Pi has a googolth digit even if we don’t run the calculation. A decision procedure has an output even if we do not run it. We just do not know what it is. I do not see the problem.
No, a decision procedure doesn’t have an output if you don’t run it. There is something that would be the output if you ran it. But if you ran it, it would not be an l-zombie.
Let’s give this program a name. Call it MaybeZombie. Benja is saying “If MaybeZombie is an l-zombie, then MaybeZombie would say ‘I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie’ ”. Benja did not say “If MaybeZombie is an l-zombie, then if MaybeZombie were run, MaybeZombie would say ‘I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie’ ”.
There is no case in which a program can think “I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie” and be wrong. You’re trying to argue that based on a mixed counterfactual. You’re saying “I’m sitting here in Universe A, and I’m imagining Universe B where there is this program MaybeZombie that isn’t run, and the me-in-Universe-A is imagining the me-in-Universe-B imagining a Universe C in which MaybeZombie is run. And now the me-in-Universe-A is observing that the me-in-Universe-B would conclude that MaybeZombie-in-Universe-C would say ‘I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie’.”
You’re evaluating “Does MaybeZombie say ‘I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie’?” in Universe C, but evaluating “Is MaybeZombie conscious?” in Universe B. You’re concluding that MaybeZombie is “wrong” by mixing two different levels of counterfactuals. The analogy to pi is not appropriate, because the properties of pi don’t change depending on whether we calculate it. The properties of MaybeZombie do depend on whether MaybeZombie is run.
It is perfectly valid for any mind to say “I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie”. The statement “I can’t be an l-zombie” clearly means “I can’t be an l-zombie in this universe”.
No, a decision procedure doesn’t have an output if you don’t run it. There is something that would be the output if you ran it.
I’m not sure that is a particularly useful way to carve reality. At best it means that we need another word for the thing that Coscott is referring to as ‘output’ that we can use instead of the word output. The thing Coscott is talking about is a much more useful thing when analysing decision procedures than the thing you have defined ‘output’ to mean.
“What would happen if hypothetically X were done” is one of the most common targets in statistical inference. That’s a huge chunk of what Fisher/Neyman had done (originally in the context of agriculture: “what if we had given this fertilizer to this plot of land?”) This is almost a hundred years ago.
No, a decision procedure doesn’t have an output if you don’t run it.
This made me think that he was talking about the property of the output, so my misunderstanding was relative to that interpretation.
I personally think that consciousness is a property of MaybeZombie, and that L-zombies do not make sense, but the position I was trying to defend in this thread was that we can talk about the theoretical output of a function without actually running that funciton. (We might not be able to talk very much, since perhaps we can’t know the output without running it)
We are getting in a situation similar to the Ontological Argument for God, in which an argument gets bogged down in equivocation. The question becomes: what is a valid predicate of MaybeZombie? One could argue that there is a distinction to be made between such predicates as “the program has a Kolmogorov complexity of less than 3^^^3 bits” on the one hand, versus such predicates as “the program has been run” on the other. The former is an inherent property, while the latter is extrinsic to the program, and in some sense is not a property of the program itself. And yet, grammatically at least, “has been run” is the predicate of “the program” in the sentence “the program has been run”. If “has said ‘I must not be a zombie’ ” is not a valid predicate of MaybeZombie, then talking about whether MaybeZombie has said ‘I must not be a zombie’ is invalid. If one can meaningfully talk about whether MaybeZombie has said ‘I must not be a zombie’, then “has said ‘I must not be a zombie’ ” is a valid predicate of MaybeZombie. Since this predicate is obviously false if MaybeZombie isn’t run, and could be true if MaybeZombie is run, then this is a property of MaybeZombie that depends on whether MaybeZombie is run.
Pi has a googolth digit even if we don’t run the calculation. A decision procedure has an output even if we do not run it. We just do not know what it is. I do not see the problem.
No, a decision procedure doesn’t have an output if you don’t run it. There is something that would be the output if you ran it. But if you ran it, it would not be an l-zombie.
Let’s give this program a name. Call it MaybeZombie. Benja is saying “If MaybeZombie is an l-zombie, then MaybeZombie would say ‘I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie’ ”. Benja did not say “If MaybeZombie is an l-zombie, then if MaybeZombie were run, MaybeZombie would say ‘I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie’ ”.
There is no case in which a program can think “I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie” and be wrong. You’re trying to argue that based on a mixed counterfactual. You’re saying “I’m sitting here in Universe A, and I’m imagining Universe B where there is this program MaybeZombie that isn’t run, and the me-in-Universe-A is imagining the me-in-Universe-B imagining a Universe C in which MaybeZombie is run. And now the me-in-Universe-A is observing that the me-in-Universe-B would conclude that MaybeZombie-in-Universe-C would say ‘I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie’.”
You’re evaluating “Does MaybeZombie say ‘I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie’?” in Universe C, but evaluating “Is MaybeZombie conscious?” in Universe B. You’re concluding that MaybeZombie is “wrong” by mixing two different levels of counterfactuals. The analogy to pi is not appropriate, because the properties of pi don’t change depending on whether we calculate it. The properties of MaybeZombie do depend on whether MaybeZombie is run.
It is perfectly valid for any mind to say “I have conscious experiences, so clearly I can’t be an l-zombie”. The statement “I can’t be an l-zombie” clearly means “I can’t be an l-zombie in this universe”.
I’m not sure that is a particularly useful way to carve reality. At best it means that we need another word for the thing that Coscott is referring to as ‘output’ that we can use instead of the word output. The thing Coscott is talking about is a much more useful thing when analysing decision procedures than the thing you have defined ‘output’ to mean.
That’s just a potential outcome, pretty standard stuff:
http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~fienberg/Rubin/Rubin-JASA-05.pdf
“What would happen if hypothetically X were done” is one of the most common targets in statistical inference. That’s a huge chunk of what Fisher/Neyman had done (originally in the context of agriculture: “what if we had given this fertilizer to this plot of land?”) This is almost a hundred years ago.
I do not understand how the properties of MaybeZombie depend on whether or not MaybeZombie is run.
Because consciousness isn’t a property of MaybeZombie, it’s a property of the process of running it?
This made me think that he was talking about the property of the output, so my misunderstanding was relative to that interpretation.
I personally think that consciousness is a property of MaybeZombie, and that L-zombies do not make sense, but the position I was trying to defend in this thread was that we can talk about the theoretical output of a function without actually running that funciton. (We might not be able to talk very much, since perhaps we can’t know the output without running it)
We are getting in a situation similar to the Ontological Argument for God, in which an argument gets bogged down in equivocation. The question becomes: what is a valid predicate of MaybeZombie? One could argue that there is a distinction to be made between such predicates as “the program has a Kolmogorov complexity of less than 3^^^3 bits” on the one hand, versus such predicates as “the program has been run” on the other. The former is an inherent property, while the latter is extrinsic to the program, and in some sense is not a property of the program itself. And yet, grammatically at least, “has been run” is the predicate of “the program” in the sentence “the program has been run”. If “has said ‘I must not be a zombie’ ” is not a valid predicate of MaybeZombie, then talking about whether MaybeZombie has said ‘I must not be a zombie’ is invalid. If one can meaningfully talk about whether MaybeZombie has said ‘I must not be a zombie’, then “has said ‘I must not be a zombie’ ” is a valid predicate of MaybeZombie. Since this predicate is obviously false if MaybeZombie isn’t run, and could be true if MaybeZombie is run, then this is a property of MaybeZombie that depends on whether MaybeZombie is run.