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> When I watch a movie, I don't care if the camera was pointed at real events, or if it was CGI. We call something conscious because it actually thinks, not be

> When I watch a movie, I don't care if the camera was pointed at real events, or if it was CGI. We call something conscious because it actually thinks, not because it can fool human beings into believing it does. The foolishness of a human audience is not the measure of all things. Whether neo exists or not matters. We have moral obligations to thinking things, we have none to non-thinking things. etc. We have none to fictional things.

Dylan16807 9y ago
What evidence do you have that you are conscious? What if your neurons are running a biological program that merely emulates thinking, and fools humans into believing that it thinks? But all of that is philosophy, right? In terms of external behavior, you're admitting this machine could match a human? Because that's enough for AGI. You don't need "genuine consciousness".
- mjburgess 9y ago
  They are not "running a biological program". Acid melting metal isn't a "program" it's a chemical reaction. Consciousness is what I am doing. That's my definition of the term. It's incoherent to say "what's my evidence for it". > In terms of external behavior, you're admitting this machine could match a human? No. I am only saying that a stupid human being using only stupid human faculties of speaking to something might be fooled, by their stupidity, into thinking they were speaking to something as equally stupid as their are. A dog which observes a toy dog walking around may bark at it as-if it were another dog. But that toy dog isnt. it doesnt think, it has no emotion, experiences no pain. has no goals, no interests, no skills, etc. No piece of silicon will every amount to more than a toy dog. Neuroscientists will not be fooled by it. Incraesingly sophisticated tests of cognition and goal-directed behaviour won't be fooled by it. People on the street might be. But their foolishness is no guide to the temperature of the sun, the cause of the tides, nor whether the toy dog thinks.,
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    So you think no silicon computer could ever correctly calculate the way atoms move, and photons bounce? Because that's the only way for it to fail cognition tests! It has to calculate different photons than you'd get from a real body. And I feel like the idea that some physical processes just can't be simulated is magical thinking.
    - mjburgess 9y ago
      Does simulating a gold bar turn the simulation into gold? I feel im going round in circles here. A description of a system, even if that description is "active" (ie., it evolves over time)... is not the same as the system. I can take a photograph of a mountain. My hand has no mountain in it, but a photograph. I can describe any system with mathematics. I can give every atom in your body a number for all of its properties, and a location with respect to the centre of the earth and then append all those numbers together to form a massive number X. Over time because your position and properties change the number which describes you X2 differs from X. If I start by writing X down, then X2, then X3, etc. then the ink on the page describes you as a changing system. The ink isnt you. It isnt alive. It's ink. That is all a machine is. We have replaced ink with electricity and paper with silicon, but it is only correlated with a changing number. WE perform the translation from this number to something else in the world. The person who reads the ink on the paper is the person who knows what X becoming X2 means as it pertains to you. The paper and ink do not mean anything alone, they are not you and share none of your properties. When a chat bot says "hi" it is just a change to an LCD screen caused by an electrical fluctuation caused by a prior electrical fluctuation. It is just a new line of ink on the page. There is nothing thinking, saying, speaking, understanding, "hi". It is just a change to some liquid crystal which fools you as you read it. YOU impart meaning on it when you look at it. It isnt a person, it's just ink. The most ambitious we can be about machines is that they fool people into thinking they are having a conversation with someone. Ie., that paper shreds with ink phrases on them tumble out of a folder in just-the-right-order as-if a conversation was happening. But it's a tumbling of electric, there is no conversation.
      - 9y ago

Dylan16807 9y ago

What evidence do you have that you are conscious? What if your neurons are running a biological program that merely emulates thinking, and fools humans into believing that it thinks? But all of that is philosophy, right? In terms of external behavior, you're admitting this machine could match a human? Because that's enough for AGI. You don't need "genuine consciousness".

mjburgess 9y ago
They are not "running a biological program". Acid melting metal isn't a "program" it's a chemical reaction. Consciousness is what I am doing. That's my definition of the term. It's incoherent to say "what's my evidence for it". > In terms of external behavior, you're admitting this machine could match a human? No. I am only saying that a stupid human being using only stupid human faculties of speaking to something might be fooled, by their stupidity, into thinking they were speaking to something as equally stupid as their are. A dog which observes a toy dog walking around may bark at it as-if it were another dog. But that toy dog isnt. it doesnt think, it has no emotion, experiences no pain. has no goals, no interests, no skills, etc. No piece of silicon will every amount to more than a toy dog. Neuroscientists will not be fooled by it. Incraesingly sophisticated tests of cognition and goal-directed behaviour won't be fooled by it. People on the street might be. But their foolishness is no guide to the temperature of the sun, the cause of the tides, nor whether the toy dog thinks.,
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  So you think no silicon computer could ever correctly calculate the way atoms move, and photons bounce? Because that's the only way for it to fail cognition tests! It has to calculate different photons than you'd get from a real body. And I feel like the idea that some physical processes just can't be simulated is magical thinking.
  - mjburgess 9y ago
    Does simulating a gold bar turn the simulation into gold? I feel im going round in circles here. A description of a system, even if that description is "active" (ie., it evolves over time)... is not the same as the system. I can take a photograph of a mountain. My hand has no mountain in it, but a photograph. I can describe any system with mathematics. I can give every atom in your body a number for all of its properties, and a location with respect to the centre of the earth and then append all those numbers together to form a massive number X. Over time because your position and properties change the number which describes you X2 differs from X. If I start by writing X down, then X2, then X3, etc. then the ink on the page describes you as a changing system. The ink isnt you. It isnt alive. It's ink. That is all a machine is. We have replaced ink with electricity and paper with silicon, but it is only correlated with a changing number. WE perform the translation from this number to something else in the world. The person who reads the ink on the paper is the person who knows what X becoming X2 means as it pertains to you. The paper and ink do not mean anything alone, they are not you and share none of your properties. When a chat bot says "hi" it is just a change to an LCD screen caused by an electrical fluctuation caused by a prior electrical fluctuation. It is just a new line of ink on the page. There is nothing thinking, saying, speaking, understanding, "hi". It is just a change to some liquid crystal which fools you as you read it. YOU impart meaning on it when you look at it. It isnt a person, it's just ink. The most ambitious we can be about machines is that they fool people into thinking they are having a conversation with someone. Ie., that paper shreds with ink phrases on them tumble out of a folder in just-the-right-order as-if a conversation was happening. But it's a tumbling of electric, there is no conversation.
    - 9y ago