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What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

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Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#41
I'm pretty sure we could study a bat's brain, if it hasn't already been done, and get a good idea of what echolocation would feel like.

Fundamentally echolocation is a bit like vision in that the bat can direct it's echolocation sense in whatever direction it likes, and a bit like peripheral vision it can also control the acuity of this sense by how fast it sends out chirps - varying from 5-20 per second when scanning or up to 200 per second when locked onto a target.

How similar the perceptual "feel" of echolocation is to vision would seem to largely depend on whether a bat's echolocation sense has the equivalent of persistence of vision and a 2-D cortical map which combine to give us the "spatial, always-on" feel of vision. These are both things that could be determined by studying a bat's brain. If it has these then I'd expect that in 5-20 chirps per second scanning mode the bat would experience something like looking at a submarines sonar screen, while switching to 200 chirps per second "radar lock" mode would increase the resolution and update rate of that display, with the periphery perhaps fading away due to not being updated.

Of course a bat doesn't necessarily have "persistence of echo" and a 2-D cortical map of echo space, in which case we could reason about what the quale of the sense would be like in that case (a bit more like hearing perhaps), but given the speed and accuracy of sensing it needs to catch fast moving insects, I'd expect that it does have these to better allow it's brain to predict prey trajectories and intercept points.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#42
What it's like - the gestalt of a bat (or other thing) as it engages its sensing-deciding-reacting loop. This gestalt isn't just for biological organisms, but any system for which its decision making engages with representations of the external environment unified with a self-representation to form a coherent representation of a persistent entity engaged with an external world.

Why do such systems need this gestalt? Why consciousness instead of everything happening in the dark? The recognition of oneself as situated in the world is crucial to coherent engagement with the world. It is how an entity can ensure its body parts are moving towards the same goal. It's how behavior over time doesn't undermine its purpose. Fragmented, incoherent behavior does not serve self-preservation.

LLMs as they are currently constructed probably aren't conscious, but we are a hop skip and a jump away from ones that are.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#43
post #19

I know what it's like to be a bat. I don't have anqualia, the inability to imaginatively summon what an experience is like. In other words, I have the ability to imagine what an experience is like. Do others not have this?

Everyone can imagine some experiences. No-one can imagine every experience. Why are you so sure you know what it's like to be a bat? Do you know how a bat works, how its brain generates sensations, how different sensory organs than yours give rise to subjective experience? What justification do you have, apart from "I reckon I can imagine it"?

I don’t know those things about myself so they can’t be necessary.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#44

I'm pretty sure we could study a bat's brain, if it hasn't already been done, and get a good idea of what echolocation would feel like. Fundamentally echolocation is a bit like vision in that the bat can direct it's echolocation sense in whatever direction it likes, and a bit like peripheral vision it can also control the acuity of this sense by how fast it sends out chirps - varying from 5-20 per second when scannin…

[deleted]

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#45

Tangential, but really, really good: What is it like to be an octopus? https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n17/amia-srinivasan/the-...

An Octopus may seem more like an alien with its 9 brains (one central, plus one per tentacle), but note that the left/right hemispheres of other animal's brains are essentially separate brains, and human's who have had "split brain" surgery to separate these (e.g. in cases of severe epilepsy) don't report feeling much, if at all, different afterwards than they did before.

I would expect that an Octopus's central brain may well feel as if it is directly controlling it's arms, and receiving sensory feedback from them, even though it is not.

The reality is that we don't see the external world - we predict it (and receive error feedback), and similarly our brain can't also help but predict itself, whether its hemispheres are connected or not, and gets pretty good at both doing this as well as creating post-hoc rationalizations that feel like it's perfectly in control. I would assume that an Octopus's "main brain" is predicting what its tentacles are going to do in similar fashion, and would not feel that they have a mind of their own!

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#46

What it's like - the gestalt of a bat (or other thing) as it engages its sensing-deciding-reacting loop. This gestalt isn't just for biological organisms, but any system for which its decision making engages with representations of the external environment unified with a self-representation to form a coherent representation of a persistent entity engaged with an external world. Why do such systems need this gestalt?…

Could you determine if I am conscious using the same interface you have into an LLM?

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#47

Tangential, but really, really good: What is it like to be an octopus? https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n17/amia-srinivasan/the-...

Strange coincidence, I just read a novel that explored what it is like to be a bat and what it is like to be an octopus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mountain_in_the_Sea

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#49

What it's like - the gestalt of a bat (or other thing) as it engages its sensing-deciding-reacting loop. This gestalt isn't just for biological organisms, but any system for which its decision making engages with representations of the external environment unified with a self-representation to form a coherent representation of a persistent entity engaged with an external world. Why do such systems need this gestalt?…

Could you determine if I am conscious using the same interface you have into an LLM?

Seems like a rather ad hoc restriction. The issue is one of inferring the structure of the processes generating the output. I suppose given enough time and an adversarial style of interaction one could in principle determine the computational structure of any system with high confidence. So probably yes, modulo real-world concerns.
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