5 ms·

> Saying things like "Consciousness is emergent" or "Consciousness is just a side effect of information processing" seems to miss the point. It sounds suspect

by knzhou 6y ago

> Saying things like "Consciousness is emergent" or "Consciousness is just a side effect of information processing" seems to miss the point. It sounds suspect to me too, but the reason the idea is appealing is that it's worked fantastically for hundreds of similar phenomena. To vastly oversimplify thousands of years of philosophy, for most of human history the default position has been that every idea had to be reified into some metaphysical essence. What is the essence that makes a dog a dog? That makes bread nourishing but rocks not? That makes rocks solid? That makes fire hot? That makes falling objects seek Earth? Again and again, we've found simple physical explanations for these puzzles, that once were regarded as just as inexplicable as consciousness. Indeed, consciousness is now the last essence that survives, and that's why some bet it'll go the same way as all the rest. "But this one is different", indeed, and every single time so far that argument has been wrong.

pontus 6y ago
My background is in theoretical physics, so I absolutely subscribe to this perspective. In understanding my own consciousness, however, I find it a lot harder to see how such an explanation could work. The only other problem that I feel may require a similarly "out-there" explanation would be the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. Why is it that a macroscopic object, made entirely of electrons, protons, etc. when interacting with an electron means that a measurement occurs, but somehow when a single electron interacts with that same electron we can just use the Schrödinger equation? The existence of some type of cutoff between macroscopic and microscopic seems to me to suffer from inevitable inconsistencies. More likely, I would think, is that something like the many worlds interpretation is correct. Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if something similar will happen when we understand consciousness more deeply. Simply saying that it's an emergent property is sort of cheating and discounting how different the sense of experience is from anything else that we have seen in nature.
- youareostriches 6y ago
  We can imagine consciousness as a purely informational process, which can occur in any adequately complex substrate—real or virtual. In this regard (integrated information theory), the inherent “properties” of consciousness would be more readily described using graph theory or topology. However, we can also view physics itself as something inherently informational, given that all the base particles in the standard model can ultimately be boiled down to scalar values. Would it be possible to say that those values are ultimately derived from the inherently mathematical properties which result in this reality “existing”? What does it mean for something to exist on the basis of its inherent mathematical identity? If both consciousness and reality are purely mathematical phenomenon (maybe consciousness is more derived through the computation-generating properties of life), why would one such phenomenon be any less expected than the other? Isn’t it impossible for a non-mathematically-derived (informational) consciousness to exist at all in such a universe?
  - kaffeemitsahne 6y ago
    Last I heard, integrated information theory is _not_ neutral w.r.t. substrate, i.e. to compute the consciousness of a human being simulated on a computer chip, Tononi wants us to apply the IIT calculations to the computer chip.
    - youareostriches 6y ago
      Oh, certainly the processes occurring on the chip itself could bring about an entirely separate consciousness while at the same time simulating a human one on a different level.
- scotty79 6y ago
  > Why is it that a macroscopic object, made entirely of electrons, protons, etc. when interacting with an electron means that a measurement occurs, but somehow when a single electron interacts with that same electron we can just use the Schrödinger equation? The way I understand it is that particles are fuzzy, but if they interact with sharper things they get less fuzzy themselves. Naturally large amounts of interacting particles (macroscopic objects) are way sharper than single isolated particles. So measurement is just theoretical concept that relates to system physically getting immensely less fuzzy to a point we can safely assume for the sake of easier calculations that it's not fuzzy at all. You can still describe such sharp system with Schrödinger equation, it still works even after measurement, but you don't do that since there are easier ways like Newtons mechanics. There's no artificial cutoff. There are just many orders of magnitude difference of how sharp things become through interaction. You can see that experimental scientists managed to make pretty large systems to display quantum superposition if they are properly isolated from interaction with way larger systems that could knock them out of superposition. As for consciousness my opinion is that it's just some specific algorithm that has some evolutionary utility for some animals. It's fairly good for modelling self, environment and the future. It's not in any way pinnacle of development. It's gradual like human has more consciousness than dog, and dog more than a hamster, but not to the point of absurd, that single electron or even single neuron has some amount of consciousness. Just the same as you shouldn't think that single electron or even neuron has some intrinsic ability to perform sorting or image recognition. You need hardware, and yes, more powerful hardware yields stronger results, but you still need to have at least rudimentary versions of correct algorithm running on that hardware before you can actually say it does the thing.
  - magicalhippo 6y ago
    > So measurement is just theoretical concept that relates to system physically getting immensely less fuzzy to a point we can safely assume for the sake of easier calculations that it's not fuzzy at all. It appears to be more complicated than that, see Wigner's friend[1] thought experiment and a recent experimental realization of it[2]. From the paper's abstract: "In a state-of-the-art 6-photon experiment, we realise this extended Wigner’s friend scenario, experimentally violating the associated Bell-type inequality by 5 standard deviations. If one holds fast to the assumptions of locality and free-choice, this result implies that quantum theory should be interpreted in an observer-dependent way." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend [2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080 https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080
- taneq 6y ago
  > Why is it that a macroscopic object, made entirely of electrons, protons, etc. when interacting with an electron means that a measurement occurs, but somehow when a single electron interacts with that same electron we can just use the Schrödinger equation? People get hung up on this semantic concept of 'measurement' when that's not what it's about at all. It's not "if you measure a property of a particle then you change that property", it's "if you interact with a property of a particle then you change it, and that it's impossible to measure without interacting". The electron doesn't care whether you're conscious and certainly not whether you're writing anything down. Its momentum or whatever is still going to change regardless.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Indeed. Measurement is a physical process, not metaphysical one. To measure something, you necessarily need to interact with it (and at this point it's worth remembering that photons bouncing off an object and hitting your retinas absolutely count as interaction, so you can't e.g. put a ruler next to the dog and read out the results, and say you weren't interacting with it, not in the sense physicists use this word).
    - SteveJS 6y ago
      How does that explain the quantum eraser experiment? a photon that has been "marked" and then "unmarked" will interfere with itself and produce the fringes characteristic of Young's experiment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_eraser_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_eraser_experiment
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Did you mean to reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221433? I don't see how QEE is incompatible with the notion that measuring something necessitates interacting with it. Photons are usually measured by absorbing them and turning into electricity.
  - lambdatronics 6y ago
agumonkey 6y ago
Anybody have a really bad negative feeling toward the deconstruction of science ? There was an obvious degree of existential improvement for a while, but then dissecting everything at this points .. kinda hurts my soul. I somehow wants to keep some magic unexplained phenomena to stare at without any theory, just feeling.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  I recommend reading Joy in the Merely Real by Eliezer Yudkowsky (and its follow-ups). It might help you with that. https://www.lesswrong.com/s/6BFkmEgre7uwhDxDR/p/x4dG4GhpZH2hgz59x https://www.lesswrong.com/s/6BFkmEgre7uwhDxDR/p/x4dG4GhpZH2h... Alternatively, there's the obligatory xkcd (https://xkcd.com/877/ https://xkcd.com/877/), but I feel it kind of misses the point a little.
- mellow2020 6y ago
  > Anybody have a really bad negative feeling toward the deconstruction of science ? C.S. Lewis for one, this is from "The Abolition of Man": > But you cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    Well every layer man made transparent changed his life, and it became a chase, technologically driven mainly, to do so ad infinitum. Even though we're seeing resistance now because ignored side effects are biting us, I don't know if societies won't keep digging beyond QM so man can have room temperature super conductors and backyard fusion to power neverending fountain of youths. Until their sanity disappears.
- monktastic1 6y ago

by knzhou 6y ago

pontus 6y ago

My background is in theoretical physics, so I absolutely subscribe to this perspective. In understanding my own consciousness, however, I find it a lot harder to see how such an explanation could work. The only other problem that I feel may require a similarly "out-there" explanation would be the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. Why is it that a macroscopic object, made entirely of electrons, protons, etc. when interacting with an electron means that a measurement occurs, but somehow when a single electron interacts with that same electron we can just use the Schrödinger equation? The existence of some type of cutoff between macroscopic and microscopic seems to me to suffer from inevitable inconsistencies. More likely, I would think, is that something like the many worlds interpretation is correct. Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if something similar will happen when we understand consciousness more deeply. Simply saying that it's an emergent property is sort of cheating and discounting how different the sense of experience is from anything else that we have seen in nature.

youareostriches 6y ago
We can imagine consciousness as a purely informational process, which can occur in any adequately complex substrate—real or virtual. In this regard (integrated information theory), the inherent “properties” of consciousness would be more readily described using graph theory or topology. However, we can also view physics itself as something inherently informational, given that all the base particles in the standard model can ultimately be boiled down to scalar values. Would it be possible to say that those values are ultimately derived from the inherently mathematical properties which result in this reality “existing”? What does it mean for something to exist on the basis of its inherent mathematical identity? If both consciousness and reality are purely mathematical phenomenon (maybe consciousness is more derived through the computation-generating properties of life), why would one such phenomenon be any less expected than the other? Isn’t it impossible for a non-mathematically-derived (informational) consciousness to exist at all in such a universe?
- kaffeemitsahne 6y ago
  Last I heard, integrated information theory is _not_ neutral w.r.t. substrate, i.e. to compute the consciousness of a human being simulated on a computer chip, Tononi wants us to apply the IIT calculations to the computer chip.
  - youareostriches 6y ago
    Oh, certainly the processes occurring on the chip itself could bring about an entirely separate consciousness while at the same time simulating a human one on a different level.
scotty79 6y ago
> Why is it that a macroscopic object, made entirely of electrons, protons, etc. when interacting with an electron means that a measurement occurs, but somehow when a single electron interacts with that same electron we can just use the Schrödinger equation? The way I understand it is that particles are fuzzy, but if they interact with sharper things they get less fuzzy themselves. Naturally large amounts of interacting particles (macroscopic objects) are way sharper than single isolated particles. So measurement is just theoretical concept that relates to system physically getting immensely less fuzzy to a point we can safely assume for the sake of easier calculations that it's not fuzzy at all. You can still describe such sharp system with Schrödinger equation, it still works even after measurement, but you don't do that since there are easier ways like Newtons mechanics. There's no artificial cutoff. There are just many orders of magnitude difference of how sharp things become through interaction. You can see that experimental scientists managed to make pretty large systems to display quantum superposition if they are properly isolated from interaction with way larger systems that could knock them out of superposition. As for consciousness my opinion is that it's just some specific algorithm that has some evolutionary utility for some animals. It's fairly good for modelling self, environment and the future. It's not in any way pinnacle of development. It's gradual like human has more consciousness than dog, and dog more than a hamster, but not to the point of absurd, that single electron or even single neuron has some amount of consciousness. Just the same as you shouldn't think that single electron or even neuron has some intrinsic ability to perform sorting or image recognition. You need hardware, and yes, more powerful hardware yields stronger results, but you still need to have at least rudimentary versions of correct algorithm running on that hardware before you can actually say it does the thing.
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  > So measurement is just theoretical concept that relates to system physically getting immensely less fuzzy to a point we can safely assume for the sake of easier calculations that it's not fuzzy at all. It appears to be more complicated than that, see Wigner's friend[1] thought experiment and a recent experimental realization of it[2]. From the paper's abstract: "In a state-of-the-art 6-photon experiment, we realise this extended Wigner’s friend scenario, experimentally violating the associated Bell-type inequality by 5 standard deviations. If one holds fast to the assumptions of locality and free-choice, this result implies that quantum theory should be interpreted in an observer-dependent way." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend [2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080 https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080
taneq 6y ago
> Why is it that a macroscopic object, made entirely of electrons, protons, etc. when interacting with an electron means that a measurement occurs, but somehow when a single electron interacts with that same electron we can just use the Schrödinger equation? People get hung up on this semantic concept of 'measurement' when that's not what it's about at all. It's not "if you measure a property of a particle then you change that property", it's "if you interact with a property of a particle then you change it, and that it's impossible to measure without interacting". The electron doesn't care whether you're conscious and certainly not whether you're writing anything down. Its momentum or whatever is still going to change regardless.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Indeed. Measurement is a physical process, not metaphysical one. To measure something, you necessarily need to interact with it (and at this point it's worth remembering that photons bouncing off an object and hitting your retinas absolutely count as interaction, so you can't e.g. put a ruler next to the dog and read out the results, and say you weren't interacting with it, not in the sense physicists use this word).
  - SteveJS 6y ago
    How does that explain the quantum eraser experiment? a photon that has been "marked" and then "unmarked" will interfere with itself and produce the fringes characteristic of Young's experiment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_eraser_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_eraser_experiment
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Did you mean to reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221433? I don't see how QEE is incompatible with the notion that measuring something necessitates interacting with it. Photons are usually measured by absorbing them and turning into electricity.
- lambdatronics 6y ago

agumonkey 6y ago

Anybody have a really bad negative feeling toward the deconstruction of science ? There was an obvious degree of existential improvement for a while, but then dissecting everything at this points .. kinda hurts my soul. I somehow wants to keep some magic unexplained phenomena to stare at without any theory, just feeling.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
I recommend reading Joy in the Merely Real by Eliezer Yudkowsky (and its follow-ups). It might help you with that. https://www.lesswrong.com/s/6BFkmEgre7uwhDxDR/p/x4dG4GhpZH2hgz59x https://www.lesswrong.com/s/6BFkmEgre7uwhDxDR/p/x4dG4GhpZH2h... Alternatively, there's the obligatory xkcd (https://xkcd.com/877/ https://xkcd.com/877/), but I feel it kind of misses the point a little.
mellow2020 6y ago
> Anybody have a really bad negative feeling toward the deconstruction of science ? C.S. Lewis for one, this is from "The Abolition of Man": > But you cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  Well every layer man made transparent changed his life, and it became a chase, technologically driven mainly, to do so ad infinitum. Even though we're seeing resistance now because ignored side effects are biting us, I don't know if societies won't keep digging beyond QM so man can have room temperature super conductors and backyard fusion to power neverending fountain of youths. Until their sanity disappears.
monktastic1 6y ago