5 ms·

It doesn't say much, it's an obituary from [1] for the author of [2] and other books, and it just vaguely refers to his ideas on consciousness and the brain. To

It doesn't say much, it's an obituary from [1] for the author of [2] and other books, and it just vaguely refers to his ideas on consciousness and the brain. Too bad since the concepts seem very interesting. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_your_brain_hallucinates_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained

andoando 2y ago
I don't get it. Denying the existence of qualia is surely convenient but hardly convincing. Saying its a hallucination just sides steps the problem. What is this hallucination you're experiencing? Why hallucinate anything at all when it is not a necessary component of functioning? Why couldnt a hypothetical human like robot simply reply "I dont know what you mean by did that hurt, I simply know it could have damaged me so I know to avoid such scenarios" To believe we are all p zombies youd have to believe that a table you punched experienced the same thing as punching me. That, either a table has all the same experiences that I feel, or that I unlike yourself that I feel nothing at all. I am of the first opinion, that everything does experience some form of consciousness, and that we are a conglomeration of many individual pieces of it.
- delichon 2y ago
  > Why hallucinate anything at all when it is not a necessary component of functioning? LLMs may be demonstrating that hallucination is indeed a necessary component of at least one kind of thinking.
  - andoando 2y ago
    Sure, but what I mean is 1. saying concious experience is just a hallucination implies something is being hallucinated. If there is no such thing as consciousness, how could we speak of it being a hallucination? Why would there be anything to have to explain in the first place? 2. LLMs hallucinate in the sense that they make up random, different ideas, which I agree is necessary for intelligence. In this case however, consciousness is something we all experience.
    - delichon 2y ago
      I like the theory that consciousness is similar to the illusion of motion in film, constructed by a frame rate. Consciousness is a cognitive loop in which one frame is examining the senses, and then your reaction to them. Look outward, then inward. Like the illusion of motion, consciousness emerges when that frame rate exceeds a threshold of perception. We call it an illusion of motion so maybe it is also an illusion of consciousness. It's difficult to say whether the resulting consciousness is in some sense more real than the motion.
      - HKH2 2y ago
        So what might control the frame rate? What happens when it's too slow? Does what you experience lose meaning?
        delichon 2y ago
        > What happens when it's too slow? Sleep?
        mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
        Not sure if this answers the question but one time I took a ridiculous amount of 2c-b(100mg) and and it was like everything was stuttering. Continuous sounds like my computer fan sounded like a repetitive banging sound instead and movement was discontinuous as well.
        andoando 2y ago
        I had the same experience getting drunk and high once. I was just experiencing frames in between.
- exe34 2y ago
  You report feeling the punch. Detecting a punch, assessing the damage are all useful things to do evolutionarily speaking. At some point if you live in society, it's useful to build a virtual machine that describes what your neighbour feels when you punch him. Now if you run the same virtual machine but with all the inputs being measured rather than guessed at, you end up with an emphatic tale of how you got punched and how it seemed to feel like to get punched. But the system isn't built to know how it works, it's like asking chat gpt how it got the answer - it'll happily make up a plausible explanation. Just like you.
  - andoando 2y ago
    That just explains how one can make up words to describe their experience. You can certainly explain all the observations that humans or animals do from an outside perspective. It doesn't explain the fact that one does indeed actually feel the pain. I am not just making up a tale after the fact that it did hurt, it did in fact hurt! And neither knowing or not knowing how it works, nor making up explanations has nothing to do with it. A robot as I said could easily just say "When you hit me hard, I dont know why but it gives me an instinct to scream and move out of the way" just as easily I could say "I dont know why but what you said made me never want to talk to you again". Qualia is still something we cant describe, so I am not sure what you mean its like making up some gibberish like an LLM does. If you ask me what red is I cant tell you, I dont go "well its like the frequency of light that resembles autumn and golden leaves". Youve either experienced it yourself or you havent.
    - exe34 2y ago
      Yes, I believe your account that this is what it seems like to you. The fact that you believe that doesn't make it so.
      - andoando 2y ago
        What does "doesnt make it so" even mean here. If I experience pain, then I dont "actually" feel pain? I don't understand what youre saying.
- roarcher 2y ago
  Agreed, I've never understood this argument. A hallucination or an illusion, or whatever this school of thought likes to call it, exists within consciousness. It's a qualitative experience. If my consciousness is an illusion, then who or what is experiencing that illusion, and how? Is that experience also just an illusion? Illusions all the way down? Perhaps I misunderstand Dennet's ideas. Maybe he means something entirely different by "illusion" and "consciousness" than what I understand those terms to mean. But these theories certainly appear to me to be a clever semantic way to ignore the question rather than answer it.
  - naasking 2y ago
    > It's a qualitative experience. If my consciousness is an illusion, then who or what is experiencing that illusion, and how? Asking "who" begs the question that subjects are necessary, therefore "what" is the only question that matters. What "experiences the illusion" that experiences exist too. But "what perceives the illusion" dissolves the hard problem entirely since it permits a mechanistic system, where an illusion is a perception that entails a false conclusion, all things that don't require admitting privileged subjects into your ontology.
    - roarcher 2y ago
      I said "who or what" in anticipation of this exact tiresome semantic game. Use whichever word you prefer, it's irrelevant to my point. My point is that qualia exist. You can call them an illusion, but we still "feel" them. Why are we able to feel anything, illusory or real? My ontology does not require "privileged subjects". I make no claims about where qualia may or may not exist outside of human minds. I merely acknowledge that they do exist in the human mind, the one place where they can be observed and self-reported. And I think the question of what produces them is worth investigating. Unfortunately any discussion is drowned out by the thought-terminating cliche, "it's an illusion". What exactly do you mean by an "illusion", anyway? Do you mean that I'm programmed by evolution to believe and behave as if I have internal experiences, but I actually don't? I would beg to differ, but I suppose by your reasoning, that's exactly what a befuddled meat robot such as myself would say.
- naasking 2y ago
  > Why hallucinate anything at all when it is not a necessary component of functioning? Who claimed it wasn't necessary for functioning? The text boxes and links and windows on your screen are also illusions, they don't actually exist in the screen or inside the computer, but how useful would a computer be to you without these illusions? > To believe we are all p zombies youd have to believe that a table you punched experienced the same thing as punching me Eliminate materialism is the position that qualitative experience is not what it appears to be, and that our perceptions are not trustworthy. That doesn't mean there is no difference between you and a table.
  - andoando 2y ago
    >Who claimed it wasn't necessary for functioning? The text boxes and links and windows on your screen are also illusions, they don't actually exist in the screen or inside the computer, but how useful would a computer be to you without these illusions? By this reasoning, everything we perceive, including physical reality is an "illusion" (which I am totally onboard with). There is still the question however, of when does this illusion arise? Is any system that understands its sensory input conscious? Is any system that has the ability to form thoughts in a feedback loop (i.e, the ability to process its own thoughts), consciously experiencing the world in a similar manner as I am? Or what's the criteria?
    - naasking 2y ago
      > By this reasoning, everything we perceive, including physical reality is an "illusion" Yes and no. An illusion is technically a perception that does not correspond to reality. So it's not an illusion to say there's a table in front of you, but some of the table's apparent properties might turn out to be illusions of sorts, eg. its solidity might suggests that it's solid all the way through, but we know it's 99% empty space and the perception of solidity arises from the exchange of photons. This is the kind of illusion that consciousness would end up being: some process that useful in evolutionary terms, but which reduces to something completely different and mechanical in terms of particle exchanges, and which at a high-level leaves us with the belief that we have subjective experience. For one possible model of how this would work, see: https://pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119 https://pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119

andoando 2y ago

I don't get it. Denying the existence of qualia is surely convenient but hardly convincing. Saying its a hallucination just sides steps the problem. What is this hallucination you're experiencing? Why hallucinate anything at all when it is not a necessary component of functioning? Why couldnt a hypothetical human like robot simply reply "I dont know what you mean by did that hurt, I simply know it could have damaged me so I know to avoid such scenarios" To believe we are all p zombies youd have to believe that a table you punched experienced the same thing as punching me. That, either a table has all the same experiences that I feel, or that I unlike yourself that I feel nothing at all. I am of the first opinion, that everything does experience some form of consciousness, and that we are a conglomeration of many individual pieces of it.

delichon 2y ago
> Why hallucinate anything at all when it is not a necessary component of functioning? LLMs may be demonstrating that hallucination is indeed a necessary component of at least one kind of thinking.
- andoando 2y ago
  Sure, but what I mean is 1. saying concious experience is just a hallucination implies something is being hallucinated. If there is no such thing as consciousness, how could we speak of it being a hallucination? Why would there be anything to have to explain in the first place? 2. LLMs hallucinate in the sense that they make up random, different ideas, which I agree is necessary for intelligence. In this case however, consciousness is something we all experience.
  - delichon 2y ago
    I like the theory that consciousness is similar to the illusion of motion in film, constructed by a frame rate. Consciousness is a cognitive loop in which one frame is examining the senses, and then your reaction to them. Look outward, then inward. Like the illusion of motion, consciousness emerges when that frame rate exceeds a threshold of perception. We call it an illusion of motion so maybe it is also an illusion of consciousness. It's difficult to say whether the resulting consciousness is in some sense more real than the motion.
    - HKH2 2y ago
      So what might control the frame rate? What happens when it's too slow? Does what you experience lose meaning?
      - delichon 2y ago
        > What happens when it's too slow? Sleep?
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
        Not sure if this answers the question but one time I took a ridiculous amount of 2c-b(100mg) and and it was like everything was stuttering. Continuous sounds like my computer fan sounded like a repetitive banging sound instead and movement was discontinuous as well.
        andoando 2y ago
        I had the same experience getting drunk and high once. I was just experiencing frames in between.
exe34 2y ago
You report feeling the punch. Detecting a punch, assessing the damage are all useful things to do evolutionarily speaking. At some point if you live in society, it's useful to build a virtual machine that describes what your neighbour feels when you punch him. Now if you run the same virtual machine but with all the inputs being measured rather than guessed at, you end up with an emphatic tale of how you got punched and how it seemed to feel like to get punched. But the system isn't built to know how it works, it's like asking chat gpt how it got the answer - it'll happily make up a plausible explanation. Just like you.
- andoando 2y ago
  That just explains how one can make up words to describe their experience. You can certainly explain all the observations that humans or animals do from an outside perspective. It doesn't explain the fact that one does indeed actually feel the pain. I am not just making up a tale after the fact that it did hurt, it did in fact hurt! And neither knowing or not knowing how it works, nor making up explanations has nothing to do with it. A robot as I said could easily just say "When you hit me hard, I dont know why but it gives me an instinct to scream and move out of the way" just as easily I could say "I dont know why but what you said made me never want to talk to you again". Qualia is still something we cant describe, so I am not sure what you mean its like making up some gibberish like an LLM does. If you ask me what red is I cant tell you, I dont go "well its like the frequency of light that resembles autumn and golden leaves". Youve either experienced it yourself or you havent.
  - exe34 2y ago
    Yes, I believe your account that this is what it seems like to you. The fact that you believe that doesn't make it so.
    - andoando 2y ago
      What does "doesnt make it so" even mean here. If I experience pain, then I dont "actually" feel pain? I don't understand what youre saying.
roarcher 2y ago
Agreed, I've never understood this argument. A hallucination or an illusion, or whatever this school of thought likes to call it, exists within consciousness. It's a qualitative experience. If my consciousness is an illusion, then who or what is experiencing that illusion, and how? Is that experience also just an illusion? Illusions all the way down? Perhaps I misunderstand Dennet's ideas. Maybe he means something entirely different by "illusion" and "consciousness" than what I understand those terms to mean. But these theories certainly appear to me to be a clever semantic way to ignore the question rather than answer it.
- naasking 2y ago
  > It's a qualitative experience. If my consciousness is an illusion, then who or what is experiencing that illusion, and how? Asking "who" begs the question that subjects are necessary, therefore "what" is the only question that matters. What "experiences the illusion" that experiences exist too. But "what perceives the illusion" dissolves the hard problem entirely since it permits a mechanistic system, where an illusion is a perception that entails a false conclusion, all things that don't require admitting privileged subjects into your ontology.
  - roarcher 2y ago
    I said "who or what" in anticipation of this exact tiresome semantic game. Use whichever word you prefer, it's irrelevant to my point. My point is that qualia exist. You can call them an illusion, but we still "feel" them. Why are we able to feel anything, illusory or real? My ontology does not require "privileged subjects". I make no claims about where qualia may or may not exist outside of human minds. I merely acknowledge that they do exist in the human mind, the one place where they can be observed and self-reported. And I think the question of what produces them is worth investigating. Unfortunately any discussion is drowned out by the thought-terminating cliche, "it's an illusion". What exactly do you mean by an "illusion", anyway? Do you mean that I'm programmed by evolution to believe and behave as if I have internal experiences, but I actually don't? I would beg to differ, but I suppose by your reasoning, that's exactly what a befuddled meat robot such as myself would say.
naasking 2y ago
> Why hallucinate anything at all when it is not a necessary component of functioning? Who claimed it wasn't necessary for functioning? The text boxes and links and windows on your screen are also illusions, they don't actually exist in the screen or inside the computer, but how useful would a computer be to you without these illusions? > To believe we are all p zombies youd have to believe that a table you punched experienced the same thing as punching me Eliminate materialism is the position that qualitative experience is not what it appears to be, and that our perceptions are not trustworthy. That doesn't mean there is no difference between you and a table.
- andoando 2y ago
  >Who claimed it wasn't necessary for functioning? The text boxes and links and windows on your screen are also illusions, they don't actually exist in the screen or inside the computer, but how useful would a computer be to you without these illusions? By this reasoning, everything we perceive, including physical reality is an "illusion" (which I am totally onboard with). There is still the question however, of when does this illusion arise? Is any system that understands its sensory input conscious? Is any system that has the ability to form thoughts in a feedback loop (i.e, the ability to process its own thoughts), consciously experiencing the world in a similar manner as I am? Or what's the criteria?
  - naasking 2y ago
    > By this reasoning, everything we perceive, including physical reality is an "illusion" Yes and no. An illusion is technically a perception that does not correspond to reality. So it's not an illusion to say there's a table in front of you, but some of the table's apparent properties might turn out to be illusions of sorts, eg. its solidity might suggests that it's solid all the way through, but we know it's 99% empty space and the perception of solidity arises from the exchange of photons. This is the kind of illusion that consciousness would end up being: some process that useful in evolutionary terms, but which reduces to something completely different and mechanical in terms of particle exchanges, and which at a high-level leaves us with the belief that we have subjective experience. For one possible model of how this would work, see: https://pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119 https://pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119