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> anything that processes data and performs decision-making has some kind of 'consciousness' that sits 'atop' it? There's an interesting thought experiment alo
by n4r9 4y ago
> anything that processes data and performs decision-making has some kind of 'consciousness' that sits 'atop' it?
There's an interesting thought experiment along these lines. Suppose someone builds a computer program which - when run with a specific input/environment - is intelligent, conscious, and feels pain and joy etc... .
Now, that computer program and even its inputs can be simulated effectively by 1's and 0's. The substrate shouldn't matter. So you can - in principle - run the exact same agorithmic decision-making process on the exact same inputs by getting a large group of people to write and edit 1's and 0's on pieces of paper according to well-defined rules and very simple interactions with the people around them.
Is this total process, now represented merely by marks on pieces of paper, a conscious being? Does it still feel pain and joy?
I find it both absurd and impossible to refute.
- s_weber 4y agoI think the absurdity might just stem from the different timescales involved when comparing human consciousness to the "paper consciousness". The differing timescales would make it difficult for us to communicate with or even comprehend such a "being". But if we agree that consciousness is the product of a computation then the medium on which it is performed should not matter at all. And it should be equally absurd that our consciousness seems to arise from microscopic things conducting electrical and chemical signals. Which is probably a valid view point as well. The thought experiment is a variation of the Chinese Room, by the way. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
- n4r9 4y agoI'd agree with all that. The idea of a "very slow consciousness" reminds me of Great-A'tuin in the Discworld novels, whose brain functions at a slow timescale. After centuries of study, telepaths were only able to glean that it is looking forward to something. I think the absurdity also comes from the difficulty of directly measuring or evaluating the conscious process. You can ramp up the absurdity even more by fully encrypting the algorithm and destroying the encryption key. No other conscious being will ever be able to interact with that process's experience.