On Monday, March 08, 2021, at 9:17 PM, Nanograte Knowledge Technologies wrote: > I connect my brain to its brain with a "wire" of variable bandwidth > and see what it feels like to sense myself fusing with it > > Then I carry out the same experiment with another human, a dog, a > mushroom, a toaster, a computer running Microsoft Access, and Donald > Trump... and compare...
Ben, I like it. The idea may be a little half-baked (since the brain doesn't have a built-in IO interface for direct transmission of thoughts, etc., how exactly would we connect to all these things?) but it's a more reasonable proposal for trying to investigate consciousness than most of the ones I've heard. Matt seems to think he knows a lot about how this would feel. He thinks that if he connected his brain and a dog's, he would never be able to achieve anything more than getting the dog's senses added to his ... rather than perceiving the dog's complex of sensations, thoughts, and emotions as "the other," an alien and complete presence in his mind. But he quite obviously doesn't know anything, because he hasn't done the experiment. The one caveat I can think of is ... if you feel another entity's thoughts, emotions, or presence, that's still *your* feeling. Conclusively determining that another system has *its own* feelings may be forever out of reach. Nonetheless, "If I link up to a dog's brain, I get a whole complex of never-before-seen feelings, I think I sense a presence ... and if I link up to the chemical signaling processes in a mushroom, I don't," or vice versa, could be a highly interesting result. I maintain that denying the reality of one's *own* consciousness is irrational, insane. Matt says in the same breath that consciousness is "what thinking feels like" and that it is an illusion ... but that's a contradiction. A feeling is undeniably real. A feeling cannot be an illusion. Rather, an illusion takes place when someone infers the incorrect cause for a feeling. I'm more certain of my own consciousness than I am of the existence of this desk in front of me. I experience my consciousness directly, but I have to infer the existence of the desk from the sensations of seeing and touching it. The sensations are certainly real, but the desk (in theory) might not be. ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Ta5ed5d0d0e4de96d-Ma25c33e428cbb799353f2028 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
