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The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

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Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#111

Post by tsimionescu »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #102
brotchie wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good counter argument to the paper, honestly.

I think a better counter is the question "Is there a meaningful difference between binary discretization and Planck units? Aren't those discrete/indivisible as well?"

That's not really a good counter - Planck units are not a discretization. Space-time is continuous in all quantum models, two objects can very well be 6.75 Planck lengths away from each other. The math of QM or QFT actually doesn't work on a discretized spacetime, people have tried.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#112

Post by gwd »

tsimionescu wrote: post #25

I've never understood why certain philosophers view computation as some kind of abstract symbolic manipulation, while they easily accept that consciousness is a physical process. Computation is something that a computer provably does. We build physical hardware, at great effort, to do computation. The hardware works and does the computation regardless of whether there is anyone to understand or interpret it. If it di…

> I've never understood why certain philosophers view computation as some kind of abstract symbolic manipulation

Possibly very early AI misled people here. In the 80's, a huge amount of AI was logic manipulation; "If A then B is valid"; "A is true"; therefore, "B is true". It's not hard to see how people would conclude that that sort of symbolic manipulation could never result in consciousness.

But modern neural nets aren't like that at all. Calling modern neural nets "symbolic manipulation" seems insane; like calling libraries forests, and insisting we can apply scientific principles about forests to them, because books are made of trees.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#113

Post by wdbm »

cameldrv wrote: post #91
tsimionescu wrote: post #25

I've never understood why certain philosophers view computation as some kind of abstract symbolic manipulation, while they easily accept that consciousness is a physical process. Computation is something that a computer provably does. We build physical hardware, at great effort, to do computation. The hardware works and does the computation regardless of whether there is anyone to understand or interpret it. If it di…

The issue that the paper brings up is that the same physical process can be interpreted as multiple different computational processes. If the content of consciousness (the hard problem, qualia) is only dependent on the computational process, and not its particular physical instantiation, then which qualia are generated from a particular physical process?

Why assume there has to be a one-to-one mapping? Why assume one physical process can't correspond to an infinity of different qualia?

We assume an infinity of wave-functions correspond to a single physical process without difficulty.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#114

Post by tim333 »

GMoromisato wrote: post #24

I think this is a circular argument. It defines a separation between computation and experience (between the abstraction and the "mapmaker") and then concludes that computation cannot be experience because they are in separate categories. There are really only two solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness: 1. Consciousness is an unknown physical something (force/particle/quantum whatever). 2. Consciousness is an…

>2 ... It is the software telling itself something.

I think human/animal consciousness works something like that - the neurons produce a summary of the organisms situation - what it's seeing, where it is, how it's feeling etc. That the is an input to the thinking/acting parts of the brain eg. feeling hungry, in bedroom -> maybe walk to the fridge. I'm not sure illusion is the right word. Maybe something like situational summary?

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#115

Post by renticulous »

GMoromisato wrote: post #105
renticulous wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the emergence argument, I have the following retort. How can something emerge if it wasn't embedded or hidden within the system already?

I think when people say "emergent" they mean that it happens because of a combination of parts forming something greater. For example, if you decompose an airplane into its pieces, you will discover than none of the pieces can fly from Boston to San Francisco by itself. Wings can't fly without engines, engines can't work without fuel, etc. etc. Maybe consciousness is a process that requires many different components…

Would it be ok to say quantum fields are conscious in some sense? That a quality of consciousness cannot emerge if it isn't there already in the most fundamental aspects of the reality

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#116

Post by colordrops »

0xBA5ED wrote: post #81
colordrops wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "real" thing and not an "illusion" if you go with #2? Is a car a real thing, or just a collection of atoms? Is an atom a real thing? Or a collection of processes? Is it not turtles all the way down? What is "real"?

Well if you can't concede that anything is real, that sort of makes you crazy doesn't it? A tree is real. But the concept of a tree and the word "tree" and all the ideas you have about the tree and what tree means, is that real? No, because it doesn't change the nature of the tree. When you cease to exist, the tree will still be there. Can you be absolutely 100% sure of that? Also no. But if you believe that other pe…

No, I don't feel crazy. Just honest.

I have no idea if the tree is still there when I cease to exist. I just go with that assumption out of convenience.

This degrading of subjective experience as a minor detail rather than a fundamental aspect of reality is one of the core sources of confusion in western thought IMHO.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#117

Post by FrustratedMonky »

colordrops wrote: post #9
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #2

Doesn't this still presume that we understand our own consciousness, in order to make the comparison. Where does our survival instinct come from? And why couldn't AI have one? >>>Additional Also, reproduction. Humans are basically just Food, Sex, Survival. And consciousness is just a rule set for fulfilling those goals. So if a NN, modeled on US, does develop the same rules, why can't it have the same degree of consc…

Asking humans to discuss consciousness is like asking Super Mario to discuss screen pixels. We have no freaking idea. Everyone on all sides, physicalists, idealists, and everything in between are all full of it.

You might dig works of Donald Hoffman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_D._Hoffman

He often uses similar examples.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#118

Post by cameldrv »

tsimionescu wrote: post #104
cameldrv wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue that the paper brings up is that the same physical process can be interpreted as multiple different computational processes. If the content of consciousness (the hard problem, qualia) is only dependent on the computational process, and not its particular physical instantiation, then which qualia are generated from a particular physical process?

> The issue that the paper brings up is that the same physical process can be interpreted as multiple different computational processes. I don't think this is relevant to the notion that consciousness is a form of computation. The assertion that consciousness is a form of computation basically means that the physical process that happens in the brain/body that we recognize as consciousness can be described in terms o…

The "hard problem" is talking about the thing that it's like to be you, to experience what is happening. I don't know about you, but I only experience one set of things happening at once, i.e. it doesn't feel like I am in two places at once or that there are two completely different versions of my life happening simultaneously.

If the physical thing that is conscious is the CPU, what are the contents of its consciousness if there are multiple interpretations of what it is computing?

Now maybe somehow there are in fact multiple consciousnesses inhabiting the CPU. I don't experience that though, so I don't have a positive reason to believe that that's true.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#119

Post by josefritzishere »

bee_rider wrote: post #53
jsdalton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and it immediately called to mind for me the phrase “the map is not the territory.” Put another way: no matter how detailed or “perfect” you make a map, it will never be the territory, ie the thing that is mapped. Computers and AI are like a map in this regard —- just ones and zeros that we have assigned meaning to arbitrarily. No matter how “good” AI gets, it’s still just a map of the thing not the thing itself…

If you make a big enough map you can fly it over and drop it on the territory I guess. Then does it become the territory?

According to the paper, no.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness

#120

Post by colordrops »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #117
colordrops wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking humans to discuss consciousness is like asking Super Mario to discuss screen pixels. We have no freaking idea. Everyone on all sides, physicalists, idealists, and everything in between are all full of it.

You might dig works of Donald Hoffman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_D._Hoffman He often uses similar examples.

Indeed interesting. Seems that his theories are a particular strain of idealism. I probably lean more towards idealism than physicalism but I don't think it's the whole picture. It's still missing something.
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