Thanks for the response. I guess I find the idea that there is such a thing as a platonic form of qualia or valence highly dubious.
A simple thought experiment: for any formal description of “negative valence,” you could build an agent that acts to maximize this “negative valence” form and still acts exactly like a human maximizing happiness when looking from the outside (something like a “philosophical masochist”). It seems to me that it’s impossible to define positive and negative valence independently from the environment the agent is embedded in.
Hi Samuel, I think it’s a good thought experiment. One prediction I’ve made is that one could make an agent such as that, but it would be deeply computationally suboptimal: it would be a system that maximizes disharmony/dissonance internally, but seeks out consonant patterns externally. Possible to make but definitely an AI-complete problem.
Just as an idle question, what do you suppose the natural kinds of phenomenology are? I think this can be a generative place to think about qualia in general.
Thanks for the response. I guess I find the idea that there is such a thing as a platonic form of qualia or valence highly dubious.
A simple thought experiment: for any formal description of “negative valence,” you could build an agent that acts to maximize this “negative valence” form and still acts exactly like a human maximizing happiness when looking from the outside (something like a “philosophical masochist”). It seems to me that it’s impossible to define positive and negative valence independently from the environment the agent is embedded in.
Hi Samuel, I think it’s a good thought experiment. One prediction I’ve made is that one could make an agent such as that, but it would be deeply computationally suboptimal: it would be a system that maximizes disharmony/dissonance internally, but seeks out consonant patterns externally. Possible to make but definitely an AI-complete problem.
Just as an idle question, what do you suppose the natural kinds of phenomenology are? I think this can be a generative place to think about qualia in general.