Explain consciousness to the layman.

[punshhh]

Argument from ignorance.

There may be some comments in my post which are found in arguments from ignorance, but I'm not using them to infer anything. I'm merely suggesting a philosophical position in relation to consciousness.

Consciousness is the window or portal through which all things are or can be known.

 

[Leumas]

Oh look, you altered my statement to make your point! Why did you feel the need to do that?

I never said "current computers with current technology of software and hardware." I said I thought it in theory possible, though astronomically difficult, to build a conscious machine.

Nevertheless, I want to read your succinct and clear explanation of why you do NOT think current computers with current technology of software and hardware are capable of achieving consciousness. Is the limit qualitative or quantitative?

I await your response.

My post was not addressing the DETAILS of your conjectures. It was about the way you brag about how long your CV is and the way you think that that makes your speculations more valid.

I was trying to point out that despite my CV being perhaps longer I still hypothesize differently.

Unless of course you are saying that emulation is the way to go not computers which then means that we are in agreement.... but that still does not mean anything.... I personally at least do not think that I am qualified despite my large and long knowledge to brag about it as qualifying me to guess outside the realms of current scientific FACTS despite how much science fiction I am wishing for.

It is not the size of ones knowledge that matters.... it is how it is utilized.... fictive applications of it is not ever going to be as rewarding as applying it to palpable reality.

 

[PixyMisa]

Argument from ignorance.

More like argument from twaddle. Argumentum ad twaddlum.

 

[annnnoid]

Argument from ignorance.

But tsig…we are, in fact, ignorant (as that quote quite clearly establishes). But this case is unique. We’re not ignorant about some distant abstraction (on either a macro or micro scale). The ignorance is the most immediate and fundamental that could exist.

There does not exist (within the epistemology of science) an understanding of either what we are or how we are created. To proceed otherwise is, in fact, the real argument from ignorance.

The obvious question is…how does this ignorance implicate our experience of our condition?

In the world of skeptics…this would seem to be one of those ten-foot-pole issues.

 

[punshhh]

But tsig…we are, in fact, ignorant (as that quote quite clearly establishes). But this case is unique. We’re not ignorant about some distant abstraction (on either a macro or micro scale). The ignorance is the most immediate and fundamental that could exist.

There does not exist (within the epistemology of science) an understanding of either what we are or how we are created. To proceed otherwise is, in fact, the real argument from ignorance.

The obvious question is…how does this ignorance implicate our experience of our condition?

In the world of skeptics…this would seem to be one of those ten-foot-pole issues.

In the UK we say "he wouldn't touch it with a barge pole".

 

[rocketdodger]

What does it matter if 99% of the people don’t understand what you or Pixy are talking about?

It matters because your claim is that the models we reference are "simple."

If 99% of people can't understand those models, I don't see how they can be "simple."

Everything else is irrelevant, I am only making a statement about your claim regarding the "simplicity" of the models.

 

[rocketdodger]

There does not exist (within the epistemology of science) an understanding of either what we are or how we are created.

This is news to me.

Unless you mean like "what caused the big bang," but if you are using our lack of first-cause understanding as a platform to proclaim that we don't know what we are or how we are created, well that is just absurd.

We are a system of particles, just like everything else in the known universe, and we know exactly where we come from -- a sperm and an egg.

 

[Frank Newgent]

This is news to me.

Unless you mean like "what caused the big bang," but if you are using our lack of first-cause understanding as a platform to proclaim that we don't know what we are or how we are created, well that is just absurd.

We are a system of particles, just like everything else in the known universe, and we know exactly where we come from -- a sperm and an egg.

Not necessarily so if we are in a simulation.

 

[westprog]

Argument from ignorance.

The misuse of "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance" is endemic in this discussion. It does not mean that when we don't know the answer that we avoid saying so. That's the opposite of arguing from ignorance. It's accepting ignorance as a fact. It's also not arguing from ignorance to surmise that if certain approaches have failed to explain something, then the solution must lie elsewhere.

It is an argument from ignorance to demand that, say, someone prove that computers aren't conscious, and to assume that they are until such proof is provided.

 

[dlorde]

Not necessarily so if we are in a simulation.

Nor if we were created last Thursday by a random act of God, or any other conceivable means for our existence. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to accept the empirical evidence we have so far obtained as being the best indication we have of our situation until better evidence becomes available.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Well, China hasn't reverse-engineered the latest Intel chips, but researchers have (for example) simulated the activity of a rat neocortical column.

Well now, that's something I have crunched the numbers on personally.

I assume you're talking about Markram's Blue Brain project, which is more accurately an emulation - not that we need to get into those semantics again. Numbers wise, they're doing 10k cells at 1/100x speed, on a 500 Teraflop supercomputer.

This works out to 5 Teraflops (5E12 flops) per real-time neuron. There's enough arguments for and against their choice of simulation fidelity for me to call the whole thing a wash and run with these numbers until we have more data.

The human brain has about 100 billion neurons - 1E11. Assuming embarassing parallelizability, a whole-brain human emulation running in real time would need 5E23 flops, which wikipedia tells me is 500 zettaflops.

A mouse cortex, interestingly enough, has only 4 million neurons and would need only 2E19 flops, or 20 exaflops. This will be used in a bit.

My interest has historically focused on when individual computing clusters will scale up to these capabilities. Distributed systems can leverage lots of power, but latency issues are always going to be a bitch. So, taking computer #500 from Top500, and assuming Moore's Law continues at its present trajectory (it's holding very steady, fyi), we're looking at 2040 before a computer can emulate a human, more likely 2050 or so to give us a bit of leeway with all the assumptions made above.

But if you want to compare it to worldwide computing power, as if we could take every computer on earth and grind them into a thick computronium paste to harness arbitrarily, these guys say that in 2007, the world's general-purpose computing capacity was 6.4E18 ips, call it 6 exaflops, with a growth rate of 58% per year. If that held since, then we passed the global computing power needed to emulate a mouse cortex sometime in 2010.

Well, sure. This particular example doesn't matter. But the broader point about arguments from authority does matter.

You say that like you expect them to listen. We're on page 105. People stopped bothering to read each others' posts, much less take anything said in them to heart, over fifty pages ago. We're now two choirs preaching to ourselves in front of the other. Either satisfied or disappointed, everyone else has left.

 

[punshhh]

Nor if we were created last Thursday by a random act of God, or any other conceivable means for our existence. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to accept the empirical evidence we have so far obtained as being the best indication we have of our situation until better evidence becomes available.

Looks like we're stuck with the school of hard knocks and endless repetition. I don't doubt we'll get there in the end though.

 

[westprog]

OK, apart from the execution of the instruction resulting in an implicit (or explicit) change to the instruction pointer, thus causing the subsequently addressed instruction to be executed, I accept that there can be two successive instructions where the execution of the first doesn't influence the execution of the second (except by causing it to be executed).

So, what was the point of this?

The point is the way people look at computers and computer programs. The object-oriented paradigm has become a very popular way to look at how programs work. There are various objects sending each other messages, changing their states, and performing all kinds of different activities. This can be a productive and helpful way to look at how computers work, but it's only a helpful fiction.

In fact, we have blocks of data, which sits there, doing nothing. Some of the data can be considered as instructions, but all that means is that there are codes with special significance for the processor. It's all data. The processor will look at some piece of data, and do something accordingly. The data won't do anything. The processor is fundamentally a fairly simple device - the 4004 had 2,300 transistors, and is no fundamentally different from an i7 - just slower. The complexity of behaviour arises because the processor overwrites data - in its registers, in RAM, on disc, etc, and changes its behaviour according to what data it reads.

I'm not claiming that this proves anything in particular. However, it does affect what people's intuition might lead them to believe. If someone believes that a person might exist in a simulation - then what is their condition when the processor is executing another bit of code? Are they self-aware then - or just when they are being accessed? What happens to the legs when the processor is executing the arm code?

So much of the discussion of the "world of the computer" relies on metaphor and illusion, which is treated as if it were objectively real.

 

[dafydd]

Looks like we're stuck with the school of hard knocks and endless repetition. I don't doubt we'll get there in the end though.

Yes. One day religion, the paranormal, the mystical and other primitive superstitions will vanish from the world.

 

[rocketdodger]

If someone believes that a person might exist in a simulation - then what is their condition when the processor is executing another bit of code? Are they self-aware then - or just when they are being accessed? What happens to the legs when the processor is executing the arm code?

What is your own condition less than one planck time after you last checked it ?

Thought so.

 

[!Kaggen]

Yes. One day religion, the paranormal, the mystical and other primitive superstitions will vanish from the world.

Yes humans will probably not get off this ball before the sun gets very angry

 

[rocketdodger]

Not necessarily so if we are in a simulation.

Nope, necessarily.

It would just imply that things such as "particles" and "cause" have a slightly different meaning than we tend to think.

You know that thing we call an electron? That is always gonna be an electron, regardless of whether we are in a simulation or not.

 

[dafydd]

Not necessarily so if we are in a simulation.

Those awful Matrix movies with that wooden actor have a lot to answer for.

 

[westprog]

The BBC program about AI is proving quite interesting. Especially when listening to what the people doing this research actually think. Not necessarily what we've been told here.

 

[dafydd]

The BBC program about AI is proving quite interesting. Especially when listening to what the people doing this research actually think. Not necessarily what we've been told here.

I saw that last night. I discovered that my view of AI was skewed.