[ExI] wicked

[William Flynn Wallace]

I'll bet neurologists could tell us several places in the brain which, if
deadened, would lead to loss of consciousness.

What does it mean to be conscious?  I think it is simple:  one is aware of
some aspects of his environment.  All living creatures have some of this.
An amoeba is conscious of a toxic substance it has run into and moves away
from it. A tree is conscious of insects attacking it and releases chemicals
to fight them, and often signals other trees of that attack.

The further you go up the phylogenetic scale the more the creature can
process and understand the information coming into its sensors.

So I think that consciousness did not evolve.  It was there from the
beginning in simple form.  More and more sophisticated sensors did evolve.

bill w

On Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 12:37 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 26/09/2021 17:00, bill w wrote:
>
> Could an impressively intelligent AI fake sentience?
>
> I'm not sure what this means. (I'm assuming you mean sapience, seeing as
> sentience is easy. Worms and bacteria are sentient. You could argue that
> your computer is already sentient).
>
>
> I think so.  If so we will never know if it is faking or real.
>
> I don't know this about you, either. Or anyone else.
>
>
> Suppose we find a consciousness center in humans.  We turn it off so that
> the person is responding totally with his unconscious mind.  No
> metaconsciousness (or ego) overseeing what is happening.  We could never
> know.  It would be like some definitions of a zombie.  Alive but not
> alive.  Living dead.  Differently alive.  Like the advanced AI:  there
> would be no real difference.    bill w
>
> Suppose we don't find a consciousness centre in humans, or in anything. I
> suspect we won't.
>
> I reckon we need to consider why consciousness (whatever it is) evolved.
> There must be a good reason. Personally, I think it's essential for
> sapience. A metaphysical zombie like that you describe, is nonsensical.
> Dennett explains this much better than I can.
>
> Ben
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