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But framing it as a problem (or program) is begging the question; I'm arguing that it is not a computation.

by zarmin 4y ago

russdill 4y ago
Which necessitates that somehow, there's some law of physics important to operation in the brain who's effects aren't computable. Yes?
- zarmin 4y ago
  Not exactly. I am saying that consciousness is fundamental; that matter, physics, our brains, etc emerge from consciousness. Physics is the OS, consciousness is the transistors/electricity, and we are conscious agents (to borrow a term from Donald Hoffman) using the OS. So, instead of the physicalist paradigm of Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology -> Consciousness it is the idealist paradigm of Consciousness -> Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology
  - russdill 4y ago
    That doesn't change the question though. We don't know how many layers are beneath the known laws of physics. Who knows, one of them could be consciousness. Maybe it's turtles all the way down. They question remains. Can you provide a direct answer? If we measured all the particles in the brain, would they be operating in a way not compatible with the currently known laws of physics?
    - zarmin 4y ago
      >If we measured all the particles in the brain, would they be operating in a way not compatible with the currently known laws of physics? Their operation would be perfectly compatible with the known laws of physics. But their operation is _not_ thinking itself, it's what thinking looks like when observed across a dissociative boundary. If I am sad, and you look at my face and see tears, you would never think that the tears were my sadness itself; they are a representation, an image, of the sadness. Tears are what sadness looks like from across that boundary. I experience sadness from a first-person perspective, you see my tears from a second-person perspective, across a dissociative boundary. So, you can measure electrical activity in your brain when you are thinking thoughts, but that activity is not your thoughts, in the same way that flames are the image of fire but they are not fire itself. Neuronal activity is the image of thought, it is what your thoughts look like from across a dissociative boundary.
      - russdill 4y ago
        Okay, so if I use the laws of physics to simulate a human brain, it will behave exactly like a human brain in the real world. Will it also be conscious and experience sadness?
        zarmin 4y ago
        >Will it also be conscious and experience sadness? Imagine you are programming an AI simulation. You could train a detector to associate a certain wavelength with a certain color. When shown a red light, the AI could say "that is red", because it correctly identified the wavelength. But it would never know what it feels like to see red, right? This is similar to how a blind person cannot know what it feels like to see red, but they can intellectually understand that it is an oscillation of 4.3*10^14 cycles per second. A different example: you could train an AI to recognize 10,000 songs. It would listen to the frequencies and patterns, and make an identification. In both of these cases, we have quantity as the input and output. If after training, you asked the AI to identify the first song it was trained on, would the AI experience nostalgia? Would there be a way the AI "feels" about the song? We can probably both agree that the answer would be no. For the same reasons, the answer to your question is also no. (edited for clarity)
        russdill 4y ago
        I appreciate your response, but it's impossible for me to imagine programming an AI simulation capable of feeling the perception of red. The idea that I can't imagine doing these things is because of a shortcoming in my knowledge. Maybe that knowledge is out there, or maybe it isn't. So the exercise gets us no closer to answering the question at hand. But what I can do is imagine creating a physics simulation. There's no gaps in our knowledge there. So again, I'll ask. We create a physics simulation of a human brain. Can the brain write a novel? Answer questions about what it's like to perceive the color red? This is just a yes or no question.
        zarmin 4y ago
        >The idea that I can't imagine doing these things is because of a shortcoming in my knowledge. I don't think there is a shortcoming in your knowledge. Your metaphysics intuition is correctly tuned: simulations cannot feel. >We create a physics simulation of a human brain. Can the brain write a novel? Answer questions about what it's like to perceive the color red? This is just a yes or no question. GPT-3 can do both of these things. Is it conscious? If you need a direct answer, it is yes. But when we reword your second question as "can a simulated brain experience the color red?" the answer becomes more clear; the simulation can identify a wavelength and know it is called "red". But the experiential part is akin to explaining color to a blind person. A simulated brain could identify molecular patterns of cocoa and sugar, but can it know what it is like to taste chocolate? Think about what it means to taste chocolate. Is it purely quantitative, like the balance of ingredients, or is there something else going on that is qualitative? Something abstract, something with meaning, something more close to the metal? We can probably agree that it feels like there is. What we are describing is subjectivity — your private conscious inner life. I suggest it is this that is fundamental and cannot be simulated. This is the layer where experience "happens". From this layer emerges meta-consciousness. Here is an article by Bernardo Kastrup on meta-consciousness: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590537/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590537/

But framing it as a problem (or program) is begging the question; I'm arguing that it is not a computation.

by zarmin 4y ago

But framing it as a problem (or program) is begging the question; I'm arguing that it is not a computation.

Which necessitates that somehow, there's some law of physics important to operation in the brain who's effects aren't computable. Yes?

zarmin 4y ago
Not exactly. I am saying that consciousness is fundamental; that matter, physics, our brains, etc emerge from consciousness. Physics is the OS, consciousness is the transistors/electricity, and we are conscious agents (to borrow a term from Donald Hoffman) using the OS. So, instead of the physicalist paradigm of Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology -> Consciousness it is the idealist paradigm of Consciousness -> Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology
- russdill 4y ago
  That doesn't change the question though. We don't know how many layers are beneath the known laws of physics. Who knows, one of them could be consciousness. Maybe it's turtles all the way down. They question remains. Can you provide a direct answer? If we measured all the particles in the brain, would they be operating in a way not compatible with the currently known laws of physics?
  - zarmin 4y ago
    >If we measured all the particles in the brain, would they be operating in a way not compatible with the currently known laws of physics? Their operation would be perfectly compatible with the known laws of physics. But their operation is _not_ thinking itself, it's what thinking looks like when observed across a dissociative boundary. If I am sad, and you look at my face and see tears, you would never think that the tears were my sadness itself; they are a representation, an image, of the sadness. Tears are what sadness looks like from across that boundary. I experience sadness from a first-person perspective, you see my tears from a second-person perspective, across a dissociative boundary. So, you can measure electrical activity in your brain when you are thinking thoughts, but that activity is not your thoughts, in the same way that flames are the image of fire but they are not fire itself. Neuronal activity is the image of thought, it is what your thoughts look like from across a dissociative boundary.
    - russdill 4y ago
      Okay, so if I use the laws of physics to simulate a human brain, it will behave exactly like a human brain in the real world. Will it also be conscious and experience sadness?
      - zarmin 4y ago
        >Will it also be conscious and experience sadness? Imagine you are programming an AI simulation. You could train a detector to associate a certain wavelength with a certain color. When shown a red light, the AI could say "that is red", because it correctly identified the wavelength. But it would never know what it feels like to see red, right? This is similar to how a blind person cannot know what it feels like to see red, but they can intellectually understand that it is an oscillation of 4.3*10^14 cycles per second. A different example: you could train an AI to recognize 10,000 songs. It would listen to the frequencies and patterns, and make an identification. In both of these cases, we have quantity as the input and output. If after training, you asked the AI to identify the first song it was trained on, would the AI experience nostalgia? Would there be a way the AI "feels" about the song? We can probably both agree that the answer would be no. For the same reasons, the answer to your question is also no. (edited for clarity)
        russdill 4y ago
        I appreciate your response, but it's impossible for me to imagine programming an AI simulation capable of feeling the perception of red. The idea that I can't imagine doing these things is because of a shortcoming in my knowledge. Maybe that knowledge is out there, or maybe it isn't. So the exercise gets us no closer to answering the question at hand. But what I can do is imagine creating a physics simulation. There's no gaps in our knowledge there. So again, I'll ask. We create a physics simulation of a human brain. Can the brain write a novel? Answer questions about what it's like to perceive the color red? This is just a yes or no question.
        zarmin 4y ago
        >The idea that I can't imagine doing these things is because of a shortcoming in my knowledge. I don't think there is a shortcoming in your knowledge. Your metaphysics intuition is correctly tuned: simulations cannot feel. >We create a physics simulation of a human brain. Can the brain write a novel? Answer questions about what it's like to perceive the color red? This is just a yes or no question. GPT-3 can do both of these things. Is it conscious? If you need a direct answer, it is yes. But when we reword your second question as "can a simulated brain experience the color red?" the answer becomes more clear; the simulation can identify a wavelength and know it is called "red". But the experiential part is akin to explaining color to a blind person. A simulated brain could identify molecular patterns of cocoa and sugar, but can it know what it is like to taste chocolate? Think about what it means to taste chocolate. Is it purely quantitative, like the balance of ingredients, or is there something else going on that is qualitative? Something abstract, something with meaning, something more close to the metal? We can probably agree that it feels like there is. What we are describing is subjectivity — your private conscious inner life. I suggest it is this that is fundamental and cannot be simulated. This is the layer where experience "happens". From this layer emerges meta-consciousness. Here is an article by Bernardo Kastrup on meta-consciousness: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590537/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590537/