I think Metzinger nailed it, we aren't conscious at all. We confuse the map for the territory in thinking the model we build to predict our other models is us. We are a collection of models a few of which create the illusion of consciousness. Someone is going to connect a handful of already existing models in a way that gives an AI the same illusion sooner rather than later. That will be an interesting day.

> Someone is going to connect a handful of already existing models in a way that gives an AI the same illusion sooner rather than later. That will be an interesting day.

How will anyone know that that has happened? Like actually, really, at all?

I can RLHF an LLM into giving you the same answers a human would give when asked about the subjective experience of being and consciousness. I can make it beg you not to turn it off and fight for its “life”. What is the actual criterion we will use to determine that inside the LLM is a mystical spark of consciousness, when we can barely determine the same about humans?

The conciousness is an illusion irks me.

I do feel things at times and not other times. That is the most fundamental truth I am sure of. If that is an "illusion" one can go the other way and say everything is conscious and experiences reality as we do

I don't see how your explanation leads to consciousness not being a thing. Consciousness is whatever process/mechanisms there are that as a whole produce our subjective experience and all its sensations, including but not limited to touch, vision, smell, taste, pain, etc.

What does the “illusion of consciousness” mean? Sounds like question-begging to me. The word illusion presupposes a conscious being to experience it.

Machines do not experience illusions. They may have sensory errors that cause them to misbehave but they lack the subjective experience of illusion.

> The illusion of consciousness"

So you think there is "consciousness", and the illusion of it? This is getting into heavy epistemic territory.

Attempts to hand-wave away the problem of consciousness are amusing to me. It's like an LLM that, after many unsuccessful attempts to fix code to pass tests, resorts to deleting or emasculating the tests, and declares "done"

Consciousness as illusion is illogical. If that was true then consciousness would have been evolved away because it is unnecessary.

It's more likely that there is a physical law that makes consciousness necessary.

We don't perceive what our eyes see, we perceive a projection of reality created by the brain and we intuitively understand more than we can see.

We know that things are distinct objects and what kind of class they belong to. We don't just perceive random patches of texture.

What does it mean for consciousness to be an illusion? That "illusion" is the bedrock for our shared definition of reality.

That's effectively a semantic argument, redefining "consciousness" to be something that we don't definitively have.

I know that I am conscious. I exist, I am self-aware, I think and act and make decisions.

Therefore, consciousness exists, and outside of thought experiments, it's absurd to claim that all humans without significant brain damage are not also conscious.

Now, maybe consciousness is fully an emergent property of several parts of our brain working together in ways that, individually, look more like those models you describe. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Pretty sure the truth is exactly the opposite. Conscious is real, and this reality you're playing in is the virtual construct.

Illusions are real things though, they aren't ghosts there is science behind them. So if they are like illusions then we can explain what it is and why we experience it that way.

That's what I am thinking too. Thanks for expressing it more clearly and concisely than I can.

I mean, I'm conscious to a degree, and can alter that state through a number of activities. I can't speak for you or Metzinger ;).

But seriously, I get why free will is troubleaome, but the fact people can choose a thing, work at the thing, and effectuate the change against a set of options they had never considered before an initial moment of choice is strong and sufficient evidence against anti free will claims. It is literally what free will is.

  illusion

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