Be careful not to assume the conclusion, e.g. “Non-physical minds have high K complexity because my preferred Turing language assigns high K complexity to non-physical minds (and my preferred Turing language makes sense, dammit!).”. The high K complexity isn’t want makes us suspicious of “non-physical” phenomena, it’s all the reasons that make our chosen ontology the pragmatic one. As of yet we can’t get an agent to formally “update” its Turing language or choose a “natural” one, though SI folk are very interested in that problem. Steve Rayhawk had some interesting and related ideas about extracting bits of Chaitin’s constant from computation latent in the environment, which sneakily highlights some themes of Friendliness.
In things like Cartesian Dualism, mind stuff is supposed to have mental properties as essential and irreducible features.
Cartesian minds, are , conroversially, “without moving parts”. Surely that would make them low in complexity.
Right. It gets kind of funny, though, when you chase that a little further onto a tangent. Human minds think that “without moving parts” is simple because of their mechanical intuitions, and humans got their mechanical intuitions because they evolved in a universe with straightforward physical laws. Or! Human minds think “without moving parts” is simple because of their mechanical intuitions, and human minds got their mechanical intuitions because mechanical intuition is a convergent property of minds, and wherever you have a mind you will find mechanical intuition, via non-fallacious teleology. Put another way, that minds were preceded by some evolutionary process is questionable, or contingent and trivial if “true”. Given the latter interpretation, pointing out that human minds evolved is just the genetic fallacy. Given the former interpretation, though, the latter can conceivably be called the teleological fallacy. Dissolving the debate requires resolving the inherent logical uncertainty, and that is a little trickier than some seem to think.
Put another way, that minds were preceded by some evolutionary process is questionable, or contingent and trivial if “true”. Given the latter interpretation, pointing out that human minds evolved is just the genetic fallacy. Given the former interpretation, though, the latter can conceivably be called the teleological fallacy. Dissolving the debate requires resolving the inherent logical uncertainty, and that is a little trickier than some seem to think.
(Voted back up to 0.) If you downvoted Peterdjones, please, stop that. He’s doing an excellent job at showing how positions like dualism aren’t completely stupid, and downvoting him is the sort of behavior that makes LW echo chamber-y. It makes sense to downvote someone if they say something that sounds false without good explanation; I say things that sound like nonsense all the time and it’s understandable that I get downvoted for it, even if I know it’s due to misunderstanding. But Peterdjones is writing comprehensible and informative comments and I see no good reason to downvote them. If there is a good reason please explain it.
Be careful not to assume the conclusion, e.g. “Non-physical minds have high K complexity because my preferred Turing language assigns high K complexity to non-physical minds (and my preferred Turing language makes sense, dammit!).”. The high K complexity isn’t want makes us suspicious of “non-physical” phenomena, it’s all the reasons that make our chosen ontology the pragmatic one. As of yet we can’t get an agent to formally “update” its Turing language or choose a “natural” one, though SI folk are very interested in that problem. Steve Rayhawk had some interesting and related ideas about extracting bits of Chaitin’s constant from computation latent in the environment, which sneakily highlights some themes of Friendliness.
In things like Cartesian Dualism, mind stuff is supposed to have mental properties as essential and irreducible features. Cartesian minds, are , conroversially, “without moving parts”. Surely that would make them low in complexity.
Right. It gets kind of funny, though, when you chase that a little further onto a tangent. Human minds think that “without moving parts” is simple because of their mechanical intuitions, and humans got their mechanical intuitions because they evolved in a universe with straightforward physical laws. Or! Human minds think “without moving parts” is simple because of their mechanical intuitions, and human minds got their mechanical intuitions because mechanical intuition is a convergent property of minds, and wherever you have a mind you will find mechanical intuition, via non-fallacious teleology. Put another way, that minds were preceded by some evolutionary process is questionable, or contingent and trivial if “true”. Given the latter interpretation, pointing out that human minds evolved is just the genetic fallacy. Given the former interpretation, though, the latter can conceivably be called the teleological fallacy. Dissolving the debate requires resolving the inherent logical uncertainty, and that is a little trickier than some seem to think.
I didn’t follow that.
(Voted back up to 0.) If you downvoted Peterdjones, please, stop that. He’s doing an excellent job at showing how positions like dualism aren’t completely stupid, and downvoting him is the sort of behavior that makes LW echo chamber-y. It makes sense to downvote someone if they say something that sounds false without good explanation; I say things that sound like nonsense all the time and it’s understandable that I get downvoted for it, even if I know it’s due to misunderstanding. But Peterdjones is writing comprehensible and informative comments and I see no good reason to downvote them. If there is a good reason please explain it.