I think if most people consider this philosophy to be deeply confused, it is actually the case that most people are deeply confused. When I read this sentence, I was pleasantly surprised that someone else had figured it out, and even more surprised it was the leader of e/acc (unrelated to the previous surprisal).
I believe you are being serious in your post, but there’s this niggling suspicion in the back of my mind that, if I were satirizing how philosophists talk about consciousness/subjective experience/morality, this is how it would come out. Statements like,
“The world of consciousness. Subjective experience. What it feels like to see red.”
that you see exclaimed everywhere with an undertone of wonder and confusion, and no attempt to really pin down what is meant mathematically. Then a section called “pinpointing the ineffable” saying, “this probably sounds too abstract. Let’s try to make it more concrete,” without actually trying to make it more concrete (mathematically)—just make explicit the wonder and confusion.
The rest of the post builds off of this in a constructive way, so I believe you are being serious here. I just don’t get the confusion around consciousness. As someone else said, the laws of mathematics are enough to explain the phenomenon (though they qualified their statement more). It isn’t a separate world. Subjective experience? Simply a reference to a compressed copy of the self. Ontologies? They’re a little harder to figure out, but I’m pretty sure it’s the significant bits of autoencoding.
And let’s not forget the central question, what about moral goods? Here’s a question for you: is soft actor-critic maxxing energy under entropy regularization, or entropy under energy regularization? They’re the same thing! But if you dig down into the two terms, entropy definitely exists, while energy always feels like a placeholder for something else. Like, “does this policy get the results I want, so I’m going to let it stick around and further evolve?” But that’s just maxxing entropy when you consider part of the game is for the researcher to keep using the policy.
I don’t understand your argument here. I think we don’t have a good mathematical definition of phenomenological consciousness that seems particularly believable to me, and confusing it with access “consciousness” is just one of the many ways where people seem confused about it. It also means that attempting a new mathematical construct is an interesting and valid approach to the problem but surely shouldn’t be your Plan A.
I think the problem is not that, “we don’t have a good mathematical definition of phenomenological consciousness,” it’s that there isn’t a definition at all! My theory is that this babble is useful to survival, because babble can still be used as a justification. On a species level, you still see religious people today saying, “it’s okay to kill and eat animals, but not humans, because humans have souls.” On an individual level, you’re going to fight harder if your brain insists me. On a memetic level, proclaiming to be realer than real, “the thing that is redness”, will get more people talking about it. Doesn’t mean there’s anything there.
Disclaimer: This comment hasn’t really been edited for clarity, cohesion, or politeness. I do think it’s useful, but it’ll definitely be spicy.
I think if most people consider this philosophy to be deeply confused, it is actually the case that most people are deeply confused. When I read this sentence, I was pleasantly surprised that someone else had figured it out, and even more surprised it was the leader of e/acc (unrelated to the previous surprisal).
I believe you are being serious in your post, but there’s this niggling suspicion in the back of my mind that, if I were satirizing how philosophists talk about consciousness/subjective experience/morality, this is how it would come out. Statements like,
“The world of consciousness. Subjective experience. What it feels like to see red.”
that you see exclaimed everywhere with an undertone of wonder and confusion, and no attempt to really pin down what is meant mathematically. Then a section called “pinpointing the ineffable” saying, “this probably sounds too abstract. Let’s try to make it more concrete,” without actually trying to make it more concrete (mathematically)—just make explicit the wonder and confusion.
The rest of the post builds off of this in a constructive way, so I believe you are being serious here. I just don’t get the confusion around consciousness. As someone else said, the laws of mathematics are enough to explain the phenomenon (though they qualified their statement more). It isn’t a separate world. Subjective experience? Simply a reference to a compressed copy of the self. Ontologies? They’re a little harder to figure out, but I’m pretty sure it’s the significant bits of autoencoding.
And let’s not forget the central question, what about moral goods? Here’s a question for you: is soft actor-critic maxxing energy under entropy regularization, or entropy under energy regularization? They’re the same thing! But if you dig down into the two terms, entropy definitely exists, while energy always feels like a placeholder for something else. Like, “does this policy get the results I want, so I’m going to let it stick around and further evolve?” But that’s just maxxing entropy when you consider part of the game is for the researcher to keep using the policy.
I don’t understand your argument here. I think we don’t have a good mathematical definition of phenomenological consciousness that seems particularly believable to me, and confusing it with access “consciousness” is just one of the many ways where people seem confused about it. It also means that attempting a new mathematical construct is an interesting and valid approach to the problem but surely shouldn’t be your Plan A.
I think the problem is not that, “we don’t have a good mathematical definition of phenomenological consciousness,” it’s that there isn’t a definition at all! My theory is that this babble is useful to survival, because babble can still be used as a justification. On a species level, you still see religious people today saying, “it’s okay to kill and eat animals, but not humans, because humans have souls.” On an individual level, you’re going to fight harder if your brain insists me. On a memetic level, proclaiming to be realer than real, “the thing that is redness”, will get more people talking about it. Doesn’t mean there’s anything there.