4 ms·
This article, and the author's critique of Ray Kurzweil's latest book, which was also on HN last week, makes me think about a powerful point made by David Deuts
by adriand 14y ago
This article, and the author's critique of Ray Kurzweil's latest book, which was also on HN last week, makes me think about a powerful point made by David Deutsch in his book "The Beginning of Infinity". He says (excuse the paraphrasing) that explanation-less theories are useless and bad science. Devoid of an explanation, data are meaningless and can be interpreted in countless nonsensical ways.
When it comes to consciousness the problem is not that we haven't built a big enough simulation with enough neurons, but rather that we lack an explanation for consciousness and its associated complex phenomena, like qualia. When we can explain consciousness, he suspects it will be easy to program. Conversely, if you can't program it, you don't understand it.
- thirdtruck 14y agoThe notion of "qualia" confuses me. Tracking down such a thing sounds like trying to find the essential "Tuxness" of a given Linux installation. If I install one kernel patch, does that make the system "less Linux-y"? What if that patch was a bug fix by Torvalds himself? Would that have the opposite effect? I know the answer to the questions above: they're nonsense questions, so answers don't even enter the equation. We have identified specific modules of the brain that, among other things, let us distinguish faces from mere shapes, friends from strangers (even when it comes to the same individual), and language processing itself. Our own sense of self seems to reduce to a distinct, toggle-able neurological phenomenon. In short, the very idea of qualia reduces to just various artifacts of our brain's multiple systems of abstraction.