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I don’t think the movie/video-game analogy captures what I find interesting about dreaming here, because it seems to put phenomenal awareness, meta-awareness and control on a single scale of “critical ability”.

These capacities can dissociate: In an ordinary non-lucid dream there can already be vivid phenomenal experience without awareness that one is dreaming. Lucidity adds that meta-awareness, but does not necessarily add control (lucid dreams can themselves occur with or without substantial control over what happens).

So rather than a simple progression from passive/uncritical to active/critical, dreaming seems to give us different combinations of phenomenal experience, meta-awareness and control.

That is precisely why I think it provides some evidence that phenomenal experience is not tightly bound to the other capacities.

I think “awareness” is doing two different jobs here. Of course we are consciously experiencing an ordinary dream (seeing, feeling, fearing, etc.). That is a premise of my criticism.

What is characteristically absent in a non-lucid dream is awareness that one is dreaming, together with much of the associated reality monitoring and critical reflection. Becoming aware that one is dreaming is precisely what distinguishes lucid dreaming.

So saying “we’re aware of them” does not seem to address the distinction I was making between phenomenal experience and reflective/metacognitive awareness.

I agree that behavior which is blatantly robotic can be evidence that the behavior itself does not involve universal creativity, questioning or error correction. But I don't see how that gets us to the stronger conclusion that it “has nothing to do with consciousness.”

A system could execute a rigid, preprogrammed behavior while still having phenomenal experiences such as seeing color or feeling pain. The robotic character of the behavior seems relevant to whether the system is exercising universal creativity, but not by itself to whether anything is being experienced.

To infer insentience from the robotic behavior, we would still need the separate premise that phenomenal experience cannot accompany non-universal information processing, which is the point under dispute.

Suppose we eventually can write complete generative programs for both a crow and a human. You say that the human program “would result in consciousness.”

I agree that this follows from your theory if universal creativity entails consciousness. But then I don’t think it can also serve as an independent argument for that connection. The possibility of a universally creative philosophical zombie is ruled out by your theory, rather than independently by the fact that the program is universally creative.

Likewise, your theory predicts that the crow program would be unconscious if it remains non-universal. Competing theories of consciousness could make different predictions about the same two programs. For example, IIT explicitly allows functionally equivalent systems to differ in consciousness depending on their intrinsic causal organization. I’m not assuming IIT is correct. It just illustrates that knowing what the two programs can do would not by itself decide which theory of consciousness is correct.

So I think the simulation comparison inherits the disagreement about which theory of consciousness is correct; it does not by itself resolve the link between universal creativity and phenomenal experience.

I understand “we can write the programs and simulate animals” to mean that we can write an underlying program capable of generating an animal’s full behavioral and cognitive repertoire across novel circumstances. If you only mean that we can reproduce particular behaviors, then I don’t see the asymmetry, since we can reproduce particular human behaviors computationally too.

But I think we should be careful with the stronger claim. As far as I know, we cannot currently write such a complete generative program for animals such as crows or apes either. Indeed, even for vastly simpler animals such as the fruit fly or C. elegans, despite having mapped its complete connectome, our executable models still reproduce only parts of its behavior rather than the organism’s full repertoire.

A sticky button can't work here: the main content area has to be a horizontal scroll container so deeply nested trees can grow sideways, and that stops position: sticky from sticking. The workarounds (reworking the global layout, or JavaScript positioning that jitters on mobile) are too risky for such a small benefit.

Tyler suggested (#3904) we use the chart type from Kialo:

Could be a useful visualization in addition to trees.

Each top-level idea would be the center node. Then red segments around it for pending criticisms. Gray for non-pending criticisms and neutral comments.

Unlike Kialo, though, each segment would have the same size as the other segments on its circle.

Offer easy way to link to latest version of an idea. The ability already exists – an idea link + /latest will always go to the latest version – but isn’t directly exposed in the form of a link or button yet.

Done as of c00ed18.

Reiterating/refining #3904: There should be a graphical indication for pending criticisms. The dropdown line should be red if the comment it leads to is a pending criticism. The yellow pills can be turned gray to be easier on the eyes.

This says nothing about the yellow color of the criticisms pills, which I think Tyler is saying are too harsh on the eyes.

That doesn’t mean the pill has to stay yellow. Too harsh.

That doesn’t mean the pill has to say yellow. Too harsh.

And dimmer red for refuted criticisms, brighter red for pending ones! Default gray for comments.

Would get alternating dim and bright depending on insertion order. Confusing!

Reiterating/refining #3904: There should be a graphical indication for pending criticisms. The dropdown line should be red if the comment it leads to is a pending criticism.

Reiterating/refining #3904: I think the yellow "Criticism of" bubbles can and should be replaced by a graphical indication that is much easier on the eyes. The dropdown line can be made red if the comment it leads to is a criticism, and the bubble on the criticism can be eliminated. Reading the yellow bubble to get the idea # it is referring to, then searching the ideas above for the matching # is inelegant (even if it is usually the one right above).

And dimmer red for refuted criticisms, brighter red for pending ones! Default gray for comments.

It’s more in line with refute.us if non-pending criticisms are neutralized, ie gray as well.

And dimmer red for refuted criticisms, brighter red for pending ones! Default gray for comments.

Tried it – unfortunately, there aren’t enough shades of red to easily tell the difference.

Not red anymore. Gray as of 5b3358f.

Reiterating/refining #3904: I think the yellow "Criticism of" bubbles can and should be replaced by a graphical indication that is much easier on the eyes. The dropdown line can be made red if the comment it leads to is a criticism, and the bubble on the criticism can be eliminated. Reading the yellow bubble to get the idea # it is referring to, then searching the ideas above for the matching # is inelegant (even if it is usually the one right above).

And dimmer red for refuted criticisms, brighter red for pending ones! Default gray for comments.

Best to put additional information in a revision of the target idea, not as a comment. Comments aren’t for chronological addition of information like on X or Reddit.

Would avoid putting it in a tooltip. Best to keep it for accessibility. Communicating only with lines and colors is too little information.

I have yet to want to open the criticized idea in a new tab

I do that on occasion and like being able to do it. Other users may, too.

Fixed as of d633dc3.

Fixed as of 76299a2, see eg https://veritula.com/ideas/3951-done-as-of-cc1ab95-ruby-example-ruby-def/revisions/2. (Click on “Expand unchanged parts”.)