Re: Qualia Question

"1Z" <peterdjones@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Curt Welch wrote:
> > "1Z" <peterdjones@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Curt Welch wrote:
> >
> > > > You brought up the idea of "mechanical" when you wrote:
> > > >
> > > > "There is no reason to insist that everything has to
> > > > be explained mechanically."
> > > >
> > > > I only used the word in response to your comment.
> > >
> > > I only said that because of Lester Zick!
> >
> > That's what I get for commenting without trying to follow the real
> > context!
> > :)
> >
> > Like I said, I have never been able to understand Lester's definition
> > of mechanical.
> >
> > > > We known for a fact
> > > > that different hunks of matter which make up human bodies, are
> > > > still functionally the same in terms of being intelligent.
> > >
> > > There is no evidence that the implementation (the biochemistry)
> > > varies much more widely than the function (intelligence).
> >
> > True. But we only have one example of intelligence to study, so it's
> > no surprise that the one example we have to study (humans), have a lot
> > in common with each other. And since the device is so large and
> > complex, and our tools so primitive, it's no surprise we are still
> > working on the reverse engineering problem. Nothing found in the brain
>
> What about the mind ?

In the "everything is physical" model, the mind and the brain are the same
thing.

Se my other recent post about this. The fact that we assume "thoughts" are
not physical, is where all this confusion over Qualia comes from.

In my model, I've "fixed" that confusion, and everything is physical. The
mind IS the brain. They are the same thing. Anyone you feel the need to
write "mind", try writing "brain" instead, and try to learn to think like
that to see who the "everything is physical" model of reality works.

> >so far indicates
> > that anything odd is happening in there - it's just a big signal
> > processing device which is still too complex for us to figure out. But
> > progress is being made daily, and by all predictions, we will figure it
> > out before too long (a few hundred years at max). There's no
> > indication so far that there is anything there beyond our ability to
> > figure out.
>
> So how are we going to figure out qualia ? Or does that conveniently
> fail to
> feature in what we have to figure out ?

Once you fix the problem of believing the thoughts are not physical, the
qualia become trivial to explain. I've already explained it multiple times
in these threads.

Qualia are nothing more than the internal signals generated by your brain.

> > And since we don't understand the function of the only example we have,
> > it should be no surprise that we have not built a duplicate yet.
> >
> > What do you think would happen if you took a standard PC back in time
> > 100 years and asked the leading scientist and engineers of the day to
> > try and reverse engineer the device? They would have no clue what they
> > were looking at. The don't even know what a transistor is, and they
> > don't have any electronic tools that work at the frequencies our
> > computers run at today. The vacuum tube was only invented in 1904.
> > All they could figure out was that the device as producing a ton of RF
> > noise. It would take them 50 years to figure out what the thing was
> > doing. And that's a simple PC designed by humans. They would have to
> > first master all the technology it was built from, and then create
> > tools just to study it.
> >
> > The fact that we have been looking at the brain in all this time is the
> > same type of problem. Here we have a technology we have not yet
> > mastered and we are slowly developing the knowledge needed to
> > understand what we are looking at.
> >
> > > You are not comparign liek with like. Yes there are variations
> > > between people,
> > > but they are all variations on a theme. The kind of difference that
> > > exists
> > > between a silicon chip and cell is vastly freater than between people
> > > with
> > > O-type and A-type blood. It's a whole different ball-game.
> >
> > Yes. Of course. But I've studied, designed, and built a ton of
> > different machines in my life. In all that study, and work, I found
> > that the implementation can easily change and still provide the same
> > function.
>
> Perhaps that is a defining feature of mechanism. Perhaps it isn't a
> defining feature of organism. The question is not whether one machine
> can duplicate another, but whether either can duplicate a mind.

Again. See my post to Lester about the mind/brain language problem you are
having.

The only reason you see all this as a "problem" is because you have
accepted as _fact_ that the mind is NOT the brain. That there are two
domains of existence in your model of the universe - one for everything
that exists in the physical world, and a separate type of existence for
everything in the "mental" world. The problem you are having is that you
don't see how something physical, can create something in your other domain
of existence - the mental world. You think only a mind can create thoughts
and that they are not physical.

The reason you think this is because 1) that's what you were taught to
believe, and 2) it makes sense because you have never been able to touch,
smell, or see, your thoughts, or the thoughts of anyone else.

We can sense are own thoughts - we have the power to manipulate them with
our mind, just like we have the power to manipulate our arms and legs with
our mind. But yet, we can't use our fingers to touch our thoughts. We
can't see our thoughts or the thoughts of another person. We can't hear
our thoughts. We can't record our thoughts with a tape recorder. All this
makes our thoughts "feel" to us like they must exist in a separate
universe. That's why our forefathers created all this unique language to
describe our thoughts - like "mind", and "thought", and "memory".

This separation of mental and physical has leaked out into many of our
words - like computer hardware vs. computer software. Like tangible vs.
intangible. Are you aware that computer software is in fact just as
physical and "hard" as hardware?

All you have to do to answer all the questions you don't see answers to
about qualia, is accept the idea that the thoughts we sense in our head is
nothing more than the physical activity of our brain. We do not have a
"mind" which is something different from the brain, we only have a brain.
When we "see" something, what we are actually sensing is brain activity.

We are not some separate "thing" which is able to sense the activity of our
brain. We ARE a brain controlling a body. That's all we are.

It's hard to grasp this way of thinking because you have to change the
meaning of about 1000 words, all at once to see how it works.

> > One common function in simple machines is just size and shape. If you
> > want to duplicate the function of a screw, you have to get the size and
> > shape correct - there's just not much room for change.
> >
> > But on the other end of the scale of machines, we find electronics, and
> > computers. Their functional requirements has to do with producing the
> > correct type of signal - i.e., the correct flow of electrons in and out
> > of an electron pipe (write). In these types of machines, the same
> > function can be duplicated with machines that have almost nothing in
> > common in terms of size and shape.
> >
> > You can build a radio out of vacuum tubes, or transistors, and they
> > both work just fine even though the physical and logical operation of
> > tubes is completely different than transistors. You can use simple
> > resistors and capacitors to create a tone control which acts as a
> > filter to shape the sound. Or, you can build the radio all in the
> > digital domain, so it receives the radio signal in a digital format and
> > does the tone control by running mathematical signal processing
> > algorithms on the numbers, instead of doing the work in the analog
> > domain.
> >
> > What we know about building signal processing devices is that the
> > hardware implementation is irrelevant as long as it produces the
> > correct signal, and transforms the signals correctly in the end.
> >
> > There's a lot we don't know about the brain, but the one thing we know
> > every well is that all our conscious intelligent behavior is created by
> > the brain which is acting as a signal processing device.
>
> Since we don't know how the brain works in detail, we don't *know*
> that.
> we just assume it. OTOH, the failure of the assumption to deal with
> consciousness could be a reason for dropping it.

Yeah, you could. But once again, my goal is not to run way from AI. My
goal is to be the first one to create it. To do that, I must assume the
shortest path to the answer is probably the correct one, because if I
don't, and it is the correct one, someone else will take it and beat me to
it. If it's not the right path, then I could loose the race, but more
likely, it means that AI is either not possible, or it's still so far away,
I might die before mankind figures it out.

So, when a short path answers all the questions, and makes a ton of sense,
and enable me to create AI in short order, there's just now reason for me
to waste any time thinking it's wrong.

And though you see to fail to understand it, I have explained
consciousness, and qualia, and all the questions you have asked. All you
have to do to explain it all is throw out the assumption that thoughts
exist in some land of magic, and instead, start with the assumption that
our thoughts are just the physical activity of our brain.

I have two options. I can assume thoughts exist in some non-physical
domain like you do and like a huge percentage of the population believes
(and were taught to believe by the very low level meaning of all the mental
words they have been taught in their life), in which case, AI becomes a
"hard" problem, or I can accept all the physical evidence we have that
tells us thoughts are just the physical and throw out my believe in the
land of magic where thoughts exist, and bring them into the physical world.
When I do that, all the "hard" problems vanish, and we are left with one
fairly easy to define engineering problem standing between us and the
creation of human level AI.

> > And what we know
> > about signal processing devices is that it makes no difference what the
> > hardware is made from (tubes, transistors, or neurons) - if you process
> > the signal correctly, you get the same function.
> >
> > You can encode sound signal in a wire for a phone call, or in a scratch
> > on a wax cylinder which is read with physical contact, or in the pits
> > of CD red by a laser. In the end, it still sounds like a person
> > talking when the signal is used to specify how the air gets moved.
> >
> > With all the work we have done, we have built a huge body of machines
> > which attempt to duplicate intelligent behavior, and all of those
> > devices, that come at all close to duplicating different parts of
> > intelligent human behavior, have to date, been signal processing
> > devices - and none of them used neurons yet that didn't stop them from
> > producing the correct signals.
> >
> > All this adds up to a huge body of evidence telling us that the
> > solution to AI is simply a matter of building a single processing
> > device with the right function and we know for a fact that signal
> > processing devices don't need to be made out of neurons to work.
>
> Assuming you get the intelligence -- will that give yu the
> consciousness?

If my "everything is physical" point of view is correct, yes it will give
us machine consciousness.

> > > > All humans and all machines are built from these same building
> > > > blocks, and the nature of what we can build is of course directly
> > > > controlled by the nature of the building blocks we build with. So
> > > > of course the nature of the building block is the foundation of all
> > > > the functions a machine build from these things can have in our
> > > > universe. In the end, the "function" is defined in terms of these
> > > > same building blocks - so you can't separate the function from the
> > > > building blocks.
> > >
> > > OK. So you can't dulicate neurons in silcon. So AI is impossible ?
> >
> > You seem to have missed my point. The building blocks everything is
> > built from is atoms, not neurons. Transistors and neurons and vacuum
> > tubes are all built from the same building blocks - atoms. We will be
> > able to duplicate the function of the brain using transistors. I'm
> > quite sure of that.
>
> That doesn't follow at all. The fact that everything is made of atoms
> does not mean you can duplicate one bunch of atoms with a different
> bunch.
> Nothing has the exact properties of iron except iron.

Yeah, well, the fictional description of intelligence is something we
haven't been able to agree on so I agree, we can't agree if "biology" is
part of the requirement or not. I know it's not. If you want to believe
it is, you are free to do that. I think there's a ton of evidence
supporting my believe, but if you choose to not agree, that's your right.

But from the little I know about your believes (you seem to ask more
questions than state your own opinions), I sense your prime issue is with
this brain/mind split I'm talking about. You believe the thoughts exist in
some fairy land which no one has been able to explain yet. As long as you
believe that, AI will always look impossible to you, until you see someone
explain it.

But think logically just what that explanation would have to look like. It
would have to exist as some matter in this universe, being physically
moved, by your mind, with no cause other than your mind, moving it. In
order to make your arms move with your mind, we KNOW, you have to make the
neurons in your head fire. So somewhere in your head, neurons must be
firing not in response to the known laws of physical/chemical interactions,
but by "the force" of your mind.

If that is happening, it's never been noticed by all the scientist trying
to figure out the CNS.

> > > > For example, a "machine which spits out H2O molecules" is a
> > > > functional description. But the function is defined in terms of
> > > > the actions of these building blocks.
> > > >
> > > > If you take a device like a network router on the internet, it's
> > > > easy to see how they are functionally equivalent. It makes no
> > > > difference what brand, or design, router, might be located in the
> > > > network between my computer and Google's computers, because I can
> > > > access the web site either way. They are functionally the same.
> > >
> > > Presumably you mean at a high level of description. You also seem
> > > to be saying that physical differences are functional differences at
> > > a low level
> > > of description.
> >
> > Yes exactly.
> >
> > When you say "high level" all you are really saying is, "when I leave
> > out a lot of the details". The details you include however are all
> > defined ultimately in physical terms because the meaning of all those
> > terms were build on words, which were build on words, which started
> > with words which described physical stuff. All our meaning is
> > ultimately grounded back to physical reality.
> >
> > > > It's impossible to create a functional description which is not
> > > > based on the physico-chemical properties of the universe.
> > >
> > > Any kind of functional description ?
> >
> > Yes. I think. Did my double negative confuse you?
> >
> > I was trying to say that all functional descriptions are based on the
> > physico-chemical properties of the universe - including the functional
> > description we call a NAND gate.
>
> I would have held that up as a counterexample. It is defined in
> terms of abstract 1's and 0's.
>
> > > So you can't say that a TTL NAND
> > > gate and a CMOS NAND gate are functionally equivalent ?
> >
> > Of course you can. But the meaning of NAND gate is defined in terms of
> > atoms. There is no other way to define it in this universe. The
> > concept of a "signal" only has meaning in terms of the interaction of
> > physical matter.
>
> But you can't plug a TTL chip into a CMOS socket -- they run off
> different
> voltages. They are funcitonally equivalent in a sense that specifically
> ignores the physical details.

It doesn't ignore all the physical details, just some of them. That's what
a functional description is - a partial physcial description.

> > When you talk about a high level functional description like NAND gate,
> > you leave out the lower level functional description that ties it to
> > physical reality. We can specify the functional description of the
> > NAND gate with a simple truth table which seems to have no connection
> > to physical reality. A CMOS NAND get might for example be a 3.3V device
> > and the TTL a 5 V device, so that they are not in fact directly
> > compatible. But this encoding of logic values was left out of the
> > truth table description of what an NAND gate is.
> >
> > However, it's impossible to build a real NAND gate without filling in
> > the missing functional pieces. You must fill in the missing functional
> > parts which were missing which tie the functional description to
> > physical reality.
>
> Yes, but hat is to do with physicla implementation, not functional
> equivalence.
>
> > Inversely, the only reason we were able to define the function of a
> > NAND gate in the first place was because we were describing the
> > behavior of physical matter. So, the description of a NAND gate is
> > based on logic values, and values can only exist in physical matter -
> > so therefore the functional description of NAND, is tied to, and
> > depended on, the properties of physical matter in our universe.
>
> No, the functional equivalence has to ignore it. Otherwise they turn
> out not to be equivalent at all.

You don't seem to be able to grasp this idea.

A functional equivalnce is ignoring some data, but not all the data. A
functional description of an NAND gate is a partial description of it's
physical behavior. It's a description based on the behavior of physical
objects.

> > > Or an ultimately
> > > fine-grained functional description ?
> >
> > Don't know what point you are getting there.
> >
> > > > When I say only the
> > > > "function" is important, what I'm really saying is that only a
> > > > subset of the total properties of some configuration of matter is
> > > > important. Function is always defined in terms of, and is grounded
> > > > to, the properties of matter in this universe. It's impossible for
> > > > us to create a functional description which is not grounded in the
> > > > physical universe.
> > > >
> > > > So when I say only the function of a human is important, I'm not
> > > > saying anything we don't already know as a fact. We already know
> > > > humans don't have to be identical clones just to be intelligent.
> > > > So we now that only a subset of the behavior of the description of
> > > > the matter we are made from is important to make us "act
> > > > intelligent".
> > > >
> > > > The only thing in question here is whether our physical make-up
> > > > alone is enough to explain human behavior, and human subjective
> > > > experience. I believe it is, and I think it's an obvious "fact"
> > > > that it is, but I don't have the simple evidence to make everyone
> > > > else believe it yet.
> > >
> > > But that -- the absence of ghosts or souls -- doesn't justify AI. You
> > > need
> > > to argue that some level of functioning can be duplciated in a
> > > radically different material substrate.
> >
> > I did that above for you with the discussion about our experience with
> > signal processing devices.
> >
> > Did I mention I can build a signal processing device out of water or
> > light, or chemicals as well?
> >
> > > > If we can
> > > > create robots that act human-like in all ways, including talking
> > > > about how things "feel" to them, including being confused about why
> > > > it feels like it does to them, then I think it will become obvious
> > > > that humans are just "machines" as well, and we will at that point
> > > > know how to describe what type of machine we are as well.
> > >
> > > That is approaching the problem from the wrong end. Why should we
> > > think such duplication is possible in the first place ?
> >
> > Because I'm an engineer that wants to be the person who built the first
> > human level AI. Why I want to do it has everything to do with how I
> > should approach the problem.
> >
> > The point is, we don't know if it's possible, but there is also no
> > evidence showing it's impossible. We just don't have enough data to
> > answer the question either way. Those of us that want it to be
> > possible approach it from my direction - we assume it's possible and
> > will continue to do so as long as we can explain away any data that
> > suggests it is not possible. And so far, that's been easy to do.
>
> > People that don't want it to be possible, or for whatever reason, have
> > simply chosen to believe it's not possible, will not change their mind
> > until someone can offer proof that it is possible. No one has that
> > proof yet. It will only come in the form of machines which act
> > intelligent and human in all ways. Until people on my side of the
> > fence can do that, we have no hope of winning an argument that AI is
> > possible. Because the ultimate defense from the other side is always -
> > if it's possible, why can't you build one?
> >
> > When we get human-level machines running, then we will be faced with a
> > new level of debate - are they really conscious? Are they sentient? I
> > think that debate will be much like the evolution debate. Many people
> > will just not accept that the machines are conscious like humans are
> > conscious. In the end however, we will both know how to build these
> > machines, and we will have a complete understanding of how the brain
> > works to show that it is performing the same function as the machines.
>
> Will the machines arive before the understanding of the brain arrives ?

I think so.

It depends on how complex AI really is. I think it's simple - and if that
idea is correct, the machine will come first. Other people think AI is the
product of billions of years of evolution and is complex as hell. They
believe it's going to take a ton of complex engineering with tons of
complex modules all working together. Most on that side of the fence
believe that taking the brain apart, neuron by neuron, is the only want to
figure out what evolution did in those billions of years.

> How often is an engineering problem solved before a science problem ?

I'm solving the science problem by doing engineering experiments. The
machine design is the hypothesis (I hypothesize that design X will produce
human level intelligence), I then produce an experiment to test the
hypothesis - I build it and see if the behavior of the machine is
human-like. When it's not, I study the difference between the machine(s)
and humans, and evolve the design until there is no difference left between
the machine and humans.

So AI engineering is science as well. It's just a different approach to
the same problem.


> > So there will be no doubt
> > about what we are. Like evolution, which still, after 100 years, is
> > not fully believed by more than half of the people in the world, it
> > will probably take a long time for society to accept what has been
> > found and to change the culture to embrace the idea.
> >
> > > Insisting that people are
> > > entirely physical doesn't demonstrate that.
> >
> > Right, it doesn't. I can't demonstrate it. I can only demonstrate
> > that there are answers to all the questions that are consistent with
> > the point of view that AI is possible. If you take my stance on
> > explaining what we are, it gives us answers to all the questions. The
> > huge missing pieces of the puzzle however is that we don't have a
> > conscious intelligent machine yet. Until we get that job done,
> > everything else is just idle chat to a non believer.
> >
> > To a believer however - someone like me that wants to solve this
> > problem, it's not just idle chat - it's important data about the path
> > we must take to solve AI. If it's possible, everything must be
> > physical.
> >
> > > Physical things can have unique, unreproducible properties.
> >
> > Like what?
>
> AFAIK every substance has a different boiling point.

You said unreproducible properties?

I can take my electron/proton/neutron building blocks, and build a copy of
your jar of water, and my clone jar of H2O will have the same boiling
point. How is that an unreproducible property? It's trival to reproduce.

> > And what evidence do you have to support the idea that if we
> > cloned the device at the atomic level, that the clone would not have
> > all the same properties.
>
> None, but the issue is whether you can reproduce consciousness in
> silicon.

Yeah. That's why I'm creating experiments to answer that question.

The plan is very simple. I keep evolving my machine designs until I get
one that acts human in every way I (and anyone else) can think to measure.
Then, if I get that done, I'll let it debate the issues with humans that
still think it is not conscious. :)

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

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