Quote:
Originally Posted by masque de Z
Consciousness is the observation of very fast connections that have become so familiar they appear to be super safe and taken for granted as part of who we are. We are simply observing ourselves making connections and triggering connections that trigger other connections. Boiling water. How many connections in it (add all your past experiences with boiling water and you have so much to work with in terms of adapting to the info from senses that water somewhere is boiling). We have become very good at this processing connections game by relentless training since age 2-3 that we realized the "i" part in all this.
We observe the brain "deciding" what to do based on the connections of what has worked before for some task. Enhancement of certain priorities guide choices. Cause and effect connections. You want something to happen do this etc. Next what do you want. All this happens very fast. You want food, you follow the steps to get there and the observation of the thinking and cooking makes you a conscious cooker.
Consciousness is emergent. We are not conscious like that at age 10 days. But we have started to recognize the concept of mother and the others.
Endless stream of experiments that we shouldn't be too lazy to count but apparently we are if we think that consciousness is something so impossibly difficult. If every day you live you interact with 1 thing per second, you have had 1 bil interactions by age 30 something. Well of course 1 bil interactions with thousands of bytes per event in terms of senses information data influx, build a great sense of how it all works, a total feeling of control and familiarity and self. Just dont forget none of that were here at age 1 or even at age 5 in the scale they are today. We are learning ourselves and the world damn it! That is what is happening. Machines will do the same eventually if we understand a little better the mechanics of our brain functions to create an architecture that is similar and better for them. All they need is senses and endless trial and error experiments that establish connections based on reward, comfort and discomfort. They need arms and legs to experiment better. Create something that experiments with the world and makes connections to achieve predefined goals and see how fast it will start appearing very interesting, deliberate and yes conscious the way we perceive others as conscious.
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.