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I certainly don't rule that out. But even the Hofstadter "strange loop" model explains awareness, moreso than the qualia of experience. (Show me an "ouch", and

I certainly don't rule that out. But even the Hofstadter "strange loop" model explains awareness, moreso than the qualia of experience. (Show me an "ouch", and I'll show a way to accomplish identical behavior via -X weighting of utils.) And, it invokes the question of whether a sufficiently advanced predictive function in silicon/code would also have consciousness and/or qualia. If yes, one essentially lands in IIT [0] (according to some, implying that even a light switch has a 1-bit micro-consciousness). If no, then one wonders what utility qualia brings to the table, compared to simply optimizing the algorithm to work without subjectivity. (Would ML training be more effective if we could somehow add "yuck" and "yum" experiences? How would we tell, assuming we aren't accidentally doing it already?) For another perspective, Peter Watts' novel "Blindsight" explores the idea that consciousness is merely a temporary local optimum, and eventually selected against, in favor of life forms which are intelligent without being conscious. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48484.Blindsight https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48484.Blindsight

daxfohl 3y ago
One thing that hadn't occurred to me before, in light of some other threads arguing that it all comes down to maximizing entropy, which sounds reasonable, is that consciousness implies the ability to make mistakes, and mistakes imply missing the maximum. How to reconcile with consciousness maximizing entropy? Maybe Blindsight is right; maybe there's a future life that has no consciousness and thus is always maximally entropic. Or maybe it's a zero-sum game of simultaneous moves between entropy and some other force, or spatially-separated moves such that relativity cannot order them, making nondeterminism the optimal strategy. But now I'm making stuff up.

daxfohl 3y ago

One thing that hadn't occurred to me before, in light of some other threads arguing that it all comes down to maximizing entropy, which sounds reasonable, is that consciousness implies the ability to make mistakes, and mistakes imply missing the maximum. How to reconcile with consciousness maximizing entropy? Maybe Blindsight is right; maybe there's a future life that has no consciousness and thus is always maximally entropic. Or maybe it's a zero-sum game of simultaneous moves between entropy and some other force, or spatially-separated moves such that relativity cannot order them, making nondeterminism the optimal strategy. But now I'm making stuff up.