James Rogers <jamesr@best.com>
> I would be willing to bet against you
Cool!
OK, let me see if I can start to propose some of the details
for such a bet.
First off, there are at least two issues here. #1, will
something like Steve's theory turn out to be true (and proved by
science by 2025) and second, will people, 25 years from now, Consider
Steve Lehar to be as famous as Einstein.
I wouldn't mind betting $100 on both of these.
For the first one, how about something like this:
1: By 2025, science will demonstrate that we are not consciously
directly aware of anything causally upstream from our 5 basic senses,
but rather there is a 3D world inside of our head, produced by our
brain, constructed of the conscious phenomenal and spatial qualities
that exist in our conscious awareness. "The pain isn't in the toe, it
is in the phenomenal toe in your head". Science will have made a
significant paradigm shift to include looking for more than simple
causal properties of nature. This will including observation and
classification of the phenomenal qualities we all subjectively
experience in consciousness, and hopefully the discovery of new qualia
not yet experienced by any human. The primary proof of all this being
actual "effing" of to date "ineffable" phenomenal qualities, as
described in my paper "A Qualia theory of Consciousness". People and
Machines will be experienceing and hence saying things like: "Oh
That's what salt tastes like!" by 2025. And because of this we will
have much more than a mere causal Turing Tests to know if other
conscious minds truly exist and what they are like...
And for the second one, how about something simply like:
2: By 2025, Steve Lehar, because of his work with consciousness, will
be popularly considered as one of the great scientists of all time,
in a league with Einstein.
Can you think of any ways to improve these descriptions to
make a better, more concice, easer to judge bet?
Are there any others out there?
Brent Allsop
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