From: Brent Allsop (allsop@fc.hp.com)
Date: Tue Mar 13 2001 - 13:38:57 MST
James Rogers <jamesr@best.com> responded:
> I don't see how this makes a difference; do you define consciousness
> as somehow being fundamentally different than intelligence?
Yes, a causal color detecting machine at the local paint store
is more intelligent, color wise, than we are. Some day causal
machines will be more intelligent than our brain is in the same way.
But I think or predict this is missing the most important point about
conscious knowledge - and that is what it is phenomenally like.
> So? I don't grasp the importance. Interesting perhaps, but I can't
> see it as anything more than a secondary effect.
A big part of our conscious intelligence is our conscious
knowledge, it's phenomenal nature, and the way it is all unified into
the (spiritual if you will) world of everything we consciously
know. You know that red represents 700 nm light. If you saw a page
with 1 million small numbers on it, each indicating the numerical
value of that pixel's color, you would know what the picture contains.
That is about all a causal computer of today knows of pictures.
The phenomenal magic occurs when you turn these numbers into
qualia and put them all together in a conscious 3D spirit world.
We'll be able to make progress with today's causal technology, but I
predict once we discover how to represent knowledge in phenomenal
spirit worlds, artificial intelligences will take a quantum leap
forward.
Imagine having color receptors added to your eye so you could
see beyond infrared. Imagine mapping that color to a blue qualia so
when you see a rainbow, it would be wider and now have two blue
stripes. But that's not near as great as discovering some other yet
to be experienced color qualia and using it to represent infrared
rather than repeatedly using blue in your 3D conscious world.
I can know all that goes on in a compiler. But that kind of
knowledge isn't all that useful to me. Until that knowledge is
represented in a vast, complex and phenomenally conscious way, more
than just "seeing it all real time" that kind of sub conscious
knowledge isn't worth much.
Before we can really grow in intelligence, the vastness and
complexity of our "spirit worlds" or what our brains can consciously
know must be greatly increased. Who cares about the difference
between 700 and 500 nm light? But the difference between red and
green!? Now that is something I want to really objectively know
about. I predict that when science discovers this, it will be much
more than just "interesting perhaps", it will be the greatest
scientific discovery to date, if not of all time. Untill we make that
discovery, we still don't really know what we are and what it means to
say: "I [consciously] think, therefor I am" and what is required to re
make or increase ourselves.
Brent Allsop
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