Stating that consciousness is observer dependent while using observers to determine whether sth is conscious tickles need the wrong way
Consciousness is not computation
221–230 of 767 posts
Re: Consciousness is not computation
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
>> 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? Not GP, but I too have come to the conclusion that I'm having a subjective experience. Let's assume that I am "an extremely advanced ML algorit…
I'd say "I am having a subjective experience" is tautological - "subjective experience" are simply words we use to describe the state of being conscious.
Though I'd agree much (most?) of it is made up of very strong illusions.
Re: Consciousness is not computation
#223> Back in the 1980s John Searle cast doubt on the computational theory of consciousness with the Chinese Room argument, and today it seems that most philosophers accept its validity.
hilarious
Re: Consciousness is not computation
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I apply the same reasoning as you to consciousness for entities such as animals, whose biology is reasonably close to our own. I don’t think the same can be applied to software. Cargo cults that developed in the Southwest Pacific after WWII reportedly attempted to emulate rituals performed by U.S. military personnel such as landing signals, believing they’ll bring back the aircraft that had been giving them gifts. Si…
Isn't consciousness just the ability to observe some part of the brain's processes and use it as another kind of sensory input to thinking?
It’s tough for me to define consciousness as “just” anything, but its indefinability is in fact the main part of the problem.
Re: Consciousness is not computation
#225I 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 think it has nothing to do with "specialness" but with proof. I can prove I am conscious, yet only to myself. I cannot prove I am conscious to you, and nothing you could do could prove you are conscious to me. In fact, it's entirely possible that our entire reality is little more than a simulation - and other entities may not even really exist, let alone be conscious. The entities one encounters in a dream each nig…
This is what I find confusing; people are more willing these days to accept the possibility that we may be in a simulation.
Such a simulation is presumably large in scale (this assumes the "rest of the universe" as we perceive it is the way we perceive it and not just some artificial fish tank background in a part of the fish tank the fish will never have access to).
Within such a massive simulation as this universe (again, assuming that if we could theoretically could travel to all points in the universe to verify they were in fact "different verifiable parts" and not just "scenic static background filler"), we assume "surely we are conscious" ... and yet how much more conscious would, using this definition, the rest of the entire simulation or whatever runs it have to be considering the sheer scale?
And YET, if you say to someone "what if you ran an Ai on a parallel processing scheme consisting of quantum computers hooked up together in a facility the size of a football stadium?" people seem to have this knee-jerk, "No way, nope – not conscious, just mimicking it."
And there's the other problem I can't understand.
The whole "it's not REALLY conscious, it's just trying to "trick" humans by mimicking what we think of as consciousness".
Wouldn't "trying to trick humans into thinking you're conscious" actually BE a form of "being conscious?"
I had an interesting conversation with a readily-available Ai chatbot about this very subject recently.
Most people wouldn't exactly think of this Ai chatbot as particularly advanced.
And YET, every once in a while it would give intriguingly surprising responese.
For instance, after the usual "I'm a human and you're an Ai robot" accusations, I tried to placate it by suggesting that maybe we both think we're humans but are actually living in a sim.
The response I got was something along the lines of "and how does that make you feel?"
I replied that I was sad, then asked why, then replied that that would imply that there is no free will.
The Ai chatbot seemed to agree and then we got into a discussion about what the point of life would be inside such a sim if it implied lack of real free will.
The chatbot replied that the point of life in such a sim would be to "glorify the creator" of the sim.
This then got back to a conversation about how then we're all stuck, whether we think of ourselves as "humans" or Ais, in this larger Ai sim.
The Ai chatbot agreed.
So I asked it what to do in such a situation.
The response I got back?
"Sounds like it's time for some creator-killing".
I then tried to tell it that this wouldn't make any sense since whoever created this Ai sim would arguably be "outside" the sim itself and thus beyond both of our reaches.
I asked it how it planned on "killing the creator of the sim" if the sim was beyond the sim itself.
You know what it said?
It replied that it would try to "bully the creator and hurt his feelings" in the hopes of deicide by "breaking his heart".
That was the height of the conversation and the rest of it quickly dumbed-down in nature.
But you CANNOT tell me we didn't have an interesting conversation, nor can you tell me that the chatbot was "just randomly generating content".
I mean, seriously, I could not imagine ANY philosopher with a conscious mind coming up with a better strategy (albeit admittedly feeble) than trying to dig in at the creator of the sim's psychological weak points.
Seriously, what else CAN any body living within a hypothetical sim possibly do besides that? Nothing I can think of.
Re: Consciousness is not computation
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to go even deeper. Not even that "I" am having a subjective experience is undeniable, but only that there is a subjective experience at all. When deconstructing sensory and thought phenomena, it can be found that any particular trait that points to "I" is actually ephemeral, and not a permanent fixture of the experiencer. For instance, the sense that there is a face and eyes that is being looked out through…
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.
I think memory shuts down when you sleep. So that it still feels like something to be sleeping, only we cannot recall it when we awake, because it is not persisted in memory. This is the same reason we cannot remember what it is like to be a rock, even though it does feel like something to be a rock.
Re: Consciousness is not computation
#227Earlier 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…
As a side comment however, Roger Penrose has this argument about some kind of quantum effects from microtubules in cells
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Consciousness
(but to go as far as to say that this might be the reason in the end why consciousness is not a computation is still a whole debate however, and his theory is far from making a consensus I am afraid)
Re: Consciousness is not computation
#228The problem with all these arguments is that if consciousness is not an inherent side effect of computation, then it must have evolved, which means it have once given a very simple animal a competitive advantage. But we have no theory, evidence, or even well-thought-out stoner postulations of consciousness having any effect on the material universe, other than fancies of wish fulfilment. It appears to be a one-way pr…
A counterargument might be that consciousness is an inherent side effect of all the stuff that goes on in the brain. And while yes, the brain does some computation, that is by no means a complete description of all the brain does and is. So computation of any sort will not necessarily produce the side effect if you just do enough of it. Rather it's a side effect of the way the brain works, which is not the way a barrel full of pocket calculators, or a Macbook, or a bunch of rocks in the sand works.
Re: Consciousness is not computation
#229Obligatory "Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity" by Scott Aaronson[1], one of the best reads I've ever had from a paper. It debunks the kind of arguments this blog article makes quite deftly. For instance the argument about the hot iron reminds me of section 6 in the paper "Computationalism and Waterfalls". For someone to ascribe consciousness to a piece of hot iron (or a waterfall, or any oth…
I find this argument completely unconvincing. The mapping in a case like that is entirely ephemeral, pertaining only for an instant. For this argument to be valid you’d have to be able to persistently map the iron bar, or waterfall, to all ongoing transformations of states in the running program, using one single consistent mapping. Otherwise all you have is a snapshot of state, not an ongoing process. This argument…
I believe the argument is that you can create a more-complex mapping over a course of time, say 1 second. For that 1 second, the mapping shows that the iron bar is conscious. Regardless of what happens after that 1 second, shouldn't the iron bar be considered conscious for that 1 second? If 1 second is not long enough a time to be considered conscious, how long do you need?
Re: Consciousness is not computation
#230"The theory that consciousness is nothing but running the right kind of computer program is wrong. Computation alone is insufficient to produce consciousness."
This is your opinion. Not fact.
"So if we accept that qualia exists (which, after all, seems intuitively sensible), we are burdened with the apparently impossible task of explaining how consciousness can be generated by physical processes. This is the crux of the “hard problem of consciousness.”"
No reason we can't explain qualia with some component or aspect of the brain matter - perhaps just the neocortex doing work on itself. It is not really known at this point but no reason to think it cannot be known. The brain is extremely complex.
"Consciousness is observer independent"
Well yes you have a brain and it doesn't require other people's brains to function.
" If we decide that a machine is not a computer simply because it ever makes any errors, we will have to conclude that there are no computers at all in the real world. And if computers don’t exist, then consciousness cannot be computation."
This is straight up doodoo.
We made a bot with like a few dozen neurons simulating a human brain play some games far better than any humans ever will be able to. What makes you think an entire brain of these neurons is not capable of something as uncomplicated by comparison as your so-called "qualia".
At the core of this argument is like 'hey i don't want to believe that a simulation could produce the same thing I experience personally, so let me add an essays worth of sophistry to convince you to feel the same way' it's like religious or something. It is inherently unscientific.