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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#61

Post by stormbrew »

dibujante wrote: post #47
n8cpdx wrote: post #3

I think people start with the premise that consciousness is a specific “thing”, that it is unique and special to humans (and maybe dogs because we like them but definitely not spiders and flies because we don’t) and then try to work backwards to define it in some ways that keeps it special. I don’t think consciousness is so specific, and I think people aren’t clear about how they think about it as something separate…

> My personal experience is that consciousness, like free will, is a useful illusion. This is easily contradicted. Let's say consciousness is an epiphenomenon of computation but causality only flows one way: you "choose" to do something because your brain chose to do it and your consciousness tricked itself into thinking it was doing the choosing. If that were the case, then the brain wouldn't be aware of consciousne…

> And since evolution hates inefficiency, that means it must have a purpose.

Evolution doesn't hate or love anything, and everything evolved does not have a purpose. Evolution is a theoretical framework developed by humans to describe some things that happen in the world they observe, not a guiding force or a god.

It's honestly kind of amazing that you appear to have ascribed consciousness to evolution in an argument for the human uniqueness of consciousness.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#62

Post by Arn_Thor »

Gwarzo wrote: post #25
epgui wrote: post #18

The idea that you cannot get to consciousness from computation requires accepting on faith alone that consciousness is magic. It’s fundamentally a religious-like bias. It’s not magic, I’m afraid.

This is a little bit of an emotional take I think. The burden of proof is on the claim that you can get there through computation, not otherwise. We do not understand the fundamental reality of consciousness, this does not mean that consciousness is magic. The assertion that you cannot get there from computation implies there is a currently non understood yet essential piece of physics(I assume, but I do not know) wh…

I disagree about where the burden of proof lies. If we start off firstly with the assumption that humans have consciousness, and secondly the decently supported claim that animals exhibit what to us appears to be consciousness on a spectrum, and thirdly that we don't exactly know how or why consciousness exists, then the conclusion that seems obvious to me is that we cannot rule out that it could emerge in a network similar to that in human and animal brains. To me the best explanation we have now is that consciousness is an emergent property of a brain. And since a brain is neurons firing, as far as we've been able to determine, then there's no particular reason why certain types of networks can't have the same emergent properties.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#63

Post by iosystem »

jotm wrote: post #32
iosystem wrote: post #5

I genuinely question if consciousness is just an illusion if everything is just cause and effect. Similar, awareness is just a word used for human expression from one human to another for claiming we’re not just navigating a script like a computer but are we really aware or conscious if everything is just cause and effect? I assume AI will be good enough as humans before we understand the human brain in comparison to…

> we’re not just navigating a script like a computer We just don't see the script. One of the primal driving forces behind creating AI is to have slaves with high intelligence doing work no one else would 24+/7+. I assume you'd be against using animal labour as they would be suffering. But would you say the same about tractors? Going by the logic in that comment, we should nuke ourselves and try to blow up the Sun fo…

> We just don't see the script.

True.

> One of the primal driving forces behind creating AI is to have slaves with high intelligence doing work no one else would 24+/7+.

True

> I assume you'd be against using animal labour as they would be suffering.

Animals doing labour while suffering != animals doing labour while not suffering.

> But would you say the same about tractors? Going by the logic in that comment, we should nuke ourselves and try to blow up the Sun for good measure to reduce suffering.

I think you should read again what I wrote and consider if you're being illogical towards what I wrote. The all or nothing thought of yours, isn't a gotcha (if perfectionism isn't obtainable) and it doesn't mean we shouldn't acknowledge the best universe while striving towards one of the least total suffering possible for us while being able to enjoy life.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#64

Post by IIAOPSW »

tsimionescu wrote: post #53
IIAOPSW wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started to go in the opposite direction of the usual physical approach. At some point, any experiment or argument or fact is for the digestion of some conscious entity. So what happens when we assume consciousness as the baseline ontological object. There's you, me, and however many bystanders that can also participate in the conversation. Starting with a domain of discussion of just the person(s) making the tex…

> Starting from these as axioms, what can we construct? Nothing, unless there is also a physical world which actually exists independent of any of the participants' will.

This text is in the physical world. This statement exists on your screen independent of my will. It may exist in the first place because of my will, but its continued existence before you right now is independent of me. We have a shared reality in the form of this very text based medium.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#66

Post by burrows »

civilized wrote: post #23

> Before getting too deep we need a working definition of consciousness. This is a tricky concept to define rigorously since it seems that a rigorous definition of consciousness practically requires a theory of consciousness itself. To make matters worse, in these kinds of discussions it oftentimes gets mingled with related ideas like self-awareness, intelligence, and executive function. But in this post I am interes…

I think the real problem is pretending that the phrase “what it feels like to be something” is going to act like a key in my dict of feelings.

A: You know, the feeling of what it is like to be something.

B: sits quietly, looks at ceiling Right, yeah, that feeling.

From a different angle, if OP wants to define “consciousness” as some feeling it sounds like he’s basically done. He’s labeled one of his feelings with the word “consciousness”. I’m not sure what point of contention remains.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#67

Post by tsimionescu »

unrealhoang wrote: post #52
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get into a vehicle every day that I don't fully understand, yet it still seems to perform its function. I use vast swathes of computational resources every day for various tasks, the operation of which I understand even less. They still seem to accomplish those tasks without issue. Sometimes those computational resources run ML workloads. Very very few people on this planet can honestly claim to understand how neur…

> We have yet to find a single shred of evidence that the human brain makes use of quantum principles in aggregate to do its thing, and have even specifically excluded a few such explanations. And even if consciousness strictly requires quantum hardware...we'll get there eventually. Isn't a random generator for a neural network act as its "inception"? If so, it's exactly quantum principles in aggregate.

Why would a random generator be important for a neutral network?

Furthermore, not all sources of noise/randomness arise from quantum measurement (the only part of QM which can be interpreted to have randomness at all). Classical chaotic systems are also random if you were unable to measure the initial conditions to cosmic precision.

In fact, it's unclear at the moment how QM can actually give rise to randomness. In principle, in QM a perfectly isolated system of any complexity would behave entirely linearly with no randomness or even any chaos involved.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#68

Post by alexalx666 »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_co...

"If true, the theory has major implications for efforts to design consciousness into artificial intelligence machines;[30] current microprocessor technology is designed to transmit information linearly along electrical channels, and more general electromagnetic effects are seen as a nuisance and damped out; if this theory is right, however, this is directly counterproductive to creating an artificially conscious computer, which on some versions of the theory would instead have electromagnetic fields that synchronized its outputs—or in the original version of the theory would have spatially patterned electromagnetic fields"

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#69

Post by melenaboija »

doctor_eval wrote: post #54
n8cpdx wrote: post #3

I think people start with the premise that consciousness is a specific “thing”, that it is unique and special to humans (and maybe dogs because we like them but definitely not spiders and flies because we don’t) and then try to work backwards to define it in some ways that keeps it special. I don’t think consciousness is so specific, and I think people aren’t clear about how they think about it as something separate…

> Generating text for hours without an anchor to the real world is not a productive method of generating insight about that world. Yet people see to be claiming that LaMDA does just this, and is therefore not conscious. Seems like a journalist is conscious if they do it, but it can’t possible be consciousness if LaMDA does it. I’m yet to see a convincing argument about why LaMDA isn’t conscious other than “it’s just…

I guess that a unigram language model trained with few words should be considered conscious in some way too.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#70

Post by Imnimo »

The argument presented that a hot bar of iron would qualify as conscious if consciousness is computation also concludes that a hot bar of iron qualifies as a computer.

Do you believe that a hot bar of iron is a computer? If your answer is no, then it seems like the argument presented here should be not be at all convincing.

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