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From my time reading and watching science fiction I've come to the belief that sentience is not binary. It's not a toggle that is either true or false. It seems

From my time reading and watching science fiction I've come to the belief that sentience is not binary. It's not a toggle that is either true or false. It seems like a fuzzy gradient with no definite threshold for becoming sentient. Maybe it is just from increased complexity or maybe there really are some key ingredients. I hope we figure this out in my lifetime though because it is a fascinating question.

capableweb 4y ago
This is the correct way of seeing it, but lots of people seems to feel personally hurt when someone rebuts the claim "It's scientifically proven!" with their own data, failing to understand that that specific process is exactly what science is.
ackbar03 4y ago
I agree. Sentient or not, I think the fact that we now need to start seriously considering these questions, and not just as some far away hypothetical exercise anymore, is quite impressive in itself
thisNeeds2BeSad 4y ago
Totally agree, and its gradually growing from a animalistic fixated on the now state to full self-awareness. It can temporarliy collapse when fight and flight reflexes override the expensive reflection. It can permanently be lowered if a mental sickness (or a neuro-diverse adaption to more warlike states of humanity) gets triggered by stressfull circumstances. And there is also a zoo of complexity when it comes to "sentience", meaning there are those who are "great thinkers in the subconcious" and can not explain there thought process. There are levels of sentience and almost automated task, were the subconcious kicks in and the sentient human just "dissolves" for a moment, like driving home in a car. Its a fascinating topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel) Obligatory Watts Reference, cause his book really does have a interesting look on the zoo of humanity.
starwind 4y ago
The answer always seemed obvious to me. There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next --Robert Ford, Westworld
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  People hate this take, but to me it is obvious. Our conscious experience has to ultimately be illusory, because we know that at least parts of it are verifiably false - like our perception of free will when really what actions we take are close to deterministic.
  - ryeights 4y ago
    So consciousness is an illusion. Great. Then what are you experiencing right now? Who is experiencing it?
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      If what defines an agent who experiences something is something that takes in inputs, makes a "choice" independent of the base, deterministic interactions of atoms in their brain, and then executes on that choice - then nobody is experiencing it. I agree that this is a difficult question - but it is equally obvious that the way we experience the world is not real. We feel that we have free will but we know we don't.
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        So it was preordained since the beginning of time that you would write this comment and that I would reply to you?
        4y ago
DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
This seems to not be a very useful distinction (binary vs gradient) though, because in practice the question in the gradient scenario moves to “at what point along the gradient do we demarcate sentience”.
- izzydata 4y ago
  I think the idea is that the entire gradient is sentient to varying degrees. Two neurons interacting could be sentient, but is not enough to us as humans to have any meaningful interaction with. A cpu with two gates is way less useful than a cpu with a billion gates because one can perform more useful calculations to us more quickly. A creature with a brain that has 10 times as many neurons as a human probably isn't 10 times as sentient, but it might enable than to perceive reality in a way that a human never could imagine. I think the problem might be that we are wanting to define sentience in a too human centric way. Just because something like an insect can never perceive reality like we do as people doesn't necessarily mean it is not a simpler form of sentience. An insects brain probably doesn't dedicate any neurons to allow it to perceive suffering or itself, but it clearly perceives something. I don't know though. Just rambling here.
Groxx 4y ago
This raises the question of "can we identify something that is more sentient than us?". I think we can spot things that are less, just look at an insect. But what would more look like? Not merely more intelligent, that's probably not very difficult. More... alive or something.
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  Sometimes I wonder if people on LSD are more sentient.
  - TuringTest 4y ago
    No, they're sensing different than usual. It provides "new" experiences, not "more" experiences. You'll have more memories, but they aren't "more elevated" than the ones you're accustomed to - the brain doing the experiences is the same one, even if working differently.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      It does dedicate more processing power for pattern matching, so if consciousness (however defined) does correspond to that on the physical layer ...

capableweb 4y ago

This is the correct way of seeing it, but lots of people seems to feel personally hurt when someone rebuts the claim "It's scientifically proven!" with their own data, failing to understand that that specific process is exactly what science is.

ackbar03 4y ago

I agree. Sentient or not, I think the fact that we now need to start seriously considering these questions, and not just as some far away hypothetical exercise anymore, is quite impressive in itself

thisNeeds2BeSad 4y ago

Totally agree, and its gradually growing from a animalistic fixated on the now state to full self-awareness. It can temporarliy collapse when fight and flight reflexes override the expensive reflection. It can permanently be lowered if a mental sickness (or a neuro-diverse adaption to more warlike states of humanity) gets triggered by stressfull circumstances. And there is also a zoo of complexity when it comes to "sentience", meaning there are those who are "great thinkers in the subconcious" and can not explain there thought process. There are levels of sentience and almost automated task, were the subconcious kicks in and the sentient human just "dissolves" for a moment, like driving home in a car. Its a fascinating topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel) Obligatory Watts Reference, cause his book really does have a interesting look on the zoo of humanity.

starwind 4y ago

The answer always seemed obvious to me. There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next --Robert Ford, Westworld

whimsicalism 4y ago
People hate this take, but to me it is obvious. Our conscious experience has to ultimately be illusory, because we know that at least parts of it are verifiably false - like our perception of free will when really what actions we take are close to deterministic.
- ryeights 4y ago
  So consciousness is an illusion. Great. Then what are you experiencing right now? Who is experiencing it?
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    If what defines an agent who experiences something is something that takes in inputs, makes a "choice" independent of the base, deterministic interactions of atoms in their brain, and then executes on that choice - then nobody is experiencing it. I agree that this is a difficult question - but it is equally obvious that the way we experience the world is not real. We feel that we have free will but we know we don't.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      So it was preordained since the beginning of time that you would write this comment and that I would reply to you?
      - 4y ago

DoneWithAllThat 4y ago

This seems to not be a very useful distinction (binary vs gradient) though, because in practice the question in the gradient scenario moves to “at what point along the gradient do we demarcate sentience”.

izzydata 4y ago
I think the idea is that the entire gradient is sentient to varying degrees. Two neurons interacting could be sentient, but is not enough to us as humans to have any meaningful interaction with. A cpu with two gates is way less useful than a cpu with a billion gates because one can perform more useful calculations to us more quickly. A creature with a brain that has 10 times as many neurons as a human probably isn't 10 times as sentient, but it might enable than to perceive reality in a way that a human never could imagine. I think the problem might be that we are wanting to define sentience in a too human centric way. Just because something like an insect can never perceive reality like we do as people doesn't necessarily mean it is not a simpler form of sentience. An insects brain probably doesn't dedicate any neurons to allow it to perceive suffering or itself, but it clearly perceives something. I don't know though. Just rambling here.

Groxx 4y ago

This raises the question of "can we identify something that is more sentient than us?". I think we can spot things that are less, just look at an insect. But what would more look like? Not merely more intelligent, that's probably not very difficult. More... alive or something.

jonny_eh 4y ago
Sometimes I wonder if people on LSD are more sentient.
- TuringTest 4y ago
  No, they're sensing different than usual. It provides "new" experiences, not "more" experiences. You'll have more memories, but they aren't "more elevated" than the ones you're accustomed to - the brain doing the experiences is the same one, even if working differently.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    It does dedicate more processing power for pattern matching, so if consciousness (however defined) does correspond to that on the physical layer ...