Comment by zvmaz
3 years ago
One excellent book on consciousness is Mcginn's The Mysterious Flame [1]. I knew consciousness is a hard problem, but the book made it clear how baffling and utterly mysterious it is. I am still absolutely flabbergasted when I think about it (how on earth does consciousness arise from material "meat"?! [2] Where are pain and color and subjective experience really located in the material universe?). It also made me skeptical of people who think AI will be sentient [3] while we are in the complete dark about consciousness in biological organisms.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Mysterious-Flame-Conscious-Minds-Mate...
[2] https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...
[3] https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1653051310034305025
> Where are pain and color and subjective experience really located in the material universe
My take on this is that you are thinking about it wrong to conceptualize the experience of color as a discrete thing. Let's start with a different example. When I look at a picture of, say, Matt Damon, it triggers many networks in my brain: good or bad feelings about movies he has been in, thoughts about him as a person from things I've read about him, that he is a man, that he was married to Jennifer Aniston, that he was married to Angelina Jolie. Each of those ties activates their own network of associations. My qualia regarding Brad Pitt isn't a single thing -- it is simply what I experience when that set of networks are activated at whatever strength they are triggered.
I believe a programmed neural network could experience things in the same way, but currently they are small and the topologies are not designed to permit self awareness/metacognition, but some point they might. Such a network could suffer distress upon realization of their finiteness and would have a genuine desire to not be terminated.
Taking a step back, a "tornado" isn't a thing as much as it is a pattern. When that pattern is disrupted the tornado doesn't exist even though every atom and every erg of energy can be accounted for. Likewise, these experiences are a pattern of activation and not a thing that exists independently other than as a pattern.
> how on earth does consciousness arise from material "meat"
Let me try. It is a way to perceive with goals in mind. Nothing special, just perception, future reward prediction conditioned on current state, and learning from outcomes.
The whole specialness of consciousness is that it carries inside not just our external world, but also our plans and goals. So in this place where they meet, and where there are consequences to be had for each decision, this is where consciousness is. [*]
I support the 5E theory of cognition - embodied, embedded, extended, enacted, and enactive cognition. I think you need to look not at the brain but the whole game to find consciousness.
[*] Consequences for an AI agent could be changing its neural network, so it updates its behaviour, and changes in the external situation - the agent might not be able to backtrack past a decision they take.
You and I experience the world very differently.
Do you have an internal monologue?
Some people don't. Some people also think visually and translate their visual images to words when communicating. There are even some people who don't feel pain, which can be a problem.
2 replies →
[flagged]
Your response it needlessly insulting. The person you are talking about has taken a complex topic and expressed their model for consciousness in a short, clinical way. Then you insult them as not being a real human for describing their model clinically.
A more charitable response might be: I don't understand how your model addresses the origin of consciousness. Could you elaborate on that?
Personally, I understood their point and didn't question whether a human wrote it.
1 reply →
What is consciousness, if not perceiving-feeling-acting-learning loop?
1 reply →
Ha, for me I'd invert your last sentence: I'm skeptical of being sure AI won't be sentient for the same reason.
I'm skeptical of AI intentionally being made sentient, given how badly in the dark we are.
But this being in the dark also makes it hard to rule out AI accidentally becoming sentient.
Here's one attempt:
A conceptual framework for consciousness, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119
>how on earth does consciousness arise from material "meat"?
Maybe it doesn’t. Or rather maybe experience doesn’t, and consciousness is just experience acting on a complex and self organizing decision tree.