Yudkowsky argues that such a being would notice that humans discuss at length the fact that they possess qualia, and their internal narratives also represent this fact.
It’s that the end result (speech) is physical, so any explanation of the world saying qualia are mystical in addition to a generally physicalist picture of the world still has to have a physical interface with the mystical where the purely physical is disturbed by mystical forces. People’s physical words (supposedly caused by qualia in a spiritual realm) would be traceable back to severed nerve endings that magically lit up with energy (not caused by the physical system) to eventually cause those words about internal experience.
On the other hand, if people’s explanations of their experiences are only caused by physical processes unrelated to their experiencing something genuinely spiritual, even if such a spiritual thing were to (be logically intelligible and) exist, then there would still be no evidence or reason to believe in the mystical nature of qualia because people’s explanations and experiences are fully explained by the physical.
It’s not a probabilistic argument, it’s a damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t argument.
It’s that the end result (speech) is physical, so any explanation of the world saying qualia are mystical in addition to a generally physicalist picture of the world still has to have a physical interface with the mystical where the purely physical is disturbed by mystical forces. People’s physical words (supposedly caused by qualia in a spiritual realm) would be traceable back to severed nerve endings that magically lit up with energy (not caused by the physical system) to eventually cause those words about internal experience.
Lessdazed, in other words you are presuming that qualia are a reducible concept that we can in principle break down through various levels into quarks. Firstly, if this is a legitimate presumption do you agree that Yudkowsky’s argument is entirely surplus to requirements (and therefore misleading), since as I demonstrate in my article we can use this presumption to refute Chalmers in a few lines? Secondly do you have nothing to say in response to my argument that we should not presume that qualia—a concept with a seemingly unique quality of utter indefinability—are reducible?
It seems to me that the superintelligence can obtain full knowledge of the existence of qualia, because it necessarily experiences these qualia itself. Therefore, qualia are not “extra-physical” because there is no additional uncertainty surrounding them that is not uncertainty about the physical Universe. However, this only implies some kind of supervenience between qualia and brain states, not that qualia can necessarily be understood as a higher-order phenomenon composed of quarks. That is an empirical question, and based on the unique properties of the qualia concept I see no reason to assume that the thesis of reducibility generalises to include them.
Time for a pop quiz. Try to solve this problem before reading on. Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
Yes~~No~~Cannot be determined
More than 80 per cent of people answer this question incorrectly. If you concluded that the answer cannot be determined, you’re one of them. (So was I.) The correct answer is, yes, a married person is looking at an unmarried person.
Most of us believe that we need to know if Anne is married to answer the question. But think about all of the possibilities. If Anne is unmarried, then a married person ( Jack) is looking at an unmarried person (Anne). If Anne is married, then a married person (Anne) is looking at an unmarried person (George). Either way, the answer is yes.
It’s about considering all possibilities and noticing when multiple ones lead to the same place, one doesn’t have to presume as much as one might think.
a concept with a seemingly unique quality of utter indefinability
The undefinability of a word isn’t a point in favor of the concept it is supposed to represent.
It’s not exactly inconceivable to me, as much as unlikely. What that situation would still imply is that a perfect picture of what all the mere atoms in a locality were doing—including those of speech—would have a readily discoverable flaw when there was a massive inability to predict what would happen at some point after photons hit eyes lasting until some point before the speech emanated. Then there would be a different kind of matter as a component of every mind with qualia—every human mind or nearly so, at least.
you may be an eliminative materialist
I may be what people call that but if you (or I) learn that such a label fits me after you (or I) learn my opinions on all the categories eliminative materialists opine on then you (or I) haven’t learned anything about me from the label. If I try to figure out if others would call me that then I won’t be able to taboo “eliminative materialist” for that inquiry.
It’s not exactly inconceivable to me, as much as unlikely. What that situation would still imply is that a perfect picture of what all the mere atoms in a locality were doing—including those of speech—would have a readily discoverable flaw when there was a massive inability to predict what would happen at some point after photons hit eyes lasting until some point before the speech emanated. Then there would be a different kind of matter as a component of every mind with qualia—every human mind or nearly so, at least.
The way I picture it is that we might obtain a detailed picture of the brain, but all we would find is that the brain has a parallel structure interpreted in a serial way, per Dennett. We would discover that in hindsight we already had a roughly accurate idea in 2011, with some gaps and flaws but no major missing piece, of internal narratives and why humans write philosophy papers, as Dennett has layed out in Consciousness Explained.
Eliminative materialists might then claim victory. However, I argue in my article that if a mind possesses sufficiently detailed information regarding a brain’s structure, then he actually experiences whatever qualia that brain produces because he runs exactly the same computations (and whatever inaccuracy there is in his information about that brain is the same degree of inaccuracy that exists in the similarity of the qualia he experiences).
Therefore, to the extent that a mind can accurately predict another mind’s precise behaviours, he experiences that brain’s qualia because he is essentially running that brain himself. Therefore, there is no additional uncertainty of qualia in addition to uncertainty about the physical configuration of the Universe, which is the precise subject Eliezer and Chalmers were arguing about.
nitpick: it’s still a probabilistic argument because, as you point out, there could be two totally unrelated mechanisms that produce speech talking about qualia and the actual experience of qualia. Obviously that’s super unlikely, but it’s still probabilistic.
nitpick: it’s still a probabilistic argument because, as you point out, there could be two totally unrelated mechanisms that produce speech talking about qualia and the actual experience of qualia. Obviously that’s super unlikely, but it’s still probabilistic.
Exactly my point. Because there should be no probabilistic element concerning qualia if there is no informational uncertainty about the physics of a given brain. Extremely (extremely extremely) likely to have qualia doesn’t cut it.
So I corrected Eliezer’s argument to state that it is us who are merely extremely confident that other human minds have qualia, and our hypothetical omniscient intelligence is certain about whatever qualia that exist in the same way that it is certain about physics. My best understanding of Eliezer’s argument is that the omniscient intelligence is merely extremely confident about qualia existing in given minds, which is not the same thing. But it’s easy to mix the two up by arguing imprecisely.
Comments have focused on my speculation about the irreducibility of qualia, but that was intended as more or less an aside to the main focus of the article.
To be fair, I came in to this thread expecting you to argue my nitpick and then I read some of your post and got confused about what you were arguing. I’m also a but confused about your comment. Where are you drawing the boundary around “a given brain”? Does it include any inaccessible qualia physics?
Where are you drawing the boundary around “a given brain”?
I’m not as such. But the existence of clusters in thingspace that correspond to the referent of our word “brain” is one of many (naturally) unspoken premises in the Yudkowsky-Chalmers debate. As such, I don’t believe that it is my duty to define “brain” precisely nor do I think that it is particularly relevant to the debate to do so.
I meant it’s an argument that attempts to take an inside view into the causes of believing the relative extent to which nature is well-carved at “qualia”, rather than one that takes the outside view of “categories we create are better than chance at describing reality well, because our brains are neat that way, and I feel really confident they’re so good that they almost never mess up”.
I say later “Beliefs are probabilistic” so my beliefs aren’t outside the realm of healthy skepticism, the way Phlebas’ are as he he “suspects” what the outcome of this, as determined by further discovery/thought. My “belief” isn’t different in kind from his “suspicion” regarding the correct answers to these questions we are considering.
It’s that the end result (speech) is physical, so any explanation of the world saying qualia are mystical in addition to a generally physicalist picture of the world still has to have a physical interface with the mystical where the purely physical is disturbed by mystical forces. People’s physical words (supposedly caused by qualia in a spiritual realm) would be traceable back to severed nerve endings that magically lit up with energy (not caused by the physical system) to eventually cause those words about internal experience.
On the other hand, if people’s explanations of their experiences are only caused by physical processes unrelated to their experiencing something genuinely spiritual, even if such a spiritual thing were to (be logically intelligible and) exist, then there would still be no evidence or reason to believe in the mystical nature of qualia because people’s explanations and experiences are fully explained by the physical.
It’s not a probabilistic argument, it’s a damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t argument.
Lessdazed, in other words you are presuming that qualia are a reducible concept that we can in principle break down through various levels into quarks. Firstly, if this is a legitimate presumption do you agree that Yudkowsky’s argument is entirely surplus to requirements (and therefore misleading), since as I demonstrate in my article we can use this presumption to refute Chalmers in a few lines? Secondly do you have nothing to say in response to my argument that we should not presume that qualia—a concept with a seemingly unique quality of utter indefinability—are reducible?
It seems to me that the superintelligence can obtain full knowledge of the existence of qualia, because it necessarily experiences these qualia itself. Therefore, qualia are not “extra-physical” because there is no additional uncertainty surrounding them that is not uncertainty about the physical Universe. However, this only implies some kind of supervenience between qualia and brain states, not that qualia can necessarily be understood as a higher-order phenomenon composed of quarks. That is an empirical question, and based on the unique properties of the qualia concept I see no reason to assume that the thesis of reducibility generalises to include them.
So it’s physical but not based on quarks, neutrinos or anything like that?
I haven’t read it in a while. I remember thinking it could have been more clearly written.
It’s not about presumption. Like here:
It’s about considering all possibilities and noticing when multiple ones lead to the same place, one doesn’t have to presume as much as one might think.
The undefinability of a word isn’t a point in favor of the concept it is supposed to represent.
Possibly. Although this is not an idea that sits comfortably, it is no less “inconceivable” to me than the idea that qualia are reducible to quarks.
In that case, like Dennett you may be an eliminative materialist.
It’s not exactly inconceivable to me, as much as unlikely. What that situation would still imply is that a perfect picture of what all the mere atoms in a locality were doing—including those of speech—would have a readily discoverable flaw when there was a massive inability to predict what would happen at some point after photons hit eyes lasting until some point before the speech emanated. Then there would be a different kind of matter as a component of every mind with qualia—every human mind or nearly so, at least.
I may be what people call that but if you (or I) learn that such a label fits me after you (or I) learn my opinions on all the categories eliminative materialists opine on then you (or I) haven’t learned anything about me from the label. If I try to figure out if others would call me that then I won’t be able to taboo “eliminative materialist” for that inquiry.
The way I picture it is that we might obtain a detailed picture of the brain, but all we would find is that the brain has a parallel structure interpreted in a serial way, per Dennett. We would discover that in hindsight we already had a roughly accurate idea in 2011, with some gaps and flaws but no major missing piece, of internal narratives and why humans write philosophy papers, as Dennett has layed out in Consciousness Explained.
Eliminative materialists might then claim victory. However, I argue in my article that if a mind possesses sufficiently detailed information regarding a brain’s structure, then he actually experiences whatever qualia that brain produces because he runs exactly the same computations (and whatever inaccuracy there is in his information about that brain is the same degree of inaccuracy that exists in the similarity of the qualia he experiences).
Therefore, to the extent that a mind can accurately predict another mind’s precise behaviours, he experiences that brain’s qualia because he is essentially running that brain himself. Therefore, there is no additional uncertainty of qualia in addition to uncertainty about the physical configuration of the Universe, which is the precise subject Eliezer and Chalmers were arguing about.
nitpick: it’s still a probabilistic argument because, as you point out, there could be two totally unrelated mechanisms that produce speech talking about qualia and the actual experience of qualia. Obviously that’s super unlikely, but it’s still probabilistic.
Exactly my point. Because there should be no probabilistic element concerning qualia if there is no informational uncertainty about the physics of a given brain. Extremely (extremely extremely) likely to have qualia doesn’t cut it.
So I corrected Eliezer’s argument to state that it is us who are merely extremely confident that other human minds have qualia, and our hypothetical omniscient intelligence is certain about whatever qualia that exist in the same way that it is certain about physics. My best understanding of Eliezer’s argument is that the omniscient intelligence is merely extremely confident about qualia existing in given minds, which is not the same thing. But it’s easy to mix the two up by arguing imprecisely.
Comments have focused on my speculation about the irreducibility of qualia, but that was intended as more or less an aside to the main focus of the article.
To be fair, I came in to this thread expecting you to argue my nitpick and then I read some of your post and got confused about what you were arguing. I’m also a but confused about your comment. Where are you drawing the boundary around “a given brain”? Does it include any inaccessible qualia physics?
I’m not as such. But the existence of clusters in thingspace that correspond to the referent of our word “brain” is one of many (naturally) unspoken premises in the Yudkowsky-Chalmers debate. As such, I don’t believe that it is my duty to define “brain” precisely nor do I think that it is particularly relevant to the debate to do so.
You are right.
I meant it’s an argument that attempts to take an inside view into the causes of believing the relative extent to which nature is well-carved at “qualia”, rather than one that takes the outside view of “categories we create are better than chance at describing reality well, because our brains are neat that way, and I feel really confident they’re so good that they almost never mess up”.
I say later “Beliefs are probabilistic” so my beliefs aren’t outside the realm of healthy skepticism, the way Phlebas’ are as he he “suspects” what the outcome of this, as determined by further discovery/thought. My “belief” isn’t different in kind from his “suspicion” regarding the correct answers to these questions we are considering.