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I still don't understand why we are conscious and aware if there is no free will and we just react to stimuli. Why are the lights on? Is the answer that the lig

I still don't understand why we are conscious and aware if there is no free will and we just react to stimuli. Why are the lights on? Is the answer that the lights are on because otherwise we wouldn't be here to ask the question?

alexpetralia 4y ago
Consciousness is a reaction to stimuli. If we didn't have consciousness, we would not achieve our goals as effectively.
edgyquant 4y ago
Because there is free will and anyone arguing against it is edgy and/or high on their own hubris.
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago
  There's a difference between free will as a philosophical debate compared to a question of biology/chemistry/physics. It matters as a point of principle to the physicists who are asking questions about whether true randomness exists - if the physical world can be influenced by something outside of the natural forces they know about, they want to measure that force, even if measurement and computing equipment to model the universe down to the Planck scale cannot exist. Where it really matters is when you get to computer simulations: Without access to a source of non-determinism, an AI can hardly be said to have free will. Give the same pattern of bytes running on the same instruction set the same inputs, and it will deterministically generate the same outputs.
- duckworth 4y ago
  While it's tempting to see free will as self-evident, scientific evidence suggests that our actions are determined by a complex interplay of genetics, environment, and prior experiences. Dismissing this perspective as edgy or hubristic risks ignoring important insights into human behavior. Recognizing the absence of free will can foster empathy and compassion, as we become more aware of the factors that contribute to human choices and behaviors.
  - elteto 4y ago
    It is not either or. It’s a weighted sum of environment and self-agency.
  - stefs 4y ago
    > complex interplay of genetics, environment, and prior experiences for me personally, this is a "soft free will" distinction, i.e. we have true free will, but we're very unlikely to actually use it. the other one is the question of "hard free will", i.e. whether "god plays dice" and the fully deterministic universe.
- Tommstein 4y ago
  . . . or believes that the laws of physics apply to our bodies too.
- highduc 4y ago
  Isn't that why people actually refuse to accept the possibility of no free will? I always got that impression.
unsupp0rted 4y ago
There’s a 50/50 chance the lights aren’t on for us either. There may be conscious beings in the universe (or galaxy, or perhaps solar system) who would consider us only vaguely conscious or not conscious at all. Am I typing this because the lights are on or because I’m compelled to by my genetic and social programming, predictably and without a genuine choice in the matter?
- jcelerier 4y ago
  > or because I’m compelled to by my genetic and social programming, predictably and without a genuine choice in the matter? I don't understand how anyone can doubt this even a fraction of a second. Magic does not exist.
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    If you have enough information about my DNA, my society, where I am now and what I'm doing, I think you'd be surprised how predictable each and every decision and action I make becomes. ChatGPT 4, limited as it is, could probably predict me down to a low margin of error with that kind of info alone, and it would seem like magic to me. A character on the NBC/Yahoo! show Community had a good one-liner: "I'm not psychic, Annie. That's just an illusion caused by extreme preparedness."
    - int_19h 4y ago
      I think it would vary a lot depending on the specific decisions and how unique the combination of circumstances are. Even though things tend to repeat on a large enough scale, different combinations can still be highly unique. OTOH when they are not... a simple exercise one can do is go ask GPT-4 to simulate a comment section on some political news story posted online; you can even have it write a fictional news story first, for good measure. It is extremely good at it, and that tells me volumes about the actual (rather than perceived) rationality of our public discourse.
  - bena 4y ago
    It's essentially the question of free will. There is a case that everything we do is preordained. A result of forces and interactions that trace all the way back to big bang. My choice on whether or not I reply to you doesn't exist. Your combination of words triggers a response in my brain that makes me type this combination of words. The words I "chose" to delete, rewrite, leave, are all a result of various forces. The kicker is that we can't really know. There is no test for free will. In order to know whether or not I had a choice to do this, we'd have to run the entire universe again up to that point to see what I would do. Because experience matters. Even if this exact same post went up tomorrow with all the same response except for mine. The fact that it's now Thursday instead of Wednesday matters. The fact that I posted this today matters. What I had for lunch. How fast I drank my coffee. What shirt I wore. Etc. These are all things that change the conditions under which I will engage with the post. The second kicker is that it doesn't matter. If free will truly does not exist, it's not like you have a choice in whether or not to believe in it. The arguments either will work or they won't.
yadaeno 4y ago
My understanding is that conscious is a side affect of how memory works. Your conscious experience is essentially processing stimuli, connecting with existing memories, processing, and storing what is written to your “conscious” scratchpad. Of course this is only one theory but I find it convincing. https://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/fulltext/2022/12000/consciousness_as_a_memory_system.5.aspx#:~:text=Consciousness%20binds%20elements%20of%20an,key%20to%20their%20successful%20storage https://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/fulltext/2022/12000/....
- rinka_singh 4y ago
  This is exactly what emergence is: a side affect. Emergence cannot usually be planned for...
lonelyasacloud 4y ago
> I still don't understand why we are conscious and aware if there is no free will and we just react to stimuli. In computing systems it's fairly common to have a monitoring and control layer on top of the core functionality. Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that evolution could have come up with something similar and that control view is what we call "consciousness"?
amelius 4y ago
> Why are the lights on? Maybe consciousness is the only thing that exists and physics (or rather, the experience of physics) is just an emergent property of it.
highduc 4y ago
Why wouldn't the universe observe itself with no ability to change the initial conditions? Why do we have to have free will? It's still a win, vs no self awareness. I think.
smaddox 4y ago
How would a non-concious entity intelligently plan and act in response to stimuli in situations that require self reflection, such as interaction in a social environment? Consciousness seems necessary for effective goal pursuit in such an environment.
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  "Hey ChatGPT - here is the situation, here is my goal - what is my next step?"
int_19h 4y ago
Try to define "conscious" in some kind of objective way, for starters. We can't even agree on what it is, except that each person accepts the fact that they're conscious as an axiom, and generalizes it to others on the basis of similar observed behavior. We "know it when we see it", which is good enough for most practical purposes, but extremely inadequate for discussions like this.
- laratiede 4y ago
  [dead]

alexpetralia 4y ago

Consciousness is a reaction to stimuli. If we didn't have consciousness, we would not achieve our goals as effectively.

edgyquant 4y ago

Because there is free will and anyone arguing against it is edgy and/or high on their own hubris.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago
There's a difference between free will as a philosophical debate compared to a question of biology/chemistry/physics. It matters as a point of principle to the physicists who are asking questions about whether true randomness exists - if the physical world can be influenced by something outside of the natural forces they know about, they want to measure that force, even if measurement and computing equipment to model the universe down to the Planck scale cannot exist. Where it really matters is when you get to computer simulations: Without access to a source of non-determinism, an AI can hardly be said to have free will. Give the same pattern of bytes running on the same instruction set the same inputs, and it will deterministically generate the same outputs.
duckworth 4y ago
While it's tempting to see free will as self-evident, scientific evidence suggests that our actions are determined by a complex interplay of genetics, environment, and prior experiences. Dismissing this perspective as edgy or hubristic risks ignoring important insights into human behavior. Recognizing the absence of free will can foster empathy and compassion, as we become more aware of the factors that contribute to human choices and behaviors.
- elteto 4y ago
  It is not either or. It’s a weighted sum of environment and self-agency.
- stefs 4y ago
  > complex interplay of genetics, environment, and prior experiences for me personally, this is a "soft free will" distinction, i.e. we have true free will, but we're very unlikely to actually use it. the other one is the question of "hard free will", i.e. whether "god plays dice" and the fully deterministic universe.
Tommstein 4y ago
. . . or believes that the laws of physics apply to our bodies too.
highduc 4y ago
Isn't that why people actually refuse to accept the possibility of no free will? I always got that impression.

unsupp0rted 4y ago

There’s a 50/50 chance the lights aren’t on for us either. There may be conscious beings in the universe (or galaxy, or perhaps solar system) who would consider us only vaguely conscious or not conscious at all. Am I typing this because the lights are on or because I’m compelled to by my genetic and social programming, predictably and without a genuine choice in the matter?

jcelerier 4y ago
> or because I’m compelled to by my genetic and social programming, predictably and without a genuine choice in the matter? I don't understand how anyone can doubt this even a fraction of a second. Magic does not exist.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  If you have enough information about my DNA, my society, where I am now and what I'm doing, I think you'd be surprised how predictable each and every decision and action I make becomes. ChatGPT 4, limited as it is, could probably predict me down to a low margin of error with that kind of info alone, and it would seem like magic to me. A character on the NBC/Yahoo! show Community had a good one-liner: "I'm not psychic, Annie. That's just an illusion caused by extreme preparedness."
  - int_19h 4y ago
    I think it would vary a lot depending on the specific decisions and how unique the combination of circumstances are. Even though things tend to repeat on a large enough scale, different combinations can still be highly unique. OTOH when they are not... a simple exercise one can do is go ask GPT-4 to simulate a comment section on some political news story posted online; you can even have it write a fictional news story first, for good measure. It is extremely good at it, and that tells me volumes about the actual (rather than perceived) rationality of our public discourse.
- bena 4y ago
  It's essentially the question of free will. There is a case that everything we do is preordained. A result of forces and interactions that trace all the way back to big bang. My choice on whether or not I reply to you doesn't exist. Your combination of words triggers a response in my brain that makes me type this combination of words. The words I "chose" to delete, rewrite, leave, are all a result of various forces. The kicker is that we can't really know. There is no test for free will. In order to know whether or not I had a choice to do this, we'd have to run the entire universe again up to that point to see what I would do. Because experience matters. Even if this exact same post went up tomorrow with all the same response except for mine. The fact that it's now Thursday instead of Wednesday matters. The fact that I posted this today matters. What I had for lunch. How fast I drank my coffee. What shirt I wore. Etc. These are all things that change the conditions under which I will engage with the post. The second kicker is that it doesn't matter. If free will truly does not exist, it's not like you have a choice in whether or not to believe in it. The arguments either will work or they won't.

yadaeno 4y ago

My understanding is that conscious is a side affect of how memory works. Your conscious experience is essentially processing stimuli, connecting with existing memories, processing, and storing what is written to your “conscious” scratchpad. Of course this is only one theory but I find it convincing. https://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/fulltext/2022/12000/consciousness_as_a_memory_system.5.aspx#:~:text=Consciousness%20binds%20elements%20of%20an,key%20to%20their%20successful%20storage https://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/fulltext/2022/12000/....

rinka_singh 4y ago
This is exactly what emergence is: a side affect. Emergence cannot usually be planned for...

lonelyasacloud 4y ago

> I still don't understand why we are conscious and aware if there is no free will and we just react to stimuli. In computing systems it's fairly common to have a monitoring and control layer on top of the core functionality. Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that evolution could have come up with something similar and that control view is what we call "consciousness"?

amelius 4y ago

> Why are the lights on? Maybe consciousness is the only thing that exists and physics (or rather, the experience of physics) is just an emergent property of it.

highduc 4y ago

Why wouldn't the universe observe itself with no ability to change the initial conditions? Why do we have to have free will? It's still a win, vs no self awareness. I think.

smaddox 4y ago

How would a non-concious entity intelligently plan and act in response to stimuli in situations that require self reflection, such as interaction in a social environment? Consciousness seems necessary for effective goal pursuit in such an environment.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago
"Hey ChatGPT - here is the situation, here is my goal - what is my next step?"

int_19h 4y ago

Try to define "conscious" in some kind of objective way, for starters. We can't even agree on what it is, except that each person accepts the fact that they're conscious as an axiom, and generalizes it to others on the basis of similar observed behavior. We "know it when we see it", which is good enough for most practical purposes, but extremely inadequate for discussions like this.

laratiede 4y ago
[dead]