4 ms·

It's a self-driving car. There is no driver. You are indeed conscious, and do indeed have thoughts. What the article discusses is that the overwhelming evidenc

It's a self-driving car. There is no driver. You are indeed conscious, and do indeed have thoughts. What the article discusses is that the overwhelming evidence seems to show your thoughts are generated by deterministic/proabilistic physical processes, and that in fact your conscious thoughts occur after your decisions are already made and often serve only as post-hoc justifications of what you already did. Consciousness is just another component in the car. It doesn't determine or influence where the car is going. Perhaps the most valuable part of consciousness is it provides an effective way to use reflection which can communicate data about the internal state of the car to the other cars. (Often this data is objectively inaccurate, but still serves the interest of the car or the fleet.)

Phithagoras 10y ago
How can we be certain that consciousness does or does not have an effect on this car? Assuming it is appropriate to stretch Tarski's undefinability theorem and Gödel's incompleteness theorem to problems of consciousness, it would be impossible to prove which is true (without breaking your mind).
Godel_unicode 10y ago
> deterministic/proabilistic... You do realize those aren't the same thing, right? In fact, they're basically opposites. Deterministic is "if/then", while probabilistic is "maybe". Something is either deterministic or probabilistic, and it matters which it is. In your metaphor, consciousness is the learning system which is used to generate the model which drives the car. Our brains are semi-supervised learning, and our models get retrained when they drift far enough.
- Amezarak 10y ago
  > You do realize those aren't the same thing, right? In fact, they're basically opposites. Deterministic is "if/then", while probabilistic is "maybe". Something is either deterministic or probabilistic, and it matters which it is. I say "deterministic/probabilistic" because I am thinking about physical laws; i.e., what we know of physics and quantum mechanics. The intent is to exclude the idea that consciousness is somehow above the rules of cause and effect. It probably would be safer to just say "deterministic" to prevent all the magic-shoehorning people sometimes attempt with QM, but I was being pedantic. > In your metaphor, consciousness is the learning system which is used to generate the model which drives the car. Our brains are semi-supervised learning, and our models get retrained when they drift far enough. No, in my metaphor, consciousness is totally unrelated to learning, as the article suggested. In my metaphor consciousness is basically just part of the network stack.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 10y ago
    Of course, there's Chaos theory. That deals entirely with deterministic processes so complex their outcomes can only be determined via probabilistic methods.
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    I misspoke, ^your metaphor^reality I recommend you read the works of the scientist upon which my pseudonym is based (not the Unicode part, that's just a dig at HN for the type of characters they allow) Briefly, you cannot fully describe a complex system using merely the axioms of a less complex system (or more simplistically, all metaphors are (subtlety but importantly) wrong). This is especially true of quantum mechanics, but in general it's a good rule to keep in mind. It prevents comfortable but naïve assumptions like "physics is just Newton because that's what we can perceive", or assuming that cognition is just summing neurons together. In every aspect of life, you can safely assume that It's More Complicated Than That.
hackney 10y ago
It is much simpler. We do not perceive time headon but only as it passes. In reality, everything is in the past, so logically speaking we have no control as far as 'free will' is concerned. It boils down to how aware one is in "the moment" and at that point there is mostly aquiescence.

Phithagoras 10y ago

How can we be certain that consciousness does or does not have an effect on this car? Assuming it is appropriate to stretch Tarski's undefinability theorem and Gödel's incompleteness theorem to problems of consciousness, it would be impossible to prove which is true (without breaking your mind).

Godel_unicode 10y ago

> deterministic/proabilistic... You do realize those aren't the same thing, right? In fact, they're basically opposites. Deterministic is "if/then", while probabilistic is "maybe". Something is either deterministic or probabilistic, and it matters which it is. In your metaphor, consciousness is the learning system which is used to generate the model which drives the car. Our brains are semi-supervised learning, and our models get retrained when they drift far enough.

Amezarak 10y ago
> You do realize those aren't the same thing, right? In fact, they're basically opposites. Deterministic is "if/then", while probabilistic is "maybe". Something is either deterministic or probabilistic, and it matters which it is. I say "deterministic/probabilistic" because I am thinking about physical laws; i.e., what we know of physics and quantum mechanics. The intent is to exclude the idea that consciousness is somehow above the rules of cause and effect. It probably would be safer to just say "deterministic" to prevent all the magic-shoehorning people sometimes attempt with QM, but I was being pedantic. > In your metaphor, consciousness is the learning system which is used to generate the model which drives the car. Our brains are semi-supervised learning, and our models get retrained when they drift far enough. No, in my metaphor, consciousness is totally unrelated to learning, as the article suggested. In my metaphor consciousness is basically just part of the network stack.
- SAI_Peregrinus 10y ago
  Of course, there's Chaos theory. That deals entirely with deterministic processes so complex their outcomes can only be determined via probabilistic methods.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  I misspoke, ^your metaphor^reality I recommend you read the works of the scientist upon which my pseudonym is based (not the Unicode part, that's just a dig at HN for the type of characters they allow) Briefly, you cannot fully describe a complex system using merely the axioms of a less complex system (or more simplistically, all metaphors are (subtlety but importantly) wrong). This is especially true of quantum mechanics, but in general it's a good rule to keep in mind. It prevents comfortable but naïve assumptions like "physics is just Newton because that's what we can perceive", or assuming that cognition is just summing neurons together. In every aspect of life, you can safely assume that It's More Complicated Than That.

hackney 10y ago

It is much simpler. We do not perceive time headon but only as it passes. In reality, everything is in the past, so logically speaking we have no control as far as 'free will' is concerned. It boils down to how aware one is in "the moment" and at that point there is mostly aquiescence.