[ExI] The Chess Room

[Will Steinberg]

Inspired by Spencer, here is a "brief" summation for those who thought this
was "tl" and so "dr".

A machine can construct an AI based on analysis of some data set on one
person.  Here it is their chess strategy.  But the machine encounters a
strategy that was carefully averaged over many players, yet still, by its
algorithms, produced consciousness.  I then noted that many systems are
reliant on external information modified by more than one consciousness, and
so can only be determined by all the consciousnesses (or an average.)  This
may already take place with our left and right brains.

This left me wondering whether any group of minds, say, humanity itself,
also had an emergent mind associated with it.  If the brains are very
complicated series of calculations, a bunch of brains is pretty much the
same thing.  I might even go so far as to say that this system is aware.
 Next, I leapt to the idea that the components of entire universe could well
exhibit awareness by this means, albethey in a much slower and more
complicated manner.  I guess I'm sort of proposing a god of sorts, but one
that is constrained by the same rules that constrain us and has awareness so
spread out as to not even constitute a true being in our sense of the word.

This leads to another question: at what boundary to communication does
awareness stop working?  When do the parts become too separate to lead to
consciousness?  Our brain is conscious.  If we take it that the human system
is not, to any degree, then there must be a boundary to physical intimacy
(in the brain, of course.)  I might even say that if you believe in a
totally emergent consciousness, then you MUST believe in emergent
consciousness on Earth and in the Universe in at least some small amount,
and that if you believe that consciousness exists (as I do) at some certain
neurological locus, there is still room for discussion.

If THIS post is in fact too long to merit consideration, I suppose I'll have
to craft an even shorter response and read it to you like a bedtime story.
 I could even use puppets, if you'd like. ;)
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