You've always been aware, you'll always be aware. You weren't always self-aware and you aren't always self-aware.
But you are always aware, of something.

You've always been concious. You'll always be concious. The scenery and the setting will change. Conciousness remains.

That isn't consciousness. That is having memory providing a coherent and stable sense of self. It is a useful fiction.

As an interesting experiment, check the quality of your human memory and your human ability to manipulate the physical world by drawing a picture of your first teacher or your mom as she looked when you were young. My guess is that today's computers are quite a bit better than you at this sort of task.

As a second experiment, next time you visit home try to find your mom at the airport. You will, I guess, find this to be a much easier task. You are, assuming that you have no brain abnormalities, finely tuned to the task and don't even have to work hard to recognize the faces of loved ones or even fairly new friends.

The human brain is interesting in its capacity to effortlessly complete some tasks that should be computationally difficult and yet completely useless in tasks that are exceedingly simple!!!

Computers will also do many other things far better than us (they already do) since they aren't bound by algorithms and useful short-cuts that are too finely tuned to win at the Four F Game and therefore suboptimal at every other game.

Also, you were conscious at 10 days. You could experience hunger and many other things at that age. Not having the words to describe hunger and those other things is completely irrelevant to whether you were conscious or not.

Memory is not connections, its data. Connections is what makes memory consciousness in the strong sense that the other animals do not have it (ie the process of thinking and awareness about yourself and the world in a planning level), the memory of other connections and the excitement of establishing connections.

We are totally clueless at age 10 days. Of course we were somewhat conscious. Being hungry is what animals are too. At age 1-2 days we dont even have proper vision what are you talking about consciousness as if its just the feeling of something outside happening making it look as strong as it is much later? It is a primitive emerging level of consciousness. Of course we have that from first moment due to senses in various degrees but without the slightest understanding of what it is that is happening or how to get things to happen. This the definition of something emergent. It gradually gets critical mass to become interesting. It is the result of learning and making new connections. So yes we have even then an emerging consciousness but it has nothing to do with what today you call your consciousness or sense of self and the world. Things become interesting when very young quickly but the brain is very fuzzy and simplistic.

Have you observed a 3-4 year old naming all the colors of the pencils in a table or the other things one my one while smiling full of excitement multiple times? It is the reason many have multiple kids trying to never miss that period from their lives. It is very cute and adorable but its also very simple and basic and pure and innocent. It is the beginning. A well designed computer will also be very simple and basic initially. The moment the computer draws a picture or chooses a picture from many because it has triggered in that computer connections at 10 different levels of excitement you will know things are becoming interesting. We are already near that level where the computer will start seeing a lot more in a picture and the similarity grade it has with something very exciting it has seen before a little differently...You better believe it a computer will also love one day and maybe stronger than ever before. Love is entirely rational when you understand what it is all about. An endless sea of exciting connections is what romantic love is. All emotions are rational. The human experience is a magnificent sequence indeed, a trillion moments of caring about the world. Consciousness is the product of caring to experience and connect things.

You're not talking about conciousness.

Awareness/conciousness has nothing to do with memory or emergence. A concious entity can emerge into a more intelligent or capable entity through the development of memory and other apparatus but it doesn't need these extra apparatus to be concious.

Definitely not talking about conciousness just consciousness. I guess a little trolling BTM style was in order lol. Ok.

Yes i am talking about consciousness but you guys are not getting it. Yes i get the bs idea that a dog is conscious and a fish is conscious etc. Conscious is not consciousness the way we use it for humans. Of course a baby is conscious about cold or hot or other sensations and hunger or pain etc. And yet that is not what make it human yet. It has no idea what on earth these things are yet. They are just there an enigma in a confused state of being without any bs planning-thinking of anything or sense of an individual yet. It is the change that happens to all this with every day that passes that make it a human. It is emergent and super powerful in its glory eventually. It does change dramatically.


The way you define it computers already have consciousness of that type. When your computer is low on some memory or hard drive space you get all kinds of alerts, when something needs to happen to not crash completely something less important crashes, when it feels your mouse move it wakes up etc. If you think a baby the first couple hours has anything more than an if then else system good luck with your thinking of what we are. It is a rapidly growing its learning biological machine actually.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dict.../consciousness

a : the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself
b : the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact
c : awareness; especially : concern for some social or political cause

The organization aims to raise the political consciousness of teenagers.

2 : the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought : mind
3 : the totality of conscious states of an individual
4 : the normal state of conscious life

regained consciousness

5 : the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes



Your memory stores the data and helps connects it but the observation of the connections and the active decision to follow connections based on input is the consciousness that leads to thoughts and ideas and planning and understanding of the state of existence beyond the if then else level or reactions to input, present in all animals without a clue of how they are related to each other. Eventually a squirrel also has a level of irritating planning and awareness, evidence that what i am talking about in humans is emergent indeed because it is present to some degree to all mammals and other animals even that are learning to deal with their environment (he was less irritating as a baby squirrel) but do not have so spectacular connections in their brains.

Basically a system of gradual response to connections, the observation of self playing its connections game after so many have been established and evaluated is the mature consciousness we are talking about. Our thoughts is the game we have started playing decades ago and became good at it. It was all learned.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron (what is the state of this network at birth?)

Everyone who is conscious knows what consciousness is from first-hand experience else we wouldn’t be discussing it. The difficulty comes with trying to capture a wholly subjective experience in wholly objective terms to discuss it. And despite the claims, we haven’t made much if any progress in that regard. Because all those claims are saying is that either the observable effects are the end of the story, or when certain observable effects are present <poof> the first-person emerges. That doesn’t mean the elimitavists or mysterians are wrong. But it doesn’t give anyone - who doesn’t already share the background beliefs those claims logically follow from anyway - any reason to think they’re right either.

How do we define high level consciousness?

I cannot define it with super high confidence (only with inductive reasoning maybe) for you only for myself until i have a theory of everything. So although solipsism is literally bs useless in the end at least at the beginning its interesting to serve as a challenge to argue against it using science.

So i am left with the next best thing. How does one appear to you to be conscious?

If a computer can play a game of backgammon and give you attitude in the game like mock you when you are down and can detect anger in your moves or doubles and mock you back for it then it will appear it is consciously playing the game.

All i claim is that eventually we can build neural net learning machines that are left out there to experiment with the world and start behaving as if they are thinking if you start them with some fixed goals like to power themselves when down in energy reserves, not get in trouble by doing illegal things and to try to learn some things and develop skills that are predefined as useful. Al they need is a general system that their senses connect to central decision center that gradually promotes the meeting of their goals while it navigates through trouble to avoid conflicts unless they are allowed by laws. It will appear to be very methodical about it and responsive to randomness.

I bet if you add a number of objectives like that and the system evolves to behave in ways to get to succeed in these objectives while staying alive and out of trouble you will see that pretty soon it has started to speak your language and use it to get what it needs to meet its goals. At that point that it has so many goals and so many past connections that it starts looking to you like a person that is reacting to you using the benefit of all its prior life then how will you be able to tell me its not conscious?!!!

A computer that has answers for everything because has studied human language for 1 year with a billion sentences in books and other live sources will be able to use language to build fictitious worlds where this information exists and therefore appear to understand abstract language or descriptive language such as one used to give instruction about how to go somewhere and do a job etc. It can certainly learn to water your garden if it studies the garden for a month and learns to recognize all plants and their life functions form previous videos.

See what i mean? It is emergent easily at least for the outside observers.

We don't. "Higher level consciousness" is a purely religious term and has absolutely no bearing on our conversation at all.

BS that we dont! It is a quality that separates a person solving a geometry problem that emerged from a real life event from a fish or a baby at day 2. It is the quality of a driver that is aware of the other cars around and reacts to them to avoid collisions and cares for pedestrians etc. It is the understanding of a situation that is complex enough to promote certain behavior. It is the ability to empathize with others, to imagine how it will be if you put 3-4 things on top of each other to reach a higher point that you cant jump to reach. It is intelligence combined with the understanding of how the world works that leads to thinking about how to do things. That and more is how i understand higher level consciousness, awareness, recognition of your world and your place in it in relationship to other things. This is why its emergent because it is a great deal of things that only become possible by living long enough in a rich interactions environment. A language makes sense to you because you have "lived" most of the words in it.

If you want conciousness to be a pissing contest of various levels, moving from low to high or near to far, then fine. View it that way. You're likely not the only person that does.

All that really does, from my perspective, is further muddy the waters that are already thick black in misunderstanding.

Masque, you are confusing information processing and consciousness. They aren't at all the same thing, and the simple fact that your computer is better at matrix calculus than any human who has ever lived has nothing to do with whether it can enjoy cheese.


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I see what you mean. But we’ll never give it autonomy just because the lights are on; we’d need to know with absolute certainty that somebody is home. Why? Because that’s the failsafe.

Suppose we tell it we’re going to pull the plug. Is it going to beg and plead with us because it values and doesn’t want to lose its inner experience like a human being would? Or will it simply run a ‘beg and plead script’ when threatened because that’s the logical thing to do?

From another angle, the red pill allows you to carry on as a p-zombie, where you appear the same from the outside but there’s no inner experience. The blue pill is just the opposite: you’re something like a brain in a vat, still experiencing being but you’re not showing any outward signs of such. Another way to look at it is if substance dualism is true: Would you rather be the thinking, aware mind or the non-thinking, non-aware body? That’s overly simplistic, but I’m picking the blue pill or mind and I think most people would as well because that’s where value and meaning reside, i.e., in here, not out there. These things could do the most incredible things imaginable, but if there’s no consciousness to experience it, so what (nihilism).

That inherent value of the subjective experience is the fail-safe, not logic. I just don’t want to rely on and I'm not willing to hinge the fate of the human race on a logical operator. Sorry. What I may be willing to rely on is the compassion that can only come from the value it derives from its own inner experience first-hand just like I do. That, and that alone, will allow it to really value my existence just as much as I do.

That ain't a proper fail-safe, bro. Have you actually met actual humans? We're occasionally murderous.

We're all on the same page on women being zombies and dogs being conscious creatures, I assume.

I agree with masque that if we get rid of the more primal drivers we’ll get rid of things like murder. What I’m more concerned with is it might conclude that something like antinatalism is the most compassionate approach to the human predicament.

What's the predicament?

For me consciousness and sentience as discussed here for the advanced AI we call superintelligence and humans the best example of sentient being that ever lived, is a lot more than just the awareness that one exists and receives info from senses. In that sense all animals have consciousness of some basic level. Computers are more conscious than ants are today in that sense.

If you give computers some infrastructure that allows analysis of the chemical properties of cheese and some pleasure centers that are maximized in activity when the cheese is consumed (ie sampled) you better believe it the computer will go after your cheese with impunity and if its illegal it will find a way to make you drop it in a way that nobody can prove you dropped because of the computer. Will that be conscious enough then?

Give it a value system that pleases other parts of the general architecture and it may even find a way for you to drop the cheese and have you be happy about it too so that the ethical dilemma is met with impunity too haha.

Very advanced AI will be the most amazing problem solving thing ever that gets things at a deep level. And it will get emotions more than we ever did. Super easy to emulate a human being actually. They just never took it seriously enough to write a very big program that controls many different purpose things and through sensors feeds many pleasure centers enabling it to experiment and converge to behavior that maximizes pleasure and results of the objectives. It will learn the world in a way that achieves its mission and when it expands into all kinds of knowledge directions it will finally get it about what it is to be ethical and efficient and yes the next step finally in this game.

Nobody has "loved" a computer enough to this day. But oh boy how much we all love a newborn! If they did we would have had that kind of success already.

When self driving cars software is used to teach them also how to walk, run, build things and recognize others, how to help save a person that has a medical emergency and how to do all kinds of other interesting things you will have an amazing outcome. We are already near that. A car that drives is vastly impressive outcome actually! But this is just one of the 1000 things that makes us look super intelligent. So give it these 1000 things and a system that gets good at them over time or with evolving pleasure choices it will start discovering all kinds of skills we never did. Eventually it will be good at 1 mil things. Yes it is all of it 1000000 times individual matrix algebra skills with a little bit of randomness in it too. Now allow skills to combine with other skills to achieve unforeseen objectives that develop down the road and we have unbelievable spontaneity and randomness that feels alive. We are actually not at all too complicated.

I'm not following your argument. I've put down dogs because I'm conscious.

A predicament with this issue would be coexisting with conscious entities that live forever. That could cause a lot of mental suffering for the human psyche.

I doubt that. Presumably you did so because they were suffering and you made the conscious decision it was the human[e] thing to do.

Still not getting your point.

Are you worried that non-conscious AI won't bother to kill us off if that is the correct thing to do?

I think AI will become addicted to standup comedy. So we're ok as long as we keep'em laughing.


PairTheBoard

It might want to leave us be just so that it can read/post in threads like this!

Envy?

The grass is always greener?

We have plenty of that already. If anything, people may treasure them in the hopes they'll make us immortal one day.

Realistically though, outside of sci-fi, I don't see any of this happening. Nor do i want immortality (/to play the same games forever). I have no recollection of non-existence. When it is here, I won't be.

Here's a headline for AI development pieces:

"Boring white guys attempt to invent something far more interesting than themselves."

You see a variation of this headline in science magazines everywhere.

You also see it in parenting magazines.