> From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > --- On Sat, 5/31/08, John G. Rose <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > People believe they are conscious. Why? Because they are. > > No, because people that didn't believe it did not pass on their genes. >
Also people that didn't believe that they have legs didn't pass on their genes. But they did have legs. Some younger people believe that they can't die, even though they can. That believe sometimes helps pass on the genes. > > Is there more than just a belief that we are conscious? Sure some > > rare individuals can block pain. But when they do so they are actually > > blocking the signals somehow or preventing their registration. There > > is a real pain that is blocked. It's real. > > The question is how do you distinguish between an agent that actually > feels pain and an agent that simply changes its behavior to avoid pain > (for example, crying "don't hurt me!") but doesn't really "feel" it? It > is easy to write a program of the latter type, for example > http://www.mattmahoney.net/autobliss.txt > Would you claim this program is conscious? If not, how is it > fundamentally different from an animal or human that learns to avoid > pain? > If something is pretending, at first it may dupe others into thinking that it is conscious. But as time goes on and other conscious agents detect and suspect an imposter their behavior will change towards it and the resultant behavior of the imposter may further reinforce their beliefs. Now if agents evolve to where they actually don't feel pain but still all complain about it, they all are doing that, thus that behavior is part of their individual expressions widely accepted in the group. If one of those agents actually WAS feeling pain the others might render it an imposter. Does this say anything valuable? I don't know... John ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
