6 ms·

Your last paragraph seems to contain the kind of overconfidence that I'm talking about. I don't understand how you can say "consciousness is simply X" or "it's

Your last paragraph seems to contain the kind of overconfidence that I'm talking about. I don't understand how you can say "consciousness is simply X" or "it's easy to do that [if you handwave away the hard parts]." Clearly it's not that simple or easy, or we would have done it. We can't even create life from non-life. How can we begin to understand all the stuff you're talking about that's been layered on top? We don't understand this stuff well enough to just handwave it away as unimportant or trivial.

0xfeba 9y ago
> We can't even create life from non-life. We can't really define life in the first place. But this is not necessarily to your favour. I think it's more of an indication of how the world doesn't fit into our... anthropomorphic way of thinking. That is, everything follows the laws of physics, no magic involved. We aren't special.
- Retra 9y ago
  We certainly can define life, it's just that people don't generally agree on a definition. Some people get offended if you don't include their favorite things in your definition. Even so, we understand it just the same no matter how you define it, because what we understand is not a function of word choice or definition. It's a function of capability.
pas 9y ago
I'm assuming a simpler model, no need for magic, because so far I don't see what behavior/data this simple model cannot explain. > Clearly it's not that simple or easy, or we would have done it. We don't have the computational power yet. Not to mention the vast amount of development required. Think of the climate models, that are huge (millions of lines of code), but they're still nowhere near complete enough, and they only have to model sunlight (Earth's rotation, orbital position, albedo), clouds, flows (winds and currents), some topography (big mountains, big flats), ice (melting, freezing), some chemistry (CO2, salts). And they only have to match a simple graph, not the behavior of a human mind (eg Turing test). So, it's not easy, even if simple. > We can't even create life from non-life. We understand life. Cells, RNA, DNA, proteins, mitochondria, actins, etc. It's big, it's a lot of moving parts, and we understand it, but we can't just pop a big chunk of matter into an atomic assembler and make a cell. And I think intelligence/sentience is similar. It's big, not magic.
- ahartmetz 9y ago
  We don't fully understand life. We don't even understand all the proteins. We sure don't understand a single neuron. We understand many small and big things about life, yes.
  - oldandtired 9y ago
    In part I agree with you. The big difference is that we don't understand the fundamental difference between what is alive and what isn't. We have many different ideas about the quality that is called "life" or living. We have no clue about what it is. We have little or no understanding of the complex protocols that occur within a cell. If we did, our standard manufacturing techniques would be vastly different. We can modify DNA and RNA in interesting ways, but they are not living. It is not until we put them into an already existing living cell that we can reprogram some characteristics of that cell.
    - pas 9y ago
      It's a spectrum. A rock is non-alive, and a human talking to another human is rather alive. A virus is closer to a rock than a cockroach is to a human newborn in terms of life, but a brain dead patient is probably closer to a tree than to a butterfly, and so on. We have pretty fine understanding of cells, but our materials science and manufacturing technology is not "vastly parallel incremental molecular", but "big precise drastic pure chunk" based compared to cellular manufacturing. Not to mention protein folding and self-assembling biomachines and so on. We're getting there.
- VVyattPrentice 9y ago
  If intelligence/sentience isn't magic for you, then consider existence. How strange it is to be anything at all.
  - pas 9y ago
    Yes, indeed, but that's philosophy at its best. Thinking about nothing or everything. Zero and/or infinite complexity. No predictive power whatsoever. Also, I'm amazed by consciousness, by reasoning, by our cognition, by intelligence, how we apply it, day-to-day, from pure math to messy, but useful engineering, through the ugliness of realpolitik, and the beautiful and dreadful human tangle that our civilization is. The contrasts, the why-s. (Consider the so stark difference between US and Mexico especially the border towns, which is of course deceiving, as the problems don't stop at the border, the cities, states, nations are connected. The warring cartels, the corruption, the hopeless have-nots, the dealers, the addicts, the war on drugs/terror/smuggling/slavery/yaddayadda, the DEA, ATF, their foreign counterparts, the policy going against the market, the hard on crime ideology, the big data vs gerrymandering case just on the Supreme Court's plate, the pure math and reasoning behind all that again, are all connected, just harder to frame them in a "deep" picture.) But so far, none involves any actual irreducible complexity. No magical formula, just layers upon layers of complexity and fine-tuning.
cr0sh 9y ago
> We can't even create life from non-life. Have you not been following the work of Craig Venter? Depending on your point of view, he's already done it. Even if you don't agree, you have to admit that he's probably one of the few closest to actually doing it.
- hndamien 9y ago
  Craig Venter has not created life from non-life. He has synthesised code that can reproduce and grow into a synthetic life form once implanted into an already living cell. So no, not life from non-life.

0xfeba 9y ago

> We can't even create life from non-life. We can't really define life in the first place. But this is not necessarily to your favour. I think it's more of an indication of how the world doesn't fit into our... anthropomorphic way of thinking. That is, everything follows the laws of physics, no magic involved. We aren't special.

Retra 9y ago
We certainly can define life, it's just that people don't generally agree on a definition. Some people get offended if you don't include their favorite things in your definition. Even so, we understand it just the same no matter how you define it, because what we understand is not a function of word choice or definition. It's a function of capability.

pas 9y ago

I'm assuming a simpler model, no need for magic, because so far I don't see what behavior/data this simple model cannot explain. > Clearly it's not that simple or easy, or we would have done it. We don't have the computational power yet. Not to mention the vast amount of development required. Think of the climate models, that are huge (millions of lines of code), but they're still nowhere near complete enough, and they only have to model sunlight (Earth's rotation, orbital position, albedo), clouds, flows (winds and currents), some topography (big mountains, big flats), ice (melting, freezing), some chemistry (CO2, salts). And they only have to match a simple graph, not the behavior of a human mind (eg Turing test). So, it's not easy, even if simple. > We can't even create life from non-life. We understand life. Cells, RNA, DNA, proteins, mitochondria, actins, etc. It's big, it's a lot of moving parts, and we understand it, but we can't just pop a big chunk of matter into an atomic assembler and make a cell. And I think intelligence/sentience is similar. It's big, not magic.

ahartmetz 9y ago
We don't fully understand life. We don't even understand all the proteins. We sure don't understand a single neuron. We understand many small and big things about life, yes.
- oldandtired 9y ago
  In part I agree with you. The big difference is that we don't understand the fundamental difference between what is alive and what isn't. We have many different ideas about the quality that is called "life" or living. We have no clue about what it is. We have little or no understanding of the complex protocols that occur within a cell. If we did, our standard manufacturing techniques would be vastly different. We can modify DNA and RNA in interesting ways, but they are not living. It is not until we put them into an already existing living cell that we can reprogram some characteristics of that cell.
  - pas 9y ago
    It's a spectrum. A rock is non-alive, and a human talking to another human is rather alive. A virus is closer to a rock than a cockroach is to a human newborn in terms of life, but a brain dead patient is probably closer to a tree than to a butterfly, and so on. We have pretty fine understanding of cells, but our materials science and manufacturing technology is not "vastly parallel incremental molecular", but "big precise drastic pure chunk" based compared to cellular manufacturing. Not to mention protein folding and self-assembling biomachines and so on. We're getting there.
VVyattPrentice 9y ago
If intelligence/sentience isn't magic for you, then consider existence. How strange it is to be anything at all.
- pas 9y ago
  Yes, indeed, but that's philosophy at its best. Thinking about nothing or everything. Zero and/or infinite complexity. No predictive power whatsoever. Also, I'm amazed by consciousness, by reasoning, by our cognition, by intelligence, how we apply it, day-to-day, from pure math to messy, but useful engineering, through the ugliness of realpolitik, and the beautiful and dreadful human tangle that our civilization is. The contrasts, the why-s. (Consider the so stark difference between US and Mexico especially the border towns, which is of course deceiving, as the problems don't stop at the border, the cities, states, nations are connected. The warring cartels, the corruption, the hopeless have-nots, the dealers, the addicts, the war on drugs/terror/smuggling/slavery/yaddayadda, the DEA, ATF, their foreign counterparts, the policy going against the market, the hard on crime ideology, the big data vs gerrymandering case just on the Supreme Court's plate, the pure math and reasoning behind all that again, are all connected, just harder to frame them in a "deep" picture.) But so far, none involves any actual irreducible complexity. No magical formula, just layers upon layers of complexity and fine-tuning.

cr0sh 9y ago

> We can't even create life from non-life. Have you not been following the work of Craig Venter? Depending on your point of view, he's already done it. Even if you don't agree, you have to admit that he's probably one of the few closest to actually doing it.

hndamien 9y ago
Craig Venter has not created life from non-life. He has synthesised code that can reproduce and grow into a synthetic life form once implanted into an already living cell. So no, not life from non-life.