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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#111

Post by nobody9999 »

madeofmeat wrote: post #87
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…

"Consciousness is an illusion" I take the word "illusion" to mean, some type of experience which misleads one about reality. And "consciousness" to mean, the experience of having experiences. So I parse this claim as something like, "People both do not have conscious experiences, and also do continuously have a particular type of conscious experience: a misleading experience which leads them to believe they have cons…

I look at it a little differently.

It's not that consciousness is illusory. Rather, consciousness is synthesis.

A synthesis of sensory inputs as interpreted by multiple, sometimes competing, semi-independent systems combined with stored patterns based on previous subjective "experience", creating a narrative about you and the world.

That narrative is our subjective experience, our "consciousness."

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#112

Post by dqpb »

photochemsyn wrote: post #105

Plants never evolved anything like consciousness because they can't move. The antecedents of consciousness are awareness of ones surroundings and the ability to react (move towards or away from) to threatening or attractive stimuli. It's true plants are aware of their chemical surroundings and there are things like pheromone-triggered coordinated flowering, but this is much more of a factor in animals. Hence I doubt…

Plants do move. They don't appear to move, because they move very slowly relative to human perception. When super-human AI is developed, it may perceive the world at a much higher frame rate than which we operate in the world, and we may look like plants to the AI.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#113

Post by voldacar »

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

An illusion to whom? It isn't meaningful to say that an unconscious thing experiences illusions.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#114

Post by mr_toad »

madeofmeat wrote: post #87
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…

"Consciousness is an illusion" I take the word "illusion" to mean, some type of experience which misleads one about reality. And "consciousness" to mean, the experience of having experiences. So I parse this claim as something like, "People both do not have conscious experiences, and also do continuously have a particular type of conscious experience: a misleading experience which leads them to believe they have cons…

The illusion is of conscious volition; that consciousness is an atomic unit in charge of your actions.

The brain is in control. Whether the conscious ‘mind’ has any control at all is debatable.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#115

Post by l33t2328 »

Ologn wrote: post #104
0xBABAD00C wrote: post #99

We don't know of anything that is provably not computation. There's not a single proof that "process X is not reproducible computationally, yet it is implemented in the universe". All the statements like the one in the subject line are desires (conscious or unconscious) for special privilege for humans.

> We don't know of anything that is provably not computation. How about the halting problem? :)

If you show me a TM with an infinite length memory tape I’ll accept that.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#116

Post by tsimionescu »

3g4o53g4o5 wrote: post #103
tsimionescu wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, dogs and birds can't "speak", not in the same sense you do (with dolphins it's a little more debatable). Animal calls have no syntax - each call has some meaning, but they do not compose in any way. The order in which an animal performs its calls is arbitrary, and an animal hearing said calls doesn't pay attention to it. Even basic modifiers like "no" don't exist in animal communication - if a call means "food",…

Is this a counterargument? You are denying facts and say something juat even contract with yourself. > Dolphin can understand sign language but dog dont. So ALL OF THEM do not speak. Do you mean this? It is the same as saying that you dont understand Japanese and conclud that human can not speak. Correct me if I am wrong. Or correct yourself.

I'm saying that perhaps with the exception of dolphins and mayyyyybe chimps, there is a measurable, observable, quantifiable way in which animal communication is fundamentally different from human language.

So, perhaps you can say that dolphins speak, and maybe chimps speak, and then we can even contemplate that bonobos speak (since they are very similar to chimps, but haven't been studied as much).

But dogs definitely don't speak, and neither do any other mammals that we've tried to test in this way.

Not to mention, there is another characteristic of human language that 0 animals can be taught, as far as we've tried - more complex structure, like "not (c and d)"

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#117

Post by russdill »

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.

Or more succinctly, all the known laws of physics effect things in a way that can be simulated by sufficiently complex computation. The idea that there's something going on in a wet, warm l, mushy brain that has a macroscopic effect, and yet isn't accounted for by the currently known physics or bonkers.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#118

Post by dqpb »

andai wrote: post #98
Imnimo wrote: post #70

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.

Stephen Wolfram's article "Alien Intelligence and the Concept of Technology"[0], posted a few days ago, touched on this, eg. the idea that a weather pattern "computes" its next state, ie. the weather in the next moment, and indeed exhibits very complex behavior while doing so. The hot iron bar is a simpler example but at the atomic scale the same principle applies. The iron bar doesn't strike me as particularly consc…

A hot bar of iron can "compute" the next state of a hot bar of iron. It cannot compute the next state of any arbitrary program. Can I play Fortnite with nothing more that a hot bar of iron? No, I cannot! Not unless it's compiled to WebAssembly.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#119

Post by antognini »

Imnimo wrote: post #70

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.

(Author here.)

> Do you believe that a hot bar of iron is a computer?

This is the crux of it. The main objection to the triviality argument is that we've just used far too broad a definition of a "computer." If we're thinking that a hot iron bar is a computer, then this should suggest to us that it's the definition that's wrong. You are correct in saying that if the definition we use is wrong, the whole triviality argument falls apart.

But for me, the problem with this objection is that I've never seen any workable alternative definition for a computer besides the standard definition. (Namely that a computer is a mapping from physical states to Turing machine states.) Any alternative seems to introduce some measure of subjectivity. The hot iron bar doesn't seem like a computer to us because it requires a random mapping and is not repeatable. But a requirement that the mapping be "simple" or "low entropy" is not easy to rigorously define, nor is it easy to find a principled way to determine how "repeatable" or "deterministic" a computer's behavior should be.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#120

Post by jvanderbot »

voldacar wrote: post #113
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 An illusion to whom? It isn't meaningful to say that an unconscious thing experiences illusions.

To no one. "It is an illusion" is transcribed and recalled as an explanation for feelings that drive actions in the person who said it, because we evolved to be able to explain our actions with sophisticated language, and to judge the arguments of others so that we can act together to overcome challenges and to kill the out group. In this case, OP is, without knowing it, signaling which group is his, and which is not, and we'll all jump behind the most convincing speech etc etc.

We do these things without thinking about it, because we do not understand consciousness, because it cannot be understood, because it is not a thing. It is a construct we share and use to separate ourselves from the animals so that we can kill them and eat them as a group.

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