aninhumer

It certainly seems implausible that our physical brains would behave as if they experienced things without ever having any kind of input from that process, but not impossible.

But the point of the idea of p-zombies isn't to describe something that plausibly exists. It's thought experiment to highlight the hard problem of consciousness, by demonstrating how the notion of experience is separable in our conception from any physical process we can imagine. That is, regardless of how our brain physically comes to behave as if it were conscious, we can still conceive of a version of it that does not actually experience consciousness.

This is because, at least to me, conscious experience is something entirely unlike any physical process. I can conceive of it being the result of a physical process, but nonetheless, my conception of that experience is still of a separate thing which happens as a result of that process. And as such, I can always imagine any such physical process occurring without the corresponding experience.

To say that conscious experience "is" a physical process, is to my conception, a category error.

>You look at red apple, you think "such a nice red apple, but one side is a bit yellow". But "red" doesn't mean anything to you, you don't experience it. If you can imagine that

Of course I can't imagine being a p-zombie, because there is no experience of being a p-zombie, that's the point. When I imagine a p-zombie, it is someone else.

>explain why red-p-zombie-you insist on being able to experience red color, while in fact he/she doesn't experience it.

They would say they experience it for the exact same reasons a non-p-zombie does. A chemical process in their brain produces that reaction. The difference is that they never actually have that experience, they just act as if they did.

>in your mind it's possible that consciousness is not tied to physical qualities. Therefore, physicalism would necessarily be false.

I mean, yes? I tend to assume physicalism, but I don't take it as axiomatic.

>And this is because consciousness must serve a functional purpose

I don't see why that has to be true?

No. I have absolutely no difficulty imagining such a thing.

You might suppose that any physically identical entity must necessarily experience consciousness, and that may even be true, but this does not preclude imagining a p-zombie, any more than a knowledge of anatomy and aerodynamics precludes imagining a dragon.

How do we know the experience itself influences behaviour?

Just because we experience something that feels like a decision-making process does not mean that experience is part of the process itself.

For all we know, our consciousness is just a spectator along for the ride.

It might influence it, or it might not. It's entirely plausible to me that the conclusions reached by the processes of ones mind, are completely separate from the experience of reaching those conclusions.

This only proves that behaving identically to a human is reducible to an algorithm. The actual experience of consciousness is something secondary to behaviour.

It's possible that an algorithm which behaves as a human experiences consciousness identically to a human, as some fundamental property of reality, or it's possible that it does not. We cannot know, because consciousness is not something that we can observe.

>maybe a sufficiently powerful computer running a sufficiently sophisticated program can be conscious.

Maybe it can. People presenting the hard problem of consciousness do not usually exclude such a thing. The question is, what causes human qualia? The actual experience of stimulus, rather than merely being a system reacting to them in a certain way.

The only way I can understand someone rejecting this assumption is if they somehow do not actually experience qualia.

>very superficial and inducing very strong emotions. IMHO.

I think spending part of your young adult life participating in the actions and socialisation of an institution, and then living in a society where everyone around you shares that experience, creates far stronger emotional influence on people's judgements than seeing some people you don't know being shot in a far away country.

That still assumes that all Americans are American Nationalists, i.e. they prefer the prosperity of people living in America at the expense of others. I don't think that's necessarily true and I definitely don't think they "should" believe that.

As opposed to that parallel universe without capitalism where no improvements happened?

You can't just point to improvements and say "look the system is good". If feudalism had remained the dominant system then we'd still have had some improvements in quality of life, and I'm sure the aristocracy of this hypothetical world would be pointing to that and saying "look feudalism has been nothing but a boon!" just as confidently as you.

The question is, could another system be better? And given that by pretty much any measure, we've had the resources to lift everyone out of poverty for years, and yet haven't used them to do that, I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that another way of allocating resources might be an improvement.

>Meanwhile some in the west are sitting at Starbucks on their mac books or smart phones whining about how terrible the "west" is while checking to see if their steady paycheck was direct deposited before they uber back to their furnished home or apartment, all without being arrested by secret police for their negative post upon arrival. Fancy that.

Meanwhile many people in the west can't afford most of these things, don't have a steady paycheck because they do shift work, live in a trailer, and are often harassed by the non-secret police for no reason. And they're the ones lucky enough to be born in developed economies.

The article is about someone who is collecting data. If you're not collecting data, you can just reply saying you don't have any data about them.

What exactly is the risk to a hobbyist here?

Even if we assume a completely bizarre and pathologically incompetent regulator that somehow ends up zeroing in on some tiny website which exhibits no evidence of violation, the hobbyist might have to... delete their website?

So in this hypothetical scenario, for some reason the regulator looks at your website, which presumably has no personal information inputs, no tracking analytics etc. and which you have asserted collects no personal information, and they decide that you're still somehow collecting information, and for some reason hounding your low traffic website is the best use of their limited resources.

> Twenty-eight regulators appointed by different political groups are a complex system. You will need to gain expertise on them or hire someone with it. All I’m saying is that time and money might be better used elsewhere. Particularly by someone just making side projects.

If you're not collecting data, then all of this is irrelevant. You just say "I'm not collecting data". There's no nuance here.

If you're not collecting any information "interfacing with the regulator" means replying to their email by saying "we're not collecting any information". (Assuming they even got that far, given that they'd likely take a look at your website and notice you aren't collecting any information.)

I'm not sure what's risky, expensive or time consuming about that.

This should be obviously false before you even start looking into the specifics.

Do you think if everyone in the US just made different choices everyone would be millionaires in a generation? No? Then your advice doesn't work.

Without a massive increase in productivity, the only way someone can be a millionaire is if other people are poor.

One thing I've been thinking lately is that this should be baked into the process for every unit of work, not just those people expect to be difficult.

Instead of estimating by guessing based on reading the requirements, work on an issue for say an hour or so and then estimate it.

It still wouldn't be perfect, but I think this would catch a lot of cases where, for example, a seemingly simple feature ends up requiring an extensive model change.

It would also do a much better job of shaking out cases where the requirements aren't as clear as you thought when you start trying to code it.

> I don't promote a central authority ran by me that ranks people and rewards people based on their worth.

I'm not talking about the system. I'm talking about your morality. If you say "A stupid person that contributes nothing deserves nothing." then you are making a moral statement that deems that person less worthy.

My premise is that all people are equally worthy of a good life. If distributing resources unequally helps everyone to have better lives through greater productivity then that is a justified utilitarian decision. But calling that pragmatic decision morality, and saying that people are "worth" more or less as a result, is what I object to.

And to address your points about "wife beaters", since you seem to think they are more obviously "less worthy" than others: No, I still think they are equally worthy of living good lives. They should be prevented from harming people, and if that requires a worse quality of life (i.e. as a result of imprisonment) then that is justified. But punishment for punishment's sake is just turning harm into even more harm.

>I don't promote punishing people for not being contributing members of society I promote not rewarding them.

Punishment and reward are relative in a connected economy. If you think that "A stupid person that contributes nothing deserves nothing." then you are proposing their murder via starvation.

>Your ideology promotes punishing success and rewarding idleness and stupidity.

My moral premise is the society should strive for the creation of the greatest utility for humanity. Withholding utility from some group humans, for whatever reason, directly harms that goal.

It can be argued that an unequal allocation of resources to individuals creates more overall utility by creating incentives, and I'm receptive to that argument, although I don't agree with it.

But arguing that the less productive individuals deserve less means your moral premise is no longer about creating the greatest utility, it's about creating utility for those you deem worthy.

>A stupid person that contributes nothing deserves nothing. People don't deserve things for existing.

Well thank you for being honest enough that I don't feel the need to argue against you. Your hostility towards humanity speaks for itself.

>The ideology you are promoting would have a wife and child beater be treated equally to a doctor.

And the ideology you are promoting would have the disabled murdered for being unproductive. And indeed, it already has.

Your entire point rests on the implicit moral premise that the "worth" of a human should determined by their ability to produce utility for society.

But why should that be? If someone, for whatever reason, is less able to produce utility, does that mean that person deserves less of that which is produced? That they should experience a worse life because of their lesser talents?

And if someone is, for whatever reason, more able to produce utility, do they deserve more? Should we divert resources to improve their life at the expense of others?

You can argue that inequality is necessary to create incentives. I don't personally believe that's true, but I understand the argument as a reasonable moral position. But to argue that some people are morally worth more than others is to discard the very notion of human equality.

Your point isn't "hard to swallow", rather it is the conclusion of a moral framework which many find abhorrent.

I think you're conflating cash meaning the physical currency and cash meaning the liquid asset here?

A cashless society is about the former, and as far as I know, the 10% limit is about the latter?

(EDIT: I believe in some systems the banks do technically have physical currency in the form of special high value notes, but they're not really cash in any practical sense)

Inflation doesn't make much difference to inequality, because the wealth of the rich is primarily assets not cash.

Yes of course?

If you're trying to suggest that higher income socialists won't like it if they're the ones being taxed, then I don't think you understand socialists.

>Even though I may contribute to horrific consequences on a business level, at the personal level I am still a good man.

It's true that on some level, we exist within a system that forces us to make bad choices, and in general I think criticising individuals for systemic issues is a waste of time, but you can't just say "it's just business" to dismiss all moral decisions.

If you are working for a company which you know to be causing harm, and you are in the privileged position to be able to leave without becoming destitute, choosing to keep working for them is absolutely an action which can be morally condemned.

Competition is also inherently inefficient though. It involves having at least two organisations doing the same thing, which likely involves a lot of duplicated effort.

It also leads to organisations spending money on things like advertising, which serve little purpose for the consumer, and exist only to improve their position relative to their competitor.

Competition can be better in some cases, but I'm increasingly sceptical of the assumption that it's always better, since it has these downsides.

And I don't think there's any inherent reason why a government organisation can't innovate, they usually just don't have the resources to risk doing anything they can't be sure will work. I suspect there are plenty of people in most government agencies who have ideas about how to make things more efficient, if only they had a bit of flexibility in their budget to try them. This is largely a political issue, not an organisational one.

It only "helps" if you want to dismiss the horrific consequences of the system because they make you uncomfortable.

What people mean when they say the agency is "good-natured" is not that they're going to ignore non-compliance, but that the way they enforce it is not being completely hostile and pulling out a massive lawsuit the second they see any issues.

Their goal is not to destroy companies, it's to make them compliant, and it's much easier for them to do that with communication than expensive legal action.

Yeah, I don't understand why so many people keep trying to write control-flow to FPGA compilers. The only way these things are going to be practical is if you understand how both FPGAs and the compiler work really well, and then write control-flow code in a really specific way that the compiler can handle. At which point you'd be better off using a tool that can model what you want directly.

The more useful way to write hardware using programming languages is to create a model of hardware and then use the language features to manipulate that model, and use it to create abstractions for actual hardware patterns.