41–50 of 85 posts
It's certainly worth thinking about longer than the author has. I don't want to be mean, but the part about QM, in particular, was just infuriating. I wish we could send out a memo to the world that says "Please do not draw metaphysical conclusions from mathematics or science unless you are an expert on the field you are drawing conclusions from."
To put it kindly, I'd say this is sophomoric philosophy. The OP suggests that "a more simple and elegant resolution to this paradox is that there is simply one consciousness, and that it alone observes (possibly, decides) these quantum states.". This raises obvious the question: where does that consciousness come from? The author makes no attempt to address that problem. The answer he gives "the UNIVERSE is like ALL…
One thought I've had is that programmers (given our profession) tend to fetishize the idea that ultimately we will understand the brain well enough to recreate consciousness in machine and code. It's pretty exciting to believe that as a programmer; much like it was probably exciting to think that we were at the center of a Ptolemaic universe.
I'm okay with someone wanting to ask whether the world is really flat, even if he doesn't address what other shape it could be. I found this article to be a very interesting questioning about some assumptions we have regarding consciousness.
Suppose we are living in a time when medicine has advanced tons. In this time, a friend of yours gets into an accident, and gradually starts to lose different body functions/parts. Each time a body part stops working, it is replaced with an artificial one. There comes a time when everything physical about your friend is replaced, even his brain. Though during brain change (say brain is replaced with a chip), all his memories are shifted from his old brain to the replacement. When this physically totally new friend of yours wakes up after the memory transfer, he claims he is your friend, and can answer any question you throw at him, that would have been answered by your original friend.
Is this physically new friend actually your old friend? Or is he faking it having access to all the memories of your friend? Did a "consciousness transfer" occur as well? Or not?
Any take?
To put it kindly, I'd say this is sophomoric philosophy. The OP suggests that "a more simple and elegant resolution to this paradox is that there is simply one consciousness, and that it alone observes (possibly, decides) these quantum states.". This raises obvious the question: where does that consciousness come from? The author makes no attempt to address that problem. The answer he gives "the UNIVERSE is like ALL…
Hi, I am the OP. Thank you for taking the time to read my article and to write a response. > where does that consciousness come from? great question! Yes, I make no attempt to address that problem only because the main point of my article was to raise awareness that there is a possibility that consciousness doesn't come from the brain. The important question you bring up is extremely interesting in itself, and I real…
He has some fascinating theories on the machinery of (brain-originated) consciousness, embodiment and the primacy of emotion, and he tends to explain them in the context of his various clinical cases (eg lesions to certain brain areas such as the central gray will irrevocably destroy consciousness, while others can have much more subtle effects).
I think his concept of "core consciousness" seems close to what meditation practitioners are trying to explore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
After decades of biological research, we're still not sure what makes an organism alive, in the sense that the line between living organisms and inert biological material is not well-defined, but we know how living organisms reproduce and grow, and that's really what matters. It might be as simple as "it's alive while it's a functioning machine." A disassembled car is just parts and can't drive/be-alive, but assemble…
I've come to the conclusion that it is yet another useless question. Or perhaps "it's alive if it interests us". Is the great red spot on Jupiter alive? I don't know, but who cares if it is interesting enough to study? Imagine we finally manage to land on an alien planet, and all we find is robots "living" there. Would we go "ah, too bad, we didn't find life"?
As for alien life, I expect if there's anything out there, it's probably intelligent, redundant, and efficient. Who knows what form that could take? It might be robots, or computers, a mesh network, or something else entirely. Whatever form it takes, it'll be limited by the constraints of the universe (or multiverse, or whatever "reality" is).
A lot of people's ideas about aliens are molded from television and movies. Historically we've had humans playing those characters, severely limiting how "alien" they can be. While very inspirational and valuable, it has the negative of potentially pigeon-holing peoples minds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> By the way, if we were find why consciousness has evolutionary advantage we'll have a subset of what consciousness is. Not necessarily. There are plenty of fitness adaptations we can crudely quantify (group A had adaptation X and was more successful as a result) but can't explain (in a rigorous, falsifiable way). The reason is that nature (natural selection) is "smarter" than we are. Also, the Turing test -- the id…
Am I the only one who thinks mirror test is stupid? You won't realize your recorded voice is yours. You won't realize it's you on a CCTV footage. It's not granted. On the other hand, it's trivial to make robot pass the mirror test, indeed necessary in the environment where mirrors are common.
It's pretty reliable, and the scientists who measure it have a number of ways to be sure they're witnessing what they think. One way is to put a colored spot on an animal's forehead in advance of the test. If the animal looks in the mirror, sees the spot, and then reaches to his own forehead to remove it, we can be pretty sure he grasps that he's looking at a reflection of himself.
But as to the outcome supporting or not supporting some theory of consciousness in animals, that's a different story.
> On the other hand, it's trivial to make robot pass the mirror test, indeed necessary in the environment where mirrors are common.
That's certainly true, and it's a good argument for the limited significance of the mirror test in ideas about consciousness.
It's certainly worth thinking about longer than the author has. I don't want to be mean, but the part about QM, in particular, was just infuriating. I wish we could send out a memo to the world that says "Please do not draw metaphysical conclusions from mathematics or science unless you are an expert on the field you are drawing conclusions from."
David Chalmers is an expert, and you sir are not. Keep it classy.
For one thing, he seems (like many laymen) to fundamentally misunderstand what an "observer" is in the Copenhagen interpretation. An observer does not by any means imply consciousness. A computer program could take measurements of a quantum system and then delete that data before anyone looked at it, and it would have exactly the same effect as if a human took those measurements.
Moreover, he seems to think that the primary motivation for MWI is to solve the Schrödinger's cat paradox, and that this is its only advantage. This is, of course, completely wrong.
To put it kindly, I'd say this is sophomoric philosophy. The OP suggests that "a more simple and elegant resolution to this paradox is that there is simply one consciousness, and that it alone observes (possibly, decides) these quantum states.". This raises obvious the question: where does that consciousness come from? The author makes no attempt to address that problem. The answer he gives "the UNIVERSE is like ALL…
I've discussed this topic of consciousness with others and there is a common visceral reaction (like the one in this comment) that is common when challenging the presumed location of consciousness, especially from programmers, and I'm curious why. One thought I've had is that programmers (given our profession) tend to fetishize the idea that ultimately we will understand the brain well enough to recreate consciousnes…
Most of the "dumb" arguments about "where does it live" are actually "what is it like" questions, most of which are thoroughly disposed of in Dennett's Quining Qualia.[1]
[0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/no/how_an_algorithm_feels_from_insid...