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I'm scared about biological computing

kuber.studio

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Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#51

Post by azan_ »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #44
subscribed wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your brain is a network. How does your entangled fatty tissue achieved consciousness? I think that until we can answer this question in the authoritative way ruling out non-brain based consciousness concept is not particularly well thought thought - after all plants exhibit communication and response mechanisms that are similar to those in animals - without brain. So what's your theory of consciousness and how does i…

>How does your entangled fatty tissue achieved consciousness? It doesn't. Humans aren't conscious. Nor are any other organisms. They don't have souls either, but that goes without saying since it's just an archaic synonym. Mostly this occurs because humans have painted themselves into corners morally-speaking, and they need justification to eat bacon or grow their population. And apparently "because we can and we wan…

Isn't consciousness phenomenon that's literally derived from human experience? How can you have any definition of consciousness that says humans do not possess it, it's contradictory.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#52

Post by amanaplanacanal »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #44
subscribed wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your brain is a network. How does your entangled fatty tissue achieved consciousness? I think that until we can answer this question in the authoritative way ruling out non-brain based consciousness concept is not particularly well thought thought - after all plants exhibit communication and response mechanisms that are similar to those in animals - without brain. So what's your theory of consciousness and how does i…

>How does your entangled fatty tissue achieved consciousness? It doesn't. Humans aren't conscious. Nor are any other organisms. They don't have souls either, but that goes without saying since it's just an archaic synonym. Mostly this occurs because humans have painted themselves into corners morally-speaking, and they need justification to eat bacon or grow their population. And apparently "because we can and we wan…

You appear to have a rather idiosyncratic definition of consciousness.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#53

Post by kuboble »

yuck39 wrote: post #19
kuboble wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ai running on silicon can be conscious - does it imply that the same calculation done by a human with pen and paper is also conscious?

I think this comes from our rather nebulous definition of "consciousness". We have this natural tendancy to impose our feelings of self on the definition of consciousness. Its hard to accept that all of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours could be calculated by a human with pen and paper (with enough humans and developments in neurobiological research). I believe we will have to reckon with these loose definitions…

I don't find it hard to accept, but it's rather fascinating to think.

The way I think of it is along this way:

Despite the fact that our brains consist of bilions of neurons we think of ourselves as a unit enclosed in a single skull. But studies on people who have two sides of brain separated suggest that there can exist two separate conscious entities in one body.

If we have removed the physical limitations of support systems of our brain - I think it is possible you could split the brain in smaller and smaller chunks of less and less conscious entities until you reach single neurons which almost certainly do not have consciousness.

"The_Invincible" from Stanisław Lem is also a nice novel about the similar concept.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#54

Post by tehjoker »

mrweasel wrote: post #50

In the same line of thinking: I'm a little concerned that humans are, to some extend, just LLMs in a meat suit.

For what it's worth, this happens every time there is a new technological innovation. Are human brains hydraulic systems? Are humans just a computer? Are they an LLM?

These technologies give some insight, but the answer is always not really. It would be good if we studied actual human brains in some detail if we want to know these answers.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#55

Post by AntiDyatlov »

Yeah, we're totally fucked, there is no scientific theory that can tell you what is and isn't conscious. For all we know, my laptop, not running any LLM is conscious and always has been. Or my chair. Or a proton. This consciousness thing is a nasty problem for the scientific worldview.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#58

Post by hattmall »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #44
subscribed wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your brain is a network. How does your entangled fatty tissue achieved consciousness? I think that until we can answer this question in the authoritative way ruling out non-brain based consciousness concept is not particularly well thought thought - after all plants exhibit communication and response mechanisms that are similar to those in animals - without brain. So what's your theory of consciousness and how does i…

>How does your entangled fatty tissue achieved consciousness? It doesn't. Humans aren't conscious. Nor are any other organisms. They don't have souls either, but that goes without saying since it's just an archaic synonym. Mostly this occurs because humans have painted themselves into corners morally-speaking, and they need justification to eat bacon or grow their population. And apparently "because we can and we wan…

Interestings thoughts for an non-conscious being such as yourself.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#59

Post by ux266478 »

lukasb wrote: post #3

Anyone who believes AI running on silicon could in principle be conscious has to believe that biological computers are conscious, right? Why aren't those people voicing more concerns?

How much commentary do you read on biocomputers? There are a lot less people talking about biocomputers than there are talking about AI in general. Remarks on the matter across the board are almost exclusively concerns and skeevishness, proportionally it's not even close.

So then, is it a question of volume? Ask yourself, within the last 2 years, have you thought about LLMs or biocomputers more? Probably the former, right? LLMs are ubiquitous within day-to-day life and massively marketed to the public and biocomputers are esoteric lab experiments that most people come across in a once-in-a-blue-moon news article. We talk and think about things that we are adjacent to, those form our preoccupations. Why aren't people who speak up about the Israel/Palestine dynamic speaking up more about West Papua? Or the mid-19th century geopolitical relationship between Cambodia and Viet Nam? Epistemological asymmetry.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#60

Post by slibhb »

I read an interesting book about consciousness recently: The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms.

Solms argues, I think convincingly, that consciousness fundamentally has to do with emotions and not cognition. Consciousness is not produced by the cortex but rather by the brainstem, where signals from all over the body converge (e.g. pain, hunger, itchiness, etc).

If that argument is true then a petri-dish of neurons is unlikely to be conscious, even it performs some analogue of visual processing.

The book makes other arguments that I found less convincing. For example that consciousness is "felt homeostasis" and that a fairly simple system (somewhat more complex than a thermometer) will be conscious, albeit minimally.

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