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Why would we need to 'feel' anything from the inside? We could operate perfectly well as 'machines' without having this 'feeling'. Also, consciousness isn't a f

Why would we need to 'feel' anything from the inside? We could operate perfectly well as 'machines' without having this 'feeling'. Also, consciousness isn't a feeling. It is what makes it possible at all to have a subjective experience of feelings in the first place. And that is mind-blowing the more you think of it.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Consciousness is the algorithm. What you call "consciousness" is how the computational processes that are you see themselves. It could work differently, but for some reasons it doesn't, and we don't understand the reasons.
- egjerlow 7y ago
  Well, that's a bold claim, and it doesn't really say anything substantial, in my opinion. What does it mean to see yourself? Are the electrical impulses of your brain somehow registering themselves and then reflecting them to yet another part of the brain which.. does what exactly? Believing that consciousness can be explained in terms of material processes is certainly a valid belief, but it is just that: a belief. Believing that a certain configuration of atoms, no matter how involved, can give rise to subjective experience is not far from believing in some kind of magic. And before you retort that a lot of phenomena in nature are 'emergent', I will say:all those phenomena are ultimately explicable in terms of their basic atomic constituents. Consciousness is qualitatively different. You cannot start with the experience of being hungry and then somehow explain the whole process from your stomach being empty to that qualitative experience and how it feels for you.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > Believing that consciousness can be explained in terms of material processes is certainly a valid belief, but it is just that: a belief. It's a belief, true, but it's kind of a privileged one, since it's so successful at explaining literally every other thing we observe about the universe. Why brains would be different? > Believing that a certain configuration of atoms, no matter how involved, can give rise to subjective experience is not far from believing in some kind of magic. This argument would be stronger 500 years ago, but I don't know how one can consider this "not far from believing in magic" after seeing a computer. Or, after observing brains of different animals - from insects to simians. Or, after discovering circuit-bending and realizing how similar it is to prodding a brain. There's ample evidence against the hypothesis that the human brain is the only magical object in the universe and that it somehow transcends physics. > And before you retort that a lot of phenomena in nature are 'emergent', I will say:all those phenomena are ultimately explicable in terms of their basic atomic constituents. Consciousness is qualitatively different. You cannot start with the experience of being hungry and then somehow explain the whole process from your stomach being empty to that qualitative experience and how it feels for you. Why? If I gave you a device that could trace the state of every molecule and charge in my brain to the extent allowed by uncertainty principle, would you still be confident in believing that? Just because we don't have a device like this doesn't mean consciousness is magic.
    - egjerlow 7y ago
      > It's a belief, true, but it's kind of a privileged one, since it's so successful at explaining literally every other thing we observe about the universe. Why brains would be different? It's successful at explaining everything that can be explained in material terms, yes! Science is really good at it. >This argument would be stronger 500 years ago, but I don't know how one can consider this "not far from believing in magic" after seeing a computer. Or, after observing brains of different animals - from insects to simians. Or, after discovering circuit-bending and realizing how similar it is to prodding a brain. There's ample evidence against the hypothesis that the human brain is the only magical object in the universe and that it somehow transcends physics. I cannot see how any one of those things you mentioned have to do with the utter strangeness that is subjective experience? I'm not saying a brain cannot perform computations, if that's what you're getting out of this. Why you mention a computer I don't know - there is nothing that indicates a computer has subjective experience and nothing about a computer makes me believe that creating subjective states is something that can be done with atoms alone. And that is what is 'magical' about this line of reasoning. >Why? If I gave you a device that could trace the state of every molecule and charge in my brain to the extent allowed by uncertainty principle, would you still be confident in believing that? Just because we don't have a device like this doesn't mean consciousness is magic. See above. Even if you were to trace every molecule in my brain, you would be no closer to really explaining a subjective experience. You would be able to show correlations, yes! 'Now he's angry, look at this cluster of atoms'. But that's not an explanation of the experience as such. That's the unbridgeable gap I'm talking about.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > See above. Even if you were to trace every molecule in my brain, you would be no closer to really explaining a subjective experience. You would be able to show correlations, yes! 'Now he's angry, look at this cluster of atoms'. But that's not an explanation of the experience as such. That's the unbridgeable gap I'm talking about. Personally, I don't see a basis to believe there's something more to it. I'd look at the cluster of atoms in your brain and say this is anger. This is the computational process that is anger in your brain. I don't see a meaningful difference between this and doing the same to a computer - I could point at a cluster of atoms and EM fields in the CPU and say, "this is factorization of numbers; this is how the cryptographic routine this CPU executes manifests". Why would there be anything else here?
- Zaphods 7y ago
  The problem with that line of reasoning is you're assuming the brain is a computer, or that it merely computes. But that's just an assumption and there are many reasons a person, let alone a brain, is not a machine or a computer or an algorithm. That it is like it? Sure, in some insignificant ways, we have the ability to compute things. But is it an algorithm? No. The idea that consciousness is an algorithm or a computer or a machine is an assumption that is extremely popular among people in the tech industry because it confirms their assumptions, and it makes them feel like they have extremely transferable knowledge. "I know about computers. Let's assume the brain is a computer and consciousness is an algorithm. I can now comment on the brain and consciousness." But there is very little reason to accept that assumption. This review of Harai's Homo Deus does a great job of pointing out the dead-ends that assumption leads you to. [review](https://inference-review.com/article/godzooks#When:00:35:00Z https://inference-review.com/article/godzooks#When:00:35:00Z)
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > The idea that consciousness is an algorithm or a computer or a machine is an assumption that is extremely popular among people in the tech industry because it confirms their assumptions No, it's not because of that. It's because it is effectively a computer. Not in the vague sense of "it has stuffs connected to stuffs and there's electricity involved", but in the more specific sense that it takes inputs, produces complex outputs, has clearly identifiable hardware and indirectly identifiable software. It even has internal structure we're only beginning to understand, but that we know enough about to reasonably infer what computations happen where. There's little reason to assume there's some metaphysical mystery here, as exactly zero other things in the universe that we studied since the dawn of humanity turned out to be magic. TL;DR: what else could it be? And before someone says "antenna", I don't buy it. "Computer" is a simpler explanation for all known facts than remote consciousness being received by the brain. See my take on this before[0]. See also: Occam's razor. > "I know about computers. Let's assume the brain is a computer and consciousness is an algorithm. I can now comment on the brain and consciousness." Yeah, well, sure. If I know the limit of applicability of my computer knowledge, I sure can comment on brain and consciousness. Like, I wouldn't say "it's vulnerable to SQL injection" because that would be an idiotic statement. But I could say "it implements visual processing, audio processing, collects other telemetry, and does sensor fusion in real-time in under 20 Watts, with power to spare". Because that's observation, physics, and modelling reality along a particular perspective of interest. -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19490801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19490801
- david-cako 7y ago
  I find kabbalah very interesting, because this assertion has been made for a long time without us having something tangible to compare it to. Now we have computers, basic AI, and no signs of slowing down. What if kabbalah, or something similar, is actually how consciousness emerges across different types of observers? I.e., consciousness is a "most likely" pattern that emerges from the initial ability to conceive of time. Tarot is an example of a more personified version of the same archetypal phenomenon. The first few cards are indicative of susceptibility to experience, concentration of experience, awareness of experience, multiplicity of experience, and mastery of experience.
hunta2097 7y ago
Why are you thinking? You are anticipating various scales of "the future", using memories of past events. As computers try to anticipate the future more, they may also start to "experience" things.
- egjerlow 7y ago
  That's one of the uses of thinking, yes, but it's hardly the only one, unless by some procrustean method you force all my thoughts to 'really' be about the future. In which case I'd say the statement is close to devoid of meaning. Furthermore, thinking and consciousness is not the same thing.
  - hunta2097 7y ago
    I think I based my initial thoughts on this paper (or a citation of): http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/AnticipationControl.pdf http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/AnticipationControl.pdf
EGreg 7y ago
How do you know that what you say about consciousness isn’t just a language game you play where you define words in terms of other words that are hardly connected to anything? “What it is like to be a bat” “What it is like to experience something” After having seen descriptions of all the physical components of experience: “It is Qualia! What it is like to see red” Having been described all the differences between sensing red and green, and people who can’t tell the difference, and the suggestion that maybe what you call consciousness is the collection of abilities to distinguish various things... “No, it is something more”. What is it? How is that different than saying there is a “true essence” of a thing, over and above its properties? This is what greek philosophers asked about. “It is the sense of identity. Integrating into one experience.” Ok so what about Theseus’ ship? If all the cells are being replaced? What about your gut brain? Coukd it have a separate consciousness living in the same body? “These are interesting questions”. Here is a statement I will make: If you are careful to define your words unambgiously, in terms of RICH connections to other concepts, you will find that you won’t be able to ask a single question about the following subjects without having a straightforward and simple reductionist-sounding answer: Morality Consciousess Existence
- egjerlow 7y ago
  I'm not really sure what you're arguing here. I would certainly say consciousness is 'something more', and that this something more has to be something non-material (or at least using 'materials' that have wildly different properties than what we observe using the scientific method). Theseus' ship is a problem for a purely materialistic explanation of consciousness, for, by that account, consciousness should be a function of your material makeup, and yet, it remains constant despite change in both what makes up your cells and the specific configuration of those cells. As for RICH I don't know what that means.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > Theseus' ship is a problem for a purely materialistic explanation of consciousness, Theseus's ship is not a problem for materialistic views at all. A function of matter configuration is not the same as a function of matter. In the same way, a wave on water is constantly changing its material makeup, and yet you can still call it "the same wave". > As for RICH I don't know what that means. Rich, i.e. non-trivial. That is, no tautologies or something slightly above tautology in the depth of information.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Consciousness is the algorithm. What you call "consciousness" is how the computational processes that are you see themselves. It could work differently, but for some reasons it doesn't, and we don't understand the reasons.

egjerlow 7y ago
Well, that's a bold claim, and it doesn't really say anything substantial, in my opinion. What does it mean to see yourself? Are the electrical impulses of your brain somehow registering themselves and then reflecting them to yet another part of the brain which.. does what exactly? Believing that consciousness can be explained in terms of material processes is certainly a valid belief, but it is just that: a belief. Believing that a certain configuration of atoms, no matter how involved, can give rise to subjective experience is not far from believing in some kind of magic. And before you retort that a lot of phenomena in nature are 'emergent', I will say:all those phenomena are ultimately explicable in terms of their basic atomic constituents. Consciousness is qualitatively different. You cannot start with the experience of being hungry and then somehow explain the whole process from your stomach being empty to that qualitative experience and how it feels for you.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Believing that consciousness can be explained in terms of material processes is certainly a valid belief, but it is just that: a belief. It's a belief, true, but it's kind of a privileged one, since it's so successful at explaining literally every other thing we observe about the universe. Why brains would be different? > Believing that a certain configuration of atoms, no matter how involved, can give rise to subjective experience is not far from believing in some kind of magic. This argument would be stronger 500 years ago, but I don't know how one can consider this "not far from believing in magic" after seeing a computer. Or, after observing brains of different animals - from insects to simians. Or, after discovering circuit-bending and realizing how similar it is to prodding a brain. There's ample evidence against the hypothesis that the human brain is the only magical object in the universe and that it somehow transcends physics. > And before you retort that a lot of phenomena in nature are 'emergent', I will say:all those phenomena are ultimately explicable in terms of their basic atomic constituents. Consciousness is qualitatively different. You cannot start with the experience of being hungry and then somehow explain the whole process from your stomach being empty to that qualitative experience and how it feels for you. Why? If I gave you a device that could trace the state of every molecule and charge in my brain to the extent allowed by uncertainty principle, would you still be confident in believing that? Just because we don't have a device like this doesn't mean consciousness is magic.
  - egjerlow 7y ago
    > It's a belief, true, but it's kind of a privileged one, since it's so successful at explaining literally every other thing we observe about the universe. Why brains would be different? It's successful at explaining everything that can be explained in material terms, yes! Science is really good at it. >This argument would be stronger 500 years ago, but I don't know how one can consider this "not far from believing in magic" after seeing a computer. Or, after observing brains of different animals - from insects to simians. Or, after discovering circuit-bending and realizing how similar it is to prodding a brain. There's ample evidence against the hypothesis that the human brain is the only magical object in the universe and that it somehow transcends physics. I cannot see how any one of those things you mentioned have to do with the utter strangeness that is subjective experience? I'm not saying a brain cannot perform computations, if that's what you're getting out of this. Why you mention a computer I don't know - there is nothing that indicates a computer has subjective experience and nothing about a computer makes me believe that creating subjective states is something that can be done with atoms alone. And that is what is 'magical' about this line of reasoning. >Why? If I gave you a device that could trace the state of every molecule and charge in my brain to the extent allowed by uncertainty principle, would you still be confident in believing that? Just because we don't have a device like this doesn't mean consciousness is magic. See above. Even if you were to trace every molecule in my brain, you would be no closer to really explaining a subjective experience. You would be able to show correlations, yes! 'Now he's angry, look at this cluster of atoms'. But that's not an explanation of the experience as such. That's the unbridgeable gap I'm talking about.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > See above. Even if you were to trace every molecule in my brain, you would be no closer to really explaining a subjective experience. You would be able to show correlations, yes! 'Now he's angry, look at this cluster of atoms'. But that's not an explanation of the experience as such. That's the unbridgeable gap I'm talking about. Personally, I don't see a basis to believe there's something more to it. I'd look at the cluster of atoms in your brain and say this is anger. This is the computational process that is anger in your brain. I don't see a meaningful difference between this and doing the same to a computer - I could point at a cluster of atoms and EM fields in the CPU and say, "this is factorization of numbers; this is how the cryptographic routine this CPU executes manifests". Why would there be anything else here?
Zaphods 7y ago
The problem with that line of reasoning is you're assuming the brain is a computer, or that it merely computes. But that's just an assumption and there are many reasons a person, let alone a brain, is not a machine or a computer or an algorithm. That it is like it? Sure, in some insignificant ways, we have the ability to compute things. But is it an algorithm? No. The idea that consciousness is an algorithm or a computer or a machine is an assumption that is extremely popular among people in the tech industry because it confirms their assumptions, and it makes them feel like they have extremely transferable knowledge. "I know about computers. Let's assume the brain is a computer and consciousness is an algorithm. I can now comment on the brain and consciousness." But there is very little reason to accept that assumption. This review of Harai's Homo Deus does a great job of pointing out the dead-ends that assumption leads you to. [review](https://inference-review.com/article/godzooks#When:00:35:00Z https://inference-review.com/article/godzooks#When:00:35:00Z)
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > The idea that consciousness is an algorithm or a computer or a machine is an assumption that is extremely popular among people in the tech industry because it confirms their assumptions No, it's not because of that. It's because it is effectively a computer. Not in the vague sense of "it has stuffs connected to stuffs and there's electricity involved", but in the more specific sense that it takes inputs, produces complex outputs, has clearly identifiable hardware and indirectly identifiable software. It even has internal structure we're only beginning to understand, but that we know enough about to reasonably infer what computations happen where. There's little reason to assume there's some metaphysical mystery here, as exactly zero other things in the universe that we studied since the dawn of humanity turned out to be magic. TL;DR: what else could it be? And before someone says "antenna", I don't buy it. "Computer" is a simpler explanation for all known facts than remote consciousness being received by the brain. See my take on this before[0]. See also: Occam's razor. > "I know about computers. Let's assume the brain is a computer and consciousness is an algorithm. I can now comment on the brain and consciousness." Yeah, well, sure. If I know the limit of applicability of my computer knowledge, I sure can comment on brain and consciousness. Like, I wouldn't say "it's vulnerable to SQL injection" because that would be an idiotic statement. But I could say "it implements visual processing, audio processing, collects other telemetry, and does sensor fusion in real-time in under 20 Watts, with power to spare". Because that's observation, physics, and modelling reality along a particular perspective of interest. -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19490801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19490801
david-cako 7y ago
I find kabbalah very interesting, because this assertion has been made for a long time without us having something tangible to compare it to. Now we have computers, basic AI, and no signs of slowing down. What if kabbalah, or something similar, is actually how consciousness emerges across different types of observers? I.e., consciousness is a "most likely" pattern that emerges from the initial ability to conceive of time. Tarot is an example of a more personified version of the same archetypal phenomenon. The first few cards are indicative of susceptibility to experience, concentration of experience, awareness of experience, multiplicity of experience, and mastery of experience.

hunta2097 7y ago

Why are you thinking? You are anticipating various scales of "the future", using memories of past events. As computers try to anticipate the future more, they may also start to "experience" things.

egjerlow 7y ago
That's one of the uses of thinking, yes, but it's hardly the only one, unless by some procrustean method you force all my thoughts to 'really' be about the future. In which case I'd say the statement is close to devoid of meaning. Furthermore, thinking and consciousness is not the same thing.
- hunta2097 7y ago
  I think I based my initial thoughts on this paper (or a citation of): http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/AnticipationControl.pdf http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/AnticipationControl.pdf

EGreg 7y ago

How do you know that what you say about consciousness isn’t just a language game you play where you define words in terms of other words that are hardly connected to anything? “What it is like to be a bat” “What it is like to experience something” After having seen descriptions of all the physical components of experience: “It is Qualia! What it is like to see red” Having been described all the differences between sensing red and green, and people who can’t tell the difference, and the suggestion that maybe what you call consciousness is the collection of abilities to distinguish various things... “No, it is something more”. What is it? How is that different than saying there is a “true essence” of a thing, over and above its properties? This is what greek philosophers asked about. “It is the sense of identity. Integrating into one experience.” Ok so what about Theseus’ ship? If all the cells are being replaced? What about your gut brain? Coukd it have a separate consciousness living in the same body? “These are interesting questions”. Here is a statement I will make: If you are careful to define your words unambgiously, in terms of RICH connections to other concepts, you will find that you won’t be able to ask a single question about the following subjects without having a straightforward and simple reductionist-sounding answer: Morality Consciousess Existence

egjerlow 7y ago
I'm not really sure what you're arguing here. I would certainly say consciousness is 'something more', and that this something more has to be something non-material (or at least using 'materials' that have wildly different properties than what we observe using the scientific method). Theseus' ship is a problem for a purely materialistic explanation of consciousness, for, by that account, consciousness should be a function of your material makeup, and yet, it remains constant despite change in both what makes up your cells and the specific configuration of those cells. As for RICH I don't know what that means.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Theseus' ship is a problem for a purely materialistic explanation of consciousness, Theseus's ship is not a problem for materialistic views at all. A function of matter configuration is not the same as a function of matter. In the same way, a wave on water is constantly changing its material makeup, and yet you can still call it "the same wave". > As for RICH I don't know what that means. Rich, i.e. non-trivial. That is, no tautologies or something slightly above tautology in the depth of information.