Why does anyone like the idea of "the Singularity"

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

55 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Ha. You're definitely getting etted by Alexa's Basilisk. You at the top of her list, you wax tablet-reading mothafucka. 

You have quite convinced me.  I think AI sounds great and look forward to its enlightening presence.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Consciousness, personality, identity is just an illusion created by the brain ... meaning if the process is properly replicated the same kind of illusion could also *convince* artificial creations that they are *conscious*. Why one would want to do that I don't really know ... but to copy a human mental state/personality/identity/whatever is certainly better than to let them disappear completely. Unless, of course, you think human memories don't need to be preserved.

So, we are not actually conscious?

[Werthead]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So, we are not actually conscious?

In some philosophical viewpoints (I believe this is Scott Bakker's position), so. We think we are conscious but not really. But as thinking we are conscious is as close to consciousness as we are going to get, why worry about it?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

In some philosophical viewpoints (I believe this is Scott Bakker's position), so. We think we are conscious but not really. But as thinking we are conscious is as close to consciousness as we are going to get, why worry about it?

I hate the we’re just meat arguments.  They ignore transcendental ideas compeletely.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

3 hours ago, red snow said:

Post-humanism/ singularity while interesting is a bit like our progenitor species looking forward to becoming homo sapiens. In both cases one species is replaced so I'm personally not too excited about it happening even if it's inevitable.

We're also wildly optimistic about whether AI will need or desire human cyborgs. I think AI or post humans may as well be alien in terms of how they think, feel and justify their actions.

I think i was one of the few people who felt the dark mirror episode about a digitised afterlife was sad in the sense someone was ok leaving family behind for it. I'm not even religious but perhaps because of that, the idea of a digital me is terrifying. Not because I don't think it would be me but because it would think it was me and if they can put me in heaven they can put me in hell. And the system would be monetised in such a way the quality of your afterlife would no doubt depend on how your funds or your descendents funds last.

It's funny you mention rapture as i suspect that's how it will role out with the rich/"worthy" ascending and leaving the rest of us to rot (or keep their servers running)

Is it possible we're already AI, and that how we think and feel (and what we consider right/wrong) that which is gleaned through cultural norms (religion, for example) is actually programming?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

18 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

You're still dodging the issue, which is telling apart perfectly replicated consciousness from actually transferred consciousness.

It's kinda troubling as a matter of fact. You... You are human, right?

We're inside the computer. 

[Rippounet]

44 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Is it possible we're already AI, and that how we think and feel (and what we consider right/wrong) that which is gleaned through cultural norms (religion, for example) is actually programming?

Worst programming ever. Someone forgot to debug the bloody thing before launch.

52 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So, we are not actually conscious?

We're all conscious but some of us are more conscious than others.

Jokes aside, what Wert said. Consciousness could be described as a kind of feedback loop wherein you think about thinking/experiencing/sensing. We don't know whether the "sense of self" we all get is real or an illusion produced from... the sum of our memories (and their chemical traces in our brain) for instance. For all we know consciousness is as much a signal as pain or pleasure are. I'd posit we don't even continually experience consciousness, our brains are often focused on specific tasks that don't require it ; and consciousness can be affected by drugs or brain damage. Which is to say that on some level it is a form of code.
But we don't have to care. He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
As for transcendence I'd say it's a chicken and egg thing: do you form a concept of transcendence before achieving it, or can a human actually achieve transcendence without having already considered it on some level? I'd say the former.
Pet theory: we're apes with anxiety. We're not at the top of the food chain so our brains evolved to constantly make us think about our surroundings. Our collaborative instincts led us to develop increasingly complex views of said surroundings, until we started living in the concepts born from our anxiety. And what we think of as "transcendent" is just ways in which our brains can momentarily tone the anxiety down by focusing on things not directly linked to survival. And of course, now that survival is not a day-to-day struggle anymore we're not sure what to do with anxiety. I'll assume none of us on this forum have to care about finding food or shelter tonight, but that we all live in societies that have recreated conditions for competition and fear, because we just can't escape the wiring of our anxious brains and thus will never be able to achieve actual freedom or transcendence.

Yeah, I'm fun at parties.

[Altherion]

5 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Why is the Singularity appealing to people?

Part of it is because the idea encompasses much more than uploading a human consciousness to a computer. In fact, it's not even primarily about that (though this digitization is a common proposed side effect). Singularity is about making a machine that qualitatively smarter than a human which means that it is capable of constructing an even smarter machine and so on until some fundamental limits grounded in the laws of physics are reached. At that point, it might, among many other things, be able to tell you what (if anything) would be lost in format shifting human consciousness... but it will definitely be able to do other things too. For example, it could figure out how to most efficiently extract the excess carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere. Or design an easily built fusion reactor. Or cure all diseases and reverse aging in humans. It would be like being able to interact with a techno-god -- the closest thing to a deity possible inside our universe.

Of course, when presented this scenario, the first reaction of a lot of people (perhaps the majority?) is: wait a minute, but what if it's not a nice god? A lot of science fiction has been written on this subject. In fact, Vernor Vinge himself (the professor who coined this usage of "singularity") wrote a really good book called A Deepness in the Sky which I highly recommend and a bunch of futurists (including some very wealthy ones) have been thinking about how to avoid this.

[maarsen]

25 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Part of it is because the idea encompasses much more than uploading a human consciousness to a computer. In fact, it's not even primarily about that (though this digitization is a common proposed side effect). Singularity is about making a machine that qualitatively smarter than a human which means that it is capable of constructing an even smarter machine and so on until some fundamental limits grounded in the laws of physics are reached. At that point, it might, among many other things, be able to tell you what (if anything) would be lost in format shifting human consciousness... but it will definitely be able to do other things too. For example, it could figure out how to most efficiently extract the excess carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere. Or design an easily built fusion reactor. Or cure all diseases and reverse aging in humans. It would be like being able to interact with a techno-god -- the closest thing to a deity possible inside our universe.

Of course, when presented this scenario, the first reaction of a lot of people (perhaps the majority?) is: wait a minute, but what if it's not a nice god? A lot of science fiction has been written on this subject. In fact, Vernor Vinge himself (the professor who coined this usage of "singularity") wrote a really good book called A Deepness in the Sky which I highly recommend and a bunch of futurists (including some very wealthy ones) have been thinking about how to avoid this.

I am with Roger Penrose on this. AI will never happen. Penrose has a better track record than those who think the singularity will come about. 

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

In some philosophical viewpoints (I believe this is Scott Bakker's position), so. We think we are conscious but not really. But as thinking we are conscious is as close to consciousness as we are going to get, why worry about it?

Those are not only philosophical viewpoints but essentially the result of all the brain research we got so far. In fact, there are even studies of people who woke up from a severe coma and lost (some only for a time) the sense of self. The feeling of having a self or being a person is something a working brain generates, it is not something that is *there*. And it goes away piece by piece when you suffer from Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia.

In fact, they are now even doing studies to assess how decision-making is influenced by your last meal. There is significant evidence that food affecting the brain chemistry affects the kind of decision a person makes. We are that volantile creatures. There is nothing of substance (pun intended) in our minds.

Our brains generate a virtual self, a sort of cohesive illusion that there is a self doing things, but pretty much all research done on the subject indicates processes *we as persons* cannot control *run the show*.

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I hate the we’re just meat arguments.  They ignore transcendental ideas compeletely.

Well, you can start a club with Thomas Nagel ;-). But arguments from personal incredulity are just that. I'd also prefer to be biologically female (more intense orgasms), would like to be able to see gamma rays (like Dean Stockwell), and to have the life expectancy of an average member of the Q Continuum. But that simply isn't the case. One has to get over that kind of thing.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Worst programming ever. Someone forgot to debug the bloody thing before launch.

We're all conscious but some of us are more conscious than others.

Jokes aside, what Wert said. Consciousness could be described as a kind of feedback loop wherein you think about thinking/experiencing/sensing. We don't know whether the "sense of self" we all get is real or an illusion produced from... the sum of our memories (and their chemical traces in our brain) for instance. For all we know consciousness is as much a signal as pain or pleasure is. I'd posit we don't even continually experience consciousness, our brains are often focused on specific tasks that don't require it ; and consciousness can be affected by drugs or brain damage. Which is to say that on some level it is a form of code.

I'd say that we are most aware/alive when we feel angry, afraid, are in pain, or think we might die any moment now. We are not lost in thought when adrenalin kicks in and we are about attack somebody or run away. There is a reason why people still remember what they did when they first heard about the twin towers.

But the whole thing of *being oneself* or *having a self* (whatever you phrase that in English) is something the brain generates to work better. Our complex social life nonsense needs so much capacity to interpret the behavior of others to ensure our constant survival, etc. that we developed in a way to create a pretty accurate mental picture of little world we live in.

In fact, there are people who theorize that *consciousness* and *sense of self* in combination  is actually an evolutionary disadvantage or at least a primary root for depression and suicide because we are very well aware that knowledge about ourselves and the world is one of the prime reason of unhappiness (pretty much any myth or fairy-tale whining about the loss of innocence and the beauty of the garden attests to that).

Depression can be seen as the brain being unable to maintain proper functions by no longer being able to bridge the gap between reality and the way we want to see ourselves.

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

But we don't have to care. He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

But you don't have to make yourself a beast (not that there is any difference between man and beast in any relevant sense). Why not trying to overcome problematic aspects of being what we are?

This whole transhumanism thing is a very interesting SF background insofar as one can speculate how to redesign the species if you could do it. Starting with proper knee joints designed for a bipedal species followed by a proper separation of the orifices for breathing/ingestion and pleasure/defecation.

And I think the most liberating thing the human species could do is break the shackles of what they were made to by evolution (basically just some naked apes with half the muscle mass of chimpanzees) and to actually take what they want to be in their own hands. If we gain the ability to actually remake ourselves in whatever image we want then we could create individuals who are much more in control of themselves.

Of course that's something very much down the road of history ... but the idea that the status quo is good or how it should be by default is just silly.

15 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Part of it is because the idea encompasses much more than uploading a human consciousness to a computer. In fact, it's not even primarily about that (though this digitization is a common proposed side effect). Singularity is about making a machine that qualitatively smarter than a human which means that it is capable of constructing an even smarter machine and so on until some fundamental limits grounded in the laws of physics are reached. At that point, it might, among many other things, be able to tell you what (if anything) would be lost in format shifting human consciousness... but it will definitely be able to do other things too. For example, it could figure out how to most efficiently extract the excess carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere. Or design an easily built fusion reactor. Or cure all diseases and reverse aging in humans. It would be like being able to interact with a techno-god -- the closest thing to a deity possible inside our universe.

Yeah, that's the thing, and that's how I meant that in the other thread. I think it is very evident that this kind of thing influenced the use of the super computer Control in ST: Discovery and might also be behind the whole AI story in ST: Picard right now - something I find not that great because it is clearly derived from current thoughts and should be something the ST society should have resolved one way or the other.

15 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Of course, when presented this scenario, the first reaction of a lot of people (perhaps the majority?) is: wait a minute, but what if it's not a nice god? A lot of science fiction has been written on this subject. In fact, Vernor Vinge himself (the professor who coined this usage of "singularity") wrote a really good book called A Deepness in the Sky which I highly recommend and a bunch of futurists (including some very wealthy ones) have been thinking about how to avoid this.

Overall, I expect there to be more a kind of Butler's Djihad problem - the real one from Frank Herbert and the Dune Encyclopedia, not the Brian Herbert nonsense -, mainly, that AI and machines might push humanity in problematic directions rather than that we get some kind of silly Skynet scenario. I don't think one would ever want to create a machine in exactly the human image, i.e. with the silicium-equivalent of the urge of self-preservation, ambition, domination, etc. that all grow out of our flawed existence identity as social mammals. That kind of thing should not be recreated, especially not the whole tendency of making irrational, spur-of-the-moment decisions, etc.

There might come a point where such AIs would eventually start to compete with humanity for energy resources and stuff, but unless AIs do get the same kind of defects and personality disorders as human beings it is not very likely that there would be some kind of war.

8 minutes ago, maarsen said:

I am with Roger Penrose on this. AI will never happen. Penrose has a better track record than those who think the singularity will come about. 

Perhaps not. But we certainly expect to reach a point where very complex technological devices will tell us how to make even better ones, or might end up doing so at our design without direct oversight or us understanding how exactly this kind of thing works.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

36 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Part of it is because the idea encompasses much more than uploading a human consciousness to a computer. In fact, it's not even primarily about that (though this digitization is a common proposed side effect). Singularity is about making a machine that qualitatively smarter than a human which means that it is capable of constructing an even smarter machine and so on until some fundamental limits grounded in the laws of physics are reached. At that point, it might, among many other things, be able to tell you what (if anything) would be lost in format shifting human consciousness... but it will definitely be able to do other things too. For example, it could figure out how to most efficiently extract the excess carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere. Or design an easily built fusion reactor. Or cure all diseases and reverse aging in humans. It would be like being able to interact with a techno-god -- the closest thing to a deity possible inside our universe.

Of course, when presented this scenario, the first reaction of a lot of people (perhaps the majority?) is: wait a minute, but what if it's not a nice god? A lot of science fiction has been written on this subject. In fact, Vernor Vinge himself (the professor who coined this usage of "singularity") wrote a really good book called A Deepness in the Sky which I highly recommend and a bunch of futurists (including some very wealthy ones) have been thinking about how to avoid this.

But for the dog pack aliens that are only conscious in groups I liked that book.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

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 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.  

[red snow]

7 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

Is it possible we're already AI, and that how we think and feel (and what we consider right/wrong) that which is gleaned through cultural norms (religion, for example) is actually programming?

There's a strong argument we're all algorithms and there isn't really much difference beyond how they are coded DNA in living things (or RNA in some viruses) and binary in AI. 

The big difference at the moment is that we can't accurately change a person's programming via the environment or biological manipulation. Whereas it would be straight forward with AI coding as it was created knowing what it would do. I guess there are artificial evolution studies in AI which could generate code by accident and selection but it should be easy to see where the altered code is.

7 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Worst programming ever. Someone forgot to debug the bloody thing before launch.

We're all conscious but some of us are more conscious than others.

Jokes aside, what Wert said. Consciousness could be described as a kind of feedback loop wherein you think about thinking/experiencing/sensing. We don't know whether the "sense of self" we all get is real or an illusion produced from... the sum of our memories (and their chemical traces in our brain) for instance. For all we know consciousness is as much a signal as pain or pleasure are. I'd posit we don't even continually experience consciousness, our brains are often focused on specific tasks that don't require it ; and consciousness can be affected by drugs or brain damage. Which is to say that on some level it is a form of code.
But we don't have to care. He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
As for transcendence I'd say it's a chicken and egg thing: do you form a concept of transcendence before achieving it, or can a human actually achieve transcendence without having already considered it on some level? I'd say the former.
Pet theory: we're apes with anxiety. We're not at the top of the food chain so our brains evolved to constantly make us think about our surroundings. Our collaborative instincts led us to develop increasingly complex views of said surroundings, until we started living in the concepts born from our anxiety. And what we think of as "transcendent" is just ways in which our brains can momentarily tone the anxiety down by focusing on things not directly linked to survival. And of course, now that survival is not a day-to-day struggle anymore we're not sure what to do with anxiety. I'll assume none of us on this forum have to care about finding food or shelter tonight, but that we all live in societies that have recreated conditions for competition and fear, because we just can't escape the wiring of our anxious brains and thus will never be able to achieve actual freedom or transcendence.

Yeah, I'm fun at parties.

I've been having a lot of issues with anxiety of late (thankfully getting to grips with it again) and a lot of studies agree that it was a very useful/necessary tool for increasing survival in our past. It still has uses today eg if you live somewhere with deadly snakes it's useful to become anxious about any snake-like objects or the potential of there being one in the abandoned shed. Or being anxious about walking through a part of town with a high crime rate.

My weird theory, I'm also started to wonder whether debilitating anxiety is a bit like an auto immune disease. A lot of auto immune diseases are largely due to a lack of real challenges facing the immune system so it decides to attack itself or go way overboard with outside stimuli that aren't really dangerous eg allergies to dust, certain foods, pollen. I suspect anxiety is very similar in that when it doesn't have any of the things it was designed for to occupy it, it starts over-reacting to issues that aren't as vital producing counterproductive results. Like you said most modern people are lucky enough not to have moment to moment life or death situations and using a biological warning system for the office or home environment isn't really suitable. I need to look into some studies on whether everyday anxiety changes when people are given genuine anxiety situations eg if at war. The flipside is true of veterans returning from war often having anxiety issues but that's probably because the anxiety programming was running at a maximum.

[Jo498]

Quote

The feeling of having a self or being a person is something a working brain generates, it is not something that is *there*.

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".

[.H.]

13 hours ago, Werthead said:

In some philosophical viewpoints (I believe this is Scott Bakker's position), so. We think we are conscious but not really. But as thinking we are conscious is as close to consciousness as we are going to get, why worry about it?

I don't think that Bakker denies the phenomenology of consciousness, as such, but his BBT (Blind Brain Theory) predicts that what we experience as consciousness is not what consciousness is in-itself.  It is a sort of necessary for-itself, generated by the manner in which the brain functions (in Bakker's words, usually something employing heuristic neglect).  While it is different in content to what, say, Dennett proposes, it's not all that different in intent.  That is, to say that what we experience as consciousness for-ourselves is not necessarily what consciousness is in-itself.

Or at least, that is how his case seems to me, but maybe I am missing something.

1 hour 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".

Just because something could be destroyed, doesn't mean it "isn't there" as far as I could think it.

Rather, what I think is being proposed is that consciousness is not fundamental.  So, 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.

Rather, there is something like "structure" which, in differing configurations, patterns, or states (if you will) (seem to) give different "qualia" to that matter.  Not because they alter the Noumenal qualities of the matter at hand, per se, but because they relate it differently at the level of Phenomena.

Or something like that, as far as my lay-person understanding goes.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

34 minutes ago, .H. said:

I don't think that Bakker denies the phenomenology of consciousness, as such, but his BBT (Blind Brain Theory) predicts that what we experience as consciousness is not what consciousness is in-itself.  It is a sort of necessary for-itself, generated by the manner in which the brain functions (in Bakker's words, usually something employing heuristic neglect).  While it is different in content to what, say, Dennett proposes, it's not all that different in intent.  That is, to say that what we experience as consciousness for-ourselves is not necessarily what consciousness is in-itself.

Or at least, that is how his case seems to me, but maybe I am missing something.

Just because something could be destroyed, doesn't mean it "isn't there" as far as I could think it.

Rather, what I think is being proposed is that consciousness is not fundamental.  So, 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.

Rather, there is something like "structure" which, in differing configurations, patterns, or states (if you will) (seem to) give different "qualia" to that matter.  Not because they alter the Noumenal qualities of the matter at hand, per se, but because they relate it differently at the level of Phenomena.

Or something like that, as far as my lay-person understanding goes.

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.

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.  

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.

[Liffguard]

1 hour 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".

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.

[.H.]

12 minutes 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.

Well, sure, I guess.  If there is some transcendental non-physical "consciousness" in-itself out there, then I guess that would work.  But, I'd personally be really skeptical of that claim.  That sounds to me as a sort of panpsychism argument.  As a personal opinion, I have never came across a theory of that which didn't strike me as a bit nonsensical.  Of course though, my feeling on the matter, of course, is irrelevant, it either is the case such that it is the case, or it is not the case.

33 minutes 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.

As a general rule, we should probably dismiss almost any "purity" claim, or at least be intensely skeptical of them.  Or, so I'd think.  "Pure" Materialism is likely as nonsensical as "pure" Idealism.

As for funding, the general feeling out there is that Philosophy is a "waste of time" and science is the practical and pragmatic way to actually get results.  To me, that is completely mistaken and a dangerous way to think.  While it is true in a sense, we can't "just science" our way out of everything (and/or shouldn't).

Scientism is no better than a Materialism, or a Theism, or an Idealism.  Overly applied, or applied in some "pure" sense, it likely fails to capture what is the entirety of The Real (whatever that is).

[Rippounet]

11 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I'd say that we are most aware/alive when we feel angry, afraid, are in pain, or think we might die any moment now. We are not lost in thought when adrenalin kicks in and we are about attack somebody or run away. There is a reason why people still remember what they did when they first heard about the twin towers.

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.

11 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But you don't have to make yourself a beast (not that there is any difference between man and beast in any relevant sense). Why not trying to overcome problematic aspects of being what we are?

'twas a joke Lord Varys.

11 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

And I think the most liberating thing the human species could do is break the shackles of what they were made to by evolution (basically just some naked apes with half the muscle mass of chimpanzees) and to actually take what they want to be in their own hands. If we gain the ability to actually remake ourselves in whatever image we want then we could create individuals who are much more in control of themselves.

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."

11 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

My biggest problem with pure materialism is that it assumes what we currently perceive and know is all that there is. 

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.

Quote

What if the brain is a receiver for consciousness that exists on a level higher than we are currently able to perceive?

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.

 

[.H.]

42 minutes 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.

This is a really good point.  I knew there was something I was forgetting, which is of course, process.

Structure, process, these are more relations than relata.  I think Dennett would class these things as "Real Patterns" (if I understand his point correctly).