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"Clearly, asking questions about consciousness does not prove anything per se. But could an AI zombie formulate such questions by itself, without hearing them f

• vokep 8y ago
  This isn't clear at all how it reaches the conclusion...it seems to jump to its conclusion with no justification other than "anything else is absurd because I said so". Of course the conclusion is absurd, because the premise: someone executing assembly instructions and writing results on a ledger could do so at a scale capable of simulating consciousness over any significant time scale. The time required for a person to do such simulation of just 1 second of conscious existence would likely take more than their lifetime. Consciousness is universally present. That doesn't mean rocks are conscious, no more than it means sand can compute. And yet we're communicating over computing sand, aren't we?
  • whack 8y ago
    Your objection is explicitly addressed in the linked article. > "Assumption 5: The fact that a computer simulation can be conscious, is independent of the CPU speed of the computer." Do you disagree with this assumption? Is it your argument that a "slow" computer can never be considered to be conscious, even if it's given sufficient time to run the exact same software? If so, how are you deciding what the cutoff frequency should be?
    • vokep 8y ago
      No, thats exactly my point, a person carrying out computations by pen and paper on a massive ledger could emerge self-aware intelligent consciousness, and if such a thing were to occur, than any unethical things that the computer (as in the person writing on the ledger) created in this consciousness would be just as unethical as anywhere else, and such a person should be tried for crimes. It's argued that this is absurd because how could a persons activities on a private ledger be examined as a crime? But this absurd sort of crime investigation is not absurd at all in the context of someone able to simulate consciousness on a ledger. If a couple has a child and somehow does it all secluded, at home, they are just rearranging atoms until consciousness emerges. Then they lock the child up. How could such private activity that both parties consent to, be considered a crime? Because we have solid reason to believe a new "soul" exists which requires ethical treatment. It no longer is entirely private. I'm happy to continue discussion, its good to challenge views and while I think there is this error in your conclusion, you do a good job of defending and explaining your position.
• rhn_mk1 8y ago
  This is an excellent link, but hardly a proof. First, it does not preclude a computer from somehow obtaining a soul. Second, the reason to reject its conclusion (that computers have no souls) is, literally: > However, this conclusion should be rejected as being absurd on its face. Which is not saying much. I still recommend to read the whole thing, but the general outcome is based on not much apart from a personal notion of absurdity.
• dTal 8y ago
  Hm, the argument seems to be "I don't like this conclusion, therefore I will deem it absurd, and arbitrarily select one of my many assumptions to discard". All of the "assumptions" in that link are correct, with the exception of 6 as a flawed intuition pump. A human being is not capable of emulating a suffering being by marking ones and zeroes in a notebook - a being with the lifespan, patience, working memory, intelligence, and motivation to do this would be far outside the scope of "human". If we posit that this being fully comprehends what it is doing, then it would certainly be guilty of torture. But it's beyond the scale of all but the most abstract apprehension of an actual human being, which is probably responsible for the revulsion against the notion of attributing guilt to one. The flawed intuition pump here is almost identical to Searle's Chinese Room, which roughly goes: 1) if a computer program can speak Chinese, then so can a human manipulating symbols from a rulebook 2) a human speaking Chinese from a rulebook doesn't understand Chinese 3) the computer program doesn't really understand Chinese The problem is that in both these cases, the vast complexity of a computer program capable of doing this task is abstracted away into an innocent little "book" of some sort, while the comparatively dumb mechanical execution of a simple set of rules is handed to the hugely complex and relatable human being. The argument then conflates the mental activity of the human with the activity of the entire computer, of which the human is a small mechanical part. It's also part of a larger class of flawed anti-synthetic consciousness arguments, which I call "stupid substrate" arguments, which go like this: 1) Suppose we posit a simulated conscious being, running on a computer made of <a human with a paper notebook/rats running a giant maze/a huge marble factory> 2) this is stupid and implausible 3) therefore consciousness can only exist on a human brain My response to all such arguments is - why is it so plausible that consciousness can exist on the 3 pound lump of jelly in your head? Isn't your argument too strong? What makes brains special? And why are they that way? Is it just "magic" and "because God loves us", respectively?
  • whack 8y ago
    > All of the "assumptions" in that link are correct, with the exception of 6 as a flawed intuition pump. A human being is not capable of emulating a suffering being by marking ones and zeroes in a notebook Ironically enough, you too are rejecting this assumption, not on its own merits, but because you dislike its eventual conclusion. Here's the exact assumption as stated: > Assumption 6: Anything a computer does can be functionally replicated by a human being writing 1s and 0s in a massive ledger. Are you truly rejecting this assumption? It is almost trivially true. I know in detail exactly how a CPU works. All it does is perform extremely simple calculations, and then write/read the resulting 1s and 0s from various storage locations. I've literally solved exam problems where I had to debug/replicate a computer's behavior by writing 1s and 0s on a piece of paper. If your point is that humans are far too slow to replicate anything a computer does, then I will refer you to the previous assumption which you stated to be correct: > Assumption 5: The fact that a computer simulation can be conscious, is independent of the CPU speed of the computer. If your point is that human lifespans are too short to run any meaningful computer program, then I will ask you this: If we did achieve human immortality, and if someone did use their immortality to do exactly what the article suggests (writing 1s and 0s in a massive book), should they be found guilty of torture and murder? > why is it so plausible that consciousness can exist on the 3 pound lump of jelly in your head? Isn't your argument too strong? What makes brains special? That's the whole point of the article. There's nothing special about our brains, or about any other 3 pound lump of jelly. Consciousness requires both physical phenomena as well as supernatural phenomena, and without the latter, our brains would not possess consciousness either. We clearly have to reject one of the assumptions/conclusion, and the most reasonable one to reject is the assumption that consciousness can arise from purely physical phenomena. All the others assumptions are much more logically defensible, whereas the first assumption is nothing more than conjecture.
• peterashford 8y ago
  That argument is bizarre. His conclusion doesn't follow at all from his assumptions.