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Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

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Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#91

Post by maxerickson »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #76
imtringued wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't just relevant to other people. The question is also 'why does a human form a single consciousness?'. If consciousness emerges purely from information exchange in a complex system, then consciousness would be primarily driven by communication interactions between regions of the human brain and the rest of the body. This in turn means that there should be a way to merge or split consciousnesses. For example,…

If I were to run a single-threaded program on a dual core machine, would it run twice as fast? I'm not suggesting this is a strong analogy, perhaps, but I don't see why putting a high bandwidth link between two brains would necessarily do anything at all. (Actually -since human brains are very adaptable- maybe we would see something happen. But emergence is not something magical. It happens when parts that are made t…

Analogy doesn't really inform us about the unknown.

If we knew what consciousness is, we could make sweeping assertions about what is possible.

We don't know what consciousness is.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#92

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

anotheryou wrote: post #12

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 coun…

The whole debate over what is and isn't conscious is foolish, if you ask me. It's essentially a proxy for what does and does not deserve ethical consideration. In that regard our desire to exploit the universe around us without consideration will bias our reasoning considerably. The debate around ML models that you are referencing is illustrative of this.

The much harder ethical quandary is how we should operate in a universe where we are not specially privileged, and as a species I think we are generally unwilling to consider such a thing.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#93

Post by Kim_Bruning »

ttctciyf wrote: post #89
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit like the gods, in that respect. Maybe Consciousness doesn't actually exist.

You doubt that you have experiences?

You doubt the existence of thunder and lighting? But surely those prove the might of the great Jupiter!

All joking aside : Of course I'm not particularly married to the position that "Consciousness doesn't exist". But it seems a bit suss that it has been so ill defined for so long. Some days I really do wonder if maybe it belongs in the same pre-scientific category as Vis Vitalis or Luminiferous Ether.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#94

Post by Kim_Bruning »

maxerickson wrote: post #91
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to run a single-threaded program on a dual core machine, would it run twice as fast? I'm not suggesting this is a strong analogy, perhaps, but I don't see why putting a high bandwidth link between two brains would necessarily do anything at all. (Actually -since human brains are very adaptable- maybe we would see something happen. But emergence is not something magical. It happens when parts that are made t…

Analogy doesn't really inform us about the unknown. If we knew what consciousness is, we could make sweeping assertions about what is possible. We don't know what consciousness is.

I don't disagree!

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#95

Post by candiddevmike »

imtringued wrote: post #67
hnfong wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "hard" qualia question can potentially be answered by the emergence argument. The much more difficult part of "why do I have qualia" is not the qualia part, but why am "I" attached to this body's consciousness, as opposed to the billions of other candidates?

This isn't just relevant to other people. The question is also 'why does a human form a single consciousness?'. If consciousness emerges purely from information exchange in a complex system, then consciousness would be primarily driven by communication interactions between regions of the human brain and the rest of the body. This in turn means that there should be a way to merge or split consciousnesses. For example,…

Depending on how fringe your beliefs are, we may all be part of a shared consciousness (Jung's collective unconscious).

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#96

Post by willbudd »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #88
willbudd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You jest, but that has a good likelihood of becoming the watershed moment. The moment AI is bootstrapped to the point where it surpasses human ability to advance the AI SOTA, it's pretty much game over—from a Darwinian point of view at least. And I have a hard time seeing any reason why that would be a matter of "if" rather than "when".

> The moment AI is bootstrapped to the point where it surpasses human ability to advance the AI SOTA, it's pretty much game over—from a Darwinian point of view at least. How so? The vast majority of life on earth is far less intelligent than human beings by any objective measure, and yet it still thrives.

Yeah, that was sloppy phrasing on my part: I meant that in a top of the food chain / king of the jungle sort of way rather than any extinction events per se.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#97

Post by jnwatson »

imtringued wrote: post #67
hnfong wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "hard" qualia question can potentially be answered by the emergence argument. The much more difficult part of "why do I have qualia" is not the qualia part, but why am "I" attached to this body's consciousness, as opposed to the billions of other candidates?

This isn't just relevant to other people. The question is also 'why does a human form a single consciousness?'. If consciousness emerges purely from information exchange in a complex system, then consciousness would be primarily driven by communication interactions between regions of the human brain and the rest of the body. This in turn means that there should be a way to merge or split consciousnesses. For example,…

A related question is “why do conjoined twins have two consciousnesses?” Some twins have reported to be able to share feelings.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#98

Post by jnwatson »

pa7x1 wrote: post #7

I wouldn't be surprised if consciousness ~conscience~ is just an emergent phenomenon resulting from any sufficiently powerful cognitive system (either biological or artificial) with sufficient inputs of its environment and, crucially, of itself. So as to be able to develop a rich model of itself and its relationship with its environment, and that thing will resemble a whole lot what we call consciousness ~conscience~…

This is called “emergentism”.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#99

Post by patmorgan23 »

imtringued wrote: post #67
hnfong wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "hard" qualia question can potentially be answered by the emergence argument. The much more difficult part of "why do I have qualia" is not the qualia part, but why am "I" attached to this body's consciousness, as opposed to the billions of other candidates?

This isn't just relevant to other people. The question is also 'why does a human form a single consciousness?'. If consciousness emerges purely from information exchange in a complex system, then consciousness would be primarily driven by communication interactions between regions of the human brain and the rest of the body. This in turn means that there should be a way to merge or split consciousnesses. For example,…

You're probably right. We have a couple examples of this happening.

There's the interesting quarks that people with split brain hemispheres experience. https://youtu.be/wfYbgdo8e-8

And dissociative identity disorder where there arguably multiple consciousnesses inhabiting the same brain.

It is probably an evolutionary advantage that humans have a ( mostly) uniform singular consciousness.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#100

Post by willbudd »

pmarreck wrote: post #85
willbudd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You jest, but that has a good likelihood of becoming the watershed moment. The moment AI is bootstrapped to the point where it surpasses human ability to advance the AI SOTA, it's pretty much game over—from a Darwinian point of view at least. And I have a hard time seeing any reason why that would be a matter of "if" rather than "when".

It's going to be a will-free intelligence though, and it's confusing for people because we've never seen that before so I don't think we can make any assumptions. There's no Darwinian forces in effect among entities that have no will, as it were...

Will-free? Unless that's a play on my first name, I'm not sure I agree. I see no reason why AI would have any difficulty defining its own reward functions. Especially if it also has an abstract overarching reward function that's wide enough in scope. For example, "learn as much about the universe as you can" would allow a very long curiosity-driven bucket list of pursuits it could "long" for.
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