Russell, Thanks for your answers. I think my description and understanding of the Doomsday argument was overly simplified, but there is a very similar anthropic reasoning problem I heard before. The situation is something like this:
There are 5,000 females and 5 males that are created as part of some experiment. They are the only humans that exist at the time. 200 years later after all the humans in the study have died the alien experimenter creates 5 females and 5,000 males. Now if you are in this experiment and find yourself to be male, you could reasonably guess that you are part of the second batch of humans, since 99.9% of males in the experiments belong to the second batch. The original 5 males short of being given extra information will also conclude they are part of the second group. What would they conclude, however, if they were told they are part of the first batch? Personally I would conclude, "Well it had to be someone, there was after all, an original group. I just happen to be one of those few rare ones." ASSA looks for explanations elsewhere, such as concluding that perhaps the aliens likely never go through with the second half of the experiment in the future, or maybe the aliens mess up the creation of the humans and create non-conscious zombie males. The danger I see in using SSAs to determine what animals can be conscious is that inevitably there are human generated OMs, regardless of there being ant OMs or not. We may be extremely rare in the set of all OMs, but I don't see the probability that my OM is experienced as some value between 0 and 1, I see it as 1. This I think is the root of the difference in conclusions between you and I. Regarding the mirror test, I see two problems with it. The first is that there is some bias to it, it is biased towards animals that are visually orientated. Dogs for example, do not pass. However can a dog recognize its own scent? I believe they can, they can follow their own tracks. If Dogs ruled the world and subjected humans to a self-smell test would humans be capable of passing? Would it be valid for the dogs to conclude humans weren't conscious because they couldn't identify themselves by their scent? My second objection is that I don't think self-awareness is a necessary requirement for consciousness. I equate awareness with consciousness. One could be aware of many things without being aware of the self. The phenomenon of "ego death" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death is a case when humans can lose the sense of self, yet they don't lose consciousness in the process. I think there is some process in the brain that generates the sensation of the self being a distinct actor within an environment but I think this is just a tool that evolution developed. My view on consciousness is similar to Chalmer's, in that perhaps all informational processes might be conscious in some manner: http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/254?in=00:22:04&out=00:30:01 Chalmers also mentions the more conservative view that only certain types of informational processes are conscious. Perhaps some type of self-reference is required, but I am not yet convinced. I have Godel, Escher, Bach on my reading queue and may change my opinion after reading it, as my understanding of it is that it says consciousness is the result of "strange loops". Jason On Mar 22, 1:15 am, Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 02:24:40AM -0700, Jason wrote: > > > Hello Russell, > > > Congratulations on your latest publication. > > > Today on my way home I begin to question whether or not I still > > believe self-sampling assumptions are valid tools for drawing > > conclusions. I decided that though self-sampling assumptions may lead > > to conclusions that are true for the greatest number of observers, > > correct conclusions are entirely coincidental. In the same way > > correlation is no indication of causation, likelihood of truth for the > > majority of observers is not caused by something being true for one's > > self. > > > By definition every OM with a non-zero measure has a 100% guaranteed > > chance of being experienced, even if its measure is 10^(-20) that of > > another more prolific OM. The only thing that can be reasoned from > > current experience is that one's current OM has a non-zero measure. > > Attempting to use properties of one's vantage point to draw > > conclusions about other OMs can be disastrously wrong, for example > > take the Doomsday Argument: > > > The doomsday argument allows the largest number of observers to > > correctly predict the doom of their civilization, but it achieves this > > by having every observer who has ever lived believe that doom is just > > around the corner. > > This is not true. See the appendix "How soon until doom" in my book > Theory of Nothing. For most of humanity's history, doom is a long way off. > > > If a nuclear holocaust occurs tomorrow, the 6.66 > > billion alive today would have been correct, but the people alive > > today represent just 10% of the total number of humans who have ever > > lived, leading 90% to be wrong. > > The DA just predicts that population will drop in the near future - > perhaps catastrophically, but more gentle drops are also compatible > with it. > > > The main objection I have to anthropic reasoning in this case, is that > > it leads to the conclusion that life forms which are reactive to their > > environments and capable of thought / decision making are > > philosophical zombies. Though it is easier to imagine that ants are > > not conscious, what about other animals far more numerous than > > humans? Are chickens, mice, and sheep zombies? > > I don't think these animals are that much more numerous than humans, > but it is also true that it is far from clear these animals are > conscious either. None of the species you mention pass the mirror test > of self-awareness. > > > I also do not see how the leap from "Russell Standish" is conscious, > > to "All other humans are conscious" can be made yet stop short of > > "Bonobos are conscious", "Chimps are conscious", and perhaps even > > I don't. I rather suspect these animals are conscious. > > > lemurs and squirrels are conscious. > > These ones possibly aren't. There is a test called the Gallup mirror > test, which is strongly indicative of self-awareness. Most apes pass > this test, bottlenose dolphins and also elephants have found to pass > the test. Virtually no other species does, although it wouldn't > suprise me if some other species were found to pass it. It may also be > that certain species will pass a suitably modified version of the > test, that do not pass the current version of it. > > > How does the ability to produce > > viable offspring with another relate to whether or not that other can > > be conscious? Drawing the line between species seems arbitrary to me, > > especially considering how small of steps evolution takes. If you > > conclude other humans are conscious because we have similar brains, > > could you not likewise conclude all mammals are conscious because > > mammals too have similar brains and share a common ancestor? > > Human brains are far more similar to each other than to other > mammalian brains. In the absence of an adequate theory of > consciousness, we can't really draw the line anywhere, however there are > bound to be some species that are conscious, and others that aren't, > just as there are some species pass the mirror self-awareness test and others > that don't. > > > Where in > > the evolutionary tree did the first human ancestor's consciousness > > appear? The term consciousness was not clearly defined in your paper, > > do you consider it to be a binary property, or something that can have > > varying levels of sophistication? > > It is defined operationally as being a member of the reference class > used in anthropic reasoning. It is therefore a binary property (you > are either in the reference class, or you aren't). > > Consciousness is sometimes used to refer to something that is > graduated: ie the term "level of consciousness" used in > anaethsiology. This is not how I would use the term, and would prefer > to use "awareness" or "alertness" to describe the differing states > before and after having a strong cup of coffee (for instance). > > > I look forward to your response, > > > Jason > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Mathematics > UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
