The idea that consciousness is emergent, substrate independent, and depends only only a very complex arrangement or perhaps some kind of self referential system etc etc makes no sense at all. Then everything about the system is entirely equivalent to its external interpretations, but arbitrary external interpretations can be put onto anything. I can just throw a bag of bits on the ground and read a conscious mind out of it if I stare hard enough.

▲

pixl97 2 days ago | parent [-]

Why does this bother you? Is it an internal sense of ego that seems to be ingrained in our complex set of bits?

Really this is why it took humanity 100,000 years to reach the space age. We cannot look at things emotionally and irrationally and expect to receive rational answers. Consciousness emerges and we can see a gradient of it across different bags of meat. There are also some studies that show signs that plants can show conscious signalling behaviors, at a much reduced set of functionalities than animals.

Maybe this is just the wake up call humanity needs to know that consciousness is not that unique to us?

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox , when does a pile become a heap?

▲

GPerson 2 days ago | parent [-]

I doubt it bothers me in the sense you have in mind. What bothers me is the desire to actually understand it and always see all the smart people stuck on a non-starter. And it’s the first idea most smart people have about what consciousness must be. I also thought this when I was a teenager and after reflecting on it for many years decided it does not work.

I believe animals have consciousness and probably plants may have some kind of qualia so also may have it, so your charges against me seem misdirected. If an AI system happened to have qualia I believe it would depend on its substrate (which might be something we don’t understand yet), not because of how intelligent (how complicated it’s processing). And I believe a different substrate running the same processing may not have qualia. I don’t think we randomly chose the right substrate in the 60s-70s.

And I don’t argue against the idea that concepts like heaps are emergent. You’re making a logical error in assuming you know what consciousness is and thus I don’t know what emergence means. No, I do not think consciousness is emergent in the sense of a sand pile.

And before the army of false dichotomists show up, my position is not biological chauvinism or whatever your LLM has told you about.

▲

pixl97 2 days ago | parent [-]

Now you've put yourself into a trap. "Consciousness is emergent" but also "Consciousness is not emergent". Only one of these statements can be true. Life is that sand pile. We were a pile of chemicals that got hit by lightning or whatever billions of years ago, and from those uncountable chemical and electrical reactions nature evolved a programming machine that reliably produces conscious entities from non-conscious materials. Again, 4 billion year old sand pile.

Personally I reject the hard problem of consciousness. People keep having to try to invent magic, god, or unfound sciences for an issue that is simply complex but right in front of us.

	▲	GPerson 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I didn’t say consciousness is emergent? Given some fundamental mechanism and substrate which is the essence of consciousness sure there will be emergence on top, but I’m not sure how you’re getting me saying consciousness is emergent when I clearly expressed the opposite. You can reject the hard problem, but that just amounts to giving up with pride.