this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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This whole argument hinges on consciousness being easier to produce than to fake intelligence to humans.
Humans already anthropomorphise everything, so I'm leaning towards the latter being easier.
I'd take a step farther back and say the argument hinges on whether "consciousness" is even really a thing, or if we're "faking" it to each other and to ourselves as well. We still don't have a particularly good way of measuring human consciousness, let alone determining whether AIs have it too.
...or even if consciousness is an emergent property of interactions between certain arrangements of matter.
It's still a mystery which I don't think can be reduced to weighted values of a network.
This is a really interesting train of thought!
I don’t mean to belittle the actual, real questions here, but I can’t shake the hilarious image of 2 dudes sitting around in a basement, stoned out of their minds getting “deep.”
Now I get it. That dude is explaining the Boltzmann brain.
Brah, if an AI was conscious, how would it know we are sentient?! Checkmate LLMs.
Bold of you to assume any philosophical debate doesn't boil down to just that.
Or maybe our current understanding of conscious and intelligence is wrong and they are not related to each other. A non conscious thing can perform advanced logic like the Geometrical patterns found within the overlapping orbits of planets, the Fibonacci being found about everywhere. We also have yet to proof that individual strands of grass or rocks aren't fully consciousness. There is so much we don't know for certain its perplexing how we believe we can just assume.
Standard descent into semantics incoming...
We define concepts like consciousness and intelligence. They may be related or may not depending on your definitions, but the whole premise here is about experience regardless of the terms we use.
I wouldn't say Fibonacci being found everywhere is in any way related to either and is certainly not an expression of logic.
I suspect it's something like the simplest method nature has of controlling growth. Much like how hexagons are the sturdiest shape, so appear in nature a lot.
Grass/rocks being conscious is really out there! If that hypothesis was remotely feasible we couldn't talk about things being either consciousness or not, it would be a sliding scale with rocks way below grass. And it would be really stretching most people's definition of consciousness.
I understand what you're saying but i disagree that there is any proper defining of the concept. The few scientist that attempt to study it can't even agree on what it even is.
I agree that my example where far out, they are supposed to be to represent ideas outside the conventional box. I don't literally believe grass is conscious. I recognize that if i/we don't know, then i/we don't know. In the face of something we don't know the nature off, the requirements for, the purpose it serves i prefer to remain open to every option.
I know Wikipedia isn't a scientific research paper but i expect that if there really is a agreed upon scientific answer it wouldn't be like it currently is:
"Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of internal and external existence. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debate by philosophers, theologians, and all of science. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of mind. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination and volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, or self-awareness either continuously changing or not. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked."
I feel like an AI right now having predicted the descent into semantics.
I fear it was inevitable, with no framework where we can agree upon semantics are all there is.
I truly wish we humanity had more knowledge to have a more proper discussion but currently it seems unproductive, especially in the context of a faceless online forum debate between 2 strangers.
Thank you for your time, and input on this matter.