3 ms·
It's not even clear to me that consciousness is "real" at the level of base reality, but I do have a proposed test: link yourself up to an octopus using the sam
by blotter_paper 7y ago
It's not even clear to me that consciousness is "real" at the level of base reality, but I do have a proposed test: link yourself up to an octopus using the same BMI setups that are used to allow two rats to share experiences and memories. If you start experiencing/remembering the life of an octopus, the brain on the other side of those wires is almost certainly conscious. The inverse is not true, of course; we could simply fail to grasp the differences between the brains of cephalopods and mammals, resulting in a bad connection to a perfectly fine brain.
(I'm more than 99% sure that octopuses experience the world, but I think this test can be generalised to simpler life forms in principle.)
- MereInterest 7y agoI don't think that would be a good test, either. All that would prove is that there exists a storage device, and a method by which to read it. It doesn't imply that the recording device is conscious.
- blotter_paper 7y agoDisagree, it would additionally show that the storage device was in a natively consciousness-readable format, and that's just for memory sharing. Experience sharing, if that's what the "light in one cage, button in another, reward for both" study really shows (as opposed to, say, short-term memory sharing that appears like experience sharing to an outside observer) would seem to directly suggest the circuitry of consciousness. Of course it can't be completely proven, but neither can anything else.