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We Are Beast Machines

nautil.us

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Re: We Are Beast Machines

#31

Post by ganzuul »

joeberon wrote: post #5
ganzuul wrote: post #2

I'm finally starting to unravel New Age terminology which deals with this subject. Eastern philosophy is almost impenetrable due to the cultural barrier, but those who succeeded imported some relevant ideas to Wester society. It's really bizarre how some of these wisdom teachers go on conspiratorial rants which have a completely different tone from the actually useful information.

Eastern philosophy isn't impenetrable, and people who cannot penetrate it aren't hampered by cultural difference. Even for natives of those cultures, penetrating that philosophy often takes years of spiritual practise and training. The reason is that it isn't about ideas, it's an actual body-mind training and transformation of being. It isn't something you just sit and talk about and discuss, although it can include…

I did use the qualifier 'almost'... and I don't see you actually disagreeing with what I meant.

There was something called Eckhart Seminar Training or something which took people through decades of training in the more cumbersome system in a week. Similarly, a lot of cultural impedance has been removed in the teachings of Western sages.

Teachings need to be updated and modernized as we progress as society.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#32

Post by joeberon »

n4r9 wrote: post #30
adriand wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One obvious difference between computers and humans is that only one of them is an animal. So far as we can tell, consciousness only arises in animals. This sounds like a truism, but I wonder if using phrases like “complex system“ masks it: both humans and computers are complex systems, and only one of them is conscious, and therefore what could possibly be the difference? Well, the list of differences between the tw…

If we take a human and replace one of their neurons with a silicon chip that exactly replicates its electrical activity, is the human any less "conscious"? Presumably their conscious experience is the same (if not why not?) If the human is still conscious, what if we continue one by one to replace all the neurons with silicon chips in the same way? Where does this thought experiment fail?

Personally I think most people who argue consciousness is an emergent property of complicated physical systems would believe that the machine would still be conscious after replacing every neuron with a chip

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#33

Post by ganzuul »

StuntPope wrote: post #29

Another materialist who has it exactly backwards. Consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the brain. It is the base layer of reality.

You have to admire the repeatability with which they get it wrong. It's almost like they copied their homework.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#34

Post by 53r3PB9769ba »

joeberon wrote: post #4
nickelpro wrote: post #3

Nothing in this essay addresses the single most prominent question of contemporary philosophy of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness. It only addresses the soft problems, which everyone agrees are solvable "merely" with enough time, funding, and initiative. Nothing about the "beast machine" addresses how qualitative experience arises from physical phenomena, or as Chalmers puts it, "Why are we not philos…

So far the only answer I've seen people give to the question is "what problem? There's no problem". Basically, there are many people who don't (or also have convinced themselves that they don't) perceive an incongruity between their personal subjective experience and the idea that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena of a physical system. I haven't found a good way to explain it, I just know that there's somet…

I’m quite firmly in the “do not feel the incongruity” camp.

What I'm about to say might make no sense at all, but I seem to remember (or at least think I do, it might be a false memory arising from thinking too much about it) slowly gaining consciousness in early childhood.

I have a birthmark on the back of my hand and some of my earliest memories are triggered by noticing it and realizing I’m a separate being from other people and can influence my actions, stop being a mere observer of my body running on “autopilot”.

I have only passing knowledge of lucid dreaming, but from what I’ve read I’d say becoming a lucid dreamer is not at all dissimilar to developing consciousness in childhood. So maybe that’s a potential avenue for consciousness research.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#35

Post by bondarchuk »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #25
bondarchuk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to demand a precise, non-handwavey answer to the hard problem, then you must first give the hard problem in a precise, non-handwavey way, or at the very least prove in a precise, non-handwavey way that there even is such a thing as the hard problem. As far as I've seen nobody has really done this, it's always just "what breathes fire into the equations?" "what is it like to be a bat?" "I just feel it…

I find the classical argument with color qualia very convincing (in fact, I thought about it before even knowing what qualia were...). Nothing you can find out about wavelengths, cones, rods, neurons and so on will tell you why you see red the specific way you do, and whether my perception of red corresponds to yours or my "red" is actually your "green". So there is a gap there, something that doesn't follow from the…

>Nothing you can find out about wavelengths, cones, rods, neurons and so on will tell you why you see red the specific way you do

Or maybe it will, but we just don't have the neurological and information-theoretical tools at this moment in time.

>and whether my perception of red corresponds to yours or my "red" is actually your "green".

And maybe (at least this is my personal guess right now) it will show that this question is incoherent.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#36

Post by joeberon »

ganzuul wrote: post #31
joeberon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eastern philosophy isn't impenetrable, and people who cannot penetrate it aren't hampered by cultural difference. Even for natives of those cultures, penetrating that philosophy often takes years of spiritual practise and training. The reason is that it isn't about ideas, it's an actual body-mind training and transformation of being. It isn't something you just sit and talk about and discuss, although it can include…

I did use the qualifier 'almost'... and I don't see you actually disagreeing with what I meant. There was something called Eckhart Seminar Training or something which took people through decades of training in the more cumbersome system in a week. Similarly, a lot of cultural impedance has been removed in the teachings of Western sages. Teachings need to be updated and modernized as we progress as society.

> Teachings need to be updated and modernized as we progress as society.

I don't think there's any way to do that without understanding them, but to understand them fully you basically have to become a Buddha...so it is not clear how to do this without removing essential parts of the teachings, as are often done when surgically transposing bits of eastern philosophy into the west

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#37

Post by danielheath »

nickelpro wrote: post #6
joeberon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far the only answer I've seen people give to the question is "what problem? There's no problem". Basically, there are many people who don't (or also have convinced themselves that they don't) perceive an incongruity between their personal subjective experience and the idea that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena of a physical system. I haven't found a good way to explain it, I just know that there's somet…

I don't understand how someone can not understand the problem. You and I have conscious experience, we have a meaningful sensation of qualia. A billet of 4140 steel does not, or so we assume. Both are governed by physical laws of the universe, so there must be some distinction beyond these physical laws that differentiate them. In this framing, there are typically four camps, three of them line up with your camps: 1)…

In nature, there are many instances of systems which change drastically as they pass a tipping point.

I suspect the human (and many animal) brain has an information density sufficient to pass such a tipping point. That could even explain why observating quantum phenonema changes the outcome (due to multiple extremely-low-entropy states being unstable).

There could, of course, be many other explanations. Which camp is "I'm unlikely to figure out the answer, and I'm unclear on how it would help me if I did, so I'll continue to disregard the question".

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#38

Post by ganzuul »

joeberon wrote: post #36
ganzuul wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did use the qualifier 'almost'... and I don't see you actually disagreeing with what I meant. There was something called Eckhart Seminar Training or something which took people through decades of training in the more cumbersome system in a week. Similarly, a lot of cultural impedance has been removed in the teachings of Western sages. Teachings need to be updated and modernized as we progress as society.

> Teachings need to be updated and modernized as we progress as society. I don't think there's any way to do that without understanding them, but to understand them fully you basically have to become a Buddha...so it is not clear how to do this without removing essential parts of the teachings, as are often done when surgically transposing bits of eastern philosophy into the west

What Westerners need to be taught is different from the needs of other cultures. Seekers here are seldom lacking in their discernment, but very lacking in their empathy.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#39

Post by adriand »

n4r9 wrote: post #30
adriand wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One obvious difference between computers and humans is that only one of them is an animal. So far as we can tell, consciousness only arises in animals. This sounds like a truism, but I wonder if using phrases like “complex system“ masks it: both humans and computers are complex systems, and only one of them is conscious, and therefore what could possibly be the difference? Well, the list of differences between the tw…

If we take a human and replace one of their neurons with a silicon chip that exactly replicates its electrical activity, is the human any less "conscious"? Presumably their conscious experience is the same (if not why not?) If the human is still conscious, what if we continue one by one to replace all the neurons with silicon chips in the same way? Where does this thought experiment fail?

My house is made of bricks. I can confidently remove one of the bricks and replace it with a Kleenex box. The house is still standing, it’s perfectly liveable and no one can tell the difference. Now what happens when I replace all the bricks with Kleenex boxes?

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#40

Post by [deleted] »

nickelpro wrote: post #3

Nothing in this essay addresses the single most prominent question of contemporary philosophy of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness. It only addresses the soft problems, which everyone agrees are solvable "merely" with enough time, funding, and initiative. Nothing about the "beast machine" addresses how qualitative experience arises from physical phenomena, or as Chalmers puts it, "Why are we not philos…

[deleted]
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