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Posts by Obbe
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2017-04-29 at 10:17 PM UTC in H I G H A T W O R K
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2017-04-29 at 8:31 PM UTC in How To Infiltrate a Rogue BBSHow do i build roof?
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2017-04-29 at 8:15 PM UTC in Theres no use to it all.Someone is clowning around.
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2017-04-29 at 8:10 PM UTC in how is everyoneeveryone is doomed
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2017-04-29 at 8:06 PM UTC in Identity
Originally posted by Lanny I'd consider myself to have as strong evidence for the consciousness of that machine as I had for other humans, so yes, I would operate on the assumption that machine was conscious. And I do think that's a physical possibility. I brought up the lack of subjective experience in modern computers not to say that it's impossible but that it represents a qualitative difference between computational power and consciousness: not every sufficiently fast computer is conscious ergo Moore's law does not carry us to AI by default.
Do you define consciousness and subjective experience as the same thing?
Originally posted by Lanny It practice I'll argue it tracks pretty closely to the animal kingdom, although there are certainly exceptional cases (as far as I know only in the direction of non-conscious animals rather than conscious non-animals). But all we have to satisfy this question is empirical investigation, I don't have a dogmatic commitment to some things being conscious and other not. Chalmers proposes this phrase "what is it like to be X" as our criterion for consciousness, like if we can't say something about what it would be like to be a thing that that thing can't be conscious. I think this runs the risk of being a little too inclusive, you can find a decent record of thought about what it's like to be various inanimate objects in the eastern tradition. "Does x have qualia" seems better to me, although perhaps it runs the risk of being tautological.
What is it like to be a bat?
Anyways, what are your reasons for assuming inanimate objects or even things like plants wouldn't have any subjective experience? Is "subjective experience" a trait that is supposed to be unique to highly evolved lifeforms, or could it possibly be something that is like an inherent quality of existing? Perhaps what you call "subjective experience" exists on a spectrum, with us in the center, stuff like rocks on the low end, and post-human beings exist on the high end. I mean, we evolved out of literal dust. We are basically just really complicated dust, that can walk around and think about ourselves. We have this really complicated way of experiencing the world but isn't it possible that the way we experience the world is just a highly evolved, highly complicated form of something that has always been there? I guess one question to ask yourself is why would subjective experience evolve out of nothing in the first place? Why would subjective experience pop into existence, seemingly randomly, if it wasn't already there in a a very basic way, that became more complicated as our existence became more complicated? -
2017-04-29 at 7:46 PM UTC in H I G H A T W O R K
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2017-04-29 at 7:43 PM UTC in Theres no use to it all.
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2017-04-29 at 1:06 AM UTC in H I G H A T W O R K
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2017-04-28 at 9:38 PM UTC in Identity
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2017-04-28 at 9:27 PM UTC in What would you do if your child acted like Sploo?Would you beat him with a shoe?
Would you give up and huff glue?
What would you do if your kid was a Sploo? -
2017-04-28 at 9:05 PM UTC in Identity
Originally posted by Lanny None direct, of course, but I can be certain that I have subjective experience and other people seem to the similar kinds of things as me, the simplest explanation of their behavior would seem to be that they, like me, have an internal experience that mediates their actions.
So based on similarities you share with other humans, you assume they also have a subjective experience. If a machine could simulate a human so precisely that you could not tell it was actually a machine, would you consider it to have a subjective experience?
I am guessing that you assume some animals also have a subjective experience, while their consciousness/mind probably isn't the same as at human level, they do seem to experience the world in a subjective way. Where does subjective experience stop? Can we imagine insects having a subjective experience? Plants? Single celled organisms? Minerals? What is the cut off point?
Originally posted by Captain Falcon Well of course. That's why any given thing is one thing and not another. "You" is not a category. Why does identity mean for you?
I think your identity is who/what you are, or maybe it's just who/what you think you are. -
2017-04-28 at 7:55 PM UTC in Identity
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2017-04-28 at 7:41 PM UTC in Identity
Originally posted by Captain Falcon Sure a "you" exists. And it has just as much of a basis a in reality as any other concept. The problem you have is that you are trying to find an essential definition of identity and pinning that as your standard for "real", and you have not really justified you have opted for that mode of thinking.
That pursuit is doomed to failure. As with all concepts, they constructs that only make sense within the context of a framework. As you just said. So I do not know why identity in particular is the topic where people insist on breaking down these frameworks and try to find a deeper, essential solution to the problem of identity. It's not like you try to find some complete definition of an electron. Turns out that that is just about as arbitrary as this.
If there really is a "you", I think it has to be the whole complete puzzle, not just a couple pieces. -
2017-04-28 at 7:39 PM UTC in Identity
Originally posted by Lanny Well one qualitative difference between humans and modern computers would seem to be the presence of subjective experience. Like that's not just a lack of sophistication in computers, it's not like (or at least I don't see evidence of) digital computers have some minor internal experience and as programs become more complex this will progress towards human-level consciousness. Which is not to say I reject the idea that subjective experience could potentially be sustained on digital substrata, I'm just pointing out there's a fundamental quality of minds that is, at present, as far as I can tell, wholly absent in digital computers.
To be clear, by "subjective experience" I mean essentially qualia, or perhaps a more general category which includes qualia.
Do rocks and trees have subjective experiences? -
2017-04-28 at 6:31 PM UTC in Identity:facepal:
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2017-04-28 at 6:24 PM UTC in Identity
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2017-04-28 at 6:19 PM UTC in runescape ruined my lifeYou are what you do, brah.
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2017-04-28 at 6:07 PM UTC in IdentityAfter all this discussion I'm starting to conclude that "you" don't actually exist. The concept of an individual identity is like the concept of freewill - it's just a concept, it's just an idea, an idea that can be useful but might not have an actual basis in reality.
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2017-04-28 at 5:02 PM UTC in Identity
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2017-04-28 at 3:23 PM UTC in Identity
