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The idea that you cannot get to consciousness from computation requires accepting on faith alone that consciousness is magic. It’s fundamentally a religious-lik

by epgui 4y ago

The idea that you cannot get to consciousness from computation requires accepting on faith alone that consciousness is magic. It’s fundamentally a religious-like bias. It’s not magic, I’m afraid.

Gwarzo 4y ago
This is a little bit of an emotional take I think. The burden of proof is on the claim that you can get there through computation, not otherwise. We do not understand the fundamental reality of consciousness, this does not mean that consciousness is magic. The assertion that you cannot get there from computation implies there is a currently non understood yet essential piece of physics(I assume, but I do not know) which doesn't fall under "computation". A laymans initial thoughts point this towards the quantum realm.
- deleted 4y ago
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- epgui 4y ago
  Considering that everything in the universe is the product of some computation, I would consider it a reasonable default assumption that whatever we mean by “consciousness” emerges from computation. That this idea “intuitively feels weird” or “intuitively feels wrong”, and that we love to think we are special and have a unique place in the universe, is probably a more serious bias.
  - 3g4o53g4o5 4y ago
    Not probably, it is a bias. Dolphin can speak, dog can speak, bird can speak too. There is nothing special about homo species except the only fact that we have more neurons in our head. Those "philosophers" love to claim that human consciousness is different than animal and this is the biggest bullshit.
    - epgui 4y ago
      We’re in total agreement, I’m just measuring my words by habit.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      No, dogs and birds can't "speak", not in the same sense you do (with dolphins it's a little more debatable). Animal calls have no syntax - each call has some meaning, but they do not compose in any way. The order in which an animal performs its calls is arbitrary, and an animal hearing said calls doesn't pay attention to it. Even basic modifiers like "no" don't exist in animal communication - if a call means "food", and another call means "no", then an animal hearing the call for "no" and the call for "food" will behave as if they heard there is food somewhere. The exception to this seem to be dolphins (orcas, in particular), where it seems they have been quite successfully trained to follow a series a short commands in order, in a sign language (so you can sign "jump, swim, splash" and they will follow this; and then sign "swim, splash, jump" and they will do it in the new order). This can't be done with dogs, and it's even questionable if it has been successfully done with chimps.
      - epgui 4y ago
        To say that almost all animal communication is without order (syntax) is almost certainly incorrect, and would have a high burden of proof. It’s certainly been a historical assumption, but I think science has moved a little past it. Even bees can communicate relatively sophisticated messages between them.
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        Bee dances are a fascinating topic, but the evidence is still inconclusive - there is some evidence that suggests the movements in the dance correlate with the position of the flower, but there is other evidence that suggests they are irrelevant and the flower is found by a trail of pheromones. In all other animals where this had been extensively studied (except orcas and maybe chimps), syntax has proven to be absent in natural calls, and also impossible to teach artificially. There are sometimes apparent breakthroughs, but it later turns out that the animal figured out a way to interpret "a", "b", "a then b", and "b then a" as four separate calls, without any deeper understanding. This is evident when you then teach it "c", and find out that it sees no difference between "c then a" and "a then c", and it takes just as long to teach it to distinguish these three calls; and then again just as long to teach it the difference between "b than c" and "c then b". Have we tested each possible animal this way? No, of course not - but we have tested all the most likely candidates, and orcas and chimps were the only successes (and even here there is some debate). Crows, parrots, dogs, cats, gorillas, elephants, horses - none of these show any understanding of syntax.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    >Considering that everything in the universe is the product of some computation This is not necessarily true. If you drop a ball it's impossible to calculate how long it takes before it hits need ground. We can calculate an approximation by creating a model, but there is no way to know if that model matches reality.
    - epgui 4y ago
      What I am saying is that the universe is literally performing the computation. What you're describing is humans' attempt at modelling this computation using simple formulas.
- tensor 4y ago
  Quantum is the go to pearl for everyone who doesn't like the idea that consciousness is not simply a result of a deterministic but very complex system of physics. Unfortunately there has never been any evidence that anything in the brain exhibits any sort of quantum computing or logic or otherwise. Thus, the burned of proof is in fact on the the claim that you cannot get their through computation, because deterministic physics processes are all that we have observed in the brain, thus the default assumption must be that all the properties of the brain are also deterministic.
  - epgui 4y ago
    Well, there are plenty of quantum effects required for cells to function (everything is just biophysics and biochemistry after all), but those are irrelevant at the scale of the brain as a whole. The properties we care about (especially in this context) are emergent.
  - antoinexp 4y ago
    As a side comment however, Roger Penrose has this argument about some kind of quantum effects from microtubules in cells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Consciousness (but to go as far as to say that this might be the reason in the end why consciousness is not a computation is still a whole debate however, and his theory is far from making a consensus I am afraid)
  - mekkkkkk 4y ago
    I don't understand how this would be an escape hatch though. If some sort of quantum randomness is essential for the emergence of consciousness, it could be incorporated into an algorithm as well. It wouldn't be strictly deterministic, but why would that matter? Maybe I'm missing something.
- mrshadowgoose 4y ago
  I get into a vehicle every day that I don't fully understand, yet it still seems to perform its function. I use vast swathes of computational resources every day for various tasks, the operation of which I understand even less. They still seem to accomplish those tasks without issue. Sometimes those computational resources run ML workloads. Very very few people on this planet can honestly claim to understand how neural networks work, and in many cases, the minutiae are inscrutable to all of us. They still seem to work fine. I most certainly do not understand how my own brain works, yet here it is, shitposting on hackernews. We have yet to find a single shred of evidence that the human brain makes use of quantum principles in aggregate to do its thing, and have even specifically excluded a few such explanations. And even if consciousness strictly requires quantum hardware...we'll get there eventually. Although you're certainly right about one thing, most laypeople would have a real tough time accepting a world where consciousness is synthetically reproducible, and instead tend to reach for comforting thoughts of "maybe quantum is required", "maybe consciousness is magic" or "maybe consciousness can only be created by a deity". Non-laypeople know that at normal temperatures and pressures, quantum effects don't really extend into the macroscopic realm.
  - unrealhoang 4y ago
    > We have yet to find a single shred of evidence that the human brain makes use of quantum principles in aggregate to do its thing, and have even specifically excluded a few such explanations. And even if consciousness strictly requires quantum hardware...we'll get there eventually. Isn't a random generator for a neural network act as its "inception"? If so, it's exactly quantum principles in aggregate.
    - mrshadowgoose 4y ago
      One does not require true random number generation to perform SGD. And once trained, most neural networks in-use today are completely deterministic. So no. You are also making a baseless assertion that consciousness requires randomness of any kind, let alone quantum-based true random number generation.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
- Arn_Thor 4y ago
  I disagree about where the burden of proof lies. If we start off firstly with the assumption that humans have consciousness, and secondly the decently supported claim that animals exhibit what to us appears to be consciousness on a spectrum, and thirdly that we don't exactly know how or why consciousness exists, then the conclusion that seems obvious to me is that we cannot rule out that it could emerge in a network similar to that in human and animal brains. To me the best explanation we have now is that consciousness is an emergent property of a brain. And since a brain is neurons firing, as far as we've been able to determine, then there's no particular reason why certain types of networks can't have the same emergent properties.
  - Planktonne 4y ago
    > the conclusion that seems obvious to me is that we cannot rule out that it could emerge in a network Not being able to rule out consciousness through computation is a far more cautious claim than 'consciousness is computation'.
    - Arn_Thor 4y ago
      Sure. But I was responding to the statement "The burden of proof is on the claim that you can get there through computation, not otherwise."
    - epgui 4y ago
      That is strictly true, but if you define computation as any physical process which involves information, as I do, then defending any other position than "consciousness emerges from computation" is extremely difficult.
  - thom 4y ago
    I think it’s important to note that the article isn’t saying that if you build a brain-like thing, it can’t be conscious. It’s arguing that if you simulate a brain-like thing purely in software it can’t be conscious. I’m not saying one argument has more merit than the other (not that anyone is going to be able to prove anything is conscious either way).
- stormbrew 4y ago
  > The assertion that you cannot get there from computation implies there is a currently non understood yet essential piece of physics(I assume, but I do not know) which doesn't fall under "computation" This conflates "computation" with "physics". I think even the OP doesn't do that, since it allows for the possibility that non-computational physical processes could lead to consciousness, even derived from computational efforts. To me this is the crux of the problem with that argument, though. The definition of "computation" here seems to be designed to get to this answer. It includes all physical processes that are not like consciousness and excludes all physical processes that are like consciousness, and on top of that presumes that humans consciousness isn't "deterministic", which to me is a difficult proposition to prove since human brains are never not being bombarded with stimuli, so creating two "runs" of the same brain is essentially impossible. Like trying to add 1+1 on a computer that's sitting in a big burst of cosmic rays twice.
  - epgui 4y ago
    Just for clarity, I consider to be “computation” any physical process which involves information.
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      Right, I meant the article's idea of computation, not yours. Should have said TFA instead of OP.
- simonh 4y ago
  All the arguments Ive seen against computational consciousness seem to me to reduce down to arguments against materialism. I expounded on this more in a root comment, and subsequent discussions so I won't repeat. Right now in physics and the materials sciences materialism is thoroughly uncontroversial. There is no evidence for any kind of dualism, it only rears it's nebulous and poorly defined head when we talk about consciousness, and there is zero experimental evidence for it. Therefore no, I think the burden of proof is on the dualist / non-computational consciousness side.
  - celeritascelery 4y ago
    The reductionist argument seems to be “the brain is just a meat computer and is conscious, therefore a complex enough silicon computer will be conscious as well”. I find this very similar to alchemy in the 15th century. The idea was “gold is heavy, malleable, lustery metal, and so is lead. We have observed substances can be converted others. Therefore with the right chemical process we can convert lead to gold”. The implicit assumption is that since the two things are similar, they can be made to exhibit the same properties with the right science. I.e. lead can become gold. This is the same as the “meat brain/silicon brain” line of reasoning. But as we learned with more advanced chemistry, lead cannot be turned into gold (at least not in the chemical way they were expecting). So the burden of proof does lie with those making the assertion that: “meat computer has consciousness”, therefore “silicon computer could have consciousness”. Lots of people assume this is just a given without any evidence. Just as alchemists assumed from the similarities between gold and lead meant they could be chemically converted. I would postulate chemistry is much simpler then consciousness.
    - kazinator 4y ago
      That's not necessarily a reductionist argument if it respects that the consciousness has a drama of its own that is not related to the low-level parts of the substrate; i.e. that the consciousness is irreducible. The mere hypothesis that something can be ported to silicon doesn't reduce it; it respects the complexity of the abstraction itself. Also, "the meat computer has consciousness" independently requires proof. Every meat computer thinks it has consciousness, and we just take their word for it, based on our own experience as a meat computer. If the thing making the same claim is not a meat computer, then we don't believe it in the same way: "I know meat computers are conscious because I am one; you say you are conscious but you are not a meat computer, therefore I don't believe you". In the same way, we could deny that an extraterrestrial life form is conscious, if it's not made of anything resembling meat.
cgio 4y ago
Would you say that the opposite assertion, I.e. that consciousness is computation is not grounded on belief and bias? I believe consciousness is computation of some kind. I think some of the challenges with consciousness is the link with the substrate of the computation, like a program that cannot run on any other computer, a kind of soul DRM? The belief in my uniqueness is instrumental in my belief that I am a conscious being.
zarmin 4y ago
so we can finally put this woo nonsense to bed, could you walk us through the high-level computations of a subjective experience? eg, having a bellyache or falling in love.
- epgui 4y ago
  I can’t explain to you how a whole brain works, but if the question was genuine, I would actually recommend starting with Blumenfeld’s “Neuroanatomy through Clinical Cases” textbook. It’ll demystify a lot of the larger scale questions around structure and organization. It’s fairly easy to study how neurons, axons and synapses work using any number of freely available resources. You’ll never find out exactly how every cell is wired, but after a while (especially if you have a comp-sci, ML or statistics background) you’ll realize that that’s besides the point.
  - zarmin 4y ago
    I'm just curious as to when exactly quality arises from quantity
    - epgui 4y ago
      What do you mean? Are you referring to emergence? The issue is that we know very very well that “consciousness” is not “one thing”, but rather a collection of features, all (or most) of which can exist in isolation, and all of which can have a whole spectrum of both pathological and “normal” forms or states. Generally speaking, different features emerge at different scales, so there is no particular reason to think that all of the things that make up “consciousness” would emerge at the same scale, at the same level of organization, or even at the same physical location in the brain. We can assume that interesting features emerge at the “group of neurons” level or at the tissue level, but that’s a pretty wide scale. Crude illustration: “consciousness” is much more like a network of microservices than it is a monolith… And it has fuzzy borders and is not even well encapsulated from its environment.
      - zarmin 4y ago
russdill 4y ago
Or more succinctly, all the known laws of physics effect things in a way that can be simulated by sufficiently complex computation. The idea that there's something going on in a wet, warm l, mushy brain that has a macroscopic effect, and yet isn't accounted for by the currently known physics or bonkers.
- epgui 4y ago
  I’m not sure that was more succinct, but exactly! Haha :)
- zarmin 4y ago
  >The idea that there's something going on in a wet, warm, mushy brain that has a macroscopic effect, What kind of complex computation simulates the subjective experiences of wet, warm, and mushy? EDIT: my account appears to be rate limited, so i am unable to post a reply until idk when.... By "subjective" I am referring to my conscious inner life, that there is something it is like to be me. I am an experiencer because I can experience things. My experiences are subjective and qualitative. When I see something red, there actually is no "red" in reality, there is just an electromagnetic wave vibrating at a certain frequency. But I still have a "red" experience. In the same way, I can also have a wet, warm, or mushy experience. How do the subjective qualities of my experience arise from quantities like spin, charge, mass, etc?
  - epgui 4y ago
    The same kind of computation as is performed by the wet warm and mushy computer. Be careful with the term “subjective”, because it’s a can of worms: it doesn’t imply chaos and lack of information. Your subjective experiences are merely called “subjective” because they aren’t computed the exact same way as other brains. It doesn’t mean they’re not the product of computation, or that they have magic properties!
  - epgui 4y ago
    Reply to your edit: I know it would be ideal if there was a simple, short answer, but this question is nearly the equivalent of "please explain all the core ideas of neuroscience/neurology/neuropsychology to me". It's a good question, but it's a big question. This is why in the other thread [1] I've tried to point you in the direction where you will find the answers you are looking for: the answers exist and are for the most part known, but you have a lot of reading ahead of you, and there's no way around that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31806312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31806312
Barrin92 4y ago
nope, the other way around. Thinking you can 'get' anything from computation is religious thinking, because it introduces a sort of dualism. As the author correctly points out, computation is not a 'thing that 'does' anything, it's a label for a subjective observation about a state of physical matter. Taking the naturalistic position is to accept that matter is all there is. Consciousness is not divorced from the stuff it is made out of, and cannot be abstracted into some cloud of computation. It is a sort enlightenment era rationalism gone wrong which is also why it's so popular among folks in this industry. It actually comes with its own theology while we're at it. (Immortality, raising the dead, final judgement, and so on). A person computes consciousness no more than a falling pen computes gravity. Even a literal computer does not 'compute' anything other than in the sense that human observers impose meaning on a bunch of electrons buzzing around, and the language makes sense to explain how it works.
antognini 4y ago
(Author here.) This is a false dichotomy. Saying that consciousness is not fundamentally a computational process does not mean that it then has to be magic. We could say the same thing about life. Life is not a computational phenomenon. But it is also not magic. It is, fundamentally, a particular kind of chemical process. Perhaps the same is true of consciousness, or maybe it is some other kind of physical process. I don't believe that saying that it is not computation means that we need to throw up our hands and resort to magic, though.
- epgui 4y ago
  I would absolutely argue that life is a particular category of computation as well, and that is actually closer to my area of expertise (biochemistry) than consciousness / neuro. For clarity: when I say "computation", I refer to any physical process ("physics") which involves information.
  - lowwave 4y ago
    I think the parent author may be talking about life in a phenomenological model as in how we experience something vs knowing about it epistemologically. Often that gets mixed up. Knowing doesn't equal experiencing. This is something often the technocrats misses.
  - antognini 4y ago
    I suspect we agree more than we disagree. But I think that your definition of a "computational process" is too broad. A bacterium does things that we can say are "performing a computation." But that is different from saying that life is, at root, a computational phenomenon. For instance, sorting a list is a computational process. It doesn't matter what kind of computer I run a sorting algorithm on, if I follow the algorithm, I end up with a sorted list. If I use quicksort, it takes me on average O(n log n) steps. It doesn't matter if I'm doing this on a Lego computer or if I'm simulating a Lego computer on a virtual computer. I always end up with a sorted list in an average of O(n log n) steps. By contrast, if I construct a collection of chemicals that matches the positions of those of a real bacterium, I have created a new bacterium. However, if I simulate the activity of those chemicals on a computer, I have not created a bacterium. I have just created a simulation of a bacterium. I haven't created a living thing. My argument is that the same is true of consciousness. If you create a perfect simulation of a brain in a computer, you have not created a new consciousness. You just have a simulation of a brain. None of this to say that a computational paradigm cannot sometimes be useful in understanding what is going on in life or consciousness. Just that it is not fundamentally a computational process, it's a physical process.
2-718-281-828 4y ago
Any sufficiently advanced technology feels like magic and it seems to me that consciousness is about as advanced as it gets.
V-2 4y ago
"The idea that you cannot make tea from water alone requires accepting on faith that brewing tea is magic." No, not necessarily. It just means that water/computation is not the only ingredient you need.
- doliveira 4y ago
  And what is this other ingredient if it's not something physical?
  - V-2 4y ago
    It could well be something physical, but going beyond mere computationality. If I knew what it was, I'd be waiting for my Nobel prize now :) It's kind of as Newton's physics was missing the secret ingredient of special relativity. It was still physical, not magical, but not discovered yet.
    - doliveira 4y ago
      You seem to be arguing for conscience as the fifth force of nature, or something quite close to it. That's basically magic.
      - V-2 4y ago
        Only in the same sense as dark matter or string theory are "basically magic". It is naive to assume we've already discovered all properties of matter and energy and are now only refining our understanding of those.
        doliveira 4y ago
        Yes, astrology could also work due to a fifth force of nature. After all, it would be naive to just dismiss it based on our current understanding of Physics.
        4y ago
doliveira 4y ago
Yeah, God of the gaps all the way down. That, and a good deal of armchair philosophy. I think it was Sean Carroll that said something like "don't trust any way of thinking that allows you to discover truths about the universe from the comfort of your armchair".

by epgui 4y ago

Gwarzo 4y ago

This is a little bit of an emotional take I think. The burden of proof is on the claim that you can get there through computation, not otherwise. We do not understand the fundamental reality of consciousness, this does not mean that consciousness is magic. The assertion that you cannot get there from computation implies there is a currently non understood yet essential piece of physics(I assume, but I do not know) which doesn't fall under "computation". A laymans initial thoughts point this towards the quantum realm.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
epgui 4y ago
Considering that everything in the universe is the product of some computation, I would consider it a reasonable default assumption that whatever we mean by “consciousness” emerges from computation. That this idea “intuitively feels weird” or “intuitively feels wrong”, and that we love to think we are special and have a unique place in the universe, is probably a more serious bias.
- 3g4o53g4o5 4y ago
  Not probably, it is a bias. Dolphin can speak, dog can speak, bird can speak too. There is nothing special about homo species except the only fact that we have more neurons in our head. Those "philosophers" love to claim that human consciousness is different than animal and this is the biggest bullshit.
  - epgui 4y ago
    We’re in total agreement, I’m just measuring my words by habit.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    No, dogs and birds can't "speak", not in the same sense you do (with dolphins it's a little more debatable). Animal calls have no syntax - each call has some meaning, but they do not compose in any way. The order in which an animal performs its calls is arbitrary, and an animal hearing said calls doesn't pay attention to it. Even basic modifiers like "no" don't exist in animal communication - if a call means "food", and another call means "no", then an animal hearing the call for "no" and the call for "food" will behave as if they heard there is food somewhere. The exception to this seem to be dolphins (orcas, in particular), where it seems they have been quite successfully trained to follow a series a short commands in order, in a sign language (so you can sign "jump, swim, splash" and they will follow this; and then sign "swim, splash, jump" and they will do it in the new order). This can't be done with dogs, and it's even questionable if it has been successfully done with chimps.
    - epgui 4y ago
      To say that almost all animal communication is without order (syntax) is almost certainly incorrect, and would have a high burden of proof. It’s certainly been a historical assumption, but I think science has moved a little past it. Even bees can communicate relatively sophisticated messages between them.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        Bee dances are a fascinating topic, but the evidence is still inconclusive - there is some evidence that suggests the movements in the dance correlate with the position of the flower, but there is other evidence that suggests they are irrelevant and the flower is found by a trail of pheromones. In all other animals where this had been extensively studied (except orcas and maybe chimps), syntax has proven to be absent in natural calls, and also impossible to teach artificially. There are sometimes apparent breakthroughs, but it later turns out that the animal figured out a way to interpret "a", "b", "a then b", and "b then a" as four separate calls, without any deeper understanding. This is evident when you then teach it "c", and find out that it sees no difference between "c then a" and "a then c", and it takes just as long to teach it to distinguish these three calls; and then again just as long to teach it the difference between "b than c" and "c then b". Have we tested each possible animal this way? No, of course not - but we have tested all the most likely candidates, and orcas and chimps were the only successes (and even here there is some debate). Crows, parrots, dogs, cats, gorillas, elephants, horses - none of these show any understanding of syntax.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >Considering that everything in the universe is the product of some computation This is not necessarily true. If you drop a ball it's impossible to calculate how long it takes before it hits need ground. We can calculate an approximation by creating a model, but there is no way to know if that model matches reality.
  - epgui 4y ago
    What I am saying is that the universe is literally performing the computation. What you're describing is humans' attempt at modelling this computation using simple formulas.
tensor 4y ago
Quantum is the go to pearl for everyone who doesn't like the idea that consciousness is not simply a result of a deterministic but very complex system of physics. Unfortunately there has never been any evidence that anything in the brain exhibits any sort of quantum computing or logic or otherwise. Thus, the burned of proof is in fact on the the claim that you cannot get their through computation, because deterministic physics processes are all that we have observed in the brain, thus the default assumption must be that all the properties of the brain are also deterministic.
- epgui 4y ago
  Well, there are plenty of quantum effects required for cells to function (everything is just biophysics and biochemistry after all), but those are irrelevant at the scale of the brain as a whole. The properties we care about (especially in this context) are emergent.
- antoinexp 4y ago
  As a side comment however, Roger Penrose has this argument about some kind of quantum effects from microtubules in cells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Consciousness (but to go as far as to say that this might be the reason in the end why consciousness is not a computation is still a whole debate however, and his theory is far from making a consensus I am afraid)
- mekkkkkk 4y ago
  I don't understand how this would be an escape hatch though. If some sort of quantum randomness is essential for the emergence of consciousness, it could be incorporated into an algorithm as well. It wouldn't be strictly deterministic, but why would that matter? Maybe I'm missing something.
mrshadowgoose 4y ago
I get into a vehicle every day that I don't fully understand, yet it still seems to perform its function. I use vast swathes of computational resources every day for various tasks, the operation of which I understand even less. They still seem to accomplish those tasks without issue. Sometimes those computational resources run ML workloads. Very very few people on this planet can honestly claim to understand how neural networks work, and in many cases, the minutiae are inscrutable to all of us. They still seem to work fine. I most certainly do not understand how my own brain works, yet here it is, shitposting on hackernews. We have yet to find a single shred of evidence that the human brain makes use of quantum principles in aggregate to do its thing, and have even specifically excluded a few such explanations. And even if consciousness strictly requires quantum hardware...we'll get there eventually. Although you're certainly right about one thing, most laypeople would have a real tough time accepting a world where consciousness is synthetically reproducible, and instead tend to reach for comforting thoughts of "maybe quantum is required", "maybe consciousness is magic" or "maybe consciousness can only be created by a deity". Non-laypeople know that at normal temperatures and pressures, quantum effects don't really extend into the macroscopic realm.
- unrealhoang 4y ago
  > We have yet to find a single shred of evidence that the human brain makes use of quantum principles in aggregate to do its thing, and have even specifically excluded a few such explanations. And even if consciousness strictly requires quantum hardware...we'll get there eventually. Isn't a random generator for a neural network act as its "inception"? If so, it's exactly quantum principles in aggregate.
  - mrshadowgoose 4y ago
    One does not require true random number generation to perform SGD. And once trained, most neural networks in-use today are completely deterministic. So no. You are also making a baseless assertion that consciousness requires randomness of any kind, let alone quantum-based true random number generation.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
Arn_Thor 4y ago
I disagree about where the burden of proof lies. If we start off firstly with the assumption that humans have consciousness, and secondly the decently supported claim that animals exhibit what to us appears to be consciousness on a spectrum, and thirdly that we don't exactly know how or why consciousness exists, then the conclusion that seems obvious to me is that we cannot rule out that it could emerge in a network similar to that in human and animal brains. To me the best explanation we have now is that consciousness is an emergent property of a brain. And since a brain is neurons firing, as far as we've been able to determine, then there's no particular reason why certain types of networks can't have the same emergent properties.
- Planktonne 4y ago
  > the conclusion that seems obvious to me is that we cannot rule out that it could emerge in a network Not being able to rule out consciousness through computation is a far more cautious claim than 'consciousness is computation'.
  - Arn_Thor 4y ago
    Sure. But I was responding to the statement "The burden of proof is on the claim that you can get there through computation, not otherwise."
  - epgui 4y ago
    That is strictly true, but if you define computation as any physical process which involves information, as I do, then defending any other position than "consciousness emerges from computation" is extremely difficult.
- thom 4y ago
  I think it’s important to note that the article isn’t saying that if you build a brain-like thing, it can’t be conscious. It’s arguing that if you simulate a brain-like thing purely in software it can’t be conscious. I’m not saying one argument has more merit than the other (not that anyone is going to be able to prove anything is conscious either way).
stormbrew 4y ago
> The assertion that you cannot get there from computation implies there is a currently non understood yet essential piece of physics(I assume, but I do not know) which doesn't fall under "computation" This conflates "computation" with "physics". I think even the OP doesn't do that, since it allows for the possibility that non-computational physical processes could lead to consciousness, even derived from computational efforts. To me this is the crux of the problem with that argument, though. The definition of "computation" here seems to be designed to get to this answer. It includes all physical processes that are not like consciousness and excludes all physical processes that are like consciousness, and on top of that presumes that humans consciousness isn't "deterministic", which to me is a difficult proposition to prove since human brains are never not being bombarded with stimuli, so creating two "runs" of the same brain is essentially impossible. Like trying to add 1+1 on a computer that's sitting in a big burst of cosmic rays twice.
- epgui 4y ago
  Just for clarity, I consider to be “computation” any physical process which involves information.
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    Right, I meant the article's idea of computation, not yours. Should have said TFA instead of OP.
simonh 4y ago
All the arguments Ive seen against computational consciousness seem to me to reduce down to arguments against materialism. I expounded on this more in a root comment, and subsequent discussions so I won't repeat. Right now in physics and the materials sciences materialism is thoroughly uncontroversial. There is no evidence for any kind of dualism, it only rears it's nebulous and poorly defined head when we talk about consciousness, and there is zero experimental evidence for it. Therefore no, I think the burden of proof is on the dualist / non-computational consciousness side.
- celeritascelery 4y ago
  The reductionist argument seems to be “the brain is just a meat computer and is conscious, therefore a complex enough silicon computer will be conscious as well”. I find this very similar to alchemy in the 15th century. The idea was “gold is heavy, malleable, lustery metal, and so is lead. We have observed substances can be converted others. Therefore with the right chemical process we can convert lead to gold”. The implicit assumption is that since the two things are similar, they can be made to exhibit the same properties with the right science. I.e. lead can become gold. This is the same as the “meat brain/silicon brain” line of reasoning. But as we learned with more advanced chemistry, lead cannot be turned into gold (at least not in the chemical way they were expecting). So the burden of proof does lie with those making the assertion that: “meat computer has consciousness”, therefore “silicon computer could have consciousness”. Lots of people assume this is just a given without any evidence. Just as alchemists assumed from the similarities between gold and lead meant they could be chemically converted. I would postulate chemistry is much simpler then consciousness.
  - kazinator 4y ago
    That's not necessarily a reductionist argument if it respects that the consciousness has a drama of its own that is not related to the low-level parts of the substrate; i.e. that the consciousness is irreducible. The mere hypothesis that something can be ported to silicon doesn't reduce it; it respects the complexity of the abstraction itself. Also, "the meat computer has consciousness" independently requires proof. Every meat computer thinks it has consciousness, and we just take their word for it, based on our own experience as a meat computer. If the thing making the same claim is not a meat computer, then we don't believe it in the same way: "I know meat computers are conscious because I am one; you say you are conscious but you are not a meat computer, therefore I don't believe you". In the same way, we could deny that an extraterrestrial life form is conscious, if it's not made of anything resembling meat.

cgio 4y ago

Would you say that the opposite assertion, I.e. that consciousness is computation is not grounded on belief and bias? I believe consciousness is computation of some kind. I think some of the challenges with consciousness is the link with the substrate of the computation, like a program that cannot run on any other computer, a kind of soul DRM? The belief in my uniqueness is instrumental in my belief that I am a conscious being.

zarmin 4y ago

so we can finally put this woo nonsense to bed, could you walk us through the high-level computations of a subjective experience? eg, having a bellyache or falling in love.

epgui 4y ago
I can’t explain to you how a whole brain works, but if the question was genuine, I would actually recommend starting with Blumenfeld’s “Neuroanatomy through Clinical Cases” textbook. It’ll demystify a lot of the larger scale questions around structure and organization. It’s fairly easy to study how neurons, axons and synapses work using any number of freely available resources. You’ll never find out exactly how every cell is wired, but after a while (especially if you have a comp-sci, ML or statistics background) you’ll realize that that’s besides the point.
- zarmin 4y ago
  I'm just curious as to when exactly quality arises from quantity
  - epgui 4y ago
    What do you mean? Are you referring to emergence? The issue is that we know very very well that “consciousness” is not “one thing”, but rather a collection of features, all (or most) of which can exist in isolation, and all of which can have a whole spectrum of both pathological and “normal” forms or states. Generally speaking, different features emerge at different scales, so there is no particular reason to think that all of the things that make up “consciousness” would emerge at the same scale, at the same level of organization, or even at the same physical location in the brain. We can assume that interesting features emerge at the “group of neurons” level or at the tissue level, but that’s a pretty wide scale. Crude illustration: “consciousness” is much more like a network of microservices than it is a monolith… And it has fuzzy borders and is not even well encapsulated from its environment.
    - zarmin 4y ago

russdill 4y ago

Or more succinctly, all the known laws of physics effect things in a way that can be simulated by sufficiently complex computation. The idea that there's something going on in a wet, warm l, mushy brain that has a macroscopic effect, and yet isn't accounted for by the currently known physics or bonkers.

epgui 4y ago
I’m not sure that was more succinct, but exactly! Haha :)
zarmin 4y ago
>The idea that there's something going on in a wet, warm, mushy brain that has a macroscopic effect, What kind of complex computation simulates the subjective experiences of wet, warm, and mushy? EDIT: my account appears to be rate limited, so i am unable to post a reply until idk when.... By "subjective" I am referring to my conscious inner life, that there is something it is like to be me. I am an experiencer because I can experience things. My experiences are subjective and qualitative. When I see something red, there actually is no "red" in reality, there is just an electromagnetic wave vibrating at a certain frequency. But I still have a "red" experience. In the same way, I can also have a wet, warm, or mushy experience. How do the subjective qualities of my experience arise from quantities like spin, charge, mass, etc?
- epgui 4y ago
  The same kind of computation as is performed by the wet warm and mushy computer. Be careful with the term “subjective”, because it’s a can of worms: it doesn’t imply chaos and lack of information. Your subjective experiences are merely called “subjective” because they aren’t computed the exact same way as other brains. It doesn’t mean they’re not the product of computation, or that they have magic properties!
- epgui 4y ago
  Reply to your edit: I know it would be ideal if there was a simple, short answer, but this question is nearly the equivalent of "please explain all the core ideas of neuroscience/neurology/neuropsychology to me". It's a good question, but it's a big question. This is why in the other thread [1] I've tried to point you in the direction where you will find the answers you are looking for: the answers exist and are for the most part known, but you have a lot of reading ahead of you, and there's no way around that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31806312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31806312

Barrin92 4y ago

nope, the other way around. Thinking you can 'get' anything from computation is religious thinking, because it introduces a sort of dualism. As the author correctly points out, computation is not a 'thing that 'does' anything, it's a label for a subjective observation about a state of physical matter. Taking the naturalistic position is to accept that matter is all there is. Consciousness is not divorced from the stuff it is made out of, and cannot be abstracted into some cloud of computation. It is a sort enlightenment era rationalism gone wrong which is also why it's so popular among folks in this industry. It actually comes with its own theology while we're at it. (Immortality, raising the dead, final judgement, and so on). A person computes consciousness no more than a falling pen computes gravity. Even a literal computer does not 'compute' anything other than in the sense that human observers impose meaning on a bunch of electrons buzzing around, and the language makes sense to explain how it works.

antognini 4y ago

(Author here.) This is a false dichotomy. Saying that consciousness is not fundamentally a computational process does not mean that it then has to be magic. We could say the same thing about life. Life is not a computational phenomenon. But it is also not magic. It is, fundamentally, a particular kind of chemical process. Perhaps the same is true of consciousness, or maybe it is some other kind of physical process. I don't believe that saying that it is not computation means that we need to throw up our hands and resort to magic, though.

epgui 4y ago
I would absolutely argue that life is a particular category of computation as well, and that is actually closer to my area of expertise (biochemistry) than consciousness / neuro. For clarity: when I say "computation", I refer to any physical process ("physics") which involves information.
- lowwave 4y ago
  I think the parent author may be talking about life in a phenomenological model as in how we experience something vs knowing about it epistemologically. Often that gets mixed up. Knowing doesn't equal experiencing. This is something often the technocrats misses.
- antognini 4y ago
  I suspect we agree more than we disagree. But I think that your definition of a "computational process" is too broad. A bacterium does things that we can say are "performing a computation." But that is different from saying that life is, at root, a computational phenomenon. For instance, sorting a list is a computational process. It doesn't matter what kind of computer I run a sorting algorithm on, if I follow the algorithm, I end up with a sorted list. If I use quicksort, it takes me on average O(n log n) steps. It doesn't matter if I'm doing this on a Lego computer or if I'm simulating a Lego computer on a virtual computer. I always end up with a sorted list in an average of O(n log n) steps. By contrast, if I construct a collection of chemicals that matches the positions of those of a real bacterium, I have created a new bacterium. However, if I simulate the activity of those chemicals on a computer, I have not created a bacterium. I have just created a simulation of a bacterium. I haven't created a living thing. My argument is that the same is true of consciousness. If you create a perfect simulation of a brain in a computer, you have not created a new consciousness. You just have a simulation of a brain. None of this to say that a computational paradigm cannot sometimes be useful in understanding what is going on in life or consciousness. Just that it is not fundamentally a computational process, it's a physical process.

2-718-281-828 4y ago

Any sufficiently advanced technology feels like magic and it seems to me that consciousness is about as advanced as it gets.

V-2 4y ago

"The idea that you cannot make tea from water alone requires accepting on faith that brewing tea is magic." No, not necessarily. It just means that water/computation is not the only ingredient you need.

doliveira 4y ago
And what is this other ingredient if it's not something physical?
- V-2 4y ago
  It could well be something physical, but going beyond mere computationality. If I knew what it was, I'd be waiting for my Nobel prize now :) It's kind of as Newton's physics was missing the secret ingredient of special relativity. It was still physical, not magical, but not discovered yet.
  - doliveira 4y ago
    You seem to be arguing for conscience as the fifth force of nature, or something quite close to it. That's basically magic.
    - V-2 4y ago
      Only in the same sense as dark matter or string theory are "basically magic". It is naive to assume we've already discovered all properties of matter and energy and are now only refining our understanding of those.
      - doliveira 4y ago
        Yes, astrology could also work due to a fifth force of nature. After all, it would be naive to just dismiss it based on our current understanding of Physics.
        4y ago

doliveira 4y ago

Yeah, God of the gaps all the way down. That, and a good deal of armchair philosophy. I think it was Sean Carroll that said something like "don't trust any way of thinking that allows you to discover truths about the universe from the comfort of your armchair".