[extropy-chat] Consciousness vs. awareness [was: I keep asking myself...]

[Samantha Atkins]

On Apr 7, 2006, at 8:28 AM, Robert Bradbury wrote:

> The recent conversations regarding sentience, consciousness and  
> intelligence have caused me to become more aware of a distinction  
> that I make (to a large extent automatically) which many other  
> people do not make and which may in part explain why I am reviled  
> by some list members.
>
> Let us define a hierarchy...
> 1. Sentient (has a nervous system and senses physical pain)
> 2. Conscious (in the sense that they 'believe' that they have free  
> will)
> 3. Self-aware (in the sense that they run their own mind and their  
> mind does not run them)
>
>
> Now, self-awareness, aka 'enlightenment', is a somewhat more  
> ethereal quality.  In my opinion it is the fundamental shift from  
> ones mind running you to you running your mind.  It is a shift from  
> the memes running you to you running the memes.  Many people may be  
> self-aware when they think about specific problems, particularly  
> those which are novel, but they are not generally (universally?)  
> self-aware.
>

Interestingly, a lot of spiritual practices developed by religions  
(which you roundly disparage) have as their goal (at least an  
intermediate goal) learning to run your mind rather than being run by  
it.   Granted of course that religions, even the best of them,  
accrete all matter of nonsense and obfuscation.    But then those  
that "get it" in whatever system and using whatever means are thin on  
the ground.  "Second handers", various hangers on, camp followers,  
sycophants and so on abound.  There are many niches to be filled and  
few of them are all that interesting from the viewpoint of the few.

> But IMO there is a critical distinction between those who are self- 
> aware and those who are merely conscious.  As I view it as highly  
> improbable that those who are enmeshed in religious meme sets whose  
> primary raison d'etre is the endless repetition and replication of  
> ideas which range from highly outdated to completely wrong will  
> magically become self-aware and extract themselves from their  
> fantasy realities.  I have no problem classifying them as "children  
> of a lesser god".
>

It is not magic but growth in critical self-examination does happen.   
As one's belief system accrues more real costs it becomes easier to  
question it.  If however those with a radically different set of  
beliefs and world view are directly attacking or oppressing then it  
is MUCH more difficult to calmly consider the merits of their world  
view.  Making it a matter of physical survival makes it nearly  
impossible to do such self-examination.

> Subscribing to the idea that sentience or consciousness (or being  
> "human") grants rights (to be free of pain, to exercise free will,  
> etc.) runs into the hurdles of where do you want to go and how do  
> you want to get there.  As a "true" extropian, I believe "Its the  
> information stupid!"  The un-self-aware pursuit of making endless  
> copies of information (be it copies of the human genome or copies  
> of specific meme sets) is rather pointless once the basic  
> information set is sufficiently redundant that its probability of  
> destruction is very low.  In my mind one bowl of jello is very  
> similar to another bowl of jello unless one bowl of jello behaves  
> in a way that produces new, and hopefully more complex, bowl of  
> Super-jello.
>
> Being born in the United States, particularly in Massachusetts, one  
> learns very early about the "unalienable" rights such as "life,  
> liberty and the pursuit of happiness".  However, being somewhat  
> enlightened now I can ask whether this perspective is indeed true  
> or even whether it is useful at this point in time?

The nature of human beings makes such rights reasonably universal for  
optimal well being.  The nature of human beings hasn't changed.

>
> An extropic perspective, at least *my* extropic perspective  
> (somewhat biased by a background in computer science) would want to  
> know whether or not the bowl of jello contained any unique,  
> potentially useful, information?  If so I would want it to be  
> preserved, perhaps in some compressed form.  If the information can  
> be truly "productive" then it should be supplied with resources to  
> mutate, create, replicate, etc.  If not then it should perhaps be  
> put out in the compost heap where its resources could used to  
> facilitate more mutation and selection, albeit by more primitive  
> organisms.
>

And you are qualified to sort out which is which by what?
>
> There are a couple of things which come out of this perspective.  A  
> highly self-aware person realizes that there isn't really any such  
> thing as "pain" -- physical or emotional -- there is simply a  
> choice to experience a set of sensations (eletrochemical phenomena)  
> as something we label as "painful".


This is a monstrously dangerous notion.  Go enjoy the opportunity to  
experience novel sensations while being tortured.
>
>
> Now, I suspect when we are hitting the resource limits of the  
> planet and the time comes to send in the nanorobots in to harvest  
> the silicon contained in the Kaaba [6] in Mecca that there may  
> still be around a fairly large number of non-enlightened people who  
> would perceive this as "painful" and most likely would seek to kill  
> those responsible for this (of course its kind of hard to "kill"  
> distributed replicated uploads so the natural fear of retribution  
> which might hold one back from this action now will be of  
> significantly less concern in the future).  The question for the  
> enlightened then becomes how one handles this nonproductive use of  
> resources (in silicon in the Kaaba or in carbon in unaware meme  
> replicators) in the long term.  Perhaps we should prohibit the use  
> of life-extension technologies by those who are unenlightened and  
> simply wait until they all die.
>

What is the value of this "productivity" that justifies the ignoring  
of or negation of any rights to life or property?  Do I have the  
right to take everything you own including your very life if I  
arguably can make better use of it?    In such a world every  
intelligent being must fear the opinions of others and must  
especially fear that greater intelligences will come along and  
consider such as itself obsolete and worthless.  Is this the type of  
future you want?  Do you think this type of future is inevitable?  Do  
we get to choose differently?

- samantha