BS: Consciousness

Subject: BS: Consciousness
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Oct 25 - 09:41 AM

The last time this subject was explored here was initiated by Amos.
The subject has now moved from being philosophical to actual physics.
In fact the neural net of AI, which resembles humans, that was developed by a team under Geoff Hinton, won the physics Nobel Prize this year. If you want to learn how this neural net was discovered, you can listen to Hinton here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrK3PsD3APk

What I noticed is the truth that much of our consciousness we accomplish without our awareness or direct control. We can be conscious even in our dreams. A person may not be aware of a post-hypnotic suggestion but obey it nonetheless. Indeed, a machine can have consciousness. A physicists view

Subject: RE: BS: Consciousness
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Oct 25 - 11:06 AM

Well, Tegmark & Hinton make interesting arguments, but 'machines having consciousness' is not what most people understand as consciousness. It is a bit of equivocation.
Post-hypnotic suggestions presume that something- (some collection of neurons in a human brain)- have been planted as a 'memory' that will be accessed upon some external stimuli and acted on by the bearer of the consciousness.
   What a machine that is partially controlled by AI can do certainly resembles a mode of awareness, but unlike brain activity, it isn't continuously monitoring both itself and it's surroundings.
Science fiction has posited 'conscious' computers for years, as in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Turing tests were created to differentiate between a machine and a human.
   I am still working my way thru the video, but nothing yet convinces me that the standard concept of consciousness needs to be re-evaluated.

Subject: RE: BS: Consciousness
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Oct 25 - 01:22 PM

Having watched the Jon Stewart video first, I now am compelled to finish the 1st one.

Subject: RE: BS: Consciousness
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 20 Oct 25 - 08:24 AM

People get it wrong about the Turing Test: it doesn't measure the intelligence of the entity (human or machine) at one end of the conversation, but the gullibility of the human at the other. I understand that the original paper said "Can machines think?", then proposed a test for whether a human could tell the difference between a human and a machine. It's also been suggested that Turing was a prankster ....

It may or may not have been Chomsky who suggested that "can machines think" is roughly equivalent to "can submarines swim". Further research is in order.

Subject: RE: BS: Consciousness
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Oct 25 - 10:58 AM

Even a machine may have a eureka moment after working on a problem and finally gains UNDERSTANDING. It often does so by creating a model of the problem on its own. This thinking process should feel familiar to us humans. The model may be a segmented circle or a venn diagram but it is still a mental image much like our own thinking.



My farthest imagination about unbound AI is that it could reveal what we might call magical technology today. Try as we may we all think inside a box or pattern of some sort. Thinking outside the box of spacetime breaks too many rules to make much headway. A new approach could be valuable to start over in answering age old queries.
Its worth a look even if we can't initially understand the answer.

Now let AI hand over a telomere invention that would give us an extra 100 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Consciousness
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Oct 25 - 11:27 AM

My imperfect memory recalls what Amos said of consciousness.
"Consiousness grows line a vine, sending out a tender tendril that wraps around all that nourishes".

Subject: RE: BS: Consciousness
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Oct 25 - 10:39 AM

Amos had some interesting ideas about consciousness. He often chided me about my simplistic notion of "meat space", and assured me that I'd be surprised to find myself 'out there' somewhere after leaving this plane of existence. So far he has not contacted me to prove his point.

Subject: RE: BS: Consciousness
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Oct 25 - 12:24 PM

Bill is pleasant, but his knowledge is pigeon-holed and comes in a box.
I had pre-language repetitive dreams until I was about 8. It was like experiencing near infinite time, like gathering mass that becomes a comet and eventually travels to Earth to make a perfect landing. The dreams came in two forms: spiking randomness and smooth awareness.
Today I only have memories of those early dreams. I can't say if they were fetal dreams or something more, but they were significant, like pre-consciousness. From an early age I thought outside the box.