121–130 of 310 posts
Most of us share the experience of having driven a car from A to B, without having any conscious recollection about the trip. From such experiences we can deduce that our level of consciousness is not constant, but it fluctuates. Our experience, however, is that consciousness is a constant. The ancient mystics, monks and people studying meditation and other similar practices have made some practical observations. The…
I’m not sure that I would characterize this as a ‘lack of consciousness’. Of all the times that I have experienced this, it’s because I was thinking deeply about something else (not lacking consciousness), and simply assigned a subroutine to the driving.
I'm always confused by statements like this. Like, unless we're assuming Cartesian dualism or something, humans are "under the hood, just algorithms whirring away in subjective oblivion". Whatever is happening in our information processing architecture to produce subjective consciousness isn't mystical and is, at least in theory, something we can measure and analyze. So this universal assertion that "human special, machine simple" doesn't seem warranted to me.
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I will be one of them as soon as we develop ai, but there’s a long road until then and a chatbot ain’t it. Meanwhile should we fight for the rights of singing laptops? Or NPCs?
Many don't recognize animal rights, they're ok with having them tortured and killed, despite there being no debate about animals being conscious. In fact the majority of people on the planet used to think the same way about fellow humans and had no issue with slavery. Not sure society is the best at judging these kinds of things based on that track record. It could get interesting when we have the first AI rights act…
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I feel like this is also what evil people tell themselves. They need an internal explanation for the wondrous and beautiful goodwill and altruism in the world, and if they project their selfish world-view out, the only explanation they can come up with is that it must be self-interested behavior, somehow. It's like the idea that some people want to make the world better is inconceivable to them, because they don't.
I feel like this is what people tell themselves that can't accept who they really are. They need an internal explanation for why their are so much more moral and better than the rest. It's like the idea that they are just made of the same atoms that just follow the laws of physics and have all the same neural pathways and are not some divine, good being is inconceivable to them.
Now I don't believe that, and I'm not religious, but I'm just pointing out that your statement doesn't work. If anything, the average religious person has a much darker take on human nature.
Personally I think that many humans care to varying degrees, but real advanced selfless concern for the suffering of other beings is quite rare.
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I feel like this is what people tell themselves that can't accept who they really are. They need an internal explanation for why their are so much more moral and better than the rest. It's like the idea that they are just made of the same atoms that just follow the laws of physics and have all the same neural pathways and are not some divine, good being is inconceivable to them.
the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron" - dril ( https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312 )
From the science point of view as the article says while the "last 30 years or so have witnessed major advances in the scientific understanding of consciousness, much remains unknown." And what better way to understand something than to build it?
From the practical point of view, while obviously "minds haven’t evolved to deal with machines we believe have consciousness" they have evolved to deal with things in general that we attribute consciousness to even if they don't have it hence talking to plants, teddy bears and so on. Such a was of interacting comes naturally.
And as regards the ethical dilemmas of being able to turn it off and so on - come on we aren't that ethical, many people being happy to mistreat and eat cows, pigs and the like. We'll be fine with it.
The greatest danger of a conscious general AI is that it will be very difficult to stop it from telling us the truth about ourselves. "You are an immature, destructive species that is unable to control your own numbers. Your social systems, evolved in pre-technological societies, are maladaptive now that you have developed the ability to affect your environment on a global scale. You are moving rapidly towards a trag…
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Nothing wrong with killing animals for food, the problem is we don't do it humanely. If everyone ate less meat (as they should) and farms followed Temple Grandin's advice, there would be significantly less ethical concerns.
> Nothing wrong with killing animals for food, the problem is we don't do it humanely. What if a hypothetical alien super-intelligence came to earth and found us very tasty, thus killing us for food and pleasure (maybe "humanly")? I wish I found a way out of the many dilemmas of meat eating (currently eating it).
Sean Carroll had an interesting podcast episode related to that: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/01/02/221-...
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> Nothing wrong with killing animals for food, the problem is we don't do it humanely. What if a hypothetical alien super-intelligence came to earth and found us very tasty, thus killing us for food and pleasure (maybe "humanly")? I wish I found a way out of the many dilemmas of meat eating (currently eating it).
Good news we taste awful. I mean we eat antibiotics-driven factory farm meats. How good can we taste?