3 ms·

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 par

by 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

by K0balt 2y ago

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