3 ms·

I'm of the opinion that the thalamo-coritcal loop, combined with chaotic brain activity, and randomness, give rise to consciousness. The "hard" problem is only

by qudat 2y ago

I'm of the opinion that the thalamo-coritcal loop, combined with chaotic brain activity, and randomness, give rise to consciousness. The "hard" problem is only hard when we put consciousness on a pedestal. If we have learned anything from LLMs it's that some clever statistics and data compression which predicts the next word can give rise to complex and seemingly "intelligent" behavior. LLMs are not conscious, but they lift the veil of our conceit. There's no hard problem of consciousness, it's an artifact of a chaotic thalamo-cortical loop that recursively processes inputs -- including outputs from previous neuronal activity. https://bower.sh/what-is-consciousness https://bower.sh/what-is-consciousness

_akhe 2y ago
Has nothing to do with a pedestal, it's a scientific observation. > a chaotic thalamo-cortical loop The aroma of coffee is not explained by the words "chaotic thalamo-cortical loop" - those are words used to loosely describe which neurons activate when I experience the aroma of coffee, but they are not the aroma of coffee, and there's no proof that they are even causal to that experience. It's a logical fallacy because many correlations are not causes but effects, and some are entirely unrelated. Example: The green stoplight correlates with cars driving, but they don't cause a car to drive. No amount of learning about stoplights will teach you about how a car moves. From far away you simply noticed that the green light is loosely correlated with the cars moving, but that's all you know. That's what is meant by the phrase correlation is not causation - "False Cause Fallacy". LLMs have nothing to do with consciousness, that's artificial intelligence which as I defined above is not the same as having a sensation. Intelligence (and selfhood, and other psychiatry) are all happening within the conscious process, they shouldn't be conflated with it. > There's no hard problem of consciousness If there's no problem - meaning, it's well-understood to the point you can reproduce it - then why has nobody been successful at producing it in isolation? The answer is, we don't know what consciousness is to the point we can reproduce it. To deny consciousness outright is to deny the first-person observation that you're having right now. Empirical science is based on observational evidence, and there is observational evidence of an experience from your perspective - the fact of your experiential existence owes a grokable explanation - even if it is caused by or correlated with neurons in brains.

by qudat 2y ago

_akhe 2y ago

Has nothing to do with a pedestal, it's a scientific observation. > a chaotic thalamo-cortical loop The aroma of coffee is not explained by the words "chaotic thalamo-cortical loop" - those are words used to loosely describe which neurons activate when I experience the aroma of coffee, but they are not the aroma of coffee, and there's no proof that they are even causal to that experience. It's a logical fallacy because many correlations are not causes but effects, and some are entirely unrelated. Example: The green stoplight correlates with cars driving, but they don't cause a car to drive. No amount of learning about stoplights will teach you about how a car moves. From far away you simply noticed that the green light is loosely correlated with the cars moving, but that's all you know. That's what is meant by the phrase correlation is not causation - "False Cause Fallacy". LLMs have nothing to do with consciousness, that's artificial intelligence which as I defined above is not the same as having a sensation. Intelligence (and selfhood, and other psychiatry) are all happening within the conscious process, they shouldn't be conflated with it. > There's no hard problem of consciousness If there's no problem - meaning, it's well-understood to the point you can reproduce it - then why has nobody been successful at producing it in isolation? The answer is, we don't know what consciousness is to the point we can reproduce it. To deny consciousness outright is to deny the first-person observation that you're having right now. Empirical science is based on observational evidence, and there is observational evidence of an experience from your perspective - the fact of your experiential existence owes a grokable explanation - even if it is caused by or correlated with neurons in brains.