While I don't really understand why Russ' endpoint is *un*consciousness, I can
imagine that even if we assumed something like a grandmother neuron were actual
(whether a cell or some composite thing), the crucial part of the argument is
how prickly the branching structures are.
Going along with the idea that the world is an unfolding branching structure,
and allowing for things like hierarchical decoupling (where the fine grain can
be well-simulated by the coarse grain), the crucial difference with some
Theseus' ship process lies in how prickly the branching is and how *fast* the
branching happens.
Replace the Jennifer Aniston clique with a Josip Broz clique and I would expect
immediate cognitive dissonance. The victim prolly won't *immediately* think
that Josip Broz starred in this or that romcom. They'll go through some
re-organization process. When will that re-org happen? How fast will it happen?
What will be the impact on the milieu surrounding the clique? To boot,
replacing the Jennifer Aniston clique with, say, an Emma Stone clique *might*
work. Would it? How fast?
Any heuristically or predictively useful theory of (hard) consciousness has to
handle all that data. No data ⇒ no theory. No testability ⇒ no hypothesis.
I'd go one step further and suggest that those of us who regularly experience
such dissonance and have developed habits around reorganization and rapid
rebinding to the world will be more likely to stay conscious. Russ' idea that
such replacement might lead to unconsciousness may well apply to those who have
fewer compensation/reorganization experiences.
But none of that implies that the resulting structures can't be somehow "computationally
universal". Our brains/CNS' may well be, in some sense, similarly organized such that any one
human can express the same "mind" as some other human. *That* would rely on hierarchical
decoupling.
On 10/1/26 9:22 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
Interesting idea. Parfit's "Combined Spectrum" thought experiment is from his 1984 book
"Reasons and Persons". I have not heard of him before.
I we apply this to the hard problem then we come to the conclusion that qualia sameness
is a matter of degree and experiences become functionally and phenomenology "close
enough" long before they hit 100% physical alignment.
-J.
-------- Original message --------
From: Russell Standish <[email protected]>
Date: 10/1/26 12:27 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] LNC Impossibility Theorem
Actually, this conversation sparked a recall on my objection to
Parfit's Napoleon thought experiment. Parfit supposed that one could
find a continuous path between the subject's brain and Napoleon's by
replacing one neuron after another. My counter was that I couldn't see
how any such path could exist - in a scenario similar to the
percolation threshold of random graphs, eventually the probability of
reaching an unconsious state becomes one once sufficient neurons have
been replaced.
Not exactly formulated to a rigorous extent, but that was the gist of
it anyway.
On Sat, Sep 26, 2026 at 09:50:11PM +0200, [email protected] wrote:
> Yes, good point. You are right, the proof is not completely waterproof yet.
It is based on the assumption that each of us is wired in a unique way.
>
> Just as no two fermions can occupy the exact same quantum state or location (the Pauli
exclusion principle), no two persons can be in the same location or follow the exact same
path in their lives. The "slice of the world" we experience (how Nick used to call
it) is different for each of us. Because we are adaptive and learn from experience, the
unique paths we take and slices we experience lead to different, unique results. But you are
right, even if two path-dependent processes are unlikely to generate the same graph, it is
not the same as proving they cannot.
>
> I have asked Gemini, and it says the proof can be made more waterproof by arguing the fact that no two persons can be in the same location at the same time is enough to guarantee unique subjective experience. It argues as long as you have two separate people in two separate places, the two first-person views can never become identical. To be 100% identical, every single detail of the inner experiences must match — including where you feel you are in space. Your mind knows where you are: a part of your subjective experience is the feeling: "I am standing over here. The other person knows where it is: a part of its subjective experience includes the feeling: "I am standing over here." The Contradiction: because the two are standing in different spots, the inner experiences must be slightly different. The only way two minds could ever be 100% identical is if they were standing in the exact same space at the exact same time — which means they wouldn't be two different people
anymore.
> They would be the exact same physical person.
>
> Gemini mentioned two other ways to make it waterproof, but I liked this one
most. These AI models are becoming better in programming, coding and now even in
mathematics than we are. It is a little bit frightening.
>
> -J.
>
> On 2026-09-26 19:20, Jon Zingale wrote:
> > While I can appreciate the sentiment regarding Abel and Galois, the
> > impossibility of solving the general quintic by radicals has a
> > strikingly different form. Its Galois group is not solvable, giving a
> > precise obstruction to a solution by radicals. In your case, it seems
> > less like an impossibility that two graphs could be the same and more
> > like a claim that they are unlikely to be the same. Perhaps two
> > path-dependent processes are unlikely to generate the same graph, but
> > that is not the same as proving they cannot.
> >
> > My own tendency is to think that a graph generated by material
> > processes over a finite life may have only finitely many
> > distinguishable configurations. That leaves open the possibility of
> > collisions. The birthday problem or hash collisions seem like closer
> > analogies to me.
> >
> > There also seems to be more work to do in showing why *consciousness*
> > (whatever is meant by the word) should be modeled by an adjacency
> > graph, and why a theorem about such graphs would resolve the hard
> > problem.
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