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I didn't realize until reading this comment section that there's an entire demographic of intelligent people in denial about why we are conscious (generic cogni

by sp527 10y ago

I didn't realize until reading this comment section that there's an entire demographic of intelligent people in denial about why we are conscious (generic cognition is an evolutionary advantage in responding to circumstances that are too dynamic to be accounted for by a process measured in generations) and whether it persists beyond death (no, because it's hooked up to the brain). And by the way, it clearly worked : we colonized the planet. And now we have arrived at a juncture wherein we are left having to explain our existence when the reality is that our only identifiable purpose is to reproduce. Everything else is incidental.

sebastianconcpt 10y ago
You are talking about behavior. Qualia is something else. Why does it exists?
- sp527 10y ago
  Because evolution ultimately reduces entropy in response to stimuli. This process, combined with time, can yield complexity. Countless studies abound ascertaining rudimentary aspects of cognition in even fairly primitive organisms. It's hardly a trait upon which humans hold an exclusive claim - we just evolved the best version of it.
  - CuriouslyC 10y ago
    He's asking why we aren't just philosophical zombies. There's no reason that systems that display intelligence have to experience existence.
    - sp527 10y ago
      That's another way of asking if we could (theoretically) simulate intelligence. Scientific consensus offers an emphatic 'yes' to this question. We debate the when and how (not the whether) of AGI.
- tim333 10y ago
  Probably because Qualia are part of the process. My dictionary has qualia "a quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person" Take an example like something tasting good. That has obvious evolutionary advantage for getting fed.
ilaksh 10y ago
Its not about intelligence, its about beliefs. Beliefs do not indicate intelligence. For example, I have an identical twin brother who makes more money than me with a highly technical job and is quite religious, and I am an atheist. I have another brother who is a senior principal engineer who thinks Islam is an inherently violent religion and is enthusiastic about the middle east invasions, whereas myself I believe that to be propaganda going back to the Crusades.
Biganon 10y ago
If we don't have free will, what advantages does the illusion of free will grant, evolutionary speaking?
- acqq 10y ago
  The "free will" as it is used by those who insist on it existing is something that is based on the needs of religious thought. It's a concept invented to explain the problem of (paraphrasing) "if good is all-powerful and good, why is there evil," to which the magical answer is "the people have free will" to mean, the God doesn't decide what people will decide. And this is just nonsense invented to explain the starting nonsense problem in the "demon haunted world"(1) of those who believe in a "good God."(2) Our decisions are simply the function of the "stored state" in our body and outside influences in the moment up to the decision. Animals function the same. Of course, there are so many influences and the process of thinking(3) is dependent on so many variables that we can actually make different decisions based on, for example, our same experiences up to the moment of the decision but depending on if it's 9 AM or 9 PM, or if we drunk the coffee one or two hours before etc. So it appears to be a "free" decision but is still just a function of the state(4) and the input. ------ 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World 2) No every religion has a "good for everybody" god, so for these religions it's not even a problem. If the god is there just to favor your group when he is not distracted by something else (yes, there are religions where the god has a limited attention span), he can smite everybody else and he doesn't have to be absolutely "good." For those who believe in a "good God" the shock is, of course, when something like this happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake#Effect_on_society_and_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake#Effect_... 3) which we surely believe to posses, in some aspects more complex than what we understand the animals do, simply because we don't know their language and they can't write 4) not just of our neurons but also of the exact amount of the traces of different chemicals
  - sp527 10y ago
    This is a good enough answer to the question. I would have delved into the realm of chaos theory and such, but suffice to say that our understanding of the universe suggests that nothing is truly random.
acqq 10y ago
Around a month ago I wrote about the causes of that denial: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335022

by sp527 10y ago

sebastianconcpt 10y ago

You are talking about behavior. Qualia is something else. Why does it exists?

sp527 10y ago
Because evolution ultimately reduces entropy in response to stimuli. This process, combined with time, can yield complexity. Countless studies abound ascertaining rudimentary aspects of cognition in even fairly primitive organisms. It's hardly a trait upon which humans hold an exclusive claim - we just evolved the best version of it.
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  He's asking why we aren't just philosophical zombies. There's no reason that systems that display intelligence have to experience existence.
  - sp527 10y ago
    That's another way of asking if we could (theoretically) simulate intelligence. Scientific consensus offers an emphatic 'yes' to this question. We debate the when and how (not the whether) of AGI.
tim333 10y ago
Probably because Qualia are part of the process. My dictionary has qualia "a quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person" Take an example like something tasting good. That has obvious evolutionary advantage for getting fed.

ilaksh 10y ago

Its not about intelligence, its about beliefs. Beliefs do not indicate intelligence. For example, I have an identical twin brother who makes more money than me with a highly technical job and is quite religious, and I am an atheist. I have another brother who is a senior principal engineer who thinks Islam is an inherently violent religion and is enthusiastic about the middle east invasions, whereas myself I believe that to be propaganda going back to the Crusades.

Biganon 10y ago

If we don't have free will, what advantages does the illusion of free will grant, evolutionary speaking?

acqq 10y ago
The "free will" as it is used by those who insist on it existing is something that is based on the needs of religious thought. It's a concept invented to explain the problem of (paraphrasing) "if good is all-powerful and good, why is there evil," to which the magical answer is "the people have free will" to mean, the God doesn't decide what people will decide. And this is just nonsense invented to explain the starting nonsense problem in the "demon haunted world"(1) of those who believe in a "good God."(2) Our decisions are simply the function of the "stored state" in our body and outside influences in the moment up to the decision. Animals function the same. Of course, there are so many influences and the process of thinking(3) is dependent on so many variables that we can actually make different decisions based on, for example, our same experiences up to the moment of the decision but depending on if it's 9 AM or 9 PM, or if we drunk the coffee one or two hours before etc. So it appears to be a "free" decision but is still just a function of the state(4) and the input. ------ 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World 2) No every religion has a "good for everybody" god, so for these religions it's not even a problem. If the god is there just to favor your group when he is not distracted by something else (yes, there are religions where the god has a limited attention span), he can smite everybody else and he doesn't have to be absolutely "good." For those who believe in a "good God" the shock is, of course, when something like this happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake#Effect_on_society_and_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake#Effect_... 3) which we surely believe to posses, in some aspects more complex than what we understand the animals do, simply because we don't know their language and they can't write 4) not just of our neurons but also of the exact amount of the traces of different chemicals
- sp527 10y ago
  This is a good enough answer to the question. I would have delved into the realm of chaos theory and such, but suffice to say that our understanding of the universe suggests that nothing is truly random.

acqq 10y ago

Around a month ago I wrote about the causes of that denial: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335022