Categoría: Understanding Sentience
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Some problems of the very intuitive evolutionary emergentist paradigm trying to explain consciousness from neurons
Some problems of the very intuitive evolutionary emergentist paradigm trying to explain consciousness from neurons, thanks to Andrés Gómez Emilsson and Chris Percy at Qualia Research Institute: The “Slicing Problem” is a thought experiment that raises questions for substrate-neutral computational theories of consciousness, particularly, in functionalist approaches. The thought experiment uses water-based logic gates to…
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LLM, DL and generative AI to represent metaphysical hypotheses and theories.
«I realized that DALL-E 3 enables me to illustrate metaphysical models. Here is an image of our evolved perceptual user interface parsing the physical world from basement reality’s much more complicated qualitative dynamics.» —Michael Spark Leer más: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Sentience.Research/posts/1462369867653527/
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The Interface Theory of Perception by Donald D. Hoffman
A goal of perception is to estimate true properties of the world. A goal of categorization is to classify its structure. Aeons of evolution have shaped our senses to this end. These three assumptions motivate much work on human perception. I here argue, on evolutionary grounds, that all three are false. Instead, our perceptions constitute…
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Does every experience have some negative valence?
Roger Thisdell holds that every experience has some negative valence and that there are no experiences with a positive hedonic level. There is a point where you deconstruct perception to basic experiences by not feeding certain mental processes with your attention, they fade out. If I’m not paying attention to thought, the experience and comprehension…
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L’approche systématique de la souffrance: Un entretien avec Robert Daoust
English | French L’algonomie est le nom d’une discipline pour l’étude systématique de la souffrance, proposée par Robert Daoust. L’Alliance Algosphère, lancée par Robert et d’autres en 2011, est un réseau mondial ouvert et transparent d’individus et d’organisations, dédié à l’allègement de la souffrance. Sentience Research: Vous êtes l’un des fondateurs d’Algosphère. Comment l’organisation…
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Conversations about the badness of involuntary suffering
I have the intuition that voluntary suffering might not be bad. This is primarily due to personal experience: I often feel sad (sympathy) when I encounter sad stories or sad situations, but I don’t have the intuition that this is bad for me, because I don’t feel like I ought to look away or stop…
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The systematic approach to suffering: an Interview with Robert Daoust
English | French Algonomy is the name of a discipline for the systematic study of suffering, proposed by Robert Daoust. The Algosphere Alliance, launched by Robert and others in 2011, is an open and transparent global network of individuals and organizations, dedicated to alleviating suffering. Sentience Research: You are one of the founders of…
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A comprehensive list of ways in which reality may be distorted by perception, by David Pearce
«If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.» —William Blake 1. You don’t perceive the environment. There is no public world. Instead, your local environment partially selects your brain states, some of which are experienced as your external surroundings. Mind-independent reality is a speculative metaphysical inference, sadly a strong one, IMO. Contra William Blake (and…
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Andrés Gómez-Emilsson on Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain: Rating, Ranking, and Comparing Peak Experiences Suggest the Existence of Long Tails for Bliss and Suffering
I briefly explain that while some distributions (e.g. the size of the leaves of a tree) follow a Gaussian bell-shaped pattern, many others (e.g. avalanches, size of asteroids, etc.) follow a long-tail distribution. Long-tail distributions have the general property that a large fraction of the volume is accounted for by a tiny percent of instances…
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David Pearce on what is the difference between perception and consciousness
“Thus the existence of a real object outside me is never given directly in perception, but can only be added in thought to what is a modification of inner sense as its external cause, and hence can only be inferred.” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 1781) “All that we see or seem is but a dream…