Rosencrantz2
3d ago
Noting my approval for this post because it's a rare successful attempt by a (presumably) right wing person to express left wing beliefs in more or less the terms they'd use themselves.
Rosencrantz2
7d ago
If you conclude or agree that someone is experiencing visceral distress, you are agreeing that they have qualia because of what the words mean.
It's at least debatable, e.g. https://academic.oup.com/book/3353/chapter-abstract/144438238?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Rosencrantz2
7d ago
If you are wondering why your opponents, who you have modelled as cartoonishly evil, are not acting cartoonishly evil, maybe it's because your model is wrong? Maybe you should revise your model, rather than detailing all the ways their actual behavior could diverge less from your imagination's paintings of how awful they could be?
Is it cartoonishly evil to kill people in theatrical and spectacular ways, or just a form of human nature? Romans killed people like this all the time and people loved it. There's really no reason it can't happen again. This could be the starting point for it happening again if it's what America wants.
Rosencrantz2
7d ago
I doubt they'd allow him to be barefaced and either look defiant or cry though. Instead they'd probably put something over his head and won't that take away any dignity?
Rosencrantz2
7d ago
I don't have firm positions on some of these things – I should say I don't really go in for qualia talk, but if pushed I am more inclined to deny qualia altogether than say that rocks, AIs and humans all have them.
Happy to accept that an AI could have something somewhat like a functional analogue of pain. I just don't care that much about it though. The AI version of pain does not have the connection to real damage, to possible death, and the possible repercussions on other people that a human's pain has, and I count these all as part of the wider context for a functional definition of human suffering.
Rosencrantz2
7d ago
I think we can differ about that depending on one's views of qualia. If I meet a human who recoils from suffering. Who has all the same physiological responses and averse thoughts to it as you and I. Whose brain reliably produces tokens of the type, 'Oh, that's awful, I have to do something to help those poor people' etc etc, and never has any tokens of the type 'I'm different to other people, there's nothing that it feels like to be me' ... well, I am happy to term that person as experiencing visceral distress. I don't need to additionally know if there are qualia present to conclude they are experiencing distress. One might also say, qualia are definitionally present in such a case. (In the end this is just another version of the p-zombies debate.)
Rosencrantz2
8d ago
I know I experience qualia.
You say that, but how do I know you know? To be sure, it's a pretty involved debate but I tend to think it is possible to identify pain and suffering functionally, without especially needing to use qualia language (i.e. without taking a position on whether there is something in-principle third-person unknowable about consciousness or not).
Only entities with qualia would find it viscerally distressing, so if you don't think qualia is a helpful posit, you don't think this is a helpful posit, either. Besides which, we have good inductive reasons to believe that some humans that have qualia don't find causing people pain viscerally distressing, so it's not a principle you can universally reason from.
Right but I also tend to think visceral distress is defined functionally without needing to rule either way on the presence of qualia, so I deny your premise. I also do think that we can reason universally based on a scaffolding built on subjective feelings – a kind of quasi-realism. Again it's a philosophical can of worms though.
Rosencrantz2
8d ago
Qualia are an unhelpful posit at the best of times to the extent we can't be truly certain anyone or anything does or doesn't experience them. Should we be kind to rocks because pansychism could be true and they too might experience qualia?
A better reason to object to causing people pain is because it's viscerally distressing and suggests the inflicter might do the same to us or our loved ones. I personally think this ai torment experiment is only distressing to the extent it indicates the people behind it might do similar to people or animals, and it only slightly shifts my expectations there.
Rosencrantz2
16d ago
I know all of them and so does my wife. :)
Rosencrantz2
17d ago
It now seems the "plotters" called the police on themselves (or at least one of them did) and the vans just contained fuel.
Guess: someone paid them to nick diesel and when they realised they were near the RAF base they thought maybe they were being used as stooges for a terror attack?!
Additional stab in the dark: they actually were being used as stooges but their paymasters were just testing their reliability and the fact they got caught has prevented the intelligence services making arrests up the chain.
Rosencrantz2
17d ago
The Odyssey really is a great example here. I came out thinking the film was basically pretty poor, but still grateful for all the resources and craft put into creating a common point of reference and discussion for a few weeks, and full of goodwill to Christopher Nolan. Seems like ever increasing amounts of effort need to be burned to create such moments in the current age.
Rosencrantz2
25d ago
Language is limited whereas thoughts are not.
I don't buy this. There are cases of "I'll know it when I see it", sure, but a lot more of people thinking they know exactly what they think, but then finding out, the more they use language to talk and write about it, that they never knew in the first place.
As an example from my experience, clients in advertising often think they know what they want. Then they see it and realise they don't. The process goes on until they arrive at something they are happy with. Is it what was in their head originally? Basically never.
One thing I love about this forum is in stumbling across a post or comment that brilliantly summarizes my internal thoughts in a far more coherent and eloquent way than I could ever hope to do myself>
I gently suggest you introspect when this happens next. Are you really perceiving a match between what is written and what you already think? Or are you just intuitively nodding along at something without it touching the sides? Consider what is the difference between those two things. When you are on the verge of putting a smart thought into words, do you know with confidence that you already have a smart thought? Or does it sometimes feel disappointing when it is on the page?
Rosencrantz2
26d ago
Well put. Writing changes our ideas and forces us to bring thought, intuition and word into alignment. All three can change in the process. If you don't go through that usually painful process I am sceptical you are getting an ai to accurately express your thoughts. I think it's much more likely you are allowing the ai to determine what you think. Unwritten thoughts are just too inchoate for us to accurately say of an ai response "oh yes, that's exactly how I would have put it".
Rosencrantz2
29d ago
No, it's ambiguous and how you'd interpret it would depend on the speaker and context. It could be said by someone who absolutely loves pop music. A true opera lover might well hate shitty opera more than anyone.
I think they do "teach you how to learn" but that really consists in widening the distance between checkpoints and motivating you to figure out how to learn by yourself. Some people can develop these skills alone but it isn't easy.
More options
Context Copy link