Consciousness is worth thinking about • Hacker News Board

Re: Consciousness is worth thinking about

#61

Post by mistercow » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 12:54 AM UTC

vixen99 wrote: post #36

mistercow wrote: post #17

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."

I'd tear up the memo. Ignore, demolish or be persuaded by a conclusion by all means but don't define who may or may not contribute it on the basis of a fitness-to-participate filter.

I didn't say anything about prohibition. I said I want to send a memo requesting that people not do that. It's for their own dignity as much as anything. Please don't try to make this a "freedom of speech" thing. It's not.

But it's silly to try to generalize to philosophy from science and math that you have only a superficial grasp of. It can be a good way to look deep to people who are similarly ignorant (see Deepak Chopra), I suppose, but it's not a good way to find the truth.

Re: Consciousness is worth thinking about

#62

Post by algopats » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 1:02 AM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #21

guard-of-terra wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can try to figure out how to create consciousness in something that didn't have it or remove consciousness from some living being, but we can't prove that we have a success before we understand what consciousness is. By the way, if we were find why consciousness has evolutionary advantage we'll have a subset of what consciousness is. A set of traits for which we can test.

> 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…

elephant have been seeing their reflection when drinking water in lakes/ponds for millenia. Their brains evolved to identify with those patterns. Mirror test just proves if any species evolved enough to identify with that "pattern".

humans are just animals. nothing special. their consciousness is no different than say a crows or fox(cunning) consciousness. I would say one thing though....human brain is probably one of fluidest/flexible/organs ever created by nature. Take two humans...put one human in jail from birth (dont even teach language), and put other human in silicon-valley from birth, send him to stanford. Now, compare the "consciousness" of these two. Or even better, put the former human in jungle with monkeys from birth (dont teach him anything). I am sure there is lot of existing R&D/scientific articles on this.

Re: Consciousness is worth thinking about

#63

Post by jervisfm » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 1:10 AM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #49

marknadal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Chalmers is an expert, and you sir are not. Keep it classy.

David Chalmers is most certainly not an expert on quantum mechanics (and Chalmers doesn't seem to be someone the author is relying on in his points about QM). Neither am I, but I would make a strong bet that I have a better understanding of it than the author of this article. For one thing, he seems (like many laymen) to fundamentally misunderstand what an "observer" is in the Copenhagen interpretation. An observer d…

> 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.

By MWI, I am assuming you mean the Many Worlds Interpretation. I am curious: Can you describe what are the other motivations there are for this theory beyond resolving Schrödinger's cat paradox ?

Re: Consciousness is worth thinking about

#64

Post by algopats » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 1:24 AM UTC

shuaib wrote: post #44

I regularly have a discussion with friends on "consciousness". And a question that regularly comes under discussion is following: 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 everythin…

when you look at consciousness very thoroughly, you will realize (as did by buddha, and several advanced advaita masters) that there is no "you" "me" "my conciousness" etc.etc. "You" are "everything" == meaning its all in your head. "You" are just a particular manifestation of nature will certain variables/parameters/context/scope. If/When all those ingredients are replicated ...it will be you. The physical body is just a host. "You" are "compute context" operating inside the host. You call it "consciousness" or "my consciousness". You can refer to advanced buddhist or advaita masters, who realized this in nirvana.

Nature is doing its thing. "You" are just one particular manifestation of it, doing its thing (aka "living life"). To end "self" suffering (the core teaching of buddhism) you need to see this, realize this - you are guranteed to see it, as you "it" yourself. And buddha has a program for you. As does several other masters/"paths".

Re: Consciousness is worth thinking about

#65

Post by eksith » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 1:25 AM UTC

gizmo wrote: post #19

omarchowdhury wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is sophomoric, I'd pick it apart, but I don't see the point. Your comment really isn't up to HN quality standards.

A lot of people check the comments before reading an article. My comment is intended as some sort of public service announcement: don't bother reading the article. I think there's value in that. Of course, if I posted a blog post with the same contents and titled it "Consciousness is worth thinking about: a rebuttal" it would certainly deserve to get flagged.

  "My comment is intended as some sort of public service announcement: don't bother reading the article."

Isn't this by and large antithetical to the pursuit of knowledge? It's not quackery, it's not sophomoric, it's an inquisitive exploration of an idea.

Also, please see: http://duncancarroll.tumblr.com/post/57994245946/no-really-c...

Re: Consciousness is worth thinking about

#66

Post by mistercow » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 2:04 AM UTC

jervisfm wrote: post #63

mistercow wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Chalmers is most certainly not an expert on quantum mechanics (and Chalmers doesn't seem to be someone the author is relying on in his points about QM). Neither am I, but I would make a strong bet that I have a better understanding of it than the author of this article. For one thing, he seems (like many laymen) to fundamentally misunderstand what an "observer" is in the Copenhagen interpretation. An observer d…

> 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. By MWI, I am assuming you mean the Many Worlds Interpretation. I am curious: Can you describe what are the other motivations there are for this theory beyond resolving Schrödinger's cat paradox ?

Sure. To start off, I'd like to point out that Schrödinger's cat really isn't a problem for the Copenhagen interpretation. The hypothetical device is "observing" the system during the entire experiment, so the cat is never in a superposition between dead and alive.

At least, I can tell you some of its other advantages.

First of all, wavefunction collapse is non-local. That is, if you take the wavefunction as being physically real in some sense, then collapse is an event which propagates faster than the speed of light. Because this cannot be used to actually send information faster than light, it doesn't violate causality. But it still has a smell to it. MWI does not have this problem.

Another advantage of MWI is that it is deterministic. Once again, there's no rule that says that physics has to be deterministic. But when you're going along, finding one deterministic law after another, and then all of a sudden it seems that things are non-deterministic after all, it should give you pause.

There are other problems MWI solves which I don't understand as well, most dealing with problems with wavefunction collapse. In short, collapse has a lot of properties which are highly suspicious because you just don't see them elsewhere in physics.

It's also arguably a simpler interpretation, in which case Occam's razor applies. Unfortunately, we don't yet have good ways of estimating the algorithmic complexity of arbitrary hypotheses, so whether this is actually the case is a matter of debate.

Re: Consciousness is worth thinking about

#67

Post by Tichy » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 3:20 AM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #56

Tichy wrote: post #24

Consciousness is just an illusion. It is not a useful concept either. It won't help you to program robots, for example. I was very surprised to learn that according to Less Wrong, the concept of "Zombies" is accepted by a lot of researchers of consciousness: http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/ A zombie here is defined as a person that is exactly like a conscious person, down to every atom, but is not consciou…

The statement "consciousness is an illusion" has always struck me as a contradiction, since the nature of illusion is that there's something perceiving it.

You don't need consciousness to perceive something. It's just electrons interacting with atoms.

Re: Consciousness is worth thinking about

#68

Post by Tichy » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 3:24 AM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #55

Tichy wrote: post #24

Consciousness is just an illusion. It is not a useful concept either. It won't help you to program robots, for example. I was very surprised to learn that according to Less Wrong, the concept of "Zombies" is accepted by a lot of researchers of consciousness: http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/ A zombie here is defined as a person that is exactly like a conscious person, down to every atom, but is not consciou…

The problem I have with saying "consciousness is an illusion" is sort of similar to saying "God was the first cause". It pushes the question one layer away, because then the next obvious question is "an illusion to what, exactly?" How do you produce the illusion of qualia to something that does not experience qualia?

It rather seems to me talking about "qualia" is pushing the question one step away, or creating a circular argument.

If I attach a light sensor to my Arduino and then upload code to the arduino that says "if sensor active, flash light", I'd say the arduino has a "qualia" of light. Perceiving light flips some bit in the arduino. That's all there is to it.

Re: Consciousness is worth thinking about

#69

Post by Tichy » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 3:25 AM UTC

dgallagher wrote: post #47

Tichy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

I don't think the question is useless, but rather very difficult to answer. We simply don't know enough yet to answer it, but might someday. 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 cons…

The interesting question in my opinion is, why do we find something interesting. For example if we hope to find alien life, what do we hope to find? That is the real question, not some arbitrary definition of life.

Re: Consciousness is worth thinking about

#70

Post by Tichy » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 3:36 AM UTC

shuaib wrote: post #44

I regularly have a discussion with friends on "consciousness". And a question that regularly comes under discussion is following: 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 everythin…

Thinking about teleportation I eventually realized that if it ever works, it will probably work by copying a person and destroying the old copy. I think Michael Crichton described it in the same way in "Timeline".