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> We cannot test for that which we cannot define. That's not the point. You know exactly how to define being conscious and aware- it's your subjective experien
by throw310822 17d ago
> We cannot test for that which we cannot define.
That's not the point. You know exactly how to define being conscious and aware- it's your subjective experiencing of the world and of your inner states. The problem is that being a subjective experiencing, there is no way to communicate it to the outside world.
- Loquebantur 17d agoThat's obviously incorrect, as humans routinely talk about their subjective experiences. Maybe that's not as common with HN folks, but most other humans do.
- pixl97 17d agoNo, humans output a stream of tokens that sound like what a being with subjective experiences would output. Both you and I make an assumption that this stream of words is at least somewhat representative of what the are experiencing and that the person is not a p-zombie. But you have zero proof that their words aren't a confabulation, you can only know than when you output a similar set of words you had a subjective mind state they represent.
- loopies 17d agoEven so you still cannot ever test for it. The very best you can do is define human consciousness as requiring the functions of a human brain, and try to figure out (decide/agree) the chances that something which is working loosely on the same principles is or isn't conscious. At the end of the day it will always be an agreement, never scientifically proven as fact.
- mitxela 17d agothrow310822 is actually a Markov chain that just happened to output those sentences. Markov chains are definitely not conscious.