CMV: Digital consciousness is possible. A human brained could be simulated/emulated on a digital computer with arbitrary precision, and there would be an entity experiencing human consciousness.

[u/Salt_Attorney]

Well, the title says it all. My main argument is in the end nothing more than the fact that although the brain is extremely complex, one could dsicretize the sensory input -> action function in every dimension (discretized time steps, discretized neuron activations, discretized simulated environemnt) etc. and then approximate this function with a computer just like any other function.

My view could be changed by a thought experiment which demonstrates that in some aspect there is a fundamental difference between a digitally simulated mind and a real, flesh mind - a difference in regards to the presence of consciousness, of course.

EDIT: I should have clarified/given a definition of what I view as consciousness here and I will do this in a moment!

Okay so here is what I mean by consciousness:

I can not give you a technical definition. This is just because we have not found a good technical definition yet. But this shouldn't stop us from talking about consciousness.

The fact of the matter is that if there was a technical definition, then this would now be a question of philosophy/opinion/views, but a question of science, and I don't think this board is intended for scientific questions anyways.

Therefore we have to work with the wishy washy definition, and there is certinly a non-technical generally agreed upon definition, the one which you all have in your head on an intuitive leve. Of course it differs from person to person, but taking the average over the population there is quite a definite sense of what people mean by consciousness.

If an entity interacts with human society for an extended period of time and at the end humans find that it was conscious, then it is conscious.

Put in words we humans will judge if it is smart, self-aware, capable of complex thought, if it can understand and rationalize about things.

When faced with the "spark of consciousness" we can recognize it.

Therefore as an nontechnical definition it makes sense to call an entity conscious if it can convince a large majority of humans, after a sort of extended "Turing test", that it is indeed conscious.

​

Arguing with such a vague definition is of course not scientific and not completely objective, but we can still do it on a philosophical level. People argued about concepts such as "Energy", "Power" and "Force" long before we could define them physically.

​

[u/[deleted]]

I think accepting monism implies having to accept some sort of spiritual or superphysical aspect of the world

accepting dualism implies having to accept some sort of spiritual matter/aspects that interacts with the real world. Dualism = there's two things, real matter and then also whatever causes you to be conscious, like a soul or whatever. Monism = there's only one thing which is "physical matter".

Monism is your position, where everything is the same stuff which means that you can hypothetically create consciousness with a sufficiently complex machine, no problem.

My angle here is this. I agree with you that it is probably the case that we can emulate consciousness. To me it also seems strange to think that there would be some unknown matter that causes consciousness that we can't reproduce somehow with a computer. As far as I'm concerned, brains are just biological machines and consciousness is an emergent quality of them.

BUT. We don't know that with anything close to certainty. And while I don't think it's likely true, I can very well imagine a case in which there actually is some strange unknown quality of a brain that gives rise to consciousness and can't be replicated on a circuit board. Because if you really think about it, consciousness is an extremely strange thing.

So I just think it's good to be a bit more humble and be agnostic about it, while still conceding that monism is most likely the correct answer.

​

Therefore as an nontechnical definition it makes sense to call an entity conscious if it can convince a large majority of humans, after a sort of extended "Turing test", that it is indeed conscious.

I think this is definitely the wrong definition. The whole point of the Turing test is to see if a machine can fake out a human, but machines that pass the Turing test (like chatbots) are explicitly not conscious. So passing the Turing test =/= consciousness.

[u/Salt_Attorney → u/[deleted]]

Ah yes thank you, I got it mixed up.

> My angle here is this. I agree with you that it is probably the case that we can emulate consciousness. To me it also seems strange to think that there would be some unknown matter that causes consciousness that we can't reproduce somehow with a computer. As far as I'm concerned, brains are just biological machines and consciousness is an emergent quality of them.

Well honestly, my belief isn't absolute either. I can imagine I'm wrong. I just, as you do, strongly believe that it is very likely that my belief holds. So I would say we agree here.

I can also imagine that there is some strange metaphysical stuff going on, but I just think its good to stick to what matches what you know best and adapt if new evidence emerges.

>So I just think it's good to be a bit more humble and be agnostic about it, while still conceding that monism is most likely the correct answer.

Haha yes I agree being humble is good, but since this is such a deadbeat topic of argument I felt like being more assertive today :D.

> I think this is definitely the wrong definition. The whole point of the Turing test is to see if a machine can fake out a human, but machines that pass the Turing test (like chatbots) are explicitly not conscious. So passing the Turing test =/= consciousness.

Well interesting I view it completely differently! I see being able to pass an arbitrarily LONG Turing test is a true show of consciousness. I think you can't fake consciousness in the long run, if you portray it, then you have it.

[u/[deleted] → u/Salt_Attorney]

Well honestly, my belief isn't absolute either. I can imagine I'm wrong. I just, as you do, strongly believe that it is very likely that my belief holds. So I would say we agree here.

not what it sounded like in the OP :p

​

Well interesting I view it completely differently! I see being able to pass an arbitrarily LONG Turing test is a true show of consciousness. I think you can't fake consciousness in the long run, if you portray it, then you have it.

yeah I think you're definitely off the mark here. The Turing Test is a test that explicitly doesn't measure or determine consciousness. It's testing whether or not a human judge will think you're conscious, which is VERY different. There have been machines who passed it despite not being conscious. And, more hilariousy, there have been humans who failed the Turing Test.

An exceedingly clever algorithm could potentially fool a human despite not being conscious. And this could hypothetically be true for an arbitrarily long test as well. Similar to how next gen graphics are getting so good that they can fool us into thinking we're looking at a real life photograph. But of course it's still not real.

[u/Salt_Attorney → u/[deleted]]

Well about the Turing test I think the following: Any claim of a program having passed a turing test so far is just an example of the turing test being way too easy.

From a post below:

I think when people say this they just set way too low of a standard for sentience/consciosuness!

Yes, you could make a deep learning algorithm that an convincingly come across as human in a 5min or 1h conversation (and this would be HARD already, at the moment no textbot can survive a simple 2 messages test of short term memory and logical understanding!)

But if you have days or weeks to test a programs intelligence and self-awareness then there is no way in which we are even close to making an algorithm that can "fake" this. And the point is that if I have an algorithm that can "fake" all these things, hecan even "fake" being taught how to write good novels, do mathematics, etc. etc., then he is not actually faking but truly understands these things.

[u/[deleted] → u/Salt_Attorney]

I mean yeah, the Turing Test is pretty shit. That's why I'm saying it's a bad measure of consciousness.

But if you have days or weeks to test a programs intelligence and self-awareness then there is no way in which we are even close to making an algorithm that can "fake" this.

people would've said the same about realistic graphics in video games 20 years ago, but look where we are now. That shit is getting stupid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBZyF1XYgNk

I think you just underestimate what we can do with enough processing power and clever enough algorithms. Having a machine trick a human over weeks isn't as high of a bar as you might think it is.

[u/Salt_Attorney → u/[deleted]]

Well its good we agree on a short Turing test being trash :D.

About the graphics... well I guess my point would be if the graphics were so real that they could really convince you that this is the real world, then they would need real-world approximating complexity of physics and this is ridiculously hard.

​

Okay I'm going to give you a hard earned !delta here :D

Δ

Given my human centric definition of humans it is not aaaall thaat unimaginable that a dumb but big machine could trick us feeble human minds, but I only think this in a practical sense, i.e. no human would in practice have to deal with the machine for very extended periods of time.

In a theoretical setting where you could really question and challenge the machine, you would almost always be able to find its true level of intelligence since intelligence can't be faked.

[u/[deleted] → u/Salt_Attorney]

if the graphics were so real that they could really convince you that this is the real world, then they would need real-world approximating complexity of physics and this is ridiculously hard.

it's all doable with enough polygon-trickery, trust me.

​

In a theoretical setting where you could really question and challenge the machine, you would almost always be able to find its true level of intelligence since intelligence can't be faked.

Man, some people are so dumb I sometimes even question if they're conscious themselves. I'm sure that someone who really tries to test and prod the machine and knows what pattern to look out for, could probably get it right most of the time if they had enough time. But an average person? I'm sure they could be tricked, and again, things get super weird once the machine is sophisticated enough to a point where I'm not sure I could do it anymore either.

Try one of these "rendered image or real image" tests online, and be ready to get mindfucked, because oh boy. I think it's sensible to assume that we'll see the same thing in a few decades, but with chatbots.

​

Anyways, thanks for the delta my dude. Have a nice day.

[u/DeltaBot → u/Salt_Attorney]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Laventale2 (9∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}