I didn't make the claim that a world without pain is better: RogueAI did. That's on them to prove that. You can't shift the burden of proof on me for that. I have my reasons for believing this is the best possible totality of creation, which would include having pain in it. — Bob Ross

Some pain is useful, but what's the point of unending agony when you already know you're hurt and can do nothing about it? Why didn't God allow us to evolve so we could block pain? Wouldn't the world be better if we and other animals could do that?

All else being equal, it would be unjust for you to forgo retribution — Bob Ross

Why?

You can also just compare things like median housing price to median income to see that Americans are poorer than they used to be. Food and other consumable items are down in price compared to incomes, but they are more than made up for by the increased cost of assets like housing, as well as healthcare and education. — Brendan Golledge

Some Americans are poorer than they used to be. My home is 12 years old. It's gone up 250% in value. I'm selling this year and am going to make hundreds of thousands in profit. That more than makes up for the increased cost in food and healthcare. There are millions of Americans like me too.

Firstly, that would be a world. Secondly, what do you mean by paradise? That just begs the question: you’re appealing to a vague “Utopia”. — Bob Ross

A vague utopia? If you were god, THIS would be the world you come up with? How about a world where we don't have to kill other creatures to survive? A world without physical pain? A world without sickness? Etc.

"There’s nothing wrong with that: in fact, you should do that. Why? Because the retribution was paid and they have rehabilitated themselves: they gave you the $20 back and are sincerely sorry."

But they still robbed me and stole from me! Even if they pay the money back, I was violated! Should they not pay for that?

"Now, if they hadn’t paid the $20 back but you knew they stole it, then just forgiving them would be mercy at the expense of justice; and if they pay you the $20 back but aren’t sorry about it then they need rehabilitation which would normally be in the form of a punishment for something like that."

But suppose they were sorry for it and told me they spent the $20 on booze and they can't afford to pay me back because they need to feed their kids. Should they be punished for not paying me back, even if they're sorry? What is twenty bucks to me? I would still forgive them. Is that wrong?

You can't pardon the person that victimized you and be just: that would be mercy at the expense of justice. — Bob Ross

Suppose someone mugged me and stole $20 bucks and then a day later ran into me again, broke down crying, apologized and gave me the $20 back. Should I call the police on them? What would be the point of punishing them? I would forgive them and move on. What's wrong with that?

Allowing for evil is necessary when creating a good world. A world with natural laws allows for natural evil; a world with persons allows for person evil. — Bob Ross

Why create a natural world at all? Why not create a paradise without suffering or scarcity?

Those who want "gun control" are simply saying that guns should be restricted to a certain set of people. That is, they favor a monopoly of coercion. What is a monopoly of coercion? It is, by definition, a tyranny. So those who favor gun control favor tyranny. — Leontiskos

Substitute guns with "nuclear weapons". Are you really trying to say that people who favor nuclear weapon control favor tyranny?

Is information processing possible without an observer to interpret the results? A person using an abacus is processing information with it. Let's say the abacus beads are moving in pattern xyz. What if that same abacus is now falling out of plane and the beads are moving back and forth from air currents also in pattern xyz? Is it processing information?

Fair enough.

To answer that, we would have to pin down exactly what kind of being Jesus is. Is he God? Part of some trinity? The son of God? The son of man? What, exactly, is he?

Well, one can point out that Jesus felt the experience of abandonment at the cross. — boundless

Or he acted like he did. Or it never happened at all and the gospel writers wrote it like it did. But let's say it's true that for a day or two he felt abandoned. That's still not much of a sacrifice, is it? I've felt abandoned many times in my life.

Republicans believe all sorts of crazy stuff. They're primed to swallow some really kooky bullshit. When I was a kid, they fought tooth and nail to deny smoking was dangerous. Then it was Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster murdered. Followed by Iraq and WMD's (although this was kind of a mainstream lie that a lot of Democrats bought into). Then it was climate change denialism, birtherism, Qanon, pizzagate, a conspiracy to overcount Covid deaths, stolen elections, vaccine denialism, etc.

But then my party, Democrats, get stumped when someone asks them "what is a woman?", so people in glass houses.

Physicalism aside, if consciousness is fundamental, is there something it's kind to be an LLM? — flannel jesus

That's to say is there something it's like to be a bunch of microchips in action? Maybe. There's something it's like to be a bunch of neurons in action, so I don't have a problem with LLM consciousness, but as an idealist, I have to believe there really aren't microchips and brains either. They're just parts of the dream. In this dream the one mind is dreaming, brains are associated with consciousness. I don't see why microchips can't be.

Yes - what was Jesus' sacrifice exactly - a weekend ruined, perhaps? Then back to the all-powerful, omniscient, immortal ruler of all things. — Tom Storm

:100:

Being scourged and crucified isn't fun, but maybe it's like the movie Palm Springs. If you know you can't die, maybe painful "deaths" are tolerable.

But you wouldn't be sure no matter what, period. There's no possible world where you would even admit the slightest possibility that it's understanding. — flannel jesus

Why would you say that? As an idealist, I think this is all a dream. There's only a cosmic mind and we're all conscious aspects of it. Think of a jigsaw puzzle. The whole puzzle is the one mind, and each of us is a piece of the puzzle. I have no problem with an LLM also being a conscious aspect of the one mind, a jigsaw puzzle piece, if you will. I kind of like the idea, actually.

You can literally, right now, give it a text it's never seen before and ask it for a summary and it will do a damn good job. Even in the face of this you won't give any ground, meaning you're not the kind of person to give ground on this period, no matter what, in any particle world — flannel jesus

I think you're confusing me with someone else.

Consider how influential it is in our concept of 'heroism', i.e. self-sacrifice to save others and Christianity says that God incarnate did that. — boundless

Not quite. A soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save his comrades is heroic. A soldier with a ring of immortality jumping on grenades and in front of enemy bullets isn't doing anything heroic.

What’s a current example of a big lie? — Tom Storm

The 2020 election was stolen.

while CNN is softer centrist/conservative — Tom Storm

From an American perspective, regarding American politics, CNN is very liberal.

That's not the point of this conversation anyway. Rogue basically said, if everything is physical, then you should be able to understand the meaning of a book by just having physical access to it. Which seems... absurd to me, to be honest. — flannel jesus

It's absurd because you know that knowledge of the physical facts of a book does not equate to knowing everything about the book. The book has to be read and the contents understood before someone can claim they know everything there is to know about a book. Therefore, physicalism is false.

And we have what we could reasonably consider something not too far off from "physical understanding machines" in these LLMs - they display all possible outward signs of understanding. They're perfectly physical, and yet if you gave them access to a text written in a language they're not familiar with, they won't understand it. I consider that to be essentially tangible falsification of rogue's idea. — flannel jesus

This is tricky because we're still not sure whether an LLM will ever be able to understand anything, the way we do, by having the idea in our minds. But even with LLM's I can construct a similar argument to the one I made about books and knowledge:
If physicalism is true, then an LLM that knows all the physical facts about a book knows everything there is to know about the book. An LLM knows all the physical facts of a copy of 1984, but has never read it. The LLM knows all the physical facts about the book, but does not know everything there is to know about the copy of 1984. Therefore, physicalism is false.

This is an awkward argument though, because can an LLM know anything? Is that possible?

Could be. Nobody can claim definite knowledge of the subject. There's no way to test any of the theories. — Patterner

If the LLM's start making breakthroughs and displaying original thinking, that will imply maybe there's some emergent mentation happening. If they're incapable of doing that, that will imply it's nothing more than token prediction. I have a feeling there will be some LLM breakthroughs in the years to come.

Could be. Unless they have definitively figured out all about consciousness, no longer debating it the way we do, and would know for sure. — Patterner

But since we're as ignorant as we are, could we be wrong that ChatGPT doesn't understand and isn't conscious?

Do you think LLMs understand text? I don't think they have the slightest understanding that the marks on paper, or the binary code that the marks on paper are converted to, mean other things. I don't think they understand what meaning is, even when they are programmed to say they are. I think the binary code reacts in different ways to different binary code that is input, entirely determined by how they are programmed. I think it's very complex dominos. — Patterner

I agree, but...when you look under the hood at how we process meaning and produce intelligible output from inputs, it's just a bunch of neurons firing. Wouldn't a machine intelligence coming across us for the first time also be amazed we have the slightest understanding of anything?

As an EE myself, I have to say that sounds to me like pseudoscience. — wonderer1

I was reminded of another pseudoscience, IIT.

My point was that we don’t have to agree on what is sinful to agree that if we sin then there must a punishment; and from there my argument begins. — Bob Ross

Why does there have to be a punishment?

ETA: Scratch that. Let's say we have two people, Bob and Alice. Alice is an atheist who lives a decent life and does no great harm to anyone, just minor sins here and there. Bob is a serial killer who's tortured and killed untold numbers of kids. On his deathbed, Bob accepts Jesus into his heart. Alice doesn't. What do Alice's and Bob's punishments look like?

a) information representation - the complexity of bits and tidbits that are describing the contents — Ulthien

If all minds in the universe suddenly disappeared, would it still be true that Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street? Truth is supposed to be what corresponds to reality, but what reality does the Holmes story correspond to if there are no minds left to comprehend it? And yet, before the disappearance of minds, it was clearly true that Holmes lived at 221B. So how can a truth just vanish the moment consciousness does? If that’s the case, then some truths depend on minds to exist—which challenges the idea that all truths are purely objective or physical.

Where do you land on the issue of consciousness? What's your favored theory?

So anyway, the claim now from you is, if physicalism is true then knowing everything about the physical arrangement of the book should allow you to understand the meaning of the book, even if you don't understand the language it was written in.

I just don't think that follows. — flannel jesus

If physicalism is true (more specifically, if minds are physical), how do we even begin to discuss how something like the meaning of a book is possible? My point was simply that, if physicalism is true, then knowledge of all the physical facts about a book should entail complete knowledge of the book, but obviously that's not true, so strict physicalism isn't true. My point is just a rehash of Mary's Room. I personally am an idealist.

This one is rather trivial. Of course someone with that knowledge could in principle learn anything about the book someone who physically had the book could. They'd have to do more work than someone who just had the book in front of them, but... so? — flannel jesus

So let's suppose John and Alice have complete knowledge of all the physical facts of a copy of Orwell's 1984 in English. Neither of them has ever heard of the story. John doesn't know English, but Alice does, and Alice now knows the story contained in the pages. Who has more knowledge of the book? Isn't it clear Alice does?

You seem to be digressing into books from the original topic conscious mind. But think again. If there was nothing in the world, i.e. no paper, no ink, no humans, no physical objects whatsoever (imagine a place like Mars - a field with just rocks and hills), can a story of Sherlock Holmes exist? Whatever idea or story it might be, it needs to be in the form of physical media, DVD or ebook or physical book for it to exist. With no physical objects to contain ideas or books or music, nothing can exist. — Corvus

Before a story can be put down on some physical media, it exists in a mind first. Now, you may say that a story exists in a brain, but then we're back to the knowledge issue: if the story exists in a brain, and I have complete knowledge of the brain, then I will have knowledge of all the mental content of that brain, including whatever stories it may be thinking of. You tried to respond to this with a hard drive analogy, but you seemed to abandon it when I pointed out you were creating a distinction between data and the physical components of the hard drive which heavily implied dualism.

In that sense, they are all some form of physical objects. Ideas, minds and consciousness or whatever abstract objects you might be thinking, talking or imagining, they are in some form of physical existence - they need to be read, spoken or played by the physical beings and instruments. They might be different category of physical objects which are invisible, odourless and silent. But they are all some form of physical existence in nature and origin. — Corvus

Then we're back to an earlier objection. The IEP frames it nicely: "A more serious objection to Mind-Brain Type Identity, one that to this day has not been satisfactorily resolved, concerns various non-intensional properties of mental states (on the one hand), and physical states (on the other). After-images, for example, may be green or purple in color, but nobody could reasonably claim that states of the brain are green or purple. And conversely, while brain states may be spatially located with a fair degree of accuracy, it has traditionally been assumed that mental states are non-spatial."
https://iep.utm.edu/identity/

There is no such a thing called pain. You have your biological body which feels the sensation of pain when hit by some hard object. You call it "pain" when no such thing exists in the whole universe. It is just the state of your body cells with neurons which sent some electrical signals into your brain, and from your education and upbringing and customs, habits and cultural influence, you scream "ouch", and utter the sentence "I have pain." or "It is bloody painful." — Corvus

This is incoherent. People scream "ouch" because pain hurts. The salient feature of pain is that it feels bad. Any definition of pain which does not reference the subjective experience of hurting is incomplete. Imagine two old people from thousands of years ago talking about their various aches and pains. They know nothing about what the brain does or is. Are you saying then that their statements about their pains are nonsensical? Obviously, they can converse intelligently on the subject because when people talk of pains, they're almost always referring to the mental state of "being in pain" and not neurons and c-fibers.

No we don't need to talk about it: all you need to concede is that there are some legitimate sins; then God would have to incarnate himself through hypostatic union to absolve those sins. We don't need to agree on specifically what is sinful. — Bob Ross

Wait a minute. If God says masturbation or gay sex or eating the wrong thing is a sin that needs to be absolved, isn't that the end of the discussion right there? Even if I grant that other sins are legitimate and might need absolving, the God of the Bible, by declaring nonsinful actions sinful, is obviously not the entity to do it.

When you open your hard drive, and look into all the parts inside the drive, you will see nothing which even remotely resembles the data you stored in it.  You will see some electronic parts, capacitors, motors, transistors, chips and connectors on the magnetic platter. — Corvus

Your analogy actually undercuts your claim. You’re assuming the data on the hard drive is something different from the hard drive itself, that the 1s and 0s, the meaningful content, are not identical to the spinning platters or silicon circuits. That’s dualism in disguise: form vs. substance, software vs. hardware. But if you believe minds are purely physical, you don’t get that luxury. You can’t say “the data’s just encoded in the structure” and then duck the challenge of showing where, in the brain’s physical matter, the actual mental content exists.

ETA: If an alien asked "what is pain?" would a purely physical description of pain be sufficient to answer that question?

ETA2: If physicalism is right, then a book is just ink on paper; patterns of squiggles. So a person with total physical knowledge of a book (ink chemistry, paper fibers, locations of atoms, etc.) should, in theory, know everything about the book.

But now suppose this person doesn’t speak English. They gain complete physical knowledge of the book, but they don’t know it’s about Sherlock Holmes. Later, they learn English, reread the same book, and realize it’s a detective story.

Did they gain new knowledge? Yes. But there was no change in the book’s physical structure, and no change in their physical knowledge of it. The change was in their understanding.

So again, where did this new knowledge of the book come from? Not from the ink. Not from the paper. Not from new physical facts. The “aboutness,” the meaning, seems to exist in a different category not reducible to physical properties alone.

Yes, I suppose that's a possible response, although I Peter 4 suggests that Christ suffered. — Count Timothy von Icarus

How would Peter know, he wasn't even there?

I was talking about legitimate debt. Are you suggesting that the idea of sin is illegitimate? — Bob Ross

If we're talking about legitimate debt, don't we need to talk about legitimate sin? What, exactly, is a sin? Is masturbation something I need to be forgiven for? Eating shellfish? Homosexuality? Anal sex with my wife? Making a graven image? Suffering a witch to live? Taking the lord's name in vain?

Christ is tortured and executed by men through their free choices. He didn't crucify or scourge himself after all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

How do we know he felt any pain or suffered? He's part of some powerful trinity, right? For all we know, he blocked the pain.

Imagine that you knew someone was in debt to you so much money that they never could pay it back. You could absolve them of the debt with the snap of your fingers, but you would be being unjust: they deserve to pay that back and you deserve that money, but you are forgoing it to allow someone to be in a condition that they do not deserve out of some motive (perhaps love or kindness). In this case, you would be having mercy on them, but at the expense of being just. — Bob Ross

Doesn't it depend on the circumstances behind the debt? If a heroin addict is in debt to his dealer, is not paying off the debt "unjust"? What about being in debt to a person charging you for ransom or blackmail? Do those people deserve to be paid back?

Why are brains conscious but hearts and livers aren't?
— RogueAI
Good point, but a daft question. It is like asking why tables and chairs don't work as phones or computers? They are not designed / made to do those jobs. — Corvus

What is it about the brain then that makes it "work" for consciousness? Both brains and livers have cellular activity. Why is the brain's cellular activity suited for consciousness? Information processing? But then we're at my next question which is,

Why are only some brain processes associated with consciousness?
— RogueAI
This sounds like a question for the biologist and neurologist. — Corvus

And what do biologists and neurologists say about that?

If the mind is identical to the brain, and I'm picturing a purple flower in my mind's eye, wouldn't that entail there's a purple flower in my brain?
— RogueAI
A purple flower and an image or representation of the purple flower is not the same existence. — Corvus

If the mind is physical, then when I picture a purple flower, that experience must be entirely physical. But the mental image/representation of the flower is still purple—subjectively, vividly purple—so something in the brain must literally be purple in the same way, not just represent it or correlate with it. Saying it's just a "representation" sidesteps the issue: if minds are physical, then representations are physical, and physical things have physical properties. But there's no purple anywhere in the brain—just electrochemical activity. So either consciousness isn't just physical, or you need to point to the literal purple in my head. Or you need to say that I'm not REALLY seeing purple in my mind's eye. I'm mistaken in some way.

If minds are physical, then by studying someone's brain, I should be able to gain access to the contents of their mind, right?
— RogueAI
Not all physical objects are replaceable and transparent to our understanding. Many physical objects such as radio waves, atoms, cells and the black holes, space ... etc are not things that we can fully understand what they are. Many of them are also presupposed and imagined objects from the effects or events in the world.

We can read the radio waves on the frequency counter, we still don't know what they are. We know how to generate, transmit and receive the radio waves, but we don't see or hear them direct. We only know the audio data they carry in them, but the actual existence of the waves are unknown.

Likewise, we don't know how our brain works as they do, and brain is not replaceable. Only thing we know is that conscious mind cannot exist without working brain. Hence it is very likely physical state in its nature. There is no such thing as conscious mind as mental existence. — Corvus

I'm not asking whether we currently understand the brain, I’m asking what should be possible if the mind is entirely physical. If thoughts, memories, and mental images are nothing more than brain states, then in principle, a complete physical analysis of your brain should reveal exactly what you're thinking, just like analyzing a hard drive tells us what's stored on it. Saying the brain is mysterious or not fully understood today is just an appeal to ignorance. Complete knowledge of a person's brain should equal complete knowledge of their mind, right?

I am even thinking that mind could be physical in its nature, i.e. mind is not different existence from our bodies. Because mind can only exist when body exists as living agent. Hence body is the precondition of mind, and mind is actually a part of body. — Corvus

Why are brains conscious but hearts and livers aren't? Why are only some brain processes associated with consciousness? If the mind is identical to the brain, and I'm picturing a purple flower in my mind's eye, wouldn't that entail there's a purple flower in my brain? If minds are physical, then by studying someone's brain, I should be able to gain access to the contents of their mind, right?

:up:

America won't turn fascist under Trump. If Trump thought he could pull off something like a Reichstag fire scenario and solidify/expand his power, I have no doubt he would try it, but after trying to steal the 2020 election, he and his lackeys know there are too many people in key positions that won't go along with it, so it's not worth the effort and potential jail time.

But climate change could be an existential threat. I don't know if it is or not, but I can certainly see how its possible we could muck around with the climate and trigger some feedback loop that accelerates warming to something the biosphere can't tolerate. Do you think that that's really farfetched?

I think both sides, in any war, think they are fighting "the good fight". — Pieter R van Wyk

Yes, but is one side objectively right? To use the archetypical example of "the good war", WW2, wouldn't you agree the Nazi's were the "bad guys" and UK was fighting "the good fight"?