Can qualia be separated from personhood?
#5075·Tyler MillsOP revised about 1 month agoAssuming qualia are classical, there is nothing stopping every step in the computation comprising them from being measured, like any computation. Then, nothing is stopping that recording/program from being rerun.
#5075·Tyler MillsOP revised about 1 month agoAssuming qualia are classical, there is nothing stopping every step in the computation comprising them from being measured, like any computation. Then, nothing is stopping that recording/program from being rerun.
Is a quale a sequence of information states? Is this true of any given computation? Does the quale "care" if the states are computed afresh or read from memory?
Any physical process can be simulated to arbitrary precision. A simulation is a program, and nothing is stopping any given program from being rerun.
Assuming qualia are classical, there is nothing stopping every step in the computation comprising them from being measured, like any computation. Then, nothing is stopping that recording/program from being rerun.
#5040·Dennis Hackethal, about 2 months agoA quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times.
How do you know this?
Any physical process can be simulated to arbitrary precision. A simulation is a program, and nothing is stopping any given program from being rerun.
#5044·Tyler MillsOP, about 1 month agoThat's what I get for suddenly returning to this discussion after a long gap. I was thinking that any computation can be recorded and re-run at will, in principle. So qualia can too. But indeed, I have suggested in this discussion that it is the evolution of programs that causes experience, and evolution cannot be scripted. This means a quale that is recorded will not "qualiate" if it is rerun exactly as recorded.
TL;DR: I don't.
My suspicion remains that creativity and qualia come from some kind of blind exchange between layers of emergence, of which mutations and mistakes in copying, as seen in DNA, are an example.
#5040·Dennis Hackethal, about 2 months agoA quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times.
How do you know this?
That's what I get for suddenly returning to this discussion after a long gap. I was thinking that any computation can be recorded and re-run at will, in principle. So qualia can too. But indeed, I have suggested in this discussion that it is the evolution of programs that causes experience, and evolution cannot be scripted. This means a quale that is recorded will not "qualiate" if it is rerun exactly as recorded.
TL;DR: I don't.
#5038·Tyler MillsOP revised about 2 months agoA quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times. That looping program is not a person: it can only create whatever knowledge it originally did, not any possible knowledge, maybe until freed from the loop. Yet it still constitutes experience.
So people are not the only programs that can be qualia.
A quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times.
How do you know this?
A quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times. That looping program is not a person (no knowledge is created, however many times it loops, for instance), but it still constitutes experience.
So people are not the only programs that can be qualia.
A quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times. That looping program is not a person: it can only create whatever knowledge it originally did, not any possible knowledge, maybe until freed from the loop. Yet it still constitutes experience.
So people are not the only programs that can be qualia.
#5032·Tyler MillsOP, about 2 months agoActually maybe this isn't so obvious. A person need not create new knowledge for the personhood property to be present, since it is a counterfactual property: a person can create new knowledge (new and non-inferable, I argue).
True that a person need not create new knowledge, but a looping quale is not a person, per #5035, so the claim survives this criticism.
#5033·Tyler MillsOP, about 2 months agoIf qualia are only present when new knowledge is being made, then for a quale to be replayed it could be that there must be a reset each time: the knowledge produced from the previous run is erased. So w.r.t. the AGI system alone, new knowledge is being created each time (it doesn't matter if the knowledge is copied from a previous run and stored elsewhere, in which case it is not new w.r.t. that combined system).
#5034·Tyler MillsOP, about 2 months agoA looping quale is also not a person because personhood is not just: can create a given piece of new knowledge, it is: can create any knowledge (not just that created by this quale; again assuming knowledge creation defines qualia).
Should clarify that personhood is: can create any new knowledge in principle (excluding resource constraints). A program consisting of a looping quale cannot create any possible knowledge, whether or not it is creating some each time it's run.
#5031·Tyler MillsOP, about 2 months agoA quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times. That looping program is not a person (no knowledge is created, however many times it loops, for instance), but it still constitutes experience.
So people are not the only programs that can be qualia.
A looping quale is also not a person because personhood is not just: can create a given piece of new knowledge, it is: can create any knowledge (not just that created by this quale; again assuming knowledge creation defines qualia).
#5031·Tyler MillsOP, about 2 months agoA quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times. That looping program is not a person (no knowledge is created, however many times it loops, for instance), but it still constitutes experience.
So people are not the only programs that can be qualia.
If qualia are only present when new knowledge is being made, then for a quale to be replayed it could be that there must be a reset each time: the knowledge produced from the previous run is erased. So w.r.t. the AGI system alone, new knowledge is being created each time (it doesn't matter if the knowledge is copied from a previous run and stored elsewhere, in which case it is not new w.r.t. that combined system).
#5031·Tyler MillsOP, about 2 months agoA quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times. That looping program is not a person (no knowledge is created, however many times it loops, for instance), but it still constitutes experience.
So people are not the only programs that can be qualia.
Actually maybe this isn't so obvious. A person need not create new knowledge for the personhood property to be present, since it is a counterfactual property: a person can create new knowledge (new and non-inferable, I argue).
#4881·Tyler MillsOP revised 3 months agoAssumption A1: Only programs that are people can, while running, constitute qualia/experience/subjectivity/consciousness.
A quale can be recorded and replayed later, arbitrarily many times. That looping program is not a person (no knowledge is created, however many times it loops, for instance), but it still constitutes experience.
So people are not the only programs that can be qualia.
Assumption A1: Only programs that are people, while running, can constitute qualia/experience/subjectivity/consciousness.
Assumption A1: Only programs that are people can, while running, constitute qualia/experience/subjectivity/consciousness.
#4751·Tyler MillsOP, 4 months agoSOLUTION: The apple programs are not the same programs one execution to the next. They are being re-evolved every time they are run. This evolution is what the person is doing, and so must be what gives rise to the experience consisting of the apple rendering.
This is the only solution to the "apple problem" raised in #4752.
(Criticize this with alternatives solutions).
#4803·Tyler MillsOP revised 4 months agoIf only some of the criteria are stored, and the rest are random, is it still evolution? Is evolution only happening if there is random variation? But we could program an LLM to do that as well...
To clarify and add on to #4805: No, we couldn't program an LLM (on its own) to do random variation in the sense constituting evolution, because all of the randomly chosen changes to its outputs are still implicit from its current knowledge (training data + design from programmers). There is also no means of criticism that are not also implicit: any niche or criterion it generates, then seeks to satisfy, was derived again from its existing knowledge. It is a closed system (whether or not we have run it such as to reveal everything it implies!).
#4806·Tyler MillsOP, 4 months agoEven if variations are agnostic to any meaning or context of the knowledge, why are they still not implicit? Anything is implicit from anything else, if implicit just means: follows from when a given change is applied... The whole question is where the change is coming from... (?)
#4806 is saying: variations of knowledge being agnostic to that knowledge's meaning means they are not implicit from it, else implicit doesn't mean anything. So #4806 is only really asking if what matters is the source of knowledge, and that isn't really a criticism of #4805.
Criticism #4875 applies to #4806, as shown.