331–340 of 356 posts
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Just like religious experience, then. Or any other metaphysical property, for that matter.
I would argue that religious experience is really an exploration into consciousness framed imperfectly in religious terms.
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To build on your thought experiment: > So the question is, this simulated brain, which is behaving very similarly indeed to a biological brain: does it have consciousness? Does it feel? If you answer "yes" to this question, what happens if you split the computations of that simulated brain over a million people equipped with pen and paper? Where is its consciousness happening now? I have yet to hear a satisfying answ…
million? There are over 100 trillion neural connections in the human brain. And look up artificial vs biological neuron. With sheer number and added complexity of biological neurons, there's likely not enough atoms in the Universe to provide enough ink and paper to run this simulation. Also, you run into the problem of time slices. One step in a simulation of my brain is not conscious. There must be some self-referen…
Of course, we can not yet rule out the possibility that there exist more powerful models of computation than Turing machines. We just know quantum effects don't lead there.
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> A binary distinction requires a binary definition No it doesn't. See absolute value of x on real numbers - it is usually defined as: abs(x) = x if x >= 0, else -x but it can also be defined as sqrt(x * x). You can use this trick to define arbitrarily complex "binary" f(x) as a combination of these. And there are many other tricks of course. But math is one thing, we see spectrums everywhere in reality and yet quant…
x * x has two 2nd roots, namely, x and -x, and the result of this "function" (in quotes because it doesn't obey the definition thereof) requires you to choose arbitrarily between them, thus creating a dichotomy.
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As a neuroscientist, I have the opposite intuition. If we swap out one Neuron with a digital version you’ll be the same person. Do that 84B times and at the end of the day I see absolutely no reason why you would lose consciousness or sense of self.
Do you intuit - or think - or whatever - as a neuroscientist - that speed of this "swapping" matters? What about "swapping" one-by-one vs all-at-once? Would that matter? What I'm getting at - which is where things seem to go sideways to think about it - is that if you did this swap - but rather the artificial neurons remain outside the body, and you did it near-instantly (vs slowly one-by-one) - and I am speaking of…
This seems to be a non-sequitur. If we simply understand consciousness as a property of the brain, as long as you have 2 copies of the same brain, you naturally have 2 consciousnesses. The 2 may be equal or not (most likely not, given that random noise is extremely likely to play a role in brain processes), but they are definitely not a single object.
Even the theory's advocate acknowledges in this interview that it's untestable. There is no way to observe that the world would behave differently whether or not the theory is true. If that's so, I can't think what point there is discussing it, except as a mental exercise. If you can't test a theory, that means it can't affect anything. I.e. it has no practical use, except as a form of entertainment. I would almost a…
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> What does "non-experience" even mean? Indeed, that's why putting meaningless arbitrarily defined touchy-feely words in physics is a bad idea. But I'll try. Experience = event that changes the model of the world you have in your brain. We can verify it experimentally by for example: - testing if you associate a loud buzz with food before the experiment (either by looking at neurons that activate when you think of fo…
> We can deduce from that change that your internal model of the world changed to associate "buzz" with "food" so you experienced our experiment. This is a giant leap to claim that they have a model and experience. You demonstrated that what they have is internal state, i.e. memory, which many machines have. That's what you proved, not that they experience anything.
You're free to define experience differently but usually it devolves into defining unknown by unknown.
An interesting thought experiment is to imagine an incredibly-detailed computer simulation of a brain, down to the level of individual cells and neurotransmitters. (While this is beyond our current capabilities, it is in principle possible.) Hook the brain up to some decent IO devices, and you’d have an extremely human-like “AI”. (I’m glossing over some tricky details like, do you start with a fetus/baby brain and le…
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To build on your thought experiment: > So the question is, this simulated brain, which is behaving very similarly indeed to a biological brain: does it have consciousness? Does it feel? If you answer "yes" to this question, what happens if you split the computations of that simulated brain over a million people equipped with pen and paper? Where is its consciousness happening now? I have yet to hear a satisfying answ…
To take it a step further, let's assume we simulate the whole universe. We figured out all the rules for interaction so that there is nothing left over or left out of the simulation. All the rules and state are encoded. Do you think beings in this second run of the universe are conscious? Or do you think that somehow something has been left out of the simulation?
Even the theory's advocate acknowledges in this interview that it's untestable. There is no way to observe that the world would behave differently whether or not the theory is true. If that's so, I can't think what point there is discussing it, except as a mental exercise. If you can't test a theory, that means it can't affect anything. I.e. it has no practical use, except as a form of entertainment. I would almost a…
Mathematics is also "untestable" in the same way. You can't observe that the world would behave differently whether or not 2=2 or 1=2. Does this make mathematics practically useless, except as a form of entertainment?
Furthermore, why is entertainment spoken of as a lower purpose than "practical uses"? I very much doubt you'd want to live in a world without such "entertainment".
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> but our brains still act as if we experience pain That's fine for someone else's brain -- I can see it act as if a person is experiencing pain -- but I know that I experience pain. I'm not just going through the motions, I experience it. Again, your argument is a homunculus argument -- that your brain is lying/whatever for the benefit of something else inside that is experiencing the "illusion" of consciousness. Ag…
> I know that I experience pain I accept you perceive pain in the context of a self. > you can't have an illusion of consciousness, because an "illusion" requires consciousness. I think this might be the core of our disagreement. I don't know why you think that? An illusion is just a false perception of reality so it doesn't technically require consciousness - but I think I know what you're getting at. Imagine a comp…
False perception to whom?
> Why couldn't I program this computer to think it's conscious
Who is thinking it is conscious?
> and to experience its visual data
Experience how?
All these words you're using already require consciousness.
You're essentially saying "You don't really experience at all, you're experiencing an illusion!" Can't you see how that is a contradiction? The experience of experiencing an illusion can't itself be an illusion. And that's all we're saying consciousness is: that experience. If you experience anything, that's consciousness.