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We Are Beast Machines

nautil.us

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Re: We Are Beast Machines

#41

Post by joeberon »

ganzuul wrote: post #38
joeberon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I haven't experienced that the teachings need to change personally, but yes the emphasis needs to. Unfortunately westerners are being fed teachings that are more like "this meditation will make you experience a sober LSD trip" and "this one will cure your depression" and "this will give you insight into the nature of reality", because that's what westerners want. But what they actually need is teachings on compassion, loving kindness, etc, which they are in no way interested in. Ultimately you cannot have one without the other. There are no eastern spiritual paths that don't integrate both insight and compassion.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#42

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]

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#43

Post by GlennS »

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)…

I think the opposite problem - or rather the assumed explanation - is harder.

Start with empiricism: conciousness appears when we add other mental capacities, so probably it is built upon them.

The idea that conciousness (or abstraction) is a fundamental building block (as espoused by neoplatonists) is a much more unlikely explanation to me.

> I am not like a block of steel, but I don't know why.

Let's start from here. This is obviously correct, I think?

Why should I know why?

Most of my conciousness is build on top of unconcious processes that I can't control and only receive input from.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#44

Post by joeberon »

53r3PB9769ba wrote: post #34
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’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 o…

Yeah that's a pretty common experience actually. There are a lot of memes on tiktok and twitter joking about "gaining consciousness" as a child. I think a lot of people remember moments as young children where they first truly felt like real separate beings.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#45

Post by CuriouslyC »

nickelpro wrote: post #11
joeberon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we do know emergent phenomena that occur as abstractions. Probably the most obvious example is a computer program. At a basic level, the computer really doesn't look like it's doing useful work, it just processes lists of rules and stuff, but actually the emergent behaviour is that I am browsing Hacker News. What is the difference between a computer and a rock? Well there isn't actually a fundamental difference,…

Exactly, you have a handwave. A vague idea that when a system becomes "complex" enough it suddenly becomes conscious. There's no mechanism, no rigor, no cause and effect. With the browser you can chase down every bit through the hardware, down to the quantum tunneling effect dictating what's happening in the silicon and come up with a concrete explanation based in physical laws. With the browser example, at no level…

The problem in your stating (and many others) is that the notion of consciousness has self-awareness is baked into it. It's odd to think that the ability to experience qualia magically occurs for sufficiently complex systems, but it's not odd to think that self-awareness just arises once a system that can experience qualia reaches a sufficient complexity level. Unfortunately, people latch on to the reasonableness of the latter, and ignore the ridiculousness of the former.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#46

Post by GlennS »

daseiner1 wrote: post #8
joeberon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we do know emergent phenomena that occur as abstractions. Probably the most obvious example is a computer program. At a basic level, the computer really doesn't look like it's doing useful work, it just processes lists of rules and stuff, but actually the emergent behaviour is that I am browsing Hacker News. What is the difference between a computer and a rock? Well there isn't actually a fundamental difference,…

But the question is when and from where does “experiencing things” (qualia) arise. When does calculation become sensation?

Obviously: in the insect that wriggles its legs in pain.

Earlier, in the cell that avoids the chemical.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#47

Post by the8472 »

nickelpro wrote: post #13
ivanbakel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with the "hard problem" of consciousness is that it's predicated on the possibility of the existence of p-zombies. Even if you don't know how a complex physical system gives rise to consciousness, you understand that a block of steel is not a complex physical system - so the fact that it isn't conscious isn't that contentious. If p-zombies could exist as complex systems without consciousness, then there w…

Really? A sufficiently advanced computer is a perfect P-zombie to me. This is the Chinese Room problem restated. A computer is capable of behaving as a conscious actor without any concept of knowledge or qualia as we would recognize it. But again this gets into a faith-based discussion. To me a sufficiently complex computer doesn't suddenly cross a "consciousness threshold" of complexity, but if to you it does there'…

> This is the Chinese Room problem restated.

Which is non-physical because the storage complexity of a lookup table containing all possible answers to all possible inputs grows exponentially. It wouldn't fit in the universe.

https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#48

Post by FactolSarin »

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…

I don't see why two people experiencing red differently causes a problem for consciousness. Can't we both be conscious even with very different qualia?

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#49

Post by CuriouslyC »

adriand wrote: post #26
nickelpro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, you have a handwave. A vague idea that when a system becomes "complex" enough it suddenly becomes conscious. There's no mechanism, no rigor, no cause and effect. With the browser you can chase down every bit through the hardware, down to the quantum tunneling effect dictating what's happening in the silicon and come up with a concrete explanation based in physical laws. With the browser example, at no level…

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…

You think your computer isn't conscious? How do you know? Just because it's not demonstrating free will? How many layers of error correction are built into computers to stifle the "randomness" of electronic equipment? Do you think you could still exercise free will locked in a padded room and strapped to a bed with a straightjacket?

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#50

Post by [deleted] »

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)…

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