71–80 of 195 posts
I find this quote fascinating: "What I think that means is there is no holy era of time. It emerged. If, in the distant future, we find ourselves in a universe where all the stars have burned out, and all the black holes have evaporated, and all the radiation has been diluted by the dark energy that expanded our universe, and all we have is some very cold bath of photons here and there—basically thermal equilibrium;…
I find this quote fascinating: "What I think that means is there is no holy era of time. It emerged. If, in the distant future, we find ourselves in a universe where all the stars have burned out, and all the black holes have evaporated, and all the radiation has been diluted by the dark energy that expanded our universe, and all we have is some very cold bath of photons here and there—basically thermal equilibrium;…
Read The Last Question if you haven't
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consciousness is how the algorithm feels from inside.
You can reproduce any algorithm with a sufficient group of people. For example, using a person as a node in a feed-forward neural network doing digit recognition. Suppose each person called the next layer in the network with the results of their calculation, until the last layer spit out a value of a digit between 1 and 9. At what point in that process does qualia arise? What is its shape and texture, and why?
I find this quote fascinating: "What I think that means is there is no holy era of time. It emerged. If, in the distant future, we find ourselves in a universe where all the stars have burned out, and all the black holes have evaporated, and all the radiation has been diluted by the dark energy that expanded our universe, and all we have is some very cold bath of photons here and there—basically thermal equilibrium;…
Read The Last Question if you haven't
Plus, the state of the art has progressed much since then. I'm curious what the latest science says about when the universe is only empty space in thermal equilibrium, would the space itself have any mass, and would that mass be self-attractive? Would there be an even distribution of particles that don't decay (proton?), or if all particles decay, then an even distribution of energy, which also has mass?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue that consciousnes is just the feedback loop of the brain sensing itself
Because consciousness is unitary (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory ), it would be intuitive if all consciously accessible information converged at a single physical location. In this theory, simple feed-forward networks aren't conscious. From what I've read about ego-death, it doesn't seem necessary to consciously sense the self-concept, which would be self-awareness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consciousness is the algorithm. What you call "consciousness" is how the computational processes that are you see themselves. It could work differently, but for some reasons it doesn't, and we don't understand the reasons.
The problem with that line of reasoning is you're assuming the brain is a computer, or that it merely computes. But that's just an assumption and there are many reasons a person, let alone a brain, is not a machine or a computer or an algorithm. That it is like it? Sure, in some insignificant ways, we have the ability to compute things. But is it an algorithm? No. The idea that consciousness is an algorithm or a comp…
No, it's not because of that. It's because it is effectively a computer. Not in the vague sense of "it has stuffs connected to stuffs and there's electricity involved", but in the more specific sense that it takes inputs, produces complex outputs, has clearly identifiable hardware and indirectly identifiable software. It even has internal structure we're only beginning to understand, but that we know enough about to reasonably infer what computations happen where. There's little reason to assume there's some metaphysical mystery here, as exactly zero other things in the universe that we studied since the dawn of humanity turned out to be magic.
TL;DR: what else could it be? And before someone says "antenna", I don't buy it. "Computer" is a simpler explanation for all known facts than remote consciousness being received by the brain. See my take on this before[0]. See also: Occam's razor.
> "I know about computers. Let's assume the brain is a computer and consciousness is an algorithm. I can now comment on the brain and consciousness."
Yeah, well, sure. If I know the limit of applicability of my computer knowledge, I sure can comment on brain and consciousness. Like, I wouldn't say "it's vulnerable to SQL injection" because that would be an idiotic statement. But I could say "it implements visual processing, audio processing, collects other telemetry, and does sensor fusion in real-time in under 20 Watts, with power to spare". Because that's observation, physics, and modelling reality along a particular perspective of interest.
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I find this quote fascinating: "What I think that means is there is no holy era of time. It emerged. If, in the distant future, we find ourselves in a universe where all the stars have burned out, and all the black holes have evaporated, and all the radiation has been diluted by the dark energy that expanded our universe, and all we have is some very cold bath of photons here and there—basically thermal equilibrium;…
Nor am I, but as long as the universe keeps expanding and everything keeps flying apart the average density will probably continue to decrease and gravity will be too weak to cause a collapse.
Or are you saying dark energy (intrinsic to space itself) would eventually dominate and concentrate?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read The Last Question if you haven't
I love that story, alas it doesn't give me any additional insight on these questions. Plus, the state of the art has progressed much since then. I'm curious what the latest science says about when the universe is only empty space in thermal equilibrium, would the space itself have any mass, and would that mass be self-attractive? Would there be an even distribution of particles that don't decay (proton?), or if all p…
Considering that the first post isn't "Lunchtime is doubly so" consider your geek cards revoked.
I find this quote fascinating: "What I think that means is there is no holy era of time. It emerged. If, in the distant future, we find ourselves in a universe where all the stars have burned out, and all the black holes have evaporated, and all the radiation has been diluted by the dark energy that expanded our universe, and all we have is some very cold bath of photons here and there—basically thermal equilibrium;…
Science provides both a way of calculating what is going on, and also, apparently, explanations (up to the limits of our knowledge) for what happens. To eliminate the notion of time's flow from discussions of physics, would we have to abandon the concept of causality from our explanations?