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Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

nautil.us

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Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#241

Post by acqq »

dhruval wrote: post #237
cybervegan wrote: post #196

The neural network of nematode worms has been modelled in software, and a robotic avatar has been built for this "mind". It behaves very much like a real nematode worm. Real nematode worms appear to be conscious to an extent, in so far as they forage for food and mates, and retreat from danger or threats. I don't think we would argue that nematodes have the same level of consciousness as we do. If the mechanical mode…

With infinite time and infinite space, you could do all the computations required for the nematode worm neural network with a pencil and paper rather than an electronic computer. Would you say that this pencil and paper is now conscious? Does the speed of computation cause emergence? How? Does building a computer out of organic particles cause consciousness? How? "Emergence" is mostly lazy thinking and lack of unders…

> you could do all the computations required for the nematode worm neural network with a pencil and paper rather than an electronic computer.

Yes.

> Would you say that this pencil and paper is now conscious?

No. But your experiment involves "you with a pencil and a paper" where "you" is conscious.

> Does building a computer out of organic particles cause consciousness?

It's not necessary to use organic particles. We will probably soon build the electronic computer which will, from the perspective of the humans communicating with him, indeed behave "as a conscious person": soon we won't need you to write the answer you wrote, the computer will be able to make even better one.

https://www.amazon.com/Makoroni-REPLACE-SCRIPT-License-Holde...

> "Emergence" is mostly lazy thinking

Calling "emergence" lazy thinking is lazy thinking.

> and lack of understanding

... and lack of understanding of what emergence even means.

Emerging properties are everywhere and they don't have to have anything with humans or their behavior to be recognized:

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/10/18/is-time-...

"Temperature and pressure didn’t stop being real once we understood them as emergent properties of an underlying atomic description."

Yes, temperature is an emergent property.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#242

Post by MaxBarraclough »

0_gravitas wrote: post #183
dalbasal wrote: post #179

Enough credible people have publicly considered the idea credible for me to open my mind. But... I have to keep my mind open with a brace. otherwise, it'll call occam's razor & snap shut. At the heart of consciousness particles ideas (I think) is the idea that conciousness can't emerge from nonconscious stuff. This is counterintuitive to me. We now know of all sorts of emergent phenomenon. Species emerge (from other,…

They way that I've always thought about it is this: We are the physics that drives us, everything else is an abstraction. Chemistry as a thing didnt emerge from particle physics, it is an abstraction of particle physics, a higher-level view on how certain particles interact, and biology is an abstraction of chemistry, "when we combine certain chemicals this stuff happens". But if we take a moment, we zoom in and zoom…

> it's still physics all the way down

The existence of physics doesn't demonstrate that dualism is wrong.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#243

Post by MaxBarraclough »

visarga wrote: post #227
daoxid wrote: post #175

Does consciousness produce any measurable effect? For a time I thought consciousness is some kind of by-product of some kinds of computation which doesn't influence the computation itself. But how can I then know that I am conscious? And if I know that I am conscious, then consciousness must have a measurable effect, right? Because the knowledge that you are conscious should be reflected somewhere in your brain. Howe…

> Does consciousness produce any measurable effect? In the morning when you wake up do you make a sandwich? If you didn't have consciousness, you wouldn't. So your body would cease to exist in a short time. Consciousness has measurable effects - every time it saves us from hunger, danger, and other bad situations, or when it leads us to good situations.

You're describing intelligent decision-making and prudent action, not consciousness.

We are conscious even when doing nothing, and computers show us that systems showing some sort of 'intelligence' needn't be conscious.

(I'm being very imprecise about the meaning of 'intelligence' here, mind.)

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#244

Post by MaxBarraclough »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #235
0-_-0 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have evidence that some matter (your PC) can run Windows. The simplest hypothesis that explains this is that all matter can run Windows. Any hypothesis that posits that SOME matter can run Windows and other matter does not requires two different kinds of matter and a mechanism to switch between the two. Seems that hypothesis requires a lot more assumptions.

All true and consistent. "All matter can run Windows" is indeed the simplest explanation. It's wrong, but still the simplest, per Occam's Razor, as CuriouslyC pointed out.

Occam's Razor does not abide false explanations.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#245

Post by JoeAltmaier »

dandare wrote: post #209
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the whole conversation right there. I'm aware of my surroundings in an immediate sense with many states of being inside my head, immersed in my surroundings, caught up in the moment and many others across the spectrum. Unrelated to my cognitive function, logic or fitness for calculating action. I could create a device that says "I'm self-aware" but does it make it so? You can get your Echo to do that.

The sense of a moment or you being in your head is only an illusion. You think you see your surroundings outside of your fovea spot, you feel an orgasm in your abdomen, you hear music filling the room - nothing new for the brain. Ask your brain who is doing the thinking in your head and it tells you it is YOU, and you believe it because it is the only answer you ever got. Interestingly, the self-aware YOU is merely a…

All that seems to be couched in terms of somebody being fooled. Who is that somebody? Who is 'you'? I think that description is a contradiction in itself.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#246

Post by root_axis »

acqq wrote: post #241
dhruval wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With infinite time and infinite space, you could do all the computations required for the nematode worm neural network with a pencil and paper rather than an electronic computer. Would you say that this pencil and paper is now conscious? Does the speed of computation cause emergence? How? Does building a computer out of organic particles cause consciousness? How? "Emergence" is mostly lazy thinking and lack of unders…

> you could do all the computations required for the nematode worm neural network with a pencil and paper rather than an electronic computer. Yes. > Would you say that this pencil and paper is now conscious? No. But your experiment involves "you with a pencil and a paper" where "you" is conscious. > Does building a computer out of organic particles cause consciousness? It's not necessary to use organic particles. We…

> We will probably soon build the electronic computer which will, from the perspective of the humans communicating with him, indeed behave "as a conscious person": soon we won't need you to write the answer you wrote, the computer will be able to make even better one.

This is wrong. We are absolutely nowhere near anything even remotely resembling this.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#247

Post by acqq »

root_axis wrote: post #246
acqq wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you could do all the computations required for the nematode worm neural network with a pencil and paper rather than an electronic computer. Yes. > Would you say that this pencil and paper is now conscious? No. But your experiment involves "you with a pencil and a paper" where "you" is conscious. > Does building a computer out of organic particles cause consciousness? It's not necessary to use organic particles. We…

> We will probably soon build the electronic computer which will, from the perspective of the humans communicating with him, indeed behave "as a conscious person": soon we won't need you to write the answer you wrote, the computer will be able to make even better one. This is wrong. We are absolutely nowhere near anything even remotely resembling this.

No. We already have a complete nematode implemented as a computer program. We already have a realistic simulation of the living creature.

Twenty years ago the current output of Google Translate was a pure science fiction, compared to what it was possible then. Today it already often translates better than a lot of humans knowing both languages. Had anyone seen the output of Google Translate of today some 20 years ago, nobody would have believed it was produced by the machine. Note I don't say that it's always good. It's not. But it can produce amazing outputs already, which can't be recognized to be produced by a computer.

Also read about AlphaZero:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero#Training

"AlphaZero was trained solely via self-play, using 5,000 first-generation TPUs to generate the games and 64 second-generation TPUs to train the neural networks. In parallel, the in-training AlphaZero was periodically matched against its benchmark (Stockfish, elmo, or AlphaGo Zero) in brief one-second-per-move games to determine how well the training was progressing. DeepMind judged that AlphaZero's performance exceeded the benchmark after around four hours of training for Stockfish, two hours for elmo, and eight hours for AlphaGo Zero."

Apparently, the computer learned chess better than the long developed programs by only playing the game with itself for four hours! And the programs are already better than humans there.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#248

Post by root_axis »

acqq wrote: post #247
root_axis wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We will probably soon build the electronic computer which will, from the perspective of the humans communicating with him, indeed behave "as a conscious person": soon we won't need you to write the answer you wrote, the computer will be able to make even better one. This is wrong. We are absolutely nowhere near anything even remotely resembling this.

No. We already have a complete nematode implemented as a computer program. We already have a realistic simulation of the living creature. Twenty years ago the current output of Google Translate was a pure science fiction, compared to what it was possible then. Today it already often translates better than a lot of humans knowing both languages. Had anyone seen the output of Google Translate of today some 20 years ago…

> We already have a complete nematode implemented as a computer program. We already have a realistic simulation of the living creature.

It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, "a complete nematode". It is very much a simple simulation that isn't at all close to the actual complexity of a living organism, even a worm. We can't even simulate a bacteria with the kind of fidelity required to claim that it approaches the complexity of a living organism.

> Twenty years ago the current output of Google Translate was a pure science fiction

I think you're giving google translate way too much credit. Compared to 20 years ago, yes, much has improved, but compared to a human native speaker it is pitiful.

> Also read about AlphaZero:

I am aware of Alpha Zero, it is an impressive but narrowly applicable use of machine learning that doesn't at all represent anything nearing the cognitive complexity of an animal. It is a complex achievement of applied statistics, not an intelligence. The "world" of Alpha go is a very strictly defined finite universe where the only possibilities are the clean and simple rules of the go board. Yes, the combinatorial explosion of potential moves is impractical to brute force, but ultimately the rules of go are so simple and discretely defined that its worthless as a comparison to a living intelligence.

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#249

Post by vanviegen »

visarga wrote: post #227
daoxid wrote: post #175

Does consciousness produce any measurable effect? For a time I thought consciousness is some kind of by-product of some kinds of computation which doesn't influence the computation itself. But how can I then know that I am conscious? And if I know that I am conscious, then consciousness must have a measurable effect, right? Because the knowledge that you are conscious should be reflected somewhere in your brain. Howe…

> Does consciousness produce any measurable effect? In the morning when you wake up do you make a sandwich? If you didn't have consciousness, you wouldn't. So your body would cease to exist in a short time. Consciousness has measurable effects - every time it saves us from hunger, danger, and other bad situations, or when it leads us to good situations.

Following that logic, a robot vacuum that can have itself charged is conscious?

Re: Is Matter Conscious? (2017)

#250

Post by root_axis »

0-_-0 wrote: post #197
CuriouslyC wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Occam's Razor apply here? You have evidence that some matter (yourself) experiences its existence. The simplest hypothesis that explains this is that all matter experiences its existence. Any hypothesis that posits that SOME matter experiences its existence and other matter does not requires two different kinds of matter (conscious and not) and a mechanism to switch between the two. Seems that hypothesis req…

> You have evidence that some matter (your PC) can run Windows. The simplest hypothesis that explains this is that all matter can run Windows. Any hypothesis that posits that SOME matter can run Windows and other matter does not requires two different kinds of matter and a mechanism to switch between the two. Seems that hypothesis requires a lot more assumptions.

I don't think your rephrasing is very apt. "Some matter can run Windows" is only true because some humans configured matter into an arbitrary arrangement that we all agreed to label as "running Windows". There is no reason to speculate that all matter "runs Windows" since the definition of "running Windows" implies a specific configuration of matter.
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