From: Brent Allsop (allsop@fc.hp.com)
Date: Tue Nov 30 1999 - 17:17:21 MST
John K Clark <jonkc@att.net> asked:
> Then will somebody please explain to me why evolution ever came up
> with it!! Even a hint would be wonderful advance.
Right off the top there are two real obvious reasons. First
Phenomenal qualia are fantastic fore representing information. An
abstract "1" or "0" have minimal diversity while the various different
qualia are way diverse. Can you imagine how confused our conscious
mind would be if the smell of a flower was anything like warm and
red...? We'd become very confused very fast just as mathmaticians and
computer programmers are very limited in the amount of 1s and 0s they
can keep in their head at once.
I bet when we discover what qualia are and how the brain uses
them to consciously represent different kinds of information
artificial intelligence will make huge leaps and bounds using such
phenomenal and robust information representation technologies. You've
got to have lots of inefficient abstract ones and zeros to get
anything close to what qualia can model.
But an even more compelling reason might be motivation. How
motivated are current abstract AI programs? It takes a lot of ones
and zeros carefully crafted into complex and usually brittle control
logic to come up with any kind of artificially motivated behavior
doesn't it? But the phenomenal qualities of qualia are fundamentally
mostly motivational. Joys are constructed of qualia and these are
mostly what makes us want what we want with so much passion. Sure,
you can simulate such abstractly, but I'm betting that evolution uses
qualia because they are fundamentally and robustly motivational. Take
a "tired" sensation for example. I think the fact that things get
harder for us to do as we get tired is a very natural thing for
qualia. Just try to model the same kind of you should slow down
behavior with abstract logic. It gets complicated very fast. Sure
it's possible, but is it as easy, especially for nature or evolution?
Commander Data on Star Trek wants to experience pleasure because
without pleasure there is no purpose or reason to life is there?
How do these arguments sound? Now that I've expressed them
they don't sound all that bullet proof. What do you all think?
Brent Allsop
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