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Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

nature.com

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Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#11

Post by PartiallyTyped »

dlkf wrote: post #6
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #2

> Christof Koch wagered David Chalmers 25 years ago that researchers would learn how the brain achieves consciousness by now. But the quest continues. Ehhhh the title is a click bait imho.

Why is the title clickbait? What were you expecting - that the philosopher had proposed a model of consciousness that got experimental confirmation?

My immediate thought upon reading the title was, “there’s no way they have proven free will to be a thing”.

And follow up thoughts were along the lines of “did we uncover some fundamental truth of the brain?”.

I got flagged and cant respond, yet again.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#12

Post by anotheryou »

i’m so lost work these magical or straight away missing definitions of consciousness .

a dog is conscious right? what would be a minimal test for consciousness?

i’m annoyed that something has to be super human or else „it’s just statistics“. there have to be minimal definitions of reasoning, feelings, self reflection etc.

will we have the tiring chinese room discussion again where for some the emulation does not count because something does „not really“ do something?

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#13

Post by bowsamic »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #11
dlkf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the title clickbait? What were you expecting - that the philosopher had proposed a model of consciousness that got experimental confirmation?

My immediate thought upon reading the title was, “there’s no way they have proven free will to be a thing”. And follow up thoughts were along the lines of “did we uncover some fundamental truth of the brain?”. I got flagged and cant respond, yet again.

What does free will have to do with this?

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#14

Post by civilized »

Consciousness is not a well-scoped object of scientific investigation. It doesn't have a definition or characterization based on observable things or behavior.

If I were a natural scientist, I wouldn't take a bet that I can scientifically explain a phenomenon which I can't even describe in terms of observable things.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#15

Post by olddustytrail »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #10

How droll, isn't this the equivalent of trying to figure out how an operating system works by trying to look at activity on an encrypted SSD? And how exactly is this a win for philosophers? I'm not aware of any philosopher having made meaningful strides within the subject either. I'm sure once someone figures out how consciousness works it'll be irrefutable while seeming incredibly obvious in hindsight. Which, honest…

Nobody said it was a win for philosophers. It says it's a win for a philosopher (singular), and it is because he won the bet and therefore won a case of wine.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#17

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

dlkf wrote: post #6
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #2

> Christof Koch wagered David Chalmers 25 years ago that researchers would learn how the brain achieves consciousness by now. But the quest continues. Ehhhh the title is a click bait imho.

Why is the title clickbait? What were you expecting - that the philosopher had proposed a model of consciousness that got experimental confirmation?

Honestly, yes. Or at least some semblance of progress in the field.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#18

Post by shusaku »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #2

> Christof Koch wagered David Chalmers 25 years ago that researchers would learn how the brain achieves consciousness by now. But the quest continues. Ehhhh the title is a click bait imho.

You don’t get to complain about click bait while quoting part of the actual title. It’s not their fault HackerNews artificially limits title lengths; the subtitle would’ve been visible when shared on sites whose clicks actually matter like Twitter or Facebook

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#19

Post by pessimizer »

300bps wrote: post #3

We still have no idea what mechanism causes consciousness. I bet in 25 years we'll be no closer to understanding it than we are today. I think this is a good lesson for those watching LLMs and thinking we're on the cusp of imminent AGI.

> We still have no idea what mechanism causes consciousness.

We also have no way to detect it or to prove that it exists, other than direct experience. Consciousness doesn't affect the world in any way that we know of. I think that the most reasonable position is that if we could somehow extract the consciousnesses of two different people and switch them with each other, that neither the subjects nor the observers would notice a difference.

Unless we're dualists (which is totally valid), there's little reason to think that intelligence and consciousness (depending on how it's being defined) have much of a relationship at all.

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