>Handwaving with a word like processing is meaningless.

Is it though? How is it worse than handwaving with a word like consciousness or experience or qualia?

>I personally am looking to engineer not just AI but synthetic minds.

Good luck with that. Let me know when you know what a mind is and how you would recognize one.

>It's silly because it assumes subjective experience as some sort of magic that happens regardless of the design.

It's not magic at all. It's just chemical reactions.

I believe that there is a standing of inference/conformity to rationally acceptable modes of being when comprehending the environment which we tread . We subsist within a stark difference to the notion of inner being and our own perceptions of what we are as an individual - we only perceive ourselves as homeogenous with our species in depictions which the external form shows , not in any regard with our inner atunements . We apply our own logic and applicable overlay as a processing basis and interaction veil atop a plausibly differenced state of the truth of reality . Every human , from the viewport of themselves, exists as a uniquety of form in and of their own conceptions/perceptions of the entirety of existence . This is rationally negligable but rationality in and of itself is a machination which is taught to us predominantly by the external world . The only true primary evidence of consciousness is withheld within the individual and can never be ported as a shared relation of definable standards.

Beyond this, and taking speciative congruency into account, a suspension of disbelief is required to ever believe with certainty that consciousness exists beyond the realm of the michrochosm that is the specific slice of the anima mundi which you have been blessed with. It is an interesting thing to note

Handwaving with a word like processing is meaningless. I personally am looking to engineer not just AI but synthetic minds. Properties of the materials and the physics matter.

It's silly because it assumes subjective experience as some sort of magic that happens regardless of the design.

Very succinct and thought provoking - thank you

>How something is built and what sort of input it receives, how it's processed is of course relevant to the discussion

No it's not. The mere fact that processing happens is the only thing that matters.

>Making random claims that anything that receives input has subj. experience is silly.

Why is it silly?

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I think it was Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus who said that even with math we are eventually reduced to poetry and art in describing things that which we can not comprehend, as a graph is really an artistic expression of a concept that is essentially meaningless in the form we are expressing it. Thats why people use computers to analyze and create graphs for things that are beyond us. For example, the field of chaos theory, the mathematical definition and properties of chaos, is heavily dependent on numerical analysis and the creation of graphs to look at and analyze. Humans are of course impeded by their perception, I would argue that the 0 division you speak of is a fundamental piece of our universe, that has been boiled down to something we will never fully be able to interface our conscious with, like you said. I believe math is an all seeing eye. Reaching into the depth of the nuance of our universe that we will never touch.

I think that we have been bred selectively for optimum fulfillment of lower tiers of maslow's heirarchy of needs , and so we are very much entirely predisposed towards only interacting with that which is pertinant to the base aspects of reality . In time , perhaps our evolution could be trajected towards us leaving the waters of leadened reality and shaking , subtly, the droplets of physicality from our repurposed vestigialities of form - perhaps this is a heaven or hell . Society has much promise yet seemingly is pushing for nonthinking drones, purposefully subjected to the lower rungs - which is antithetical to advancements of capacity for fulfilling higher tiers of the heirarchy. I think we do purposefully make bad decisions and that it is an affliction of purpose and intent by select members of the species for gain - by will of power inherited and by will of pushing for bad decisions to be made so as to retain the status quo and prevent ascension of the power structure we currently find ourselves in .

We're also like preteens in term of geo-political amoebic poly-autonomous societal entities so it's like - ahhh when's the fermi paradox scythe gonna bring out the dead in nuclear hollocaust

I've heard tell of there being definitive gain from only being privy to base levels of reality - perhaps our trivial life and death - the whole tragedy of the human experience , in terms of species , is a blessing - hubris is a concept of biblical folly

[Tldr:] maybe we should continue to make bad decisions so we can remain gratefully dead , our waking minds asleep to the horrors of what could be - waiting blissfully in our own negligence of comprehension for that slumber , somnium eternal

Also whoa its so cool to actually like talk to somebody ab this i've been ruminating in intellectual isolation for like years now

Here is my 5-minute take on why I think conceptualizing infinity as a part of mathematics is fundamentally wrong (I know it regards mathematics, but in this case it's a metaphysical approach and mathematics is not the main subject or goal, even if it's used to visualize it)

When you think of nothing you think of a imaginary concept of lack of existence which we can't experience or comprehend, yet we can use as a proxy for a state where part of our perception is unable to well... Perceive something, despite it's objective existence (example: air is imperceivable through any of the human senses, yet it does objectively exist). In other words 0 is a symbol that allows us to describe that state. You can't divide with it because the process of dividing is a process that is simply a perceivable representation of a concept of partitioning a defined amount of reality into a defined space. You can have a reality defined as non-existing. Then you divide 0 into a defined space and get 0 as there was no reality to begin with. But you can't have 0 space, as if you take any amount of reality and try to divide it into 0 (non-existent) space it breaks the fundamental rule of existence which is that anything that exists does so in a defined space. And if you try 0/0, so you try to divide non-existance into non-existing space you lose the point of doing such equation - you try to conceptualize something, that by definition has no concept. So it's pointless.

It's actually funny how mathematicians concluded that something as silly as conceptualizing this or any similar concepts as infinity is a valid option - it's not. Again, by basis and fundamental goal maths is supposed to describe and conceptualize in an organized matter reality in which we find ourselves. But if that's the case, the concept of infinity has no place in it. As (even though we can't properly comprehend it) according to what we can observe our reality is, in fact finite. Infinity comes from our inability to perceive beyond observable spectrum if reality, so if anything, ironically infinity is actually a purely human invention. And as such it is childish and immature to use it as a valid concept in something that is supposed to describe reality. Here is a proof that there is a finite amount of numbers: if you use the smallest possible scale (which is a single quark as far as I know right know) and use it to count numbers up, and fill the entire universe perfectly, so that there is no more space for another quark to fit in, you have reached the highest number that exists. That's because anything higher is simply not possible - you can't count, imagine, see or use such a number and it doesn't describe anything. In other words - it doesn't exist. Apply same logic to anything like 1.3333(3), √2 etc. And you get same conclusion - there is an end to it. When you fill the entire universe (or reality if universe is not the only thing in it) with that number that's when it ends. Someone might argue that universe or reality is infinite and you can never fill it up. Well according to the theory of cosmic inflation it in fact is not. And if anything there are more proofs that reality is finite than there are proofs that it's not. One very basic is simply lacks of common infinity outside of human perception. Everything that we describe as infinite is only so for us. On the other hand everything that exists despite us so far is finite.

Deterministic systems are mathematical models, so by definition yes.

Once again, I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean.

> The lore of psychedelia is saturated with information pertaining to this - though i feel a certain amount of salt taken with this is essential due to the mind maintaining a capacity for crafting sub-autonomies which intermingle and provoke self contained feedback states [schizophrenia, tulpas, Dissociative Identity disorder, etc]

Agree, though what so many people overlook when applying salt is that the mind makes things up during normal consciousness as well - the subreddit I linked above is full of not-actually-scientific scientific thinking. You seem less prone to falling for these tricks which is a nice change of pace!

> Either way, they entail a wealth of knowledge and profundity - and until we get "real" "time" readouts of the experiences themselves or anomalous spikes in future variables with meta-tech sensors - it's entirely within the realm of plausible deniability when faced with the [quasi-rightful] tryant that is modern science .

Scientific thinkers do love epistemology, when it works in their favour at least!

> I'm exceedingly interested in detachments from the illicit though - and postulations dealing strictly with the extents of thought in sobriety . Ie - our consciousness defined by the spatial axis' x, y, z is somehow interacted with by a "consciousness" defined by the spatial axis' x, z, z² , what forms of "consciousness" might exist when emergently related to a reality substrate dictated by differing mathematical constants, what forms of "consciousness" exist within the span of a second [their relative experience of existence feels like 80 years], what variables of sustenance exist in the ebbs of post temporal/spatial transcendence - and what avenues of "life" base their "existence" around such things?

I think our (default) consciousness is kind of hardwired to 3D reality and our (human-longevity-distorted) sense of time, and as a consequence we continue to make bad decisions as a species.....what's your take on this theory?

> and how do all of these hypothetical instances relate to the perception of us from an outsider perspective ?

Exactly...which is why I think people often find psychedelic trips "more real than reality" at the time, and are certain of it, but can't recall why afterwards.

> So many questions, so much socioeconomic stiflement, so little time

Ha! Too true, too true.

The lore of psychedelia is saturated with information pertaining to this - though i feel a certain amount of salt taken with this is essential due to the mind maintaining a capacity for crafting sub-autonomies which intermingle and provoke self contained feedback states [schizophrenia, tulpas, Dissociative Identity disorder, etc]

/and/ the fact that it could be archetypes of the mind - noetic excavations of the extents of the atunement of the mind when faced with differing cognitive placements incited by chemical intake

However, religious stances of psychedelics, tesla's viewpoint on the mind [it being a receiver for information created elsewhere], native american beliefs that mental illness is an individuals predisposition towards differing dimensions, and the fact of the matter that high fidelity rated sensory organs of bioware when overclocked and refined through the usage of chemical compounds ['crystalline piezo-electric experience amplifiers' - the dead] may depict valid referentials of aspects of reality [Penrose and Hameroff have this whole theory of quantum computation within scopically sub neuronal architectures of microtubules - with delvings into psychedelia and how it may refine brain wave patterns to ellucidate deeper levels of space time geometry]

Either way, they entail a wealth of knowledge and profundity - and until we get "real" "time" readouts of the experiences themselves or anomalous spikes in future variables with meta-tech sensors - it's entirely within the realm of plausible deniability when faced with the [quasi-rightful] tryant that is modern science .

I'm exceedingly interested in detachments from the illicit though - and postulations dealing strictly with the extents of thought in sobriety . Ie - our consciousness defined by the spatial axis' x, y, z is somehow interacted with by a "consciousness" defined by the spatial axis' x, z, z² , what forms of "consciousness" might exist when emergently related to a reality substrate dictated by differing mathematical constants, what forms of "consciousness" exist within the span of a second [their relative experience of existence feels like 80 years], what variables of sustenance exist in the ebbs of post temporal/spatial transcendence - and what avenues of "life" base their "existence" around such things?

//and how do all of these hypothetical instances relate to the perception of us from an outsider perspective ? - especially when taking into account quantum implications of an observer's relation to it's environment/superposition breakdown - !!does the typoidal "consciousness" dictate , quantumly, it's residence within the nth+ hyperobject which encapsulates our reality - and what occurs when differing strains of "consciousness" enroach upon another's domain? [Strictly by means of observation]

So many questions, so much socioeconomic stiflement, so little time

Only in degrees, sure, but degrees go from zero to infinity, where it is within that range that we sit is the tricky part!

I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure there is a plethora out there depending on what you want to do. A good starting point for Google is "DAG" (directed acyclic graph) which are basically the basis of Pearl's framework (and wildly useful in many other contexts)

I have worked on free will quite a bit and we have it, only in degrees. Kevin Mitchell is working on a great (goingnby his tweets andnpeevious work) book on it right now. Check also George Ellis out wrt top-down causation.

> and if beliefs about consciousness can be debunked, that without experience we can't theorize about it (you need "access") then maybebthere is more to it.

This sounds like its right in the wheelhouse of what I'm interested in, but I can't tell what you're getting at exactly.

> You lost me a bit with the first paragraph. Illusionism wants to negate phenomenal consciousness. Don't think many people can get on that page.

I'm getting at how on specific topics, it seems as if the human mind is unable to distinguish between reality and perception, fact and opinion. Whether we have free will is simply not known, not is it known whether the entirety of the universe is deterministic. If it was otherwise someone could point to a proof (or something approaching it), but all anyone has is stories, most of which have obvious flaws in them. On this topic it's perhaps not such a big deal, but I find the phenomenon annoying and it seems rather dangerous.

Illusionism as held by Dennett, Graziano, Frankish.. has akl the issues Chalmers lists in his meta-problem. It's barely coherent, doesn't provide explanatory value.. and if beliefs about consciousness can be debunked, that without experience we can't theorize about it (you need "access") then maybebthere is more to it.

You lost me a bit with the first paragraph. Illusionism wants to negate phenomenal consciousness. Don't think many people can get on that page.

How something is built and what sort of input it receives, how it's processed is of course relevant to the discussion. Making random claims that anything that receives input has subj. experience is silly.

> His do calculus is interesting, and he's highly influential in the machine learning literature, but he has a fair amount of detractors.

This is a completely uninformed question but I am curious: are there any ML libraries you know of that specifically address causality (like, chains of causality, not simply direct correlation)?

Quantum Metaphysics, a friend argued.

Maybe I don't understand the problem then, because to me if one fully and "properly" accepts that illusionism is in effect (which includes representing heuristics predictions as truths), I'd think a workflow could be worked out such that people would be better able to realize that the core proposition is simply unknown at this point in time, which perhaps could get more people on the same page for a change.

> But we don't need an -ism for that.

Memes can be an effective popular way to get knowledge into otherwise resistant minds, just look at how well "We have no free will!" has worked, despite the truth of the matter being unknown.

>n the case of simple calculators that did not evoove to think and feel like us, we don't.

I said nothing about thinking or evolving. I am merely talking about experience.

>Our brain is an analog piece wetware.

Irrelevant to the discussion.

> Does she lack something?

Does she lack everything?

>OP would say she lacks the experience of red, what would you say?

I don't dispute this. The question is can she detect or understand the experience of red in any way.

as I said before a deaf person can understand that another person can hear and can detect when another person hears.

I do. What makes you think I don't? I was talking about the philosophical position illusionism. I have no issues with the idea that some of the thinks we believe introspectively are mistaken. But we don't need an -ism for that.