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I've had somewhat similar thoughts, and I am entirely unqualified (and highly likely not the first) to put forth the idea that consciousness's killer app is the

I've had somewhat similar thoughts, and I am entirely unqualified (and highly likely not the first) to put forth the idea that consciousness's killer app is the ability to rapidly assembly abstract models of experiences (present from current sensory input, past from short/long-term memory or future from mental simulation) and be able to query/manipulate those models, and my (admittedly potentially naive) suspicion is that whatever does "that" is the machinery behind consciousness. This is also why I think that deep learning / neural networks are only going to take us so far. I think there is more to the story of how the brain works than only neural networks that make predictions, and frankly I do not think that any system that does not at least attempt to do "that" (simulating consciousness's model building/manipulation feature) will have much better luck at language processing/understanding.

marcoperaza 10y ago
One possibility about the machinery of consciousness that would help address the Hard Problem is that the brain is not creating consciousness from scratch, but tapping into some currently misunderstood or unknown physical phenomenon. It's hard to see how information processing alone (which can be done by monks with paper and pencil, if incredibly slowly) can give rise to subjective experience. It seems that this phenomenon, whatever it is, plays a central role in sensory perception, and there's reason to think that it's present even in animals with simple brains. So I suspect that we're looking for some kind of simple operation that can happen on the scale of a small number of neurons, maybe even a single neuron. This is all speculation of course, informed by some knowledge and intuition, but speculation nonetheless. But it's the only way to push the frontier, and the unwillingness to engage with consciousness as a matter of serious study seems to be a major failing of brain science and AI.

marcoperaza 10y ago

One possibility about the machinery of consciousness that would help address the Hard Problem is that the brain is not creating consciousness from scratch, but tapping into some currently misunderstood or unknown physical phenomenon. It's hard to see how information processing alone (which can be done by monks with paper and pencil, if incredibly slowly) can give rise to subjective experience. It seems that this phenomenon, whatever it is, plays a central role in sensory perception, and there's reason to think that it's present even in animals with simple brains. So I suspect that we're looking for some kind of simple operation that can happen on the scale of a small number of neurons, maybe even a single neuron. This is all speculation of course, informed by some knowledge and intuition, but speculation nonetheless. But it's the only way to push the frontier, and the unwillingness to engage with consciousness as a matter of serious study seems to be a major failing of brain science and AI.