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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#121

Post by sebringj »

I have questions but first with a premise.

Atoms configured in a certain way produce the rich behavior of awareness and agency that we can observe in humans and other animals. This awareness and agency seems similar enough to our own behavior that we associate our internal experience to be similar as well. This internal experience we assume exists can be called "consciousness".

Based on the above definition of consciousness...

Atoms by themselves cannot be observed to have consciousness. In addition, there seems to be many more configurations of atoms that do not produce the behavior of consciousness.

However, it seems reasonable to assume that one day, we could arrange atoms in a specific way to produce consciousness from an atom-based computer system.

It feels like we are moving closure to producing the behavior of consciousness but I don't know about the efforts underway to produce the internal experience of it.

Finally to the questions.

- Is there efforts to produce some sense of self or internal dialog?

- Similar to how hand coding image recognition didn't work, maybe then the design itself of consciousness exceeds our ability... could we indirectly use AI/ML to build consciousness?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#122

Post by mr_toad »

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? :)

Is there a physical system that solves the halting problem?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#123

Post by russdill »

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 reducto adsurdium just seems to boil down to: but that makes meet uncomfortable.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#124

Post by 3g4o53g4o5 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #95
3g4o53g4o5 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Quantum behavior is computing linear algebra ever since the Big Bang, and we came accross to discover this fact 15e9 years later.

That's not a good example, as it's very hard to call particles following the laws of physics "a computation" - what would be the computer in this case? What is the program? A much better example is the machinery inside every living cell that is interpreting the DNA or RNA to produce certain proteins - there, it's much clearer there is a computational process happening. Certain specific structures inside the nucleus a…

How is it not? Quantum Mechanics and quantum field theory applies everywhere except for the black holes. Human can even harness the power by building quantum computer by that. So here you tried to deny the exist of quantum computing paradigm, a completely different computation approach?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#125

Post by epgui »

russdill wrote: post #117
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.

I’m not sure that was more succinct, but exactly! Haha :)

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#126

Post by artificialLimbs »

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…

>> I don’t think consciousness is so specific, and I think people aren’t clear about how they think about it as something separate from recall, text generation, agency, etc.

Some people. However, some people speak about it with a shockingly high degree of clarity and insight, if one is open to exploring the ideas for oneself as a practical matter. For starters you could read the works of Chögyam Trungpa, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Red Hawk, David R. Hawkins, or Gurdjieff.

You probably assume that consciousness is an illusion because you associate 'poking at it' with drugs. While drugs can change the state of mind, consciousness is an expansive field of awareness into which we may delve without the need of drugs. What you may be experiencing in seeing contradictions or challenges are products of the ego, the programmatic conditioning that has been imprinted by being in the world. Consciousness is a continuous stream which we have learned to tune out and block off, but which connects us to the source of our being.

Completely agree with Aside.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#127

Post by crdrost »

stormbrew wrote: post #73
trts wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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?

Well, since an extremely advanced ML algorithm wouldn't want to go about proving to itself that it is not what it is, that would be prima facie evidence against, no? I mean it's always possible that you are mistaken about what constitutes ML etc. but assuming you have a reasonable if flawed correspondence between your education and reality the deduction comes pretty readily...

> 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?

I mean in practice we don't find this too hard right now if the other person is reasonable—a 15-minute conversation usually suffices —but I imagine from your ptior question you're dreaming of, say, a future with robots that routinely pass the Turing test?

Well, the question is what science does during that time of course. If science manages to figure out the correlates of consciousness and understands something about why they need to have the structure that they in fact do have, then it becomes a question of “let's see whether you have the hardware that can do this whole conversation thing without consciousness, or whether you have the hardware that skips the algorithmic complexity by using consciousness.” But if this proves to be a quite tougher nut to crack, then we're stuck with our present crude methods. “How much of my internal structure do you appear to have?”

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#128

Post by tsimionescu »

epgui wrote: post #90
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",…

To say that almost all animal communication is without order (syntax) is almost certainly incorrect, and would have a high burden of proof. It’s certainly been a historical assumption, but I think science has moved a little past it. Even bees can communicate relatively sophisticated messages between them.

Bee dances are a fascinating topic, but the evidence is still inconclusive - there is some evidence that suggests the movements in the dance correlate with the position of the flower, but there is other evidence that suggests they are irrelevant and the flower is found by a trail of pheromones.

In all other animals where this had been extensively studied (except orcas and maybe chimps), syntax has proven to be absent in natural calls, and also impossible to teach artificially. There are sometimes apparent breakthroughs, but it later turns out that the animal figured out a way to interpret "a", "b", "a then b", and "b then a" as four separate calls, without any deeper understanding. This is evident when you then teach it "c", and find out that it sees no difference between "c then a" and "a then c", and it takes just as long to teach it to distinguish these three calls; and then again just as long to teach it the difference between "b than c" and "c then b".

Have we tested each possible animal this way? No, of course not - but we have tested all the most likely candidates, and orcas and chimps were the only successes (and even here there is some debate). Crows, parrots, dogs, cats, gorillas, elephants, horses - none of these show any understanding of syntax.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#129

Post by epgui »

tsimionescu wrote: post #116
3g4o53g4o5 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 definite…

{{citation needed}} for most of this.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#130

Post by kazinator »

_moof wrote: post #107
3g4o53g4o5 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but you always forgot that when you sleep your consciousness disappeared. Please take account for this fact. When all sensory shut down, really you feel nothing and of cos think nothing.

Until you start dreaming.

It's when you're anaesthesized for surgery that your consciousness goes away.

No dreams, nothing. You don't exist during those hours. You cannot account for them later; they are deleted.

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