How we understand the billion destinies, to shut out the billion-and-oneth
Or: the seemingly endless process of creating a repository, yet at the very start of which we set parameters for what shall be entered into it?
I could start with simple, reductionist analogies: the world is obsessed with digital and MP3. Yet the first one only means greater control (as of yet), not the richness of an analog content; the second one only means less hogging of memory resources, again not the richness of a WAV file. A computer programmer often creates a look-up table when instead of a binary logic applying to things, there is a particular case for a particular instance: the programming is only done for when and how to access the lookup table, and whether it's a dynamic or static table; whether it may grow or not; and when it grows, what will be the maximum limit before you start removing something, having an overrun? The last question is a crucial question: because every human being is a new story with the richness of his and her world; my experience is not yours, and if you have simulated mine, then you still haven't simulated as yet my daughter's. Or the one that I have not yet experienced.
What is thirst?
I have often grappled with the question and so have many. How to define it? By the words, that you feel parched? By coming up with magic Orwellian words that will tell everyone what does it mean: I wonder what will the thousand words for "love" will be if it comes to that stage of lingual foliation? By the exact knowledge of what chemicals get produced where and which impulses do those chemicals "fire"? Or, dismiss the question saying that it is merely a play-acting, a dream, that no real thirst exists, that it is either a figment of my imagination or Brahma's dream, that I know thirst by imagining it to be real and thus I know thirst - the advaita oneness? Do I? I do not want to define the sensations: I want to know what's that feeling, which if I am thirsty only then I may know (and if in my imagination, then how in my imagination that particular feeling: can I imagine how does a dog feel thirsty?). Objectifying thirst yes does give me great knowledge: knowledge that may help me preventing thirst in someone, that may help me inducing thirst in someone else, that may help me varying its degrees, that may help me play with it just as I can use my computer without understanding the bus cables in it. Will knowing all the signals be actually the knowledge, and thus make it redundant whether I experience thirst or not in life?
Daniel Dennett says, yes. Mary is the omniscient being. Or, RoboMary is the omniscient "someone." She knows what happens to other robots when they see red and thus she knows what will happen to her, by which I assume that she already has perfect knowledge of herself is what Dennett is implying. Or, rather, she doesn't need to know: her brain's simulation acts like a controlled input A and seeing red is another input B (again controlled, because she knows the results on other robots); however, the output is as yet unknown - she will only "know" it once the simulations of her brain and seeing red are run. The following questions arise:
1. The omniscient being is someone who already knows everything. RoboMary can only know about her reaction on seeing red after doing the equivalent of seeing red - running a red-seeing simulation. She cannot anticipate it; she has no way of knowing beforehand what will it be on encountering red. Doesn't contact with red give knowledge hitherto hidden to RoboMary?
2. Imagine Mary whose brain is implanted with RoboMary. Without ever encountering red, if she somehow can imagine red, she will then have the emotions of experiencing red. The crucial question is how will she imagine red? RoboMary will simply process the wavelength info of red color and thus without even knowing what red looks like, Mary may have a gamut of emotions that she would have experienced on actually seeing red with Mary's brain.
Right? Or, is there a catch? RoboMary does run simulations based on Mary's brain but the other input is all the reactions of all other people/robots. Is the output actually reflectant of Mary's brain? If 100 people did this and that with such and such elements in their brains with the red color, Mary with her particular brain should experience all this. The question is: how many people will be the deciding factor? 1000? One crore? One billion?
What Dennett does is to discount the possibility of a wider template than whatever is the number of robots RoboMary is feeding upon: or can humans with new combinations of chemicals and post-modifications of those chemicals given conditions, surroundings, etc., be not born? A billion human beings may be recorded, but who is to say that the billion-and-oneth will not have any element new (and then who is to determine if that information might not have been crucial to determining Mary's state on seeing red?); in a blind race to objectify experience, and human experience, why are we forgetting that we never created the world (even if a Creator didn't) and that we do not know what life is, what thirst is? The billion-and-oneth might yet be different: but, ah, yes, given the growing controls on me, it will be much more difficult to produce anything but my clone or my neighbour's clone.
Move on, Berni!
I could start with simple, reductionist analogies: the world is obsessed with digital and MP3. Yet the first one only means greater control (as of yet), not the richness of an analog content; the second one only means less hogging of memory resources, again not the richness of a WAV file. A computer programmer often creates a look-up table when instead of a binary logic applying to things, there is a particular case for a particular instance: the programming is only done for when and how to access the lookup table, and whether it's a dynamic or static table; whether it may grow or not; and when it grows, what will be the maximum limit before you start removing something, having an overrun? The last question is a crucial question: because every human being is a new story with the richness of his and her world; my experience is not yours, and if you have simulated mine, then you still haven't simulated as yet my daughter's. Or the one that I have not yet experienced.
What is thirst?
I have often grappled with the question and so have many. How to define it? By the words, that you feel parched? By coming up with magic Orwellian words that will tell everyone what does it mean: I wonder what will the thousand words for "love" will be if it comes to that stage of lingual foliation? By the exact knowledge of what chemicals get produced where and which impulses do those chemicals "fire"? Or, dismiss the question saying that it is merely a play-acting, a dream, that no real thirst exists, that it is either a figment of my imagination or Brahma's dream, that I know thirst by imagining it to be real and thus I know thirst - the advaita oneness? Do I? I do not want to define the sensations: I want to know what's that feeling, which if I am thirsty only then I may know (and if in my imagination, then how in my imagination that particular feeling: can I imagine how does a dog feel thirsty?). Objectifying thirst yes does give me great knowledge: knowledge that may help me preventing thirst in someone, that may help me inducing thirst in someone else, that may help me varying its degrees, that may help me play with it just as I can use my computer without understanding the bus cables in it. Will knowing all the signals be actually the knowledge, and thus make it redundant whether I experience thirst or not in life?
Daniel Dennett says, yes. Mary is the omniscient being. Or, RoboMary is the omniscient "someone." She knows what happens to other robots when they see red and thus she knows what will happen to her, by which I assume that she already has perfect knowledge of herself is what Dennett is implying. Or, rather, she doesn't need to know: her brain's simulation acts like a controlled input A and seeing red is another input B (again controlled, because she knows the results on other robots); however, the output is as yet unknown - she will only "know" it once the simulations of her brain and seeing red are run. The following questions arise:
1. The omniscient being is someone who already knows everything. RoboMary can only know about her reaction on seeing red after doing the equivalent of seeing red - running a red-seeing simulation. She cannot anticipate it; she has no way of knowing beforehand what will it be on encountering red. Doesn't contact with red give knowledge hitherto hidden to RoboMary?
2. Imagine Mary whose brain is implanted with RoboMary. Without ever encountering red, if she somehow can imagine red, she will then have the emotions of experiencing red. The crucial question is how will she imagine red? RoboMary will simply process the wavelength info of red color and thus without even knowing what red looks like, Mary may have a gamut of emotions that she would have experienced on actually seeing red with Mary's brain.
Right? Or, is there a catch? RoboMary does run simulations based on Mary's brain but the other input is all the reactions of all other people/robots. Is the output actually reflectant of Mary's brain? If 100 people did this and that with such and such elements in their brains with the red color, Mary with her particular brain should experience all this. The question is: how many people will be the deciding factor? 1000? One crore? One billion?
What Dennett does is to discount the possibility of a wider template than whatever is the number of robots RoboMary is feeding upon: or can humans with new combinations of chemicals and post-modifications of those chemicals given conditions, surroundings, etc., be not born? A billion human beings may be recorded, but who is to say that the billion-and-oneth will not have any element new (and then who is to determine if that information might not have been crucial to determining Mary's state on seeing red?); in a blind race to objectify experience, and human experience, why are we forgetting that we never created the world (even if a Creator didn't) and that we do not know what life is, what thirst is? The billion-and-oneth might yet be different: but, ah, yes, given the growing controls on me, it will be much more difficult to produce anything but my clone or my neighbour's clone.
Move on, Berni!
posted by ankyuk at
6:49 pm
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