Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

You just saw a first-hand account personal experience as evidence, in text, from me, yet here you are explicitly denying that fact. Nothing short of literal personal experience is going to convince you of something everyone knew for thousands of years, because you make no room in your head to unpack the thought. It's like there's a hidden filter in your mind that automatically associates spirits with nonsense and it never reaches your consciousness.

>No.. not everyone, including you, before this comment.

It's interesting how you deny that classical equations really hold true yet you will comment on what I actually believe.

>You asked for experiments that do not produce the same results, and I gave you several examples.

What I really meant was experiments that do not follow the laws we have so far discovered about nature. In the classical realm, that means experiments that do not produce the same results. In the quantum world, it means a histogram that is not in line with the expected probability (assuming n is large enough). Nobody had mentioned quantum randomness at that point so there was no need to mention it. And if you can run an experiment that produces an unexpected histogram in some quantum field, yes, you will get a Nobel prize. I think that I could have worded it better to include quantum effects, but it still was clear in my opinion that I was talking about the rules we have discovered so far not changing, as I said at the end "what did you observe that you felt was not bounded by some static law of nature?" It is clear in this question that I am talking about the laws being static, not that every individual particle's movement can be predicted absolutely, even though that is essentially true in the classical world, which was what I was referring to in when I said experiments produce the same results.

>it's not true that every macro interaction has no phenomenon that relies on quantum mechanics

Ok. But there is no classical effect where quantum randomness is observed.

>That's your assumption not mine. If I were you, I'd think about why I made it.

I made that assumption because you called science a religion (which I still disagree about). Most people that call science a religion do not believe in science at all. For example there are a lot of people that do not believe in germ theory or believe that the earth is flat. These are generally the people that called science a religion. Being that you didn't make your point very clearly, that is what it sounded like you were saying, given the context.

>In other words, you are upset when I pointed out that science itself relies on unprovable assumptions

I just didn't understand the point you are making. In fact, I am still unclear on whether you believe that the laws of physics are static or not. It seems your main point now is that you cannot definitely determine future events because of quantum randomness. But that all future events can be definitely determined is not something science relies upon. "The belief that all things obey laws" is not something that science relies upon, given "law" is defined as an algorithm whose inputs are any material conditions and outputs are exact location of that material at some given time step. This is not what was meant by "Everything is governed by laws, when we uncover it, we can replicate it." We are not talking about the movements of individual particles here.

>Sure, in a colloquial sense, we can understand them [...] but accepting it is an implicit rejection of the comment I replied to that everything follows laws

But that was said in a colloquial sense. We can use the probability distributions we find in nature to build things. And when our histogram looks more like a straight line than a curve we can safely rely on it. Also, I don't know were you got your definition of the word "law" but "the second law of thermodynamics," for example, is a probability, and we call that a law. Technically I could leave a cup of hot water out in a cold room and it would get even hotter, it just isn't statistically probable. And we call that observed probability the second law of thermodynamics. If someone said "I will use the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow to inform my decision of buying sunscreen" would you tell him that he should really say "as far as we know, many things, including the sun, seem to follow predictable patterns at sufficiently high levels of complexity leading me to buy sunscreen?"

>[some scientists now claim] that while the universe is not fully predictable, its macro phenomena can be described with certainty.

Please cite one physics journal where this claim is made. No physicist will say that quantum randomness cannot possibly have an effect on the macro scale. The claim is that it is extremely unlikely to do so, just like it is extremely unlikely that my hot cup of water will get hotter in a cold room.

>The only claim here that does not rely in some unseen reality is the first, which, again, is a major departure from what science was.

Ok, and? Your claim was that it was axiomatic. If scientists have departed from this idea, it was not axiomatic or religious. Scientists also parted from Newtonian gravity. What point are you making here.

>> Additionally, what claim do you think is only being held together by the idea that the rules of physics are constant? >I'm not sure, but either way, this question is not on me to answer "science itself relies on unprovable assumptions" "science is ultimately a religious enterprise expressing our belief in a constant, unseen, unchanging reality"

>brains might be using some unknown laws of physics, given that neurons do indeed operate at the molecular/atomic level (individual enzymes and neurotransmitters... who knows).

This is completely false. The brain does not operate at the atomic level. It actually operates at a level above the atomic level. It is a bit higher than that of modern day computer processors, which have a gate size of about 45 nm. It is also clear that it is the neurons that cause the brains activity, and conceptually neurons have no reliance on any atomic effects at all. (Similar to how logic gates have no reliance on atomic effects, and can be carried out by hand, just very slowly).

>You have no possible way of knowing whether they will or won't

What point are you making here? The world could end do to physics expiring right after finish reading my comment. That is true but a useless statement. Nobody disagrees with this point they just don't preface all their statements like "in event that the laws of physics don't drastically change tomorrow, do you want to get something to eat?"

>The belief that physics won't change is a prime example of a religious belief in science

Science doesn't say that physics won't change. Science doesn't say anything. All science does is give us observations. It's not like science pops out of a microscope after you do an experiment and says "now you have discovered my next lesson, right that down in the textbook of science." You cannot definitely accept anything as true the way you describe. You cannot even definitely accept that what you see is real. For example the quantum randomness that you see might not be real. You can't actually make a single positive statement beyond the rules of thought (which are axiomatic, or religious as you would say).

>It's telling that this is a common aspect of divinity in the monotheistic religions that birthed science.

What about the Romans' complete lack of scientific advancement? What about Greek science and Babylonian mathematics? The Scientific revolution was started by Christian Universities beginning to use Greek works (for example that of Aristotle and Eudoxus).

>you made a few assumptions based on my framing of the commenter's belief system

Yes, but you could have made your point much more clear.

>I have noticed that many science-minded people get upset when you point out that science also comes with a set of beliefs that are tacitly accepted as true without any proof

Are you referring to ZFC? Or the three rules of thought? Or Occam's Razor?

>wild accusations of not believing in science [...] I believe in science -- a lot

There is no such thing as believing in science

>I do believe the universe follows laws

That is a belief. That makes you "religious" in your terms. Yet you said we should "take an irreligious look at things." An irreligious look at things, under your definition, would be to make zero positive statements.

> That’s fair, we can’t even prove humans aren’t like you say - although the brain is vastly more complex than a neural network analogy lets on. I suppose once these models become sophisticated enough we’ll have to treat them as conscious until it can be proven one way or another.

I suspect that a lot of the complexity is legacy code and/or incidental to the implementation. Cells have to do a lot of things just to continue living. Likewise, a lot of what the brain does is just control the very complex biochemical reactor that it lives in. ie: whales have big brains relative to humans (though they are a much smaller % of their body).

Err yes I did bring it up and it was a serious claim. I'm not sure what your problem with it is tbh.

It is not a phenomenon; it's simply one way to model reality - and arguably the simplest one because it has no woo like "observers" and "collapse".