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[silverspawn]

I don't give much weight to it, but I observe that a part of me is trying to figure out how freaked out I'm "supposed to be" about Russia, and it really varies depending on where you look. Some people seem to think it's not even worth mentioning, others that it's clearly the biggest thing that's happening.

It does seem to be at least a really big thing. Not that talking about it helps

[Awaclus]

I don't give much weight to it, but I observe that a part of me is trying to figure out how freaked out I'm "supposed to be" about Russia, and it really varies depending on where you look. Some people seem to think it's not even worth mentioning, others that it's clearly the biggest thing that's happening.

It does seem to be at least a really big thing. Not that talking about it helps

Well, it's clearly the biggest thing that's happening. You're not necessarily supposed to be freaked out about it, unless freaking out makes you more motivated to do something useful.

[silverspawn]

depending on the social group that ranges from true to definitely false

[silverspawn]

But something else. Sometimes I don't remember if I've posted something before. Maybe I have. But probably not. Anyway I think it's neat.

Proof that all houses have the same color, by induction over groups of size n.

Base case, n = 1. Take one house. It has any one color. So all houses of group size 1 have the same color.

Inductive step. Suppose the claim is true for groups of size n. Take a group of size n+1. Order it (1, ..., n+1). Let M be a house somewhere in the middle. The group (1, ..., n) is size n so all have the same color. In particular, they all have the same color as house M. The group (2, ..., n+1) is size n so all have the same color. In particular, they all have the same color as house M. Therefore, all houses have the same color as house M, so all the same color.

Where's the mistake? There's only one and it's very specific. (And it's not "the base case doesn't work because a house can have several colors")

[Awaclus]

depending on the social group that ranges from true to definitely false

What kind of a social group doesn't think it's the biggest thing that's happening?

[silverspawn]

ah that was unclear, I was referring about the second sentence where you have no obligation to freak out

[Awaclus]

But something else. Sometimes I don't remember if I've posted something before. Maybe I have. But probably not. Anyway I think it's neat.

Proof that all houses have the same color, by induction over groups of size n.

Base case, n = 1. Take one house. It has any one color. So all houses of group size 1 have the same color.

Inductive step. Suppose the claim is true for groups of size n. Take a group of size n+1. Order it (1, ..., n+1). Let M be a house somewhere in the middle. The group (1, ..., n) is size n so all have the same color. In particular, they all have the same color as house M. The group (2, ..., n+1) is size n so all have the same color. In particular, they all have the same color as house M. Therefore, all houses have the same color as house M, so all the same color.

Where's the mistake? There's only one and it's very specific. (And it's not "the base case doesn't work because a house can have several colors")

Is the mistake that the induction assumes that the two groups of size n have at least one house (M) in common between them, which is only true when (n+1)/2 > 1 and so you can't actually get from the base case to the inductive step?

[silverspawn]

yep, the case n=2 doesn't work. If if it did and any two houses do have the same color, then it would actually be true that all houses have the same color

[silverspawn]

Ah yes, played poker, on the bubble against 4 players who are all way too passive, I all-ined a lot like a good player should in that position, got way bigger as a result while everyone else got smaller, then lost 4 allins in a row (most with ~50% odds) and lost at fifth place.

[silverspawn]

On the bright side I'm still up ~46$ total since playing again

[silverspawn]

Probably not even top 10 most unbelievable things that ever happened in poker though

[silverspawn]

Come to think of it that's actually only about 1/16 so should happen quite regularly, but it somehow felt more ridiculous

[Awaclus]

ah that was unclear, I was referring about the second sentence where you have no obligation to freak out

I guess the same question would still apply: what kind of a social group thinks you have an obligation to freak out even when freaking out doesn't accomplish anything useful?

[silverspawn]

Those with Very Serious people who take political things Very Seriously

honestly I think there are plenty of communities that would socially punish you for not being involved even with far less important events.

[silverspawn]

I do believe I've shown with pure philosophy that panpyschism must be true because every alternative has insurmountable problems

then as I said there is an extremely strong, almost proof-level argument that panpsychism implies that consciousness in the brain depends on substrate-dependent computation

and none of this requires any particularly modern ideas. You need to understand the difference between the implementation level and the algorithmic level, and you need to know that the brain seems to be governed by ordinary physics.

So either I am wrong (and so is QRI), or otherwise, for at least the last ten years, anyone could have shown that the brain relies on substrate-dependent computation for at least the last ten years. And who knows maybe someone did but no-one listened.

I feel like I've come around to believing in conspiracy theories again. I mean it's not a conspiracy technically since no-one is conspiring, but it probably has less academic support than anti-vaccine theories

If only there was a market to bet on this.

[Awaclus]

Those with Very Serious people who take political things Very Seriously

honestly I think there are plenty of communities that would socially punish you for not being involved even with far less important events.

I mean, I am a Very Serious person who takes political things Very Seriously and I don't really see the benefit of freaking out. Staying informed is important, freaking out not so much.

[silverspawn]

when i say Very Serious, i'm talking about people who structure much of their intellectual output around maturity signaling, which at this point I'd describe as probably the biggest failure mode of intellectual progress, broadly speaking. You however are one of the last people I would accuse of doing this

[silverspawn]

signaling as I roughly see it

loyalty signaling is probably the biggest one, especially on twitter but social media in general, and of course almost every political movement
happiness signaling is probably a real thing but not in communities I visit
virtue signaling is also a thing, probably similar contexts to loyalty signaling, but unjustifiably singled out
I-don't-care signaling is sometimes the absolute primary thing among very cool young people, primarily like 15-17, maybe longer in some communities
intelligence-signaling is definitely a thing in nerdy communities

but maturity signaling is the big one among public intellectuals, and also just among social groups of not particularly important but upper middle class+ people

[silverspawn]

It's like the polar opposite of coolness/I-don't-care signaling. You're not a dumb naive teenager who is uninvolved, you are a Very Serious person who is involved in Serious Civil Duties and follows the Serious News

[faust]

I do believe I've shown with pure philosophy that panpyschism must be true because every alternative has insurmountable problems

then as I said there is an extremely strong, almost proof-level argument that panpsychism implies that consciousness in the brain depends on substrate-dependent computation

and none of this requires any particularly modern ideas. You need to understand the difference between the implementation level and the algorithmic level, and you need to know that the brain seems to be governed by ordinary physics.

So either I am wrong (and so is QRI), or otherwise, for at least the last ten years, anyone could have shown that the brain relies on substrate-dependent computation for at least the last ten years. And who knows maybe someone did but no-one listened.

I feel like I've come around to believing in conspiracy theories again. I mean it's not a conspiracy technically since no-one is conspiring, but it probably has less academic support than anti-vaccine theories

If only there was a market to bet on this.

I'm not quite sure how the substrate-dependence really solves the problem; culdn't you just build a physics simulator that simulates the substrate and then subsequently model the brain within that physics simulator?

Also I wasn't convinced by the previous metric space argument. And I don't think you made any argument against objective idealism, at least not in this thread.

[silverspawn]

It's categorically not safe to assume that I've mentioned every important argument in this thread

the panpsychism -> substrate dependence argument (super abridged) goes as follows

Scan a brain, build a neuron-level simulation.

If this simulation captures input/output behavior, it will make the same noises about consciousness as the original. if the brain was from a philosopher who wrote papers about consciousness, the simulation will write papers about consciousness

Since this does *the same computational steps* as the original, it seems rather absurd to assume that it's conscious experience is different. If it were, that would imply that you've taken away something *with causal effect* (it's easy to forget, but consciousness actually **does things** according to panpyschism, even though these things also have a material perspective), but miraculously the Input/output behavior is unchanged. ????

( I believe some version of this argument is why the target community does not respect panpyschism very much. And as mentioned, I agree with the argument for neuron-level simulations. )

Why does substrate-dependence change this? Because if the brain is substrate-dependent, a neuron-level simulation does not have the same input/output behavior. Simulating neurons assumes that they are these nice abstractable computational units, but they're not. The simulation just wouldn't work.

In practice, this probably means simulations aren't feasible. In theory, you could of course have an atom-level simulation, and that *would* preserve input/output behavior. But this is doing totally different computational steps.

[Awaclus]

It's like the polar opposite of coolness/I-don't-care signaling. You're not a dumb naive teenager who is uninvolved, you are a Very Serious person who is involved in Serious Civil Duties and follows the Serious News

People actually follow the news just so they can pretend they care about the news?

[silverspawn]

In the post, I spend a lot of time discussing just the question of whether the atom-level simulation is philosophically problematic, and I'm convinced it's not, though idk how to make that point with few words. I guess one way to kind of say it briefly is that, since consciousness is just another perspective on things and always has a material equivalent, there is nothing surprising about a simulation that talks about consciousness *if* you simulate absolutely every atom. in a human, the consciousness is causally responsible for the human talking about consciousness; an atom-level simulation precisely computes what consciosness does and outputs it... but  so what?

Also worth pointing out that all theories agree that a system talking about consciousness is in and of itself not proof of anything. The counter-example here is the GLUT, ("Giant Lookup Table"), a hypothetical system that memorizes every possible input that a human could have and just reads a corresponding output. This would obviously have the same input/output has a human, and wouldn't be conscious according to functionalism since it does no computation other than a lookup

[silverspawn]

It's like the polar opposite of coolness/I-don't-care signaling. You're not a dumb naive teenager who is uninvolved, you are a Very Serious person who is involved in Serious Civil Duties and follows the Serious News

People actually follow the news just so they can pretend they care about the news?

Yeah that's like signaling theory 101

[silverspawn]

as for Idealism of either form, there the argument consists entirely of "it contradicts physicalism". I think this is a deal breaker and I also think the target community overwhelmingly agrees, so there's much less incentive to go into more detail than there is for functionalism