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A related question I like to consider from time to time: "Are corporations conscious?" They are composed of many individuals who we consider conscious and they

by hyperion2010 11y ago

A related question I like to consider from time to time: "Are corporations conscious?" They are composed of many individuals who we consider conscious and they gather a whole bunch of information on their internals. They even have entire departments of conscious beings devoted to communicating information to other conscious beings that often speak as if they were the corporation itself (sure, corps may have a strange habit of referring to themselves in the third person, but so do some people). How would we even measure this?

MichaelGG 11y ago
Strike the word conscious and try to rephrase your question.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
thechao 11y ago
It's weird you're the first comment (from a brief scan) to mention "measurement". All of the obvious tests are fraught with ethical issues, but testing for behavioral responses seems pretty easy, I think. For instance, consider this thought experiment: set up a rogue, landed, state; have that state attack the U.S. Can we predict a response? Surely! So, we know the U.S. responds to very simple "acute pain" stimuli. We know it responds to chronic pain stimuli: if a certain economic activity is no longer justified in a subregion (Detroit:cars), then that region atrophies. Really, I think the major issue is to determine how to talk to the U.S. What's the sovereign state equivalent of "how's it going?" It seems that the only obvious attributes of the state we to acquire resources---usually by cooperating in s semi-symbiotic fashion with similar states, and responding to basic pain-like stimuli. The U.S. seems to act more like a very simple worm, and less like a higher animal. Perhaps it has primitive organization? (I'm thinking of the larger jelly fish which, while massive, are cognitively simple.)
- hyperion2010 11y ago
  States are another fun one, thought rather terrifying to think that congress in some strange way might be equivalent to prefrontal cortex. One of the problems we face here are identifying the information channels that are actually important for driving behavior. In some cases hours and weeks of talks between high ranking officials in various foreign services do nothing compared to a 30 second conversation on a street corner.

MichaelGG 11y ago

Strike the word conscious and try to rephrase your question.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

thechao 11y ago

It's weird you're the first comment (from a brief scan) to mention "measurement". All of the obvious tests are fraught with ethical issues, but testing for behavioral responses seems pretty easy, I think. For instance, consider this thought experiment: set up a rogue, landed, state; have that state attack the U.S. Can we predict a response? Surely! So, we know the U.S. responds to very simple "acute pain" stimuli. We know it responds to chronic pain stimuli: if a certain economic activity is no longer justified in a subregion (Detroit:cars), then that region atrophies. Really, I think the major issue is to determine how to talk to the U.S. What's the sovereign state equivalent of "how's it going?" It seems that the only obvious attributes of the state we to acquire resources---usually by cooperating in s semi-symbiotic fashion with similar states, and responding to basic pain-like stimuli. The U.S. seems to act more like a very simple worm, and less like a higher animal. Perhaps it has primitive organization? (I'm thinking of the larger jelly fish which, while massive, are cognitively simple.)

hyperion2010 11y ago
States are another fun one, thought rather terrifying to think that congress in some strange way might be equivalent to prefrontal cortex. One of the problems we face here are identifying the information channels that are actually important for driving behavior. In some cases hours and weeks of talks between high ranking officials in various foreign services do nothing compared to a 30 second conversation on a street corner.