Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Comedy Theory (2022)

rpgadventures.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 182 posts

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#151

Post by smokedetector1 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #147
smokedetector1 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we agree that we both exist, but we have differing models for what the necessary constituents of that existence are? Of course, yes. > I can certainly imagine creatures with brain-driven consciousness but without a soul This would probably be the heart of the disagreement. I don't believe this is possible. Such a creature would not have qualia. And, as a species, I don't think we're any closer to resolving this…

> This would probably be the heart of the disagreement OK, sounds like we're agreed there. If souls are required for consciousness, then I guess we could try to decide which creatures are conscious by first deciding which have souls? Would that question be any easier to answer that way around?

I thought we were talking about "what is consciousness" rather than "which creatures are conscious." The conversation started with "consciousness is just [a series of material processes resulting in an illusion of interiority, rather than a genuine phenomenon of -- for lack of a better word -- personhood]"

I would probably say "consciousness is the soul" rather than "souls are required for consciousness," but either way I don't see how that helps the fundamental issue that it's impossible to physically prove another creature's interiority, including humans.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#152

Post by visarga »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #146
082349872349872 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of consciousness and the existence of a non-body non-brain soul seem to me like two completely orthogonal issues (I can easily imagine creatures without conscious awareness but with a soul; I can certainly imagine creatures with brain-driven consciousness but without a soul; a rock has neither; in your model people have both) so it seems unlikely that answering your two questions would move the conversati…

> Can we agree that we both exist, but we have differing models for what the necessary constituents of that existence are? Of course, yes. > I can certainly imagine creatures with brain-driven consciousness but without a soul This would probably be the heart of the disagreement. I don't believe this is possible. Such a creature would not have qualia. And, as a species, I don't think we're any closer to resolving this…

> fMRIs say where blood is flowing in the brain, but that's hardly enough to explain the phenomenon of subjective experience.

fMRI scans correlate well with neural net embeddings. That is a great hint. We just need to look at the semantic spaces developed in these models, by a purely mechanistic process, to see how it goes from data to semantics.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#153

Post by smokedetector1 »

visarga wrote: post #149
smokedetector1 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this explain away the mystery of consciousness?

We have a dual search loop - outside, we act using our experience to gain new data. Inside, we compress this data and update our experience. We search for experience and search for understanding. Acting is search for new insights, learning is search for error minimization. I think the way we encode our experiences is relationally, like neural networks. We relate new experiences against past experiences, this creates…

I commend your diligence, your theory may even be internally consistent, but I don't see why I should believe this rather than the comparatively simple and intuitively true (to me, anyway) notion that there is a genuine soul, it has its own volition, and it certainly interacts with the physical body and brain through a link that is currently (and may always be) mysterious.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#154

Post by visarga »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #151
082349872349872 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This would probably be the heart of the disagreement OK, sounds like we're agreed there. If souls are required for consciousness, then I guess we could try to decide which creatures are conscious by first deciding which have souls? Would that question be any easier to answer that way around?

I thought we were talking about "what is consciousness" rather than "which creatures are conscious." The conversation started with "consciousness is just [a series of material processes resulting in an illusion of interiority, rather than a genuine phenomenon of -- for lack of a better word -- personhood]" I would probably say "consciousness is the soul" rather than "souls are required for consciousness," but either…

What I said was that it's all search. We search and learn, search and learn. This feels like consciousness because it is a recurrent process that feeds on itself. We create relational representations from data, and these representations encode the structure of our experiences. In other words embeddings explain away the qualitative aspects of qualia.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#155

Post by smokedetector1 »

visarga wrote: post #152
smokedetector1 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we agree that we both exist, but we have differing models for what the necessary constituents of that existence are? Of course, yes. > I can certainly imagine creatures with brain-driven consciousness but without a soul This would probably be the heart of the disagreement. I don't believe this is possible. Such a creature would not have qualia. And, as a species, I don't think we're any closer to resolving this…

> fMRIs say where blood is flowing in the brain, but that's hardly enough to explain the phenomenon of subjective experience. fMRI scans correlate well with neural net embeddings. That is a great hint. We just need to look at the semantic spaces developed in these models, by a purely mechanistic process, to see how it goes from data to semantics.

The idea that we will just need to do that is a form of faith, no more rational (in my opinion, less so) than belief in a soul.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#156

Post by smokedetector1 »

visarga wrote: post #154
smokedetector1 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought we were talking about "what is consciousness" rather than "which creatures are conscious." The conversation started with "consciousness is just [a series of material processes resulting in an illusion of interiority, rather than a genuine phenomenon of -- for lack of a better word -- personhood]" I would probably say "consciousness is the soul" rather than "souls are required for consciousness," but either…

What I said was that it's all search. We search and learn, search and learn. This feels like consciousness because it is a recurrent process that feeds on itself. We create relational representations from data, and these representations encode the structure of our experiences. In other words embeddings explain away the qualitative aspects of qualia.

Just declaring that they explain it away doesn't make it so. You've come up with a theory that, from 10,000 feet up, could correspond with certain observations of consciousness. Why should it be true?

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#157

Post by [deleted] »

OisinMoran wrote: post #51

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” The equating of jokes and comedy here is an affront for anyone who has explored different avenues of comedy in any way. The analysis is fine and even interesting for (as others have pointed out) one specific type of joke but just flippantly calling that all of comedy is very jarring as it is obviously wrong. I just completed…

[deleted]

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#158

Post by 082349872349872 »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #151
082349872349872 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This would probably be the heart of the disagreement OK, sounds like we're agreed there. If souls are required for consciousness, then I guess we could try to decide which creatures are conscious by first deciding which have souls? Would that question be any easier to answer that way around?

I thought we were talking about "what is consciousness" rather than "which creatures are conscious." The conversation started with "consciousness is just [a series of material processes resulting in an illusion of interiority, rather than a genuine phenomenon of -- for lack of a better word -- personhood]" I would probably say "consciousness is the soul" rather than "souls are required for consciousness," but either…

We were talking about "what is consciousness" but rapidly hit an end.

Sorry for the lack of clarity: "which creatures are conscious" was my attempt to switch topics to a line which I had hoped might be mutually interesting.

Cheers!

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#159

Post by smokedetector1 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #158
smokedetector1 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought we were talking about "what is consciousness" rather than "which creatures are conscious." The conversation started with "consciousness is just [a series of material processes resulting in an illusion of interiority, rather than a genuine phenomenon of -- for lack of a better word -- personhood]" I would probably say "consciousness is the soul" rather than "souls are required for consciousness," but either…

We were talking about "what is consciousness" but rapidly hit an end. Sorry for the lack of clarity: "which creatures are conscious" was my attempt to switch topics to a line which I had hoped might be mutually interesting. Cheers!

Before we stop, if you don't mind, could you answer why you are dissatisfied with the idea that there's a soul, and why we need to do away with it 100%?

To be clear, I really do take issue with the 100% aspect. There are many psychological functions that are clearly at least mediated if not outright caused by the brain and body.

But I think some people say "there's so many functions that are physical, that probably 100% are and we just don't know it yet." But that doesn't seem logically any more forced than "there's a soul that's mediated by the brain," so I don't know why people are so willing to give up the soul.

Re: Comedy Theory (2022)

#160

Post by CooCooCaCha »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #155
visarga wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fMRIs say where blood is flowing in the brain, but that's hardly enough to explain the phenomenon of subjective experience. fMRI scans correlate well with neural net embeddings. That is a great hint. We just need to look at the semantic spaces developed in these models, by a purely mechanistic process, to see how it goes from data to semantics.

The idea that we will just need to do that is a form of faith, no more rational (in my opinion, less so) than belief in a soul.

Making up nonsense will always be easier than actually understanding reality.

Just because we can’t explain something right now does not mean you can insert whatever you want into that hole and assert it’s just as valid as any other explanation.

Post reply on HN