Comment by madrox

I'll give my own interpretation, which is different from the parent though maybe we arrive at the same place.

Blindsight dismantles a lot of noble myths about what it means to be human and human exceptionalism. The things you read and see in all kinds of stories. It makes you appreciate how easy and unconscious it is to settle for comfortable lies over truth about how smart or great you are. I think this is what freaks a lot of people out about whether AI is conscious, actually.

I think the hope comes in if you embrace the implications for yourself, because to be otherwise is to be unconscious.

Hard to pin into words!

We're unconscious of how unconscious we are?, and it's good to… what's the term, suffer gladly and give gladly? To own one's unconsciousness and raise it, and expect and see others' unconscious going about major things in life - to see it coldly as well as warmly.

I find this is more accurate and safer than assuming consciousness in everyone, and it also reveals so clearly people who do cast that light; and see.

It's less desolate! I promise! Sounds like it's worse but it's not. That's the tricky-get-into-words part, you know?

I agree with you on that point. It seems to me that people who read Blindsight and get all existential are not thinking things through all the way.

Blindsight poses the question, in essence, "What if consciousness is a competitive disadvantage, in which case non-consciousness would be Better™?"

I can't make a conclusive case one way or the other w/r/t the premise—it may perhaps be the case that consciousness is a competitive disadvantage. I don't know how we could test that without something to compare ourselves against (which is why the book resorts to introducing vampires and aliens—this question is untestable otherwise). But the conclusion, that non-consciousness is somehow "Better™," falls absolutely flat for me. "Better™" is a value judgement. Values and Judgements are both features of consciousness. Without consciousness, there is no such thing as "better" or "worse", there is only "is" and "is not."

So: speaking as a conscious being (you'll have to take my word for that), I'm quite comfortable saying that I like being conscious. And with unconscious living organisms—like, I don't know, coral reefs or whatever?—it's not so much that they like being unconscious as that they don't "like" anything at all.

So I think I'm quite comfortable continuing on being a "competitively disadvantaged" thing (supposing that's even the case, which it just as plausibly is not), that is at least able to conceive of questions like this one and make value assessments of its own, rather than despair over the alleged competitive disadvantage inherent in the fact that I experience myself and the world.

A computer can beat me at chess, sure, but it cannot care that it has done so.

It wasn't a competition though just mutual incompatibility: aliens so alien that we can barely comprehend their motives and are implicitly regarded as hostile by our manner of existence.

I'd say the case it was making has only become more relevant with the chatbot age.

I have no conscious awareness of what I wrote, I just tried to be Peter Wattsy, haha

(kidding!

It's oversold, or beautiful artistic expression of something. Bleak, yes; Stark; Also beautiful.

The thing it expresses is… a thing. We're not at all as conscious as… we think?, as we portray ourselves?, to others and/or ourselves? And it's magical to view people as… partially unconscious to a significant degree while also loving them and with respect.)