On Sun, 20 Jun 2021 at 05:48, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 11:36 AM Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> I'm enormously impressed with Deepmind and I'm an optimist regarding >>> AI, but I'm not quite that optimistic. >>> >> >> *>Are you familiar with their Agent 57? -- a single algorithm that >> mastered all 57 Atari games at a super human level, with no outside >> direction, no specification of the rules, and whose only input was the "TV >> screen" of the game.* >> > > As I've said, that is very impressive, but even more impressive would be > winning a Nobel prize, or even just being able to diagnose that the problem > with your old car is a broken fan belt, and be able to remove the bad > belt and install a good one, but we're not quite there yet. > > *> Also, because of chaos, predicting the future to any degree of accuracy >> requires exponentially more information about the system for each finite >> amount of additional time to simulate, and this does not even factor in >> quantum uncertainty,* >> > > And yet many times humans can make predictions that turn out to be better > than random guessing, and a computer should be able to do at least as good, > and I'm certain they will eventually. > > > Being unable to predict the future isn't a good definition of the >> singularity, because we already can't. >> > > Not true, often we can make very good predictions, but that will be > impossible during the singularity > > > *We are getting very close to that point. * >> > > Maybe, but even if the singularity won't happen for 1000 years 999 years > from now it will still seem like a long way off because more progress will > be made in that last year than the previous 999 combined. It's in the > nature of exponential growth and that's why predictions are virtually > impossible during that time, the tiniest uncertainty in initial condition > gets magnified into a huge difference in final outcome. > > *> There may be valid logical arguments that disprove the consistency of >> zombies. For example, can something "know without knowing?" It seems not.* >> > > Even if that's true I don't see how that would help me figure out if > you're a zombie or not. > > >> > So how does a zombie "know" where to place it's hand to catch a ball, >> if it doesn't "knowing" what it sees? >> > > If catching a ball is your criteria for consciousness then computers are > already > conscious, and you don't even need a supercomputer, you can make one in > your own home for a few hundred dollars and some spare parts. Well maybe > so, I always maintained that consciousness is easy but intelligence is > hard. > > Moving hoop won't let you miss > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myO8fxhDRW0> > > *> For example, wee could rule out many theories and narrow down on those >> that accept "organizational invariance" as Chalmers defines it. This is the >> principle that if one entity is consciousness, and another entity is >> organizationally and functionally equivalent, preserving all the parts and >> relationships among its parts, then that second entity must be equivalently >> conscious to the first.* >> > > Personally I think that principle sounds pretty reasonable, but I can't > prove it's true and never will be able to. > Chalmers presents a proof of this in the form of a reductio ad absurdum. >> I know I can suffer, can you? >> >> >> *>I can tell you that I can.* >> > > So now I know you could generate the ASCII sequence "*I can tell you that > I can*", but that doesn't answer my question, can you suffer? I don't > even know if you and I mean the same thing by the word "suffer". > > >> *> You could verify via functional brain scans that I wasn't >> preprogrammed like an Eliza bot to say I can. You could trace the neural >> firings in my brain to uncover the origin of my belief that I can suffer, >> and I could do the same for you.* >> > > No I cannot. Theoretically I could trace the neural firings in your brain > and figure out how they stimulated the muscles in your hand to type out "*I > can tell you that I can*" but that's all I can do. I can't see suffering > or unhappiness on an MRI scan, although I may be able to trace the nerve > impulses that stimulate your tear glands to become more active. > > *> Could a zombie write a book like Chalmers's "The Consciousness Mind"?* >> > > I don't think so because it takes intelligence to write a book and my > axiom is that consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of intelligence. I > can give reasons why I think the axiom is reasonable and probably true > but it falls short of a proof, that's why it's an axiom. > > >> >> *> Some have proposed writing philosophical texts on the philosophy of >> mind as a kind of super-Turing test for establishing consciousness.* >> > > I think you could do much better than that because it only takes a minimal > amount of intelligence to dream up a new consciousness theory, they're a > dime a dozen, any one of them is as good, or as bad, as another. Good > intelligence theories on the other hand are hard as hell to come up with > but if you do find one you're likely to become the world's first > trillionaire. > > *Wouldn't you prefer the anesthetic that knocks you out vs. the one that >> only blocks memory formation? Wouldn't a theory of consciousness be >> valuable here to establish which is which?* >> > > Such a theory would be utterly useless because there would be no way to > tell if it was correct. If one consciousness theory says you were conscious > and a rival theory says you were not there is no way to tell which one was > right. > > *> You appear to operate according to a "mysterian" view of consciousness, >> which is that we cannot ever know. * >> > > There is no mystery, I just operate in the certainty that there are only 2 > possibilities, a chain of "why" questions either goes on for infinity or > the chain terminates in a brute fact. In this case I think termination is > more likely, so I think it's a brute fact consciousness is the way data > feels when it is being processed. > > Of my own free will, I consciously decide to go to a restaurant. > *Why? * > Because I want to. > *Why ? * > Because I want to eat. > *Why?* > Because I'm hungry? > *Why ?* > Because lack of food triggered nerve impulses in my stomach , my brain > interpreted > these signals as pain, I can only stand so much before I try to > stop it. > *Why?* > Because I don't like pain. > *Why? * > Because that's the way my brain is constructed. > *Why?* > Because my body and the hardware of my brain were made from the > information in my genetic code (lets see, 6 billion base pairs 2 bits > per base pair > 8 bits per byte that comes out to about 1.5 gig, ) the programming of my > brain came from the environment, add a little quantum randomness perhaps > and of my own free will I consciously decide to go to a restaurant. > > *> You could have been a mysterian about how life reproduces itself or why >> the stars shine, until a few hundred years ago, but you would have been >> proven wrong. Why do you think these questions below are intractable?* >> > > Because there are objective experiments you can perform and things you > can observe that will give you information on how organisms reproduce > themselves and how stars shine, but there is nothing comparable with regard > to consciousness, there is no way to bridge the objective/subjective divide > without making use of unproven and unprovable assumptions or axioms. > That's why the field of consciousness research has not progressed one > nanometer in the last century, or even the last millennium. > > >>I have no proof and never will have any, however I must assume that the >>> above is true because I simply could not function if I really believed that >>> solipsism was correct and I was the only conscious being in the >>> universe. Therefore I take it as an axiom that intelligent behavior implies >>> consciousness. >>> >> >> *> This itself is a theory of consciousness.* >> > > Yep, and it's just as good, and just as bad, as every other theory of > consciousness. > > *> You must have some reason to believe it, even if you cannot yet prove >> it.* >> > > I do. I know Darwinian Evolution produced me and I know for a fact that I > am conscious, but Natural Selection can't see consciousness any better than > we can directly see consciousness in other people, Evolution can only see > intelligent behavior and it can't select for something it can't see. And > yet Evolution managed to produce consciousness at least once and probably > many billions of times. I therefore conclude that either Darwin was wrong > or consciousness is an inevitable byproduct of intelligence. I don't think > Darwin was wrong. > > John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> > > vgj > > -- > 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/CAJPayv18n8RKZ7QuYgQfWK71O9QVXYjrVnYa-3TFHuTynqno5A%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv18n8RKZ7QuYgQfWK71O9QVXYjrVnYa-3TFHuTynqno5A%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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]. 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