5 ms·

Thanks for the reply! I have to say, I am quite giddy. When I posted this question, I wasn't expecting to get a reply from an author and researcher on this very

Thanks for the reply! I have to say, I am quite giddy. When I posted this question, I wasn't expecting to get a reply from an author and researcher on this very topic. I am a software engineer by profession, but this is a topic that has been on the back of my mind for many years. Even when I read popsci books about the universe and the big bang and so on, i felt spiritually unsatisfied because they often do not address this elephant in the room - consciousness. A theory of everything that explains the laws of universe will be imo incomplete if it doesn't also explain, at the fundamental level, the laws of the universe that exists behind our eyes. It really deserves more attention and awareness among geeks and the general public.

b800h 4y ago
You might be waiting a long time. Things like Tarski's Undefinability Theorem (moreso than Gödel) make it rather unlikely that this will turn out to be possible. But I agree with your assertion.
techno_tsar 4y ago
There has been a turn in consciousness research in the last in the decade towards some kind of panpsychism for precisely your sentiment: a completed physics should also be a completed phenomenology. David Chalmers has written extensively and seriously entertained panpsychism in recent years. Galileo’s Error, published in 2019, by Phillip Goff traces the history of the mind-body problem and illustrates how we divorced our consciousness from the physical world during the development of early modern science and philosophy. Last century, Ernst Mach and Bertrand Russell argued in favour for neutral monism, a stance which holds that the mental and physical are two sides of the same coin. It seems like these ideas are coming back after a long stretch of dogmatic physicalism. Panpsychism gets a bad rep for sounding like it has associations with vacuous or flimsy New Age beliefs, but it means a totally different thing in the context of philosophy of mind and consciousness studies. It is the claim that consciousness might be a building block of the universe. The main problem with panpsychism is not that it is incredulous, but that it currently lacks a compelling explanation for our individual subjectivity. If consciousness and mental properties are ubiquitous in the universe, why do I have my consciousness and you have yours? The main motivation to believe in panpsychism seems to be its incredible elegance and self-consistency. That alone does not make it true, but it might be a very big hint on where to look for answers.
noting0002 4y ago
[dead]
- naasking 4y ago
  > As we see with LLM consciousness is not needed to fake humans You are just assuming that LLMs aren't conscious. We don't have a way to evaluate that at this time.
kajaktum 4y ago
I am sorry to disappoint but I think consciousness is the one thing that we will never be able to solve physically. It is perhaps the only thing that is true about that universe, that I somehow exists. Everything else is simply derived from that and might as well be an illusion (perhaps a very consistent and steady illusion). > It really deserves more attention and awareness among geeks and the general public. There's 0 interest in consciousness because it's so hard to pay attention and realize that it exists. We go about our days for weeks, months, years and even decades without even noticing that consciousness is a thing.
- elevaet 4y ago
  > We go about our days for weeks, months, years and even decades without even noticing that consciousness is a thing. Do we? I feel like I'm constantly reflecting on it and trying to make sense of it, and that I'm certainly not alone. I'd like to think that it's part of being human to turn the lens back on itself and wonder "what am I?" But I suppose some people could care less for navel gazing.
- FrustratedMonky 4y ago
  This is a common view, but it is based on humans thinking they are special. “My own thoughts are so amazing”, “my own subjective reality is so real to me”, thus surely this is unexplainable. When really, humans give themselves (their own thoughts) way too much credit and most are barely aware of their own thoughts, barely self-aware at all. It is easy to say something is ‘un-explainable’ and thus ‘must be in some otherworldly realm that is beyond comprehension’, if one is not able to observer the problem. Most humans aren’t self-aware enough to know their own thoughts or examine where those thoughts come from. Just a few decades ago simple voice recognition was deemed ‘a totally human ability that the computer will never accomplish’, now it is ordinary. It comes down to humans internal subjective reality is both amazing and ‘unknowable to the outside’, ’un-observable’, thus un-testable. But then we make this giant leap that nothing we will ever build will also have some ‘internal subjective reality’. It keeps coming up that GPT is a glorified auto-complete, but then never explain how a human isn’t also just an ‘auto-complete’ machine, just going through the day twitching at stimuli. Why do we think a human doing copy/paste, and regurgitating something they heard, is special, but if a computer does then suddenly it is completely invalid to think they could ever be conscious.
ChaitanyaSai 4y ago
Thanks! What you point out, the spiritual dissatisfaction, is one of big challenges for consciousness explanation. How can we ground this magical thing in the seemingly mechanical. How can that be satisfying? It's a tough one. But I didnt think that it would become a pressing one too so quickly with all the new AIs coming up and forcing us to think seriously about this question. What I come away with us we are the universe waking up to reflect on itself through the consciousness, self-awareness, and purpose imbued within us.

b800h 4y ago

You might be waiting a long time. Things like Tarski's Undefinability Theorem (moreso than Gödel) make it rather unlikely that this will turn out to be possible. But I agree with your assertion.

techno_tsar 4y ago

There has been a turn in consciousness research in the last in the decade towards some kind of panpsychism for precisely your sentiment: a completed physics should also be a completed phenomenology. David Chalmers has written extensively and seriously entertained panpsychism in recent years. Galileo’s Error, published in 2019, by Phillip Goff traces the history of the mind-body problem and illustrates how we divorced our consciousness from the physical world during the development of early modern science and philosophy. Last century, Ernst Mach and Bertrand Russell argued in favour for neutral monism, a stance which holds that the mental and physical are two sides of the same coin. It seems like these ideas are coming back after a long stretch of dogmatic physicalism. Panpsychism gets a bad rep for sounding like it has associations with vacuous or flimsy New Age beliefs, but it means a totally different thing in the context of philosophy of mind and consciousness studies. It is the claim that consciousness might be a building block of the universe. The main problem with panpsychism is not that it is incredulous, but that it currently lacks a compelling explanation for our individual subjectivity. If consciousness and mental properties are ubiquitous in the universe, why do I have my consciousness and you have yours? The main motivation to believe in panpsychism seems to be its incredible elegance and self-consistency. That alone does not make it true, but it might be a very big hint on where to look for answers.

noting0002 4y ago

[dead]

naasking 4y ago
> As we see with LLM consciousness is not needed to fake humans You are just assuming that LLMs aren't conscious. We don't have a way to evaluate that at this time.

kajaktum 4y ago

I am sorry to disappoint but I think consciousness is the one thing that we will never be able to solve physically. It is perhaps the only thing that is true about that universe, that I somehow exists. Everything else is simply derived from that and might as well be an illusion (perhaps a very consistent and steady illusion). > It really deserves more attention and awareness among geeks and the general public. There's 0 interest in consciousness because it's so hard to pay attention and realize that it exists. We go about our days for weeks, months, years and even decades without even noticing that consciousness is a thing.

elevaet 4y ago
> We go about our days for weeks, months, years and even decades without even noticing that consciousness is a thing. Do we? I feel like I'm constantly reflecting on it and trying to make sense of it, and that I'm certainly not alone. I'd like to think that it's part of being human to turn the lens back on itself and wonder "what am I?" But I suppose some people could care less for navel gazing.
FrustratedMonky 4y ago
This is a common view, but it is based on humans thinking they are special. “My own thoughts are so amazing”, “my own subjective reality is so real to me”, thus surely this is unexplainable. When really, humans give themselves (their own thoughts) way too much credit and most are barely aware of their own thoughts, barely self-aware at all. It is easy to say something is ‘un-explainable’ and thus ‘must be in some otherworldly realm that is beyond comprehension’, if one is not able to observer the problem. Most humans aren’t self-aware enough to know their own thoughts or examine where those thoughts come from. Just a few decades ago simple voice recognition was deemed ‘a totally human ability that the computer will never accomplish’, now it is ordinary. It comes down to humans internal subjective reality is both amazing and ‘unknowable to the outside’, ’un-observable’, thus un-testable. But then we make this giant leap that nothing we will ever build will also have some ‘internal subjective reality’. It keeps coming up that GPT is a glorified auto-complete, but then never explain how a human isn’t also just an ‘auto-complete’ machine, just going through the day twitching at stimuli. Why do we think a human doing copy/paste, and regurgitating something they heard, is special, but if a computer does then suddenly it is completely invalid to think they could ever be conscious.

ChaitanyaSai 4y ago

Thanks! What you point out, the spiritual dissatisfaction, is one of big challenges for consciousness explanation. How can we ground this magical thing in the seemingly mechanical. How can that be satisfying? It's a tough one. But I didnt think that it would become a pressing one too so quickly with all the new AIs coming up and forcing us to think seriously about this question. What I come away with us we are the universe waking up to reflect on itself through the consciousness, self-awareness, and purpose imbued within us.