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It May Not Feel Like Anything to Be an Alien
- milsorgen 7y agoThis is why I like older scifi... I just reread: https://www.amazon.com/Far-Futures-Gregory-Benford/dp/0312863799 https://www.amazon.com/Far-Futures-Gregory-Benford/dp/031286... And I'll be damned if I didn't love the optimism and the idea that humanity could be taken, in some form, into the distant reaches.
- bionhoward 7y agoConscious world models are thermodynamically favored because consciousness helps organisms stay alive and copy themselves because awareness of oneself allows one to more easily maintain homeostasis and because simulation of the external environment allows predictive modeling of future fears and hopes. If some feature helps organisms increase their number, then we should expect to see it. On the micro scale, nature works by accident, but over evolutionary time scales, nothing is accidental; consciousness evolved for a reason. we should expect aliens, even alien robots, to have consciousness, because conscious alien robots would leverage consciousness to out-compete zombies. Also, we should expect businesses which develop artificially conscious robots to outcompete those who develop zombies (in the long run) I always chuckle when someone says in a TV show, “oh, that robot is just a machine.” So is the human body!