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Doesn't this thought experiment illustrate the absurdity of consciousness cloning? Consciousness cloning is a logical implication of conscious machines. Hence

by yters 7y ago

Doesn't this thought experiment illustrate the absurdity of consciousness cloning? Consciousness cloning is a logical implication of conscious machines. Hence, by modus tollens, machines cannot be conscious.

ithkuil 7y ago
I thought I set up the thought experiment in such a way to separate the question of whether machines can be conscious from the question whether you'd feel any different if multiple concurrent and non-communicating "yous" would exists, with the purpose of engage in a discussion about Wigner's friend scenario. From your answer it seems you're also ruling out, a priori, the possibility that cloning a conscious being is not only impossible in reality, but absurd, regardless of any concession that would allow consciousness to still transcend matter (provided it allows for cloning). I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how you derive such strong conviction about the non-cloneability of conscious beings.
- yters 7y ago
  It fundamentally is a category error. A consciousness is inherently unique. If we 'cloned' it, it would be a different consciousness, so it cannot be cloned. For example, in your scenario, neither of the consciousnesses is ever going to experience what the other experiences. Thus they must be different, and not truly clones. On the other hand, if I copy a piece of software, it is in some sense the same software in both instances, though their histories are different.
  - ithkuil 7y ago
    Sure, each instance of consciousness is independent, regardless of whether it shared history with another consciousness instance, and would feel things independently. I'm glad we're on agreement here. Apparently we don't mean the same thing by "cloning". Let's call it "forking". Btw, the same "uniqueness" issue applies to running software as well. The instance of a running software is not the same thing as the code of the software. If you take a snapshot of a software running on machine A and resume it on machine B, they no longer _are_ the same instance. It's clear that they exist independently because you can act on them independently and their state and future reactions will diverge. That said, it's trivial for us to run n copies of the same state transitions with software (in lock step), something that might just not be possible for us to do with arbitrary precision on biological systems. That's not what I meant by cloning: I'm not saying having an exact "lock-step" reproduction of whatever the internal mechanism of consciousness is (that would be another debate). But let's get back to the main point of my argument in this thread: Wigner's friend thought experiment is absurd/paradoxical only if we cling to the notion that we'd somehow be subjectively affected by the fact that nature effectively forks off and entertain parallel histories for complex systems such as conscious beings in the same way as it seems to fork off and entertain parallel histories for simpler quantum systems when they are in superposition state. We don't have to invoke the many-worlds interpretation, which is just an interpretation; we can jus look at the math that describes how quantum states evolve: our most accurate description of what we observe in the world tells us that the behaviour of particles is consistent with viewing them as if they fork off and evolve in parallel over time until, at some point, when we add ourselves in the mix as "observers" then suddenly puff this superposition collapses and we observe the particle having a concrete state, at random. Common ways to explain this collapse are: 1. The act of observing a system, done by a conscious being, collapses the quantum state, because consciousness is special 2. A conscious being it's just a very complex system that obeys the same rules governing the system it obseves, and thus gets involved in the superposition while performing the measurement, literally becoming part of the superposition. Thus the observed randomness is just an artefact of subjectively "waking up in room 1" Wigner's setup exaggerates this problem by adding another observer (the scientist friend). It poses absolutely no problems of you espouse the second explaination above. It poses all sorts of problems if you absolutely cannot stomach the possibility that all of us people might not live in a uniform linear objective reality that works according to our intuition. Simple != Intuitive
    - yters 7y ago
      Yes, if any presuppositions are allowable, then you can end up with any conclusion you want. The unity of individual consciousness appears to be a more fundamental concept than any physical theories, since all physical theories are evaluated through said consciousness. Thus, any physical theory, such as forking consciousnesses, that make the unity of consciousness absurd, and thus undermines its evaluative capability, undermines the physical theory itself. Like Darwin's doubt of how we can trust the thoughts of a mind evolved from monkeys.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  I can't answer for someone else, but I don't think conscious beings can be cloned for the same reason that objects in general can't be cloned. I guess my rudimentary understanding of the uncertainty principle? Of course, that's different from people being cloned all the time implicitly, aka many-worlds. However, my instincts also tell me that reproducing quantum states for quantum computing must be basically the same thing as cloning objects, difficulty-wise, so I expect large quantum computers to become exponentially difficult to construct - but smart people who actually understand the math don't seem to believe that. So I don't have firm grounds for knowing the world works the way I think it does.
  - ithkuil 7y ago
    Yeah, being cloned implicitly while in superposition (whether interpreted as many worlds or not) is what I was a was going after in order to address the fact that Wigner's friend situation doesn't have to be absurd. That doesn't require us to clone an object; the argument only requires us to imagine how would it feel if it's happening all the time to us and conclude that we wouldn't feel a thing subjectively.

by yters 7y ago

ithkuil 7y ago

I thought I set up the thought experiment in such a way to separate the question of whether machines can be conscious from the question whether you'd feel any different if multiple concurrent and non-communicating "yous" would exists, with the purpose of engage in a discussion about Wigner's friend scenario. From your answer it seems you're also ruling out, a priori, the possibility that cloning a conscious being is not only impossible in reality, but absurd, regardless of any concession that would allow consciousness to still transcend matter (provided it allows for cloning). I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how you derive such strong conviction about the non-cloneability of conscious beings.

yters 7y ago
It fundamentally is a category error. A consciousness is inherently unique. If we 'cloned' it, it would be a different consciousness, so it cannot be cloned. For example, in your scenario, neither of the consciousnesses is ever going to experience what the other experiences. Thus they must be different, and not truly clones. On the other hand, if I copy a piece of software, it is in some sense the same software in both instances, though their histories are different.
- ithkuil 7y ago
  Sure, each instance of consciousness is independent, regardless of whether it shared history with another consciousness instance, and would feel things independently. I'm glad we're on agreement here. Apparently we don't mean the same thing by "cloning". Let's call it "forking". Btw, the same "uniqueness" issue applies to running software as well. The instance of a running software is not the same thing as the code of the software. If you take a snapshot of a software running on machine A and resume it on machine B, they no longer _are_ the same instance. It's clear that they exist independently because you can act on them independently and their state and future reactions will diverge. That said, it's trivial for us to run n copies of the same state transitions with software (in lock step), something that might just not be possible for us to do with arbitrary precision on biological systems. That's not what I meant by cloning: I'm not saying having an exact "lock-step" reproduction of whatever the internal mechanism of consciousness is (that would be another debate). But let's get back to the main point of my argument in this thread: Wigner's friend thought experiment is absurd/paradoxical only if we cling to the notion that we'd somehow be subjectively affected by the fact that nature effectively forks off and entertain parallel histories for complex systems such as conscious beings in the same way as it seems to fork off and entertain parallel histories for simpler quantum systems when they are in superposition state. We don't have to invoke the many-worlds interpretation, which is just an interpretation; we can jus look at the math that describes how quantum states evolve: our most accurate description of what we observe in the world tells us that the behaviour of particles is consistent with viewing them as if they fork off and evolve in parallel over time until, at some point, when we add ourselves in the mix as "observers" then suddenly puff this superposition collapses and we observe the particle having a concrete state, at random. Common ways to explain this collapse are: 1. The act of observing a system, done by a conscious being, collapses the quantum state, because consciousness is special 2. A conscious being it's just a very complex system that obeys the same rules governing the system it obseves, and thus gets involved in the superposition while performing the measurement, literally becoming part of the superposition. Thus the observed randomness is just an artefact of subjectively "waking up in room 1" Wigner's setup exaggerates this problem by adding another observer (the scientist friend). It poses absolutely no problems of you espouse the second explaination above. It poses all sorts of problems if you absolutely cannot stomach the possibility that all of us people might not live in a uniform linear objective reality that works according to our intuition. Simple != Intuitive
  - yters 7y ago
    Yes, if any presuppositions are allowable, then you can end up with any conclusion you want. The unity of individual consciousness appears to be a more fundamental concept than any physical theories, since all physical theories are evaluated through said consciousness. Thus, any physical theory, such as forking consciousnesses, that make the unity of consciousness absurd, and thus undermines its evaluative capability, undermines the physical theory itself. Like Darwin's doubt of how we can trust the thoughts of a mind evolved from monkeys.
perl4ever 7y ago
I can't answer for someone else, but I don't think conscious beings can be cloned for the same reason that objects in general can't be cloned. I guess my rudimentary understanding of the uncertainty principle? Of course, that's different from people being cloned all the time implicitly, aka many-worlds. However, my instincts also tell me that reproducing quantum states for quantum computing must be basically the same thing as cloning objects, difficulty-wise, so I expect large quantum computers to become exponentially difficult to construct - but smart people who actually understand the math don't seem to believe that. So I don't have firm grounds for knowing the world works the way I think it does.
- ithkuil 7y ago
  Yeah, being cloned implicitly while in superposition (whether interpreted as many worlds or not) is what I was a was going after in order to address the fact that Wigner's friend situation doesn't have to be absurd. That doesn't require us to clone an object; the argument only requires us to imagine how would it feel if it's happening all the time to us and conclude that we wouldn't feel a thing subjectively.