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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#71

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.

Also, from a system of things that only exists with respect to participants will, we can hack it into a system of things with objective physical existence by presupposing a fictitious all-knowing never-lying arbitrator who will is physical law. In other words, we can invent god as a useful linguistic fiction to rig into being the aspects of my system you've criticized as impossible to construct.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#72

Post by epgui »

3g4o53g4o5 wrote: post #42
epgui wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that everything in the universe is the product of some computation, I would consider it a reasonable default assumption that whatever we mean by “consciousness” emerges from computation. That this idea “intuitively feels weird” or “intuitively feels wrong”, and that we love to think we are special and have a unique place in the universe, is probably a more serious bias.

Not probably, it is a bias. Dolphin can speak, dog can speak, bird can speak too. There is nothing special about homo species except the only fact that we have more neurons in our head. Those "philosophers" love to claim that human consciousness is different than animal and this is the biggest bullshit.

We’re in total agreement, I’m just measuring my words by habit.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#73

Post by stormbrew »

trts wrote: post #33
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 It is probably just a difference in semantics but for me, it seems like consciousness is the only thing that is assuredly not an illusion. That I am having a subjective experience is undeniable. The objects of my consciousness all might be (and probably are) something else than they appear to be (as is often the experience with diffe…

> That I am having a subjective experience is undeniable.

If you wanted to go about proving (even to yourself) that you are not, say, an extremely advanced ML algorithm running on a system that provided synthetic inputs in the form of your senses, how would you go about it?

Further, how would you go about proving to someone who doubted your subjective experience was real if they doubted it? Say, if they believed they were having a dream or hallucination, or they believed you were incapable of consciousness? (people actually sometimes have to do those things)

To me, if it were "undeniable" these would be much easier things to do.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#74

Post by manx »

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…

Similarly, we also have a hard time defining intelligence. I often ask people how they would define intelligence, and I get wildly different answers. The common understanding of these words is very fuzzy.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#75

Post by epgui »

tensor wrote: post #39
Gwarzo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quantum is the go to pearl for everyone who doesn't like the idea that consciousness is not simply a result of a deterministic but very complex system of physics. Unfortunately there has never been any evidence that anything in the brain exhibits any sort of quantum computing or logic or otherwise. Thus, the burned of proof is in fact on the the claim that you cannot get their through computation, because determinist…

Well, there are plenty of quantum effects required for cells to function (everything is just biophysics and biochemistry after all), but those are irrelevant at the scale of the brain as a whole. The properties we care about (especially in this context) are emergent.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#76

Post by elefanten »

stormbrew wrote: post #61
dibujante wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This seems like an overly narrow reading of gp. One does not have to anthropomorphize evolution to speculate that consciousness would likely have fit this pattern of “some things that happen”

If you’re taking “hates” literally… it’s probably a misreading

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#77

Post by Vetch »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #2

This seems...very confused. This seems to be attempting to "prove" that if you regard consciousness as "containing the bits of a specific program", you could also see that program in random data by interpreting that random data by effectively applying a one-time pad to it (from which you can indeed produce any possible interpretation of data), which it treats as a proof by contradiction. And leaving that aside, while…

The experiment is okay, it's actually a special case of a concept explored in Egan's Permutation City and your observation about what's really doing the work applies there too. Except story goes in unsettling directions by really taking noise generator aspect seriously. Things get interesting when sections of patterns become self interpreting.

A similar thing could be done for brains: record with necessary accuracy, all voltages, membrane potentials and any key biochemical concentrations. This will take a finite number of bits. Look for a decoding of recorded data from heated iron bar, convert those readings, instead of using original, and play that back into state clamped brain. Does being able to read conscious state into brains from hot iron invalidate them too?

Another relevant story is Wang's Carpets. We might look at some alien moss or fungal mat and think it primitive. But later our technologies and knowledge advance to the point we can now see it's running a complex computation with intelligent agents inhabiting. Did the creatures not exist until we could decode them?

One of its pivotal flaws is:

> Since there is no definition of computation without reference to an external observer, a system in isolation just cannot compute, which suggests that a conscious being cannot compute.

This is an assumption they do not try to and cannot prove. It's also what much of their argument rests upon.

Related ideas are subjectivity of emergence or what counts as an observer for Wigner's Friend.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#78

Post by xornox »

Because we do not know what consciousness is, it is impossible to say if consciousness is computation or not.

we must not resist any idea about consciousness because it is very poorly known phenomenon. Anyone who argues that it is known if consciousness is computation or not, is just completely wrong.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#79

Post by stormbrew »

elefanten wrote: post #76
stormbrew wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This seems like an overly narrow reading of gp. One does not have to anthropomorphize evolution to speculate that consciousness would likely have fit this pattern of “some things that happen” If you’re taking “hates” literally… it’s probably a misreading

I think the idea that evolution has a purpose and a direction is more than common enough that when someone says something like that things that evolve never lack a purpose, they've gone wrong in their understanding of evolution, even if only in subtle ways they may not be aware of themselves.

Anyways, I think the juxtaposition is funny no matter how seriously they meant it. We all want to believe that consciousness is something that can be easily defined and yet our use of aspects of it is extremely fuzzy.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#80

Post by whoisjuan »

mrsmee89 wrote: post #29

My problem with this is that we don’t even know the extent of “things” that can be computed, maybe consciousness is a type of computation that has yet to be discovered at which point I can very easily see the headline “consciousness is obviously computation”.

I think he is referring to “computation” in a strictly binary sense.
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