There's a difference between describing the brain receiving data and describing me seeing red. I don't experience myself as a brain, and I certainly don't experience "receiving data", so your description of these things would not be of things I experience when I see red.
sure it is, simply make it your brain that we describe and it will be you seeing red. the brain being described doesn't experience itself as a brain...so what?
It's the difference between describing how something works and describing what something's like to the person doing whatever it is you're describing. Science can (arguably) get at how something works, or at least make some predictions and models concerning these things, but that's not the same as getting at what something's like, from a "subjective" standpoint.
Scientists can ask me about what the experience of "red" is like, and I can tell them that it's not quite like blue or green, and can point to it, but the experience itself (like all experience) remains a completely private matter for me.
Just think about it. Look at any red object and compare it with any "scientific" description regarding wavelengths and retinas, neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters, visual cortexes, atoms, molecules, or what have you. Clearly none of these thing are in any way related to what it's actually like for you to see that red object.
Now, you may well believe that what's going on when you look at a red object is "really" some interaction between what those scientific terms describe in some model of what's going on with your brain, sensory organs, etc. But this requires a sort of suspension of disbelief, as you have to set aside your actual "subjective" experience of the red object itself (an experience which lacks the mediation of all these scientific terms, models, or even what they refer to, as you don't experience the neurons, or retinas, or neurotransmitters, as such, you just see the red object).
The subjective experience is really where science is quite helpless. It's been this way for hundreds if not thousands of years, and there's no sign it's getting any closer now.
Scientists can ask me about what the experience of "red" is like, and I can tell them that it's not quite like blue or green, and can point to it, but the experience itself (like all experience) remains a completely private matter for me.
Most emphatically, no. Well, I suppose yes, for now, but that's only because your complete brain state is effectively hidden from the scientist because we don't have the technology to get a good picture of what's going on inside. Give us a decent real time high resolution scanner, and your "private" experience is just another data set on a big computer somewhere.
A C++ program would be pretty damn inscrutable, too, if we couldn't core dump when things went wrong...
Look at any red object and compare it with any "scientific" description regarding wavelengths and retinas, neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters, visual cortexes, atoms, molecules, or what have you. Clearly none of these thing are in any way related to what it's actually like for you to see that red object.
Look at any Youtube video and compare it with the "computer science" description, with bits and bytes and encodings, filtered through the Flash player, etc. One could argue that these things are clearly unrelated to some kid getting whacked in the nuts by his brother, but one would be wrong.
I'm extremely reluctant to accept the notion that our physical brains have no relation to how we experience the world (an idea you seem eager to accept) - we don't understand it very well, true, but that's partially because we're pretty stupid, and partially because we're not very far along in understanding it yet.
All that it takes for you to claim subjective experience is for your brain to be programmed to respond to the question "Do you have subjective experience of the color red?" in the affirmative. To me, that's a lot easier to swallow that that's the case than to imagine there's Magic going on here...and yup, I'm happy to apply the same logic to my own experience, I don't attribute anything special to it other than a mere self-reinforcing computational delusion.
Personally, I find that a far more fascinating thing than the alternative, anyways...
Now, you may well believe that what's going on when you look at a red object is "really" some interaction between what those scientific terms describe in some model of what's going on with your brain, sensory organs, etc. But this requires a sort of suspension of disbelief, as you have to set aside your actual "subjective" experience of the red object itself
It really doesn't, though, unless you already ascribe something mystical and aphysical to this "subjective experience," begging the question.
Someone else brought up the idea of a pzombie, someone that responds in every way as if they had subjective experience, but really doesn't. Getting past WTF that would actually mean, since nobody ever bothers to define "subjective experience," I think the heart of the question is this: if a pzombie responds internally as if it had subjective experience as well as externally, then isn't that enough for us to say that it does? That's why I'm happy to write the whole thing off as a non-issue, even when thinking about my own experience - the fact that I believe I experience "red" means nothing more than that I believe it.
IMO anyone arguing against that first has to figure out what it means for a pzombie to lack subjective experience even though it looks, walks, talks, acts, and thinks as if it did. Otherwise the argument is pretty pointless, kind of like asking what the world would be like if the prime number theorem was false.
>Give us a decent real time high resolution scanner, and your "private" experience is just another data set on a big computer somewhere.
That huge dataset still won't tell you what it's like to see red, though. It will just tell you what happens in the brain when someone sees red.
>It really doesn't, though, unless you already ascribe something mystical and aphysical to this "subjective experience," begging the question.
You don't have to do anything of the sort. You just note that there's nothing in the physical description which corresponds to the subjective quality of your experience. To make it more concrete, there's nothing that explains why seeing red isn't like seeing blue and vice versa.
constantly asserting that "it just isn't" does nothing for your case.
hypothesis must be differentiable via making different predictions about the world. otherwise they're not really different.
(I'm not parent, I'm the one who originally asked the question.)
Certainly, a _scientific theory_ is judged based on its predictive power. This is why I mentioned my opinion, earlier, that science is "the art of useful fiction." The goal isn't to achieve truth but to predict.
Philosophy, on the other hand, is concerned with what is _really_ true, not predictions.
Certainly, the experience of qualia has no effect demonstrable to an outside observer. That doesn't make it any more or less real. I experience, therefore it must exist. I merely can't prove it to you. The great thing is that you can prove it to yourself. All you have to do is pause for a moment and rationally examine what you feel.
If your interested in an attempt to explain it from a materialist perspective, you may wish to look at Roger Penrose _The Emperor's New Mind_. He argues that consciousness is intricately tied to QM. Or at least I think he does... It's difficult reading and I haven't read the whole thing yet!
what is _really_ true IS what makes the best predictions. Otherwise in what sense is it true? Qualia has no effect demonstrable to an inside observer because you have no other data points to compare to. You have only one data point: your own consciousness.
Neither will saying "it just does." How do you think that seeing a detailed brain scan would tell you what it is like to see red? It's extraordinary that you think the burden of proof is on those who simply deny the near-inconceivable possibility that it would.
The problem is precisely one of predictions. Physicalism doesn't predict the existence of conscious experience. (And if you really think its necessary to give an argument for the existence of these experiences other than "we all have them and know that we have them," I am not sure what to say -- you are simply in denial.)
Physicalism doesn't predict the existence of conscious experience. (And if you really think its necessary to give an argument for the existence of these experiences other than "we all have them and know that we have them," I am not sure what to say -- you are simply in denial.)
It is absolutely necessary to give an argument for the existence of these experiences.
I know that you believe you have them, and that I believe I have them, but that doesn't mean that they have any tangible reality, it just means that our brains store things in a way that they will respond "yes, I have conscious experience."
Alternatively, should I accept as real everything that a person believes they experience? A schizophrenic's voices are real? A memory of a past trauma that is, in fact, a false memory, proves that the past trauma is real? This is a very dangerous path to walk, accepting the validity of introspection as a means of investigating the world...
>I know that you believe you have them, and that I believe I have them, but that doesn't mean that they have any tangible reality
It does in the case of experiences. I can't even conceive of what it would mean to be mistaken about the very fact that you are having experiences. It would be a very different sort of mistake from that of being mistaken about the _object_ of an experience (thinking that you are hearing voices when there aren't any, etc. etc.)
Also, your use of the word "tangible" is very odd in this context. Almost by definition, nothing could be more tangible than an experience.
I just reread the first chapter of Penrose's _The Emperor's New Mind_ so this is based off of it.
Let's simplify the problem to just conversation, for the sake of simplicity. Suppose we have a program that can pass the Turing test... But the way it is constructing it's responses is only a more capable version of the emacs psychiatrist. Does it have consciousness?
I posted a link to ENM in another post. Maybe look at the first chapter. It hits the nail on the head, IMHO.
EDIT: Or even just read the first few pages... It seems to introduce it decently, if your short on time.
Synethesia is a very common (temporary) effect of psychedelic drugs. This means that most everyone has the ability to sense synethetically. It's just a matter of somehow triggering this experience in one's brain.
It's a pity that research on psychedelic drugs is so difficult to do legally in the US (where the overwhelming majority of research money is spent). Otherwise, it might have already been possible to develop drugs that target just the synesthetic experience without bringing on a full psychedelic trip (not to mention the many other benefits that scientific research in to psychedelics would very likely have had).
This may be true, when "synethetic" and "psychedelic" are used as specialist jargon for describing films or various effects in film. But it's not true in the general, colloquial sense of these terms, which refer to either a type of sensation or to a type of drug.
Psychedelic literally means "mind-manifesting", while the etymology for synethesia comes from "sense" and "together".
The word "psychedelic" was specifically coined as a way to describe the drugs that were previously called "hallucinogens" and "psychotomimetics", and it was an attempt to remove the inaccurate and negative connotations that those other words had.
Synethesia, on the other hand, refers to a specific type of sensation, and not to a drug.
Also, psychedelic drugs have many, many other effects apart from synethesia (which isn't present in every trip or for everyone taking psychedelic drugs, anyway).
So in the usual sense of these terms (not in the sense a film critic might use them), these two words have quite different meanings.
I hate uncommented code. When reading code I want to know what the programmer is trying to achieve (which is not infrequently different from what his code actually does).
I also often find myself wanting to just get a quick overview of what's going on instead of needing to dive in to the nitty-gritty of the implementation of a given block of code. Well-written comments help me get a bird's eye view of the code.
Certainly, uncommented code which is well written is better than uncommented code which is poorly written (and arguably better even than commented code which is poorly written), but good comments only improve code.
Still, despite my disagreement with the article, I'm upvoting it, because I think it's important to discuss issues such as this.
Upvoting a submission also adds it to a list of saved submissions. Thus, if one uses that list to remember interesting articles, discussions, or things that one wishes to read, upvoting many articles which one does not necessarily want saved would dilute that list.
Yea I just found out about that feature. I was trying to figure out how to add an article to my saved list and was dumbfounded to find the one I wanted to save already in my list! I thought for briefly (for as long as my intelligence would allow) Ycombinator had read my mind and it turned out it was cause I voted it up. Yep, so intuitive!
Oh. I guess I never used that feature. I just either bookmark the link in my browser, keep a tab open with that article, or just keep the original link to the story in my RSS reader.
Then I'm sure you won't mind me down voting you for being ridiculous (since "x points" is the first thing at the beginning of every comment/submission)
I thought the points was just a rating for the comment or submission. I didn't realize those points were transferred to the user that made the comment/submission.
As for your down voting me, whatever. Enjoy. I don't even know what use karma can be on this website. Though at least now I know there is some.
If it's any consolation I felt bad about down voting you just after I did it but I thought you were trying to be obnoxious. Sadly, you can't undownvote (but I'll up vote this to try to supplement your newly discovered karma score)
Make that a second person - and I've been on the site for over a year. I knew that _comments_ added Karma, but I wasn't aware that a story submission's Karma is added to a person's total.
I've always wondered how someone who has been on the site for less than a year can have a Karma > 1000 points. I always thought they were posting a lot - but a dozen 50 Point submissions will get you halfway there pretty quickly...
Well, yeah I guess you're right. But you kinda straw manned me there by changing the subject from an indie band and their work to a general genre. I expect more mainstream bands to consistently be good or bad, but not have the ups and downs I've heard from a couple indie bands. That and it fit my own explanation of how things vary from day to day.
But yeah, you're right, my experience blinded me. And cheer up, your comment seems out of place.
What solution do you propose? I don't think merely saying "let's keep things topical" is going to work. People are going to keep submitting articles they find interesting, and upvoting articles they find interesting, regardless of the topic.
In the interests of full disclosure, I was the one who submitted the "How to Sleep Comfortably on a Hot Night" article. Yes, it's not topical. However, I'm not ashamed! I thought it was interesting, and clearly so did the 44 other people who upvoted it.
I'm quite pleased with the community that's developed here, who are discriminating enough to pick out many articles I find interesting.
However, HN could definitely be improved, so that people who are only interested in certain topics (such as only computer/hacking related articles) or not interested in other topics (such as off-topic, or political, or venture capitalist articles) could more easily filter through what's becoming a firehydrant of links.
I think the best way to do this is by implementing tags.
The way I see is that this is how things start: one article like this is submitted and then each week another one is added, like a Fibonacci sequence until you have how Proggit or Digg is today.
And you can say that Hacker News will stay pure or whatever but this is exactly how things began with other sites and then slowly but surely things became less and less relevant. I do think that it will take quite some time before Hacker News gets that way but I'd rather be strict now and nip it in the bud before regretting it later.
With the analogy of tags I would say that if you had the two most basic tags: "hacker-related" (programming, science, tech and related fields) or "non-hacker-related" (ie. sleep habits) Then I would only have hacker-related tagged material here.
Now I realize that in the case of Digg they did purposely branch out to expand their community. And I doubt pg would do the same. Thus the speed at which Hacker News would descend in quality would be much slower, but in my mind it's not a sense of speed it's a sense of direction. And right now Hacker News is descending from the direction and the kind quality we had.
So you propose we "be strict now". Could you elaborate on just what you mean by that?
If I could be so bold as to take a guess at what you mean, it seems you're suggesting that the HN community submit only topical links.
I think that suggestion will generally simply be ignored by those people who want to (for whatever reason) submit non-topical links because only a small fraction of HN submitters will even read your suggestion, and most of those that read it aren't going to care (or they wouldn't have submitted off-topic links in the first place).
In order to reach all submitters, we could have some sort of global notice reminding everyone to only submit topical links. Maybe a stern and clearly worded warning on the submission page itself.
But say we do that and people continue to submit and upvote off-topic links. In my opinion, this is precisely what's going to happen. So then what?
I think there is no solution to keeping HN pure short of having the site be moderated by people dedicated to keeping it pure. But clearly that's not the model HN wants to pursue.
As long as HN is self-moderating it will not stay pure, and the more popular it gets, the further away from purity it will drift (witness what happened to Slashdot and Kuro5hin).
So, given that HN is not and probably will not stay pure, how can we improve the situation? I think the solution is clear: tags. Tags will let each reader more easily focus on what they find interesting, no matter how "impure" the site gets. It's an easy solution and one that should scale pretty well.
