It is funny that the title of the article is a "new 21st century religion." The Hindu conception of Brahman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman) is basically this. We are in Brahman, and Brahman is in us.
Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?
191–200 of 244 posts
Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?
#192Anyone 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.
I guess I didn't quite explain properly.
I think that the question of conscience is actually not really relevant in the context of the problems it gets brought up in.
Like morality or artificial intelligence. In these contexts whether something is conscious or not doesn't really have a practical application nor should it be the moral guide for the way we react to things.
I would still believe in not "hurting" "unconcious" things even though the logic would assert that it was okay to do this. And I believe others would struggle with the same.
Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your answer has the prejudice than only people and animals can be conscious. I don't disagree, but that instantly makes the answer to the question "is the universe conscious" negative. Also AI, which currently is significantly more capable, at least in mimicking consciousness, than most animals.
Rephrasing this: What would it take for something not categorized under animal to be considered conscious in your book?
I'd sort of say its two fold:
1. the object in question would need to behave in a conscious way 2. I'd have to look in the guts of the object and see evidence of some kind that the processes I was observing were inherent in the design of the thing.
To clarify a bit about the second point: I can talk to a phone with a person on the other end of it and it can demonstrate some properties of consciousness. If I didn't know what phones were I'd be tempted to identify this behavior with consciousness if not for the second criteria. In the case of a phone, if we take it apart and see how it works we can see that it is fit to transmit a voice from somewhere else, but not to generate the complex responses I was observing in the conversation.
Obviously the case of a language model, for instance, is significantly more complicated, since it does have some of the behaviors of a consciousness and some of the structures, but my hunch is that it doesn't really have enough of either to count. Definitely not discounting the possibility that we'll have artificial consciousnesses some day, I'm just skeptical language models are it.
Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have that prejudice. I'm entirely open to the possibility that AI or other stuff could be conscious. In fact, I'm decidedly of the opinion that consciousness isn't magic and shouldn't be expected to be confined to specific arrangements of material per se. However, I am saying that we know quite a lot how brains work and how that relates to the observable phenomenon we bundle under the word consciousness and t…
>decades of neuroscience research Could you point to some credible neuroscience research that mentions consciousness? My impression was the word consciousness is a taboo in those circles, much like AGI is in in machine learning research papers.
Hardly. Christof Koch wrote a whole book about it.
Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The most fundamental argument for panpsychism is that it obeys Occam's razor FAR better than the "emergent animate matter" hypothesis. Meh. Seems to me like this is just dressing up the anthropic principle in clerical robes. The scare quotes around the "emergent animate matter" strawman sort of give the game away. There is no such "hypothesis". "Animate matter" is an observation, how it emerged is a question, and a…
Not at all. The anthropic principle is sort of going in the opposite direction in fact, as it presupposes all these conditions on consciousness then waves a magic wand over all of it because we happen to be able to observe and reason, so of course those conditions were met, end of story, yawn. Panpsychism says that it doesn't matter how life evolved, because the universe is aware as a matter of fact, so the particula…
So, no, that's a mischaracterization. The Anthropic Principle isn't an explanation or a theory. It's not even science, it's just a philosophical argument putting a boundary around "Things that Make Sense to Talk About". Basically: "If things weren't the way they are we wouldn't be here to talk about them, so let's just not"
> Panpsychism says that it doesn't matter how life evolved, because the universe is aware as a matter of fact, so the particulars are unimportant,
Which is almost exactly a paraphrase of the concept I just elucidated. But with some weird religious imagery attached. I find that uninteresting.
Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
So you're very much in the Pragmatist camp, something is only true if it's useful?
Personally, I find it impossible to choose to believe something, all things equal, just because I like the implications. The doubt will always be in the back of my mind, "But what if it's not really true?"
I hold to compatabilism. As far as I can tell, the universe unfolds according to natural laws, and we're no exceptions. But we have agency over our own lives, the decisions we will make matter, and we're free in every way that's meaningful.
Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?
#198Douglas Adams; > This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'
See the Anthropic Principle [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
... and "This Is Water", by Wallace
Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?
#199It’s obvious to me that the universe was intelligently designed. For exactly the reasons the author states, it’s simply too perfect and conducive to life. If you have 10 minutes watch this video of a cardiac surgeon whose patient had a near death experience: https://youtu.be/JL1oDuvQR08 The most arrogant thing I could possibly imagine thinking, is that I know all of the mysteries of the universe and what happens when…
The only conclusion we can draw from your observation of a really-nice-to-live-in universe (and almost all of it isn’t) is that we can create a simulated, even nicer-to-live-in universe in our havitable corner of it and run some AIs in it. If there’s a creator, then this creator fellow must live in an even bigger, nicer universe within which ours exists. Now, where does that come from?
When you travel at the speed of light, time stops, and because of length contraction, the universe is no longer vast. To a proton - light - everything is instantaneous, time does not exist, and distance means nothing.
I don't know what the creator's purpose is. I just know we are part of something far larger and far greater. When we die, we go to another place.
Re: Could the cosmos, in fact, be conscious?
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
>decades of neuroscience research Could you point to some credible neuroscience research that mentions consciousness? My impression was the word consciousness is a taboo in those circles, much like AGI is in in machine learning research papers.
Hardly. Christof Koch wrote a whole book about it.