[ExI] flawed humans

Gadersd gadersd at gmail.com
Wed Nov 30 17:28:23 UTC 2022


That is a very inclusive definition. I like it, but good luck convincing the world that that is all it takes to be conscious. Many would feel insulted if their God given “divinity” were shared with the common cockroach. Humans feel the need to feel special beyond just being smarter than all the other animals.

> On Nov 30, 2022, at 10:01 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> Let's try this one:  if you can react meaningfully with your environment, such as fleeing a  fire, then you are conscious.  bill w
> 
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 8:13 PM Gadersd via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>> wrote:
> It seems to me that you are putting the cart before the horse. Can you prove to us that you are conscious? Before asking if silicon life forms can be conscious, shouldn’t you first demonstrate that humans can be conscious? You may claim to be conscious, but chatbots and robots have also made that claim. You may claim to know innately that you are conscious, but I request something stronger than that. I don’t even claim to be conscious. I don’t know what it means to be conscious and there is no consensus on a definition. If you give a definition then I can at least determine if I am conscious by that definition. Consciousness might as well be on the gender spectrum, some believe in it and others don’t.
> 
>> On Nov 29, 2022, at 8:02 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>> wrote:
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>> >…I think we agree that humans are innately flawed in many ways.
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>> >…How about other animals?  Are any of them flawed?  In their niche they seem perfectly adapted unless the niche changes a lot.   bill w
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>> I suppose that depends on how you look at it Billw, but I would argue that all known life forms are flawed in that they are mortal.  Even if an organism is one that multiplies by dividing, such that one could argue it is in a sense an immortal being, it too is mortal: given enough time, that species will go extinct, even without external pressure.
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>> On the other hand, if we had some kind of silicon-based consciousness, then we could transfer ourselves over from an old substrate into a newer one, so our existence would continue in a way that one could claim to be the same as it was before the transfer.
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>> This all gets very murky and definition-dependent, so I don’t want to get all tangled up.  Rather I want to help you open your mind, ask questions you never asked, such as that really fundamental question: is consciousness substrate dependent?
>>  
>> Well, all of it we know is on a carbon-based evolution-derived substrate, however… that in itself is insufficient evidence that other substrates cannot be the basis of consciousness.  I don’t see a good reason why it would be impossible for an alternative substrate to be the basis of consciousness.  Do you?
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>> spike
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