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I think you are right, but keep in mind the perceptions we have are built on an internal model of the "real world" and we operate mind on that, not the real wor

I think you are right, but keep in mind the perceptions we have are built on an internal model of the "real world" and we operate mind on that, not the real world. For example, if you were to imagine an apple in mind, what is it that you see, if anything?[1] Are you seeing a real apple, that you saw before and saved as the reference apple, or are you seeing an apple that your mind synthesized and then gives to you for perception? And, where does this vision synthesis occur? Is it external, as Theosophy claims[2], or is it internal? The comment above about gathering entropy from the real world is interesting. So, is it that consciousness "emerges" from the mashup of real entropy gathered with sensors, then modeled internally with computation, or is it contained in the real world already, in the form of another model (like a soul model or some such) and therefore comes from outside us? Or is it a little of both? Emotional states could be just another model, which set the working conditions in a given moment. It could also be possible the real world, from which our sensors gather information, is a very complex model in-and-of-itself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_body https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_body

graderjs 4y ago
Mmm :) I think definitely what we see is the perception of Apple. We find there what we bring to it. Our own internal experience of Apple, our own personal meaning-experience function F(Apple), is different for each of us. Tho probably for most of us in the same vector basis, tho maybe not, heh :) Anyway, multiple levels it's not reality: visual system does all sorts of tricks that you can see with those visual illusions (I'm sure you're aware); then meaning making--maybe what we saw was an interdimensional UFO and our mind just interpolated an apple because that was all we knew in our experience that roughly perceptually matched this improbable event; then like a Buddhist type of system/perspective: all forms are not really individuated phenomena they are the conditions that arise from a multitude of causes, so you are not really seeing an Apple, you are seeing everything that ever led there to be an Apple there, and to you to see it, no intrinsic separate reality to that Apple you only think you are seeing--all forms are illusion in other words. :) As for consciousness, nope! Not touching it here :) That's a whole other kettle of fish, I think. We can have AGI without consciousness, at least conceptually / computationally, ignoring what the real world would do with that (ie, would the real world's consciousness field "insert" a consciousness unit into any robot/agent that crossed some AGI threshold? Would AGI attract consciousness? Again, not touching those questions here :)) As to your first link, interesting. I think that's personal for each person. As in, some people think in words, some in images, some in other things...some in mix. Great flexibility, but not the main question here I think :) ;p But I also see what you were saying about the Apple's representation is slightly different to what I first thought in paragraph 1--hmm, I think the mental field exists both within us and around us. We are in unity with it (or it's a thing which is both a unity, and a duality, at the same time)--people's awareness of that of course differs. Again, not touching these questions here as this is HN, and one occasionally finds an unpleasant militant materialists here, and I'm a little scared to speak such things above a whisper as I don't want any unpleasantness :) Sayonara for today.
- danaris 4y ago
  I think that leaving aside theological and philosophical discussions of what consciousness "really" is, anything we would recognize as AGI would exhibit what we perceive as consciousness: it would demonstrate a sense of itself as distinct from the world around it, a mental model of the world and the agents (like us) and entities/objects in it, and the ability to reason abstractly about these things.
  - graderjs 4y ago
    Sure, sure probably. But there might be some interesting test, where something that is really AGI, and fails something like a "recognizing yourself in a mirror" test (not that specific test obviously, but you see what I'm getting at--some sort of trick)...that works for intelligence + consciousness but not just intelligence. No idea what that could be, but it's possible it could exist. Again I think we need to separate out that consciousness doesn't imply soul. So we have a few things: soul, consciousness, intelligence, and we are really only interested here in constructing the latter in an AGI. Just thinking about a nice analogy just now: may be a glib oversimplification but one way to characterize soul, consciousness, intelligence is as: memory, present awareness, imagination. What is a soul if not a memory of all experiences of that soul? What is consciousness if not awareness of the present? What is intelligence if not some sort of sophisticated imagination that is useful/aligns with some model (reality, or another)? Just an idea Another interesting thing is: if your reasoning is fast enough, it doesn't have to be abstract. You can probably get the same speedup that abstraction/generalization provides to categories of observations with enough parallel processing of specific observations. Obviously from that view then abstraction is like a hack for humans to overcome neural speed limits/memory limits, but it may not be necessary for AGI: I think this is one reason why AGI (or at least its inner workings) may remain incomprehensible to us.

graderjs 4y ago

Mmm :) I think definitely what we see is the perception of Apple. We find there what we bring to it. Our own internal experience of Apple, our own personal meaning-experience function F(Apple), is different for each of us. Tho probably for most of us in the same vector basis, tho maybe not, heh :) Anyway, multiple levels it's not reality: visual system does all sorts of tricks that you can see with those visual illusions (I'm sure you're aware); then meaning making--maybe what we saw was an interdimensional UFO and our mind just interpolated an apple because that was all we knew in our experience that roughly perceptually matched this improbable event; then like a Buddhist type of system/perspective: all forms are not really individuated phenomena they are the conditions that arise from a multitude of causes, so you are not really seeing an Apple, you are seeing everything that ever led there to be an Apple there, and to you to see it, no intrinsic separate reality to that Apple you only think you are seeing--all forms are illusion in other words. :) As for consciousness, nope! Not touching it here :) That's a whole other kettle of fish, I think. We can have AGI without consciousness, at least conceptually / computationally, ignoring what the real world would do with that (ie, would the real world's consciousness field "insert" a consciousness unit into any robot/agent that crossed some AGI threshold? Would AGI attract consciousness? Again, not touching those questions here :)) As to your first link, interesting. I think that's personal for each person. As in, some people think in words, some in images, some in other things...some in mix. Great flexibility, but not the main question here I think :) ;p But I also see what you were saying about the Apple's representation is slightly different to what I first thought in paragraph 1--hmm, I think the mental field exists both within us and around us. We are in unity with it (or it's a thing which is both a unity, and a duality, at the same time)--people's awareness of that of course differs. Again, not touching these questions here as this is HN, and one occasionally finds an unpleasant militant materialists here, and I'm a little scared to speak such things above a whisper as I don't want any unpleasantness :) Sayonara for today.

danaris 4y ago
I think that leaving aside theological and philosophical discussions of what consciousness "really" is, anything we would recognize as AGI would exhibit what we perceive as consciousness: it would demonstrate a sense of itself as distinct from the world around it, a mental model of the world and the agents (like us) and entities/objects in it, and the ability to reason abstractly about these things.
- graderjs 4y ago
  Sure, sure probably. But there might be some interesting test, where something that is really AGI, and fails something like a "recognizing yourself in a mirror" test (not that specific test obviously, but you see what I'm getting at--some sort of trick)...that works for intelligence + consciousness but not just intelligence. No idea what that could be, but it's possible it could exist. Again I think we need to separate out that consciousness doesn't imply soul. So we have a few things: soul, consciousness, intelligence, and we are really only interested here in constructing the latter in an AGI. Just thinking about a nice analogy just now: may be a glib oversimplification but one way to characterize soul, consciousness, intelligence is as: memory, present awareness, imagination. What is a soul if not a memory of all experiences of that soul? What is consciousness if not awareness of the present? What is intelligence if not some sort of sophisticated imagination that is useful/aligns with some model (reality, or another)? Just an idea Another interesting thing is: if your reasoning is fast enough, it doesn't have to be abstract. You can probably get the same speedup that abstraction/generalization provides to categories of observations with enough parallel processing of specific observations. Obviously from that view then abstraction is like a hack for humans to overcome neural speed limits/memory limits, but it may not be necessary for AGI: I think this is one reason why AGI (or at least its inner workings) may remain incomprehensible to us.