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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#721

Post by simonh »

celeritascelery wrote: post #654
simonh wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on whether consciousness is a computational process. If it is then meat or metal really doesn’t matter. We know this because mathematicians have proved that any sufficiently capable computer can perform any computation. So the lead to gold analogy doesn’t hold. It would be as if scientists had proved that any element can be transformed into any other element. Well, if that was true, then yes it follows tha…

> It depends on whether consciousness is a computational process. Absolutely agree. But that is the assumption that I would liken to alchemists comparing lead and gold. We know almost nothing about the brain. We know almost nothing about consciousness. But yet some people assume that consciousness is computable just because we don't know anything else it could be (just as alchemists assumed gold and lead could be tra…

I’m not assuming anything or accepting anything on blind faith, and I don’t think I’ve given you any reason to think that I am.

If anyone says that they think it is either this or that, it’s reasonable to ask them to justify that belief. There’s no reason to resort to using language like assume, blind faith, etc.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#722

Post by sebringj »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #134
sebringj wrote: post #121

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 consci…

>> 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. There is no evidence for this. It does not seem reasonable to me at all. Internal dialog is not consciousness. Many of the people who discuss consciousness at length do not need or simply do not engage in any internal dialog at all. We will never 'build' consciousness. I…

Meaning rather, if atoms can produce consciousness, then why can't a computer system based on atoms produce consciousness? I don't see a reason why not. It may be beyond our capability but physics should permit it.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#723

Post by sebringj »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #676
epgui wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no evidence for this. It's a little unreasonable to expect a speculative statement about what might happen in the future to have evidence at the present time. > We will never 'build' consciousness. It is not possible. Consciousness comes from a source outside of our realm of experience as a gift. It does not come from the micro or small things (though it is entwined with them and everything), but from the…

You cannot have a measure of consciousness in the same way that you cannot have a measure of anger. You can only possibly see its effects, and maybe not even that. But you can experience it.

Cheap and harmless infrared coupled with ML imaging is being worked on by companies I know of that can deeply see into the brain with micron-level precision and without the need of expensive MRI or CAT Scan room-filling equipment (OpenWater and Neurable for example). This tech could eventually be turned into a phone app or similar cheap device that we could directly train our emotional state on. The app would see our various emotions and degrees of intensity as it happens. That is entirely different if we can both experience our emotions and also see them directly confirmed by an app in real time. This helps take the 3rd person observation problem of consciousness into 1st person. That still doesn't solve the problem of knowing an artificial consciousness is actually experiencing things but at least its a step closure to understanding it.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#724

Post by sebringj »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #677
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This implies that consciousness is some sort of “magic”, not obeying the laws of the physical universe as we know them . I’m not willing to completely discount this idea. However, it seems likely that both mammals and birds all have this magic. It’s pretty wide spread. Why assume that humans can never figure it how it works, and replicate it?

As far as most people are concerned, it may as well be magic. It certainly doesn’t lend itself to understanding in the general sense. We must explore wholeheartedly and with integrity to even begin at comprehending the possibilities of connecting with it. Even rocks and dead sticks have it. Some of us know how it works. I don’t claim to know, but I know more about it now than I did, let us say, some years ago. So it…

I think Tom Hanks was in a film where he believed a volleyball was a person at some point in his journey where things weren't going so well. He would talk to it and it talked back (in his mind). We knew it was a volleyball and not a person. We know everything is not a person. If we said everything was a person, then it kind of doesn't make sense at that point to use that word. We should just use the word "everything". We would have to have another name for person that meant a person. It's just easier to call it "person".

What I mean by consciousness is more like how some chatbots (fake it) and animals demonstrate it (like us and dogs etc). Person's in a brain-lock situation even have activity that can be sensed by machinery and produce cursor movements on a screen where they can answer questions so they can demonstrate consciousness. That's more what I mean. Maybe I need to call it...sentience?

So far, rocks and sticks can't do that, but if this text is also conscious as its some magnetic charges on some discs somewhere, then I may be offending it.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#725

Post by yellowapple »

Notwithstanding the problems pointed out with specific thought experiments, the author doesn't seem to realize that all things are computation. Every biological, chemical, and physical process is, at the end of the day, itself a product of the computation of various mathematical principles. Invoking XKCD as the author does, it's the classic "$X is just applied $Y" chain, with mathematics being the final $Y.

Given this, consciousness must be computation, because everything else is computation. The author rejects this not because his definition of computation is too broad (as he asserts to be the principal objection to the viewpoint he describes), but because it's too narrow.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#726

Post by zarmin »

russdill wrote: post #719
zarmin wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If we measured all the particles in the brain, would they be operating in a way not compatible with the currently known laws of physics? Their operation would be perfectly compatible with the known laws of physics. But their operation is _not_ thinking itself, it's what thinking looks like when observed across a dissociative boundary. If I am sad, and you look at my face and see tears, you would never think that the…

Okay, so if I use the laws of physics to simulate a human brain, it will behave exactly like a human brain in the real world. Will it also be conscious and experience sadness?

>Will it also be conscious and experience sadness?

Imagine you are programming an AI simulation. You could train a detector to associate a certain wavelength with a certain color. When shown a red light, the AI could say "that is red", because it correctly identified the wavelength. But it would never know what it feels like to see red, right? This is similar to how a blind person cannot know what it feels like to see red, but they can intellectually understand that it is an oscillation of 4.3*10^14 cycles per second.

A different example: you could train an AI to recognize 10,000 songs. It would listen to the frequencies and patterns, and make an identification.

In both of these cases, we have quantity as the input and output.

If after training, you asked the AI to identify the first song it was trained on, would the AI experience nostalgia? Would there be a way the AI "feels" about the song? We can probably both agree that the answer would be no. For the same reasons, the answer to your question is also no.

(edited for clarity)

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#727

Post by undersuit »

criddell wrote: post #570
simonh wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the first issue, that's the Boltzmann's Brain proposition, and well, yes. Given infinite monkeys, you'll get Shakespear. I don't see what that has to do with whether consciousness is computational or not. It certainly doesn't refute it. >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? No I don't, for the same reaso…

> Given infinite monkeys, you'll get Shakespear. That seems like an odd assertion. Just because you can produce and infinite number of something it doesn't mean that every variation will be produced. I can generate an infinite list of numbers that doesn't contain '3'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

>I can generate an infinite list of numbers that doesn't contain '3'.

But you can't generate an infinite random list of numbers that doesn't contain '3'. The complete works of Shakespeare are just another one of the infinite permutations of characters a monkey could type.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#728

Post by simonh »

meroes wrote: post #679
simonh wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. He thinks there's something special about biology, but doesn't seem to be able to explain what that might be and how this is different from dualism, so it's hard for me to take it seriously. To my mind both dualism and biological naturalism are both positing some special woo needed for consciousness without saying what that woo is, or what it's like, or how it works, or anything about it at all.

It may be woo, but how I understand his approach is a rejection of dualism and the Cartesian theater. To commit to physicalism but lean very hard onto what can be asked of it. One must do some kind of move to escape the Cartesian theater. There are those who say consciousness is too hard, and those who say we can take a stab at it. In the latter camp I think he’s more on the right track than anyone major figure I kno…

The Cartesian theatre is the view that there is some special place in the brain that ‘contains’ consciousness. Searle thinks there’s some special biological machinery in brains that causes consciousness.

Thats not quite the same thing, but if there is any distinction it’s a pretty darn fine one, and it certainly doesn’t exclude a Cartesian theatre interpretation.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#729

Post by GoblinSlayer »

denton-scratch wrote: post #700
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The animal world presents varying degree of consciousness from worms to humans. That's apparently evidence that consciousness is a spectrum.

How can the state of consciousness of a worm be evidence for anything, if you can't observe the worm's state of consciousness?

You can infer worm's state of consciousness by observing its behavior, like for humans.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#730

Post by i_like_apis »

denton-scratch wrote: post #698
i_like_apis wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just re-stating (1). I understood (1) fine and addressed it directly. Observation isn't required for Turing machines to exist. A computer is still a computer even if it has no user or doesn't compute anything deemed useful. i.e., Whether something is a computer or not doesn't depend on interpretation or observation. (Directly saying 1 is wrong)

Yes, I'm restating (1). That's why my remark was introduced with the phrase "The argument was [...]". In particular, I was trying to rationalise the dumb "iron bar" example as a justification for (1). I don't think you addressed anything; you just flatly denied (1), without offering any reasoning. In particular, you don't seem to have tried to understand the author's attempt to justify (1) using iron bars. For my par…

No. Some things are Turing machines and some are not. Human interaction and interpretation are not involved.

This applies to any model of computation. Cellular autonoma for instance. A mind is not required to interact with the system for computation to take place.

Take a living cell. No mind is in the loop when the cell computes the manufacture of organelles from stored data.

> Four odd socks could be considered a computer, by someone who was using them as a 4-bit adder.

No. A group of 4 socks is not a computational system. That's just MEMORY. Same with iron bars. It doesn't compute on it's own because it's not a full computer.

The fact that memory doesn't compute by itself isn't evidence that a mind needs to be involved for computation to take place. The argument is really stupid.

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