Consciousness is not computation • Hacker News Board

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#471

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

n8cpdx wrote: post #3

I think people start with the premise that consciousness is a specific “thing”, that it is unique and special to humans (and maybe dogs because we like them but definitely not spiders and flies because we don’t) and then try to work backwards to define it in some ways that keeps it special. I don’t think consciousness is so specific, and I think people aren’t clear about how they think about it as something separate…

> My personal experience is that consciousness, like free will, is a useful illusion.

What specific personal experience led you to that conclusion? And what is useful about experiencing a bogus "free will"?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#472

Post by otikik » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

Pick three rocks and make a line with them. Does the line “exist”? Well, yes, in a way. But also very much no, only the rocks exist (let’s ignore the fact that the three imaginary rocks that you have pictured in your mind while reading the previous phrase also don’t exist).

Qualia, and consciousness, exist in the same way that line exists but also doesn’t. The universe will happily give non-conclusive answers like that and keep on working while we struggle to figure it all out.

So I reject the first axiom of this reasoning. Well I sorta reject it. Kinda. If I was forced to be precise, I would say that trying to find a binary answer (is it computation, or not?) is asking the wrong type of question. The right question has higher bit count, and maybe even some qbits as well.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#473

Post by akimball » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #314

vbezhenar wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that? Lamda AI claims itself as conscious being. How can you distinguish between two entities which can communicate? Do you discriminate on meat factor?

You can also get it to agree that it is not conscious. I can write a one line program that claims to be conscious right now. Lamda and GTP-3 are amazing achievements, but they're still just chat bots that look good when they're being lobbed softball questions. If you ask something that maps to the input texts they're trained on you get credible looking responses, but critical or adversarial questioning very easily ex…

I can also get Daniel Dennett to agree that he is not conscious.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#474

Post by PeterisP » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #446

hsn915 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computation does not have anything essential to it that makes it different from other "atoms jumping around" other than it produces outputs that we find interesting. There's no reason to expect an adder circuit to be aware that it's adding numbers. There's no reason to expect an implementation of AlphaGo to know that it's playing Go. This should be extendable without limitation. There's no reason to expect that a cer…

It’s hard to ignore the fact that physical dynamics in the brain tightly correspond to qualia. There almost certainly is a connection between the computation going on in the brain and the experience of qualia - the question is more about the direction of causality.

Since we can alter, temporarily suspend or stop qualia with various physical and chemical alterations to the brain, the direction of causality is quite clear.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#475

Post by akimball » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 1:14 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #411

vbezhenar wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same reasoning could be applied to many people. You wouldn't deny their consciousness on that ground. The issue with general AI is like issue with chess. People are not happy when robot can win some games. People can only accept that robot really plays chess, when robot defeated best of the best. General AI is the same. Looking like some guy is not enough. You need to reason better than smartest human on the plan…

This line of reasoning reduces to the philosophical zombie argument. It's true I can't prove to you that I have a first person experience of the world, but it doesn't therefore follow that anything that makes that claim does have such an experience. For myself I'm satisfied that, when questioned thoroughly, these models fail so completely and utterly and their output is so ludicrously nonsensical that I don't see how…

People frequently output ludicrous nonsense. Does this disqualify their consciousness?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#476

Post by josefx » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 1:15 PM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #244

hsn915 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computation does not have anything essential to it that makes it different from other "atoms jumping around" other than it produces outputs that we find interesting. There's no reason to expect an adder circuit to be aware that it's adding numbers. There's no reason to expect an implementation of AlphaGo to know that it's playing Go. This should be extendable without limitation. There's no reason to expect that a cer…

How do you know that? Lamda AI claims itself as conscious being. How can you distinguish between two entities which can communicate? Do you discriminate on meat factor?

Did it? Or did it just reply to a question that already implied that it was a conscious being? Will it respond the same to a query implying otherwise? As far as I understand we cannot even trust the published chat since it was "cleaned up" for better reading.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#477

Post by sitkack » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 1:16 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #441

seanwilson wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no reason to expect an adder circuit to be aware that it's adding numbers. There's no reason to expect an implementation of AlphaGo to know that it's playing Go. This should be extendable without limitation. What about an AI that creates models of what humans are thinking to predict their behaviour, and is able to turn this upon itself (i.e. theory of mind)? Is there a story somewhere following this idea as…

I think there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop

I could listen to Hofstadter forever.

Perhaps consciousness is just a byproduct of our ability to anticipate the outcomes of our decisions and reflect on the decisions we have made (that itself is a whole other ball of wax [1]).

Consciousness is a sort of neuroreflective Narcissus, we end up navel gazing at our own existence as a mind in the universe.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#478

Post by IIAOPSW » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 1:16 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #428

IIAOPSW wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I am only convinced of this fact because I have experienced it independently >In other words, I am more certain of the fact that your comment exists >So, the physical world is a much more believable explanation than Phrasing all of these in terms of what you believe and what you are convinced/certain of, instead of in terms of what absolutely is, makes my point for me. You didn't even realize you were talking in…

Phrasing is irrelevant. My senses are not little people talking to me about what they perceive, they are sensing organs connected to the brain. Saying that they "lie" is just a twist of the phrase so that I avoid something more unwieldy, like "my sense organs perceive the world incorrectly because of some defect". > Starting with just the existence of the arguers and their arguments, can they argue for the existence…

>No, you can't argue the world into being from these axioms. They could probably invent logic and mathematics, but nothing of the natural sciences can be discovered without the senses.

It seems contradictory to admit they could invent math and logic, but then reject that they could go one step further and rig that understanding of math into and understanding of physics. I'll admit without some corpus of data to understand the motivation for constructing physics is tenuous. But the question was about the principle of if they could and if you're granting me math I don't see any obstacle left.

>Phrasing is irrelevant. My senses are not little people talking to me about what they perceive

Sure maybe your senses aren't actually little people, but if you've already evolved a social reasoning / grunting system that only knows how to talk about people, why not convert that into a system for reasoning / grunting about everything by imagining everything as little people. It might not be literally true, but its a useful fiction. Its a fiction that lets us hack "conversational reality consciousness" into "physical reality consciousness". The difficulty in twisting the phrase differently is supportive of this hypothesis.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#479

Post by _gabe_ » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 1:17 PM UTC

> in the late 1800s there were heated philosophical debates about whether life required a mysterious “vital force” or if it could be produced through ordinary physical interactions. As biochemists learned more about the chemistry of life they found that it was the latter and before long everyone forgot that this was even a question that had ever been debated.

I wasn't aware that we figured out how to manufacture life? Afaik, there is no reliable experiment that can reliably construct a living organism using a combination of non-living material. Did I miss some fundamental experiment that proved otherwise?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#480

Post by akimball » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 1:18 PM UTC

feet wrote: post #458

FeepingCreature wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simulation of weather can absolutely produce a simulation of rain. Then the only question is, is consciousness like data or like matter? As opposed to matter, data can easily traverse levels of simulation.

Consciousness is an emergent property that comes from a complex system, if we can simulate all of the mechanisms then the emergent property will follow. I don't know if its "data" but rather consciousness is the experience of processing data from the perspective of the entity doing the processing. We have the ability to communicate our internal experience which is why humans only attribute conscious awareness to othe…

Your first sentence is not, in my opinion, a demonstrable fact. The lack of an adequate definition of consciousness tends to preclude such a demonstration.