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

Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

heraldscotland.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 244 posts

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#181

Post by ethanbond »

layer8 wrote: post #178
CuriouslyC wrote: post #65

The most fundamental argument for panpsychism is that it obeys Occam's razor FAR better than the "emergent animate matter" hypothesis. Panpsychism requires that the universe updates its state by conscious choice, which we already know happens, so from the perspective of Occam's razor we would actually need to explain why it DIDN'T happen for non-animal matter. Additionally, if we go with the emergence hypothesis, we…

Panpsychism requires that we have a solid grasp on what constitutes consciousness, and we don’t. How would you falsify panpsychism? What testable predictions does it make?

How do you falsify the claim that all living humans are conscious? Or that none of them except you are? Or that you are not conscious?

This is an inconvenience for every theory of consciousness, isn't it?

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#182

Post by paxys »

aleksiy123 wrote: post #165

Anyone else starting to get a feeling that whether something is conscious, or even studying consciousness matters at all in a practical sense. More of just a nerd snipe or red herring to waste time on. Like working to understand consciousness probably won't actually advance building an GAI in any meaningful way. Nor will it be the driver of how we interact with our surroundings be it rock, dirt, tree fish, dog, human…

Nothing beyond food and shelter and reproduction matters in the practical sense, yet we are out here breaking apart atoms and launching rockets. The pursuit of knowledge is never a red herring.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#184

Post by layer8 »

ethanbond wrote: post #181
layer8 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panpsychism requires that we have a solid grasp on what constitutes consciousness, and we don’t. How would you falsify panpsychism? What testable predictions does it make?

How do you falsify the claim that all living humans are conscious? Or that none of them except you are? Or that you are not conscious? This is an inconvenience for every theory of consciousness, isn't it?

I’m criticizing panpsychism as a theory of the universe, not as a theory of consciousness. But even as the latter, neither does it explain much of anything, nor does it make any useful predictions I’m aware of.

Personally I don’t make the claim that all humans or even I myself are conscious, because I find the notion of consciousness to be too ill-defined.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#185

Post by lxgr »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #162
lxgr wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically leading my life as if I had free will and being convinced I actually do have free will – despite zero evidence either way other than my senses and my reasoning, both of which regularly fail/deceive me in all kinds of situations – are two very different things. There's of course also a variant of Pascal's wager in here, except that this one is logically sound, in my view: If there is free will, why not mak…

The main point of disagreement I have with this is that I don't think the notion that your senses and reality are not always perfectly in sync implies that your perception of free will is false. There's a lot of approximating that goes into taking sensory input and generating an experience, that doesn't invalidate your experience of making decisions. Also, your doubt in your own free will isn't free, it has a cost. I…

That may well be the case, but it feels deeply epistemologically wrong to me to say “I am certain about X” just because being certain about X might come with certain psychological advantages. Not much good follows from that line of reasoning applied to many other issues.

I also don’t think “it’s quite plausible that there is free will but I’m agnostic about it” is a particularly harmful position to have.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#186

Post by CuriouslyC »

Scarblac wrote: post #173
CuriouslyC wrote: post #65

The most fundamental argument for panpsychism is that it obeys Occam's razor FAR better than the "emergent animate matter" hypothesis. Panpsychism requires that the universe updates its state by conscious choice, which we already know happens, so from the perspective of Occam's razor we would actually need to explain why it DIDN'T happen for non-animal matter. Additionally, if we go with the emergence hypothesis, we…

If absolutely everything is conscious, how come we can go unconscious after a knock on the head? How come chemicals like alcohol can change our consciousness? Or adrenalin? How is it that the only consciousnesses we are aware of happen to be located in exactly one human body, rather than say only the upper half of one, or fifteen humans, or any other subdivision of the universe's matter? Why is my consciousness not s…

You don't know that we're unaware when "unconscious" just that we're unresponsive, and we don't have memories of that time. There is evidence that the senses are still active and a lot of brain activity continues.

There is evidence that the human brain contains many consciousnesses, just look into research on split brain studies. I'm sure you've had the feeling of being aware of what was going on but feeling powerless to stop your behavior, as if you were a passenger in your body, at some point in your life, maybe there's more to that than we want to believe.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#187

Post by aleksiy123 »

ethanbond wrote: post #176
aleksiy123 wrote: post #165

Anyone else starting to get a feeling that whether something is conscious, or even studying consciousness matters at all in a practical sense. More of just a nerd snipe or red herring to waste time on. Like working to understand consciousness probably won't actually advance building an GAI in any meaningful way. Nor will it be the driver of how we interact with our surroundings be it rock, dirt, tree fish, dog, human…

You don’t think “is dog conscious” is relevant to how we treat dogs?

Yeah I actually don't.

If we learned that dogs where less conscious or even not conscious would you be okay with treating them poorly?

What I am really saying is I don't think people love their dogs because of there level of consciousness. Its everything else that matters.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#188

Post by CuriouslyC »

stvltvs wrote: post #180
CuriouslyC wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disempowering and does not resonate with our conscious experience, and given there is no more evidence for it than the opposite view, I find the idea that someone would choose a world view that tends to cause depression and fatalism to be absurd.

There's another option: the Skeptic's choice to withhold judgement when there's not enough evidence.

That is a choice that entertains both notions. The problem with that is that entertaining the notion that you are a powerless observer of the universe who must abide surfing the waves of fate with no agency is soul crushing for most people. If that choice isn't bringing you some power in some other way, why make it?

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#189

Post by aleksiy123 »

Scarblac wrote: post #169
aleksiy123 wrote: post #165

Anyone else starting to get a feeling that whether something is conscious, or even studying consciousness matters at all in a practical sense. More of just a nerd snipe or red herring to waste time on. Like working to understand consciousness probably won't actually advance building an GAI in any meaningful way. Nor will it be the driver of how we interact with our surroundings be it rock, dirt, tree fish, dog, human…

There may be an ethical element, we try not to hurt animals but don't care about crushing rocks.

Yes, but I'm actually starting to think that consciousness isn't the real reason for this.

Like I may still believe that hurting a robot is immoral even though its not "conscious".

I think what I am trying to explain is I don't believe that the level of conciousness of an entity should be the moral guide for how that entity has a right to be treated.

Mostly because of the logical conclusion that it implies: it is alright to treat a lower consciousness entity more poorly than a higher consciousness being.

Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?

#190

Post by CuriouslyC »

layer8 wrote: post #184
ethanbond wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you falsify the claim that all living humans are conscious? Or that none of them except you are? Or that you are not conscious? This is an inconvenience for every theory of consciousness, isn't it?

I’m criticizing panpsychism as a theory of the universe, not as a theory of consciousness. But even as the latter, neither does it explain much of anything, nor does it make any useful predictions I’m aware of. Personally I don’t make the claim that all humans or even I myself are conscious, because I find the notion of consciousness to be too ill-defined.

That is something we can certainly disagree on. I would hope given your fist-hand experience of the universe you would at least posit that you yourself are conscious :)
Post reply on HN