On Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 4:37 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On 1/23/2024 12:52 PM, John Clark wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 3:38 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> > wrote: > > * > Who wrote this? you, JC?* >> > > No, Scott Alexander did, he's a pretty smart guy but I think he got some > things wrong. I did write this in the comments section: > > "You say "If we’re lucky, consciousness is a basic feature of information > processing and anything smart enough to outcompete us will be at least as > conscious as we are" and I agree with you about that because there is > evidence that it is true. I know for a fact that random mutation and > natural selection managed to produce consciousness at least once (me) and > probably many billions of times, but Evolution can't directly detect > consciousness any better than I can, except in myself, and it can't select > for something it can't see, but evolution can detect intelligent behavior. > I could not function if I really believed that solipsism was true, > therefore I must take it as an axiom, as a brute fact, that consciousness > is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently. > > > * >You've written this before, but I slightly disagree with it. I think > Evolution can detect consciousness as directly or indirectly as > intelligence. * > I agree, Evolution can detect intelligence so it can only detect consciousness if it is an inevitable byproduct of intelligent data-processing. John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> 887 > Consciouness is imagining the world with you as an actor within it. It's > a kind of thinking necessary for planning, i.e. for an advanced form of > intelligence. The consciousness you talk about is just awareness, > perception; that's processing data. > > > You also say "consciousness seems very closely linked to brain waves in > humans" but how was that fact determined? It was observed that when people > behave intelligently their brain waves take a certain form and when they > don't behave intelligently the brain waves are different than that. I'm > sure you don't think that other people are conscious when they are sleeping > or under anesthesia or dead because when they are in those conditions they > are not behaving very intelligently. > > As for the fear of paperclip maximizers, I think that's kind of silly. It > assumes the possibility of an intelligent entity having an absolutely fixed > goal they can never change, but such a thing is impossible. In the 1930s > Kurt Gödel prove that there are some things that are true but have no proof > and Alan Turing proved that there is no way to know for certain if a given > task is even possible. For example, is it possible to prove or disprove > that every even number greater than two is the sum of two prime numbers? > Nobody knows. If an intelligent being was able to have goals that could > never change it would soon be caught in an infinite loop because sooner or > later it would attempt a task that was impossible, that's why Evolution > invented the very important emotion of boredom. Certainly human beings > don't have fix goals, not even the goal of self preservation, and I don't > see how an AI could either." > > > Good point. > > Brent > > -- > -- 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/CAJPayv3rkA2NMqsPuY_9HkvJpQrTk1rY_oHkEuzFhrKJLFG2HA%40mail.gmail.com.
