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Software can be represented in any arbitrary way (e.g. in a book) and computations can be carried out from the software instructions in any arbitrary way (e.g.

by erokar 11y ago

Software can be represented in any arbitrary way (e.g. in a book) and computations can be carried out from the software instructions in any arbitrary way (e.g. by arranging rocks in certain patterns). If one believes that consciousness can emerge from software on a computer alone, it also follows that consciousness can emerge from placing rocks in a certain pattern following instructions in a book. I think this idea is absurd. I do not think consciousness necessarily can only be produced by organic life, but I do think it has to emerge from physical structures. As of today we have no idea what properties such physical structures must have. It follows that computers are no more likely to become conscious than e.g. washing machines.

pdonis 11y ago
> If one believes that consciousness can emerge from software on a computer alone, it also follows that consciousness can emerge from placing rocks in a certain pattern following instructions in a book. The word "alone" here is not correct. Claiming that software on a computer can produce feelings is not the same as claiming that software on a computer can produce feeling without having to interact with anything else. The latter claim is obviously absurd; organic life forms like us don't produce feelings without interacting with anything else, so why should we expect software on a computer to do so? But ruling out the latter claim still leaves open the possibility that software on a computer could produce feelings if it were interacting with the rest of the world in appropriate ways. > I do not think consciousness necessarily can only be produced by organic life, but I do think it has to emerge from physical structures. Rocks in a certain pattern are physical structures. So this doesn't rule out rocks in a certain pattern producing feelings. > As of today we have no idea what properties such physical structures must have. I don't think we're that badly off. We expect embodied brains of sufficient size and complexity to produce feelings, but we don't expect three pounds of jello to produce feelings. So clearly we have some knowledge of the properties that physical structures must have to produce feelings. They must have some level of complexity and heterogeneity; they must be able to store information in some way that is recoverable (three pounds of jello can "store information" in some sense, but there's no way to recover it in any useful sense); and they must be interacting with the rest of the world in appropriate ways. There's no reason why we couldn't eventually build computers with these properties.
- daxfohl 11y ago
  http://www.quotes.net/mquote/128463 http://www.quotes.net/mquote/128463 [Charlie Brown picks up a rock from the beach, and throws it into the water] Linus: Nice going, Charlie Brown. It took that rock 4,000 years to get to shore, and now you've thrown it back. Charlie Brown: Everything I do makes me feel guilty.
breuleux 11y ago
> If one believes that consciousness can emerge from software on a computer alone, it also follows that consciousness can emerge from placing rocks in a certain pattern following instructions in a book. I don't think this is as absurd as it sounds. I think it was Dennett who said our intuition about consciousness is pretty sensitive to timing. The rock construction you describe would "think" a billion times slower than a human brain, and there is something unsettling or unintuitive about a consciousness that operates in slow motion. I would expect extremely fast-paced AI to think that the idea that human beings are conscious is similarly absurd. Also, consciousness "feels" like it's ineffable, so it makes sense that we would have an inherent bias against understanding it as a process. There is something we see in our consciousness that we simply cannot wrap our minds around in any way (possibly because we're hallucinating it). So yes, I would bite the bullet on this: consciousness could emerge from placing rocks in a certain pattern following instructions in a book. It would just be an excruciatingly "slow" consciousness.
- Frenchgeek 11y ago
  https://xkcd.com/505/ https://xkcd.com/505/
- pdonis 11y ago
  > It would just be an excruciatingly "slow" consciousness. If it's too slow to interact with the rest of the world in appropriate ways, it wouldn't be a consciousness at all.
  - breuleux 11y ago
    There's always something to interact with. If you had a conscious being made out of star systems, it wouldn't meaningfully interact with anything within our lifetime, but over billions of billions of years, it would presumably shift entire galaxies. The rockputer just needs inputs that operate at its own scale, like the shape of the coastlines it's expanding into, information about geological processes, another rockputer competing for territory, and so on. Alternatively you could simulate a whole universe using these rocks, and feed simulated inputs to the being. Of course, part of the difficulty of imagining a conscious rockputer is that it's also pretty hard to imagine its inputs :)
_greim_ 11y ago
A computer is a physical structure, is it not?

by erokar 11y ago

pdonis 11y ago

> If one believes that consciousness can emerge from software on a computer alone, it also follows that consciousness can emerge from placing rocks in a certain pattern following instructions in a book. The word "alone" here is not correct. Claiming that software on a computer can produce feelings is not the same as claiming that software on a computer can produce feeling without having to interact with anything else. The latter claim is obviously absurd; organic life forms like us don't produce feelings without interacting with anything else, so why should we expect software on a computer to do so? But ruling out the latter claim still leaves open the possibility that software on a computer could produce feelings if it were interacting with the rest of the world in appropriate ways. > I do not think consciousness necessarily can only be produced by organic life, but I do think it has to emerge from physical structures. Rocks in a certain pattern are physical structures. So this doesn't rule out rocks in a certain pattern producing feelings. > As of today we have no idea what properties such physical structures must have. I don't think we're that badly off. We expect embodied brains of sufficient size and complexity to produce feelings, but we don't expect three pounds of jello to produce feelings. So clearly we have some knowledge of the properties that physical structures must have to produce feelings. They must have some level of complexity and heterogeneity; they must be able to store information in some way that is recoverable (three pounds of jello can "store information" in some sense, but there's no way to recover it in any useful sense); and they must be interacting with the rest of the world in appropriate ways. There's no reason why we couldn't eventually build computers with these properties.

daxfohl 11y ago
http://www.quotes.net/mquote/128463 http://www.quotes.net/mquote/128463 [Charlie Brown picks up a rock from the beach, and throws it into the water] Linus: Nice going, Charlie Brown. It took that rock 4,000 years to get to shore, and now you've thrown it back. Charlie Brown: Everything I do makes me feel guilty.

breuleux 11y ago

> If one believes that consciousness can emerge from software on a computer alone, it also follows that consciousness can emerge from placing rocks in a certain pattern following instructions in a book. I don't think this is as absurd as it sounds. I think it was Dennett who said our intuition about consciousness is pretty sensitive to timing. The rock construction you describe would "think" a billion times slower than a human brain, and there is something unsettling or unintuitive about a consciousness that operates in slow motion. I would expect extremely fast-paced AI to think that the idea that human beings are conscious is similarly absurd. Also, consciousness "feels" like it's ineffable, so it makes sense that we would have an inherent bias against understanding it as a process. There is something we see in our consciousness that we simply cannot wrap our minds around in any way (possibly because we're hallucinating it). So yes, I would bite the bullet on this: consciousness could emerge from placing rocks in a certain pattern following instructions in a book. It would just be an excruciatingly "slow" consciousness.

Frenchgeek 11y ago
https://xkcd.com/505/ https://xkcd.com/505/
pdonis 11y ago
> It would just be an excruciatingly "slow" consciousness. If it's too slow to interact with the rest of the world in appropriate ways, it wouldn't be a consciousness at all.
- breuleux 11y ago
  There's always something to interact with. If you had a conscious being made out of star systems, it wouldn't meaningfully interact with anything within our lifetime, but over billions of billions of years, it would presumably shift entire galaxies. The rockputer just needs inputs that operate at its own scale, like the shape of the coastlines it's expanding into, information about geological processes, another rockputer competing for territory, and so on. Alternatively you could simulate a whole universe using these rocks, and feed simulated inputs to the being. Of course, part of the difficulty of imagining a conscious rockputer is that it's also pretty hard to imagine its inputs :)

_greim_ 11y ago

A computer is a physical structure, is it not?