[HN Gopher] A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of e...
___________________________________________________________________
A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and
implications
Author : danielam
Score : 90 points
Date : 2024-07-01 11:44 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| This is a wonderful project, I had no idea there was so much
| fragmentation n the topic of consciousness. Maybe we should feed
| these writings and concepts to AI and ask it to give us any grand
| unifying commonality among them, if any.
| bubblyworld wrote:
| I would love to be wrong about this, but I don't think anyone
| knows how to do that yet. You're basically asking for automatic
| most-likely hypothesis generation given a set of input data.
| Concepts about consciousness in this case, but you could
| imagine doing the same with scientific data, system traces
| around bugs and crashes, etc. That would be wild!
| russdill wrote:
| It's precisely the type of thing that current LLMs are not
| suited for. They excel at extrapolating between existing
| writings and ideas. They do really poorly when trying to do
| something novel.
| mistermann wrote:
| On their own yes, but as human-like intelligent agents
| running within a larger framework it's a different story.
| superb_dev wrote:
| Just skip all the thinking ourselves and see if some AI can
| come up with plausible sounding nonsense? I'm not interested
| dcre wrote:
| You should probably try thinking about it instead.
| poikroequ wrote:
| Why do people feel the need to AI everything?
| cut3 wrote:
| This topic is so interesting. If I were creating a system for
| everything, it seems like empty space needs awareness of anything
| it could expand to contain, so all things would be aware of all
| other things as a base universal conscious hitbox.
|
| Panpsychism seems neat to think about.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| You don't need empty space. All the processing power can be
| tied to entities, and space emerges from relationships between
| entities.
|
| Want something fun to think about? What if the Heisenberg
| uncertainty principle is basically a function of the
| information capacity of the thing being examined. To make a
| computer analogy, imagine you have 8 bits of information -
| using 6 for position leaves 2 momentum, for example.
| brotchie wrote:
| Two things I'm absolutely convinced of at this point.
| 1. Consciousness is primitive. That is, interior experience is a
| fundamental property of the universe: any information system in
| the universe that has certain properties has an interior
| experience, 2. Within the human population, interior
| experience varies vastly between individuals.
|
| Assertion 1 is informed though reading, introspection,
| meditation, and psychedelic experience. I've transitions the
| whole spectrum of being a die hard physical materialist to high
| conviction that consciousness is primitive. I'm not traditionally
| panpsychic, which most commonly postulates that every bit of
| matter has some level of conscious experience. I really think
| information and information processing is the fundamental unit
| (realized as certain configurations of matter) and certain
| information system's (e.g. our brain) have an interior
| experience.
|
| Assertion 2 is informed through discussion with others. Denial of
| Chalmer's hard problem doesn't make sense to me. Like it seems
| logically flawed to argue that consciousness is emergent.
| Interior experience can't "emerge" from the traditional laws of
| physics, it's like a nonsense argument. The observation that
| folks really challenge this makes me deeply believe that the
| interior experience across humans is not at all uniform. The
| interior experience of somebody who vehemently denies the hard
| problem must be so much different from my interior experience to
| the extend that the divide can't be bridged.
| tanepiper wrote:
| You word my position here too.
|
| 20's - a rabid Dawkins reading Athiest. 40's - I think Dawkins
| is an idiot and my favourite book is "Beelzebub's Tales to His
| Grandson"
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| You don't come off as being a nuanced thinker if those are
| your two positions on Dawkins. I can understand disagreeing
| with him, but calling him an idiot impugns you more than him.
| mistermann wrote:
| Assuming your model of him is correct.
|
| How many videos of him "destroying" theists have you
| watched on TikTok? I've seen 100+, and agree that he's an
| idiot, _amazingly_ so. Watch carefully the words he uses as
| he "proves" his "facts".
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Have you considered that TikTok may not be a full
| representation of the human being?
|
| It is one thing to say someone spews bullshit on tiktok,
| and another to claim them an idiot.
|
| Do you use a purity testing approach to determining
| idiocy?
| mistermann wrote:
| A full representation is not necessary. If a Human has
| errors in any single sentence, they have errors in their
| corresponding model. These details _are the essence of
| the very point of contention_.
|
| > Do you use a purity testing approach to determining
| idiocy?
|
| If one is claiming logical and epistemic superiority, as
| he literally _and explicitly_ does, and _arrogantly_ so
| (followed by roars of applause from the audience), I will
| judge him by those standards. I will also mock him,
| _because he is sooooo dumb_ , while he chastises others
| for the same thing (which he is typically not wrong
| about, to be fair).
|
| Live by the sword, die by the sword.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Would you agree that this may make the error of judging
| them by their worst output, and not their best, or even
| average?
| mistermann wrote:
| Oh yes, if I could bet money on it, I'd say it's even
| likely! However, I think this touches on an under
| realized phenomenon: the difference between what people
| say when they are "speaking their mind" in
| literature/studies (slow, deliberate, careful error
| checking, often including other people), versus the
| _more_ real unfiltered version you get that comes out
| during real time speech (which emerges from cognition).
|
| In the atheism community in particular, there are some
| very strange beliefs about human beliefs. For example, a
| recurring claim I hear from atheists is that what object
| level atheists believe, in fact, is _the formal
| definition_ of atheism: merely /only a _lack of belief_
| in God(s), _but no negative belief_. The silliness of
| this should be obvious, but I 've had no luck getting any
| of them to realize (or even contemplate) this, not even
| one person. The irony is mind boggling. (The same
| phenomenon exists in science as well interestingly, which
| is part of why I claim it is a fact that it is an
| underpowered methodology/ideology for navigating reality,
| _a false prophet_ if you will.)
|
| I propose that if he (and all other people) didn't
| actually hold these flawed beliefs in the first place,
| they wouldn't come out during real time speech... or if
| they did ~accidentally, they should be realized and
| corrected (which scientists _in public venues_ tend to
| do, _begrudgingly_ ).
|
| All people suffer from this problem, and I think our
| culture buries it, for reasons I have no theory about
| (some sort of psychological game theory maybe?).
|
| Another way of putting it: if you only consume content
| from someone that is written offline, you are getting a
| misrepresentation of that person. I think this is a huge
| deal, yet another important part of reality that our
| culture behaves as if it is not there. We are like
| teenagers at best on an absolute scale imho.
| gjm11 wrote:
| I think _both_ what you get in real time _and_ what you
| get when someone has time to consider and check for
| errors and polish are "real". It's not that each person
| has a perfectly well-defined set of beliefs and ideas,
| and (1) you get to see them unfiltered in real time and
| only see a fake version when the person has time to
| polish, or (2) you get to see them accurately when the
| person has time to make sure they're getting it right,
| and only see a rough draft full of mistakes in real time.
| People are more complicated than that.
|
| Some people are good at getting things right in real
| time. Some people are good at getting things right when
| they're careful. I think it is a mistake to call someone
| stupid because they're bad at one of those things --
| unless for some reason one of them _matters_ more than
| the other (e.g., they 're in a position where they have
| to make quick decisions all the time; or they are
| primarily a writer who can always think and check and
| polish before publishing).
|
| I'm not convinced that the definition-of-atheism thing
| has much to do with the real-time versus polished
| distinction. But:
|
| I think both atheists and theists sometimes cherry-pick
| definitions for tactical purposes. "Oh no, I can't
| possibly be expected to offer evidence that there are no
| gods, because being an atheist just means not positively
| believing in gods." "Of course so-and-so's evil actions
| don't reflect badly on Christianity -- if he were a
| _real_ Christian he 'd be acting better." "Why should I
| care what liberal Muslims say? The most authentic Muslims
| are obviously the ones who behead people while shouting
| _Allahu akbar_. " Etc., etc., etc.
|
| But it's not _silly_ to define "atheist" as "not
| positively believing in any gods"; that's a property that
| many people have, it's perfectly reasonable to have a
| name for it, and the only problem with using "atheist"
| for it is that most people use that word to mean
| something a bit different. And the trouble is that there
| aren't "enough" words; we've got "atheist" and "agnostic"
| and "deist" and "theist" but there are more gradations of
| belief than that. (Absolutely certain there are no gods.
| Of the opinion that on balance there are probably no
| gods. Of the opinion that whether there are gods is
| unknowable in principle. Of the opinion that it's
| knowable in principle but one doesn't in fact have enough
| evidence. Inclined to think that there's probably
| something godlike but we can't know anything much about
| it. Thoroughly convinced that there is something godlike,
| but that we can't know much about it. Somewhat convinced
| by arguments for a particular religion but still unsure.
| Firmly committed to a particular religion and confident
| that it's right. Etc.)
|
| Personally, I use "atheist" to mean "overall of the
| opinion that there are no gods, whether or not certain of
| this", "non-theist" to mean "not positively believing in
| any gods", "agnostic" to mean "substantially unsure
| whether there are gods, whether or not one thinks it's
| knowable in principle", "theist" to mean "overall of the
| opinion that there is at least one god, whether or not
| certain of this", and I qualify those terms in whatever
| ways might be necessary if I want to say that someone's
| certain there's no god or kinda-halfheartedly-Hindu or
| whatever. I am somewhat prepared to argue that all those
| choices are better than the alternatives. But if someone
| else only uses "atheist" and "theist" for people who feel
| completely certain about whether there are any gods, or
| uses "atheist" to mean "not positively believing in
| gods", or something, that's a defensible choice so long
| as they take the trouble to be clear about what they mean
| and refrain from cheating by equivocation.
| mistermann wrote:
| The distinction, or better: the _phenomenon_ I am trying
| to get at is that people (including genuinely smart
| people) commonly mix up ~intent and ability / actual
| behaviour.
|
| For example, consider someone who says "I am moral,
| because I am _a Christian_ ", but then sneaks off and
| cheats on his wife. Or, consider a physics teacher who
| says "You can learn physics from me, because _I am
| knowledgeable in physics_ ", but then starts lecturing
| and the content is incorrect.
|
| So too with "atheists" who believe that _simply declaring
| oneself to be_ a certain way is adequate to _achieve_ the
| intent.
|
| Note that atheists (also Scientific Materialist
| fundamentalists like Sean Carroll or NDT, etc) are just a
| particularly common (and hilarious, because of the irony
| + self-confidence) manifestation of this abstract
| phenomenon, it is common in any ideology, derived from
| fundamental flaws in how our culture teaches (or not) how
| to think ("Use logic, evidence, critical thinking,
| etc"...except no methodology accompanies the motto,
| people think simply _declaring it_ to be so _makes it_
| so).
|
| Or maybe another angle to think of it from: rewind 200
| years and consider how Western culture was broadly ok
| with racism and slavery - that's how we currently are
| with our cultural norms on thinking.
| gjm11 wrote:
| This seems like a separate thing from what you were
| talking about before. (Unless you're referring again to
| the "no positive belief in gods" definition of "atheism",
| but I don't think you can be since in fact if you
| sincerely declare that you have no positive belief in any
| gods then that _does_ pretty much mean that you in fact
| have no such belief.)
|
| If all you're saying is that some people make a lot of
| fuss about being rational, informed by evidence, etc.,
| and then fail to be sufficiently rational, informed by
| evidence, etc. -- well, yes, people are fallible and
| think too highly of themselves, and I expect that state
| of affairs to continue at least until the Glorious
| Transhuman Future, should any version of that ever
| arrive, and probably beyond. I don't see any particular
| reason to think that atheists overestimate themselves
| more than theists do.
|
| Also, I think more highly of e.g. Sean Carroll's
| rationality than it seems you do, and I see _absolutely
| no reason_ to think that he isn 't genuinely attempting,
| with more success than most, to apply logic and critical
| thinking to evidence. If you claim he's just mouthing
| those words and thinks that saying them makes him
| rational, then I would be interested to know on what
| grounds you think so.
|
| Also also, although I don't find Richard Dawkins super-
| impressive when he argues against religion[1], if you
| think he isn't substantially more rational and more
| evidence-led than most of the people he argues with[2]
| then I fear you're severely overstating his shortcomings.
|
| [1] His writing on evolutionary biology is generally very
| good.
|
| [2] Most, not all. I am not claiming that there is no one
| reasonable on Team Theism.
| mistermann wrote:
| > since in fact if you sincerely declare that you have no
| positive belief in any gods then that does pretty much
| mean that you in fact have no such belief.
|
| If one _declares_ one 's mind to operate in a specific
| way, it operates that way? How does that work? And what
| should one think about the plentiful evidence available
| online of Atheists (Scientists, Rationalists, Experts,
| etc) _demonstrating_ that their perceived /intended
| cognition isn't how their actual cognition works? _Shall
| we ignore it_?
|
| I am pointing to a _genuinely_ interesting phenomenon
| here....it is _always and everywhere, right in front of
| (behind?) our noses_. Perhaps there 's something about it
| that makes it ~not possible to see it?
|
| > If all you're saying is that some people make a lot of
| fuss about being rational, informed by evidence, etc.,
| and then fail to be sufficiently rational, informed by
| evidence, etc.
|
| It isn't, and the evidence of that is right there above.
|
| > well, yes, people are fallible and think too highly of
| themselves, and I expect that state of affairs to
| continue at least until the Glorious Transhuman Future,
| should any version of that ever arrive, and probably
| beyond.
|
| This is an interesting _and common_ (a literal philosophy
| professor succumbed to it under testing not more than a
| week ago) behavior when the idea of improving upon
| cultural defaults is suggested: framing it as an
| uninteresting, "everyone knows" fact of life, or an
| absurd strawman, _or both_.
|
| Out of curiosity: do you ever observe patterns of
| cognitive behavior in ( _all!_ ) Humans? It's really
| quite interesting, I highly recommend it!
|
| > I don't see any particular reason to think that
| atheists overestimate themselves more than theists do.
|
| Have you gone looking for it?
|
| Regardless: this is not the point of contention, let's
| try to avoiding sliding the topic.
|
| > Also, I think more highly of e.g. Sean Carroll's
| rationality than it seems you do, and I see absolutely no
| reason to think that he isn't genuinely attempting, with
| more success than most, to apply logic and critical
| thinking to evidence.
|
| The point isn't whether he's better than most, the point
| is that he suffers from the very same problems he mocks
| others for - it is usually to a lesser degree, _perhaps_
| , but on an absolute scale, _how bad is he_?
|
| It seems to me that Theists, Conspiracy Theorists, Trump
| supporters, _all the usual suspects_ are always fair game
| for criticism, but when the same is done to The Right
| People, for some reason that 's inappropriate, _if not
| outright disallowed_. And yet: is openness to criticism
| not often held up as _why_ these superior disciplines are
| superior?
|
| > If you claim he's just mouthing those words and thinks
| that saying them makes him rational, then I would be
| interested to know on what grounds you think so.
|
| More like: "mouthing those words and thinking that _he
| is_ rational " (in an ~absolute sense, as opposed to
| _more rational_ ).
|
| > Also also, although I don't find Richard Dawkins super-
| impressive when he argues against religion[1], if you
| think he isn't substantially more rational and more
| evidence-led than most of the people he argues with[2]
| then I fear you're severely overstating his shortcomings.
|
| To me, his debates are like the move Dumb and Dumber.
| Dawkins is dumb, his opponents are _typically_ dumber.
| Have you ever seen him go up against someone with some
| mental horsepower? I haven 't, but check out this video
| with NDT opining on philosophy, in discussion with Kurt
| Jaimungal (a heavyweight in my books):
|
| "Philosophers Are USELESS!" Neil & Curt Clash on Physics
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye9OkJih3-U
|
| _How embarrassing_. But also useful - Neil (and Rich,
| and to a lesser degree Sean) are like walking poster boys
| for the phenomenon I 'm discussing.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I agree Dawkins shouldn't be talking about theology in
| general as he obviously hasn't studied it. He is fine to
| great in explaining the evolutionary evidence why young
| earth creationism is wrong, but is out of his depth when
| discussing the bigger picture. That doesn't make him an
| idiot.
| mistermann wrote:
| Ok, what term do you believe should be applied to someone
| who professionally mocks people's intellectual
| shortcomings (real or imagined...this gets into another
| variation of the phenomenon), and in so doing
| demonstrates that he too suffers from the very same
| abstract problem, to the cheers of audiences who also
| suffer from the same problem (many of whom will then
| recommend his work, spreading this mind virus (both data
| & methodology) ever further)?
|
| Is the irony of this circle jerk of delusion not a bit
| thick?
| tanepiper wrote:
| Well my position comes from some of the positions Dawkins
| has publicly stated, when he really didn't need to speak up
| in those circles.
|
| Maybe you find 'idiot' a strong word? The problem with
| someone like Dawkins is he is 'clever' - someone who
| doesn't understand that in his position it's better to not
| wield it like a weapon. This is why I prefer someone like
| Sean Carroll, who absolutely entertains some bonkers ideas,
| but never from a position of superiority or dismissal - but
| rather challenges it rationally.
| carrozo wrote:
| What are your thoughts on what Donald Hoffman has been
| pursuing?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_D._Hoffman
| brotchie wrote:
| Compelling.
|
| I really buy his argument about our interior experience being
| a multimodal user interface (MUI) over stimulus from some
| information system. We describe the universe in terms of a 4D
| space-time with forces and particles, but this is really the
| MUI we've constructed (or evolution has constructed) that
| maximizes our predictive power when "actuating" our MUI (e.g
| interacting with that external system).
|
| I haven't thought about this before, and kinda rejected it on
| first reading of Hoffman's work, but think I grok it now.
| Because our internal experience is a MUI, and that MUI (4D
| space time, particles) can't be considered a "true reality",
| it's just an interface, then other conscious entities are
| more "real" than our MUI. That is, the fundamental true
| reality that really matters is other conscious agents (e.g.
| Conscious Realism).
|
| A slightly more wacky theory I like to think about is how
| this intersects with the simulation argument. If our reality
| isn't ring 0 (e.g. there's an outer reality that is actually
| time-stepping our universe), then the conscious interior
| experience we have in our reality may be due to the
| properties of reality in the outer universe "leaking through"
| into our simulation.
|
| This actually aligns well with the Hoffman's MUI argument. We
| live in some information processing system. Through evolution
| we've constructed a MUI that we see as 4D space time. But
| this doesn't at all reflect the true reality of our universe
| being a process simulated in the ring 0 reality. Conscious
| Realism then arises because ring 0 reality has properties
| that imbue pattern of information processing with interior
| experience.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Assertion 1 is quite weak. The stronger version is that
| consciousness is the mechanism by which the universe processes
| information, and choice (as we experience it) is the mechanism
| by which the universe updates its state. Under this assertion,
| the laws of physics are nothing more than an application of the
| central limit theorem on the distribution of conscious choices
| made by all the little bits of the universe involved in the
| system. This view also implies that space and reality are
| "virtual" or "imaginary" much like George Berkeley suggested
| 300 years ago.
| brotchie wrote:
| I'm starting to buy this argument after rejecting it before
| (primarily thought ignorance of the meaning of "consciousness
| is the mechanism by which the universe processes
| information").
|
| Also intersects with Hoffman's argument re: Conscious
| Realism. The only real thing is conscious experience, and
| "reality" as used in common parlance is just a multimodal
| user interface constructed to maximize evolutionary fitness.
| naasking wrote:
| > The interior experience of somebody who vehemently denies the
| hard problem must be so much different from my interior
| experience to the extend that the divide can't be bridged.
|
| Internal experiences are probably a bit different, but it's a
| mistake to think this is the only reason to deny the hard
| problem. We all experience perceptual illusions of various
| types, auditory, visual, etc. In other words, perceptions are
| useful but deeply flawed. Why do you think your perceptions of
| subjective, qualitative experience doesn't have these same
| issues? I see no factual reason to treat them differently,
| therefore I simply don't naively trust what my perception of
| conscious experience suggests might be true, eg. that
| subjective experience is cohesive, without gaps, ineliminable,
| ineffable, etc.
|
| Once you accept this fact, the hard problem starts looking a
| lot like a god of the gaps.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| To me it seems your reply is conflating consciousness with
| perception. The perception is the consciousness. Auditory
| illusion, for example, is just signals to the senses and your
| senses miss-representing the inputs. The consciousness is the
| part which is aware of these sensations. If they are accurate
| or not - is not the point. The point is that you are aware of
| them.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| I have an alternative, more generous explanation of your 2nd
| point - the people you talk about haven't done much reflection
| about consciousness yet and are so immersed in it that they
| cannot separate their own conscious experience as an entity to
| talk about. Like fish and water. Just like you said - it was
| also your position when you were younger. The people you label
| as having a different interior experience might be in the same
| position as your younger self.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I've never understood why Chalmer's reasoning is so captivating
| to people. The whole idea of p-zombies seems absurd on its face.
| Quoting the article:
|
| (quote) His core argument against materialism,
| in its original form, is deceptively (and delightfully) simple:
| 1. In our world, there are conscious experiences. 2.
| There is a logically possible world physically identical to ours,
| in which the positive facts about consciousness in our world do
| not hold. 3. Therefore, facts about consciousness are
| further facts about our world, over and above the physical facts.
| 4. So, materialism is false.
|
| (endquote)
|
| Point 2 is textbook begging the question: it imagines a world
| which is physically identical to ours but consciousness is
| different there. That is baking in the presupposition that
| consciousness is not a physical process. Points 3 and 4 then
| "cleverly" detect the very contradiction he has planted and
| claims victory.
| codeflo wrote:
| If you believe that what we describe as "consciousness" is
| emergent from the ideas a material brain develops about itself,
| then it's in fact not logically possible to have a world that
| is physically identical to ours yet does not contain
| consciousness. So indeed, premise 2. sneaks in the conclusion.
|
| To illustrate this point, here's an argument with the same
| structure that would similarly "prove" that gravity doesn't
| cause things to fall down:
|
| 1. In our world, there is gravity and things fall down.
|
| 2. There is a logically possible world where there is gravity
| yet things do not fall down.
|
| 3. Therefore, things falling down is a further fact about our
| world, over and above gravity.
|
| 4. So, gravity causing things to fall down is false.
| goatlover wrote:
| But Chalmers doesn't think that approach works, nor any other
| physicalist attempt to explain consciousness. The problem
| with what you stated is that you're substituting ideas about
| consciousness for sensations. And those aren't the same
| thing. We experience sensations as part of being embodied
| organisms, and then we think about those sensations.
| codeflo wrote:
| I'm making an argument about the validity of an argument. A
| rebuttal to that can never be "but the conclusion is true".
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It's quite clear if you approach these things logically
| that Chalmers doesn't do a lot of thinking before coming up
| with these arguments. All of his arguments boil down to "if
| we assume that consciousness is different from everything
| else, then it's different from everything else". He gets
| way, way too much attention for someone who is sub mediocre
| in his reasoning.
|
| He also doesn't understand what computation is, even though
| he often makes confident statements about it. He thinks
| computation is a subjective process, that something only
| counts as a computation if someone interprets it as such,
| which is simply wrong, not a debatable topic. And this is
| the core of one of his other arguments about why
| consciousness can't be a computational process.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| There are a number of ways to determine that
| consciousness is not a computational process. Roger
| Penrose is a good source on this.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There is not. It's by the far the most likely
| explanation, and even if you don't agree with that, it is
| at least completely consistent with everything we know
| about computation.
| mistermann wrote:
| > If you believe that what we describe as "consciousness" is
| emergent from the ideas a material brain develops about
| itself, then it's in fact not logically possible to have a
| world that is physically identical to ours yet does not
| contain consciousness.
|
| This sneaks in an implicit axiom: that the brain is not only
| necessary, but is also sufficient, _necessarily_ , for
| consciousness (implicitly ruling out some unknown outside,
| non-materialistic force(s)).
| empath75 wrote:
| I don't think your point 2 is directly analogous to his point
| 2.
|
| Because a world where things do not fall down is not
| physically identical to a world in which they don't.
|
| I think the point of arguing about p-zombies is this. Do you
| believe it's possible for a human being to exhibit all the
| external characteristics of consciousness without an internal
| conscious experience? And if you believe that's true, then
| you can posit a world which is physically indistinguishable
| from our world through any experiment in which consciousness
| simply does not exist, because, as far as I know, there is no
| test that can prove that an individual does have an internal
| consciousness, and isn't merely mimicking it. Most arguments
| that p-zombies don't exist sort of rely on the internal
| conscious experience of the person making it, which no one
| else has access to -- "I have an internal conscious
| experience of the world, other people are similar to me and
| so they must also have those experiences."
|
| That is _not_ true about a world in which gravity does not
| exist for obvious reasons. That universe would be very
| different from ours and easily distinguishible through
| experiment.
|
| I think his point does hinge on whether it's possible for
| p-zombies to exist, but it's not as silly as you all are
| making it out to be, and it is not begging the question.
|
| I actually think his weakest point is part 3 and 4, because I
| think mostly the problem is that we don't really have good
| definitions of consciousness and related concepts let alone a
| complete physical explanation of their origins, and his whole
| argument hinges on the fact that we currently don't have a
| way to test for internal conscious experience, but I think
| that might not always be true.
| observationist wrote:
| You experience your own consciousness - your own model of
| your self, time, and the world as perceived through your
| physical sensory apparatus. This could give you a
| probability of 100% certainty of your own consciousness.
| You're a good skeptic, though, and after much
| consideration, you decide that, despite absence of evidence
| to the contrary, you'll allow for 2% uncertainty, since you
| might be a simulation specifically designed to "feel"
| conscious, or some other bizarre circumstance.
|
| Knowing this, you compare your own experience with reports
| by others, and find that, despite some startling variety in
| social and cultural practice, humans all more or less go
| through life experiencing the world in a way that more or
| less maps to your own experiences. You find that even Helen
| Keller, despite her tragic disability, wrote about
| experiences which you can simulate for yourself. You
| conclude that if you somehow swapped places with her, she
| would be able to map the sensory input of your physical
| sensors to her own experience of the world, and vice versa.
|
| This leads you to think that our physical brains are
| performing a process that models the world, and it does so
| consistently. After reading up on people's experiences, you
| also learn that our subjective experiences are constructed,
| moment by moment, by a combination of these world models,
| real-time stimulation, abstract feedback loops of conscious
| and unconscious thinking.
|
| The more you read, the more evidence you have of this
| strange loop being the default case for every instance of a
| human having a brain and being alive.
|
| The Bayesian probability that you are conscious, because of
| your brain, given all available evidence, approaches 100%
| certainty. You conclude your brain is more or less the same
| as anyone else's brain, broadly speaking, and this is
| supported by the evidence provided by a vast majority of
| accounts from other similarly brained individuals through
| all of human history.
|
| Since your brain doesn't have a particular difference upon
| which to pin your experience of consciousness, and the
| evidence doesn't speak to any need for explanation, Occam's
| razor leads you to the conclusion that the simplest
| explanation is also the best. The living human brain is
| necessary and sufficient for consciousness, and
| consciousness is the default case for any living human
| brain.
|
| The posterior probability that any given human (with a
| "normal" living brain) is conscious approaches 100%
| certainty, unless you can specifically provide evidence to
| the contrary. Saying "but what if p-zombies exist" makes
| for a diverting thought experiment, but it's rationally
| equivalent to saying "but what if little invisible unicorns
| are the ones actually experiencing things" or "what if
| we're all in the Matrix and it's a simulation" or "what if
| we're just an oddly persistent Boltzmann brain in an
| energetic nebula somewhere in the universe."
|
| Without evidence, p-zombies are a plot device, not a
| legitimate rational launching off point for theorizing
| about anything serious.
|
| Humans are conscious. We have neural correlates, endless
| recorded evidence, all sorts of second hand reporting which
| can compare and contrast our own first hand experiences and
| arrive at rational conclusions. Insisting on some arbitrary
| threshold of double blind, first hand, objective replicable
| evidence is not necessary, and even a bit shortsighted and
| silly, since the thing we are talking about cannot be
| directly shared or communicated. At some point, we'll be
| able to map engrams and share conscious experience directly
| between brains using BCI, and the translation layer between
| individuals will be studied, and we'll have chains of
| double blinded, replicable experiments that give us
| visibility into the algorithms of conscious experience.
|
| Without direct interfaces to the brain and a robust
| knowledge of neural operation, we're left with tools of
| abstract reasoning. There's no good reason for p-zombies -
| they cannot exist, given the evidence, so we'd be better
| served by thinking about things that are real.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >since you might be a simulation specifically designed to
| "feel" conscious
|
| I would argue this is actually consciousness also. If
| (and yea, it's a big if) consciousness is an internal
| model/simulation of how we experience reality, then a
| simulation of a simulation is still a simulation.
| observationist wrote:
| I agree - once you've settled your math on consciousness,
| you can go back and modify the priors based on new
| evidence. One of the crazier suppositions that actually
| makes a dent in the posterior probability is the
| simulation hypothesis.
|
| If all civilizations that develop computation and
| simulation capabilities converge to the development of
| high fidelity simulations, then it's highly likely that
| they would create simulations of interesting periods of
| history, such as the period of time when computers, the
| internet, AI, and other technologies were developed. We
| just so happen to be living through that - I still put my
| odds of living in base reality somewhere above 98%, but
| there is a distinct possibility that we're all being
| simulated so that this period of history can be iterated
| and perturbed and studied, or some such scenario.
|
| Maybe someone ought to start studying the science of
| universal adversarial simulation attacks, to elicit some
| glitches in the matrix. That'd be one hell of a paper.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >That'd be one hell of a paper
|
| Until 'they' restore the checkpoint and arrange your
| teams plane to fall out of the sky.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Is a video game a conscious experience for a computer?
|
| Now imagine an internal video game in a computer system
| that is being generated from the real world inputs of what
| it sees/hears/feels around it. You take outside input,
| simulate it, record some information on it, and output
| feedback into the real world.
|
| Many people would say this isn't consciousness, but I
| personally disagree. You have input, processing,
| introspection, and output. The loops that occur in the
| human brain are more complex, but you have the same things
| occurring. There is electrical processing and chemical
| reactions occurring in the humans mind. Just because we
| don't understand their exact processing doesn't mean they
| are unrelated to consciousness. Moreso we can turn this
| consciousness off with drugs and stop said electrical
| processing.
| lumb63 wrote:
| To elaborate on your statement, we all think in very
| different ways. Recently there was an academic test posted
| here that evaluated "how" a person thinks (internal
| monologue, use of images, how memories are recalled, etc.).
| After my girlfriend and I both took the test and I saw how
| differently we both think, I was shocked. Had we not taken
| this quiz I'd have assumed the inside of her mind
| fundamentally worked the same way as mine does. But that is
| seemingly very far from the truth.
|
| As where I can visualize, use internal monologue, vividly
| recall my memories, etc. at will, by default I do none of
| the above, and my thoughts are opaque to me. For her, she
| almost exclusively uses her internal monologue when
| thinking, and her entire thought process is consciously
| visible to her. It's entirely conceivable that other people
| might not have an experience of "consciousness" resembling
| anything like what my idea of consciousness is.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| That sounds like a really interesting test, do you have a
| link?
| nonce42 wrote:
| Midazolam/Versed sedation seems pretty close to a p-zombie.
| You can have someone who seems completely awake, walking
| around and interacting normally, but if you ask them later
| they were completely unconscious from their own
| perspective. So self-reported consciousness isn't always
| accurate. And it also seems that consciousness is very
| closely tied to memory.
|
| (I'm not arguing a particular position, but trying to
| figure out what to make of this. Also, this is based on
| what I've read, not personal experience.)
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> You can have someone who seems completely awake,
| walking around and interacting normally, but if you ask
| them later they were completely unconscious from their
| own perspective_
|
| Were they unconscious, or are they now unable to remember
| what they did? I.e. amnesiac.
| RaftPeople wrote:
| > _Do you believe it 's possible for a human being to
| exhibit all the external characteristics of consciousness
| without an internal conscious experience?_
|
| Nobody knows whether conscious experience is a requirement
| or not to "exhibit all of the external characteristics".
|
| It's possible that the only way to get from state N to
| state N+1 is to include the consciousness function as part
| of that calculation.
|
| A counter to this would be that a lookup table of states
| would produce the same external characteristics without
| consciousness.
|
| A counter to that counter would be that the consciousness
| function is required to produce state N+1 from state N. The
| creation of the lookup table must have invoked the
| consciousness function to arrive at and store state N+1.
|
| The thing we just don't really know is whether state N+1
| can be derived from state N without the consciousness
| function being invoked.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Your Step 2 is so off as an analogy, it's possible you don't
| understand Chalmer's point.
| chr1 wrote:
| What is Chalmers saying then? As i understand he is saying
| that there can be a world where conciousness does not
| exist, but all the possible physical experiments cannot
| distinguish between that world and our world. But that
| simply means the conciousness he is looking for has
| absolutely no consequence, and therefore his point has no
| value...
| patrickmay wrote:
| Well and succinctly put. One would have to be a philosopher to
| be willing to consider p-zombies further.
| RaftPeople wrote:
| Some of the arguments I've read by philosophers seem like
| they are focusing on pure logic to prove a point or find
| weakness in another, but the linkage between those logic
| stmts and reality don't always seem to be considered.
|
| It's almost like they are purely focused on symbolic logic,
| even if the stmts and symbols don't truly map to reality
| unambiguously, or without contradictions.
| empath75 wrote:
| I actually think it's worth asking the question if these
| advanced AIs are a kind of p-zombie.
| Filligree wrote:
| P-zombies are supposed to be physically identical to
| humans. They're problematic because they lack
| consciousness, yet mysteriously talk about it anyway --
| among other reasons.
|
| Advanced AI is definitely not physically identical to
| humans, and there's a well understood reason why they might
| talk about consciousness despite lacking it which doesn't
| apply to p-zombies.
| amelius wrote:
| > it imagines a world which is physically identical to ours but
| consciousness is different there
|
| So a world where people discuss consciousness but where it does
| not exist? That sounds very implausible.
| sornen wrote:
| Chalmers in point 2 is not saying to imagine such a world, but
| that such a world is logically possible. Chalmers gives as an
| example of a logical impossibility a male vixen since it is
| contradictory. He states "... a flying telephone is
| conceptually coherent, if a little out of the ordinary, so a
| flying telephone is logically possible. Nevertheless, that
| zombies are logically possible, may be begging the question,
| that consciousness is non physical.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| I'm still missing the point, I guess, as I don't think the
| question is logically possible.
|
| One might as well say: it is logically possible to have a
| universe where the physics are identical to our present
| world, except the core of the Sun is chocolate... therefore
| fusion can't be the explanation for why our Sun radiates so
| much energy.
|
| Getting back to the zombies, presuming there could be a
| zombie clone of me which is indistinguishable from the real
| me but it isn't conscious is one that needs far more support
| than just asserting it. I've heard people try to explain:
| well, imagine if a powerful computer was simulating you in
| every respect, that would be a p-zombie. But that is question
| begging, as it presumes that such a creature wouldn't be
| conscious.
|
| I feel the same way about Searle's Chinese Room -- the power
| of the argument is there only if you have already decided
| that consciousness is mystical.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| But it's _not_ logically possible if consciousness is a
| material process, a consequence of computation in the human
| brain (and potentially other places). So you can 't prove
| that consciousness is not materialistic by assuming it's not
| materialistic.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I have known some pretty vixen-y males...
| goatlover wrote:
| No, you have to take that argument in context of his other
| arguments against physical explanations for consciousness. What
| he's saying is that the physical facts do not adequately
| account for conscious experiences, which is why we can conceive
| of a universe physically identical lacking consciousness. Why
| he (and some other philosophers) think this is so is part of
| their larger arguments.
| Ukv wrote:
| > which is why we can conceive of a universe physically
| identical lacking consciousness
|
| I can conceive of it about as well as I can conceive of an
| identical universe lacking the Internet. Both seem like
| fairly direct logical contradictions, slightly disguised by
| referring to concepts that we generally think about more
| abstractly rather than their physical composition.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If you examine all of his arguments, they all end up in the
| same place. He assumes that consciousness is not necessary
| for human-like or even animal-like intelligence, and he works
| from there back to the same conclusion.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| > Point 2 is textbook begging the question: it imagines a world
| which is physically identical to ours but consciousness is
| different there.
|
| It's not begging the question. He gives reasons for (2) that
| support the premise. That the premise essentially leads
| inexorably to (4) is a feature of the argument structure, not a
| bug. You have to engage with his reasons for (2) in determining
| whether or not the argument succeeds.
| root_axis wrote:
| Why is phenomenological subjective experience a thing at all?
| Unless you're a proponent of panpsychism, we have to ask why
| living beings have it, but other natural processes do not. From
| this perspective, it's actually easier to conceive of a world
| like ours _without_ subjective experience than one with it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Unless you're a proponent of panpsychism, we have to ask
| why living beings have it, but other natural processes do
| not.
|
| No, we don't.
|
| Because, while an individual may experience it, the
| conjecture that other things do or do not have it is without
| exception an unverifiable assumption, not an observed
| phenomenon which calls for an explanation.
|
| > it's actually easier to conceive of a world like ours
| without subjective experience than one with it.
|
| This is demonstrably false, because no experiencer can
| observe subjective experience other than their own, and,
| despite that, describing the world in terms of subjective
| experience occurring in a vast array of other beings beside
| the speaker is near-universal, to the point that we
| pathologize _not_ viewing the universe that way.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _the conjecture that other things do or do not have it is
| without exception an unverifiable assumption_
|
| Yes, but ultimately, either they do or they don't, and the
| default assumption is that they don't, unless you favor
| panpsychism.
| jstanley wrote:
| The real problem with the p-zombies thing is _why do
| p-zombies talk about consciousness?_.
|
| You and I have the experience of _talking about being
| conscious_ because we have the experience of _being conscious
| in the first place_. But for a p-zombie to behave exactly the
| same as us, it would have to have some other mechanism for
| talking about being conscious that is not dependent on being
| conscious. So that would mean that _our_ talking about
| consciousness can be explained by some mechanism other than
| our being conscious in the first place! Our experience of
| consciousness, and our _talking about_ experiencing
| consciousness, could just happen to be one massive
| coincidence rather than being causally linked! Doesn 't seem
| likely, ergo no p-zombies.
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kYAuNJX2ecH2uFqZ9/the-
| genera...
| naasking wrote:
| > From this perspective, it's actually easier to conceive of
| a world like ours without subjective experience than one with
| it.
|
| Welcome to eliminative materialism!
| pixl97 wrote:
| >we have to ask why living beings have it, but other natural
| processes do not.
|
| The entropy gradient is the first one. Of course lots of
| natural processes have a bit of energy generated so it's not
| the only part.
|
| Memory is the next one. Being able to take some of that
| entropy and put it in a more orderly fashion while rejecting
| the disorganized part. Crystals can use energy to create
| ordered systems, but they don't have any means of error
| correcting.
|
| Execution/replay/updating of said memories based on input
| from the world around it.
|
| Now before humans came along 'life' was the only thing that
| could readily manage these traits, and that was after a few
| billion years of trial and error. Humans now have been going
| down the path of giving other non-living objects these
| traits. Advanced computer systems are getting closer to the
| point of recording information and acting on it in a manner
| that certainly seems like a subjective experience.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Entropy gradients are non explanations.
|
| Pointing to statistical mechanics and saying the derivative
| of an exponent is an exponent is an odd way to explain
| qualia.
| pixl97 wrote:
| They are not an explanation, they are a requirement. You
| don't have consciousness in a rock because nothing is
| happening in a rock.
| nabla9 wrote:
| > 4. So, materialism is false.
|
| Physicalism is conditionally false.
|
| If p-zombies are logically incoherent, the consciousness does
| not exist. It's an illusion. This is the argument by Daniel
| Dennet. We are zombies.
|
| I mean it's obvious to any physicalist that we don't really
| feel anything. There is no I, soul, no suffering in a in a
| rock, peas soup, or a human. It's all physical process.
| theptip wrote:
| A simple counter-argument to p-zombies that I like (I first
| encountered from Yudkowski) is:
|
| If there was no conscious experience in this identical p-zombie
| world, it would be impossible to explain why everybody falsely
| claims they have conscious experience. If people stop claiming
| this, then the world is physically different, as people no
| longer act and produce artifacts such as HN posts discussing
| the phenomenon.
|
| Or, my summary would be: conscious experience is causal, and so
| you cannot get the same universe-wide effects without it.
| naasking wrote:
| Not impossible actually. People often claim falsehoods are
| real, eg. demons, ghosts, deities, etc. If you believe it's
| possible that p-zombies could generate false beliefs about
| these other things, then consciousness would just be another
| falsehood.
| theptip wrote:
| You would need some coordinating mechanism to ensure that
| all the p-zombies have the same hallucination. Including
| some detailed state machine that takes sense inputs, and
| processes it to produce the qualia present in each waking
| moment, plus the valence attributed to each moment of
| qualia.
|
| Since a non-p-zombie can sit down and interrogate the
| details of their conscious experience, then write a book
| about it, which others read and agree upon the fine details
| - I find it hard to come up with a p-zombie substitute that
| wouldn't just be consciousness by another name.
| naasking wrote:
| > You would need some coordinating mechanism to ensure
| that all the p-zombies have the same hallucination
|
| You mean like talking and writing? As I said, how would
| p-zombies invent organized religion or other common
| spiritual beliefs that are false?
|
| > Since a non-p-zombie can sit down and interrogate the
| details of their conscious experience, then write a book
| about it, which others read and agree upon the fine
| details
|
| First, assuming you think that we're not p-zombies, not
| everybody agrees on the properties of consciousness even
| though we presumably have such an introspective ability.
| Therefore what you describe is a kind of fictional just-
| so story, and clearly doesn't actually happen in all
| cases.
|
| Second, when there is no fact of the matter as with
| p-zombies and consciousness, any argument about
| consciousness only has to be rhetorically persuasive, not
| factual. Why do so many people agree on the broad
| properties of ghosts, eg. translucency, pass through
| physical objects, etc. despite such things not existing?
| There is no fact of the matter being described, so people
| just need to like the story being told, or perhaps how
| it's told.
|
| In such a world, Chalmers and other philosophers of
| consciousness are just persuasive writers that spin a
| convincing just-so story connecting fictional internal
| states to real world observations, and people/p-zombies
| run with it thinking they learned something meaningful.
|
| Suffice it to say, I think this is uncomfortably close to
| our world.
| naasking wrote:
| Chalmers' argument is more of an intuition pump to clarify your
| thinking. If premise 2 seems plausible, then you probably
| cannot be a physicalist. If you're a die-hard physicalist, then
| you probably have to deny premise 1 and/or 2.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "logically possible world physically identical"
|
| "Point 2 is textbook begging the question"
|
| -> It is a thought experiment.
|
| He is proposing a possible postulate to spur talking about the
| ideas. It isn't a 'proof'.
|
| Just like we don't argue with Schrodinger about the absurdity
| of a half dead cat.
| sireat wrote:
| The thing is we are acting like 99.9% p-zombies for most of our
| interactions with the world - that is we are acting
| unconsciosly for most of what we do.
|
| The question is where does that subjective 0.01% - the rider on
| top of the elephant come from?
|
| We generally do not pay attention to walking, breathing or
| brushing teeth and so on.
|
| We can do more complex tasks as well once we achieve
| unconscious mastery in some subject.
|
| With proper training we can play chess or tennis ("The Inner
| Game of Tennis") at a high level, without paying attention. In
| fact it can be detrimental to think about one's performance.
|
| It is the Dennett's "multiple drafts model" - but where does
| the subjective experience arise when some model is brought to
| foreground "thread"?
|
| Thus allure of Chalmer's zombies. Why not have a 100% zombie?
|
| There are many stories of people seemingly being conscious, yet
| not really.
|
| Black out drunks driving home from a bar.
|
| Hypoglycemic shock is another example - my wife's diabetic
| friend was responding seemingly logically and claiming to be
| conscious, yet she was not and paramedics were barely able to
| save her.
|
| A human being can achieve very high levels on unconscious
| mastery in multiple subjects.
|
| A very tired me gave a remote lecture (on intermediate Python)
| during Covid where I switched spoken languages mid-lecture and
| even answered questions in a different language. Meanwhile I
| was was half asleep and thinking about a different subject
| matter. I was not really aware of the lecture material - I had
| given the same lecture many times before - I was on autopilot.
|
| Only after watching the Zoom recording I realized what had
| happened.
|
| Thus, are there are some actions that our zombie (unconscious)
| states unable to produce?
|
| Presumably, subjective experience helps in planning future
| actions. That could be one avenue to explore.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| Just wanted to say how much I like your answer. To me one of
| the bigger puzzles is why people have such different takes on
| consciousness. To some the idea of p-zombies is immediately
| clear. To others it is nonsense. But during my conversations
| about the topic I was never able to explain it adequately to
| someone sceptical. And from my perspective they (the
| sceptics) always conflate being conscious with talking,
| learning, thinking, remembering, etc.
| causal wrote:
| Good points. Part of my issue with these discussions is the
| poor vocabulary we have for consciousness. Your comment alone
| probably touches on several types of consciousness. The kind
| of consciousness we're experiencing undoubtedly varies
| greatly by time and circumstance.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| You can't skip over step 1, this is an axiom. I see more
| materialists denying they have consciousness and free will.
| Kind of funny actually.
| andoando wrote:
| P-zombies is a thought experiment to demonstrate the hard
| problem of consciousness, it is not, in itself, an argument
| against materialism.
|
| I can certainly imagine a robot that imitates all of human
| behaviors. If you hit it, it goes "Ow" and retracts, if you ask
| it if its conscious it says "yes". We can this imagine being
| created out of our completely physical electrical components,
| so the question becomes what is the difference between the
| imitation of consciousness and the consciousness we experience?
| This is interesting as in this day and age, we can totally
| imagine building such a robot, yet we'd have a tough time
| believing it is actually conscious.
|
| Now, whether you are a materialist or not depends entirely on
| whether or not you believe conscious experience like yours can
| emerge out of physical components.
|
| My take on this is: Materialism/physicalism is ill defined and
| materialism/physicalism and dualism are compatible. We consider
| completely mysterious properties like energy and now even
| randomness (things happen one way or another for no reason) as
| being fundamental physical facts about the universe.
| Theoretically, how does this differ from saying consciousness
| is a fundamental physical property?
|
| Moreover, you have to consider the fact that the "material"
| world IS an imagination of the mind. Whatever facts or
| attributes we assign to being material is limited to the mental
| facilities of the brain.
|
| At the end of the day, the question is, what fundamental facts
| do we need to explain the observations that we make? I can
| observe that I feel, see, hear things. Can the fundamental
| facts of the current physics model explain this? No? Then we
| must add to it an additional property, making it part of the
| standard physics model. If you want proof, you must either A.
| explain how consciousness can emerge out of existing known
| "material" processes, B. Admit consciousness as a "material"
| property and define the process by which it combines, reduces,
| etc. (the combination problem of panpsychism)
| codeflo wrote:
| As a thought experiment, imagine we were to scan the position of
| every molecule in the human body to the Heisenberg limit of
| accuracy. Imagine we were to plug the resulting model in a
| physics simulation that models every biochemical and physical
| interaction with perfect fidelity. This is a thought experiment,
| and what I suggest isn't ruled out by physics, so let's assume
| it's technologically possible. Would the simulated being be
| "conscious" in the same way the original human is? Would it
| experience "qualia"?
|
| If you think the answer might be no, then congratulations, you
| actually believe in immaterial souls, no matter how materialist
| or rationalist you otherwise claim to be.
| mistermann wrote:
| Not necessarily, one could be a Pedant.
| vundercind wrote:
| Only holds if whatever hardware that's pretending to be the
| matter can act exactly like the matter without _being_ the same
| thing.
|
| For the distinction, consider the difference between a
| simulation of a simple chemical process in a computer--even a
| perfectly accurate one!--and the actual thing happening. Is the
| thing going on in the computer the same? No, no matter how
| perfect the simulation. It's a little electricity moving
| around, looking nothing whatsoever like the real thing. The
| simulation is _meaning_ that we impose on that electricity
| moving around.
|
| That being the case, this reduces to "if we recreate the matter
| and state exactly, for-real, is that consciousness?" in which
| case yeah, sure, probably so.
|
| This doesn't work if the _thing_ running the simulation
| requires interpretation.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| exactly, The parent post does not address the issue of
| _representation_ vs reality.
|
| You can simulate every molecular interaction in a fire, but
| that does not mean the simulation gives off the same heat.
| You can write a perfectly accurate equation for splitting an
| atom, but the equation does not release energy.
| codeflo wrote:
| > You can simulate every molecular interaction in a fire,
| but that does not mean the simulation gives off the same
| heat
|
| It would to a simulated being standing next to the fire.
|
| > You can write a perfectly accurate equation for splitting
| an atom, but the equation does not release energy.
|
| It releases simulated energy inside the simulation.
|
| Every material interaction is simulated. If you believe
| that consciousness can't exist in the simulation, then you
| believe that consciousness is not a material interaction,
| q.e.d.
| vundercind wrote:
| It's some electrons moving around. Any further meaning of
| that is only what we assign to it.
|
| Unless your "computer" is identical matter in the same
| arrangement and state is the original, actually doing
| stuff.
|
| This is why the "what if you slowly simulated the entire
| universe on an infinite beach moving rocks around to
| represent the state? Could anything in it be conscious?"
| thing isn't my very interesting.
|
| No, you're just shoving rocks around on sand. They don't
| mean anything except what you decide they do. Easy
| answer.
| MrScruff wrote:
| Doesn't materialism imply that a perfectly accurate
| simulation of the universe would be identical to the
| universe we live in? If not, in what possible way could
| the two be distinguished?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Every material interaction is simulated. If you believe
| that consciousness can't exist in the simulation, then
| you believe that consciousness is not a material
| interaction
|
| I think that is missing the point. You are literally
| changing the material and medium by conducting a
| simulation.
|
| Releasing simulated energy within a simulation is not
| identical to releasing real energy in the real world. The
| former is purely representational, and even a perfectly
| simulated object retains this property, and lack of
| equivalence.
|
| a simulated atom is not a real atom, no mater their
| similarlity.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| When we refer to heat we refer to the increase in entropy
| that has specific effects to things in our world. We can
| also describe a generic "disordered" state, which doesn't
| imply a similar kind of causal compatibility. A simulation
| of entropy is equally disordered with no caveats despite
| not being exactly entropy due to the causal compatibility
| issue. Why think consciousness is like entropy rather than
| like disorder?
|
| In other words, why think consciousness is a physical
| property of some specific kind of matter rather than an
| abstract property that can supervene on any sufficiently
| robust physical substrate?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >why think consciousness is a physical property of some
| specific kind of matter rather than an abstract property
| that can supervene on any sufficiently robust physical
| substrate?
|
| Im open to the idea that consciousness could arise on
| different substrates, but hold that the substrate is
| relevant, and we dont have a working definition of
| "robustness".
|
| This is part of a bigger challenge in which I claim there
| is no such thing as a perfect simulation.
|
| Simulation requires representation, which requires
| requires remaining differences unrepresented. Otherwise
| you just have just created the same thing, not a
| simulation.
|
| You can simulate the interaction of physical object with
| other physical objects using electronic object
| interacting with other electronic objects, but the two
| are not the same. The electronic object still can not
| interact with a physical object.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| >Simulation requires representation, which requires
| requires remaining differences unrepresented
|
| Right. But presumably not all physical properties of
| brains are necessary for consciousness. For example, the
| fact that action potentials happen on the order of 1ms to
| 1 second probably isn't intrinsic to consciousness. That
| is, there is no in principle problem with having
| consciousness supervene on neural networks that have much
| longer cycles for the basic substrate of communication.
| It also probably doesn't matter that neurons communicate
| through opening and closing ion channels, are made of
| carbon atoms, are constructed by protein assemblies
| produced from DNA, etc.
|
| What we need is to represent every necessary feature and
| relationship involved in manifesting consciousness. As a
| first pass estimation, it seems very likely that only the
| information-bearing structures are necessary for
| consciousness. But the information-bearing structures are
| substrate independent. It follows that a perfect
| simulation of these information-bearing structures
| engaged in their typical dynamics would be conscious.
|
| >You can simulate the interaction [...] but the two are
| not the same.
|
| This idea that something needs to be "the same" is doing
| a lot of work in your argument. But most relationships
| involved in brains are incidental to consciousness. We
| need to get clear on what the necessary features of
| consciousness are. This is the only measure of sameness
| that matters, not superficial resemblance.
| amelius wrote:
| Ok, next experiment.
|
| Imagine you took a brain and replaced one neuron by a
| transistor (or gate) that performs the exact same function as
| the neuron.
|
| Now replace more and more neurons until all neurons are now
| transistors.
|
| Would the resulting being be conscious and experience qualia,
| like the original did? If not, at what point was there a
| notable change?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
| vundercind wrote:
| The same function, down to quantum and gravity et c effects
| on everything around it, and accepting and reacting to
| same? Yeah probably, but we're back to having to "run" this
| on the same arrangement of actual matter as the original.
|
| [edit] there's an obvious attack on this, but I'll go ahead
| and note my position on it: the whole premise that we can
| do any of this without just _using actual matter the
| ordinary way_ is so far into magical territory that we
| might as well ask "what if lephuchans simulated it?" or
| "what if god imagined the simulation?"--well ok, sure, I
| guess if magic is involved that could work, but what's the
| point of even considering it?
|
| "What if a miracle occurred?" isn't a rebuttal to the
| position that consciousness as we know it likely can't be
| simulated by simulating physics, because you can rebut
| anything with it. Its admission to a discussion is the same
| as giving up on figuring out anything.
| mistermann wrote:
| > there's an obvious attack on this, but I'll go ahead
| and note my position on it: the whole premise that we can
| do any of this without just using actual matter the
| ordinary way is so far into magical territory that we
| might as well ask "what if lephuchans simulated it?" or
| "what if god imagined the simulation?"--well ok, sure, I
| guess if magic is involved that could work, but what's
| the point of even considering it?
|
| That's one of the main points of using a thought
| experiment: by declaring axioms explicitly, by fiat
| ("true" _by definition_ ), it prevents the mind from
| taking advantage of _thought terminating_ get out of jail
| free cards like this, it forces people to argue their
| point.
| swid wrote:
| Are you questioning if physics is computable? Even if it is
| not fully, we must be able to approximate it quite well.
|
| Suppose we scan more than just the person, but a local
| environment around them and simulated the whole box.
|
| The update that occurs as the person sits in the room
| involves them considering their own existence. Maybe they
| create art about it. If the simulation is to produce accurate
| results, they will need to feel alive to themselves.
|
| We agree we can simulate an explosion and get accurate
| results; if we can't get an accurate simulation of a person,
| why?
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| >It's a little electricity moving around, looking nothing
| whatsoever like the real thing.
|
| Why does "looking ... like the real thing" have any relevance
| for consciousness? What property of a conscious substance is
| captured by this "looking like" criteria? Is consciousness
| (partially) a feature of the substrate itself or how the
| substrate moves through some background consciousness aether,
| or something else? If you can't articulate what this special
| criteria is, then why think a simulation isn't conscious,
| which by assumption reproduces all information dynamics of
| the physical phenomena?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > If you think the answer might be no, then congratulations,
| you actually believe in immaterial souls
|
| If you scan a body of water, and simulate it perfectly, the
| resulting simulation will not be wet. You can't separate a
| material process from the material _completely_. Consciousness
| may be a result of carbon being a substrate in the
| interactions. It might be because the brain is wet when those
| processes happen. There is plenty of room between believing a
| perfect computational simulation is not conscious and believing
| in immaterial souls.
| codeflo wrote:
| > If you scan a body of water, and simulate it perfectly, the
| resulting simulation will not be wet.
|
| It will be wet to the simulated being that's swimming in it.
|
| > Consciousness may be a result of carbon being a substrate
| in the interactions.
|
| Are you conscious? If so, how did you find out that you're
| made from actual carbon atoms and not simulated ones?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > It will be wet to the simulated being that's swimming in
| it.
|
| Which has an entirely different qualia to us, the beings
| who consciousness we are trying to unravel.
|
| > Are you conscious?
|
| That's the big question.
|
| > If so, how did you find out that you're made from actual
| carbon atoms and not simulated ones?
|
| If I assume I'm conscious, whatever my atoms are, they are
| the atoms of concern with regard to said consciousness.
| amelius wrote:
| What if you forked the simulator? Would there be two
| consciousnesses experiencing qualia?
| igleria wrote:
| I feel like I've seen this exact post this week on the same
| topic on this website. Am I going mental, or is hackernews
| merging duplicate posts?
| strogonoff wrote:
| The "total scan" argument, when presented to further a
| physicalist stance ("surely if we were to scan you using some
| fantasy tech X we would get an exact copy of you, including any
| consciousness if it exists, and to deny that is to believe in
| ghosts"), is unconvincing on at least two counts: 1) fantasy
| tech illustrating axiomatic belief in particular physical
| models that are in vogue today but will not hold in the long
| run (Heisenberg limit? who is she?); and 2) believing that the
| only alternative to monistic materialism is body-soul dualism,
| which is depressingly common among STEM folk philosophical
| naivete.
|
| The most obvious objection is that perceived time-space is a
| map of some fundamentally inaccessible to us territory, that
| modern physical models on which the argument depends are likely
| only covering (imperfectly) a minuscule part of that territory,
| and that the map may never be fully precise and complete
| regardless of technology (since a map that is fully precise and
| complete is _the_ territory).
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Instead of one person, simulate the earth starting several
| million years before the dawn of man. If you think the humans
| that evolve in some simulation runs are not conscious, you
| believe in souls. If in the fake world you predict that in some
| large fraction of simulations of the unfeeling simulacra will
| nonetheless invent and argue about the concept of qualia, you
| believe in immaterial souls. If you suspect that because they
| don't have souls they won't write books about qualia you
| believe in material souls, souls that both affect and are
| affected by protons and electrons, souls that physics will
| eventually find.
| basil-rash wrote:
| Scott Aaronson's take on this is certainly worth a read for
| anyone interested in consciousness , quantum mechanics,
| comparability theory, etc: https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159
| root_axis wrote:
| > _This is a thought experiment, and what I suggest isn 't
| ruled out by physics_
|
| It is actually ruled out by the uncertainty principle. A
| simulation with perfect fidelity is not a simulation, it's the
| thing itself.
| birktj wrote:
| Not necessarily, this assumes that it is possible to perfectly
| simulate physics on computers. It is not obvious that this is
| true. For one it assumes that physical interactions happen in
| discrete time steps (or at least be equivalent with a process
| that happens in discrete time steps). It also assumes that it
| is possible to perfectly scan the all the properties of some
| piece of matter (which we know is not possible)
| filipezf wrote:
| As a sibling comment put, the Scott Aaronson post has lots of
| interesting questions about this. Do the aliens who are
| watching us being simulated inside matrix think we are
| _actually_ conscious? What if they freeze the program for 100
| years, or run the computation encrypted, or if the 'computer'
| is just a human inside a room shuffling papers? Is the computer
| simulation of a water drop _wet_ ?
|
| I found this article [0] very insightful, where they basically
| propose that consciousness is relative to _whom_ you ask. We
| inside the simulation may attribute consciousness to each
| other. The aliens running it may not. What is relevant is the
| degree of isomorphism between our simulated brain processes and
| their real ones. So things will advance from all these back-
| and-forth nebulous arguments only when neuroscience becomes
| able to explain mechanistically _why_ people claim to be
| conscious.
|
| [0] A Relativistic Theory of Consciousness.
| https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
| grishka wrote:
| The answer might be no because it's neither proven nor
| disproven that the universe as we all perceive it is the
| fundamental layer of reality.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| To me it seems that the hard problem of consciousness can be
| stated a lot simpler, like so:
|
| _How can we tell if another person is conscious or not?_
|
| As far as I see, this is not possible and will never be possible.
| Hence the "hard problem".
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Mechanical telepathy may be possible, and for me could possibly
| answer this question. You and they put on a device whereby you
| tap into their conscious experience, see through their eyes,
| hear the voices in their head...
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Even then, you're still only experiencing your own, single,
| unitary stream of experience, you've just replaced or
| superimposed parts of it with signals from another nervous
| system. But even if you can somehow replace/superimpose the
| signals coming through their optic nerve, for example, into
| your own experience, that still doesn't answer the question
| of whether or not they have their own stream of experience to
| begin with. That is simply unknowable, outside of the
| reasonable assumptions we all make to avoid solipsism (but
| they are still assumptions at the end of the day).
| Thiez wrote:
| That seems unlikely, as neural networks don't all develop
| exactly the same. There is some natural variance which brain
| regions perform which function. E.g. Broca's area (very
| important for speech) only 'usually' lies on your left
| hemisphere. We know from experiments that stimulating certain
| areas of the brain produces certain (predictable) feelings,
| but to stimulate the brain in such a way to transfer an exact
| thought or a specific vision would seem impossible without a
| very detailed scan of the source and destination brain, and a
| complex remapping in between. And some experiences may not be
| transferable if the target doesn't hawe the required
| circuitry.
| poikroequ wrote:
| We don't know if dark matter exists, but we can still observe
| it by its gravitational effect on large astronomical objects.
| We can't be sure it's dark matter, but it's "likely" dark
| matter.
|
| I believe we can do something similar with consciousness. We
| can make measurements or observations of a person and conclude
| they are "likely" consciousness.
|
| Maybe we can't ever be 100% certain whether a person is
| conscious or not. But nothing in science is 100% certain. No
| matter how much evidence we have, it would only take a single
| counterexample to disprove a well established scientific
| theory.
| mistermann wrote:
| > But nothing in science is 100% certain.
|
| Scientists are arguably "in" (a part of) science, and they
| are often extremely certain (as a consequence of being
| culturalized humans).
| detourdog wrote:
| I'm still thinking about what Helen Keller discussed in her paper
| on consciousness and language.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40466814 The paper is linked
| and disused in this thread. Her description of the void before
| having language is eye opening.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Robert Kuhn is a really impressive dude. I've been occasionally
| running across his videos on YT from these interviews. I'm very
| impressed that he's rolling it all up into a written research
| project as well.
|
| "I have discussed consciousness with over 200 scientists and
| philosophers who work on or think about consciousness and related
| fields (Closer To Truth YouTube; Closer To Truth website)."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJr3pJl27pJKWEUWv9X5...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@CloserToTruthTV/videos
| utkarsh858 wrote:
| Vedic philosophy has an interesting take on the problem of
| consciousness.
|
| It take consciousness to be emanating from particles the size of
| atoms. They word those atomic particles as 'atma' ( in english
| souls, some even call it spiriton!).Those particles are
| fundamental to the universe and indivisible like quarks, bosons
| etc. Like radiation emanating from sun, it handles consciousness
| as 'emanating' from soul.
|
| Each and every living being starting from size of a cell has a
| soul feeling (partially) about mechanisms of its body. A multi-
| cellular organism is then explained as a universe in itself where
| millions of cells with souls are thriving. The organism will then
| contain a 'chief soul' directing the working of whole body (which
| will be us case of humans). Further the philosophy expands this
| concept to the real universe in which all organisms with their
| individual consciousness are directed by a chief 'super
| consciousness'( in Vedic terminology it is termed as paramatma,
| some translate that as equal to God Concept) Although then it
| further expands by saying that there are infinite (almost)
| parallel universes but that's other thing...
| Thiez wrote:
| That's a nice story but does it make any testable predictions?
| Because it appears to introduce many new concepts that would be
| measurable with particle physics, yet mysteriously have never
| been observed. And if these magic soul particles don't interact
| with matter in measurable ways, how do you know their size?
| robwwilliams wrote:
| What a massive and impressive coverage. The author, Robert Kuhn
| of Closer to Truth (https://closertotruth.com), ends this beast
| with a request to readers:
|
| > Feedback is appreciated, critique too--especially explanations
| or theories of consciousness not included, or not described
| accurately, or not classified properly; also, improvements of the
| classification typology.
|
| I think RK would enjoy Humberto Maturana's take on cognition and
| self-cognition. Maturana usually does not use the word
| "consciousness".
|
| Start with Maturana's book with Francisco Valera:
|
| Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (1970)
|
| The appendix of this book is important ("The Nervous System").
| Last few pages blew my brain or mind ;-)
|
| Thinking about consciousness without thinking more deeply about
| temporality is one problem most (or perhaps even all) models of
| consciousness still have.
|
| Since Robert Kuhn works in thalamocortical activity the theme of
| timing should resonant.
| Animats wrote:
| _" The implications of consciousness explanations or theories are
| assessed with respect to four questions: meaning/purpose/value
| (if any); AI consciousness; virtual immortality; and survival
| beyond death."_
|
| This is theology. What's it doing in Elsevier's "Progress in
| Biophysics and Molecular Biology"?
|
| Most of the classical arguments in this area are now obsolete.
| The classic big question, presented in the article, was, "Out of
| meat, how do you get thought?". That's no longer so mysterious.
| You get some basic processing elements from molecular biology.
| The puzzle, for a long time, was, can a large number of basic
| processing elements with no overall design self-organize into
| intelligence. Then came LLMs, which do exactly that.
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