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The Hard Problem of Consciousness
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2019-03-12 at 7:47 PM UTC
Originally posted by Obbe I would imagine so. Given the potential for super-human processing power, I imagine that once AI begins to create it's own language and own "social world", more complex than any human culture is capable of, these AI's would have much more consciousness then we can possibly imagine.
Why would consciousness have anything to do with developing a language? Do you think a human brain that never learns a language is unconscious? -
2019-03-12 at 8:04 PM UTC
Originally posted by SHARK Do you think a human brain that never learns a language is unconscious?
That is a really good point.
But, one could argue that even some feral child raised by wolves who never learns to speak could have a symbolic understanding of their environment, and symbols are a type of language. -
2019-03-12 at 8:06 PM UTCSo, essentially, Obbe's position could extend to any entity that can process their environment symbolically.
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2019-03-12 at 8:27 PM UTCThe problem isn't pushing around the symbols, it is creating subjective perception to make them mean something... Information integration is almost certainly a part of it (why do you have any sort of structured visual perception rather than processing in a feed forward manner?) And certainly other animals that we consider most likely to be conscious have direct analogy to most of our neural equipment except our language centers. It would be quite a stretch to propose that most animals are not conscious for example, a Cartesian view.
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2019-03-12 at 8:38 PM UTC
Originally posted by gadzooks That is a really good point.
But, one could argue that even some feral child raised by wolves who never learns to speak could have a symbolic understanding of their environment, and symbols are a type of language.
I've often considered an experiment of having a child and keeping it in a pitch black room for however many years with no sound or any interaction whatsoever other than feeding and watering it, and then introducing into 'the real world' and seeing what it does. -
2019-03-12 at 8:45 PM UTCfuckin shit thread mate
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2019-03-12 at 9:09 PM UTC
Originally posted by SHARK The problem isn't pushing around the symbols, it is creating subjective perception to make them mean something… Information integration is almost certainly a part of it (why do you have any sort of structured visual perception rather than processing in a feed forward manner?) And certainly other animals that we consider most likely to be conscious have direct analogy to most of our neural equipment except our language centers. It would be quite a stretch to propose that most animals are not conscious for example, a Cartesian view.
I have to agree that some animals might be conscious (albeit in a more limited sense than we are).
Originally posted by SHARK why do you have any sort of structured visual perception rather than processing in a feed forward manner?
On this line especially, I have no answer to that. In fact, that's pretty much the very crux of the hard problem, from what I understand.
It's hard to take a firm position either way on the matter, because we have no instruments that can "detect/measure" subjective experience.
I want to return to my advanced AI analogy... If we replicate the entire human brain digitally, and then upload a whole slew of information to it (in a sense, feeding it a couple decades worth of life experience that a biological human might have), then, at that point, will consciousness / a subjective experiencer emerge?
I think such an advanced AI would even circumvent Searle's Chinese Room argument. The machine would actually have conceptual understanding of any information given to it... I think, at least. I'm only speculating here. -
2019-03-12 at 9:12 PM UTC
Originally posted by mmQ I've often considered an experiment of having a child and keeping it in a pitch black room for however many years with no sound or any interaction whatsoever other than feeding and watering it, and then introducing into 'the real world' and seeing what it does.
World's most unethical experiment, but yes, it would be utterly fascinating.
The closest thing in real life to that to have happened is the discovery of poor Genie. The girl was confined to a single room for the entire duration of her formative years. She never learned language. She interacted with nobody (although she would see her parents, who fed her and all that). -
2019-03-12 at 9:19 PM UTC
Originally posted by gadzooks Okay, maybe currently existing biological species are incomparable to humans in that regard.
But, returning to the computer AI comparison…
How do we know that the cutting edge AI we end up seeing 10+ years from now won't start posing questions like "what am I?" or "why do I simply do what humans tell me to do?", etc…?
Once they start doing that, are they conscious like we are?
That's when...
What ever happened to that trailer narrator with the deep voice?? they don't use him anymore?
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2019-03-12 at 9:23 PM UTCOr maybe AI will go full biological
MILF Julie Christie was hawt!
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2019-03-12 at 9:28 PM UTCYeah, Isaac Asimov was way ahead of his time, and I think he might have really been onto something about the dangers of AI.
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2019-03-12 at 9:56 PM UTC
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2019-03-12 at 9:57 PM UTC
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2019-03-12 at 10:20 PM UTC
Originally posted by gadzooks I'm not sure, but I doubt it.
He was primarily a science fiction author.
He did have a doctorate in biochemistry, though.
hmm something about using dna to store program code into. sort of human cells as a bio form of a hard-drive. and using a quantum processor will "change the world and computing forever"
I mean I might be wrong about how biological forms of HDD are made or utilized. but it's something like this? this will be Human AI yet artificial in a way. existing humans born traditionally or parts and eventually an entire human created in a lab with super mind abilities. and possibly titanium skeleton. and perfect skin that is bullet proof and fire proof and skid proof.
reality in 20-30 years? I mean at least the prototype? -
2019-03-12 at 10:36 PM UTC
Originally posted by Krow hmm something about using dna to store program code into. sort of human cells as a bio form of a hard-drive. and using a quantum processor will "change the world and computing forever"
I mean I might be wrong about how biological forms of HDD are made or utilized. but it's something like this? this will be Human AI yet artificial in a way. existing humans born traditionally or parts and eventually an entire human created in a lab with super mind abilities. and possibly titanium skeleton. and perfect skin that is bullet proof and fire proof and skid proof.
reality in 20-30 years? I mean at least the prototype?
I mean, technically, you could store any old data biologically in terms of binary encoding.
DNA currently consists of an extraordinarily long sequence of what is basically a quarternary encoding. It consists of a sequence of four varieties of nucleotides. These nucleotide sequences then instruct RNA to synthesize specific proteins based on each sequence.
So, in a sense, DNA stores information in the form of biochemical instructions/blueprints.
I imagine that at some point in the future, there will start to be overlaps between the fields of computer science and molecular biology.
But as far as estimating any specifics, only the future will tell. -
2019-03-12 at 10:50 PM UTCPeople want to prove their research as tangible and not just on paper or as notes.
yet, is there a moral obligation to not fuck with this? and at what point will someone in a lab in some country break this international law, if ever passed, to not create such things. Wasn't Human cloning banned by some international law giver? (like the UN?) -
2019-03-12 at 11:08 PM UTC
Originally posted by SHARK Why would consciousness have anything to do with developing a language? Do you think a human brain that never learns a language is unconscious?
Originally posted by gadzooks That is a really good point.
But, one could argue that even some feral child raised by wolves who never learns to speak could have a symbolic understanding of their environment, and symbols are a type of language.
In being conscious of consciousness we feel we feel it is the defining attribute of all our waking states, our moods and affections, memories, thought and attention. We feel that consciousness is the basis of concepts, learning, reasoning. We feel that consciousness must be located within our heads. All of these statements are actually false.
Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, as we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of - sort of like asking a flashlight in a dark room to find something that doesn't have any light shining upon it. Everywhere it looks there appears to be light, when in reality most of the room is in darkness.
We feel that consciousness is continuous. But if you think of a minute as being 60000 milliseconds, are you conscious for every one of those milliseconds? We are conscious less often then we believe we are, because we cannot be conscious of when we are not conscious.
Consciousness is often unnecessary. Consciousness is not necessary for concepts.
Consciousness is not necessary for learning. Consciousness is not necessary for thinking, nor for reasoning. Consciousness is not a copy of experience. Consciousness has no location. I may elaborate on these statements more later on, but if you are actually interested in learning more about this theory of consciousness, read The Origin of Consciousness by Julian Jaynes. -
2019-03-12 at 11:13 PM UTC
Originally posted by SHARK What I'm saying is that it's not conceivable that there is another universe physically identical to ours, which doesn't also include consciousness.
I suppose it depends on if you consider laws involving physical things to be themselves part of the physical facts about the world. That sounds pedantic but it's kind of important, if physical facts can give rise to non-physical phenomena, and the laws governing this interaction are not part of the physical facts, then it's perfectly conceivable that the physical facts of the world can remain unaltered while the non-physical facts which supervene on them are different.You seem to be proposing some kind of property dualism. Why do you believe that there needs to be something extra that composes conscious experience? I think our current understanding of maths and physics already gives us everything we need to derive what it would take to make an information system conscious. The problem is how everything goes together.
I think there needs to be something extra because empirical investigation seems to at least be theoretically capable of explaining of explaining all of my physical behaviors without reference to consciousness. Nervous signals, information processing, muscle actuation, all physical phenomena that don't need to make reference to consciousness to explain. Despite a legacy of substance dualism and a society that assumes, almost by necessity, that our conscious experience has some kind of executive role in our behavior we have no evidence that this is the case, and some reasonable evidence to the contrary. The physical world doesn't actually seem to give us any evidence that consciousness exists at all, there are biological machines walking around and we can explain their behavior but it's only by analogy to our own experience and form that we attribute experience to other physical systems, no where in nature have we empirically discovered consciousness.
And yet I have immediate and intensely compelling evidence that I am in fact conscious, far better evidence than the physical sciences have ever given me for anything. And I can't even imagine why the empirical sciences could do to produce evidence of consciousness, what would it look like?
Given I have good reason to believe consciousness exists, but no evidence that it has any physical effect on the world, nor any physical evidence that even exists, it seems quite reasonable to put it into some non-physical category. -
2019-03-12 at 11:14 PM UTC
Originally posted by Obbe We feel that consciousness is continuous. But if you think of a minute as being 60000 milliseconds, are you conscious for every one of those milliseconds? We are conscious less often then we believe we are, because we cannot be conscious of when we are not conscious.
But there is something there that creates that illusion of continuity for some experiencing subject. Where exactly is this experiencing subject located?
Originally posted by Obbe Consciousness is often unnecessary. Consciousness is not necessary for concepts.
Consciousness is not necessary for learning. Consciousness is not necessary for thinking, nor for reasoning. Consciousness is not a copy of experience. Consciousness has no location.
That's true that consciousness is not necessary for learning.
A lot of our experiments into the biology of human learning comes from studies on sea slugs (Aplysia). And I highly doubt anyone would try to argue that such a simple organism is conscious in any way even remotely similar to humans.
Originally posted by Obbe I may elaborate on these statements more later on, but if you are actually interested in learning more about this theory of consciousness, read The Origin of Consciousness by Julian Jaynes.
I will definitely check it out. -
2019-03-12 at 11:15 PM UTC
Originally posted by Krow People want to prove their research as tangible and not just on paper or as notes.
yet, is there a moral obligation to not fuck with this? and at what point will someone in a lab in some country break this international law, if ever passed, to not create such things. Wasn't Human cloning banned by some international law giver? (like the UN?)
This stuff is a very interesting topic, but if we keep at it, it will muddy up the thread a bit.
Maybe it could become it's own thread? I dunno, I'm trying to get a bunch of stuff done and keep getting distracted with NiS, so I don't know if I'm up for starting it myself right now.
