Why does anyone like the idea of "the Singularity"

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Right. I was lazy last night. I should have said that consciousness could be seen as a signal (like pleasure or pain are) but at the same time seems to be a by-product or a combination of other signals.

As for tasks that can make us "lose" consciousness, I was thinking more about intellectual stuff.

'twas a joke Lord Varys.

That's already where we are in some respects, and there is a lot of resistance to the idea of humans "taking what they want to be in their own hands."

Not quite. In this case it's just saying that while the universe is vast and wondrous our own perceptions are mechanically limited by our biology.

At least originally. Taking "materialism" as a starting point doesn't mean you don't rule out current or future evolutions. Human civilization is what, some few thousand years old? Just the blink of an eye. I'm sure humans will eventually transcend their original condition in ways we can barely imagine today. But I'm afraid you and I can only perform thought experiments on this.

It's not that it isnt conceivable. It's just that Occam's razor doesn't point in that direction, and that a desire to go in that direction can be interpreted as a futile attempt at escaping the human condition and one's mortality.

You've read Homo Deus, right? Remember that chapter in which Harari starts explaining that humans might well end up completely mastering their existence/destiny by manipulating brain chemistry? That seems far more within our reach that working on something whose substance we can't discern.

Perhaps in the far future we will be able to study whether "consciousness" actually transcends materialism somehow, or simply whether it is a specific type of energy emission that can be measured and studied. But absent a scientific revolution I don't think we'll get there in our lifetimes.
I'm afraid that you and I are condemned to live as sapiens. Our children might get something else though.

 

I’ve read Sapiens but not yet read Homo Deus.  It’s on my list.

[Lord Varys]

12 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Lord Varys,

My biggest problem with pure materialism is that it assumes what we currently perceive and know is all that there is.  I firmly believe that the Universe not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.  I expect to be surprised by what we find.

That would only be a problem if you were a dogmatic materialist. I like fantasy/horror/SF stuff - if Q or even even Star Trek's Apollo or 'God' showed up I'd be delighted. But the point to take stuff like that seriously is when they show up, not before.

And how things are out in the universe have pretty much nothing to do with how our brains work, I'm afraid. This we will figure out, and there is simply no space there for souls and spirits and 'magic'.

12 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That includes human consciousness.  Saying consciousness is an illusion is just giving up because consciousness is such a difficult problem to quantify and investigate.  Giving up has never been something I care for.  

You could just as well say you firmly believe in phlogiston or the ether - the way to properly investigate certain questions is to free yourself from your own preconceptions and assumptions and cherished beliefs.

Sure, you cannot feel like what's being me if you are you, but you could definitely learn a lot about how human brains work by investigating mine.

And if we use that AI thing as a parallel - if you built a human-looking robot who succeeded being even more human than Data, behaving exactly like a human being would, then this thing would effectively have the same amount of consciousness as you have.

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

This is an "argument" on the level that the Eiffel Tower is just something working men built from steel but that could be easily destroyed with a bomb, so it is not something that is "there".

That way we get into the nature of concepts and entities and all that - and that based on the limited and biased ontology our naturally evolved perception force on us or make us appear very plausible.

What is there is a living, breathing, thinking human being - because it has a working/healthy brain. Once that's gone, a rapidly decaying corpse remains. Our thinking processes and languages - especially those blasted pronouns - force us to think of *ourselves* as cohesive and coherent entitities but this is not what we are - we are complex bio-chemical entitities, *who* only get a sense of self and all that because *our* neurons work properly.

If you want to know what *you* are - *you* are a neural network which is intricately linked and interacts with and is influenced by *your* cardiovascular system and digestive tract.

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What if the brain is a receiver for consciousness that exists on a level higher than we are currently able to perceive?  If the brain (the reciever) is damaged or altered chemically then the perceptions we get through that receiver would be altered.

Then we would know about all that, because we would *be* the sending consciousness. And we would be able to get at least traces of that esoteric connection between brain/nerves and *the other realm where the mystical higher consciousness is* because we do understand rather well what happens in the brain. We would also be able to recognize it if the brain was a receiver of rather than a generator of consciousness.

I mean, a trivial example is the mental map of a body the brain generates - that's the problem with ghost pain. If you lose a limb your brain has to *understand* and *properly process* that a part of it is missing or otherwise no longer of use. If that doesn't work properly you are stuck with a lot of weird pain *in* nonexisting limbs.

If you are truly interested in this subject read articles by people who actually do brain research.

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Another frustration I have with pure materialists is that they dismiss this possibility not because it isn’t possible, but because it isn’t currently testable.  Lord Kelvin dismissed inquiries into the (then) metaphysical concept of “Atomism” during the 19th century and thought funding inquiry in that direction was a waste of time and money.

That is a straw man argument. There are no such materialists around. Literally nobody is a dogmatist materialist who declares that because something isn't testable yet it should be dismissed out of hand. Most of the results of modern theoretical physics was not testable for quite some time while the particles or ideas hypothesized were put forth - but that didn't stop the people from doing so, no? And literally every physicist you ask a hypothetical question is going to add the caveat 'to our present understanding' or something along those lines.

What can be easily dismissed, though, is a world view based on myths and concepts and stories from the bronze age. While perhaps interesting on a historical or cultural level it makes no sense to take anything going back to this era as guidelines or hypothesis for modern scientific inquiry. There do have to be some standards.

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

We wouldn’t be having this discussion in this venue if Lord Kelvin had been successful and prevented funding research into the then metaphysical idea of Atomism.

Well, Atomism as a metaphyiscal concept is wrong. There are no smallest particles as particles unless I'm mistaken.

1 hour ago, Liffguard said:

The difference is that the Eiffel Tower is a structure, not a process. The Eiffel Tower is still the Eiffel Tower even with the power cut. But a dead brain and a live brain are vitally different, even if the underlying physical structures are identical. The evidence seems to suggest that minds are processes, not objects.

Yeah, if one can make the analogy of working toaster and a broken one. Or better steel, a working monitor used to watch a movie and a broken one. What we call 'consciousness' or 'sense of self' would be 'the inside' of a working toaster or the process of depicting the movie on the screen. It is a crude analogy because we have difficulty ascribing agency and identity to tools and objects we see only as instruments, and also because the brain network is affected by the way it processes incoming stimuli, etc.

Also, it is quite clear that animals - especially mammals - have exactly the same kind of 'consciousness' as human beings - minus the whole forethought/planning stuff we apes needed to properly deal with the social structures our species developed.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Right. I was lazy last night. I should have said that consciousness could be seen as a signal (like pleasure or pain are) but at the same time seems to be a by-product or a combination of other signals.

Oh, well, that was just my reflection on when exactly I think our brains want *us* to feel the most alive. I'd say I'm always conscious when I'm awake - and also when I'm starting to sleep because, as you likely know, you do think you are awake when the person next to year credibly tells you have been snoring too loud...

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

That's already where we are in some respects, and there is a lot of resistance to the idea of humans "taking what they want to be in their own hands."

I know, but that doesn't change the fact that I think doing that could indeed be the one great thing our species - overcoming what it means to be human or mammalian. Those are not things we 'chose'. But if we figured out how to change how we are we could remake ourselves into truly enlightened creatures. We would only be limited by the preconceptions of our biased 'natural way of thinking'.

But this certainly is also a kind of transcendence that's imaginable in analogy to that AI singularity - if we had sufficient knowledge of changing our genetic makeup who could create new humans who are able to figure out a way to better themselves in ways we could not conceive.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

What is there is a living, breathing, thinking human being - because it has a working/healthy brain. Once that's gone, a rapidly decaying corpse remains. Our thinking processes and languages - especially those blasted pronouns - force us to think of *ourselves* as cohesive and coherent entitities but this is not what we are - we are complex bio-chemical entitities, *who* only get a sense of self and all that because *our* neurons work properly.

So, we're rocks who can move and make more rocks that are similar to us, and nothing more?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, Atomism as a metaphyiscal concept is wrong. There are no smallest particles as particles unless I'm mistaken.

The investigation of atomism lead, in large part, to the discovery of quantum phenomena and consequentially our ability to have this discussion in this medium.  Had Lord Kelvin's view prevailed we would be having this discussion over weeks in individualized letters delivered by world postal services. 

[felice]

20 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Doesn't matter how perfect your quiz or your test is. At best you'll have created a perfect copy, perhaps down to the atomic level. But you still won't know if the consciousness itself has been transferred, whether it's the same "person."

Or even if it's a person at all, or just a machine simulating the activity of a brain but without producing a self-aware entity?

20 hours ago, Rippounet said:

The only way you can successfully "prove" that consciousness has been transferred is, again, for a person to sense the world from different bodies at the same time. Anything else, I believe, would be inconclusive.

Even that doesn't do it; if the organic and digital versions are linked, how do you know the consciousness isn't exclusively based in the organic brain?

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, felice said:

Even that doesn't do it; if the organic and digital versions are linked, how do you know the consciousness isn't exclusively based in the organic brain?

Absolutely, even that wouldn't truly be conclusive.

[Lord Varys]

7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So, we're rocks who can move and make more rocks that are similar to us, and nothing more?

Oh, come on, not that creationist nonsense routine. If we more than naked apes with large brains we would have no long ago found out. This kind of entitlement, of self-importance that speech and thought and futile attempts at understanding the universe (which immediately break down when we try to understand spheres and concept we are not evolved to understand and cope with) make us special is one of our worst human traits - but it is understandable, as is 'the natural Platonism' of children. Ascribing agency to the things and beings happening around you comes in handy when you live in world where there are dangerous predators and fellow (proto-)humans around you, you have to deal with on a regular basis.

But it is silly to assume 'the universe as such' or only the local weather god gives a damn about you.

I mean, seriously, if you wish to live on after death, why not also wonder or wish for a toaster or TV set or car heaven? Where do cars do when they no longer work? To the scrapyard ... and we decompose. That's the way things are right now.

Anything else are fairy-tales or fantasy literature, really. Until a point when there is demonstrable evidence that 'spirits' (or whatever) exist.

7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The investigation of atomism lead, in large part, to the discovery of quantum phenomena and consequentially our ability to have this discussion in this medium.  Had Lord Kelvin's view prevailed we would be having this discussion over weeks in individualized letters delivered by world postal services. 

Well, Lord Kelvin was in no way representative of the scientific community of his era nor did he ever speak for them. But as a brief glance on Lord Kevin's Wikipedia article shows: The man believed a lot of fashionable nonsense - among them the vortex theory of the atom - which is hardly a surprise considering the limited scientific knowledge people still had throughout most of the 19th century. Modern Atomic theory only took up steam around the turn of the century with the works of Rutherford and Bohr (in the sense that one could finally start to tackle empirical particles instead of just theorizing on the basis of the qualities of the chemical elements and compounds).

5 hours ago, felice said:

Or even if it's a person at all, or just a machine simulating the activity of a brain but without producing a self-aware entity?

Even that doesn't do it; if the organic and digital versions are linked, how do you know the consciousness isn't exclusively based in the organic brain?

As I tried to point out - we would deal with that kind of problem long before we reached the level of a copying complete memories/personalities (unless we had to take complete detour and could only copy 'brain data' by scanning a brain from the outside and then rebuilding the neural network in a different medium) once we able to have cybernetic brain enhancements.

Think of accesory brain allowing you to store mental states, memories, emotions, etc on a hard drive and to access the mental data of others through that medium. *You* being linked to such a device would be *a completely different person* than you you not or no longer being linked to it. And depending on what kind of data you store on the harddrive brain - or only experience while you are connected to it - you would never be the same once *you* were linked to such a device. In fact, if such a device allowed to erase memories from the biological brain in favor of storage on the artificial device (by stimulating and changing the established synaptic pathways, or however we right now assume memories are stored in the brain) then you might not even know you ever were connected to such a device if you processed your interaction with it on the artificial device itself.

We can only maintain this fiction that personal idenity doesn't change, is fixed, we are in control, etc. because things like that are not possible - yet we still experience such changes within our own brains with the passage of time, the influence of internal and external stimuli, unbalanced brain chemistry, sickness, etc.

The fiction of personhood is very fragile.

But of course a mind copied to some kind of artificial brain eventually controlling his biological body after his biologically brain no longer functions definitely would know (or had means of figuring out) that *it* was generated by said artificial brain.

[felice]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But of course a mind copied to some kind of artificial brain eventually controlling his biological body after his biologically brain no longer functions definitely would know (or had means of figuring out) that *it* was generated by said artificial brain.

Oh yes, it knows, there's just no way for anyone else to verify that.

[Lord Varys]

7 minutes ago, felice said:

Oh yes, it knows, there's just no way for anyone else to verify that.

Well, it would have the same plausibility as my assumption that you are a human being and not a bot or a human being working within the same 'sense of self' parameters as I do.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, come on, not that creationist nonsense routine. If we more than naked apes with large brains we would have no long ago found out. This kind of entitlement, of self-importance that speech and thought and futile attempts at understanding the universe (which immediately break down when we try to understand spheres and concept we are not evolved to understand and cope with) make us special is one of our worst human traits - but it is understandable, as is 'the natural Platonism' of children. Ascribing agency to the things and beings happening around you comes in handy when you live in world where there are dangerous predators and fellow (proto-)humans around you, you have to deal with on a regular basis.

Creationist nonsense?  Could you please point to where I’m espousing “creationism”?  Or, did you not mean to put words in my mouth? 
 

[Lord Varys]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Creationist nonsense?  Could you please point to where I’m espousing “creationism”?  Or, did you not mean to put words in my mouth? 
 

It is a well-known creationist rhetoric 'that we are all rocks'. I didn't say you are creationist, merely that you use their arguments - which wouldn't be an issue if they were good arguments ;-).

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

It is a well-known creationist rhetoric 'that we are all rocks'. I didn't say you are creationist, merely that you use their arguments - which wouldn't be an issue if they were good arguments ;-).

I made that up off the top of my head.  If all we are is replicable animate matter it seems, lacking.  

When you say “creationist” do you mean the kooks who think the Universe is only 6-10,000 years old because they believe in a literal 7 day creation period?

[felice]

47 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, it would have the same plausibility as my assumption that you are a human being and not a bot or a human being working within the same 'sense of self' parameters as I do. 

Not quite. You know organic brains are capable of experiencing a sense of self because you have one, and it's unlikely that other organics would go round claiming to have a sense of self if it wasn't a common thing, so it seems like a safe working assumption. But you have no first-hand knowledge of what digital brain-analogues experience (if anything at all), and you'd expect a good simulation of a human brain to claim to be self-aware even if it's not, so any assumptions are on much shakier ground.

[Lord Varys]

13 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I made that up off the top of my head.  If all we are is replicable animate matter it seems, lacking.  

When you say “creationist” do you mean the kooks who think the Universe is only 6-10,000 years old because they believe in a literal 7 day creation period?

Well, we are rather complex organic molecules which have little in common with the atoms making up granite, say, but, of course, on the lowest levels there shouldn't be any difference between *your* Higgs-Bosons and those of a chair.

Creationism is a broad spectrum. You can take the ridiculous literalist faction as well as people who simply believe they or the world are in some manner created by supernatural forces. Modern evolutionary theory explains the evolution of biological life without any religious or esoteric dogmas or presuppositions and is thus not really in accord with such assumptions.

12 minutes ago, felice said:

Not quite. You know organic brains are capable of experiencing a sense of self because you have one, and it's unlikely that other organics would go round claiming to have a sense of self if it wasn't a common thing, so it seems like a safe working assumption. But you have no first-hand knowledge of what digital brain-analogues experience (if anything at all), and you'd expect a good simulation of a human brain to claim to be self-aware even if it's not, so any assumptions are on much shakier ground.

Well, I could use special pleading for myself and argue only I are proper human being with consciousness. The good old solipsism route ;-).

[And, to be sure, we all do that to a point. Listen to people talking about other people's actions and their own - the criteria are vastly different. Oneself always makes choices, thinks, knows what one wants, explains what happened from a position where one had agency. But when we talk other people we have a strong tendency to imagine those people to determined by outside factors and inner urges and drives they do not control. This is a remarkable difference, in my opinion, and might have to do with the fact that are evolved to view ourselves as in control of our actions even - and especially - because we are not.]

You do have a point that an artificial brain would be very different from a biological one but think about what it would mean if we had created a workable artificial brain which we used to copy the personality/memories of a human being ... it would mean we would know very, very much about technology and mechanism involved. We would know that the neural network in the artificial brain would operate within the same parameters as the biological one, etc.

In fact, for such an artificial brain to properly work as a replacement human brain it would need the ability to also create this sense of self our brains apparently have - else it wouldn't work as a proper copy.

But whether we actually do mean the same thing when talking about (vague) emotional states is an issue that comes up between strictly biological people just the same way.

Part of such a technological recreation of brains/intelligences should involve not to reproduce things volatile things like most emotions - especially not those uncontrollable things like sudden fears, aggression, anger, desire, etc. which go back to basic animal nature - also something like pain would be a completely nonsensical concept in that whole thing. Information that something is no longer working properly is great, but it should not hurt learning that.

Contemplative emotions like awe and wonder when exploring the universe could be replicated. And especially AIs should really have no fear about 'death' or a desire to perpetuate their existence.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Creationism is a broad spectrum. You can take the ridiculous literalist faction as well as people who simply believe they or the world are in some manner created by supernatural forces. Modern evolutionary theory explains the evolution of biological life without any religious or esoteric dogmas or presuppositions and is thus not really in accord with such assumptions.

I can't help but feel there's a degree of straw-manning here. The mainstream religious view is that God/gods use evolution to achieve their ends.

Consciousness itself is a mystery I don't think we'll ever understand.

[Lord Varys]

8 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

I can't help but feel there's a degree of straw-manning here. The mainstream religious view is that God/gods use evolution to achieve their ends.

That is only a view at all since crushed the creationist story we were told up until the 19th century.

If you view natural deterministic processes as being controlled by unseen, elusive forces who work 'in mysterious ways' we cannot (possibly) detect you are outside rational scientific discourse.

8 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Consciousness itself is a mystery I don't think we'll ever understand.

We actually pretty much understand how it is created. We cannot reproduce brains it yet or illustrate in an easily understandable way to the public, but this is no big mystery. I mean, seriously, it is just a minor quality in a working biological entity of considerable complexity. It isn't a bigger mystery than many of the other things the brain can do.

The problem comes from the fact that people thing consciousness is a real thing, something the brain does a lot. But it doesn't.

[The Marquis de Leech]

4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

That is only a view at all since crushed the creationist story we were told up until the 19th century.

If you view natural deterministic processes as being controlled by unseen, elusive forces who work 'in mysterious ways' we cannot (possibly) detect you are outside rational scientific discourse.

We actually pretty much understand how it is created. We cannot reproduce brains it yet or illustrate in an easily understandable way to the public, but this is no big mystery. I mean, seriously, it is just a minor quality in a working biological entity of considerable complexity. It isn't a bigger mystery than many of the other things the brain can do.

The problem comes from the fact that people thing consciousness is a real thing, something the brain does a lot. But it doesn't.

Religion, by definition, is outside rational scientific discourse. God is not a testable hypothesis, therefore science isn't interested in it (science isn't interested in a good number of things, but then science doesn't set out to Know Everything, contrary to the claims of some). I'd also point out that, apart from biblical literalists, mainstream religion was more than happy to get on the evolution bandwagon - it wasn't as if it was a case of kicking-and-screaming.

Your confidence about consciousness flies in the face of everything I have found on the subject:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness

It's called the Hard Problem for a reason.

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Your confidence about consciousness flies in the face of everything I have found on the subject:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness

It's called the Hard Problem for a reason.

Great article, marquis.

To be fair with Lord Varys, it's not that what he says flies in the face of anything, it's just that he's taking position in the debate, one inspired by thinkers like Dennet, while Scot (Scott?) would take the role of Chalmers.

I would take the view that as things stand, science and reason would give a point to Dennet and Lord Varys. However, I don't think that's all there is to it, and more importantly, even if that were the case, it is an illusion or a lie that we humans need. On some level, we need to believe that there is something special about us, about our consciousness, about our soul, lest we devolve into various degrees of nihilism (that was the point of my earlier joke after all).
It's especially important no, of all times, if we are to face the environmental crisis by rejecting extreme forms of socio-economic individualism.

Heliocentrism or the theory of evolution proved that the world does not revolve around humans being that special. But ironically those theories didn't stop us from being something actually special, if anything they helped us grow as a species. Tthe "hard problem" may be similar, and "panpsychism" is a funny way of solving it. We need a way to confront the age-old myths about human souls while keeping the optimism necessary to move forward. We don't know what we'll find exactly just yet, but we know that it'll be as pragmatic and useful as heliocentrism and evolution were. In the meantime, it's best to keep some kind of faith.

 

[The Mother of The Others]

19 hours ago, .H. said:

That is, to say that what we experience as consciousness for-ourselves is not necessarily what consciousness is in-itself.

 Brand name consciousness vs. generic.    Scientists tell us we have the generic one to lower everyone else's self esteem.   

19 hours ago, .H. said:

 in the case of a brain becoming conscious, there isn't some fundamental substance of Mind which makes it so.  In the same way that all the steel in the Eiffel Tower has no "towerness" that makes it a tower.

So consciousness surfs atop the physical structure like Hellboy has that flame floating between his horns.   Ephemeral, not illusionary.  It's real because here we are using it.  Like a can of grease.  The illusions are the things we convince ourselves of once we're conscious.

18 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I'm sure humans will eventually transcend their original condition in ways we can barely imagine today. But I'm afraid you and I can only perform thought experiments on this.

My machine will be able to shift your consciousness from ape brain architecture to mollusk.   For kicks.  Like a new kind of tourism.   And it would replicate, not transfer, to answer your lingering issue from page 1.  It'd build-a-brain in quantum modeling while you waited and got your back waxed.  Then the copy would be so exacting that it'd count as a consciousness transfer when it awoke in the computer world.  You'd remember going in for the waxing/mindcopy procedure, and would understand you'd awoken as a new version in cyberspace. Your body in its coccoon of wax would then be pooped out the side of the spaceship into actual space.

[The Marquis de Leech]

28 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Heliocentrism or the theory of evolution proved that the world does not revolve around humans being that special. 

Nitpick: Heliocentrism was actually moving humans "up in the world", so to speak. The traditional geocentric model had Earth as the cesspit of the cosmos, the lowest part of Creation. Earth being "nowhere special" was an improvement.