9 ms·

Yea, sure. What's so hard about that? XKCD made a comic about something similar: https://xkcd.com/505/ https://xkcd.com/505/. It's unintuitive, sure, but tha

• teaearlgraycold 10y ago
  I think that's my new favorite XKCD.
• ythn 10y ago
  > Yea, sure. What's so hard about that? The hard part is coming to grips with consciousness merely being an abstract or concrete system changing states and nothing more. If rocks on the ground can be (slowly) self aware, then doesn't that mean everything in the universe is self-aware? For example, say I throw a bucket full of sand on the ground. Then, later, I define an incredibly complex abstract computer, such that the sand falling out of the bucket and shifting along the ground exactly represents a self-aware AI within my defined computer going through its states. Does that mean as I was pouring the the sand on the ground, the sand was momentarily self-aware?
  • Sharlin 10y ago
    Follow this train of thought to its logical conclusion and you get Greg Egan's Permutation City. Very much recommended.
    • jwhitlark 10y ago
      Thanks! Was looking for something different to read.
    • JonnieCache 10y ago
      Follow that train of thought to it's logical conclusion, and you end up here, via Big Yud: http://kruel.co/backup/Ontological%20Therapy.png http://kruel.co/backup/Ontological%20Therapy.png Still cracks me up, that page. (BTW you should definitely read Permulation City, and the 'sequel' Diaspora. Try not to found any cults tho.)
      • lmitchell 10y ago
        What is this? I get the feeling there's a joke somewhere I'm not getting that's pretty funny.
        • JonnieCache 10y ago
          It's not a joke. It's literally someone on the verge of a psychotic break from reading too many LessWrong blogposts. Those folks aren't only into game-theoretic polyamory and shitty harry potter fanfiction, far from it. Just because it isn't a joke doesn't mean it isn't hilarious though. Look into roko's basilisk, if you dare!
          • zeroer 10y ago
            I liked HPMoR. What about it made you think it was shitty?
  • corysama 10y ago
    You should read "Gödel, Escher, Bach". It's an incredibly enjoyable, though quite dense, exploration of how possibly can intelligence arise from non-intelligent things.
    • stan_rogers 10y ago
      ...and of how that intelligence/consciousness/whatever would exist on a level "above" the machine, so to speak. And that's where the confusion and arguments usually pop up: it's not that the machine (or slab of meat) is self-aware as much as there is a self-awareness running on the machine, and there's a reasonable chance that the consciousness is not understandable, even in principle, from an examination of the parts that enable it (whether physical or process).
  • em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
    "then doesn't that mean everything in the universe is self-aware?" More accurate to sat everything can become self aware. The bigger thing to note is that it is not the balls or the sand that is self aware, but rather the entire computing entity.
  • __jal 10y ago
    > If rocks on the ground can be (slowly) self aware If weird assemblages of water, carbon, calcium and trace minerals can be self-aware, why not?
    • retina_sam 10y ago
      > If weird assemblages of water, carbon, calcium and trace minerals can be self-aware, why not? Because humans (and indeed all life) have "spirits" which can think independently of the body, and that's the true reason we are conscious/self-aware. The body is merely a glove for the spirit. Before birth and after death your spirit still exists and is self-aware (don't take my word for it; try it out - when you die, think to yourself "wow, I'm still conscious without a body!"). Spirits are created by God beings from intelligences (which is a spiritual resource that can be neither created nor destroyed). Gods are created by granting humans more knowledge and powers. The progression is this: intelligence -> spirit -> human (body + spirit) -> God. However, not everyone makes it to God status since Gods choose which humans are to be granted further knowledge and power. And people that have been really bad can be stripped of their body and spirit to have their intelligence recycled back into the immutable pool. Hence Strong AI is impossible since we aren't/don't know how to mine/utilize intelligences (the immutable spiritual resource) like God does.
      • olavk 10y ago
        So if strong AI is achieved, this would prove God does not exist?
        • retina_sam 10y ago
          Yes, basically.
          • andrepd 10y ago
            But... Strong AI can be achieved, if nothing else by emulating a brain synapse by synapse, at the molecular level. Therefore god doesn't exist?
  • notliketherest 10y ago
    I'd recommend Genius of the Beast by Howard Bloom
  • Nacraile 10y ago
    > If rocks on the ground can be (slowly) self aware, then doesn't that mean everything in the universe is self-aware? This is a formal logical fallacy. If we accept the antecedent "rock does not imply not-conscious", your consequent of "rock implies conscious" does not follow. > For example, say I throw a bucket full of sand on the ground. Then, later, I define an incredibly complex abstract computer, such that the sand falling out of the bucket and shifting along the ground exactly represents a self-aware AI within my defined computer going through its states. Does that mean as I was pouring the the sand on the ground, the sand was momentarily self-aware? You're assuming that is possible to define a mapping between the mechanics of the falling-sand dynamic system and a dynamic system that satisfies a definition of "self-aware". It is difficult to argue this in any meaningful sense because there is no satisfactory formal definition of consciousness in existence. I strongly suspect that if a such a definition did exist, the falling-sand dynamic system would not satisfy it, but if it did, then yes, the falling sand is conscious ;)
  • JonnieCache 10y ago
    >doesn't that mean everything in the universe is self-aware? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism David Chalmers, contemporary philosopher of mind, notably espouses this view. He's like the Anti-Dennett.
  • JonnieCache 10y ago
    >say I throw a bucket full of sand on the ground... What happens if I homomorphically encrypt the AI and delete the key? What happens if I run the AI in a quantum computer such that the algorithm runs only if a particular atom decays, which I then choose not to observe? etc etc. Scott Aaronson gives talks about these things if you're interested.
  • nialv7 10y ago
    I wanted to say that whether a system is self-aware depends on how you interpret it. Then I realized this argument also works for "me". Under whose interpretation am I self-aware? Or does the mind come first?
  • phs318u 10y ago
    Are you aware of your cells (as in, the individual cells, not "my cells" as a concept)? Are your cells aware of you (as in, the you that is contemplating these questions, not the adjacent cells that make up part of you)? For me, the answer to the first is no, and I strongly suspect the answer to the second is also no. So I don't believe that the grains of sand would be aware. But it is possible that "entity comprised of sand granules" is aware, just as "entity comprised of carbon-based cells" is aware.
    • rubberstamp 10y ago
      Basically its all physics rules how particles interact and the energy flowing through. Now am "I" in control of making decision to do one thing and not the other? Or was it inevitable that the decision was made as that was the only possible outcome of particles inter acting in my brain at that moment? I am stuck with that thought
      • skosch 10y ago
        Whether or not it was the only possible outcome is a question of determinism, which at the quantum level looks like it should be answered with no. That doesn't mean, however, that the outcome is random; it rather depends strongly on the sum of all of the life experiences that have influenced your brain's wiring, all the way since the second trimester of your mother's pregnancy. In that sense, your decisions are uniquely yours. Whether or not that was actually "you" is a different question, but since "you" don't actually exist as an independent agent (despite your feelings to the contrary), it's a moot point to discuss. You may be interested in the experiments on volition by the late Benjamin Libet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet).
  • grondilu 10y ago
    > Then, later, I define an incredibly complex abstract computer, such that the sand falling out of the bucket and shifting along the ground exactly represents a self-aware AI within my defined computer going through its states. Is it possible though? There is likely no equivalence between all arbitrary dynamical systems, including those with very high entropy such as a bucket of sand, and systems capable of performing what we call computation. Otherwise building a computer would be much easier than it currently is.
  • mccoyspace 10y ago
    "I define". There's your problem right there. "Exactly represents" is your other problem. Your description paints a picture of high entropy (and wonders how that could be the basis for computational consciousness), but once you have defined an exact representation, you no longer have any entropy in your system. You just have a circuit operating or, if it's truly alive, a metabolism at work.
  • zeroer 10y ago
    If you buy into materialism, the idea that the mind arises from the brain through physics alone and nothing else, then your mind is able to be simulated on a big enough computer, which means that consciousness can be implemented by a machine shuffling around stones on an infinite desert. (To be fair, materialism is not certain, though there's a lot of circumstantial evidence.) In this view, consciousness is a class of computations. If your thrown bucket of sand does the same computations, then it would be conscious. Objects that don't aren't. Are you trying to argue that for any way sand can fall out of your bucket, there's a way of mapping those falls to any computation you please so that any physical action can represent any consciousness?
    • kybernetikos 10y ago
      > If you buy into materialism, the idea that the mind arises from the brain through physics alone and nothing else, then your mind is able to be simulated on a big enough computer Pretty much everyone believes that materialism implies the simulatability of everything physical, but that reality is computable is actually still only a widely held assumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing%E2%80%93Deutsch_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing%E2%80%93... We don't know nearly enough about reality to know confidently that it's something you can always simulate.
  • mcv 10y ago
    > The hard part is coming to grips with consciousness merely being an abstract or concrete system changing states and nothing more. But that's no different whether it's an computer, marbles on card board, or stone on a beach. If one of them can become aware at sufficient complexity, then logically, so could the others. Though it's easier to believe with computers, because they already are so complex that they're mostly black boxes to us, whereas stones on the beach is just not feasible in reality. > If rocks on the ground can be (slowly) self aware, then doesn't that mean everything in the universe is self-aware? Maybe it does. It's an interesting thought. This also goes back to the idea of the self-aware anthill in Hofstadter's _Gödel, Escher, Bach_ (where the ants are not aware, but the anthill is). Or maybe awareness is an illusion, as some people claim (but then what is perceiving that illusion, is what I'd like to know). Or maybe computers can't be aware and we can.
• Nition 10y ago
  I bet if you put the whole massive contraption in a big box with a face painted on it people would believe it 10x more easily.
• justinhj 10y ago
  Drifting off topic but something about that comic is confusing. Surely by putting down rocks to represent the computation is he is not simulating the Universe, only describing a simulation of it. In the case of the cardboard and marbles there is a physical process by which the program is executed, in this case the only way it is executed is in the mind of the guy. Or is that the point?
  • simcop2387 10y ago
    I think the simulation is as much in the rocks as it is in the head of the guy doing it. The rocks would have an infinite size but it doesn't need to be in the head of the guy for him to compute it.
  • zeroer 10y ago
    The question you're asking is essentially the same as the Chinese room thought experiment. My interpretation is that the system of the stones plus the mind of the guy together make up the program, when neither alone can.
  • seiferteric 10y ago
    You could just as easily say a computer simulation is only describing a simulation by holding bits in memory.
  • fizixer 10y ago
    One row represents one instant of "the machine". By adding another row below it, the human is doing the execution very very very slowly. Actually, depending on the rules, there is no need for more than one row to be present at any time. When the human starts working on the next row, (s)he can remove the rocks from the previous row after using up its information. "Depending on the rules" means the future state (next row) is completely defined by one previous state (one previous row). This still allows one to make a turing machine. An example where one previous state is not enough is Newtonian mechanics, where you need, not just previous positions, but also previous velocities, or, equivalently, the second to last row as well. (note: the physics in the comic is being simulated on top of the turing machine, so it's not a problem for this comic). Minor nitpick: Someone who is smart enough to crack quantum mechanics, and build a "manual" computer when alone, should be smart enough to figure out a way to find a source of energy so the computation happens automatically.
• Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  > What's so hard about that? Maybe the little inconvenient fact that we don't really know anything about how consciousness works? Not talking about intelligence - that nut appears to be cracking open these days. I'm talking about consciousness.
  • duaneb 10y ago
    Not everyone—myself included—believe in it at all. I see 0 reason a marble machine can't believe itself conscious as much as humans do.
  • rosalinekarr 10y ago
    [What is consciousness?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjfaoe847qQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjfaoe847qQ)