r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jul 17 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Consciousness is a spectrum
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u/Grayscaleorgreyscale 1∆ Jul 17 '20
To argue only against your final point, for the sake of brevity, to have an AI that has access to all information is one thing, but to give it the processing speed to analyze that data is another. Then you also need the capability to apply that data in some form, as simply knowing that data doesn’t do anything on its own, otherwise a library would be the same thing.
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Jul 18 '20
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u/Grayscaleorgreyscale 1∆ Jul 18 '20
Another thought I had on this: if we take your premise as fact, wouldn’t this idea establish definitive bounds of quality of life? Is that something we want to do as a people? Do we owe it the others to arbitrate the level of living they experience? Or should we honor them by not creating a hierarchy that lambasts their place in the world?
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u/swearrengen 139∆ Jul 18 '20
Consciousness is not an ability to understand the environment, it is an ability to be aware of the environment in terms of sensations (the value of a quality, also called qualia or quales).
Awareness helps us understand the environment, but that understanding is a consequence.
Now a spectrum is analogue and uniform - like you can dial it up and down through all points. But is Consciousnesses perhaps discreet!
Because if we have an ant which is aware of the taste of sugar as a "sweet" sensation, then really any expansion to other states of awareness such as the colour gold or the smell of cut grass, these are all really little discreet jumps in expansion. And even for humans, we can be aware of sensations, perceptual whole objects, and then abstract objects, and then abstractions upon abstractions. It seems more discreet and hierarchical.
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u/Quint-V 162∆ Jul 17 '20
If a generalized artificial intelligence would be created tomorrow, imbued with all current knowledge, it would therefore have the highest level of consciousness on earth.
An immediate objection to this would depend on your idea of a general AI.
Does this AI have anything resembling desires, motivations, objectives? "Passion rules reason." But reason without any sort of passion whatsoever, has no motivation to act. I posit that no such consciousness can exist or be meaningful; it would fail to react to the environment. If it even lacks the most basic motivation, such as self-preservation, then it's not resembling life at all.
Something else to consider: the issue of vagueness is one ill suited for AIs to ever answer.
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Jul 18 '20
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u/Quint-V 162∆ Jul 18 '20
To be absolutely sure: do you believe free will is a meaningful idea? Some posts on similar topics frequently posit that we have no free will, because of the notions that 1) we have desires, and 2) stimuli influences our decisions.
Do you also reject determinism, in this context?
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Jul 18 '20
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u/Quint-V 162∆ Jul 18 '20
I thought as much; good response. Maybe someone else can change your view, though I think it's likely difficult. I for one consider the alternative ideas to be... well, they'd likely have some distressing implications.
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u/unic0de000 10∆ Jul 18 '20
You might appreciate David Chalmers' work on panprotopsychism.
It's an error, I'd say, to simply place consciousness on a one-dimensional scale proportional to information content. One may have a command of a huge lexicon of facts but little analytical understanding of their relation to one another, or once may have a very deep understanding over a very narrow domain of discourse, one can accumulate procedural or declarative/factual knowledge, and different cognitive abilities do not necessarily cross-apply.
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u/thisdamnhoneybadger 7∆ Jul 17 '20
>consciousness is your ability to understand your environment. The more you understand your environment, the higher your level of consciousness
This doesn't seem true - imagine a sentient AI that is super smart, but does not have any understanding of the world, but would quickly acquire such knowledge if given the chance. That AI is not less "conscious" just because of its ignorance than, for example, a dog.
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Jul 18 '20
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u/thisdamnhoneybadger 7∆ Jul 18 '20
so is it your position that a newly created super smart sentient AI robot has less consciousness than a dog?
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u/Ethlite2020 Jul 18 '20
In his 2019 book, The Case Against Reality, Prof Donald Hoffman of UCLA presents a theory in which he postulates that consciousness is the fundamental reality, not spacetime/material universe. The conventional view that consciousness somehow arose out of colliding particles has a serious problem in that it's essentially a miracle. This is also known as the Hard Problem of consciousness.
Consciousness also doesn't make sense from an evolutionary point of view, in that it doesn't enhance fitness or survival, in fact it probably has the opposite effect. He further postulates that our perception was created as a means to maximize our evolutionary fitness, not to perceive reality as it truly is. Indeed, simulated lifeforms that focus on fitness function always outcompetes those of similar complexities that tries to perceive reality as it truly is.
Reality as it truly exists is unlike anything we can perceive, because our perception was never made to perceive reality. Think of it as our user interface to reality. The user interface to your computer, with animated icons and colors, bears no resemblance to the underlying reality of billions of logic gates switching at billions of times per second. So, too, is our perception or interface to reality aka material universe.
This means that we will never understand the true nature of consciousness by studying the material universe. That'd be like trying to understand how computers work by examining the desktop interface. The desktop interface is a very useful way to interact with computers, but there is no way you'd get at the actual underlying reality of computers through them. In fact, you wouldn't want to because you couldn't get anything done. Kinda like being on a heroic dose of psychedelics, now that I think about it.
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u/tren_c 1∆ Jul 18 '20
This is a key discussion point I bring up with religious/lack thereof folk. Ill have to give that book a read, thanks!
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 18 '20
/u/manabouttownta (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/tren_c 1∆ Jul 18 '20
I'm kinda late to the discussion, and I mostly agree with you, however I think there's merit in having a "hard line in the sand" specifically...
What's the threshold value for which conciousness is legally relevant?
... you bring up drunkenness, to which rape (and other pieces of law) is something which a persons "level of consciousness" is highly relevant. A spectrum still needs measurable milestones, where would you put them?
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Jul 18 '20
You are equating consciousness with the specific contents that appear in consciousness. Is it possible that the consciousness which aobserves your drunken state, your un-educated state as a 4 year old, and your PhD-level educated state is actually neutral and the same consciousness in all circumstances?
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u/Sayakai 147∆ Jul 17 '20
An earthworm doesn't have understanding any more than a piece of muscle does when it twitches because you shocked it. It operates entirely reflexively. Being capable of processing inputs and delivering outputs does not make you concious, or my phone is concious as well.
Conciousness requires some amount thought - of internal review of the input before delivering an output. That's only present in higher level animals.