Explain consciousness to the layman.

[westprog]

And yet simulated things are interacting in the simulation. Some imaginary world, eh ?

I've had to come up with my own definitions of many of the terms used here. So for a simulation, I suppose I would say that a simulation of a physical system is another physical system which has patterns of behaviour which are comparable to some degree. I dare say someone else could come up with an alternative, but that's close enough to work with.

So, we could consider (as I've mentioned before) the Earth-Moon system as a simulation of the Sun-Earth system. It's not perfect, of course - but it's quite close, and it has the advantage that it uses the same physical forces as the system being simulated. Certainly one could examine the Earth-Moon system and draw conclusions about Sun-Earth.

Now, are we to consider that there's an actual alternate world where the Earth is the Sun and the Moon is the Earth? And since the simulation works both ways, a world where the Sun is the Earth and the Earth is the Moon? And since any planetary system is a simulation of any other planetary system, they all have layers of simulated worlds which all include each other.

IMO, this is nonsensical. There are no "worlds of the simulation". There are similar patterns of behaviour. We can't say that the Earth is the Sun "inside the simulation". There is no "inside the simulation". If the Earth is to stand in for the Sun, it does so in our imagination.

 

[PixyMisa]

But here's the problem with that.

Folks like Pixy and Dodger go way beyond this.

As does anyone who claims that "people" who are "inside" a "simulation" like this could really in some way "become conscious" and begin to "perceive" the "world of the simulation" as the world in which they live.

Not "become conscious". They would be conscious.

No matter how consciousness arises, as long as it is a physical process, that conclusion is inescapable.

 

[rocketdodger]

To say that the "world of the simulation" is imaginary conforms with the laws of physics, direct observation and measurement, systems theory, and common sense.

But you don't need to say it is imaginary, either.

If you actually knew wtf we meant by "world of the simulation," or even just "simulation," you might realize this.

In particular, the "world of the simulation" is a bunch of transistors inside a computer. Are you going to claim that these transistors are imaginary, now? I didn't think so.

The "imaginary" part is that, for instance, an entity in that world -- which is just a series of current differences in the transitors where the entity is transiently located in the computer -- should be interpreted as a monster or a ball or whatever else we want to see in the world of the simulation.

But that is the interpretation of the world of the simulation, not the world of the simulation. The world of the simulation is a bunch of transistors.

And I don't think it is particularly enlightening to point out that an "interpretation" is obviously observer dependent, which is what you have been ranting about from day one -- you just don't understand the distinction between the simulation and the interpretation of the simulation.

 

[rocketdodger]

IMO, this is nonsensical. There are no "worlds of the simulation". There are similar patterns of behaviour. We can't say that the Earth is the Sun "inside the simulation". There is no "inside the simulation". If the Earth is to stand in for the Sun, it does so in our imagination.

Well, your opinion is bizarre.

In this particular case, the "world of the simulation" is just the Earth and the Sun. Interpreting the Sun as the Earth is just that -- an interpretation. It has no bearing on the world of the simulation itself.

And before you try to think differently, consider all the other cases where humans think of things in terms of "worlds."

How many times have you heard things like "In the world of the aquarium" or "In the world of monkeys" or "The rainforest canopy is its own world" or "In the world of the cell," etc. It goes on and on and on and on. Do you make it a point to argue that those are not "worlds" either?

Why the double standard?

 

[rocketdodger]

Folks like Pixy and Dodger go way beyond this.

As does anyone who claims that "people" who are "inside" a "simulation" like this could really in some way "become conscious" and begin to "perceive" the "world of the simulation" as the world in which they live.

But you don't even know what that claim actually means.

Let me expand the terms in it for you, and you tell me if there is a difference.

As does anyone who claims that "sets voltage and current differentials" that are "located within a set of transistors" inside a "computer running a certain program" like this could really in some way "exhibit the internal causal relationships between their parts that some consider to be 'consciousness'" and begin to "use" the "set of voltage and current differentials that are part of the program but not part of them" as the world in which they live.

I'm sorry, I honestly don't see anything controversial in the corrected version aside from the independent issue of whether or not you agree that the necessary causal relationships for consciousness could exist between voltage and current differentials.

The stuff in your computer is transistors. While running a program there are localized differences in current and voltage, that lead to other such differences, in an endless cascade. The causal relationships between all of those changes is easy to see. This is all plain fact.

Whether or not someone wants to interpret those voltage and current differences as a given "thing" is irrelevant to the fact that they are real. Whether or not you want to interpret them as a simulated tornado or anything else is irrelevant. What is relevant is that they are there, they are real, and there are relationships between them.

And if those voltage and current differences exhibit the relationships necessary for consciousness, then they would be conscious. You might disagree on just what is necessary, but you can't disagree that *if* they exhibit those relationships, *then* they are conscious. This is just simple logic, piggy.

And *if* they are conscious, then what their consciousness understands as being "external" to them is their "world." This is just a fact, that stems from commonly understood definitions of the term "world." If you don't like the definitions then I am sorry, maybe petition the dictionaries of Earth to change it ?

They would get to define what their "world" is just like you get to define what your "world" is. Our "uninterpreted" perception of their world would be just what it is in our world -- a bunch of voltage and current differentials in a bunch of transistors. But this is irrelevant -- an alien with better visual acuity might perceive your world as a huge set of particles rather than the solid objects that you see. Who is correct?

 

[Frank Newgent]

Most people consider a simulation to be meaningful in the absence of humans.

Reminds me of the question: "if a tree falls in a forest and no body is around to hear it... does it make a sound?"

The correct answer is no. For a sound to register ears are required.

Most people think a phrase like "X simulates Y" to mean something like "some behaviors of X are similar to some behaviors of Y." Most people don't think that similarity just evaporates when an observer goes home for the night.

I dunno. What does the similarity do when the observer goes home for the night?

 

[yy2bggggs]

It's bizarre. Piggy has been totally explicit for a long time about his absolute insistence that artificial minds are possible in principle. He's been very explicit about that. He's a hard-line materialist, AFAIAA. Yet if this conflicts with someone's hard-core belief system, it's just ignored.

What's even more interesting is this:

Yes, there's been a lot of waffle about how one system is dynamic, and the other isn't, and one works according to rules and the other doesn't, and one is causal, and the other isn't - all of which evaporates away when looked at closely with precise definitions of what we're talking about.

...and the fact that the whole discussion of DVD's stemmed from a discussion of films. This originated from a comparison between a tornado and a simulation of a tornado, after which films of tornadoes and books about tornadoes was introduced.

Yet, you forgot the tornado in your spiel. I see an analogy here. One could imagine that this is because it conflicts with someone's hard-core belief system, and so it was ignored.

So, let's not ignore this tornado in the room, westprog. When you see an actual tornado blow away the house, do you think there's something corresponding to the image of the tornado you perceive that is causing something that you perceive as the house to get blown away?

If not, you're just nutters. If so, let's move to the next question you should not ignore.

When you see in the playback of a DVD an image of a tornado blowing away the house, do you think there's something corresponding to the image of the tornado you perceive on the DVD that is causing something you perceive as the house to get blown away?

In the former case, the image of the tornado blowing the house away is the result of perceiving a real causal relation between entities. In the latter case, it's just an optical illusion.

 

[rocketdodger]

But they also relate in all sorts of ways that you're ignoring because they're irrelevant to the way you want to use the machine.

Not quite.

They relate in all sorts of ways that we ignore because they are irrelevant to any of the behaviors that we don't particularly care about.

Why is this an issue?

We don't care about the relations that are relevant only to the behaviors that a rock can exhibit.

We do care about the relations that are relevant to the behaviors that things like lifeforms can exhibit.

This is fact -- lifeforms exhibit behaviors that rocks do not. Whether or not those behaviors are significant is another issue, although there are objective statistical reasons for why they are. But that is neither here nor there -- if we want to figure out why a person is conscious, we certainly don't need to look at the relations that go into causing a rock to sit in the sun, because we don't consider rocks conscious. We tend to look at the relations that go into behaviors such as the behaviors that neurons exhibit in a living conscious brain as opposed to the behaviors that neurons exhibit when one is buried 6 feet in the Earth in a coffin.

I don't understand why you find this controversial.

 

[rocketdodger]

Reminds me of the question: "if a tree falls in a forest and no body is around to hear it... does it make a sound?"

The correct answer is no. For a sound to register ears are required.

Yet, the question is "does it make a sound" not "is a sound registered."

The logic seems pretty easy to grasp, maybe I am missing something ...

I dunno. What does the similarity do when the observer goes home for the night?

The "similarity" isn't observer dependent ( any more than any other objective property of an entity, like mass, is observer dependent ), it always exists.

 

[rocketdodger]

An open question to all of the anti-computationalist crowd:

In a very restricted view, assume that "consciousness" is what we call it when a person steps out of the way of a car or when a person sees red after looking at a red wall, things like that.

Would you say that the important thing going on there, in the context of consciousness, is that the person moved out of the way of the car, or that the oncoming car caused them to move out of the way?

Would you say that the important thing going on there is that the person saw red after looking at a red wall, or that looking at the red wall caused the person to see red?

Meaning I want to know whether you all think the behaviors of the things or the causal relationships between the behaviors of the things is more important.

 

[Frank Newgent]

Yet, the question is "does it make a sound" not "is a sound registered."

The logic seems pretty easy to grasp, maybe I am missing something ...

Look up the word "sound".

The "similarity" isn't observer dependent ( any more than any other objective property of an entity, like mass, is observer dependent ), it always exists.

If the simulation/similarity is conscious I though maybe it would get into some mischief when the boss went home for the night

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

Reminds me of the question: "if a tree falls in a forest and no body is around to hear it... does it make a sound?"

The correct answer is no. For a sound to register ears are required.

Is that the only “correct” answer? (Or are there also other “correct” answers?)

For instance, there will be no hearing, regardless of how sensitive ears one has, without there being acoustic waves.

Whatever is required to register the sound (sound being oscillation of pressure (as in a mechanical wave)), still implies there is something there to be registered in the first place.

 

[tsig]

So, the elements formed together to form the first living organism. This much I understand, but what about consciousness? This is never really explained, besides "neurons firing together in the brain" to form it, but this explanation never goes further than that when I hear it.

I know this question has probably already been asked in a more eloquent and intelligent way, but that's why the title has the word layman in it. I also ask, because theists or people in the new age mind set usually put a lot of emphases on consciousness as proof of their beliefs. I want to know how it can be explained by physical laws.

The OP starts off by implying that consciousness is beyond physical laws.

 

[rocketdodger]

Look up the word "sound".

Eh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound

 

[Frank Newgent]

Eh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound

And?

Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.

If you don't like your own link's definition consider what Wolfram|Alpha dictated:

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

No. Sound is vibration, transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear, and recognized as sound only at our nerve centers. The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air. If there be no ears to hear, there will be no sound. (According to the question more or less asked in its current form the 1910 book Physics by Charles Riborg Mann and George Ransom Twiss and answered (in its original slightly different form but for which the answer is the same) by Scientific American magazine on April 5, 1884, on page 218.)

http://guybrush.soup.io/post/34776258/Hello-human-What-is-your-name-My

Not intending to derail, just trying to point out sound doesn't occur in a vacuum so to speak

Making an analogy to "meaning" though defining that word is more problematic than defining "sound".

 

[dlorde]

.. You're only giving the illusion of having a discussion.

Or simulating a discussion? [/ironic]

 

[Modified]

If you don't like your own link's definition ...

The first definition there "Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or ..." does not require an observer.

Other definitions do not even require that the vibrations be audible, as in (b) here: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sound .

 

[dlorde]

How many times have you heard things like "In the world of the aquarium" or "In the world of monkeys" or "The rainforest canopy is its own world" or "In the world of the cell," etc. It goes on and on and on and on. Do you make it a point to argue that those are not "worlds" either?

Why the double standard?

You could try using 'context' in place of 'world'.

Although any expression you use can be deliberately misrepresented to subvert your meaning by someone determined to avoid your argument.

 

[Frank Newgent]

The first definition there "Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or ..." does not require an observer.

Other definitions do not even require that the vibrations be audible, as in (b) here: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sound .

What's doing the hearig?

 

[rocketdodger]

What's doing the hearig?

I am pretty sure that means "within a range of frequencies that the average human is capable of hearing" not "within a range of frequencies that a dude standing right there will hear, and if there is no dude standing right there, the range collapses to the empty set."

Just sayin

However I hate to disagree with alpha, perhaps we should just say that "sound" includes the perception of the mechanical waves, and come up with another term for observer-less mechanical waves that "would be" sound if someone was there. How about o-l-sound ( "observer" "less" ).