5 ms·

I have not read the article but I would love to have a real debate with a materialist. All anti-meterial models will skew sightly mystical so if you have zero a

I have not read the article but I would love to have a real debate with a materialist. All anti-meterial models will skew sightly mystical so if you have zero appetite for that I won’t bother. But I’d like to try to change your mind if you’re interested. I’ll start: Consciousness has nothing to do with any sort of processing. Processing is “dead” in the sense of a desktop calculator. Consciousness is the “living” part of your experience - that which experiences. Any process is the content of experience, not the subject. I’ll stop here for now. EDIT: currently this comment is at a 0 score. If you disagree with me, please leave a reply and I will try to get to you, but don't blindly downvote me cause I'd like to talk to more people, that's all. I'm not some religious zealot, you can check my post history etc.

mysecretaccount 3y ago
I have some appetite for it. Either conscious is mere computation or it is not, and either branch should be explored. I think assuming that either branch is correct beyond a reasonable doubt is wrong. Is there any material (!) you can link me to to explore further?
- xmonkee 3y ago
  Look, there is more material about this stuff that perhaps any other subject explored by man, but it frequently comes in ecclesiastic garb and that may or may not be to your taste. I'll can link both spiritual and secular starting points. The spiritual ones are far more delicious. What's your stand on religion in general? I'll link sources appropriately.
visarga 3y ago
> Consciousness is the “living” part of your experience - that which experiences. That's circular, what is experience, what is "that which"? I propose a simple definition - consciousness is what informs actions, and optimises actions to benefit the agent. That's a concrete definition, without subjective elements.
- xmonkee 3y ago
  Sure, but it entirely leaves off subjective experience.
  - simonh 3y ago
    It also defines Roombas, and even simple sense/response feedback loop systems as conscious entities. Is a carburetor conscious?
  - visarga 3y ago
    It's all in there. Consciousness decides actions, it's embedded in every action. Actions change the future timeline, there is consequence in actions, and they provide feedback. It feels like something because it matters how you react. You could die if you don't react correctly, for example.
noncoml 3y ago
Can you define the “minimum reproducible example”? Which is the simplest organism that has this “living” part and which is the most complex organism that doesn’t have it?
- xmonkee 3y ago
  In the sense that you are asking, I can't answer this question, because I don't know. Perhaps ants and up have it? idk, there is no way to know. There is no way to even know if other people definitely HAVE consciousness, I take it on faith. I can only KNOW for sure that I have consciousness. How do I know that? Because I am conscious of it. Is this circular? Yes. In fact, this is the ONLY absolute reality that I can positively assert, without reference to any other fact or axiom. The fact that I can think, or that I have a body, or that it's day outside, all of these first need me to be conscious. So, yes, it's circular, and it's true, and you know it's true that you are conscious. And you don't need process any information to know that you are conscious. It's prior to all that.
simonh 3y ago
You are simply defining consciousness and information processing in terms of alive and dead. If those are your axiomatic assumptions, you’ve already established the outcome before evaluating the issues. Consciousness may be more than processing information, but it is definitely processing information. Perceptions go in, and decisions come out. Along the way we also form memories. When we experience something, qualia if you like, it matters to us. That process stimulates us, interests us and often it prompts us to action. Those are all information processes. Stimulation is a signal. Interest and attention is metadata about the experience. Being prompted to action is making a decision. These are all intrinsically processes on and about information.
- seri4l 3y ago
  There are some experiments that suggest that human actions are not the result of conscious thought. Maybe you've heard about Michael Gazzaniga's experiments on split brain subjects. The most radical interpretation of the results is that our conscious thought merely constructs a narrative about actions it has no direct control of. In other words, our brains act like a bunch of interconnected neural networks and one of them, the language processing part, tries to make sense of what all the others are doing, serving the only purpose of communicating with others.
  - simonh 3y ago
    I wasn’t aware of that research, thanks, but I do agree most cognition is subconscious. When talking rapidly, the words seem to just spill out from nowhere. Ideas simply spring to mind. We have no direct awareness if the cognitive processes that generate them. We can reason consciously step by step, but it’s an incredibly slow process. It seems likely that consciousness has something to do with attention management and broadcast communication across brain regions and functions.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Which is part of the reason why I think LLMs are a big deal. LLMs talk like the inner voice, and their failure modes are strikingly similar to the failure modes of "gut instinct" / first reactions and "stream of thoughts". I don't think this is a coincidence - I think we may have stumbled on the main trick that makes biological brains work. I don't mean language here, but rather the use of absurdly high-dimensional latent space for representing relatedness. Now, if the above is anywhere close to the truth, then taking it together with the research you mention suggests that LLMs aren't simulating or parroting abstract thinking and understanding - they're actually doing it, the same way we do. They just lack an evaluator/censor layer of conscious experience.
jiggawatts 3y ago
You've already fallen into several pits of failure, perhaps without realising it. Firstly, "alive" and "dead" are very squishy words with no clear definition. You can mould them into whatever you please, but that's not a firm foundation for any kind of debate. Second, you can't just state your position as fact. You say that "Consciousness has nothing to do with any sort of processing." That's not an argument! You're making an assumption, and treating it as an obvious thing we all agree on. We don't. In fact, it's the main point of disagreement. This is like a theologian assuming the Bible is true because God wrote it, but Atheists don't believe God exists. "Any process is the content of experience, not the subject." -- this is too vague to respond to. It could mean anything. Other than hand-wavey, vague things, you've only said one clear thing, which is to assume the outcome that you would like. Materialists aren't just making assumptions. Tests have been done. Real, scientific experiments. We can (trivially!) alter consciousness through chemical, surgical, or electromagnetic means. Simple physical processes seem to underlie consciousness, and altering those processes alters consciousness. Every teenager that has taken LSD or mushrooms can attest to this fact. Anyone that has taken a nasty hit to head can experience this first hand.
- xmonkee 3y ago
  I admit my language is squishy. Sometimes it helps point to what I'm trying to point to. And I know where you are coming from, as someone who was a materialist for much of my life. We are simply talking about different things. You are talking about the contents of consciousness - the things that get altered by physical processes. We don't need tests to establish that. When the sun rises, the contents of my consciousness change from black to orange, thus we know that physical processes can change the contents of my awareness. I am taking about consciousness itself. When the sun rises, the sky is the same, even it now seems orange.
  - jiggawatts 3y ago
    > When the sun rises, the sky is the same, even it now seems orange. I don't understand what point you're trying to make. When the sun rises, the colour of the sky changes in ways measurable with physical devices and noticeable to animal and human eyes. It is not "the same" in any sense. Different photons traverse it, its temperature changes, ionisation of its gas molecules change, etc...

mysecretaccount 3y ago

I have some appetite for it. Either conscious is mere computation or it is not, and either branch should be explored. I think assuming that either branch is correct beyond a reasonable doubt is wrong. Is there any material (!) you can link me to to explore further?

xmonkee 3y ago
Look, there is more material about this stuff that perhaps any other subject explored by man, but it frequently comes in ecclesiastic garb and that may or may not be to your taste. I'll can link both spiritual and secular starting points. The spiritual ones are far more delicious. What's your stand on religion in general? I'll link sources appropriately.

visarga 3y ago

> Consciousness is the “living” part of your experience - that which experiences. That's circular, what is experience, what is "that which"? I propose a simple definition - consciousness is what informs actions, and optimises actions to benefit the agent. That's a concrete definition, without subjective elements.

xmonkee 3y ago
Sure, but it entirely leaves off subjective experience.
- simonh 3y ago
  It also defines Roombas, and even simple sense/response feedback loop systems as conscious entities. Is a carburetor conscious?
- visarga 3y ago
  It's all in there. Consciousness decides actions, it's embedded in every action. Actions change the future timeline, there is consequence in actions, and they provide feedback. It feels like something because it matters how you react. You could die if you don't react correctly, for example.

noncoml 3y ago

Can you define the “minimum reproducible example”? Which is the simplest organism that has this “living” part and which is the most complex organism that doesn’t have it?

xmonkee 3y ago
In the sense that you are asking, I can't answer this question, because I don't know. Perhaps ants and up have it? idk, there is no way to know. There is no way to even know if other people definitely HAVE consciousness, I take it on faith. I can only KNOW for sure that I have consciousness. How do I know that? Because I am conscious of it. Is this circular? Yes. In fact, this is the ONLY absolute reality that I can positively assert, without reference to any other fact or axiom. The fact that I can think, or that I have a body, or that it's day outside, all of these first need me to be conscious. So, yes, it's circular, and it's true, and you know it's true that you are conscious. And you don't need process any information to know that you are conscious. It's prior to all that.

simonh 3y ago

You are simply defining consciousness and information processing in terms of alive and dead. If those are your axiomatic assumptions, you’ve already established the outcome before evaluating the issues. Consciousness may be more than processing information, but it is definitely processing information. Perceptions go in, and decisions come out. Along the way we also form memories. When we experience something, qualia if you like, it matters to us. That process stimulates us, interests us and often it prompts us to action. Those are all information processes. Stimulation is a signal. Interest and attention is metadata about the experience. Being prompted to action is making a decision. These are all intrinsically processes on and about information.

seri4l 3y ago
There are some experiments that suggest that human actions are not the result of conscious thought. Maybe you've heard about Michael Gazzaniga's experiments on split brain subjects. The most radical interpretation of the results is that our conscious thought merely constructs a narrative about actions it has no direct control of. In other words, our brains act like a bunch of interconnected neural networks and one of them, the language processing part, tries to make sense of what all the others are doing, serving the only purpose of communicating with others.
- simonh 3y ago
  I wasn’t aware of that research, thanks, but I do agree most cognition is subconscious. When talking rapidly, the words seem to just spill out from nowhere. Ideas simply spring to mind. We have no direct awareness if the cognitive processes that generate them. We can reason consciously step by step, but it’s an incredibly slow process. It seems likely that consciousness has something to do with attention management and broadcast communication across brain regions and functions.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Which is part of the reason why I think LLMs are a big deal. LLMs talk like the inner voice, and their failure modes are strikingly similar to the failure modes of "gut instinct" / first reactions and "stream of thoughts". I don't think this is a coincidence - I think we may have stumbled on the main trick that makes biological brains work. I don't mean language here, but rather the use of absurdly high-dimensional latent space for representing relatedness. Now, if the above is anywhere close to the truth, then taking it together with the research you mention suggests that LLMs aren't simulating or parroting abstract thinking and understanding - they're actually doing it, the same way we do. They just lack an evaluator/censor layer of conscious experience.

jiggawatts 3y ago

You've already fallen into several pits of failure, perhaps without realising it. Firstly, "alive" and "dead" are very squishy words with no clear definition. You can mould them into whatever you please, but that's not a firm foundation for any kind of debate. Second, you can't just state your position as fact. You say that "Consciousness has nothing to do with any sort of processing." That's not an argument! You're making an assumption, and treating it as an obvious thing we all agree on. We don't. In fact, it's the main point of disagreement. This is like a theologian assuming the Bible is true because God wrote it, but Atheists don't believe God exists. "Any process is the content of experience, not the subject." -- this is too vague to respond to. It could mean anything. Other than hand-wavey, vague things, you've only said one clear thing, which is to assume the outcome that you would like. Materialists aren't just making assumptions. Tests have been done. Real, scientific experiments. We can (trivially!) alter consciousness through chemical, surgical, or electromagnetic means. Simple physical processes seem to underlie consciousness, and altering those processes alters consciousness. Every teenager that has taken LSD or mushrooms can attest to this fact. Anyone that has taken a nasty hit to head can experience this first hand.

xmonkee 3y ago
I admit my language is squishy. Sometimes it helps point to what I'm trying to point to. And I know where you are coming from, as someone who was a materialist for much of my life. We are simply talking about different things. You are talking about the contents of consciousness - the things that get altered by physical processes. We don't need tests to establish that. When the sun rises, the contents of my consciousness change from black to orange, thus we know that physical processes can change the contents of my awareness. I am taking about consciousness itself. When the sun rises, the sky is the same, even it now seems orange.
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  > When the sun rises, the sky is the same, even it now seems orange. I don't understand what point you're trying to make. When the sun rises, the colour of the sky changes in ways measurable with physical devices and noticeable to animal and human eyes. It is not "the same" in any sense. Different photons traverse it, its temperature changes, ionisation of its gas molecules change, etc...