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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#431

Post by hhjinks »

strogonoff wrote: post #238
Sophistifunk wrote: post #160

The 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…

The act of saying “consciousness doesn’t have any effect on the material universe” denies the premise of what’s being said. Behold, your consciousness has just had direct effect on material universe (just as deciding to obtain the device on which it was typed, and before that someone’s idea to make that device, had). I remember myself being unshakeably of the same opinion: consciousness is obviously something of no r…

That depends on your perspective. I could argue that the consciousness merely attributes these actions to itself. The consciousness could be a passive observer, tricking itself into believing it is the cause behind the actions of the meat computer it observeres.

Then again, that argument doesn't sit well with the evolution argument. If we assume consciousness is a fitness advantage, then it must have some effect on the organism's behaviour.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#432

Post by Schroedingersat »

eru wrote: post #301
simonh wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, if you were to compute the mapping in real time on a computer, that would be conscious but it's really got nothing to do with the actual iron bar.

Scott Aaronson (if memory serves right) had an interesting take on this. He framed his thought in terms of the Turing test, but the argument would apply equally well to the mapped iron bar: In theory, we could pass any Turing test of finite duration (eg an hour or less) and run in a chat room with finite bandwidth with a giant lookup table. Just look up the entire past of the conversation to see what answer should be…

I've never been able to see why one would give the lookup table any credence. It's just kicking the can down the road one step in terms of abstraction.

The second you assert that the lookup table can pass a turing test with, eg. a gigabyte of exchange, then the table of every single one gigabyte number in it becomes your state space and program, the page number becomes the state, and you've got just as much complexity as any other simulation with one gigabyte of state. You haven't changed the parameters of the problem at all.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#433

Post by kertoip_1 »

hoseja wrote: post #369
hgomersall wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an interesting thought experiment that goes the other way. What if we replace a single neuron in a conscious person's brain by a properly connected real-time neuron simulator? Would that affect the person's consciousness? What about two neurons? Etc etc. At what point, if ever, would a progressively more simulated brain no longer be the original consciousness?

This may be a little deceptive depending on how you define "a properly connected real-time neuron simulator". Can it form new connections? Can it grow? Does it metabolize? Can it die? Etc...

But does it really matter? If we can just replace, one-by-one all neurons in brain with artificial ones and that would not affect consciousness of the user, then we've just proved it's possible to have a thinking machine

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#434

Post by 3g4o53g4o5 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #393
3g4o53g4o5 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. FYI, unitary transformation, creation and annihilation operator, etc.

Are these physical objects? Do they have mass, energy, volume, a position or speed, charge, color charge, weak hyper charge, spin etc?

The operation of adding and subtracting per se in classical computers also lacking these physical properties. If you use this as your counterargument, namely classical computer can compute without the inherent operation owning a physical property, then you left yourself with no ground of saying that quantum computing is invalid. You better check your logic.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#435

Post by xg15 »

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 mapping in a case like the iron bar is entirely ephemeral, pertaining only for an instant.

Also even if you somehow oversaw this, the author is effectively describing the XOR function. If you take a fixed bitstring (the iron atoms) and xor it with every possible bitstring of the same length (the observers), you get... every possible bitstring of the same length! That's a well-known property of XOR and the reason why you can "decrypt" one-time-pads to every message you like if you just apply the right key.

This means if you accepted the author's proposition that for one observer, the iron bar is running consciousness.exe, then for another observer, the bar will run Doom or WoW or a bitcoin miner or whatever else you want.

The problem is that the things we colloquially call "computers" are also observer-independent: A server will run its program and update its internal state even if no human is watching. That's one thing that distinguishes computation by computers from computation with pen and paper.

So if you add this together, you can prove that computers are not computation, which I think is contradictory.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#436

Post by gfodor »

One facet to the computational theory of consciousness that is worth considering is the experience of qualia may be latency-coupled, because the universe itself isn't scale invariant in terms of physical forces, etc. So it may be consistent to run a slow mind on rocks or a fast mind on transistors, but only the latter would be conscious due to the state transitions occuring quickly enough. (for example) This doesn't answer why it's the case, but this degree of freedom would allow for a description of reality where a large pile of rocks being flipped around cannot experience qualia, which would be very surprising if it wasn't the case.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#437

Post by GoblinSlayer »

eru wrote: post #271
fancyfredbot wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I think you are conscious, and so is the combination of iron bar and crazy complex mapping. In the latter case, the crazy complex mapping does all the work and in some sense _is_ conscious.

The iron bar is obviously not a Turing machine and doesn't run programs, that argument is total bonkers, the author assumes it's correct, but it's not correct. With the same success you can look at a turned off computer, assign interpretations to its atoms and thus imagine it runs linux, but it's just a fantasy.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#438

Post by gfodor »

thom wrote: post #295
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which doesn't solve the problem, because it define what a "thought" is. And besides - there are also emotions and physical sensations.

We can just lump all these together as “qualia”. “There are qualia” is the basest possible conclusion that can be drawn, as opposed to “I have qualia, therefore I am”.

Yeah I take it to mean this way too, its very strange that Descartes is controversial among eg panpsychics because of the fixation on the term 'think' - it seems pretty clear that he was just noticing that qualia exists and is the only real axiom one can rely on for any kind of self-induced philosophy of mind.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#439

Post by layer8 »

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…

“I’m having a subjective experience” is an interesting statement. It seems that you’re expressing that you’re experiencing having a subjective experience. Could that (first) experience be non-subjective? Is what makes the (latter) experience subjective just that it is an immediate input to your own thoughts?

I personally believe that what a real explanation of subjective experience will come down to is some kind of recursivity. The brain perceives parts of its own processing. To make a loose analogy, a bit similar to a debugger or profiler observing its own execution.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#440

Post by pnut »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #126
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…

I agree wholeheartedly with this and suspect that consciousness in the singular, may be the only actual thing that exists. What causes wave function collapse in the quantum realm? A conscious observer. What caused the universe to collapse from a cloud of probability?
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