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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#541

Post by archibaldJ »

Here is how I’d argue that consciousness is (hugely likely) not computation:

First we still don’t understand how time crystals work. There are some nice recent advancements though https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31766804

For those who are not familiar with time crystals and weird time related things like Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser, here is a nice Sean Carroll's article https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2019/09/21/the-not...

The Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser (and other weird time related things) always reinforce the many-world interpretation, the most mathematically minimal of all.

As strange as it is, even if it is true, many-world is only scratching the surface of our reality.

We need a new mathematical framework that goes beyond spacetime and amplituhedron https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplituhedron (from which more re-interpretations can happen, especially ones that can encapsulate consciousness more than just “an observer” (or worst leading to absurdity like the quantum suicide experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortal... )

There could be a huge connection between time crystals and “consciousness” in ways we don’t understand. In that case “consciousness” would be related to quantum computation. Or likely going beyond that as we reformulate our understanding of physics.

Also, there are also so much about computation we need to advance our understanding in (like what does the Curry-Howard correspondence implies about our universe? And why is the current formulation makes it so difficult or almost impossible to prove p =? np ?).

There are so many work to be done in these two fields.

And we still don’t understand how meditation work and why practising mindfulness can help us to be more productive at work

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#542

Post by skohan »

denton-scratch wrote: post #526
skohan wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you define consciousness?

I wouldn't! I could have a go, but I'm not inclined to. OK, let's try this: consciousness is the canvas on which subjective experience is painted. But I'm afraid that's not much help, because it begs a definition of subjective experience, and because it side-steps the nature of the blank canvas.

Idk it seems to me like you’re reaching for something which may or may not exist - how do we know there even is such a canvas?

If you can’t even define what this elusive thing might be, how can you raise this as a serious argument against the idea that consciousness is a product of brain function?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#543

Post by mistermann »

hsn915 wrote: post #234
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…

Computation does not have anything essential to it that makes it different from other "atoms jumping around" other than it produces outputs that we find interesting. There's no reason to expect an adder circuit to be aware that it's adding numbers. There's no reason to expect an implementation of AlphaGo to know that it's playing Go. This should be extendable without limitation. There's no reason to expect that a cer…

While I agree with parts of this, there are others that I can't resist critiquing:

> Computation does not have anything essential to it that makes it different from other "atoms jumping around" other than it produces outputs that we find interesting.

--

> The only thing there is is our brains. You just think that since the brain is doing computations and the brain is conscious, therefore consciousness is a computation.

I think we have to be very careful when we are using consciousness itself to contemplate consciousness. In this case, what you are referring to is not the mind and consciousness themselves, but rather your ~conscious (subconscious + conscious) model of them.

It is certainly possible that "all there is is the brain", but this is not known - absence of evidence can be evidence of absence, but it is not proof of absence. You (or more precisely, your consciousness, and that of many other consciousnesses, which affect yours and your model of reality) think that what you say is true, but it is currently speculative, necessarily.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#544

Post by criddell »

whittingtonaaon wrote: post #175
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.

Consciousness can end temporarily, perhaps permanently. This in no way suggests that it’s an illusion. The claim that consciousness is an illusion has always seemed like nonsense to me; for, if consciousness is an illusion, who experiences that illusion? Answer: the conscious mind.

> Answer: the conscious mind.

It's a controversial idea, but depending on the state of the brain, there may be more than one consciousness.

Maybe "you" are actually a committee.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#545

Post by csee »

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…

  "To achieve a persistent mapping for a significant time you'd probably need an iron bar something like size of the observable universe"
But the observable universe exists. So why can't the observable universe appropriately substitute for the iron bar in his argument?

  "As for doubting the field of rocks can be conscious"
Just to be clear, you don't doubt that a sufficiently large field of rocks is conscious as long as it is performing the same computation as a brain?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#546

Post by kazinator »

hsn915 wrote: post #372
kazinator wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no reason to expect an adder circuit to be aware that it's adding numbers There is no reason to expect a neuron to be aware that it's propagating part of the evolution of an epiphany.

I suppose your argument is, consciousness on the system level does not require individual parts to be conscious. So let me expand a bit of why I used the adder circuit as an example. There's nothing about addition that can say "this is addition" in an objective sense. We are dealing with binary encoding of numbers. There's nearly an infinite number of ways to encode information. The design of any circuit deals with p…

"Anything" can be reinterpreted. If you strip audio from a movie, you can add dialogue or subtitles that change the story and plot. We can probably substitute the nouns and verbs around in a novel consistently to create another novel that still makes sense.

Most random reinterpretations of symbols will be gibberish.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#548

Post by ivalm »

jwalton wrote: post #538
ivalm wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can but it shifts the burden to the decoder. Since an iron bar over some time period has a finite number of states, there exists a decoder that maps state changes in the iron bar to your Fortnite gameplay. I think a more fair criticism is that you likely cannot choose the decoder without an oracle (ie the causal relationship would be hard to preserve). I think OPs claim is that consciousness, unlike Fortnite, doe…

> Since an iron bar over some time period has a finite number of states Citation needed.

He defined these states through spin flips and I assume we sample slower than decoherence. This is a semi classical system without complicated qm effects.

But even if we didn’t restrict ourselves

log(# of states)~entropy

and there is a maximum (and finite) amount of entropy you can have in a finite volume (actually it scales with surface area) before you get a black hole.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#549

Post by sudosysgen »

hoseja wrote: post #462
kertoip_1 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What if you replace all the neurons and the person is suddenly stuck with no short-term memory and aphasia? Clearly your replacement neurons are defective. At which point are they not? Is that point distinguishable from normal neurons?

What is this counterfactual? We're talking about replacing the neurons one by one, slowly. When would the loss of memory happen?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#550

Post by feet »

ddingus wrote: post #529
dahfizz wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the point. Simulated rain isn't real rain, it's a digital representation. So, the argument goes, that a simulated consciousness is not a real consciousness, but a digital approximation. It's as real as the fake rain. In other words, there is something inherently biological about consciousness. Simulating rain doesn't produce water, and simulating a brain doesn't produce consciousness.

This discussion lead me to an idea: When we simulate a brain, the brain is unreal, not running on the hardware at all. It's represented by something else running on the hardware. If we made brain like hardware of sufficient complexity so that it could differentiate "itself" from everything else, that closed loop may invoke consciousness. It would be running on the hardware directly. This, to me, is the one thing cons…

>When we simulate a brain, the brain is unreal, not running on the hardware at all. It's represented by something else running on the hardware.

I think this is an important thing to consider. A simulated brain does not interact with the rest of the world in the same way that a non simulated brain does. In order to have that we would need to ensure that the simulation has all the right inputs and output. Similar to simulated rain, if the simulation would somehow have the same inputs and outputs and normal weather it could integrate with the rest of the system (earth's weather patterns)

Its really about partitioning and mode of information transfer

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