u/linewhite

I've been a big fan of the infinity engine games, BG1 & 2, Icewind dale 1 & 2 etc., the atmosphere you can create is incredible. I figure it's been almost 30 years since BG came out.

Suppose I was to create a infinity engine style game

Completely custom:

Lore, universe, spells, graphics, UI, sound design, anything that is content. Complete universe.

Would like to use:

Gameplay mechanics, rough user interface layout, having spellslots, sleep, travel, creating character classes, generic non IP classes like goblins or humans, elves etc., character, DND style character screen, colour of circles under characters, The colour of text when you have a conversation.

Where is the line exactly, I know pathfinder did a similar thing as well as a few others, but I'm not sure where the line is exactly.

How would I go about finding this out, or if you have a perspective, where is the legal line in regards to this.

I was working with the log of prime numbers and playing with fractals to predict nth prime number with no success, at the same time I was also thinking about the identity of indiscernibles.

I thought what if I follow a quantum through the prime numbers, I thought I'd explore this a bit. The spaces between could be fields since since the information between primes could change, but the primes would have to retain their identity. If you converted them to physics objects they could behave like prisms or little glass spheres, they have a numeric space between them that changes, could they refract quantum information. After a lot of exploration I landed on some parallels in QCD what this prism like behaviour would look like with scattering and angular momentum.

I know primes get a bad rap in physics, so in the paper I frame everything in terms of the scattering density 1/ln n rather than the primes themselves. The primes are one realisation of that density, but the result only depends on the density profile.

If you'd like to follow along the paper is only 1 and half pages long https://zenodo.org/records/20033556

The paper is quite limited, but I think shows some potential to be explored more.

Edit: Looking forward to hearing why I'm retarded again.

I've been working through an idea and I want to see if it holds up to scrutiny here.

The setup is simple. Physics deals in quantities wavelengths, frequencies, pressures, measurable values on a continuum. Thought deals in qualities red, loud, bitter, warm. These are fundamentally different kinds of thing. A wavelength is a number on a continuum. "Red" is a category with a boundary: this is red, this is not red. Time does this weird thing where nouns are really frozen verbs.

So something has to happen between a wavelength and the experience of red. Some operation converts one into the other.

So I think that operation is consciousness, this is about the process not the origin btw, that would be a far greater claim. Take the colour red. Physically it's electromagnetic radiation at 620 to 750nm / 400-480 THz. These are quantities points on a continuum. There's no hard line in the physics between red and orange. But in experience, there is a line. Red is red. Not red is not red. You drew a boundary in the continuum. The boundary created a category. The category is the quality.

Now look at what that operation did:

1. It took a continuum (quantities) and partitioned it (created a boundary)
2. The partition produced a category (a quality)
3. The category is a symbol it stands for all the wavelengths in that range but contains none of them. You can't recover the exact wavelength from the experience of "red"
4. Information was lost this is lossy compression. Many distinct wavelengths map to the single experience "red"
5. The output is private it exists only at the point of compression and can't be reconstructed from the outside

Every one of these properties falls out of the single operation of converting a quantity to a quality. You can apply this recursively, and each time it becomes more compressed, which in my mind is the only way you could take all the information in reality around us and perceive it as a single point of focus.

Once you have qualities (red, sweet, loud, warm), you can treat them as quantities in a new space measurable, distinguishable states. And compress again. I guess technically a quality is somthing with a quantity of 1, or an Identity.

• Level 1 (perception): wavelength -> red. Quantity -> quality. A boundary drawn in the physical continuum.
• Level 2 (thought): red is beautiful. Qualities treated as quantities, compressed again. A boundary drawn in the space of perceptual qualities.
• Level 3 (self-reflection): "I find this beautiful." A boundary drawn in the space of conceptual qualities.
• Level 4 (meta-cognition): "I am the kind of being that responds to beauty."

The same operation at every level. Take a continuum, draw a boundary, produce a quality. Each quality becomes the raw material for the next compression. Perception, thought, reflection and self-awareness are all the same operation applied to its own output. This makes me think about a few questions that we have:

Why experience is private?

The compression is lossy and irreversible. The quality produced exists only at the point of compression. You can't reconstruct the exact physical input from the experience. So no external observer can access your quality because the original was destroyed and the compressed symbol is the only copy.

Why experience can't be reduced to brain description?

The brain description is quantities (neural firing rates, connectivity patterns). The experience is qualities. Quantities and qualities are different formats produced by the same compression process. Neither contains the other. Knowing every neuron doesn't tell you what it's like, because "what it's like" is the quality that the neuron-pattern was compressed into.

Why do different people experience differently?

Different compressors produce different boundaries. Your "red" boundary sits at a slightly different wavelength than mine. Our compression histories differ every quality you've ever produced has slightly altered your compressor.

The hard problem becomes Interesting, It asks "why do physical processes give rise to experience?" But if consciousness is the conversion operation, nothing is giving rise to anything. The quantity doesn't produce the quality. The operation of converting one to the other is the experience. It's like asking why folding produces a crease, no mechanism links them because they aren't two things. There's no additional "why."

The core claim, as simply as I can state it:

Consciousness is what happens when a continuum is partitioned into a category. A boundary is drawn. A quality is created. A symbol is formed that points at what it replaced but can never reproduce it. This operation quantity to quality is the whole thing. Perception is it happening to light. Thought is it happening to percepts. Self-reflection is it happening to thoughts. Every level is the same act: draw a line, make a quality, lose the original.

Would love to hear where this breaks.