The problem with taking physics as fundamental and working up from there is that it forces us to make a lot of assumptions about the nature of the hardware that underlies reality, which are not supported by observation.
I say this because in order to make an observation we have to describe the observation in terms of the hardware in the form that we assume it has. We can claim to observe the sun rising in the east or the number of atoms in a box, but these are actually judgment about our observations and these judgments are formulated in terms of the hardware
Such assumptions have repeatedly turned out to be a bad idea.
It also forces us to ignore the observations, our experiences, that lead to these judgments because they can not be formulated in terms of the hardware.
We can try to avoid this by saying our experiences take place at a higher level, but this still leaves the problem that there isn’t any way to formulate experience in terms of the type of hardware assumed, so we have no idea what to look for at the higher level. One could then say that anything that can not be formulated in terms of the type of hardware assumed does not exist. But, this forces us to ignore our observations and hold on to assumptions that contradict evidence that is continually beating us over the head.
We can avoid this by not making any assumptions about hardware, and instead using the structure of subjective experience as our foundation.
Eventually we should know enough to be able to open our brains and have experiences that are far more different from anything anyone has experienced then the difference between green and bliss, and by then we may have a clear enough idea of whats going on to identify qualia bearing structures, and even communicate qualia directly, but until then i don’t think we can say much about hardware other then there seems to be something out there even when we aren’t looking and it is correlated with our experiences.
With regard to the matrix,
I had guessed that Morphious just didn’t know about thermodynamics or why the machines kept people alive, and that the matrix was second life gone wrong… or right… depending on how you look at it.
Or perhaps that the ai were instantiated in a literal collective unconscious of human brains
The problem with taking physics as fundamental and working up from there is that it forces us to make a lot of assumptions about the nature of the hardware that underlies reality, which are not supported by observation.
I say this because in order to make an observation we have to describe the observation in terms of the hardware in the form that we assume it has. We can claim to observe the sun rising in the east or the number of atoms in a box, but these are actually judgment about our observations and these judgments are formulated in terms of the hardware
Such assumptions have repeatedly turned out to be a bad idea.
It also forces us to ignore the observations, our experiences, that lead to these judgments because they can not be formulated in terms of the hardware.
We can try to avoid this by saying our experiences take place at a higher level, but this still leaves the problem that there isn’t any way to formulate experience in terms of the type of hardware assumed, so we have no idea what to look for at the higher level. One could then say that anything that can not be formulated in terms of the type of hardware assumed does not exist. But, this forces us to ignore our observations and hold on to assumptions that contradict evidence that is continually beating us over the head.
We can avoid this by not making any assumptions about hardware, and instead using the structure of subjective experience as our foundation.
Eventually we should know enough to be able to open our brains and have experiences that are far more different from anything anyone has experienced then the difference between green and bliss, and by then we may have a clear enough idea of whats going on to identify qualia bearing structures, and even communicate qualia directly, but until then i don’t think we can say much about hardware other then there seems to be something out there even when we aren’t looking and it is correlated with our experiences.
With regard to the matrix, I had guessed that Morphious just didn’t know about thermodynamics or why the machines kept people alive, and that the matrix was second life gone wrong… or right… depending on how you look at it.
Or perhaps that the ai were instantiated in a literal collective unconscious of human brains