4 ms·

The reason I think you are not artificial has to do with the fact that you are observing yourself. My actions are undoubtedly being driven primarily by a serie

by rjf72 8y ago

The reason I think you are not artificial has to do with the fact that you are observing yourself. My actions are undoubtedly being driven primarily by a series of electrical, chemical, and other reactions going off in my mind and throughout my body. Manipulate my brain in various ways and you can manipulate my behavior in various ways. In this regard I'm effectively a glorified automaton. Yet the catch here is that there is something inside here, 'me', observing all of this happen and having the perception of controlling it. When I write a program to generate a random number I find it inconceivable that suddenly some entity poofs into existence observing itself imagining it's deciding on a random number only to inevitably decide on the number that my pseudo-random algorithm had already predetermined given its initial state. And similarly, even if we made vastly more complex systems that could create a passable replication of human behavior - I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within. A religious individual would call this 'me' your soul. I'm more compelled by the simulation hypothesis for reasons beyond the scope of this post. But in either case this is something that will undoubtedly never going to be proven in any way during our lifetimes, if ever. So it's a place where an individual must come to their own conclusion based on very limited information. That a bad decision could have unimaginable consequence here is undoubtedly what drove things such as Pascal's Wager [1]. Though he failed to consider of course that life itself could be a test. Willingness to adopt views one does not genuinely believe for hope of future reward and convenient social graces, is probably not something that would score so well. Quite the burdensome consideration, life is. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

pas 8y ago
Children. Vastly complex. Gain sentience and consciousness over time. No need for a soul. Initial set of the network (DNA, Hox genes, and a million others) and the environment "is all" that is needed for that fire to light up in there. Not always, unfortunately. Severe developmental disorders sometimes prevent the forming of that consciousness.
comboy 8y ago
> And similarly, even if we made vastly more complex systems that could create a passable replication of human behavior - I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within. So I code a fleshy looking automaton that it's indistinguishable for you from a human. Every action and communication is 100% convincing. Surely you feel some empathy towards it (since you are not able to tell) and you may even want it not to suffer. Does that change after I tell you what it "really is"? How about other people? I still can't figure out how very smart people who know a lot of science, look at this world and say "here - science", "there - also science", and then there's me. I know how my brain works and that you can manipulate my behavior just by touching it, but apart from it there's also the entity. It's obviously not there but I'm also sure it is. Emergent behavior of complex systems. Is it so hard to believe that we are one? If you want some romance in all this then how about the universe looking at itself. Is it burdensome?
- robbiep 8y ago
  A p-zombie. You’re going to split people 50-50 here
  - comboy 8y ago
    Thank you, never knew the name, now I can do some reading.
    - robbiep 8y ago
      Ken MacLeod is a sci-if writer who uses elements of the concept in a few books - the corporation wars being the key ones. It’s an interesting read if sci-Fi is your vibe :)
- intertextuality 8y ago
  >> And similarly, even if we made vastly more complex systems that could create a passable replication of human behavior - I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within. > So I code a fleshy looking automaton that it's indistinguishable for you from a human. Every action and communication is 100% convincing. Surely you feel some empathy towards it (since you are not able to tell) and you may even want it not to suffer. Does that change after I tell you what it "really is"? How about other people? Your comment has nothing at all to do with the comment you quoted. Whether something is merely convincing to you or I is irrelevant–since it wouldn't actually be cognizant either way. The parent comment was discussing meta-cognition and the fact that even if you made a replica it wouldn't have meta-cognition like we do.
nnq 8y ago
> I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within Why would you think something like that??!! I'm really curious of your reasoning... To me and other peoples like me, both reason and intuition are "99.9%" sure that this is how it all works. Life / the universe / math / is full of emergent phenomena/properties, things that you'd say "suddenly appear". Even in pure math, even basic and boring areas like number theory have deep structure in them unseen if you just think from the "basic principles" step by step. The illusion is the opposite kinds of things: things where you (mistakenly believe) you understand the full causal sequence of things and that there are no extra things that can pop out of the darkness and surprise your reason. This is plain arrogance. "Step by step rational reasoning" doesn't work except in a very very small number of cases. Because natural processes can only rarely be approximated to a human-brain-friendly number of steps - most of the time you can't reason A -> B -> C because there's a gazillion steps from A to C, and they're all no-linear eg. you can't "compress them" into a fewer number of steps (btw, this is the insight behind deeps neural networks and "deep learning" - very very basic math operations + some adequate non-linear transforms between them ---> "emergent" intelligence). "Rational thought" as understood naively by lots of non-techical people is a weird distorted aberration. If I were to subscribe to mystical viewpoint, it would likely be some form of pan-teism or "the entire universe is conscious / pure consciousness" whatever thing, it's the only thing that would even remotely make sense... the whole idea of "soul" and all that ghost-in-the-machine and "chinese room argument" nonsenses deriving from that... I almost feel that you people thinking this way are an entire different species from us, how can you "compute" like that? It's almost as if human brains "diverged" at some point and produced two different types of minds with completely different views of the world...
xamuel 8y ago
>Though he failed to consider of course that life itself could be a test. Before brushing Pascal's Wager aside, one should remember that Pascal was one of the main founding fathers of probability itself. We're not talking about some lightweight mucking around in the mud of primitive mankind's ignorance. The man knew what he was talking about.

by rjf72 8y ago

pas 8y ago

Children. Vastly complex. Gain sentience and consciousness over time. No need for a soul. Initial set of the network (DNA, Hox genes, and a million others) and the environment "is all" that is needed for that fire to light up in there. Not always, unfortunately. Severe developmental disorders sometimes prevent the forming of that consciousness.

comboy 8y ago

> And similarly, even if we made vastly more complex systems that could create a passable replication of human behavior - I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within. So I code a fleshy looking automaton that it's indistinguishable for you from a human. Every action and communication is 100% convincing. Surely you feel some empathy towards it (since you are not able to tell) and you may even want it not to suffer. Does that change after I tell you what it "really is"? How about other people? I still can't figure out how very smart people who know a lot of science, look at this world and say "here - science", "there - also science", and then there's me. I know how my brain works and that you can manipulate my behavior just by touching it, but apart from it there's also the entity. It's obviously not there but I'm also sure it is. Emergent behavior of complex systems. Is it so hard to believe that we are one? If you want some romance in all this then how about the universe looking at itself. Is it burdensome?

robbiep 8y ago
A p-zombie. You’re going to split people 50-50 here
- comboy 8y ago
  Thank you, never knew the name, now I can do some reading.
  - robbiep 8y ago
    Ken MacLeod is a sci-if writer who uses elements of the concept in a few books - the corporation wars being the key ones. It’s an interesting read if sci-Fi is your vibe :)
intertextuality 8y ago
>> And similarly, even if we made vastly more complex systems that could create a passable replication of human behavior - I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within. > So I code a fleshy looking automaton that it's indistinguishable for you from a human. Every action and communication is 100% convincing. Surely you feel some empathy towards it (since you are not able to tell) and you may even want it not to suffer. Does that change after I tell you what it "really is"? How about other people? Your comment has nothing at all to do with the comment you quoted. Whether something is merely convincing to you or I is irrelevant–since it wouldn't actually be cognizant either way. The parent comment was discussing meta-cognition and the fact that even if you made a replica it wouldn't have meta-cognition like we do.

nnq 8y ago

> I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within Why would you think something like that??!! I'm really curious of your reasoning... To me and other peoples like me, both reason and intuition are "99.9%" sure that this is how it all works. Life / the universe / math / is full of emergent phenomena/properties, things that you'd say "suddenly appear". Even in pure math, even basic and boring areas like number theory have deep structure in them unseen if you just think from the "basic principles" step by step. The illusion is the opposite kinds of things: things where you (mistakenly believe) you understand the full causal sequence of things and that there are no extra things that can pop out of the darkness and surprise your reason. This is plain arrogance. "Step by step rational reasoning" doesn't work except in a very very small number of cases. Because natural processes can only rarely be approximated to a human-brain-friendly number of steps - most of the time you can't reason A -> B -> C because there's a gazillion steps from A to C, and they're all no-linear eg. you can't "compress them" into a fewer number of steps (btw, this is the insight behind deeps neural networks and "deep learning" - very very basic math operations + some adequate non-linear transforms between them ---> "emergent" intelligence). "Rational thought" as understood naively by lots of non-techical people is a weird distorted aberration. If I were to subscribe to mystical viewpoint, it would likely be some form of pan-teism or "the entire universe is conscious / pure consciousness" whatever thing, it's the only thing that would even remotely make sense... the whole idea of "soul" and all that ghost-in-the-machine and "chinese room argument" nonsenses deriving from that... I almost feel that you people thinking this way are an entire different species from us, how can you "compute" like that? It's almost as if human brains "diverged" at some point and produced two different types of minds with completely different views of the world...

xamuel 8y ago

>Though he failed to consider of course that life itself could be a test. Before brushing Pascal's Wager aside, one should remember that Pascal was one of the main founding fathers of probability itself. We're not talking about some lightweight mucking around in the mud of primitive mankind's ignorance. The man knew what he was talking about.