I am agreeing with Lene here. 

Brent, 

I think you are going to just have to keep talking with your wife to find out what it is like to be her. 

This skepticism towards other minds you set out to “solve” is not an authentic, living problem. If we seriously entertain solipsism, to the extent that we want massive biomedical interventions to experimentally work on it, then: Who are you writing for about the problem? Who did you lean about the problem from? Who is inventing these things you will use to solve your solipsism problem? Other people. All around these confused solipsistic scientists there are other people ready willing and able to solve this problem for them through communication. No (insanely) dangerous, experimental computer interface needed. 

Can anyone really coherently live and speak as a pure solipsist? Is this so-called problem only a symptom of arm-chair western philosophy and the bias/confusion/reductionism of scientists? I know it is an old problem in philosophy, but this only confirms my point (that there has been some longstanding confusion, like a type/form/basin of attraction of confusion). 

I am also afraid to say that the techo-optimist worldview and future landscape you paint is hype and fiction. Consciousness cannot be moved between bodies via silicon intermediaries. Period. The attempt to do so (based on deep metaphysical confusions) will result in a biomedical experimentation complex in which military and civilian “subjects” are used to test the limits of the nervous system's ability to safely interface with silicon implants and body swapping, etc. Such places likely already exists, and are hidden from view. I am not sure if you have ever experienced brain injury or been with someone who has: worse than hell to have your brain damaged. Needless to say that when your neuro ponytail gets to “human trials” there will be failures, because what they are attempting to do is not possible. Bad news for whoever signed up as text subjects…. Perhaps you'd be interested Brent? to be a pioneer? 

If you succeed you will find me hiding from the transhumanist overloads in Vermont. 

zak





On Oct 31, 2019, at 12:32 PM, Lene Rachel Andersen - Nordic Bildung / Fremvirke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

We can't even be sure our cell phones don't listen in, why should we trust a brain implant?

And how about this: https://www.dw.com/en/when-smart-devices-pass-secrets-to-the-police/a-49207589 ?

/ L

On 31-10-2019 17:26, Waldemar Schmidt wrote:
[log in to unmask]" class=""> A question, probably mostly for Brent, but all answers are welcome:

In this world of “shared sensation/perception” via a “neurotail” is there the option to maintain privacy and “connect” when desired or willing to do so?

Best regards,

Waldemar

Waldemar A Schmidt, PhD, MD
(Perseveret et Percipiunt)
503.631.8044

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. (A Einstein)

On Oct 31, 2019, at 9:23 AM, Lene Rachel Andersen - Nordic Bildung / Fremvirke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Something went wrong in that sentence.

Why would it be worth messing with the privacy of your mind in order to know if we perceive those things the same way?

And is that really all you care about regarding your wife?

/ L

On 31-10-2019 17:20, Lene Rachel Andersen - Nordic Bildung / Fremvirke wrote:
[log in to unmask]" class="">

Why would that be worth messing with the privacy of your mind for?

/ L

On 31-10-2019 16:56, Brent Allsop wrote:
[log in to unmask]" class="">


On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 9:28 AM Lene Rachel Andersen - Nordic Bildung / Fremvirke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Playing along and accepting that this device ends up in your head, how would you know that what you experience is in fact what the other person or the dog experiences?


 For the answer, let me start with another question.

 

When you perceive a strawberry in your right field of vision, your physical knowledge of such, which has a redness quality, is in your left hemisphere.  At the same time, if there is a leaf in your left field of vision, knowledge of that, which has a physical greenness quality exist in your right hemisphere.  How would your left hemisphere know that what your other hemisphere is experiencing is in fact what the other hemisphere or the dog experiences?

Physical things can have both a color (the kind of light they reflect, which is only abstract, no qualitative meaning) and a coolness we can be directly aware of.  Once experimentalists stop being qualia blind (using more than one word to represent different physical qualities) we’ll finally discover what colorness things in the brain have.  If we objectively observe that another person is using the physical stuff which has your greenness quality to represent red things, we will be able to make objectively justified effing of the ineffable statements like: “My redness is like your greenness”.

Again, it 's not a hard mind body problem.  It's just an approachable color problem.  We just need to improve our sloppy epistemology of what color or what physical qualities something has.  The falsifiable prediction is that the causal properties of redness, and the causal properties of glutamate are the same thing.  In other words, glutamate and redness are abstract labels for the same physical thing.  Once experimentalists start making this connect (that redness is our subjective direct awareness of glutamate, as it reacts in a synapse) this will connect the subjective with the objective, making the introspective, objectively observable and shareable.  Then we can finally objectively eff the ineffable nature of elemental physical qualities like redness and greenness.

Color of glutamate:             white (it reflects white light)
Colorness of glutamate:      redness, which we are directly aware of.









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