| > You don't even know what physics or particles are as yet undiscovered You would not need the simulation to be perfect; there is ample evidence that our brains a quite robust against disturbances. > just because you simulated a brain atom by atom, does not mean you have a consciousness. If you don't want that to be true, you need some kind of magic, that makes the simulation behave differently from reality. How would a simulation of your brain react to an question that you would answer "consciously"? If it gives the same responds to the same inputs, how could you argue it isnt't conscious? > If it is the arrangement of matter that gives rise to consciousness, then would that new consciousness be the same person or not? The simulated consciousness would be a different one from the original; both could exist at the same time and would be expected to diverge. But their reactions/internal state/thoughts could be matched at least for an instant, and be very similar for potentially much longer. I think this is just Occams razor applied to our minds: There is no evidence whatsoever that our thinking is linked to anything outside of our brains, or outside the realm of physics. |
| > "quite robust against disturbances." does not mean that the essential thing gives rise to consciousness is only approximate. To give an example from software, you can write software is robust against bad input, attempts to crash it, even bit flips. But, if I came in and just changed a single character in the source code, that may cause it to fail compilation, fail to run, or become quite buggy. > If you don't want that to be true, you need some kind of magic, This is just what I'm saying is a false dichotomy. The only reason some are unable to see beyond it is that we think the basic logic we understand are all there could be. In this respect physics has been very helpful, because without peering into reality, we would have kept deluding ourselves that pure reason was enough to understand the world. It's like trying to explain quantum mechanics to a well educated person or scientist from the 16th century without the benefit of experimental evidence. No way they'd believe you. In fact, they'd accuse you of violating basic logic. |
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| ▲ | myrmidon 3 days ago | parent [-] | | How is it a false dichotomy? If you want consciousness to NOT be simulateable, then you need some essential component to our minds that can't be simulated (call it soul or whatever) and for that thing to interface with our physical bodies (obviously). We have zero evidence for either. > does not mean that the essential thing gives rise to consciousness is only approximate But we have 8 billion different instances that are presumably conscious; plenty of them have all kinds of defects, and the whole architecture has been derived by a completely mechanical process free of any understanding (=> evolution/selection). On the other hand, there is zero evidence of consciousness continuing/running before or after our physical brains are operational. | | |
| ▲ | prmph 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > plenty of them have all kinds of defects, Defects that have not rendered them unconscious, as long as they still are alive. You seem not to see the circularity of your argument. I gave you an example to show that robustness against adverse conditions is NOT the same as internal resiliency. Those defect, as far as we know, are not affecting the origin of consciousness itself. Which is my point. > How is it a false dichotomy? If you want consciousness to NOT be simulateable, then you need some essential component to our minds that can't be simulated (call it soul or whatever) and for that thing to interface with our physical bodies (obviously). If you need two things to happen at the same time in sync with each other no matter if they are separated by billions of miles, then you need faster-than-light travel, or some magic [1]; see what I did there? 1. I.e., quantum entanglement | | |
| ▲ | myrmidon 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > If you need two things to happen at the same time in sync with each other no matter if they are separated by billions of miles, then you need faster-than-light travel, or some magic [1]; see what I did there? No. Because even if you had solid evidence for the hypothesis that quantum mechanical effects are indispensable in making our brains work (which we don't), then that is still not preventing simulation. You need some uncomputable component, which physics right now neither provides nor predicts. And fleeing into "we don't know 100% of physics yet" is a bad hypothesis, because we can make very accurate physical predictions already-- you would need our brains to "amplify" some very small gap in our physical understanding, and this does not match with how "robust" the operation of our brain is-- amplifiers, by their very nature, are highly sensitive to disruption or disturbances, but a human can stay conscious even with a particle accelerator firing through his brain. | |
| ▲ | tsimionescu 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If you need two things to happen at the same time in sync with each other no matter if they are separated by billions of miles, then you need faster-than-light travel, or some magic [1] This makes no sense as written - by definition, there is no concept of "at the same time" for events that are spacelike separated like this. Quantum entanglement allows you to know something about the statistical outcomes of experiments that are carried over a long distance away from you, but that's about it (there's a simpler version, where you can know some facts for certain, but that one actually looks just like classical correlation, so it's not that interesting on its own). I do get the point that we don't know what we don't know, so that a radical new form of physics, as alien to current physics as quantum entanglement is to classical physics, could exist. But this is an anti-scientific position to take. There's nothing about consciousness that breaks any known law of physics today, so the only logical position is to suppose that consciousness is explainable by current physics. We can't go around positing unknown new physics behind every phenomenon we haven't entirely characterized and understood yet. | | |
| ▲ | prmph 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > There's nothing about consciousness that breaks any known law of physics today, so the only logical position is to suppose that consciousness is explainable by current physics Quite the claim to make | | |
| ▲ | tsimionescu 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Is it? It's quite uncontroversial I think that consciousness has no special impact in physics, there's no physical experiment that is affected by a consciousness being present or not. Electrons don't behave differently if a human is looking at them versus a machine, as far as any current physical experiment has ever found. If we agree on this, then it follows logically that we don't need new physics to explain consciousnesses. I'm not claiming it's impossible that consciousness is created by physics we don't yet know - just claiming that it's also not impossible that it's not. Similarly, we don't fully understand the pancreas, and it could be that the pancreas works in a way that isn't fully explainable by current physics - but there's currently no reason to believe that, so we shouldn't assume that. | | |
| ▲ | prmph a day ago | parent [-] | | > It's quite uncontroversial I think that consciousness has no special impact in physics, there's no physical experiment that is affected by a consciousness being present or not. Electrons don't behave differently if a human is looking at them versus a machine, as far as any current physical experiment has ever found. Way to totally miss the point. We can't detect or measure consciousness, so therefore there is nothing to explain. /s Like an LLM that deletes or emasculates tests it is unable to make pass. I know I am conscious, I also know that the stone in my hand is not. I want to understand why. It is probably the most unexplainable thing. It does not mean we ignore it. If you want to dispute that my consciousness has no physical import nor consequence, well, then we will have to agree to disagree. | | |
| ▲ | tsimionescu a day ago | parent [-] | | My point is this: find a physical experiment that can't be entirely explained by the physical signs of consciousness (e.g. electrochemical signals in the brain). As long as none can be found, there is no reason to believe that new physics is required to explain consciousness - my own or yours. |
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