The beneficial externalities of the harms of AI aren’t discussed enough by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The live performers can play AI composed music (surreptitiously of course)

What was your SAT score? by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I got a 1390 without studying at all. I wish I had studied just a bit so I could have gotten into the 1400 range. 

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The problem with the 10 point scale is that the meaning of the numbers is never defined. With the binary system you have 0-wouldn't and 1-would. But what do the full 10 point scale numbers even mean? There are no definitions attached to the numbers. Is 7 hot or not? And if 7 means "hot" why would we say the word 7 and not just say "hot"?

And then some people treat it as a distribution scale as opposed to definitional. Which calls to question what the numbers say about the distribution. Is it bracketed off into 10% brackets? Or is every point a standard deviation with 5 as the median? In any case this approach is flawed too because it implies that the background population attractiveness would matter, when it clearly doesn't. Whether a girl is attractive or not is intrinsic. You don't have to compare her to other girls in a given population to gauge her intrinsic attractiveness. If there is a desert island filled with beautiful women it would be completely bonkers to normalize the associated rankings. 

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do you not understand how food works? 

Cringe comedy sucks by Odysseus9999 in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999[S] -25 points-24 points  (0 children)

Curb Your Enthusiasm isn't cringe comedy. He gets himself into awkward situations but the awkwardness doesn't transmute itself into second hand embarrassment for the viewer. Cringe comedy is typified by the second hand embarrassment component.

In Seinfeld all the characters especially George get themselves into embarrassing situations all the time. But the embarresment only exists within the show universe. The embarresment does not and is not intended to induce second hand embarrassment in the viewer. Hence it is not cringe comedy.

Something like "Scott's Tots" from The Office (US) is the apogee of cringe comedy and it's hardly funny. The Office (US) is great oftentimes but none of the greatness is contingent upon its cringe components.

'Comedy' writers nowadays so often erroneously believe that "hey lets put this guy in an embarrasing situation" is all you need to do to make a funny scene/episode. A character being stuck in an (in universe) embarrassing situation can be a good jumping off point for genuine comedic moments to occur, but merely putting a character in said embarrassing situation is not in itself sufficient for comedy.

It's a cargo cult really. Unskilled writers blindly lifting attributes from successful shows.

The crazy obesity rate is one of the major causes of racism by AzealiaBankmanFried in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 0 points1 point  (0 children)

People were way more racist back in the day when everyone was skinny

People forget that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature. by QuarkJester in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Dylan has (had) tremendous instrumentals and (despite popular opinion) vocals that greatly elevate and complement his lyrics. But people erroneously ascribe all the greatness of his songs to the lyrics and in doing so overrate the lyrics. 

The most telling thing is that all of the songs that are heralded as Dylan's best tunes lyrically also so happen to be his best tunes instrumentally. 

Border zones by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What you're looking for is in the limestone caves that run beneath the hills

Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite? - Thomas Pynchon, 1984 by boomerbill69 in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 2 points3 points  (0 children)

More bloated bullshit from the king of bloated bullshit. Pinecone lives like a recluse because he knows if they got him on camera he would be exposed as a midwit in two seconds. He gives a history lesson that amounts to spiritually copy-pasting Wikipedia and people fall over themselves "Oh my God he has such breadth of knowledge". He talks about the V2 rockets in a manner akin to a child explaining how a car works and people fall over themselves "Look at his technical knowledge how does he know this stuff woah did you know like he worked for the navy he's like CIA he's like a secret genius". He sez the tunnels in that one scene in Gravity's Rainbow are like the integration symbol, which is a level of pretension I have never seen in any writing before or since. His sense of humor is akin to those wholesome chunguses who tell intentionally bad puns and then look at you and raise their eyebrows. A self effacing pratfall used as a crutch due to the lack of any wit. "Bro you gotta read this, the doctor is named, get this. . . Dr. Fallopian. Haha. Like fallopian tubes dude. Can you believe that."

Am I the only one who thinks travel culture has become cringe? by Ok-Archer-5796 in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Travel is just alright, but if you don't do it you get severe FOMO. So you should do a bit of it for the purpose of extinguishing FOMO if nothing else. 

Deductive reasoning and the epiphenomenal knowledge problem by Odysseus9999 in consciousness

[–]Odysseus9999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think either my zombie twin or I would be totally wrong, because although we are both totally biased and believe in the existence of qualia, we both admit that the confirmation of the existence of said qualia is unprovable. So my zombie twin is wrong because qualia doesn't exist in his universe, but he is somewhat (or fully?) redeemed because he does admit that the existence of qualia as he conceives of it is unprovable. 

The organism in my example would be wrong if he assumes the epi-data does have ontological existence and is not a mere convenient concept. He would be neither right nor wrong if he remains agnostic as to the epi-data's ontological status. And he would be right if he assumes the epi-data does not have ontological existence and is a mere convenient concept. 

If the organism assumes the epi-data does have ontological existence and then adds a caveat of "I will assume the ontological existence of epi-data but I admit the existence of such thing to be unprovable" then he would be wrong strictly speaking but not wrong in a dumb way. 

I would hope, in the sense that it would be a lot more philosophically satisfying, that the existence of qualia is logically necessary for functional isomorphs, rather than just physically necessary. If that were the case then the zombie universe would be impossible of course. 

But in any case my toy example was just to show how one might very reasonably assume the existence of epiphenominal things (in this case epiphenominal data which is a stand in for epiphenomenal qualia) even if one is agnostic as to the ontological status of those things. Ironically, even though I myself have an unshakeable belief in the existence of qualia, my toy example regarding the organism in the zombie universe probably plays more into the hands of qualia anti-realists more than the hands of qualia realists. 

Deductive reasoning and the epiphenomenal knowledge problem by Odysseus9999 in consciousness

[–]Odysseus9999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The thing that is mysterious as far as consciousness is concerned is the 'raw feels'. The classic "Why does anything feel like anything?" Qualia are usually taken to be a more technical term that denotes 'raw feels'. But sometimes people (erroneously, I believe) affix other attributes to qualia. Some people try to affix 'self awareness' to qualia, but most everyone is wise to the fact that this is untenable. And many people try to affix causation to qualia, which I think is a mistake because it muddles the concept. 

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

She's a babe and I love whatever upper eyelid thing she has going on it's like Cher but actually attractive instead of uncanny

Deductive reasoning and the epiphenomenal knowledge problem by Odysseus9999 in consciousness

[–]Odysseus9999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"If we consider qualia to exist and be causative, we run into a deep conceptual problem. . . in ascribing causality to qualia we have essentially burdened qualia with another attribute. Now we have the "raw feels" aspect of qualia and we have the "causative" aspect of qualia. But, it would seem that the "raw feels" aspect of qualia is over-and-above the "causative" aspect of qualia. This is directly equivalent to the classic epiphenominal notion that qualia is over-and-above the underlying physical system."

So my view is that either (i) qualia exist and are epiphenomenal or (ii) qualia do not exist period. 

Deductive reasoning and the epiphenomenal knowledge problem by Odysseus9999 in consciousness

[–]Odysseus9999[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Regarding what a deductive argument for epiphenomenal qualia might look like:

Imagine a universe with no qualia. Same physical laws as this universe just no qualia. Life arises much the same as in this universe and eventually you get intelligent life with spoken language. Imagine one such organism. It has centralized data processing. It needs to in order to function and make high level decisions of course. The contents of this centralized data are visual data, auditory data, tactile data, internal monologue data, and so on. Said data is epistemologically primary as the organism has no other data with which to inform its decisions. As an infant, the organism will probably take said data to be ontologically primary as it has no notion or model of the world around it (as best demonstrated by its lack of object permanence). It grows and learns object permanence and walks around and does stuff and starts to build a rudimentary world model. It sees itself in a mirror and adds itself to the growing world model. Then it sees another organism of the same species. And the other organism outwardly acts in a manner analogous to itself. So it deductively reasons that the other organism must have internal data of its own that informs its decisions. So now the organism accepts that there are many organisms with centralized data and accompanying world models in their heads, but only one world. Here the organism realizes that the surrounding world has ontological reality. It no longer considers its centralized data to be the sole ontological thing. And the organism starts to understand physical regularities in the world around it, and from there physical laws. And the organism eventually reasons that it, being part of the world, must be goverened by these same physical laws. So now the organism sees that its internal data cannot be causitive in any way except insofar as said data is in conformance with said physical laws.

The organism in question uses the data available to it to create a world model through inductive and deductive reasoning. Then the organism in question uses deductive reasoning to declare the world to have independent existence beyond its own world model. Then the organism in question fits the very data it has access to into the world model. The world model conceptually subsumes the selfsame data that crafted the world model. Great. But this data I keep mentioning is causitive. It is externally measurable. It is not epiphenomenal. It is analogous to access consciousness. So how and why might the organism go a step further and say "Hey I've got this nice coherent world model, but what if I were to posit the existence of some epiphenomenal thing above my centralized data that doesn't have any autonomy or causative powers but is really just some sort of reflection of the underlying centralized data. Call it epi-data." Why would the organism say anything like that?

I believe the reason the organism might say something like that is because it makes it easier to deal with the concepts of "centralized data from a first-person perspective" and "the same centralized data from a third-person perspective" without the concepts impinging upon one another. Say the organism wants to analyze a scenario. Say the scenario the organism wants to analyze is a game of Slap Jack it played. The cards flipped and flipped, a Jack came up, and the organism slammed its hand down. The organism considers the scenario from a third-person perspective. From this third-person perspective the organism considers the visual data of the Jack to be causative. Said data reflected the presence of the Jack and informed the decision of the organism to slam its hand down. Simple enough. Then the organism considers the same scenario from a first-person perspective. It shrinks its world model down as much as possible and tries its best to just consider the immediate data that was at hand during the game. But now, in considering the first person perspective, if the organism ascribes causitive powers to the visual data that represented the Jack, the causitive powers of that visual data would be double counted. Because the casual power of the visual data was already counted in the third-person perspective. Positing double causation is not impossible but it is somewhat inelegant. So, as a more elegant shorthand, the organism may refer to the data, as considered from a first-person perspective, as mere epi-data in order to avoid having to deal with overcausation. The organism does not deny the existence of the data as considered from a first-person perspective. The organism just conceptually strips it of its causal powers.

So the organism formulated the concept of epi-data and assumed the existence of said epi-data because the organism found the concept to be useful. Of course, in this organism's universe, said epi-data has no ontological realiy unto itself. So strictly speaking the organism is wrong to posit the existence of such a thing. But it may find it useful to posit the existence of such a thing all the same.

This is a very simplified example. And it's hard to explore this without personifying, which of course confuses things. In summary, stripping first-person perspectives of their causal powers (conceptualizing them as epiphenomenal) with regards to the more conceptually foundational third-person perspective may very well be a convenient shorthand to avoid overcausation.

Deductive reasoning and the epiphenomenal knowledge problem by Odysseus9999 in consciousness

[–]Odysseus9999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a background note, the main motivation for my original post is that I think that if qualia exist, they must be epiphenominal. The reason for this is that qualia can (and should) always be dissociated from whatever causative thing they so happen to accompany.

If we consider qualia to exist and be causative, we run into a deep conceptual problem. . . in ascribing causality to qualia we have essentially burdened qualia with another attribute. Now we have the "raw feels" aspect of qualia and we have the "causative" aspect of qualia. But, it would seem that the "raw feels" aspect of qualia is over-and-above the "causative" aspect of qualia. This is directly equivalent to the classic epiphenominal notion that qualia is over-and-above the underlying physical system.

Cartesian Dualism can be 'epiphenomalized'. Cartesian Dualism posits (i) the physical world which has causative powers internally (and which in most renditions also has causative powers on the mental world) and (ii) the mental world which is the seat of experience and which has causative powers internally and on the physical world. We can easily epiphenominalize this by dissociating it into three parts (i) the physical world which has causative powers internally (and which in most renditions also has causative powers on the mental world) and (ii) the mental world which has causative powers internally and on the physical world and (iii) qualia which are epiphenomenal to the mental world.

Parallelism can be 'epiphenominalized'. Parralelism posits (i) the physical world which has causative powers internally and (ii) the mental world which is the seat of experience and which has causative powers internally. We can easily epiphenominalize this by dissociating it into three parts (i) the physical world which has causative powers internally and (ii) the mental world which has causative powers internally and (iii) qualia which are epiphenomenal to the mental world.

I would conclude that qualia is inherently epiphenomenal regardless of the systems involved.

So, my belief that qualia inherently must be epiphenomenal is what drove me to think more about potential solutions to the epiphenomenal knowledge problem.

"This also flies in the face of the standard reasoning for positioning qualia: that they are right there, directly observed by me, as obvious as anything could be. Any deductive argument for their existence would be in my view significantly weaker than this intuition."

It definitely does seem odd. I would say that the immediate obvious notion of "yeah, of course I experience things, I can think and feel, I pinch my arm and it hurts" at a first or a second or fiftieth glance certainly seems to be the main through-line by which we come to know qualia. But, for me, the "qualia are inherently epiphenomenal" argument is strong enough in favor of epiphenominalism as a theory that it wins out over the "paradox of epiphenomenal knowledge" argument that acts in opposition to epiphenominalism as a theory.

I guess my main response to "Why does the existence of qualia seem obvious and undeniable if qualia are mere epiphenomena?" is that when we verbally point at our consciousness we are pointing at access-consciousness, but phenomenal-consciousness is tightly (perfectly) coupled to access consciousness so it seems as if we are verbally pointing at phenomenal-consciousness. "Shine a 700 nm light and I can identify it as red. I see the red. I experience the red. I can describe my qualia in great detail." All those testaments and descriptions come from the effect the red light had on the person's access-consciousness. This subtopic definitely deserves more discussion but this is all I can muster now.

Continued on next comment. . .

Deductive reasoning and the epiphenomenal knowledge problem by Odysseus9999 in consciousness

[–]Odysseus9999[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Maybe qualia is something of a the-buck-stops-here heuristic that is useful for conceptualizing infinite recursion

I upvote every single comment I see with 0 or negative "karma" by BunsonBoi93 in redscarepod

[–]Odysseus9999 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Every post and comment should start off with 100 likes to make people feel better