> if you really imagine that Conway's game of life and the unknowable future of that game is analogous to the phenomenon of subjective experience
No. Convay's Game of Life does not include all the physical rules that govern the physical world. The actual rules are much, much more complex, but even they can be condensed to a single equation:
Conway's game is just a minuscule subset of those, but it is, just like the fractal formulas are, completely enough to demonstrate that the emerging properties are never "intuitive" by looking at the rules themselves, and that for the outcomes of most of the rules there are no "shortcuts" -- you have to calculate all the steps, not skipping anything.
So I see your claim of "uniqueness" of your "subjective experience" nothing more than a claim that you are unable or not willing to accept that the given rules can produce such emerging properties (and additionally being confused by that property of the rule's application being undecidable for any interesting set of rules and outcomes). As I see it, it's completely obvious, from many examples I've given which show that the emerging properties produced by the application of much more minimal rules were absolutely beyond what people were able to accept. But the "non-intuitive" emerging properties do exist, and the property of undecidability effectively guarantees that nobody can predict them in advance, or imagine an easy "shortcut" to some outcome, and also that you can't claim what you claim (that the outcome you "experience" is impossible) and remain intellectually honest, now after you were made aware of how the emerging properties actually work and what are the properties of most of the applications of the rules. More precisely, to remain intellectually honest, you must admit that the emerging properties you consider "unique" can be the result of the given rules. Your only consistent claim can then be "even if they can, I don't like to think about them as such." Nothing more.
On the other side, we can, once we calculate enough, be certain that the application of the rules is enough for any property we observe in any such experiment. Which is what we did with all the simple examples I've demonstrated. But like I've said, there's no shortcut for many steps (for some subsets we do have some, like Newton's laws for exactly two bodies, but see what happens with three already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem -- "Unlike two-body problems, no closed-form solution exists for all sets of initial conditions, and numerical methods are generally required" meaning, again, you have to do all the calculation steps to know what is going to happen), so you not being able to find one shortcut exactly where you'd like is also completely normal and trivial, and can not support any claim. It's the property of how the rules work.
I don't (or at least didn't mean to) claim that the emerging properties of, say, Conway's game of life are intuitive. What I am claiming is that there is a qualitative difference between the outcomes of Conway and other physical emerging phenomena and the phenomenon of consciousness (and frankly, I have run out of ways to try to illustrate just how qualitatively different these things are). Just because both actual emergent phenomena and the phenomenon of consciousness are non-intuitive does not mean that they must necessarily be explainable in the same way any more than describing 'fog' and 'thoughts' to both be nebulous terms must mean anything beyond that.
Basically your claim is that everything we see in this world must be explicable in terms of physical laws or 'emergence' simply because emergence has shown to be correct when it comes to unimaginable things before. That, of course, does not logically follow. Of course, you're free to believe that, but then your only consistent claim can be "even if it's not logically true, I don't like to think that science cannot tell us everything.". Nothing more.
But you have already said that what I consider subjective experience is just 'my imagination' (the more I think of it, the more of an empty statement it seems to be. If consciousness is an illusion, then there must still be something that is 'being tricked', and then the question becomes how that phenomenon can happen. It's turtles all the way down.) If this is your stance, why are you still trying to convince me that subjective experience is something that will somehow be shown to be an 'emergent' property? Is it illusory or not?
> you have already said that what I consider subjective experience is just 'my imagination'
Subjective experience is an emerging property. Your imagination is "just" the "uniqueness" of it, that is, that belief of yours that subjective experience doesn't emerge from effectively computational processing of all the rules which directly follow from the initial conditions (matter and energy existing) and the physical laws (the rules that govern how matter and energy react to each other).
> why are you still trying to convince me that subjective experience is something that will somehow be shown to be an 'emergent' property? Is it illusory or not?
The illusion is the "uniqueness" of it -- you personally have an illusion of subjective experience as not being an emerging property, just like a traveler across the hot sand would see in the distance what would appear to him as a small lake, only to turn into a hot sand the closer he gets to that point. The existence of a human who thinks he sees the water is real, his thoughts are real, an in that specific example, even the picture formed in his eye is real (these phenomena can be photographed https://nikhilerigila.wordpress.com/tag/mirage/ ) just the existence of the water itself is a complete illusion.
> I have run out of ways to try to illustrate just how qualitatively different these things are
That's what you believe, but I can't remember to have read anything more then your claim that you "see/experience that it's different" which is what I tried to show you is not surprising at all, it's completely logical to happen as an emergent property in animals that move, eat or are being eaten and reproduce sexually.
Moreover, it will be possible to "teach" the computer to "experience that" just like humans experience it now. Because how we think about the world is a product of what we learn and the physical inputs we become while growing and living. As our thinking is effectively just a result of 1) processing of the information we get 2) the internal state of our body and 3) external inputs; eventually we will be able to construct a machine that will be able to process enough information, to the point of "thinking" in the same symbols (language) as we do, which has big enough internal state (memory) and which has enough of external inputs to behave, for us, surprisingly humane, even to the point of that computer claiming having a "subjective experience" which would also appear to the computer as "unique."
So is "subjective experience" illusory or not you ask? It exists, just like the mentioned human on the hot sand (or on the hot road) sees "water" in the distance and just like, similarly, the belief in gods exists among a lot of humans. But that belief is not something from the outside world: the gods were also invented by humans and there's nothing mysterious about that too:
The processes involved in such emerging properties appearing aren't mysterious but quite trivial. The rules are simple, the pure immense scale of the conditions and the parallel processing results in all we see.
> then there must still be something that is 'being tricked'
Yes, correct. You are being tricked that your "experience" is something special. It's not.
> then the question becomes how that phenomenon can happen.
Trivially. At the end, it's always that simple rules applied on enough particles in parallel produce the emerging properties that aren't simple. In between is people inventing the beliefs in gods or in the "uniqueness" of their "experience" but where every particle of them still behaved according to the rules. Emerging properties.
See the animations: http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Spaceship these objects move and keep moving. You have to play the game to see how this happens in front of your eyes, from the input you make, and from just four immensely simpler rules than the all which exist in nature (for the start, the game happens in only two dimensions an the time). If you know how to program you can make your own program from the scratch. Nothing mysterious.
- Any "live" cell with fewer than two "live" neighbours "dies".
- Any "live" cell with more than three "live" neighbours dies
- Any "live" cell with two or three live neighbours "lives", unchanged, to the next generation.
- Any "dead" cell with exactly three "live" neighbours will "come to life".
Note "live", the term used by the players of the game, actually just means "the cell is black" "dead" means "the cell is white." "Dies" means "becomes white" and "comes to life" means "becomes black." Also note that it's the humans who invented the names of "lives" "dies" for the change of the color property of the cell. That's how humans invent their beliefs. By using language (symbolical processing) to describe the properties. That symbolical processing produces false results when the use of some symbols for some phenomena is deeply wrong, even if it appears "natural" to those who use them, like here when the players of the game talk about the cells that "live." They are just black or white. But teach some children that that is the meaning of the word "live" and leave them alone and they can believe until they die (physically) that that what happens in the game is also "a life." To them it would be undeniable.
Let me quote what you said when I asked how we can move from the objective facts of a thing to my subjective experience of that thing: "It's a thing of your imagination: for me, you just imagine that there is anything more than the electrical and chemical reactions, and there isn't anything." I take this to mean that you're saying the subjective experience is imaginary. If you now claim that subjective experience is an emergent property, then let me pose the question one more time: If subjective experience is an emergent phenomenon, we should ultimately be able to explain a given state of that phenomenon in terms of the material world (just like we're able to, ultimately, explain for example a state of Conway's game of life through the rules that govern that game). So, light of wavelenghts that we associate with the color yellow hit my eye and the signals eventually reach my brain. How can we go from that (objective) description of a signal entering my brain to my subjective experience of the color yellow? How can we infer from the configuration of neurons in my brain what the experience of that color is 'like'?
Also, when you say "you personally have an illusion of subjective experience as not being an emerging property, just like a traveler across the hot sand would see in the distance what would appear to him as a small lake, only to turn into a hot sand the closer he gets to that point." this is a very strange statement. I thought, up until now, that you were arguing that it was the subjective experience itself that was the illusion, but if I understand you correctly you're claiming that it is my belief in its uniqueness that is the illusion? If that is what you claim, then there is really not much to say to you, because this itself is an unsubstantiated claim. You apparently have a strong belief that everyone who believes consciousness to be a unique phenomenon is being tricked. Maybe you believe this because otherwise your belief that all of existence can be explained by the laws of physics will not be true? You want to believe in a orderly universe that we can wrap our heads around and explain, which is very natural - we humans have problems when things get too complex, but unfortunately it's not a belief that has been validated logically or scientifically. The same goes for your belief that "the gods were also invented by humans and there's nothing mysterious about that too". It's a nice thing to believe, and faith in a higher principle (like the laws of physics) is a precious thing that can help make sense of the world, but we should recognize that it is faith, not a necessary truth reached by rational thought. See this link: http://skepdic.com/wishfulthinking.html
But then later you also say "So is "subjective experience" illusory or not you ask? It exists, just like the mentioned human on the hot sand (or on the hot road) sees "water" in the distance". Now it seems it is the subjective experience itself that is the illusion, not my belief that it is a unique phenomenon. So which is it?
I thank you for all the explanations about Conway's game of life and the philosophical musings (that I emphasize, again, must not be mistaken for rational truth) that you give surrounding it. I have implemented my own (poor) version of this game before, so I am familiar with the concepts here. Just FYI so you don't have to spend too much energy explaning how the game works.
Edit:
> Moreover, it will be possible to "teach" the computer to "experience that" just like humans experience it now. Because how we think about the world is a product of what we learn and the physical inputs we become while growing and living. As our thinking is effectively just a result of 1) processing of the information we get 2) the internal state of our body and 3) external inputs; eventually we will be able to construct a machine that will be able to process enough information, to the point of "thinking" in the same symbols (language) as we do, which has big enough internal state (memory) and which has enough of external inputs to behave, for us, surprisingly humane, even to the point of that computer claiming having a "subjective experience" which would also appear to the computer as "unique."
This is not an argument, this is a restatement of what you believe to be true. Yes, if consciousness and subjective experience are emergent phenomena, then we could make such a computer.
No. Convay's Game of Life does not include all the physical rules that govern the physical world. The actual rules are much, much more complex, but even they can be condensed to a single equation:
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/04/the-worl...
Conway's game is just a minuscule subset of those, but it is, just like the fractal formulas are, completely enough to demonstrate that the emerging properties are never "intuitive" by looking at the rules themselves, and that for the outcomes of most of the rules there are no "shortcuts" -- you have to calculate all the steps, not skipping anything.
So I see your claim of "uniqueness" of your "subjective experience" nothing more than a claim that you are unable or not willing to accept that the given rules can produce such emerging properties (and additionally being confused by that property of the rule's application being undecidable for any interesting set of rules and outcomes). As I see it, it's completely obvious, from many examples I've given which show that the emerging properties produced by the application of much more minimal rules were absolutely beyond what people were able to accept. But the "non-intuitive" emerging properties do exist, and the property of undecidability effectively guarantees that nobody can predict them in advance, or imagine an easy "shortcut" to some outcome, and also that you can't claim what you claim (that the outcome you "experience" is impossible) and remain intellectually honest, now after you were made aware of how the emerging properties actually work and what are the properties of most of the applications of the rules. More precisely, to remain intellectually honest, you must admit that the emerging properties you consider "unique" can be the result of the given rules. Your only consistent claim can then be "even if they can, I don't like to think about them as such." Nothing more.
On the other side, we can, once we calculate enough, be certain that the application of the rules is enough for any property we observe in any such experiment. Which is what we did with all the simple examples I've demonstrated. But like I've said, there's no shortcut for many steps (for some subsets we do have some, like Newton's laws for exactly two bodies, but see what happens with three already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem -- "Unlike two-body problems, no closed-form solution exists for all sets of initial conditions, and numerical methods are generally required" meaning, again, you have to do all the calculation steps to know what is going to happen), so you not being able to find one shortcut exactly where you'd like is also completely normal and trivial, and can not support any claim. It's the property of how the rules work.