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>Unless we reduce models of consciousness to purely stochastic processes, this is trivially false. And no one seriously reduces consciousness to probabilistic p

>Unless we reduce models of consciousness to purely stochastic processes, this is trivially false. And no one seriously reduces consciousness to probabilistic pattern recognition. Most things in this universe have mathematical models that can describe it. We have models for virtually everything. Thus it is reasonable to say such a model also exists for consciousness. To say what you said definitively without even knowing the meaning of the word consciousness is premature. You don't have enough knowledge to say anything about this. >It doesn't represent any experience. ChatGPT doesn't "experience" things as conscious things do. It's not even comparable to the experience of a simple invertebrate, for example. Again you don't know what you're talking about. Nobody can define what consciousness is and nobody fully understands the emergent effects of chatGPT or the human brain. To say what you say with conviction is therefore empty. You don't actually know because nobody knows.

dvt 4y ago
> Again you don't know what you're talking about. I think that's a bit uncharitable. You're acting like people haven't been grappling with these problems for thousands of years. Searle, for example, makes a pretty good argument why symbol-processing systems will never produce consciousness (you'd have to prove that the Chinese room is conscious, etc.). It's clear, for example, that a toaster doesn't have any conscious experiences, but a dog does. To say that "nobody fully understands" the human brain is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. ChatGPT is not conscious any more than my (very complex) Swiss wristwatch is.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  Philosophers grapple with the problem the same way Greeks used mythology to grapple with the problem of reality. Thunder is not thrown by some god named Zeus. and the impossibility of a mathematical model describing consciousness cannot be explained away by a Chinese room argument that has tons and tons of qualitative holes in it. If an atom can be described by a mathematical equation that means so can groups of atoms. If groups of atoms can be described math and if a neuron is simply a complex group of atoms then a neuron can be described by an equation. If neurons can be described by an equation then so can groups of neurons. If the brain is a group of neurons then the brain can be described by a mathematical equation. If consciousness is a physical phenomena produced by a mathematical brain then consciousness is a mathematical model. The only way you can believe that consciousness cannot ever by described by math is if you see some break in the previous chain of logic. Most likely it's in the linking of consciousness entirely with the physical brain. Likely you believe in a soul or something if you don't agree with the logic. Which just means you're using mythology and concepts outside of science to derive your conclusions. Again, lighting is not thrown down from the sky by a god named Zeus. It's clear a toaster is not conscious. But what chatGPT is, is not clear. Placing it in a category where we aren't sure is reasonable and also it's a category agreed upon by many people. It would be a bit uncharitable to demand that your categorization of chatGPT is more correct then other peoples. Even you must be be aware of the ambiguity associated with chatGPT despite your stubborn stance to the contrary.
  - dvt 4y ago
    > But what chatGPT is, is not clear. I would posit that it is clear. It's simply a whole bunch of toasters put together (that is, a long list of if-then statements). If you're trying to argue that consciousness is merely a bunch of if-then statements, then yes, ChatGPT might be conscious. But then it's going to be much harder to argue that a toaster isn't conscious, which I thought we both agreed with. > Likely you believe in a soul or something if you don't agree with the logic. This seems a bit dismissive, and although I myself am a substance dualist (which is generally seen as a metaphysical position), most materialists aren't mechanistic in their interpretation of consciousness.
    - kilgnad 4y ago
      >I would posit that it is clear. It's simply a whole bunch of toasters put together (that is, a long list of if-then statements). If you're trying to argue that consciousness is merely a bunch of if-then statements, then yes, ChatGPT might be conscious. But then it's going to be much harder to argue that a toaster isn't conscious, which I thought we both agreed with. The combination of multitudes of if-else statements forms a macro structure. It is this emergent macro structure that we call consciousness. As stated before the exact interconnect of this macro structure can't be fully articulated yet. >This seems a bit dismissive, and although I myself am a substance dualist (which is generally seen as a metaphysical position), most materialists aren't mechanistic in their interpretation of consciousness My arguments are based on likelihood derived from logic and evidence meaning While we don't fully know if a soul fits in this framework, we certainly do not yet have the capability to derive it's existence/likelihood from evidence or first principles. Thus there's really nothing to talk about as it's an argument outside of known logic. What is the point of arguing about topics we don't know about? There is no point. I'm being dismissive because there is literally nothing left to talk about for either of us. Logic and evidence is also the only shared principles that seem consistent across individuals so best keep discussions in that realm fully.
      - dvt 4y ago
        > The combination of multitudes of if-else statements forms a macro structure. It is this emergent macro structure that we call consciousness. As stated before the exact interconnect of this macro structure can't be fully articulated yet. It can be, and it's called the theory of computation. It's been extensively studied for the past century and a half, and, all-in-all, it's not even particularly strong. For example, most real numbers aren't even computable, Godel showed that consistent theories can't even prove their own consistency, and so on. In my view, our mind does not seem to compute things (though some, like Dennett and Putnam, would disagree). The claim that our mind computes things is a pretty strong one (and if correct, I think we'd all probably be much better at math). Penrose argues that whatever the mind does, it's (at least in part) a fundamentally unsound operation; this to me sounds way more correct than the idea that our mind operates algorithmically.
- evilsetg 4y ago
  Can you explain how you know that neither a toaster, your wristwatch nor ChatGPT are conscious? If being conscious means being conscious like a human this would be obvious but maybe the toaster is just conscious like a toaster. Is a bug conscious?
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    Internally we know we're conscious because we just do. We experience qualia, even though we don't know what "we", "experience", and "qualia" really mean. Even so. For us, consciousness is just there. Externally we attribute consciousness to certain behaviours, including (but not limited to) self-reference, goal-seeking, physical and social responsiveness, use of language, memory, and so on. These two things are not the same. We assume other humans are conscious in the same way we are to the extent that they perform consciousness. We can't be sure, but for human interactions it's a workable proxy. A toaster, a watch, a rock, and a web server don't perform consciousness in any way at all. They may have some kind of metaphyiscal awareness, or not, but if they do we can't see it, and without a comprehensive theory of consciousness it's parsimonious to assume they're not aware. ChatGPT performs some elements of consciousness, but not others. It happens to perform the elements AI researchers consider important - specifically use of language. But it doesn't have a memory for previous conversations, it doesn't show any independent goal seeking, and so on. It uses "I..." and a vast amount of human training to mimic the appearance of consciousness, and plenty of humans seem to want to believe that's enough. But the essence of the hard problem is the difference between "performs the actions we associate with consciousness" and "is conscious in the same way we know we are." You could argue that practically there's no difference, and from one point of view that may be true. But that doesn't work if you want to understand what's happening rather than just assuming in a "well obviously..." kind of a way. If only because historically in science "well obviously..." has been consistently wrong.
    - wruza 4y ago
      They may have some kind of metaphyiscal awareness, or not Another option is there is some kind of metaphyiscal awareness everywhere, and it's only coincidental that objects of class "human" eventually convince themselves into believing that it's equivalent or highly related to their own thinking process. Unless we exclude this option somehow, AI can't be definitely seen as simply rolex, because it does that too. Currently AI is discontinuous and passive, but is that even required? without a comprehensive theory of consciousness it's parsimonious to assume they're not aware This hypothesis creates more entities (one island of awareness per complex enough object), so why not the other way round?
- wruza 4y ago
  It's clear, for example, that a toaster doesn't have any conscious experiences So anthropic. We can agree that it is on the opposite end of a spectrum though. A spectrum that we define out of a single point (“us”, and mostly “I”). We can also say that a toaster is a part of your consciousness instead, like e.g. your arm but less noisy. But then you are a part of a dog’s consciousness as well. Consciousness is probably best described as just a field in a complexity space, not a discrete set of localized phenomenons. It has a near-zero value in a physical projection of a toaster’s concept, but is that projection even useful?

dvt 4y ago

> Again you don't know what you're talking about. I think that's a bit uncharitable. You're acting like people haven't been grappling with these problems for thousands of years. Searle, for example, makes a pretty good argument why symbol-processing systems will never produce consciousness (you'd have to prove that the Chinese room is conscious, etc.). It's clear, for example, that a toaster doesn't have any conscious experiences, but a dog does. To say that "nobody fully understands" the human brain is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. ChatGPT is not conscious any more than my (very complex) Swiss wristwatch is.

kilgnad 4y ago
Philosophers grapple with the problem the same way Greeks used mythology to grapple with the problem of reality. Thunder is not thrown by some god named Zeus. and the impossibility of a mathematical model describing consciousness cannot be explained away by a Chinese room argument that has tons and tons of qualitative holes in it. If an atom can be described by a mathematical equation that means so can groups of atoms. If groups of atoms can be described math and if a neuron is simply a complex group of atoms then a neuron can be described by an equation. If neurons can be described by an equation then so can groups of neurons. If the brain is a group of neurons then the brain can be described by a mathematical equation. If consciousness is a physical phenomena produced by a mathematical brain then consciousness is a mathematical model. The only way you can believe that consciousness cannot ever by described by math is if you see some break in the previous chain of logic. Most likely it's in the linking of consciousness entirely with the physical brain. Likely you believe in a soul or something if you don't agree with the logic. Which just means you're using mythology and concepts outside of science to derive your conclusions. Again, lighting is not thrown down from the sky by a god named Zeus. It's clear a toaster is not conscious. But what chatGPT is, is not clear. Placing it in a category where we aren't sure is reasonable and also it's a category agreed upon by many people. It would be a bit uncharitable to demand that your categorization of chatGPT is more correct then other peoples. Even you must be be aware of the ambiguity associated with chatGPT despite your stubborn stance to the contrary.
- dvt 4y ago
  > But what chatGPT is, is not clear. I would posit that it is clear. It's simply a whole bunch of toasters put together (that is, a long list of if-then statements). If you're trying to argue that consciousness is merely a bunch of if-then statements, then yes, ChatGPT might be conscious. But then it's going to be much harder to argue that a toaster isn't conscious, which I thought we both agreed with. > Likely you believe in a soul or something if you don't agree with the logic. This seems a bit dismissive, and although I myself am a substance dualist (which is generally seen as a metaphysical position), most materialists aren't mechanistic in their interpretation of consciousness.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    >I would posit that it is clear. It's simply a whole bunch of toasters put together (that is, a long list of if-then statements). If you're trying to argue that consciousness is merely a bunch of if-then statements, then yes, ChatGPT might be conscious. But then it's going to be much harder to argue that a toaster isn't conscious, which I thought we both agreed with. The combination of multitudes of if-else statements forms a macro structure. It is this emergent macro structure that we call consciousness. As stated before the exact interconnect of this macro structure can't be fully articulated yet. >This seems a bit dismissive, and although I myself am a substance dualist (which is generally seen as a metaphysical position), most materialists aren't mechanistic in their interpretation of consciousness My arguments are based on likelihood derived from logic and evidence meaning While we don't fully know if a soul fits in this framework, we certainly do not yet have the capability to derive it's existence/likelihood from evidence or first principles. Thus there's really nothing to talk about as it's an argument outside of known logic. What is the point of arguing about topics we don't know about? There is no point. I'm being dismissive because there is literally nothing left to talk about for either of us. Logic and evidence is also the only shared principles that seem consistent across individuals so best keep discussions in that realm fully.
    - dvt 4y ago
      > The combination of multitudes of if-else statements forms a macro structure. It is this emergent macro structure that we call consciousness. As stated before the exact interconnect of this macro structure can't be fully articulated yet. It can be, and it's called the theory of computation. It's been extensively studied for the past century and a half, and, all-in-all, it's not even particularly strong. For example, most real numbers aren't even computable, Godel showed that consistent theories can't even prove their own consistency, and so on. In my view, our mind does not seem to compute things (though some, like Dennett and Putnam, would disagree). The claim that our mind computes things is a pretty strong one (and if correct, I think we'd all probably be much better at math). Penrose argues that whatever the mind does, it's (at least in part) a fundamentally unsound operation; this to me sounds way more correct than the idea that our mind operates algorithmically.
evilsetg 4y ago
Can you explain how you know that neither a toaster, your wristwatch nor ChatGPT are conscious? If being conscious means being conscious like a human this would be obvious but maybe the toaster is just conscious like a toaster. Is a bug conscious?
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Internally we know we're conscious because we just do. We experience qualia, even though we don't know what "we", "experience", and "qualia" really mean. Even so. For us, consciousness is just there. Externally we attribute consciousness to certain behaviours, including (but not limited to) self-reference, goal-seeking, physical and social responsiveness, use of language, memory, and so on. These two things are not the same. We assume other humans are conscious in the same way we are to the extent that they perform consciousness. We can't be sure, but for human interactions it's a workable proxy. A toaster, a watch, a rock, and a web server don't perform consciousness in any way at all. They may have some kind of metaphyiscal awareness, or not, but if they do we can't see it, and without a comprehensive theory of consciousness it's parsimonious to assume they're not aware. ChatGPT performs some elements of consciousness, but not others. It happens to perform the elements AI researchers consider important - specifically use of language. But it doesn't have a memory for previous conversations, it doesn't show any independent goal seeking, and so on. It uses "I..." and a vast amount of human training to mimic the appearance of consciousness, and plenty of humans seem to want to believe that's enough. But the essence of the hard problem is the difference between "performs the actions we associate with consciousness" and "is conscious in the same way we know we are." You could argue that practically there's no difference, and from one point of view that may be true. But that doesn't work if you want to understand what's happening rather than just assuming in a "well obviously..." kind of a way. If only because historically in science "well obviously..." has been consistently wrong.
  - wruza 4y ago
    They may have some kind of metaphyiscal awareness, or not Another option is there is some kind of metaphyiscal awareness everywhere, and it's only coincidental that objects of class "human" eventually convince themselves into believing that it's equivalent or highly related to their own thinking process. Unless we exclude this option somehow, AI can't be definitely seen as simply rolex, because it does that too. Currently AI is discontinuous and passive, but is that even required? without a comprehensive theory of consciousness it's parsimonious to assume they're not aware This hypothesis creates more entities (one island of awareness per complex enough object), so why not the other way round?
wruza 4y ago
It's clear, for example, that a toaster doesn't have any conscious experiences So anthropic. We can agree that it is on the opposite end of a spectrum though. A spectrum that we define out of a single point (“us”, and mostly “I”). We can also say that a toaster is a part of your consciousness instead, like e.g. your arm but less noisy. But then you are a part of a dog’s consciousness as well. Consciousness is probably best described as just a field in a complexity space, not a discrete set of localized phenomenons. It has a near-zero value in a physical projection of a toaster’s concept, but is that projection even useful?