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0 pointsWhyOhWhyQ4mo ago0 comments

I think the role computation / the brain plays is to create a model (which may require a lot of decoding) of the outside world as a physical part of us. Due to some as yet undiscovered physical mechanism, the decoding process in the format the brain uses results in consciousness. Yes this is vague, but this is the only non-absurd position I am aware of, and I will adapt it as soon as a better one is presented.

>>>"Not that it really changes anything if the particular way quarks interact did affect the brain in a way that couldn't be explained through the simplified view of a proton. It adds a few more particles to consider and the weirdness of quantum chromodynamics, but nothing there explains consciousness either.

>>>So how do you go from particles pushing and pulling on each other to consciousness? It seems to me no matter how you arrange a bunch of particles, there is never any reason to assume that arrangement is conscious. It's just a bunch of points moving according to a few simple rules."

The pushing and pulling is another computational process. Consciousness must be some irreducible component of matter or of certain arrangements of matter, so that this matter "just is conscious". The pulling / pushing done in the correct way imposes a complex experience on that matter. I would love to tell you what it is, but my reasoning is a process of elimination, where we eliminate the popular idea that consciousness = computation now when it is very important to humanity to do so.

>>>"equally absurd".

I don't think it is, and I am very passionate about this. If computation is the only explainer of consciousness, then every large enough random collection of bits can be interpreted as representing some conscious process given a complicated enough interpretation rule set. E.g. take an exabyte of random data and extract from it a 1 mb ChatGPT conversation by deciding to include this bit and to exclude that bit. Who's to say that my rule for extracting the correct bits isn't a valid computational process? If I just write a random bit string over an exabyte memory bank over and over, and if some way of interpreting part of it at this frame, and some way of interpreting it in the next frame etc.. etc.. results in an intelligent conversation, was a conscious being simulated? Let's make it more absurd. Take a computation which expresses consciousness. Print out the conversation in bit form onto a piece of paper. Cut up and rearrange the paper into a sequence first of all the 0's and then all the 1's. Then show the result to your friend and say this can be interpreted at a conscious process, therefore is conscious. This is ridiculous. Why is a blank sheet of paper not a conscious process if some guy says by looking at the paper he imagines 50 0's in a row and 100 1's in a row, and those can be rearranged to express a thought in some manner?

>>>"how would you even go about recognizing which artificial thinking machines have the required physical process for consciousness?"

We would not be able to tell until we actually learn more physics, which is the deepest reason I think it is unethical to build them at all. My position on the physical nature of consciousness makes me believe that everything with a neuron-based brain probably has consciousness. And so if we are hell-bent on making something with consciousness, we could do it by growing a brain in a lab. That's not to say I believe only a brain can have consciousness, it's just that it is the only kind I will have confidence in for the time being. The reason I doubt our computer hardware has consciousness is that computation is abundant in the universe (basically anything can be interpreted as computation), and so I doubt that just any arbitrary hardware we've created is likely to interact the computation with the special sauce in the right way.

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nearbuy4mo ago

As I understand it, you don't want to posit the existence of a new particle, or new property of particles (e.g. particles have mass, charge, and some consciousness property), or a new field or anything outside of the standard model of physics. In other words, there is nothing special about the particles themselves that causes consciousness; they're just bits of matter that can push and pull on each other. And when you arrange bits of matter that push and pull on each other in just the right way, it somehow creates consciousness.

If that's all there is, it seems likely you could create consciousness out of marbles connected by springs. If protons and electrons don't have any special consciousness-related property other than pushing and pulling, we'd just have to recreate the arrangement of matter and the forces to get consciousness.

There is no way to make the leap from particles and forces to consciousness that seems intuitively right. No arrangement of dumb matter, whether marbles or protons, should be conscious.

On a somewhat related note: forces are rules that dictate how things move. At some level, position and movement is the only thing we can measure. When we measure something like voltage or charge, our measurement techniques actually rely on observing the movement of particles.

Consciousness doesn't seem like it's just movement. But if there were some other property of our universe that didn't cause movement, we would have no way to measure it. It would have no observable effect on matter. Which would make epiphenomenal consciousness seemingly impossible to prove or disprove even if it were some basic property of physics.

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