Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter

[T-hawk]

In Haphazard's thread on Alpha Centauri, we diverged into quite a bit of a side tangent, deep enough that it's probably best to bring that out into an off-topic thread.  It started here:

The quotes for some facilities and techs may sound disturbing... but over time I've come to realize that Yang is basically right about everything.

It's like a schizophrenic; once you accept their initial delusion, everything else is perfectly reasonable and logical. 

I was thinking in bed last night about a followup post on Yang, and this hits the nail on the head.  Yang starts from his stated first principles: "life is chemical processes and nothing more", "life's only purpose is life itself".  Everything else follows from that: "does the genetic code brook no improvement?" and up to the Genejacks.  Personally, I've come to believe he's right in those principles: we are all merely aggregates of atoms, behaving deterministically by physical laws, free will is an illusion.  That's not a popular opinion societally and it's actually refreshing to see Yang openly advocating it.

[Fluffball]

The quotes for some facilities and techs may sound disturbing... but over time I've come to realize that Yang is basically right about everything.

I'm not sure that's something you want to admit in public. 

My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?

• Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"
  

[Krill]

Thawk you really need to defend that point. And also what is your answer to Camus's question?

[T-hawk]

No, I hold that the burden of proof is the other way around. If you think the genetic code is any different than any other matter, or that life is any different than any other chemical process, or that anything other than physical determinism drives its behavior, you need to present the evidence and support for that. Yang's first principle stands on its own as the simplest and most consistent of all possible first principles. Camus's question is moot; suicide is no different than any other change a chemical process undergoes.

[Krill]

Camus's question, in a general sense, is about why you make a choice though. Especially in the context of lacking free will. Perhaps defend is the wrong word, but explain could be more appropriate.

[Ichabod]

Personally, I've come to believe he's right in those principles: we are all merely aggregates of atoms, behaving deterministically by physical laws, free will is an illusion.  That's not a popular opinion societally and it's actually refreshing to see Yang openly advocating it.

I believe in this myself (though I never went on to the lenghts of thought to defend it phiolosophically and with proper method) and it seems to me like a very simple thing, to the point that I'm surprised to rarely find people that believe in it as well. I see a lot of people defending science against things like religion, but when I present this thought, which seems like a logical conclusion from believing that all nature follows deterministic rules that can't come to different results, they act surprised. After that, I hear a lot of: "well, there's quantum physics, so an eletron can be at two places at the same time, therefore, free will", which, even though I know nothing about quantum physics or the like, really seems like a big stretch.

That being said, I also think human beings are incapable of emotionally feeling like they don't possess free will, even though we can perhaps reach that conclusion rationally. It's part of being a human, we live as if we had choices. In that sense, you can perhaps argue that free will exists. But again, those are just some random and superficial thoughts, that I find amusing to wonder about, but not enough to pursue in a real serious and methodical level.

[Bacchus]

"Life is just chemical processes" doesn't actually assert anything at all, it's not even clear what the 'just' is meant to cut away -- surely not that life is also physical processes, biological processes and ecological processes. And to the extent that it's a statement of materialism, it doesn't address morality or individuality. Just as there is no inconsistency in believing that cells are composed of molecules, but behave characteristically _as cells_, and that molecules are composed of particles, but behave characteristically _as molecules_, there is no inconsistency between materialism and believing that humans behave characteristically as rational beings, that is by conscious choice among actions through a consideration of reasons. The consciousness that is produced by the chemical substrate is just as real as the substrate itself.

To deny meaningfulness of morality you have to assert something far stronger than "life is just chemical processes", you have to say that the chemical processes do not actually amount to what they appear to amount to, i.e. consciousness and reasoning about purposes, but that instead they amount to an entirely different, and completely opaque behavioural mechanism, whilst the apparent mechanism is nothing but a sophisticated and expensively maintained, but entirely gratuitous illusion. That point of view to me is actually entirely mystical and anti-materialist. For example, it's in stark contradiction with the concept of evolution by natural selection.

[T-hawk]

"Life is just chemical processes" doesn't actually assert anything at all, it's not even clear what the 'just' is meant to cut away

It cuts away two things.  One is the idea of a soul or anything else metaphysical or supernatural; only matter exists and only physical forces act on it.  The second is any idea of treating the matter of life any different than any other matter; there is no reason to refrain from editing and improving the genetic code to serve our purposes, as we do with any other chemical process like editing petrochemicals into plastics or silicon into computers.

Just as there is no inconsistency in believing that cells are composed of molecules, but behave characteristically _as cells_, and that molecules are composed of particles, but behave characteristically _as molecules_, there is no inconsistency in believing that humans behave characteristically as rational beings, that is by conscious choice among actions through a consideration of reasons. The consciousness that is produced by the chemical substrate is just as real as the substrate itself.

This is the right argument to counter Yang.  An analogy: one water molecule is not wet; wetness is an emergent property that arises in aggregate, as does consciousness.  Yang has two counters to this counter:

One, this is still not incompatible with determinism.  What the consciousness thinks are its choices are still only the aggregate results of the physical processes.  Free will is still only a perception that the consciousness invents for itself.  We know that human behavior can be modified in ways that the subject will claim is still free will; examples are rabies and toxoplasmosis.

Two, Yang's vision is to edit the genetic code that produces that consciousness, until the emergent behavior no longer includes that perception.  Then there is no concern about morality; the matter of the human organism is no different than that of a bacterium or a computer or any other construct to serve you.  Yang is not about authoritarianism; he is about rendering authoritarianism unnecessary.  He wants humans to serve the collective just as bees serve their hive.  That is Yang's communal utopia.

[Bacchus]

It cuts away two things. One is the idea of a soul or anything else metaphysical or supernatural; only matter exists and only physical forces act on it. The second is any idea of treating the matter of life any different than any other matter; there is no reason to refrain from editing and improving the genetic code to serve our purposes, as we do with any other chemical process like editing petrochemicals into plastics or silicon into computers.

The second doesn't really work. The way we treat "any other matter" is to see how it could be put to use for our own ends. That's how conscious life works. Then we run into the problem that our own ends aren't the only ends, there is more conscious life out there with its own ends, and there is a scarcity of matter. So we need to answer the question of what to do when ends come into conflict over scarce means. Yang provides an answer, but that answer has nothing to do with materialism per se, his chosen ends are, after all, his own, arrived at by personal, conscious deliberation. He is of course free to alter his own genetic matter as he sees fit, but the question of altering others' matter is about something else entirely. The immorality of changing another's body is not that the matter is substantively different, but that it's not Yang's to change, just as another's food is not yours to eat. Yang is of course right that all his problems are solved when there is only one consciousness and only one set of ends, so no question of conflict arises. Morgan is far bigger a realist here

One, this is still not incompatible with determinism. What the consciousness thinks are its choices are still only the aggregate results of the physical processes. Free will is still only a perception that the consciousness invents for itself. We know that human behavior can be modified in ways that the subject will claim is still free will; examples are rabies and toxoplasmosis.

Nothing is being 'invented' gratuitously. We really do proceed, at least in the important things, by choice and deliberation, that's just how life happens. The question of whether that choice is 'free' is I would say meaningless — we certainly have no way of letting go of conscious choice and just 'let the physical processes happen'. If we did, we'd mostly just sit there inanimate, so the illusion seems to have a bit too strong of a practical effect to be called that. There is also no denying that some processing of information goes on in the brain, so there is a real causal role played by thinking in determining subsequent behavior — without the processing there'd be no behavior, and the same information can be processed differently by different brains. But if that's all granted, what's left for determinism? An assertion that the same person, in the same circumstances, with the same information, and provided his brain functions in exactly the same way, will always behave the same, and arrive at the same conclusions? Well, sure, but that's very far from a statement as grandiose as 'free will is only a perception created by consciousness'. In fact, how do you even imagine free will as being something separate from consciousness to be invented by it? You think there is some other thinking that goes on in the background, which REALLY determines your actions, and then a second, entirely gratuitous train of thought is invented for nobody except yourself to experience?

Two, Yang's vision is to edit the genetic code that produces that consciousness, until the emergent behavior no longer includes that perception.

That thinking would actually be fine, an organism with human-like DNA, but that really produces no characteristically human-like behaviour, including no mental behaviour, would really be no different from livestock. My biggest problem with all the many versions of human customisation of this sort is that we have no access to the mental states of others, and so we never really know — did we splice out the consciousness, or just the ability for consciousness to manifest itself? Imagine that the Genejacks actually feel everything they are not meant to, that their minds rail, powerless against the ultimate subjugation of their bodies and abuse of their dignity. I'd certainly think twice before running even a small risk of mass-producing such a manifest Hell.

[Dark Savant]

That thinking would actually be fine, an organism with human-like DNA, but that really produces no characteristically human-like behaviour, including no mental behaviour, would really be no different from livestock. My biggest problem with all the many versions of human customisation of this sort is that we have no access to the mental states of others, and so we never really know — did we splice out the consciousness, or just the ability for consciousness to manifest itself? Imagine that the Genejacks actually feel everything they are not meant to, that their minds rail, powerless against the ultimate subjugation of their bodies and abuse of their dignity. I'd certainly think twice before running even a small risk of mass-producing such a manifest Hell.

Well, we have no such access, but that's because our scientists have yet to discover Secrets of the Human Brain.

And if someone has Retroviral Engineering (the tech for Genejack Factories), then someone has Secrets of the Human Brain.

And if that is the case, then that access might well be possible.