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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#351

Post by glittle2 »

I agree with the conclusion, but not the reasoning.

I agree that "consciousness is not computation", if we convert that to "qualia is not computation", as the author seems to do. I agree because I don't think qualia -- like what red looks like to me -- can be communicated, whereas all computation seems communicable by writing out the Turing Machine. Maybe someone will convince me otherwise by describing redness.

However, the "triviality argument" seems pretty poor to me:

> 1. To say that a physical system is a computer requires an external observer to map the physical states of that system onto the abstract states of a Turing machine.

Does it? If nobody maps the states of AlphaZero to abstract states, will it fail at chess?

> 2. Consciousness does not require an external observer to exist.

I agree that my consciousness is not dependent on other people's consciousness, but I have no reason to be sure my consciousness is not external to my brain. If we're in a simulation, then it seems like my consciousness is external to my brain.

> 3. Therefore, consciousness cannot be reduced to computation.

Again, I agree, but not because of 1. and 2.

To me, consciouness/qualia seems like a mysterious other-worldly phenomena that observes interesting computations, but doesn't affect them.. like God running a universe simulation, and then looking at one of the creatures in it, and basically making up "what it's like" to be that creature, by filling in some gaps which are not dictated by the simulation, like what redness is like.

In conclusion: I think computers can definitely be conscious, but at the same time, I think consciounsess/qualia is weird, and is not computation.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#352

Post by grive »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #232
simonh wrote: post #205

I find this argument completely unconvincing. The mapping in a case like the iron bar 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. To ach…

The iron bar argument is terrible for exactly the reason you say. The atoms in the iron bar would have to evolve following the rules of a Turing machine and they won't. So you'd have to define a mapping which varies over time. There's nothing stopping us doing that but I can do the same with a pumpkin and my brain. Therefore I'm not conscious. Sad!

An encoding which varies over time, dependent on previous states does not seem impossible. I don't think this is disqualifying to say that a sufficiently complex system cannot then simulate an abstract machine.

It does not make the article argument valid however, just that the iron bar argument is still worth thinking about.

The article says that consciousness cannot be computing because it requires an observer to derive meaning. Nothing precludes sufficiently complex encodings to themselves be accurate simulations of abstract machines. I think such class of simulations being able to support themselves might be the nature of consciousness. Some physical systems might be better suited to allow the emergence of such recursive simulations.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#353

Post by yreg »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #143

Why is reduction-to-panpsychism sufficient to banish consciousness as computation? Maybe every brick has consciousness, what matters to humans is whether it's a consciousness that we can communicate with. We don't care about consciousnesses with orthogonal arrows of time, or consciousnesses with nothing to say or no way to say it in our universe. We're after a compatible kind of consciousness. It seems to me that the…

I don't get this either. I used to think about these experiments and my conclusions are completely opposite. Any physical medium that runs the right program would be conscious. And the right program is probably a very broad category.

>It already seems implausible to me that a vast desert of rocks being manipulated into various patterns is conscious. What exactly is conscious here? What happens if I accidentally kick a rock to the side — have I killed whatever ghostly being inhabits these rocks?

If you kick a rock to the side it's probably analogous to making someone's neuron misfire. If the pebble computer is as sturdy as a human brain then there would be probably no noticeable effect.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#354

Post by quickthrower2 »

whittingtonaaon wrote: post #250
simonh wrote: post #205

I find this argument completely unconvincing. The mapping in a case like the iron bar 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. To ach…

The question is whether there was ever a good reason to suggest that mind is computational, and I think philosophy (i.e. Searle) have shown that there wasn’t. A brain CAN compute (albeit very slowly), but that’s the end of the similarities. The reason it’s not morally wrong, say, to recycle an old computer is that computers are not at all like human minds.

If true it means there is a fundamental limit of science to understand the nature of the universe.

Because if we can unify a theory of physics, we can build a simulation on a computer, which could simulate us.

The get out might be that the energy required to run a computer that can simulate us is more than the energy in the universe and so is practically impossible.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#355

Post by simonh »

cmdli wrote: post #229
simonh wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

At the scale of hot annealing atoms one second is a stupendous amount of time. There's no way a single consistent mapping would hold in a reasonably sized volume for even microseconds.

This whole argument is exactly a rephrasing of the Boltzmann's Brain proposition. But even if we suppose an infinite universe for eternity, sure that means consciousnesses randomly manifest and then disperse. That's vaguely horrific but it doesn't explain or refute anything. So what?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#356

Post by V-2 »

whaaswijk wrote: post #347
V-2 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Occam's razor favors the simpler explanation though.

What explanation are you referring to though? Just saying consciousness is an emergent property is not an explanation. Rather it is an assertion.

It's a working hypothesis where the element of "HOW does consciousness emerge out of computation" remains unanswered, but you could argue that you shouldn't assume the hypothesis is insufficient until it's shown that the question is not answerable without adding extra assertions (that there is something beyond computation).

Just like we stick to the "planetary orbits are only shaped by gravitational interactions" hypothesis, and if we observe deviations, we try to exhaust all possible explanations that remain gravity based before introducing the possibility of other forces at work.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#357

Post by doctor_eval »

XorNot wrote: post #108
doctor_eval wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

LaMDA didn't perform as well as the released document implies (it's edited, and didn't show alternatives like if you prompted it with "I think you're not conscious. Prove that for me." or "how can I prove to others you're a squirrel") The big problem is very much though that as you note, the arguments people have been making about this are atrocious. Basically, it's not conscious, but essentially because it's unlikel…

Thanks. This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.

I don’t have a strong opinion about LaMDA’s consciousness but I sure wish we could see the unedited text.

As I said elsewhere, we can’t say that LaMDA is not conscious until we’ve proven that LaMDA’s construction is incompatible with consciousness, and we have not done that yet.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#358

Post by red75prime »

antognini wrote: post #193
dqpb wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not requiring specific physical processes, I'm asking for any physical process in a hot iron bar that executes any model of computation that is capable of running an arbitrary program. But you're saying there is not one, we just get lucky one time. That's not computation.

The physical process is simply that the atoms in the bar of iron start in one Turing machine state, obey the laws of physics, and end up in another Turing machine state. But this is also true of any other physical computer. It sounds like your objection is that this is not a computer because it's not reproducible --- we just got lucky that the physical states mapped onto the appropriate Turing machine states one time…

Any physical system with a component that you can throw away to make the system a more reliable computer is not a feasible implementation of an abstract computation. If you replace the iron bar with a quartz generator, reliability will increase by ten to the power of, say, quadrillion.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#359

Post by Gare »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #354
whittingtonaaon wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is whether there was ever a good reason to suggest that mind is computational, and I think philosophy (i.e. Searle) have shown that there wasn’t. A brain CAN compute (albeit very slowly), but that’s the end of the similarities. The reason it’s not morally wrong, say, to recycle an old computer is that computers are not at all like human minds.

If true it means there is a fundamental limit of science to understand the nature of the universe. Because if we can unify a theory of physics, we can build a simulation on a computer, which could simulate us. The get out might be that the energy required to run a computer that can simulate us is more than the energy in the universe and so is practically impossible.

A human mind runs only on 12 watts of power. Even if simulation is billion times more inefficient, it's only 12 gigawatts of power, obtainable even today for state actors and large companies.

Not saying it's possible, just that on power requirements alone it should be feasible.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#360

Post by squabble »

mathgenius wrote: post #288
squabble wrote: post #37

Maybe I'm the only one who is real, and everyone else are just robots. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to know for sure.

How can we even be sure we are the same person as yesterday? Or even five minutes ago.. It's all pretty weird.

That is an interesting thought.

It might depend on how you define "person". When I look around, I see distinct human bodies. When I wake up, I'm in the same body as when I went to sleep, so in that sense I'm the same person.

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