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Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

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Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#81

Post by ForHackernews »

Retra wrote: post #73
ForHackernews wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet measurably identical in all aspects > behavior is the activity that you measure, and you can measure brain activity. You've shifted your definition of "behavior" now. I thought we were talking about behaviors that impact survival and are acted on by natural selection, not minute differences in MRI scans. For purposes of the thought experiment, I certainly don't care if the p-zombie has a slightly different brai…

>I thought we were talking about behaviors that impact survival and are acted on by natural selection, not minute differences in MRI scans. I was talking about the stupidity of p-zombies. Either way, those 'minute' differences in MRI scans build up in such a way to determine the survival of the mind being scanned. >Do you believe [...] such a robot be necessarily a conscious entity? Yes, it would. Because in order to…

> Yes, it would. [...] that's what consciousness is: the ability to process information in a particular manner.

Then this is our fundamental disagreement. You believe consciousness is purely a question of information processing, and you're throwing your lot in with Skinner and the behaviorists.

I believe that you're neglecting the "the experience of what it's like to be a human being"[0] (or maybe you yourself are a p-zombie ;) and you don't feel that it's like anything to be you). There are many scientists who agree with you, and think that consciousness is an illusion or a red herring because we haven't been able to define it or figure out how to measure it, but that's different than sidestepping the question entirely by defining down consciousness until it's something we can measure (e.g. information processing). I posted this elsewhere, but I highly recommend reading Chalmers' essay "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness"[1] if you want to understand why many people consider this one of the most difficult and fundamental questions for humanity to attempt to answer.

[0] http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/ahyvarin/teaching/niseminar4/Nag...

[1] http://consc.net/papers/facing.html

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#82

Post by ForHackernews »

deciplex wrote: post #69
ForHackernews wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet measurably identical in all aspects > behavior is the activity that you measure, and you can measure brain activity. You've shifted your definition of "behavior" now. I thought we were talking about behaviors that impact survival and are acted on by natural selection, not minute differences in MRI scans. For purposes of the thought experiment, I certainly don't care if the p-zombie has a slightly different brai…

> Do you believe that it would be possible, in principle, to build a robot that looked and acted extremely similar to a human being? It could carry on conversations, make decisions, defend itself against antagonists, etc. in a similar manner to a human being? In your view, would such a robot be necessarily a conscious entity? I don't even know that other humans are conscious entities. At least not with the level of r…

Sure, absolutely. I agree that we could construct a battery of tests such that any entity passing should be given the benefit of the doubt and treated as though it were conscious: granted human (or AI) rights, allowed self-determination, etc.

> I don't even know that other humans are conscious entities

Exactly. Note that the claim Retra is making (to which I was responding) was very much stronger than this. He is arguing not just that we should generally treat beings that seem conscious (including other people) as if they are, but that they must by definition be conscious, and in fact that it is a self-contradictory logical impossibility to speak of a hypothetical intelligent-but-not-conscious creature.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#83

Post by Retra »

ForHackernews wrote: post #81
Retra wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I thought we were talking about behaviors that impact survival and are acted on by natural selection, not minute differences in MRI scans. I was talking about the stupidity of p-zombies. Either way, those 'minute' differences in MRI scans build up in such a way to determine the survival of the mind being scanned. >Do you believe [...] such a robot be necessarily a conscious entity? Yes, it would. Because in order to…

> Yes, it would. [...] that's what consciousness is: the ability to process information in a particular manner. Then this is our fundamental disagreement. You believe consciousness is purely a question of information processing, and you're throwing your lot in with Skinner and the behaviorists. I believe that you're neglecting the "the experience of what it's like to be a human being"[0] (or maybe you yourself are a…

>You believe consciousness is purely a question of information processing, and you're throwing your lot in with Skinner and the behaviorists.

No, that is not at all what is happening. That's not even on the same level of discourse.

>I believe that you're neglecting the "the experience of what it's like to be a human being"

That experience is the information processing. They are the same thing, just different words. Like "the thing you turn to open a door" and "doorknob" are the same thing. I'm not neglecting the experience of being human by talking about information processing. What is human is encoded by information that you experience by processing it.

>There are many scientists who agree with you, and think that consciousness is an illusion or a red herring because we haven't been able to define it or figure out how to measure it [...]

No, this is not agreement with me. This is not at all what I'm saying.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#84

Post by Retra »

foldr wrote: post #74
Retra wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identity isn't what we're measuring here, it's "humanness" or "consciousness" -- things that are behaviorally distinguishable. Up to an abstract categorical similarity . Thus they only need to be indistinguishable up to some feature of similarity that allows them to be classified in the same group. That's why, for example, we don't have to worry about "A is the same as B except that it is 2 meters to the left."

OP was saying that P-zombies are "the same" as us in virtue of being indistinguishable from us. I was just pointing out that this inference doesn't go through, since two non-identical things can be indistinguishable.

Ah, ok.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#85

Post by ForHackernews »

Retra wrote: post #83
ForHackernews wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, it would. [...] that's what consciousness is: the ability to process information in a particular manner. Then this is our fundamental disagreement. You believe consciousness is purely a question of information processing, and you're throwing your lot in with Skinner and the behaviorists. I believe that you're neglecting the "the experience of what it's like to be a human being"[0] (or maybe you yourself are a…

>You believe consciousness is purely a question of information processing, and you're throwing your lot in with Skinner and the behaviorists. No, that is not at all what is happening. That's not even on the same level of discourse. >I believe that you're neglecting the "the experience of what it's like to be a human being" That experience is the information processing. They are the same thing, just different words. L…

In that case, I'm really struggling to understand your position.

> What is human is encoded by information that you experience by processing it.

So you're saying that it's impossible to process information without experiencing it? That the act of processing and the act of experiencing are one and the same? Do you think that computers are conscious? What about a single neuron that integrates and respond to neural signals? What about a person taking Ambien who walks, talks and responds to questions in their sleep (literally while "unconscious")?

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#86

Post by hmsln »

tekelsey wrote: post #65

AI is a simulation (artificial). Even if you did the acrobatics of saying there could be II (inorganic intelligence), there's nothing to suggest self-awareness could transfer from organic to inorganic, and there's no way to distinguish between a simulation being self-aware, and having the "appearance" of being self-aware, so I don't see how anyone could claim to have made a self-aware machine. If you believe that peo…

> I don't think there's any harm in believing in the singularity for entertainment value, but as for providing a door to immortality, I think the main danger is simply distraction. While all the effort and discussion and research is spent on something there is no way of proving -- in the meantime, 20,000 children die each day from preventable diseases.

> I invite anyone who seriously considers a singularity to set it down, and put some effort into the relief of suffering. When we have preventable diseases and poverty figured out, then let's revisit the singularity. I'd enjoy working on it then.

The amount of money currently being spent on singularitarian pursuits is negligible compared to what is spent on development aid, or healthcare.

Furthermore, one of the necessary enablers of the singularity is faster computers. Regardless of the sustainability of Moore's law, it is economic competition between chip-makers that has provided the impetus for the continuous exponential increase in computing power that happened during these last decades; as long as it's physically possible, and as long as the chip market is not a monopoly, the increase in computing power is going to happen anyway, and the singularity would be nothing but a byproduct of these market forces - and will not come at the cost of a disinvestment from charitable pursuits.

As a species, it's nice to have a portfolio of possible futures - and it's nice to know that the singularity road is being probed by some people.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#87

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ForHackernews wrote: post #31
Retra wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't understand how you can be so confident of this. [...] How are you measuring it? What makes you believe with such emphatic certainty that I am a conscious being and not a p-zombie? Because p-zombies are self-contradictory. The definition of a p-zombie is a contradiction. It's like saying "suppose 1 = 2 and 1 != 2. Call this a p-zombie quality." When you suppose that the behavior of a thing is separate from th…

> yet measurably identical in all aspects > behavior is the activity that you measure, and you can measure brain activity. You've shifted your definition of "behavior" now. I thought we were talking about behaviors that impact survival and are acted on by natural selection, not minute differences in MRI scans. For purposes of the thought experiment, I certainly don't care if the p-zombie has a slightly different brai…

>For purposes of the thought experiment, I certainly don't care if the p-zombie has a slightly different brain-wave.

Yes, you do. Because if the p-zombie has a slightly different brain-wave, it remains logically possible that p-zombies and a naturalistic consciousness can both exist. The goal of the thought-experiment is to prove that consciousness must be non-natural -- that there is a Hard Problem of Consciousness rather than a Pretty Hard Problem. Make the p-zombie physically different from the conscious human being and the whole thing fails to go through.

Of course, Chalmers' argument starts by assuming that consciousness is epiphenomenal, which is nonsense from a naturalistic, scientific point of view -- we can clearly observe it, which means it interacts causally, which renders epiphenomenalism a non-predictive, unfalsifiable hypothesis.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#88

Post by eli_gottlieb »

reasonattlm wrote: post #21

Many people believe that medical control over aging will be stunningly expensive, and thus indefinite extension of healthy life will only be available to a wealthy elite. This is far from the case. If you look at the SENS approach to repair therapies [1], treatments when realized will be mass-produced infusions of cells, proteins, and drugs. Everyone will get the same treatments because everyone ages due to the same…

>Nonetheless, many people believe that longevity enhancing therapies will only be available for the wealthy, and that this will be an important dynamic in the future. Inequality is something of a cultural fixation at the moment, and it is manufactured as a fantasy where it doesn't exist in reality. This is just another facet of the truth that most people don't really understand economics, either in the sense of predicting likely future changes, or in the sense of what is actually taking place in the world today.

Social elites sometimes value their inequality and eliteism more than they value economic productivity.

(Actually, this is a pretty fair explanation of the logic behind the whole neoliberal era, in which inequality has been radically widened while productivity growth has stagnated.)

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#89

Post by eli_gottlieb »

foldr wrote: post #48
TeMPOraL wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the TL;DR of the argument against p-zombies goes like this: if you have two things that are by definition indistinguishable by any possible measurement even in principle, they are by this very definition the same . Since there is, by definition, no way to tell if someone is a p-zombie or not, the introduction of the term "p-zombie" doesn't make any sense at all, and therefore why would you ever do that? The p…

That's a very bad argument. Indistinguishability doesn't entail identity. One obvious way to show this is to note that only the latter is a transitive relation. In other words, if A = B and B = C, then A = C; but if A is indistinguishable from B and B is indistinguishable from C, it doesn't follow that A is indistinguishable from C.

>Indistinguishability doesn't entail identity.

Of course it does, by Voevodsky's Univalence Axiom ;-).

>One obvious way to show this is to note that only the latter is a transitive relation. In other words, if A = B and B = C, then A = C; but if A is indistinguishable from B and B is indistinguishable from C, it doesn't follow that A is indistinguishable from C.

In this case, you seem to be envisioning A, B, and C as points along a spectrum, and talking about ways to classify them as separate from each-other, in which we can classify {A, B}->+1 or {B, C}->+1, but {A, C}->-1 always holds.

That's fine, but when we say indistinguishable in the p-zombie argument, we're talking about a physical isomorphism, which doesn't really allow for the kinds of games you can get away with when classifying sections of spectrum.

Re: Death Is Optional: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

#90

Post by tekelsey »

hmsln wrote: post #86
tekelsey wrote: post #65

AI is a simulation (artificial). Even if you did the acrobatics of saying there could be II (inorganic intelligence), there's nothing to suggest self-awareness could transfer from organic to inorganic, and there's no way to distinguish between a simulation being self-aware, and having the "appearance" of being self-aware, so I don't see how anyone could claim to have made a self-aware machine. If you believe that peo…

> I don't think there's any harm in believing in the singularity for entertainment value, but as for providing a door to immortality, I think the main danger is simply distraction. While all the effort and discussion and research is spent on something there is no way of proving -- in the meantime, 20,000 children die each day from preventable diseases. > I invite anyone who seriously considers a singularity to set it…

I think the most precious thing we have is time, not money, because our time is finite. When you consider the potential of the human race and computing power to help spare daily genocide, there is clearly an opportunity to do better. If a person is driven to spend ever more time on pursuing the innovations that could theoretically lead to a singularity, what would that person say to a stadium full of children who are going to die the next day? I wouldn't know what to say. I'm not sure they'd be comforted by assurances that a byproduct of the pursuit of the singularity results in economic momentum that employs people, as good as that may be.

Perhaps though the attendant momentum of deep mind projects might result in AI or II be putting to the task of humanitarian relief. But my guess is that any such system would probably ask, "what should the priority be for preserving life?" -- and if the prioritization were done by consensus, I'm guessing that most people would prioritize preserving life over pursuing the singularity. For example, I think most people would want a self-driving AI government to prioritize their own survival over the singularity. And if that were the case, and AI were tasked with helping to "load balance" priorities of ethics, efforts, solutions and systems, I wonder if it might not admonish us to make changes in our life.

I'm not self-righteous, I'm self-unrighteous. I'm just beginning to question my general acceptance of wherever technology goes, wherever I spend my time. I don't presume to tell people what to do, but I do propose that the ethic of choosing whether to relieve a suffering child right in front of you may be self-evident to some people -- and if so, that realizing children are at arm's length, that we can do something about it, may convince some people, myself included, to think about "re-balancing" priorities.

I read fiction regularly. I would be a hypocrite to judge anyone for "not spending enough time relieving suffering". Yet overall I question how content and comfortable I am with life. I guess in a portfolio of effort, I hope that the allocation of assets in my own life and others would place a primary emphasis on sustainability that includes the relief of suffering. I think that's what 20k kids dying each day says to me. I think that's what they'd post to Hacker News, if they could.

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