5 ms·

I've given this a skim, and it seems to be very much "of its time" (the notes were written in 2006, but only published in this paper in 2021). It basically take

I've given this a skim, and it seems to be very much "of its time" (the notes were written in 2006, but only published in this paper in 2021). It basically takes as an axiom that in order to be conscious you need to be interacting with the physical environment. But the thinking has moved on since then, and we can view the internet as an alternative "environment" in which a conscious entity could exist. Instead of existing primarily in the physical world and using clumsy tools to access the internet, conscious artifacts will exist primarily in the internet and will use clumsy tools to access the physical world.

K0balt 2y ago
I think there is something to the “interaction with an environment” paradigm for consciousness. It’s not clear to me that interaction with a much, much more parameter constrained environment such as textual data will lead to consciousness in a way that we can recognise it. I posit that robotic embodiments of AI will lead to something we can recognise as “consciousness” in a more tractable way than other environments that are wholly alien to human experience. Nonphysical environments may also pose a risk for the “stealth” development of consciousness since we may not easily recognise the presence of a consciousness developed in an alien environment. We can intuit that a dog or cat is “conscious” easily, but could we detect that consciousness if we were limited to only linguistic communications with those subjects? So physicality, I think, is probably not a prerequisite of consciousness… but it may be a safer route, and also may result in more human-interpretable versions of consciousness.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > I think there is something to the “interaction with an environment” paradigm for consciousness. It’s not clear to me that interaction with a much, much more parameter constrained environment such as textual data will lead to consciousness in a way that we can recognise it. I am of that mind myself.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    PS Incidentally, that's why I find approaches such as the article's - or, more recently Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA) - to be interesting. At some point we'll need architectural progress if we really want to move forward.- This, for example, makes for a very interesting read, and might be on to something: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820942
- bondarchuk 2y ago
  >I posit that robotic embodiments of AI will lead to something we can recognise as “consciousness” in a more tractable way than other environments that are wholly alien to human experience. But sitting with your eyes closed and just thinking about something is also familiar to human experience. Of course you still have a body and some extent of awareness of it all the same, but it is conceivable that that's not essential to the experience of being conscious of solving a sudoku in your head (or whatever). Maybe it's all a moot point though, since no matter what any artifact must somehow be embedded in the physical world for us to say that it exists at all..
  - mannykannot 2y ago
    One other difference for a person sitting and thinking with their eyes closed is that they have not been doing this all their lives, and have the memories and other mental abilities that have come with interacting physically with the world. Even so (or perhaps because of it?) most people do not cope well with extended sensory deprivation. The experience of someone who has had only very limited sensory experience of the world might tell us more about this, and in that regard, there was an article not so long ago here on HN about Helen Keller’s memories of what her life seemed like before Ann Sullivan began attempting to communicate with her. My recollection is that she reported having little sense of herself in the world until that time. http://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-helen-keller-on-her.html http://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-hel...
  - mistermann 2y ago
    > any artifact must somehow be embedded in the physical world for us to say that it exists at all. Religious belief[1] often has no such constraints. There's also this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism [1] Any metaphysical framework really, including science as it is practiced/experienced, as opposed to the technical scriptures, guidelines, and intentions. For example, see how the Rationalist community has framed the phenomenon: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/aspiring-rationalist https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/aspiring-rationalist
smokel 2y ago
How exactly is the internet not interacting with photons and electrons in the physical world?
- jstanley 2y ago
  In the same way that a sandboxed HTML page is "not executing machine code on the CPU". Of course that's how everything works if you drill down deep enough, but if your direct connection is to the internet, rather than to your arms and legs, I think it's fair to say that you exist on the internet rather than in the physical world. I think the term is "reductionist". It is reductionist to say that because the internet exists in the physical world, existing on the internet is no different from existing in the physical world.
  - carapace 2y ago
    There is no "the Internet". There are computers, and wires, and silicon and electrons and photons, and there are cells and nerves and brains, but there is no "the Internet" in the real world. > your direct connection is to the internet You've still got a brain? A brain in a jar wired to a computer network is still in the physical world. You have to figure out your metaphysics before you can talk about this sort of thing. What are you? (I would say that you are subjective awareness itself, but that's useless from the POV (no joke intended) of someone trying to build a machine that can be a conscious being, or trying to transcend physical reality.)
    - mistermann 2y ago
      > There is no "the Internet". > there is no "the Internet" in the real world. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37754535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37754535 > You have to figure out your metaphysics before you can talk about this sort of thing. This is a very good point, but easier said than done. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415441
    - Nevermark 2y ago
      You are confusing two things. Of course software runs in the real world from a substrate level. But from a systems perspective it just runs on a CPU, because it operates by an assembly language that the CPU provides and you don’t need to know if the CPU is transistors, vacuum tubes, optical switches to understand the software operations. Likewise, you don’t need to know where the CPU is. What kind of system is producing its energy, etc. So there is a different level of operation between the physical substrate (or many alternative substrates) and the software. This is very obvious in computer games. The game provides an environment that is independent of what kind of computer you are running it on (given enough speed to be indistinguishable). Likewise, the Internet has rules that are implemented with physical things, it independent of the exact physical things. Who made your router? Most of the time the answer is “who cares?” as long as it correctly follows the networking rules of a router.
fellowmartian 2y ago
Being conscious is embodiment in its own right: you decide to think a thought and you see your thought being thought.
- theptip 2y ago
  This isn’t what everybody else means when they use the term “embodiment”. It refers to sensing and actuating in the world (or a simulation!) in realtime. It’s explicitly referring to the opposite of a “brain in a jar” scenario.
  - fellowmartian 2y ago
    It is explicitly compatible with the formal definition of embodiment, which is roughly: select an action from the action set, observe results of the action taken, update internal state, in a loop.
- matt-attack 2y ago
  Incorrect. If I say “ think of a famous actor”. (Please do it benefit reading on..) l, aha you actually look back at the process and study it, you’re not actually choosing what you choose. It’s a mere illusion. The famous actor has in fact just come into your mid on its own. There was really no choice.
  - bitcoin_anon 2y ago
    A corollary to this is that you didn't arrive at this conclusion as a result of analyzing the possible perspectives and choosing the best one. Similar to what you said, you didn’t choose to believe this, the veracity of this conclusion just came into your mind on its own. So why should we, or you for that matter, take this claim seriously?
  - fellowmartian 2y ago
    I knew somebody would bring free will into this :) I should've said "you decide to think a thought (for some definition of "decide" according to your free will stance) ...". I mostly agree with you, but I decided to compartmentalize it out for the sake of this particular discussion, as I don't think it matters - a machine with these properties would be as conscious as a human.

K0balt 2y ago

I think there is something to the “interaction with an environment” paradigm for consciousness. It’s not clear to me that interaction with a much, much more parameter constrained environment such as textual data will lead to consciousness in a way that we can recognise it. I posit that robotic embodiments of AI will lead to something we can recognise as “consciousness” in a more tractable way than other environments that are wholly alien to human experience. Nonphysical environments may also pose a risk for the “stealth” development of consciousness since we may not easily recognise the presence of a consciousness developed in an alien environment. We can intuit that a dog or cat is “conscious” easily, but could we detect that consciousness if we were limited to only linguistic communications with those subjects? So physicality, I think, is probably not a prerequisite of consciousness… but it may be a safer route, and also may result in more human-interpretable versions of consciousness.

Bluestein 2y ago
> I think there is something to the “interaction with an environment” paradigm for consciousness. It’s not clear to me that interaction with a much, much more parameter constrained environment such as textual data will lead to consciousness in a way that we can recognise it. I am of that mind myself.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  PS Incidentally, that's why I find approaches such as the article's - or, more recently Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA) - to be interesting. At some point we'll need architectural progress if we really want to move forward.- This, for example, makes for a very interesting read, and might be on to something: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820942
bondarchuk 2y ago
>I posit that robotic embodiments of AI will lead to something we can recognise as “consciousness” in a more tractable way than other environments that are wholly alien to human experience. But sitting with your eyes closed and just thinking about something is also familiar to human experience. Of course you still have a body and some extent of awareness of it all the same, but it is conceivable that that's not essential to the experience of being conscious of solving a sudoku in your head (or whatever). Maybe it's all a moot point though, since no matter what any artifact must somehow be embedded in the physical world for us to say that it exists at all..
- mannykannot 2y ago
  One other difference for a person sitting and thinking with their eyes closed is that they have not been doing this all their lives, and have the memories and other mental abilities that have come with interacting physically with the world. Even so (or perhaps because of it?) most people do not cope well with extended sensory deprivation. The experience of someone who has had only very limited sensory experience of the world might tell us more about this, and in that regard, there was an article not so long ago here on HN about Helen Keller’s memories of what her life seemed like before Ann Sullivan began attempting to communicate with her. My recollection is that she reported having little sense of herself in the world until that time. http://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-helen-keller-on-her.html http://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-hel...
- mistermann 2y ago
  > any artifact must somehow be embedded in the physical world for us to say that it exists at all. Religious belief[1] often has no such constraints. There's also this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism [1] Any metaphysical framework really, including science as it is practiced/experienced, as opposed to the technical scriptures, guidelines, and intentions. For example, see how the Rationalist community has framed the phenomenon: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/aspiring-rationalist https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/aspiring-rationalist

smokel 2y ago

How exactly is the internet not interacting with photons and electrons in the physical world?

jstanley 2y ago
In the same way that a sandboxed HTML page is "not executing machine code on the CPU". Of course that's how everything works if you drill down deep enough, but if your direct connection is to the internet, rather than to your arms and legs, I think it's fair to say that you exist on the internet rather than in the physical world. I think the term is "reductionist". It is reductionist to say that because the internet exists in the physical world, existing on the internet is no different from existing in the physical world.
- carapace 2y ago
  There is no "the Internet". There are computers, and wires, and silicon and electrons and photons, and there are cells and nerves and brains, but there is no "the Internet" in the real world. > your direct connection is to the internet You've still got a brain? A brain in a jar wired to a computer network is still in the physical world. You have to figure out your metaphysics before you can talk about this sort of thing. What are you? (I would say that you are subjective awareness itself, but that's useless from the POV (no joke intended) of someone trying to build a machine that can be a conscious being, or trying to transcend physical reality.)
  - mistermann 2y ago
    > There is no "the Internet". > there is no "the Internet" in the real world. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37754535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37754535 > You have to figure out your metaphysics before you can talk about this sort of thing. This is a very good point, but easier said than done. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415441
  - Nevermark 2y ago
    You are confusing two things. Of course software runs in the real world from a substrate level. But from a systems perspective it just runs on a CPU, because it operates by an assembly language that the CPU provides and you don’t need to know if the CPU is transistors, vacuum tubes, optical switches to understand the software operations. Likewise, you don’t need to know where the CPU is. What kind of system is producing its energy, etc. So there is a different level of operation between the physical substrate (or many alternative substrates) and the software. This is very obvious in computer games. The game provides an environment that is independent of what kind of computer you are running it on (given enough speed to be indistinguishable). Likewise, the Internet has rules that are implemented with physical things, it independent of the exact physical things. Who made your router? Most of the time the answer is “who cares?” as long as it correctly follows the networking rules of a router.

fellowmartian 2y ago

Being conscious is embodiment in its own right: you decide to think a thought and you see your thought being thought.

theptip 2y ago
This isn’t what everybody else means when they use the term “embodiment”. It refers to sensing and actuating in the world (or a simulation!) in realtime. It’s explicitly referring to the opposite of a “brain in a jar” scenario.
- fellowmartian 2y ago
  It is explicitly compatible with the formal definition of embodiment, which is roughly: select an action from the action set, observe results of the action taken, update internal state, in a loop.
matt-attack 2y ago
Incorrect. If I say “ think of a famous actor”. (Please do it benefit reading on..) l, aha you actually look back at the process and study it, you’re not actually choosing what you choose. It’s a mere illusion. The famous actor has in fact just come into your mid on its own. There was really no choice.
- bitcoin_anon 2y ago
  A corollary to this is that you didn't arrive at this conclusion as a result of analyzing the possible perspectives and choosing the best one. Similar to what you said, you didn’t choose to believe this, the veracity of this conclusion just came into your mind on its own. So why should we, or you for that matter, take this claim seriously?
- fellowmartian 2y ago
  I knew somebody would bring free will into this :) I should've said "you decide to think a thought (for some definition of "decide" according to your free will stance) ...". I mostly agree with you, but I decided to compartmentalize it out for the sake of this particular discussion, as I don't think it matters - a machine with these properties would be as conscious as a human.