On Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 6:37 PM spudboy100 via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> To get to the point, I did advocate for a bit of skepticism for claiming > consciousness for a computer system, and the retort was from JC that > essentially, we cannot even define what makes a human conscious, and I am > going with an au contraries', Pierre! I took me under 10 min to locate a > worthy article submitted for JC's criticisms. > > Here tis' > > What Neuroscientists Think, and Don't Think, About Consciousness - PubMed > (nih.gov) <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35280212/> > > So, we are much closer to understand human consciousness. I am ask to to > put the same effort into how a network developed this in so little time. > Our our analog chips so mighty in 2022-3??? > Neurologists know that neurons and neural activity is correlated with consciousness, but for the most part their understanding stops there, (and by their own admission.) I would say neurologists are almost in the worst position to understand consciousness as they look at it from the lowest level, the neurons. This is like trying to decipher a word processor program by looking at the patterns of electrical impulses in the circuits of a computer's CPU. Here are some quotes about our complete lack of understanding of consciousness and the disappointment regarding what help neurology has offered (emphasis mine): “How it is that anything so remarkable as a *state of consciousness* comes about *as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable* as the appearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.” -- Thomas Huxley in " “Lessons in Elementary Psychology,” (1866) “An electron is neither red nor blue nor any other colour; the same holds for the proton, the nucleus of the hydrogen atom. But the union of the two in the atom of hydrogen, according to the physicist, produces electromagnetic radiation of a certain discrete array of wavelengths. The homogenous constituents of this radiation, when separated by a prism or an optical grating, *stimulate in an observer the sensations of red, green, blue, violet* by the intermediary of certain physiological processes, whose general character is sufficiently well known to assert that they are not red or green or blue, in fact that *the nervous elements in question display no colour in virtue of their being stimulated; the white or gray the nerve cells exhibit whether stimulated or not is certainly insignificant in respect of the colour sensation* which, in the individual whose nerves they are, accompanies their excitation.” -- Erwin Schrödinger in "Mind and Matter <https://archive.org/details/mindmatter0000schr/page/n11/mode/2up>" (1958) “Few questions have endured longer or traversed a more perplexing history than this, *the problem of consciousness and its place in nature.* Despite centuries of pondering and experiment, of trying to get together two supposed entities called mind and matter in one age, subject and object in another, or soul and body in still others, despite endless discoursing on the streams, states, or contents of consciousness, of distinguishing terms like intuitions, sense data, the given, raw feels, the sensa, presentations and representations, the sensations, images, and affections of structuralist introspections, the evidential data of the scientific positivist, phenomenological fields, the apparitions of Hobbes, the phenomena of Kant, the appearances of the idealist, the elements of Mach, the phanera of Peirce, or the category errors of Ryle,* in spite of all of these, the problem of consciousness is still with us.*” -- Julian Jaynes in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind <https://www.julianjaynes.org/resources/books/ooc/en/introduction-the-problem-of-consciousness/>" (1976) “*We know that brains are the de facto causal basis of consciousness*, but we have, it seems, *no understanding whatever of how this can be so.* It strikes us as miraculous, eerie, even faintly comic. Somehow, we feel, the water of the physical brain is turned into the wine of consciousness, but *we draw a total blank on the nature of this conversion*. Neural transmissions just seem like the wrong kind of materials with which to bring consciousness into the world, but it appears that in some way they perform this mysterious feat. The mind-body problem is the problem of understanding how the miracle is wrought, thus removing the sense of deep mystery. We want to take the magic out of the link between consciousness and the brain.” -- McGinn “Can we solve the mind body problem?” (1989) “IT IS REMARKABLE that *most of the work in both cognitive science and the neurosciences makes no reference to consciousness* (or 'awareness'), especially as many would regard consciousness a the major puzzle confronting the neural view of the mind and indeed *at the present time it appears deeply mysterious* to many people.” -- Francis Crick in "Towards a neurobiological theory of consciousness <https://authors.library.caltech.edu/40352/1/148.pdf>" (1990) “At the time, I uncritically accepted the view that the troublesome phenomenal, or “what it is like,” aspect of experiences had nothing to do with their representational contents, and *I supposed that neurophysiology would ultimately tell the full story*. In the course of reflecting on this pair of assumptions in later years, I Came to think that I had made a serious mistake. Not only are the phenomenal or felt aspects of our mental lives representational but also (relatedly) they are not even in the head at all. So, *neurophysiology certainly will not reveal to us what it is like to smell or skunk or to taste a fig. Look at the neurons for as long as you like, and you will not find phenomenal consciousness.*” -- Michael Tye in "Ten Problems of consciousness" (1995) “Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. *All sorts of mental phenomena have yielded to scientific investigation in recent years, but consciousness has stubbornly resisted.* Many have tried to explain it, but the explanations always seem to fall short of the target. Some have been led to suppose that the problem is intractable, and that no good explanation can be given.” -- David Chalmers in "Facing Up to the Hard Problem <http://consc.net/papers/facing.html>" (1996) *“We should therefore not expect the search for a neural correlate of consciousness to lead to the holy grail of a universal theory.* We might expect it to be valuable in helping us to understand consciousness in specific cases, such as the human case: learning more about the processes underlying awareness will certainly help us understand the structure and dynamics of consciousness, for example. But in holding up the bridge from physical processes to conscious experience, preexperimental coherence principles will always play a central role” -- David Chalmers in "The Conscious Mind" (1996) “Two decades later, *we know an astonishing amount about the brain*: you can’t follow the news for a week without encountering at least one more tale about scientists discovering the brain region associated with gambling, or laziness, or love at first sight, or regret – and that’s only the research that makes the headlines. Meanwhile, the field of artificial intelligence – which focuses on recreating the abilities of the human brain, rather than on what it feels like to be one – has advanced stupendously. But like an obnoxious relative who invites himself to stay for a week and then won’t leave, *the Hard Problem remains*. When I stubbed my toe on the leg of the dining table this morning, *as any student of the brain could tell you, nerve fibres called “C-fibres” shot a message to my spinal cord, sending neurotransmitters to the part of my brain called the thalamus, which activated (among other things) my limbic system. Fine. But how come all that was accompanied by an agonising flash of pain?* And what is pain, anyway?” -- Oliver Burkeman in “Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness? <https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness>” (2015) I think any satisfying answer must involve all the levels of processing that sit between the top level user-interface of consciousness (which we see and which presents the mystery), and the lowest level of the neural circuitry, which we also see. But between these two layers is a vast bridge of various levels of processing, processing of neurons and dendrites, processing of neocortical columns, algorithms in the cerebellum, processing of sub-brain regions in the visual cortex for recognizing colors, shapes, patterns, motion, faces, etc., the whole regions such as the complete visual cortex, whole brain hemispheres, the complete brain of both hemispheres and connection via the corpus callosum. We might make the analogy between the brain and a cell phone, where again we have the UI presented to us on the screen, and the circuitry at the bottom. In the middle layers are the machine code, the system calls, operating system kernel, functions, routines, modules, sub processes, processes, applications, etc. which finally work their way up to presenting a screen with buttons, text and images. All the meat required for understanding exists in the middle layers. Analyzing the top-most and/or the bottom-most layers, while ignoring the middle is sure to lead to bafflement. As neurology works its way up to building a complete map of neural regions and functioning, we will know how the brain does what it does, but will that explain consciousness? Here philosophers disagree. Some like Dennett say that is as far as we can go and that will answer all the questions we have about consciousness. Others like Chalmers say that will still leave the "hard problem" unresolved. I see merit in both aspects of their argument. I agree with Dennett that consciousness is nothing other than awareness. But I also agree with Chalmers that even with such an objective and complete brain map, there will remain some things that are unexplainable/shareable (in my opinion due in part to similar reasons as Gödelian incompleteness). First-person experiences are not explainable in third-person terms and can only be understood/experienced/known by being the system that has that particular experience. Jason > -----Original Message----- > From: John Clark <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]> > Sent: Thu, Mar 16, 2023 5:55 pm > Subject: Re: 4 Tests Reveal Bing (GPT 4) ≈ 114 IQ (last test is nuts) > > On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 4:50 PM <[email protected]> wrote: > > *> America executes prisoners for capital murder. So, legally, if a > murderer died 50 years ago for a capital crime, does that mean, once, > revived, * > > > To my knowledge no executed prisoner has ever been cryogenically > preserved, however Joseph Paul Jernigan was executed by lethal injection > in 1981 and he became part of the "Visible Human Project". His body was > sliced into 1871 1 millimeter thick slices. and each slice was then > photographed with a very high resolution camera. I've wondered if there was > enough information preserved in those photographs to upload him, probably > not but maybe. You can watch a one minute video of a journey through Mr. J > ernigan's body here. > > The visible human project - Male (HD) > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPPjUtiAGYs> > > A few years later they took even higher resolution photographs of a woman > who died of a heart attack and they used even thinner slices, only 0.33 > millimeters thick > > Visual Human Project Female <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3atjsVqFlhs> > > *> they are no longer liable because of Double Jeopardy and that their > victims will also be revived? A Civil Case then??* > > > As I've said, I'm not a lawyer. > John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> > ws8 > > u6c > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: John Clark <[email protected]> > To: 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <[email protected]> > Sent: Thu, Mar 16, 2023 1:30 pm > Subject: 4 Tests Reveal Bing (GPT 4) ≈ 114 IQ (last test is nuts) > > Forget the Ukraine war, forget climate change, forget Donald Trump, I now > think GPT-4 is by far the most world shaking event and the most > underreported one. Many of us have been talking about the singularity for > decades, but now it looks like we're on its doorstep. You've got to look at > this video! > > > 4 Tests Reveal Bing (GPT 4) ≈ 114 IQ (last test is nuts) > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFvDJnf0GXs&list=PLYXp_rV1HrBAOZqPJTOSo91275hKQrfpl&index=13> > > > -- > 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/CAJPayv2neEP50SN7NCGRqtm1uzwNaE668DFu4-QdQa-OGFei8A%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2neEP50SN7NCGRqtm1uzwNaE668DFu4-QdQa-OGFei8A%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > -- > 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/382281143.709221.1679006249871%40mail.yahoo.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/382281143.709221.1679006249871%40mail.yahoo.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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