On Sat, May 18, 2019 at 11:08 PM 'Brent Meeker' < [email protected]> wrote:
>> I am well aware that there are huge sections of DNA that just repeat the >> same thing for hundreds or even thousands of times, but I don't see the >> relevance because if they just repeat the same short phrase over and over >> then they contain no information. And there are other DNA sections that >> once were genes but over the eons have been turned off (such as genes in >> birds that once produced teeth in their ancestors). These sections don't do >> anything anymore and the way we know they no longer do anything is that the >> variation from individual to individual in those sections is much much >> greater than the variation in the parts that still have a purpose. Because >> they do nothing Natural Selection can't edit out errors in DNA duplication >> so they accumulate from generation to generation. > > > *> Right. So if consciousness just supervenes on intelligent computation, > natural selection couldn't act on it* > Natural Selection couldn't act directly on consciousness but it could do so indirectly through intelligent behavior. > *and it could persis*t. > Yes, a mutated malfunctioning gene that prevented you from being intelligent would also prevent you from being conscious. But Natural Selection wouldn't care if a gene that did nothing but give you consciousness stopped working or not so the errors in it would keep increasing from generation to generation and degrading consciousness at the same time until there were so many errors the gene no longer worked at all and you have a intelligent zombie. And if that is the case then I must be astronomically lucky in having so few errors in my consciousness gene that it still works and it is extremely unlikely any of the other 7.6 billion people on the planet is as lucky as me. > > I don't think this is particularly likely. > Then you would have no alternative but to conclude it is not particularly likely Charles Darwin was right. > *> But I do think there may be different kinds of intelligent computation > and correspondingly different kinds of consciousness. * > Of course there are different types of intelligence, and if your consciousness was the same as mine then we'd be the same person. But the bottom line is you can have intelligent behavior without consciousness or you can't. If you *can* then you must take seriously the idea you are the only conscious being in the universe, if you *can not* then you must conclude that a intelligent machine is at least as conscious as you are and perhaps more so. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2jML-zDRPCsA4r5YzrPomY_Toi-7Jv%2BJYSCGDQsSHofw%40mail.gmail.com.
