the grand scheme of things, our quest for knowledge has had a very very short timespan. Insisting that the mode of thought that has worked for a few hundred years must persist to eternity is not wise. Assuming the standard model of physics will explain consciousness without any fundamental alternations is just as big of an assumption as the assumption that there is more to the standard model of physics. No different than having assumed newtonian physics could have explained relativity. As far as I can see, current understanding of physics has no conceivable way of explaining how a system suddenly becomes capable of experiencing feeling. And neither is it scientific to deny what is so readily observable to every human being. Lastly, it would seem that you agree that our model of physics is in itself an illusion, within the framework of our conscious experience. On one hand it would appear you say, our conscious experience of reality is the sole way to find truth, and the other, that our conscious experience is flawed and experience of qualia can be discarded entirely. If we are to say "it only appears that you feel pain", how is this different than to say "it only appears that objects move"? The proposal here is that your flawed, conscious experience can produce a truth of an "external" reality, whose laws are capable of forming the vary thing which is producing this flawed perception.
wizzwizz4 3y ago
> At some point if you live in society, it's useful to build a virtual machine that describes what your neighbour feels when you punch him. This is where the argument falls down, for me. Why would this ever happen if your neighbour wasn't feeling things to begin with? Which, considering you're probably the same species as your neighbour, suggests you also feel things. Nothing is explained. We just have a little story that makes us stop asking questions. A thought-terminating cliché.
- andoando 3y ago
  I had the same thought. I was thinking perhaps its like language where at one point no one knew any common words but nonetheless formed a common understanding. But Im not sure that works here. Besides I still dont see how feeling is necessary to accomplish this goal. Youd have to merely teach a robot to emit some unique symbol which another robot interprets as "that hurt". And pain/empathy is just one thing. Theres a lot more to conscious experience. Seeing/hearing/feeling good/bad, etc
- exe34 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - andoando 3y ago
    If youre not interested in the discussion then simply dont reply rather than being rude
- naasking 3y ago
  > Why would this ever happen if your neighbour wasn't feeling things to begin with? If you only believe you have feelings, as eliminativists allege, then the outcome is the same. That's the whole point of p-zombies.

by exe34 3y ago

andoando 3y ago

That just explains how one can make up words to describe their experience. You can certainly explain all the observations that humans or animals do from an outside perspective. It doesn't explain the fact that one does indeed actually feel the pain. I am not just making up a tale after the fact that it did hurt, it did in fact hurt! And neither knowing or not knowing how it works, nor making up explanations has nothing to do with it. A robot as I said could easily just say "When you hit me hard, I dont know why but it gives me an instinct to scream and move out of the way" just as easily I could say "I dont know why but what you said made me never want to talk to you again". Qualia is still something we cant describe, so I am not sure what you mean its like making up some gibberish like an LLM does. If you ask me what red is I cant tell you, I dont go "well its like the frequency of light that resembles autumn and golden leaves". Youve either experienced it yourself or you havent.

exe34 3y ago
Yes, I believe your account that this is what it seems like to you. The fact that you believe that doesn't make it so.
- andoando 3y ago
  What does "doesnt make it so" even mean here. If I experience pain, then I dont "actually" feel pain? I don't understand what youre saying.
  - exe34 3y ago
    That's the whole point of an illusion, yes. There are people who claim to have felt the presence of their own accidentally selected dirty or seen other creatures from their preferred mythology. Would you claim that their experience are genuine, that if they saw and felt the presence of mythical creatures, then these creatures must exist?
    - andoando 3y ago
      I would say their experience of it certainly exists yes. No one is claiming these conscience experiments are material reality. It doesnt matter if you call them illusions or hallucinations. It's intriguing that they exist at all. If they simply did not exist there would be no discussion about this in the first place. I mean do you believe an LLM running is equivalent to you experiencing lucid dreams? Whats the difference? Do you think the difference is simply that I say it's different? That if I added some code for the LLM to say "Yes I really do experience lucid dreams", it would be equivalent to your experience of lucid dreams? Or is there something else, entirely unexplained happening from my experiences and a computer making rudimentary calculations to string words together?
      - exe34 3y ago
        An LLM thinks in text tokens. A lucid dream is more images and animations - so it'll be something more functionality equivalent to SOTA or DALL-E, but it's probably not diffusion itself. Yes, it exists as a phenomenon in nature, reported by most, if not all humans. It requires an explanation, but it might not have much to do with consciousness/self-awareness/intelligence or whatever you want to call it.
naasking 3y ago
> It doesn't explain the fact that one does indeed actually feel the pain. Nobody denies that you "feel the pain", eliminativism simply denies that "feeling the pain" necessarily has implications for what does and does not fundamentally exist, and therefore, whether your perception of pain necessarily reflects some fundamental reality. There is no "pain" in the standard model after all, so either your pain doesn't really exist, or you're suggesting we add something to fundamental physics literally because of feelings.
- andoando 3y ago
  Why is it assumed the standard model of physics is all encompassing in the first place?The standard model hasnt managed to explain all of physics even. Unless you can explain consciousness with physics, its only reasonable to assume something additional
  - naasking 3y ago
    > its only reasonable to assume something additional No it's not, just like it wasn't reasonable to posit something more was needed to explain the difference between living and non-living matter. See the history of vitalism. Making assumptions that aren't strictly necessary to explain evidence is almost never warranted.
    - andoando 3y ago
      The model of physics itself has changed multiple times to explain physics, at great reservation mind you. Relativity required massive changes in thinking to what we considered physically possible, as did quantum physics (things can just happen by chance without further reason, whaaat?) And in the grand scheme of things, our quest for knowledge has had a very very short timespan. Insisting that the mode of thought that has worked for a few hundred years must persist to eternity is not wise. Assuming the standard model of physics will explain consciousness without any fundamental alternations is just as big of an assumption as the assumption that there is more to the standard model of physics. No different than having assumed newtonian physics could have explained relativity. As far as I can see, current understanding of physics has no conceivable way of explaining how a system suddenly becomes capable of experiencing feeling. And neither is it scientific to deny what is so readily observable to every human being. Lastly, it would seem that you agree that our model of physics is in itself an illusion, within the framework of our conscious experience. On one hand it would appear you say, our conscious experience of reality is the sole way to find truth, and the other, that our conscious experience is flawed and experience of qualia can be discarded entirely. If we are to say "it only appears that you feel pain", how is this different than to say "it only appears that objects move"? The proposal here is that your flawed, conscious experience can produce a truth of an "external" reality, whose laws are capable of forming the vary thing which is producing this flawed perception.

wizzwizz4 3y ago

> At some point if you live in society, it's useful to build a virtual machine that describes what your neighbour feels when you punch him. This is where the argument falls down, for me. Why would this ever happen if your neighbour wasn't feeling things to begin with? Which, considering you're probably the same species as your neighbour, suggests you also feel things. Nothing is explained. We just have a little story that makes us stop asking questions. A thought-terminating cliché.

andoando 3y ago
I had the same thought. I was thinking perhaps its like language where at one point no one knew any common words but nonetheless formed a common understanding. But Im not sure that works here. Besides I still dont see how feeling is necessary to accomplish this goal. Youd have to merely teach a robot to emit some unique symbol which another robot interprets as "that hurt". And pain/empathy is just one thing. Theres a lot more to conscious experience. Seeing/hearing/feeling good/bad, etc
exe34 3y ago
[flagged]
- andoando 3y ago
  If youre not interested in the discussion then simply dont reply rather than being rude
naasking 3y ago
> Why would this ever happen if your neighbour wasn't feeling things to begin with? If you only believe you have feelings, as eliminativists allege, then the outcome is the same. That's the whole point of p-zombies.