Decades-long bet on consciousness ends • Hacker News Board

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#251

Post by kaba0 » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 7:28 AM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #236

fzaninotto wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many neuroscientists think like you, see Attention Schema Theory [1], popularized by Michael Graziano at Princeton University. This is a form of Illusionism [2] - according to Graziano, consciousness is an illusion. I've explored this idea by building a chatbot with an inner monologue, Molly [3], based on GPT-3. The result is spectacular: it gives the illusion of consciousness. And, according to Information Schema Th…

What would it mean for the sensations of pain or color to be an illusion? Do you really think that you can be wrong about experiencing a colored-in world around you, or feeling pain when you kick a rock? If so, what gives you confidence that the world exists, given how wrong all you would be about your own experiences?

There is literally no way to differentiate between whether we are living in a real world, or we are just the single agent of a simulation or whatever.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#252

Post by kaba0 » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 7:30 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #61

pa7x1 wrote: post #7

I wouldn't be surprised if consciousness ~conscience~ is just an emergent phenomenon resulting from any sufficiently powerful cognitive system (either biological or artificial) with sufficient inputs of its environment and, crucially, of itself. So as to be able to develop a rich model of itself and its relationship with its environment, and that thing will resemble a whole lot what we call consciousness ~conscience~…

The problem with this argument is that everything is conscious at that point. The consciousness may operate at geological or faster than human time scales but who is to say that we operate very quickly or slowly to begin with? Your computer is already conscious before you even loaded software into it, before you added your fancy machine learning AI. The software merely gives the conscious processor its ability to exp…

> Your computer is already conscious before you even loaded software into it

I don’t think that follows logically, it would be analogous to a (brain)dead person - who is not conscious. The software is what makes the difference here.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#253

Post by kaba0 » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 7:32 AM UTC

number6 wrote: post #22

pa7x1 wrote: post #7

I wouldn't be surprised if consciousness ~conscience~ is just an emergent phenomenon resulting from any sufficiently powerful cognitive system (either biological or artificial) with sufficient inputs of its environment and, crucially, of itself. So as to be able to develop a rich model of itself and its relationship with its environment, and that thing will resemble a whole lot what we call consciousness ~conscience~…

Humans are the only animals that create societies... Ok, that's not true. We are the only animals that laugh. Well, not true either. We are the only animal that... Create artificial intelligences... That's it!

I mean, the problem was never about drawing boundaries, it was drawing a minimum boundary.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#254

Post by Hithredin » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 7:34 AM UTC

scns wrote: post #223

quus wrote: post #178

Im a grad student in philosophy, and this one unfortunately risks perpetuating the annoying myth that philosophers are somehow in competition with the natural sciences — usually believed by people who have literally never taken any courses in philosophy. Quine said that philosophical inquiry is continuous with empirical inquiry, but I think it’d be fine to say that it’s just complementary.

The translation of Philosophy is: The Love Of Wisdom. Our natural sciences build on the foundation those greeks laid. Pythagoras? Math and Music Science. Aristotle? > His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology and the arts. (Wikipedia) Plato? Religion, science, human nature, love, sexuality, ethics, the idea of the soul, ethics,…

That's quite a big stretch saying that. Christians did keep old greek writing during middle age. And muslim did Destroy as rich Persian knowledge.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#255

Post by mekoka » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 8:01 AM UTC

bananabiscuit wrote: post #219

Is it possible consciousness will not be ever explained by physical sciences because it is exactly outside of the domain of what science was invented to explain? Physical science takes on as axioms that the laws of physics are uniform everywhere and that there is no preferred observer. The experience of consciousness is exactly opposite to those two things. It very much is the consequence of you being a preferred obs…

But it's so fun watching people spend time and money chasing their shadow. And considering that materialism is still the academic consensus on consciousness by a wide margin, it might be quite the spectacle for still many years to come.

Though, there's a tiny, but growing, idealist movement, where all the fun is being had. Last year I was acquainted with the works of Don Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup. To anyone interested in a rational and difficult to refute discourse on the proposition that consciousness, not space-time (i.e. matter), is fundamental, I suggest as an introduction their respective interviews with Zubin Damania. Dense in content, yet made accessible. One of the most transformative rabbit holes I've ever gotten into.

Here's the red pill :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd6CQCbk2ro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZWp0bnMBbM

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#256

Post by kaba0 » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 8:05 AM UTC

dangond wrote: post #128

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moment AI is bootstrapped to the point where it surpasses human ability to advance the AI SOTA, it's pretty much game over—from a Darwinian point of view at least. How so? The vast majority of life on earth is far less intelligent than human beings by any objective measure, and yet it still thrives.

Sure, but if you're a creature that's useful to humans, you'll find that you'll either get domesticated and lose all your freedom or get hunted to near (or total) extinction. Any life on earth with some semblance of intelligence is dominated by us. Dolphins, as smart as they are, have no way to use their intelligence to flip the script and become the dominant species, and are dependent on us not deciding that they wo…

I read a great comment on HN that argued that super-human intelligence is not that “OP” advantage — and it really did convince me.

Life is a game with elements where intelligence matters, plenty where it is pure luck, and others where we have a bunch of unknowns (data).

Would a super-intelligent AI have a significant advantage in a game of Monopoly, for example? I think many sci-fi scenarios fail to take this into account, especially the data aspect. Humans are quite intelligent (in the extremes at least), and any extra over that may well be in the diminishing returns category.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#257

Post by munch117 » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 8:19 AM UTC

geysersam wrote: post #231

munch117 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definition: Consciousness is those parts of the workings of the brain that are available to introspection. End definition. People so love to throw all kinds of babble under the heading of consciousness, so there's scant chance that people will agree on any kind of definition, let alone this one. But it's what I've been using, and I find that it makes all the supposedly hard questions about consciousness very simple t…

> makes all the supposedly hard questions about consciousness very simple to answer. I'm intrigued!

The answers may disappoint you, though.

Let's try some.

> Is a dog conscious?

Probably yes. Dog are social animals, so it makes sense that they would have the ability to reflect on earlier events, including a memory of what they were thinking.

Since we don't have a common language so we can hear their introspective reports, it's hard to confirm, though.

> Is ChatGPT conscious?

No, it does not make observations of its own mental state. When it appears to do so, it is reconstructing plausible observations from its training set of others making such observations.

That's just the specific design of ChatGPT, though. It doesn't have an "inner thought" layer. Other AI designs could easily be conscious; it's just that the best ones we've so far managed to build, don't have it.

> Is ps conscious?

No, it doesn't think.

> Does consciousness survive death?

Obviously no. It's a property of the living brain.

Somehow, that was way too easy to answer for such a big question. There's this expectation that the answer should cover all the mysteries of life and death. It doesn't. It just answers a specific question about consciousness, which, with my definition, is a simple question with a simple answer.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#258

Post by IshKebab » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 8:59 AM UTC

xmonkee wrote: post #229

bananabiscuit wrote: post #219

Is it possible consciousness will not be ever explained by physical sciences because it is exactly outside of the domain of what science was invented to explain? Physical science takes on as axioms that the laws of physics are uniform everywhere and that there is no preferred observer. The experience of consciousness is exactly opposite to those two things. It very much is the consequence of you being a preferred obs…

This will always fail because the premise is wrong. Consciousness does not arise in the brain. Brain activity correlates to impressions in consciousness, but consciousness is not a “thing”. Consciousness is equivalent to identity. You are that which sees all this that you see. Consciousness IS you. You don’t arise in your own brain.

This is nonsense. You don't lose your identity when you fall asleep. Consciousness is clearly a thing that you can have or not have.

A brain can exist without it being conscious.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#259

Post by IshKebab » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 9:03 AM UTC

bananabiscuit wrote: post #219

Is it possible consciousness will not be ever explained by physical sciences because it is exactly outside of the domain of what science was invented to explain? Physical science takes on as axioms that the laws of physics are uniform everywhere and that there is no preferred observer. The experience of consciousness is exactly opposite to those two things. It very much is the consequence of you being a preferred obs…

It's a very good question but I don't think it's impossible to probe what consciousness is merely because we can only directly experience our own consciousness.

There are plenty of other things that we can't directly experience but we can still use science to investigate them through indirect observations.

I think the biggest insights into consciousness so far have come from people with brain traumas and dysfunctional. E.g. people who have had their brain halves cut, or that guy who got most of his brain taken out by a bit of rail, or the Memento guy.

And it definitely is a thing that exists in our physical universe. A very weird thing, sure, but science doesn't say stuff can't be weird. We can definitely learn about it.

Maybe we'll never learn fundamentally what it is, but that's true of normal physical things like atoms and time too.

Re: Decades-long bet on consciousness ends

#260

Post by csomar » Sun, Jun 25, 2023, 9:10 AM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #258

xmonkee wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will always fail because the premise is wrong. Consciousness does not arise in the brain. Brain activity correlates to impressions in consciousness, but consciousness is not a “thing”. Consciousness is equivalent to identity. You are that which sees all this that you see. Consciousness IS you. You don’t arise in your own brain.

This is nonsense. You don't lose your identity when you fall asleep. Consciousness is clearly a thing that you can have or not have. A brain can exist without it being conscious.

You don't lose your consciousness when you fall asleep. You time travel to the point where you wake up.