3 ms·

See my other comment too, but I agree. Rocks and lightning aren't conscious of anything, because they have no state that represents anything. Amoeba are conscio

See my other comment too, but I agree. Rocks and lightning aren't conscious of anything, because they have no state that represents anything. Amoeba are conscious of some things, because they have state that represents a tiny slice of the world. Cats are conscious of much more, then LLMs and humans in turn. It's not about animate vs inanimate, it's about models that represent something. There's also some confusion because we have limited language here. A person can be "unconscious", but that doesn't mean they've lost their world model. It's just currently not executing.

quantadev 2y ago
Unconscious brains appear to be functioning normally as far as all of science can tell, except for one big difference: Brain Wave frequencies. Only the lower frequencies exist. Higher frequencies are scientifically proven to be required for consciousness. You can call that a meaningless correlation that happens to be totally inconsequential, but most neuroscientists strongly disagree with that. EDIT: I mean neuroscientists know brain frequency is more than an accidental correlation with consciousness.
- gaganyaan 2y ago
  TBH, I don't really know what you're driving at with brain waves. They're not magic. I think you're trying to use "consciousness" to mean "high level brain activity", as opposed to something like the lizard brain? To which I say that you're making a distinction that isn't there. Your lizard brain is perfectly conscious of many things. It's just conscious of fewer things than your prefrontal cortex. I mention "unconscious" only to help disambiguate an overloaded word. It's used for both "this model includes something in its representation" as well as "this model is currently executing".
  - quantadev 2y ago
    I just don't think Qualia emerges from computations. I think it's a wave phenomena, because all the neuroscience evidence indicates that. There's nothing magical about EM waves. Waves are a well understood physics with well understood mathematics governing their behaviors. People often just hear the phrase "brain waves" and immediately think of "woo woo spirituality" because all the spiritual crack pots are constantly talking about waves without even having a physics background.
    - godelski 2y ago
      What you keep describing is computation. Or as best as I can tell because "brain waves" and "em waves" aren't that detailed of descriptions. Luckily computation is just as vague
      - quantadev 2y ago
        I'm actually leaning towards a postulate that Schrodinger Waves are the core of the dynamic we call qualia (which is quite different from EM field itself), but at some point it has to interact with EMF in order to be able to effect motor neurons and cause actions.
        godelski 2y ago
        As a physicist, I've NEVER heard anyone say "Schrodinger Waves." Surely you mean "probability waves". How about picking up a physics textbook? The status quo for Quantum is Griffith's Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. Might I also suggest his E&M book (again, a standard). If you're half as passionate as you portray, I'd also pick up Jackson. That's the standard graduate level E&M book (but a warning on this: to get through Chapter 1 you're going to need to be intimately familiar with PDEs and Green's Function. To get further, I sure hope you like Bessel functions). Take your passion and use it to drive you to prove. Don't just conjecture and don't try to derive things from first principles. You will get it wrong because you won't actually be working from first principles. Again, don't ignore humanity's greatest invention. It's so much easier to catch up than reinvent the wheel. Also, you should become familiar with Penrose. I'll leave it to you to figure out why.
        quantadev 2y ago
        Stuart Hameroff's work in microtubules I think might be the one doing the closest work do discovering Quantum Effects in consciousness, and I tweet with him a lot on twitter. He hasn't yet been convinced that brains are entangled with PAST copies of themselves which is a core precept of my theory. The other person getting close to discovering the truth of my theory is Leroy Cronin, who has come up with `Assembly Theory` which is very reminiscent of my theory, but lacks the aspect of entangled negentropic structures being able to self-resonate. And also Michael Levin's work showing how he can get worms to have two heads even with the same exact DNA of the single headed ones (just as one example), is something I can derive directly from my theory. Since you're obsessed with my credentials: BS in Mech. Eng., been studying QM for decades, a software developer by profession since 1991, but thanks for the book recommendations, and most especially the genuine politeness.
godelski 2y ago
> because they have no state that represents anything. Are you sure about that? Both have lots of representation to them. Rocks have their atomic structures and you can easily view this as code. You can also view lightning as a representative of the intersection of cloud and ground states. The point I'm making is that representation is not enough. Storage (or memory) is not enough even recall is not enough. If it is, then any mechanical process is. Because you can build computation machines out of nearly anything. You can build memory out of almost anything. And the hello world python program I wrote has both! You can argue scale, but we see animals with much smaller scale than these ML models perform unambiguous reasoning tasks and critical thinking. You can then argue architecture and data, but then that's not just scale. The problem with all these people making claims is that they don't consider base assumptions and they don't follow the consequences of the model (your mental model of what is consciousness) is and must mean! So many people argue that they are working from "first principles" but I don't see anyone writing down their fucking axioms. Of course you should try to prove what you want, but not at the cost of not being wrong. Doing so will prevent you from achieving what you want. I'm just so tired of people shooting themselves in the foot and calling it medicine. We need to stop with all the bullshit because I actually want to build AGI
- famouswaffles 2y ago
  >Are you sure about that? Both have lots of representation to them. Rocks have their atomic structures and you can easily view this as code. You can also view lightning as a representative of the intersection of cloud and ground states. Sure then following OP's model outlined here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41427796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41427796, rocks are simply conscious of the passage of time. Perhaps it can be said that is the one thing every matter in the universe is conscious of. >The point I'm making is that representation is not enough. Storage (or memory) is not enough even recall is not enough. You don't know what is or isn't enough. And by the way, what 99% of people think of a concept they can scarcely define, test for or prove doesn't mean shit. We are regularly wrong about concepts with much stronger standings. Humans don't have any special insight to consciousness. We can't even make decisions without unknowingly altering our preferences and fabricating reasons in the process. What makes the conscious mind tick was clearly lost along the way. >We need to stop with all the bullshit because I actually want to build AGI No, you want to build the idea of AGI that exists in your mind. Clearly not Artificial General Intelligence seeing as what exists today checks all those boxes.

quantadev 2y ago

Unconscious brains appear to be functioning normally as far as all of science can tell, except for one big difference: Brain Wave frequencies. Only the lower frequencies exist. Higher frequencies are scientifically proven to be required for consciousness. You can call that a meaningless correlation that happens to be totally inconsequential, but most neuroscientists strongly disagree with that. EDIT: I mean neuroscientists know brain frequency is more than an accidental correlation with consciousness.

gaganyaan 2y ago
TBH, I don't really know what you're driving at with brain waves. They're not magic. I think you're trying to use "consciousness" to mean "high level brain activity", as opposed to something like the lizard brain? To which I say that you're making a distinction that isn't there. Your lizard brain is perfectly conscious of many things. It's just conscious of fewer things than your prefrontal cortex. I mention "unconscious" only to help disambiguate an overloaded word. It's used for both "this model includes something in its representation" as well as "this model is currently executing".
- quantadev 2y ago
  I just don't think Qualia emerges from computations. I think it's a wave phenomena, because all the neuroscience evidence indicates that. There's nothing magical about EM waves. Waves are a well understood physics with well understood mathematics governing their behaviors. People often just hear the phrase "brain waves" and immediately think of "woo woo spirituality" because all the spiritual crack pots are constantly talking about waves without even having a physics background.
  - godelski 2y ago
    What you keep describing is computation. Or as best as I can tell because "brain waves" and "em waves" aren't that detailed of descriptions. Luckily computation is just as vague
    - quantadev 2y ago
      I'm actually leaning towards a postulate that Schrodinger Waves are the core of the dynamic we call qualia (which is quite different from EM field itself), but at some point it has to interact with EMF in order to be able to effect motor neurons and cause actions.
      - godelski 2y ago
        As a physicist, I've NEVER heard anyone say "Schrodinger Waves." Surely you mean "probability waves". How about picking up a physics textbook? The status quo for Quantum is Griffith's Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. Might I also suggest his E&M book (again, a standard). If you're half as passionate as you portray, I'd also pick up Jackson. That's the standard graduate level E&M book (but a warning on this: to get through Chapter 1 you're going to need to be intimately familiar with PDEs and Green's Function. To get further, I sure hope you like Bessel functions). Take your passion and use it to drive you to prove. Don't just conjecture and don't try to derive things from first principles. You will get it wrong because you won't actually be working from first principles. Again, don't ignore humanity's greatest invention. It's so much easier to catch up than reinvent the wheel. Also, you should become familiar with Penrose. I'll leave it to you to figure out why.
        quantadev 2y ago
        Stuart Hameroff's work in microtubules I think might be the one doing the closest work do discovering Quantum Effects in consciousness, and I tweet with him a lot on twitter. He hasn't yet been convinced that brains are entangled with PAST copies of themselves which is a core precept of my theory. The other person getting close to discovering the truth of my theory is Leroy Cronin, who has come up with `Assembly Theory` which is very reminiscent of my theory, but lacks the aspect of entangled negentropic structures being able to self-resonate. And also Michael Levin's work showing how he can get worms to have two heads even with the same exact DNA of the single headed ones (just as one example), is something I can derive directly from my theory. Since you're obsessed with my credentials: BS in Mech. Eng., been studying QM for decades, a software developer by profession since 1991, but thanks for the book recommendations, and most especially the genuine politeness.

godelski 2y ago

> because they have no state that represents anything. Are you sure about that? Both have lots of representation to them. Rocks have their atomic structures and you can easily view this as code. You can also view lightning as a representative of the intersection of cloud and ground states. The point I'm making is that representation is not enough. Storage (or memory) is not enough even recall is not enough. If it is, then any mechanical process is. Because you can build computation machines out of nearly anything. You can build memory out of almost anything. And the hello world python program I wrote has both! You can argue scale, but we see animals with much smaller scale than these ML models perform unambiguous reasoning tasks and critical thinking. You can then argue architecture and data, but then that's not just scale. The problem with all these people making claims is that they don't consider base assumptions and they don't follow the consequences of the model (your mental model of what is consciousness) is and must mean! So many people argue that they are working from "first principles" but I don't see anyone writing down their fucking axioms. Of course you should try to prove what you want, but not at the cost of not being wrong. Doing so will prevent you from achieving what you want. I'm just so tired of people shooting themselves in the foot and calling it medicine. We need to stop with all the bullshit because I actually want to build AGI

famouswaffles 2y ago
>Are you sure about that? Both have lots of representation to them. Rocks have their atomic structures and you can easily view this as code. You can also view lightning as a representative of the intersection of cloud and ground states. Sure then following OP's model outlined here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41427796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41427796, rocks are simply conscious of the passage of time. Perhaps it can be said that is the one thing every matter in the universe is conscious of. >The point I'm making is that representation is not enough. Storage (or memory) is not enough even recall is not enough. You don't know what is or isn't enough. And by the way, what 99% of people think of a concept they can scarcely define, test for or prove doesn't mean shit. We are regularly wrong about concepts with much stronger standings. Humans don't have any special insight to consciousness. We can't even make decisions without unknowingly altering our preferences and fabricating reasons in the process. What makes the conscious mind tick was clearly lost along the way. >We need to stop with all the bullshit because I actually want to build AGI No, you want to build the idea of AGI that exists in your mind. Clearly not Artificial General Intelligence seeing as what exists today checks all those boxes.