IMO any solution to the 5-and-10 problem or wacky lesswrongian decision theory or cloning digital minds has to engage with Chalmer’s hard problem of consciousness, if it is to persuade people.
My current conclusion is that yeah both clones will have conscious experience. Both clones will understand they came from me, that does not mean they feel they are me. Similarly I will understand the clones will come from me, that does not mean they are the future me. It is possible my conscious experience is one of permanent termination and resembles one of death. (Imagine an instant death where someone sets off a fission bomb next to me and vaporises my atoms in milliseconds, don’t imagine a slow and painful process of the lungs and the heart and the brain stopping) This is compatible with newton’s laws because newton’s laws say nothing about the connection between material reality and conscious experience.
Some background for where I’m coming from, when approaching these problems:
Chalmer’s hard problem basically states that conscious experience is a distinct thing from just the material reality of the brain (mass-energy inside the brain interacting with mass-energy outside the brain).
Acknowledging existence of the hard problem might be compatible with the idea that the brain follows deterministic physical laws. It is possible that brain state at any given timestep is calculable from brain state and universe state at previous timestep, and conscious experience at any given timestep is calculable from brain state at the same timestep.
When Chalmers says conscious experience is a distinct thing from material reality, that does not mean conscious experience is made out of mass-energy. It means when we observe that we are observing things, we are able to notice there is something doing the observing.
“Conscious experience” could be seen as a useful concept for humans to reason about, the way “democracy” is a useful concept to reason about. “Democracy” and “conscious experience” are objects in the map, not the territory.
Humans tend to create those objects in their map that are correlated with actual things in the territory. This may be because of evolution, sure. Humans often make mistakes too, sometimes the objects we create in the map don’t have particularly high predictive power over the territory. Just because “conscious experience” is an intuitive concept to think about doesn’t guarantee it is a useful concept to think about when trying to achieve high predictive power over the territory.
Laws of physics don’t say anything about the connection between material reality of the brain and conscious experience. It’s possible that receiving 700 nm wavelength photons in your eyeballs feels like a more intense conscious experience than 500 nm wavelength photons in your eyeballs, it is also possible it feels less intense than 500 nm. Newton’s laws don’t tell you how intense a wavelength of photon will feel. Newton’s laws can at best predict which neurons will activate with how many electrons fire in each synapse in your brain after some 500 nm photons enter your eye, they can’t predict what is the conscious experience associated with those electrons firing.
It seems likely the function between electrons firing and conscious experience is not one-to-many. Two brains with identical electron firings will have identical conscious experience. But beyond this one fact, we know very little about which electron firing is mapped to which conscious experience.
IMO any solution to the 5-and-10 problem or wacky lesswrongian decision theory or cloning digital minds has to engage with Chalmer’s hard problem of consciousness, if it is to persuade people.
My current conclusion is that yeah both clones will have conscious experience. Both clones will understand they came from me, that does not mean they feel they are me. Similarly I will understand the clones will come from me, that does not mean they are the future me. It is possible my conscious experience is one of permanent termination and resembles one of death. (Imagine an instant death where someone sets off a fission bomb next to me and vaporises my atoms in milliseconds, don’t imagine a slow and painful process of the lungs and the heart and the brain stopping) This is compatible with newton’s laws because newton’s laws say nothing about the connection between material reality and conscious experience.
Some background for where I’m coming from, when approaching these problems:
Chalmer’s hard problem basically states that conscious experience is a distinct thing from just the material reality of the brain (mass-energy inside the brain interacting with mass-energy outside the brain).
Acknowledging existence of the hard problem might be compatible with the idea that the brain follows deterministic physical laws. It is possible that brain state at any given timestep is calculable from brain state and universe state at previous timestep, and conscious experience at any given timestep is calculable from brain state at the same timestep.
When Chalmers says conscious experience is a distinct thing from material reality, that does not mean conscious experience is made out of mass-energy. It means when we observe that we are observing things, we are able to notice there is something doing the observing.
“Conscious experience” could be seen as a useful concept for humans to reason about, the way “democracy” is a useful concept to reason about. “Democracy” and “conscious experience” are objects in the map, not the territory.
Humans tend to create those objects in their map that are correlated with actual things in the territory. This may be because of evolution, sure. Humans often make mistakes too, sometimes the objects we create in the map don’t have particularly high predictive power over the territory. Just because “conscious experience” is an intuitive concept to think about doesn’t guarantee it is a useful concept to think about when trying to achieve high predictive power over the territory.
Laws of physics don’t say anything about the connection between material reality of the brain and conscious experience. It’s possible that receiving 700 nm wavelength photons in your eyeballs feels like a more intense conscious experience than 500 nm wavelength photons in your eyeballs, it is also possible it feels less intense than 500 nm. Newton’s laws don’t tell you how intense a wavelength of photon will feel. Newton’s laws can at best predict which neurons will activate with how many electrons fire in each synapse in your brain after some 500 nm photons enter your eye, they can’t predict what is the conscious experience associated with those electrons firing.
It seems likely the function between electrons firing and conscious experience is not one-to-many. Two brains with identical electron firings will have identical conscious experience. But beyond this one fact, we know very little about which electron firing is mapped to which conscious experience.
Would love your thoughts on these ideas.