[ExI] More thoughts on sentient computers

[William Flynn Wallace]

Three silly questions:  how would you know if you had created a conscious
mind?  Why do you want to do that?  What makes that necessary?  bill w

On Thu, Feb 23, 2023 at 10:05 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Giovanni, you've just made it onto my (regrettably small) list of people
> who seem to be capable of thinking in a joined-up fashion, who seemingly
> haven't fallen prey to dualistic and crypto-dualistic notions. I'll take
> more notice of your posts here in future.
>
> It seems we on this list suffer from just as many misunderstandings as
> any other group of humans, and your statement "the brain is a
> simulation" is a good example of how this happens. I'm not criticising
> you, far from it, but it does illustrate how easy it is for people to
> get the wrong end of the stick and run with that, ignoring later
> clarifications of what the poster actually meant. I understand what you
> (almost certainly) meant by that comment, even if I wouldn't have put it
> that way myself. Some others will not.
>
> Literally speaking, what you said doesn't make any sense. The brain is a
> physical object, in what we regard as the 'real world', so it can't be a
> simulation. But of course (my assumption is) you didn't really mean
> that, and it should be pretty easy to figure that out. Our internal
> representation of the world and other people, our entire experience, is
> what I'm assuming you mean, and of course that is a simulation. It
> couldn't be anything else (silly notions of specific molecules actually
> being certain experiences of certain colours notwithstanding).
>
> My undertanding is that what our brain does, is simulate the world and
> the agents that appear in it, and even the agent that is experiencing
> the simulations.
>
> The way I'd put it, is that everything I experience (including myself),
> is a simulation created by a ('my') brain.
>
> Just to be clear, is that what you meant? I'm open to the possibility
> that I've got this totally wrong! (in which case, I may need to withdraw
> what I said in the first paragraph, above :D )
>
> I also suspect you're right in saying that consciousness is going to be
> much easier to produce than we currently think, once we figure it out.
> We will probably be astonished at how simple it is, and how easy it will
> be to create fully-conscious artificial minds.
>
> I think it's a bit like our understanding of tying a knot. At some point
> in our prehistory, humans wouldn't have known what knots were*, and
> probably struggled to do things like keeping animal skins on their
> bodies when they needed them to stay warm. Once some genius invented the
> knot (which probably didn't take long), it would have been a real 'Aha!'
> moment, and, once shown, suddenly everyone could securely tie a skin on
> themselves to keep warm, and we've hardly given it a second thought ever
> since (apart from a certain group of geeky mathematicians!).
>
> I reckon the trick of creating fully-conscious minds will be similar.
> There's probably a small set of necessary features that a system needs
> in order to be conscious and self-aware, we just don't know what they
> are yet. But I think we're getting close (just for the record, I very
> much doubt that any chatbot has these features, quite possibly by a long
> chalk. Spike's remarks about having a persistent memory is a good start,
> but probably far from all that's needed).
>
> Ben
>
> * If this strikes you as ridiculously unlikely, substitute some other
> obvious-in-hindsight thing that would totally elude someone not aware of
> it, like maybe using stones to make sharp sticks or digging a hole then
> making a noise to kill an animal, etc.
>
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