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Since the author established that the United States is a linguistic entity, then why doesn't they simply ask it. "Are you conscious?", "Do you have subjective e

by amasad 11y ago

Since the author established that the United States is a linguistic entity, then why doesn't they simply ask it. "Are you conscious?", "Do you have subjective experiences?". Surely whomever you direct the question at will laugh at you and no one would take you seriously. A more plausible way for the US to take this type of question seriously is if it was indeed asked by a planet-sized alien. Then I expect the authorities in the US to come up with some traditional explanation of countries and how the US is one. And would reject the fact that it's conscious. If an entity doesn't believe that it's conscious, then can it be conscious? I find it strange that the author didn't entertain such line of thinking since, to me, it makes the most sense. The first thing you would do when you want to know something about a language-capable entity is probably ask it. He mentions the Turing Test with regards to testing the consciousness of the supersquids, but why not the United States?

scrollaway 11y ago
> If an entity doesn't believe that it's conscious, then can it be conscious? On the flip side, if an entity asks itself that question, it probably is conscious.
- amasad 11y ago
  Sure. But when did the US ask itself that question? (assuming that -- in accordance with the paper -- when the US "speaks" it's the officials that speak for it)
asgard1024 11y ago
> Surely whomever you direct the question at will laugh at you and no one would take you seriously. But, then, do you consider that the entity may actually lie about it? It may be psychopathic enough to say, "I am not conscious, that's ridiculous", and yet be conscious. Another possibility is that it wouldn't understand words in the way we understand them. Asking a nation state "are you conscious?" may be like asking a child "do you have knee-jerk reflex?". How would you know without prior experience? However, asking in a different manner, say like in a referendum in Greece, you can get a very emphatic response which hints at consciousness at national level.
AgentME 11y ago
>If an entity doesn't believe that it's conscious, then can it be conscious? I'm sure there are brain-damaged people who have a single bit stuck flipped causing an aversion to talking about that concept and fully claim to not be conscious but are otherwise high-functioning and really do have the same sort of internal experiences as the rest of us. Classifying them as "not conscious" wouldn't be useful at anything besides making them stop arguing with you. At that point, "conscious" is just a word for people who meet some minimum intelligence and happen to also call themselves "conscious". We might as well use any other word. I don't think the word "conscious" has enough of an agreed-upon definition for this question to be even as productive as the classic question-that's-really-about-definitions "does a tree falling with no one around make a noise?". I think the question "is X conscious" is mixing many different questions together. Does the US have a subjective experience? (Who knows. I think we only assume other humans even do because we realize we're probably not the one special person to have one, but it's hard to generalize that solution to things very physically different than ourselves.) Does the US think like us? (It clearly takes a stupidly long time to come to any decisions and then changes its mind every 4 or so years on certain things.) Just for fun as a little tangent, here's an absurd example possibly closer to the US: imagine you have a person that acts just the same as any other, except somehow their neurons in addition to carrying simple signals each have human intelligence and awareness and rich inner lives that they mostly keep private, but when you ask the person if they're conscious, their neurons stir from their own thoughts at hearing a familiar word and break protocol by answering individually instead of following their proper neural behaviors to allow the person to answer the question themselves. (If that seems a little too disconnected from reality to even picture, then it might help to imagine a natural born human who undergoes a surgical process involving nano-machines that replaces their original neurons with the described self-aware neurons one at a time.)
- amasad 11y ago
  >imagine you have a person that acts just the same as any other, except somehow their neurons in addition to carrying simple signals each have human intelligence and awareness and rich inner lives that they mostly keep private, but when you ask the person if they're conscious, their neurons stir from their own thoughts at hearing a familiar word and break protocol by answering individually instead of following their proper neural behaviors to allow the person to answer the question themselves. This, actually my other objection to the paper. It seems like centrality is important for the concept of consciousness (I agree that it means a hundred different things but it's convineient to talk about as a single thing). Most people would identify as the person behind the eyes (or generally in the head). And the fact that all experiences of the body is experienced in that central place makes it quite hard to imagine that the individual parts can also experience things on their own. Let alone, be able to disagree with the central thing.

by amasad 11y ago

scrollaway 11y ago

> If an entity doesn't believe that it's conscious, then can it be conscious? On the flip side, if an entity asks itself that question, it probably is conscious.

amasad 11y ago
Sure. But when did the US ask itself that question? (assuming that -- in accordance with the paper -- when the US "speaks" it's the officials that speak for it)

asgard1024 11y ago

> Surely whomever you direct the question at will laugh at you and no one would take you seriously. But, then, do you consider that the entity may actually lie about it? It may be psychopathic enough to say, "I am not conscious, that's ridiculous", and yet be conscious. Another possibility is that it wouldn't understand words in the way we understand them. Asking a nation state "are you conscious?" may be like asking a child "do you have knee-jerk reflex?". How would you know without prior experience? However, asking in a different manner, say like in a referendum in Greece, you can get a very emphatic response which hints at consciousness at national level.

AgentME 11y ago

>If an entity doesn't believe that it's conscious, then can it be conscious? I'm sure there are brain-damaged people who have a single bit stuck flipped causing an aversion to talking about that concept and fully claim to not be conscious but are otherwise high-functioning and really do have the same sort of internal experiences as the rest of us. Classifying them as "not conscious" wouldn't be useful at anything besides making them stop arguing with you. At that point, "conscious" is just a word for people who meet some minimum intelligence and happen to also call themselves "conscious". We might as well use any other word. I don't think the word "conscious" has enough of an agreed-upon definition for this question to be even as productive as the classic question-that's-really-about-definitions "does a tree falling with no one around make a noise?". I think the question "is X conscious" is mixing many different questions together. Does the US have a subjective experience? (Who knows. I think we only assume other humans even do because we realize we're probably not the one special person to have one, but it's hard to generalize that solution to things very physically different than ourselves.) Does the US think like us? (It clearly takes a stupidly long time to come to any decisions and then changes its mind every 4 or so years on certain things.) Just for fun as a little tangent, here's an absurd example possibly closer to the US: imagine you have a person that acts just the same as any other, except somehow their neurons in addition to carrying simple signals each have human intelligence and awareness and rich inner lives that they mostly keep private, but when you ask the person if they're conscious, their neurons stir from their own thoughts at hearing a familiar word and break protocol by answering individually instead of following their proper neural behaviors to allow the person to answer the question themselves. (If that seems a little too disconnected from reality to even picture, then it might help to imagine a natural born human who undergoes a surgical process involving nano-machines that replaces their original neurons with the described self-aware neurons one at a time.)

amasad 11y ago
>imagine you have a person that acts just the same as any other, except somehow their neurons in addition to carrying simple signals each have human intelligence and awareness and rich inner lives that they mostly keep private, but when you ask the person if they're conscious, their neurons stir from their own thoughts at hearing a familiar word and break protocol by answering individually instead of following their proper neural behaviors to allow the person to answer the question themselves. This, actually my other objection to the paper. It seems like centrality is important for the concept of consciousness (I agree that it means a hundred different things but it's convineient to talk about as a single thing). Most people would identify as the person behind the eyes (or generally in the head). And the fact that all experiences of the body is experienced in that central place makes it quite hard to imagine that the individual parts can also experience things on their own. Let alone, be able to disagree with the central thing.