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>If so, what would be the magic ingredient that saves human brains from immediacy? It can't be memory, because Turing machines have memory as well. The univers

>If so, what would be the magic ingredient that saves human brains from immediacy? It can't be memory, because Turing machines have memory as well. The universe is not deterministic. There is one brain state at time T, but at time T+1 there are many possible brain states, all with different possibilities. What determines which state at time T+1 the consciousness at time T perceives itself as progressing to? If we define this as a function, which associates states at time T with states at times T+1, then this function loosely fits the definition of "free will". We can't actually construct this function or say anything about it, but we can say it can't not exist (as consciousness perceives itself as progressing to a single future state), which by the law of the excluded middle implies it must exist. The definition doesn't however prevent it from essentially being completely random.

davidmanheim 4y ago
"The universe is not deterministic." Maybe not. I think that's a big claim, and it's being made, not proved. But let's say it's right, ignoring the massive burden of proof. We can hook up a quantum random number generator to GPT-3, and suddenly it can be conscious? If that's the whole argument, it seems like a useless point anyways.
naasking 4y ago
> The universe is not deterministic. There is one brain state at time T, but at time T+1 there are many possible brain states, all with different possibilities. There is no proof of this. There are deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics, for instance. Also, there is little reason to think our brains depend on quantum indeterminacy, even if it exists. After all, a brain that behaves erratically/non-deterministically is the exact opposite of useful. Once you learn how to walk, you want to be able to rely on that ability. Once you learn what food is, you don't want to erratically start eating rocks or twigs. Non-determinism in the brain would be selected against, not selected for. Flexibility would be selected for, but flexibility can be deterministic.
tsimionescu 4y ago
Non-deterministic Turing machines are still computationally equivalent to Turing machines. That is, there is no problem that a Non-deterministic Turing machine can solve for which there doesn't exist a deterministic Turing machine that solves it as well, and vice versa. Non-deterministic Turing machines are exponentially faster as far as we know (P ≠ NP seems to be true) but they are no more powerful. And note that Non-deterministic algorithms are far more powerful than anyone imagines human brains could be - as they can perform an infinite number of operations in parallel (equivalently, they have an oracle that gives them the best possible choice at any step). Even worse for your argument, probabilistic Turing machines and algorithms (classical bounded-error probabilistic machines) don't even seem to be faster than fully deterministic ones (P = BEP).

davidmanheim 4y ago

"The universe is not deterministic." Maybe not. I think that's a big claim, and it's being made, not proved. But let's say it's right, ignoring the massive burden of proof. We can hook up a quantum random number generator to GPT-3, and suddenly it can be conscious? If that's the whole argument, it seems like a useless point anyways.

naasking 4y ago

> The universe is not deterministic. There is one brain state at time T, but at time T+1 there are many possible brain states, all with different possibilities. There is no proof of this. There are deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics, for instance. Also, there is little reason to think our brains depend on quantum indeterminacy, even if it exists. After all, a brain that behaves erratically/non-deterministically is the exact opposite of useful. Once you learn how to walk, you want to be able to rely on that ability. Once you learn what food is, you don't want to erratically start eating rocks or twigs. Non-determinism in the brain would be selected against, not selected for. Flexibility would be selected for, but flexibility can be deterministic.

tsimionescu 4y ago

Non-deterministic Turing machines are still computationally equivalent to Turing machines. That is, there is no problem that a Non-deterministic Turing machine can solve for which there doesn't exist a deterministic Turing machine that solves it as well, and vice versa. Non-deterministic Turing machines are exponentially faster as far as we know (P ≠ NP seems to be true) but they are no more powerful. And note that Non-deterministic algorithms are far more powerful than anyone imagines human brains could be - as they can perform an infinite number of operations in parallel (equivalently, they have an oracle that gives them the best possible choice at any step). Even worse for your argument, probabilistic Turing machines and algorithms (classical bounded-error probabilistic machines) don't even seem to be faster than fully deterministic ones (P = BEP).