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What part of subjective experience exactly do you think that evolutionary theory fails to explain? I study evolution quite a bit and, while there are many detai

What part of subjective experience exactly do you think that evolutionary theory fails to explain? I study evolution quite a bit and, while there are many details about behavior and learning that are still missing, AFAICT it seems to explain consciousness and subjectivity pretty well.

eternalny1 7y ago
> What part of subjective experience exactly do you think that evolutionary theory fails to explain? Consciousness. We could and should be robots. There is nothing to reproducing that requires this, which is the survival of the fittest. Brain teaser: Take absolute nothingness (not the "void" of space, true nothing) then have that create something that allows me to reply to you on HN.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- z3t4 7y ago
  Given infinite time and infinite space, anything can happen. Time is a weird thing, but it seems more of it is created every day, increasing the possibilities.
- throwanem 7y ago
  You're not the first to consider this possibility, as you know. The novelist Peter Watts, in Blindsight, has a remarkably interesting, if also remarkably dark, take on the same idea. I won't spoil it here, since the book is an enjoyable read and freely available from the author's site: https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm ("Philosophical zombie" would be a more precise term than "robot", btw, and might make soi-disant rationalists take you slightly more seriously because it's closer to the sort of language they like to use. I don't know why that would be a desideratum for anyone, but if it is for you, this may be worth considering.)
- greiskul 7y ago
  > We could and should be robots. What do you mean with robots? Describe how our actions would be different if we were robots, compared with our reality where we are not. Brain teaser answer: Well, that's more of a question of physics, and the origins of the big bang. We are talking about brains here. They came about some billions of years later.
- jhedwards 7y ago
  I think evolution explains that fine. It's the same story as for physical development: the extrapolation and refinement of living organisms via natural selection over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Consciousness is hard to define, but if we examine animal intelligence it unsurprisingly seems to exist at various levels of complexity. So even worms have intelligence (and consciousness IMO) that isn't quite robotic: they react in predictable ways to light, but the reaction is modulated by other factors like temperature, moisture and what they are doing at the time. Their behavior can be described by a simple neural net, which is in fact what they have. (see Darwin 1881) Larger animals evolved the ability to evaluate multiple such signals simultaneously, and to do so it's necessary that lower level consciousness (like what the worm has) can send signals to higher levels of consciousness for evaluation. So if my foot is cramping a lower level system sends an appropriate pain signal to a higher level system, which can then aggregate that signal with other signals and cross reference it against current active behavioral plans. If I am meditating, I might ignore the pain, but if I'm working I might get up and stretch. This is similar to how the reaction of a worm is modulated, but just filtered up through higher levels of consciousness. Why would we develop higher levels of consciousness? Because any change to animal brains that allowed them to be aware of sensory input and evaluate it with reference to behavioral goals (instead of just reacting like a robot) would increase that animals fitness, and any marginal increase in fitness will result in those traits being passed on. The most significant one for human consciousness in particular is that the appearance of language pushed evolution in the direction of favoring a large working memory. If you can tell me "the bananas are down the hill, to the right, across the stream, next to the big stone" and I can remember that information and go find the bananas, then my fitness is improved. Darwin also pointed out that this increased working memory allows people to reason that if I help someone, that other person might help me back, allowing altruism to emerge from the cognitive space allotted to planning, which evolved from the pressures related to holding large chunks of linguistic data in the mind. So there are two things: first is subjective experience, which to me seems to be easily explainable as being like "system signals" from lower systems to higher systems. It's important to remember here that the appearance of information itself and intelligent responses to the environment is one of the defining features of all life, even the most basic (Adolf Heschel 2002). The smell of rotten eggs (example from the article) is simply a chemical signal that we have, understandably, evolved an aversion to. My reaction to ice-cream is similarly a chemical signal filtered through a lower biological system which interprets it as something REALLY GOOD and sends the appropriate signals to my higher level cognitive systems. The fact that it's a subjective signal and not a "robotic" reaction means that I can respond to it differently depending on other factors, which is clearly advantageous from the POV of natural selection. If I have diabetes I can resist the temptation of "deliciousness" to my great advantage. The second thing is that humans have a great memory, so we can hold lots of these signals in our minds alongside memories, plans, ideas etc. Since that ability was associated with increased fitness over millions of years, it has increased to the level we see today.
- NoodleIncident 7y ago
  > Consciousness. We could and should be robots. There is nothing to reproducing that requires this, which is the survival of the fittest. Humans are social animals. To interact with other people, it is probably evolutionarily advantageous to have a mental model that can predict the actions of other people. Consciousness might be simply an offshoot of that mental model, in which a person predicts their own actions, too. I'm not saying that this theory is true, although I do think I heard it somewhere. (Maybe it's in I am a Strange Loop?) But it's just meant to be an example of how consciousness could arise as a side effect of something with an actual reproductive advantage.
  - jhedwards 7y ago
    Darwin pointed this out as a possible explanation for the emergence of altruism and morality. He didn't like the idea of group selection, so he suggested that humans might have started to reason that if they helped others, others might be inclined to help them in the future. As I mentioned in my other comment this probably emerged as a side-effect of the increased memory/reasoning-buffer required for language processing.
- agitator 7y ago
  Your consciousness is an illusion. Explain to me how a somewhat intelligent creature would experience it's life without consciousness? What's the alternative? How would you, as a living creature, be able to sense your environment, and fight for preserving your survival, if you didn't have a sense of self?
  - amelius 7y ago
    It seems more likely that physics is the illusion.
    - mekkkkkk 7y ago
      Go on.
      - vankessel 7y ago
        I'll expand my own take on this thought, borrowing a mathematical analogy I read recently. Take the real and complex numbers. The real numbers have the nice property that they are easy to order since they form a line. Given any two you can tell which is larger. When you go up the complex numbers you lose this obvious ordering, you can define a new ordering, but it is no longer trivial since you are comparing points on a plane. Now, some people see complex numbers as an extension of the real numbers, but it would be more accurate to call them a generalization of the real numbers. The real numbers are a subset of the complex numbers that satisfy the property of having this obvious ordering. This again extends to the complex numbers and quaternions. A quaternion is a point on a 4D plane that does not necessarily satisfy commutativity, AKA ab != ba. The subset of quaternions that do satisfy commutativity are the complex numbers. Every time you go up a level you lose an axiom, which is an assumption on how things work for that system. In a sense an axiom is a useful limitation that gives a certain structure to things. So what if there are 0 axioms? This would mean everything is possible, no limitations. 2 + 2 = 5. Obviously everything being possible is not useful. Now how does this apply to physics? Physical laws are our axioms. But what if there are actually no physical laws, we are just witnessing the subset of "everything" that appears to have structure? If we are only capable of understanding things that are rational, we would be inherently unable to process events that are irrational. We would project this irrational observation down to the rational subset that we can make sense of. Let me finish with an example. Take a uniform quantum superposition. It has an equally random chance of being measured 0 or 1. There is no hidden information determining this, it is truly random. This is irrational because there seems like there should be a reason for one final outcome being measured over the other due to our familiarity with cause-and-effect, but this ultimately appears to have no cause. We project this phenomena down to the rational and explain it the best we can with quantum states and probability.
- davidgay 7y ago
  What's wrong with "We are robots." ?

eternalny1 7y ago

> What part of subjective experience exactly do you think that evolutionary theory fails to explain? Consciousness. We could and should be robots. There is nothing to reproducing that requires this, which is the survival of the fittest. Brain teaser: Take absolute nothingness (not the "void" of space, true nothing) then have that create something that allows me to reply to you on HN.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
z3t4 7y ago
Given infinite time and infinite space, anything can happen. Time is a weird thing, but it seems more of it is created every day, increasing the possibilities.
throwanem 7y ago
You're not the first to consider this possibility, as you know. The novelist Peter Watts, in Blindsight, has a remarkably interesting, if also remarkably dark, take on the same idea. I won't spoil it here, since the book is an enjoyable read and freely available from the author's site: https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm ("Philosophical zombie" would be a more precise term than "robot", btw, and might make soi-disant rationalists take you slightly more seriously because it's closer to the sort of language they like to use. I don't know why that would be a desideratum for anyone, but if it is for you, this may be worth considering.)
greiskul 7y ago
> We could and should be robots. What do you mean with robots? Describe how our actions would be different if we were robots, compared with our reality where we are not. Brain teaser answer: Well, that's more of a question of physics, and the origins of the big bang. We are talking about brains here. They came about some billions of years later.
jhedwards 7y ago
I think evolution explains that fine. It's the same story as for physical development: the extrapolation and refinement of living organisms via natural selection over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Consciousness is hard to define, but if we examine animal intelligence it unsurprisingly seems to exist at various levels of complexity. So even worms have intelligence (and consciousness IMO) that isn't quite robotic: they react in predictable ways to light, but the reaction is modulated by other factors like temperature, moisture and what they are doing at the time. Their behavior can be described by a simple neural net, which is in fact what they have. (see Darwin 1881) Larger animals evolved the ability to evaluate multiple such signals simultaneously, and to do so it's necessary that lower level consciousness (like what the worm has) can send signals to higher levels of consciousness for evaluation. So if my foot is cramping a lower level system sends an appropriate pain signal to a higher level system, which can then aggregate that signal with other signals and cross reference it against current active behavioral plans. If I am meditating, I might ignore the pain, but if I'm working I might get up and stretch. This is similar to how the reaction of a worm is modulated, but just filtered up through higher levels of consciousness. Why would we develop higher levels of consciousness? Because any change to animal brains that allowed them to be aware of sensory input and evaluate it with reference to behavioral goals (instead of just reacting like a robot) would increase that animals fitness, and any marginal increase in fitness will result in those traits being passed on. The most significant one for human consciousness in particular is that the appearance of language pushed evolution in the direction of favoring a large working memory. If you can tell me "the bananas are down the hill, to the right, across the stream, next to the big stone" and I can remember that information and go find the bananas, then my fitness is improved. Darwin also pointed out that this increased working memory allows people to reason that if I help someone, that other person might help me back, allowing altruism to emerge from the cognitive space allotted to planning, which evolved from the pressures related to holding large chunks of linguistic data in the mind. So there are two things: first is subjective experience, which to me seems to be easily explainable as being like "system signals" from lower systems to higher systems. It's important to remember here that the appearance of information itself and intelligent responses to the environment is one of the defining features of all life, even the most basic (Adolf Heschel 2002). The smell of rotten eggs (example from the article) is simply a chemical signal that we have, understandably, evolved an aversion to. My reaction to ice-cream is similarly a chemical signal filtered through a lower biological system which interprets it as something REALLY GOOD and sends the appropriate signals to my higher level cognitive systems. The fact that it's a subjective signal and not a "robotic" reaction means that I can respond to it differently depending on other factors, which is clearly advantageous from the POV of natural selection. If I have diabetes I can resist the temptation of "deliciousness" to my great advantage. The second thing is that humans have a great memory, so we can hold lots of these signals in our minds alongside memories, plans, ideas etc. Since that ability was associated with increased fitness over millions of years, it has increased to the level we see today.
NoodleIncident 7y ago
> Consciousness. We could and should be robots. There is nothing to reproducing that requires this, which is the survival of the fittest. Humans are social animals. To interact with other people, it is probably evolutionarily advantageous to have a mental model that can predict the actions of other people. Consciousness might be simply an offshoot of that mental model, in which a person predicts their own actions, too. I'm not saying that this theory is true, although I do think I heard it somewhere. (Maybe it's in I am a Strange Loop?) But it's just meant to be an example of how consciousness could arise as a side effect of something with an actual reproductive advantage.
- jhedwards 7y ago
  Darwin pointed this out as a possible explanation for the emergence of altruism and morality. He didn't like the idea of group selection, so he suggested that humans might have started to reason that if they helped others, others might be inclined to help them in the future. As I mentioned in my other comment this probably emerged as a side-effect of the increased memory/reasoning-buffer required for language processing.
agitator 7y ago
Your consciousness is an illusion. Explain to me how a somewhat intelligent creature would experience it's life without consciousness? What's the alternative? How would you, as a living creature, be able to sense your environment, and fight for preserving your survival, if you didn't have a sense of self?
- amelius 7y ago
  It seems more likely that physics is the illusion.
  - mekkkkkk 7y ago
    Go on.
    - vankessel 7y ago
      I'll expand my own take on this thought, borrowing a mathematical analogy I read recently. Take the real and complex numbers. The real numbers have the nice property that they are easy to order since they form a line. Given any two you can tell which is larger. When you go up the complex numbers you lose this obvious ordering, you can define a new ordering, but it is no longer trivial since you are comparing points on a plane. Now, some people see complex numbers as an extension of the real numbers, but it would be more accurate to call them a generalization of the real numbers. The real numbers are a subset of the complex numbers that satisfy the property of having this obvious ordering. This again extends to the complex numbers and quaternions. A quaternion is a point on a 4D plane that does not necessarily satisfy commutativity, AKA ab != ba. The subset of quaternions that do satisfy commutativity are the complex numbers. Every time you go up a level you lose an axiom, which is an assumption on how things work for that system. In a sense an axiom is a useful limitation that gives a certain structure to things. So what if there are 0 axioms? This would mean everything is possible, no limitations. 2 + 2 = 5. Obviously everything being possible is not useful. Now how does this apply to physics? Physical laws are our axioms. But what if there are actually no physical laws, we are just witnessing the subset of "everything" that appears to have structure? If we are only capable of understanding things that are rational, we would be inherently unable to process events that are irrational. We would project this irrational observation down to the rational subset that we can make sense of. Let me finish with an example. Take a uniform quantum superposition. It has an equally random chance of being measured 0 or 1. There is no hidden information determining this, it is truly random. This is irrational because there seems like there should be a reason for one final outcome being measured over the other due to our familiarity with cause-and-effect, but this ultimately appears to have no cause. We project this phenomena down to the rational and explain it the best we can with quantum states and probability.
davidgay 7y ago
What's wrong with "We are robots." ?