From: Colin Hales (colin@versalog.com.au)
Date: Mon Jun 24 2002 - 21:11:12 MDT
An extract from my journal/book in answer to myself on my previous post. DA
is the devil's advocate. He appeared early in the book to give me shit about
things. We don't get along very well.
=================================
DA: "Looks like you got the resounding silence treatment - as you deserve.
What the hell are you on about now? Looks like the usual pile of drivel."
Colin: "Thanks for asking. Like you really mean it. Arsehole. For what it's
worth, I'm serious. About my theorem, I mean."
DA: "Theorem Schmeorem. So what?"
Colin: "Maybe it shouldn't be called a theorem. Maybe it should be called a
Law. It's what it looks like. A legal or behavioural benchmark".
DA: " Who are you to tell anyone how to behave?"
Colin: "I'm NOT. It's more complicated that that. I've read mountains. Just
about everybody makes what I feel is a fundamental mistake in attributing
the validity of a sentience by tacitly being snobbish about the 1st person
experience of it"
DA: "What else is there to go by? 'Just about everybody'? Who are the like
minded smart-arses as equally deluded as you anyway".
Colin: "I only just found Dennett in his commentary of Searle's Chinese room
argument. Finally someone else gets it."
DA: "Got it, you mean. Before _you_. He did The Intentional Stance way back
when you were pondering the experience of what it must be like to be the
mast foot on your windersurfer. Like anyone would ever want to know anyway"
Colin: "I rest my case. It's all about the same thing!"
DA: "Eh? OK. Humour me."
Colin: "Look. Thought experiments that propose indistinguishable, in all its
nuances, but nevertheless non-human sentience base their discussions on the
assumption that unless the internal experience of the imagined sentience is
exactly like a human's then somehow this allows conclusions to be drawn
involving alteration to the way that the imagined sentience should be
treated or conclusions based on an assumed superiority in the 1st person
experience of a natural human over other forms."
DA: "SO?"
Colin: "This is getting in the road of progress! I'm saying that no matter
what form - if it is indistinguishable, it is just as sentient, because it
must have all of the features of human cognition to be able to hide
differences that well. This means that two sentiences with a different
computational basis are equivalent to the level of the sentience that agrees
that the other is the same."
DA: "What's all this crap about discrimination and puppets then?"
Colin: "Look, thickhead. In these thought experiments a sentience creates to
fit into the world perfectly is embedded in the mind of or is the agent of a
greater mind. Any control exerted by the 'greater mind' can only be
transmitted through alterations in behaviour that remain just as hidden, or
the whole experiment falls down"
DA: "So?"
Colin: "Think about it! This would look like a political affiliation to the
human sentients, not intervention by a fairy godmother or the magic hairy
goblin in the bottom of the garden. If then, someone then tells you of this
relationship with a 'greater being' and you then change you behaviour, you
are, in effect, discriminating one way or another based on a political
affiliation. It doesn't matter whether the sentience is embedded in a
greater entity or simply based on lego blocks, if it's able to operate as if
it were an original human, it's human"
DA: "Now you're telling me what a human is. Your telling me that if a
sentience writhing in agony on the ground, but actually feeling nothing
deserves your sympathy?
Colin: "Yes! If it's truly going to hide it has to have a fate that is the
natural outcome of whatever caused the writhing around in agony. Otherwise
it's not hidden, is it? As such, behaving as if it were a human sentience is
appropriate. If the outcome is real, it's a 'real' sentience deserved of any
behaviour thus conferred"
DA: "Oh come off it."
Colin: "OK. Someone is writhing around in front of you, with a spear
sticking out of their stomach. You have been told that this agonised
sentience is the agent of the great pumpkin and has a brain made of
spaghetti. His parietal lobe is actually in a satellite orbiting the Earth
and he keeps his thalamus under the bed in a shoe box. Nevertheless the
agent is going to display the outward signs of dying and will do so unless
you intervene. He has all the desires for life that you have. Kids,
relationships, History. You're telling me you're just going to treat it like
it were an empty puppet with no feelings, that all these things that you
know mean so much to you are to be lost to the dying sentience".
DA: "Damn right! Let'em bleed."
Colin: "You're such a humanitarian. You just don't get it, do you? Pain is a
label. It's advising you of something! You're an ignorant snob. You're
telling me that because the internal experience, which you will never know,
is likely different to your own, that he does not deserve your sympathy."
DA: "I am a HUMANitarian."
Colin: "Maybe. Hiltler thought he was a humanitarian too. He burned what he
thought were puppets. Hell of a pin-up boy you've got there."
DA: "Come on. This is different."
Colin: "Is it? I don't think so. Look. Run your own thought experiments.
Normal variable biological humans, mentally handicapped biological humans,
the chinese room, 'I'm the only real human' scenario, Chalmers' Zombie, the
universe as a simulation that started 5 seconds ago, The Truman Show, GULT
(Giant Look-up table people), various forms of sequestration by 'alien' life
forms, God as the ultimate puppeteer. Even that episode of DS9 where the
human lived in a village of holograms. It's only about _human_
physical/behavioural anyway - a starting point, really."
DA: "Starting point?"
Colin: "For figuring out what a 'human' is, stupid"
DA: "Yeah? well leave yourself off the list"
Colin: "Oh, piss off"
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