<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">Let's try this one: if you can react meaningfully with your environment, such as fleeing a fire, then you are conscious. bill w</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 8:13 PM Gadersd via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">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.<br><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Nov 29, 2022, at 8:02 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</div><br><div><div style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></div><div><div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">…<u></u><u></u></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">>…I think we agree that humans are innately flawed in many ways.<u></u><u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">>…How about other animals? Are any of them flawed? In their niche they seem perfectly adapted unless the niche changes a lot. bill w<u></u><u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">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.<u></u><u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">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.<u></u><u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">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?<u></u><u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">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?<u></u><u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"">spike<u></u><u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS""><u></u> <u></u></span></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></div><div style="margin:0in;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></div></div></div></div><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;float:none;display:inline">_______________________________________________</span><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none"><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;float:none;display:inline">extropy-chat mailing list</span><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none"><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none"><a href="http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px" target="_blank">http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat</a></div></blockquote></div><br></div>_______________________________________________<br>
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