Explain consciousness to the layman.

[Piggy]

My point is that particles can really be whatever our minds want them to be -- the ONLY constraint we currently know about is that they interact with each other according to the physical laws of the universe.

This is a bit like saying that a wagon can be whatever our minds want it to be, as long as we want it to be a wagon.

 

[Piggy]

Why not?

If all we can measure are the effects particles have on each other, the particles effectively are nothing more than a placeholder.

The fact is, physics says absolutely nothing about particles by themselves. Nothing. The only information we have about particles pertains to how they interact with each other.

In fact the idea of a particle by itself isn't even valid -- there is zero evidence that it is even possible for a particle to exist in isolation.

That's fine.

Nevertheless, if you talk about an inter-action, you've already dragged at least 2 actors onto the table.

So to avoid that problem, you're going to have to reconceptualize what's going on at that level.

And btw, the fact that we need interactions, in order to get data, does not imply that no properties of the wavicles (or whatever those event-things are) can be deduced or attributed, but that's a different discussion.

 

[Piggy]

I am trying to show you that simulating a group of particles on a computer is identical to emulating a group of particles, from the perspective of other particles in the simulation.

Well, then you could be using zebras instead of particles and avoid some thorny issues.

As I've explained, to speak of "the perspective of other particles in the simulation" as if it were anything but an exercise of imagination is ridiculous.

You might as well draw a dog next to the baby and muse about whether it's hungry.

 

[AlBell]

Well, then you could be using zebras instead of particles and avoid some thorny issues.

As I've explained, to speak of "the perspective of other particles in the simulation" as if it were anything but an exercise of imagination is ridiculous.

You might as well draw a dog next to the baby and muse about whether it's hungry.

Bad idea. The housekeeper might feed the baby to the dog, or vice-versa.

 

[westprog]

It's about the best we can do at the moment. At any rate, it's close enough for rock'n'roll when it comes to having a discussion.

Definitely. I didn't mean that as a criticism - just an observation that this is where we are now. It might be that in fifty years from now we'll have something more fundamental.

And btw, you've omitted an important bit of the functional definition: it's what our brains are doing when we're awake or dreaming, which it's not doing when we're asleep and not dreaming or when we're under profound sedation, and the effect is a sense of self which is also a sense of experience.

That definition allows us to observe consciousness (to know it when we see it) and it allows us to investigate it scientifically.

This type of functional definition is always necessary in any period before a phenomenon can be properly investigated... and working human brains are damned hard to investigate.

For instance, at some point, the aurora borealis could only be described as something like "colored lights that are sometimes seen in the sky in the extreme north which do not appear to be coming from any known source".

A scientific definition could only be arrived at once the equipment and methods were developed to understand what was going on.

That's why demands for rigid scientific definitions of consciousness, at this time, can only serve to scuttle discussion.

Though we need to accept that we have only a functional definition at present - and this limits what we can say with certainty.

 

[PixyMisa]

Since when?

Since Godel.

 

[westprog]

That's all there is in this world, my friend, when you do what you're describing.

We can certainly be mistaken. We can mistake the picture for a baby. That's just an error, though. There isn't an alternative world with a baby in it. There's just one real world, and our imperfect understanding of it.

We don't have perfect knowledge of anything in the world. We make models to predict its behaviour. The best models are those that assume one real world with one set of rules governing everything - including photos, computers and human brains.

Any physical system can be abstracted in various ways. That's how we do science. That doesn't mean that we have multiple versions of reality - just that we need to model different things in different ways. We don't consider electrostatic forces when predicting planetary motion. That doesn't meant they don't exist.

If the computer did, in fact, produce worlds separate from us, we could not perceive or affect them.

 

[PixyMisa]

When the parents tape the drawing of the sleeping baby to the door, there's a real sleeping baby in the house, and there's a piece of paper with ink on it on the door. That's objectively real.

[snip]

The same is true if we make a sculpture of the sleeping baby, or an animated cartoon, or a computer simulation. In these cases, what is objectively real is the stone, or the celluloid, or the computer. And that's all. And they're all behaving like stone, celluloid, and a computer (respectively).

Tell us, Piggy, how does a computer behave?

 

[Piggy]

Tell us, Piggy, how does a computer behave?

Unless you're going to propose that they behave a lot like babies, I don't see the point to your question.

Ditto "How does paper behave?" or "How does clay behave?"

 

[yy2bggggs]

but these assertions are, of course, hopelessly incoherent because the "world of the simulation" exists only in the mind of the perceiver of the output of the simulation and nowhere in objective physical reality. In short, it's an imaginary world.

This isn't quite true. There are many necessary requirements on the "world of the simulation" regarding various mappings of particular interest to (or from) the thing being simulated, which greatly constrain what must be true of the "world of simulation" outside of any interpretation of a mind.

The constraints don't matter.

Yes, they do matter. You don't just get to invent a fictional world, interpret any machine any way you like, and call it a (non-trivial) multiplier. Sure, there are a lot of ways that you can build something and call it a multiplier, and there are machines that require different interpretations--perhaps even arbitrarily bizarre.

But a multiplier must have entities that map to numbers, and transformations that result in entities that map to those numbers' products. If it does not, it is not multiplying.

Actually running a simulation of a thing has this nasty requirement of actually working. And the only way of getting it to actually work is to use what reality gives us.

You're either building a representation or a reproduction.

But you can't just use real objects, you need those real arrows to make the abstract nonsense work.

If you're making a representation, then the medium -- paper and ink, clay, a computer, whatever -- is the only thing objectively real.

"Paper", "ink", "clay", "computer", and even "whatever" are but concepts we form in our brain. We apply those concepts to patterns we develop based on both perceptions and interactions--those patterns are based on particular observed invariants. And to qualify for being those things, it has to have a particular relationship with us.

The thing represented -- whether a tornado or an auto race or a brain -- has no real existence but is a figment of the imagination of the perceiver.

Flip a coin a few times. I'd be willing to bet you did not just simulate the development of a visual percept in a mouse brain.

This is because you need more than imagination figments to represent this process.

 

[westprog]

Yes, they do matter. You don't just get to invent a fictional world, interpret any machine any way you like, and call it a multiplier. Sure, there are a lot of ways that you can build something and call it a multiplier, and there are machines that require different interpretations--perhaps even arbitrarily bizarre.

But a multiplier must have entities that map to numbers, and transformations that result in entities that map to those numbers' products. If it does not, it is not multiplying.

It's very easy to produce a functional specification for multiplication. It's anything that can be used by a human being to perform multiplication. Try to produce an objective definition that applies when the human being isn't present, and it's a bit trickier. Just about everything in a multi-dimensional universe performs multiplication in some sense.

 

[yy2bggggs]

It's very easy to produce a functional specification for multiplication. It's anything that can be used by a human being to perform multiplication. Try to produce an objective definition that applies when the human being isn't present, and it's a bit trickier.

What do you mean by "objective definition"?

 

[westprog]

What do you mean by "objective definition"?

I mean a definition that doesn't require a human or other conscious entity to interpret the result of a computation.

 

[yy2bggggs]

I mean a definition that doesn't require a human or other conscious entity to interpret the result of a computation.

Then I already gave one. I didn't place any requirements that a human or conscious entity interprets the results--just a requirement that there exists a mapping.

 

[!Kaggen]

It is interesting how we get trapped within language.
Those that can't "read between the lines" at least.

 

[PixyMisa]

Unless you're going to propose that they behave a lot like babies, I don't see the point to your question.

You seem to have a very specific idea about how computers behave. I'd like you to tell us what that is, because as far as I can see, your assertion makes no sense.

 

[rocketdodger]

There's a computer doing what a computer does, behaving in essentially the same way it behaves when it runs simulations of rivers or epidemics or anything else.

That is a stupid statement.

It should clear to anyone with even a cursory education in "com-pew-turs" that computers behave in very different ways in order to do ... well, what computers do.

If you honestly think that just because you can't see gears and clockwork moving inside the box nothing is going on, then I don't think anyone here can hope to have a productive discussion with you.

That is about as stupid as a cave man cutting open someone's head and proclaiming that the brain must not be doing anything important because none of the neurons are moving.

 

[rocketdodger]

If the computer did, in fact, produce worlds separate from us, we could not perceive or affect them.

I guess all those people playing video games are pretty dumb, then, to think that Mario jumps because they press a button.

( what is it with all the stupid statements in this thread ?)

 

[rocketdodger]

As I've explained, to speak of "the perspective of other particles in the simulation" as if it were anything but an exercise of imagination is ridiculous.

No, you have not "explained" it. You just keep asserting it, then saying anything else is ridiculous.

I am the only one doing explaining, which is ( as usual ) being utterly ignored.

Should I try again?

1) The only property any particle has that is necessary for it to be a particle is the way it interacts with other particles.
2) This means anything that interacts with something like a particle is also a particle, from the perspective of the other, by any definition available to modern physics.
3) This means if two tennis balls interact with each other exactly as two quarks, the tennis balls are also quarks, from the perspective of each other.
4) This means if two simulated particles interact with each other exactly as two quarks, the simulated particles are also quarks, from the perspective of each other.

In fact the only full objective definition of something like a quark requires referencing every other particle in the universe and saying "For all particles p, p is a quark if it can interact with another quark in this way, with another boson in that way, .... and with <some particle > in this way, where boson, ... , and <some particle > have been previously defined."

Which is the whole point I am trying to make -- "where" those things are is not part of the definition. The current physical definition of each fundamental particle doesn't reference reality -- at all. It simply references other particles. If all the particles referenced are in a simulation, then the current physical definition holds.

I suspect you are going to say "but particles are 'real'." But there is zero evidence of this, in fact you have it totally backwards. Reality is defined based on references to particles, not the other way around. You can't say a real particle is real and a simulated particle is not real. All you can say is that a particle in our reality can interact with other particles in our reality whereas a simulated particle cannot interact with other particles in our reality.

 

[punshhh]

This is your problem, you think "objectively real" actually means something. It doesn't, sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I think the sim is a world -- not a real world, just a world -- which can seem real to the beings inside it. I didn't call them "actual" beings because that doesn't mean anything either.

The mechanics are simple: Just simulate every single particle in their world, using rules identical to the rules of particle interaction in our own world.

How would their subjective experience of their world not be equivalent to our subjective experience of our world? Just tell me how they would feel different. Don't blab on about "but it isn't real" because they don't care what you think, it *feels* real to *them*. How is their perception of what is real to them different than your perception of what is real to you?

Suggesting that because you know they are in a simulation from our point of view they are somehow less real from their own perspective is just an absurd proposition. If there is a God, and he tells you "you should not consider yourself real, because you are existing in a world that is a simulation from my perspective" would you say "oh, I guess I am not real then?" No, of course you wouldn't, that is just absurd. You would likely say "you are wrong, I am real, see I exist in my reality." So what gives?

Sounds reasonable, if you are generating a timespace with synthetic particles or coordinates.