From: John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Mon Sep 20 1999 - 00:02:14 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> Wrote:
>it's probably necessary on a low level for some computations, and
>on a high level for qualia, but not intrinsically necessary to intelligence
That does not compute. We know qualia exists, or rather, I know that
at least one example of it does, it must have come about somehow.
If the weird mysterious ineffable stuff was not necessary for
intelligence then Evolution would have no way of producing it.
We may value our internal states but to Evolution it's a byproduct,
behavior is the only thing that's important. Even if we were insanely
lucky and we got this weird mysterious ineffable stuff by pure
chance genetic drift would soon make it vanish, and anything
else that's irrelevant to survival too, just like the eyes of fish that lived
in dark caves for thousands of generations.
Your only way out is to argue that it just provides a short cut to
intelligence that could be produced in other more complicated ways,
but that would mean it's easier to make a AI that experiences qualia than
one that doesn't. I don't see any need for weird mysterious ineffable stuff.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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