Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy • Hacker News Board

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#41

Post by monkeycantype » Sat, Oct 02, 2021, 3:50 AM UTC

codeisawesome wrote: post #34

monkeycantype wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means that ordered systems must create disorder in order to maintain their own order, and the place where you find the greatest order to disorder is in other actively ordered systems. I blame entropy for the existence of evil, if there is a sentient omniscient creator, there better be a good reason for it, and if the reason turns out to be that entropy is the ongoing cost of His omniscient observation of every…

> Which means that ordered systems must create disorder in order to maintain their own order, and the place where you find the greatest order to disorder is in other actively ordered systems. Wow, that also nicely explains how colonisation & impoverishment of some human groups is necessary in the current framework, so that high HDI can be achieved in other human groups (which then explains various historical facts).…

Your comment seems to have been slapped, perhaps on the interpretation that you are justifying colonialism, or perhaps on the interpretation that you are engaging in space billionaire boosterism, but I read you comment very differently. That our islands of enlightenment rest on pillars of violence, and restumping our civilisation on a foundation of justice and sustainability isn't anti-enlightenment, it is the enlightenment project, and it's taking us hundreds of years not always moving forwards.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#42

Post by throwdecro » Sat, Oct 02, 2021, 3:55 AM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #10

sayonaraman wrote: post #7

I think "consciousness" is such a fuzzy term that talking about is at best premature when we are still trying to understand more fundamental things which underlie cognition, such as how human (or mice) memory works, or how the "cognitive maps" which drive spatial navigation generalize to navigation in abstract "concept spaces", how these "concepts" are represented, or how networks of neurons communicate and synchroni…

I agree with this. There are so many philosophical debates out there regarding what happens after we die, if animals are "conscious", if computers or AI could have "consciousness", but in my opinion it's all a big illusion created out of our own egos as a rationalization for our existence. We are biological machines. Sure, we have an awareness of ourselves, but so do computers in some contexts; for example you could…

> you could argue a certain types of self-modifying or monitoring code has an awareness of itself.

Having a representation of itself doesn't mean it has an awareness of itself.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#43

Post by goldenkey » Sat, Oct 02, 2021, 4:21 AM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #25

The universe became conscious enough to ask the question: ‘what is all this?’

Imagine a sophisticated enough and transparent webcam with an infinite resolution and a curved enough lens (or mirror) such that it can see its own assembly.

The funny part is every analogy we make is just something in this universe, so all we do is move the mysticism to a lowlier object.

If we eventually do find out that materials cause consciousness, then material will become mystical. Really, we cannot win.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#44

Post by kovek » Sat, Oct 02, 2021, 4:49 AM UTC

sayonaraman wrote: post #7

I think "consciousness" is such a fuzzy term that talking about is at best premature when we are still trying to understand more fundamental things which underlie cognition, such as how human (or mice) memory works, or how the "cognitive maps" which drive spatial navigation generalize to navigation in abstract "concept spaces", how these "concepts" are represented, or how networks of neurons communicate and synchroni…

Qualia is the ability to experience for example the color red. Or the color blue. An exercise… The universe is interesting, it contains some fields, some particles, some quarks, protons, electrons, photons. Some places don’t have light and others do have light. The universe is even more interesting by the fact that it also contains experience. For some reason we see colors. It is absolutely true. Another thing that we experience is thoughts. They are all different allocations/structures of attention, but they are undeniable parts of the universe.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#45

Post by a9h74j » Sat, Oct 02, 2021, 5:03 AM UTC

gradschoolfail wrote: post #38

bglusman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be interested in Lee Smolin’s book which explores this very hypothesis, among others and a generally fascinating review of how physics got where it is… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_the_Cosmos

When I was a grad student I once attended a lecture by Kip Thorne (before he won the Nobel prize but after Interstellar came out). He basically implied something that is vaguely heretical (and kinda tangential to the above): we should look for aliens inside black holes because thats where they prefer to be. For one, from their point of view (and this situation was sort of enacted in Interstellar) they can observe our…

FWIW, I could be mistaken, but I once heard that the spirit of that question (angels on the head of the pin) was less about realism than countability -- i.e. more like asking about the countablility of the Real Numbers in an interval, or something of that sort. One way or another I took it as a much more generous description.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#46

Post by jtsiskin » Sat, Oct 02, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #39

monkeycantype wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means that ordered systems must create disorder in order to maintain their own order, and the place where you find the greatest order to disorder is in other actively ordered systems. I blame entropy for the existence of evil, if there is a sentient omniscient creator, there better be a good reason for it, and if the reason turns out to be that entropy is the ongoing cost of His omniscient observation of every…

Entropy is a not instilled by a creator, but a natural consequence of math. If the number of states labelled ordered is substantially smaller than the number of states labelled disordered and a system moves essentially randomly between states, it is far more likely that it will spend most of its time in a disordered state. Entropy is just the universe settling into a state that cannot be meaningfully differentiated f…

…but why assume a system moves essentially randomly between states?

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#47

Post by monkeycantype » Sat, Oct 02, 2021, 6:32 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #39

monkeycantype wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means that ordered systems must create disorder in order to maintain their own order, and the place where you find the greatest order to disorder is in other actively ordered systems. I blame entropy for the existence of evil, if there is a sentient omniscient creator, there better be a good reason for it, and if the reason turns out to be that entropy is the ongoing cost of His omniscient observation of every…

Entropy is a not instilled by a creator, but a natural consequence of math. If the number of states labelled ordered is substantially smaller than the number of states labelled disordered and a system moves essentially randomly between states, it is far more likely that it will spend most of its time in a disordered state. Entropy is just the universe settling into a state that cannot be meaningfully differentiated f…

I do get that. While I understand that some people firmly believe in a literal creator, in my case it's an anthropomorphisation of all that is unknowable and truly fundamental to the existence of our universe, just as the green woman with the spiky hat is an anthropomorphisation of liberty. The difference being that I stay open to the idea that the creator might be conscious because I have no way of disproving it, where I'd put put hundred dollars down that the green lady is a big chunk of metal with a slap of copper and asbestos over the top.

I don't know if other universes with different maths are possible. Greg Egan's books take my to the limit of my conceptual capacity, but I do think there are limits to what it is possible to know from within this universe, because everything needs to be built up from axioms from this universe. I agree with your explanation, right now while I'm sitting here in this universe, but if the celestial teapot turns up this afternoon and takes us both to perpetual motion machine universe, we might start to see things differently

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#48

Post by kitd » Sat, Oct 02, 2021, 6:33 AM UTC

throwdecro wrote: post #42

oceanplexian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. There are so many philosophical debates out there regarding what happens after we die, if animals are "conscious", if computers or AI could have "consciousness", but in my opinion it's all a big illusion created out of our own egos as a rationalization for our existence. We are biological machines. Sure, we have an awareness of ourselves, but so do computers in some contexts; for example you could…

> you could argue a certain types of self-modifying or monitoring code has an awareness of itself. Having a representation of itself doesn't mean it has an awareness of itself.

You say that as an outsider able to view both code and its representation. The code itself only 'sees' its representation as itself.

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#49

Post by sgt101 » Sat, Oct 02, 2021, 7:00 AM UTC

Yeah - the consciousness is integrated thing shows a lack of experience with both drugs and schizophrenia

Re: Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life’s Push Against Entropy

#50

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, Oct 02, 2021, 7:08 AM UTC

The idea to define life as the creation of local negative entropy, in a sense pushing disorder out of a local space is not new, in fact that's the premise of Schrödingers 1944 book, What is Life?, which led him to speculate that human genetic information must be stored in something like a crystal, which he thought of as a prototypical structure for storing information, in a way anticipating the discovery of DNA.[1] (a helix instead of a crystal, but in principle not that far off)

I'm not sure I agree though with the connection between life and consciousness in the article. I think it's very possible to have things that are alive in that entropic-displacing sense that need not be conscious or intelligent at all, say fairly trivial, self-replicating machines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F