281–290 of 310 posts
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> That hinges on the fact that the brain, or human-like body, is related to the existence of consciousness. That's what the evidence indicates. Anything else is mystical woo-woo that can be disregarded.
As long as you disregard evidence that does not conform with your worldview, all evidence you see support whatever you believe.
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lol. no. As a thought experiment, I am going to challenge you to define what being conscious is. Go ahead, try it.
Nobody knows the exact definition of consciousness. It's a made up word with a vague definition. The catch is the vagueness of the definition is also made up so it's all bullshit anyway. Either way when we communicate in English we have a vague feeling of what consciousness actually is. Most humans, save the most pedantic ass hole, is still able to communicate about consciousness based off of this vague and fuzzy fee…
It's not about being an ahole. I agree with you that communication is hard and imprecise but that should not stop us from trying to be more precise in the right context.
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Nobody knows the exact definition of consciousness. It's a made up word with a vague definition. The catch is the vagueness of the definition is also made up so it's all bullshit anyway. Either way when we communicate in English we have a vague feeling of what consciousness actually is. Most humans, save the most pedantic ass hole, is still able to communicate about consciousness based off of this vague and fuzzy fee…
So your argument is that consciousness is hard to define but Google may have something that resembles a conscious machine? It's not about being an ahole. I agree with you that communication is hard and imprecise but that should not stop us from trying to be more precise in the right context.
"Indeed, the assumption that consciousness will just come along for the ride as AI gets smarter echoes a kind of human exceptionalism that we’d do well to see the back of. We think we’re intelligent, and we know we’re conscious, so we assume the two go together." Isn't this assumption actually arguing AGAINST human exceptionalism? I feel like there are only two options to what consciousness can be explained by (the i…
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One definition or property of consciousness I find interesting is that it encompasses “what it is like to be ”. If there is something that it is like to be , it is conscious. Intelligence and awareness are separate from consciousness in this framing. And there is arguably a point where we can speculate that extremely simplistic organisms could not be conscious, given the lack of sense organs that seems to predicate e…
> One definition or property of consciousness I find interesting is that it encompasses “what it is like to be ”. If there is something that it is like to be , it is conscious. I think there are problems with this. Take something like the roundworm, with 300 neurons. It has senses, and I assume a base level consciousness to process those senses. It would be something to be like a roundworm. On the other hand, a round…
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461
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> One definition or property of consciousness I find interesting is that it encompasses “what it is like to be ”. If there is something that it is like to be , it is conscious. I think there are problems with this. Take something like the roundworm, with 300 neurons. It has senses, and I assume a base level consciousness to process those senses. It would be something to be like a roundworm. On the other hand, a round…
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished betwe…
Thanks for sharing!
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I am baffled when smart people say something like this. Without consciousness, without a stake in the game, the behavior is pure statistics. Statistics is limited by probabilities and logical gates. Nothing else. Consciousness is about being aware which means insights about context and harm. People are limited in ways that a statistical engine is not and that makes all the difference in the world.
You are mistaking consciousness with free will.
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You are mistaking consciousness with free will.
All of these terms are vague. You are possibly mistaking free will with being an agent that has a (possibly deterministic) method of updating priors in response to new (unknown to the agent, and possibly deterministic) input.
I do not believe that I am confusing free will and consciousness. See my comment above. Determinism versus free will is independent of knowledge available. Consider a paralyzed person incapable of any action. That person if the senses are all working still has awareness and context. A statistical engine only appears to. A LLM model is basing all actions on a complex matrices of thresholds. It is surprising and amazing how well that works. Given stimulus that takes advantage of those minute differences in thresholds, a wrong response will be returned. Human are not fooled in this way. Minute differences are typically missed or even skipped. Human beings can be fooled by optical illusions and by contradicting context (a statement like pick the "red" circle written in green ink and the person mistakenly picks the "green" circle. LLM models do not make these types of mistakes.
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I am baffled when smart people say something like this. Without consciousness, without a stake in the game, the behavior is pure statistics. Statistics is limited by probabilities and logical gates. Nothing else. Consciousness is about being aware which means insights about context and harm. People are limited in ways that a statistical engine is not and that makes all the difference in the world.
Are you sure? That's it? I seriously doubt it. Your claim too heavily relies on a presupposition of what is to be shown. Somewhere between the four fundamental forces and us is zillions of light years of unexplored blue sky. Please meet the rest of us there
> We think we’re intelligent, know we’re conscious, and so assume the two go together. Excuse me, I know _I_ am conscious. There is literally nothing you can do to proof that there's anything outside of what I am conscious of. The world could be a very stable illusion, a dream, a simulation and it would all be the same. I don't understand why people think that it matters whether AI is conscious or not. We can't even…
I am baffled when smart people say something like this. Without consciousness, without a stake in the game, the behavior is pure statistics. Statistics is limited by probabilities and logical gates. Nothing else. Consciousness is about being aware which means insights about context and harm. People are limited in ways that a statistical engine is not and that makes all the difference in the world.
> What I am trying to say is, it doesn't matter if the subject is actually conscious. All that matter is we (I), feel/think that it is conscious, or deserving of care and respect.
My point was that it does matter if the subject is actually conscious. Human beings are easily fooled and it does matter if people mistakenly think it is conscious when it is not.