[ExI] More thoughts on sentient computers

Sat Feb 25 15:34:25 UTC 2023

On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 10:29 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Yes, and one side has language and the other doesn't.  I would like to see
> data on left-handed people with split brains.  Some data indicate that
> their language is on both sides.  bill w
>

Language ability on both sides is more common among left handed people.
There was one such left-handed person who got a Callosotomy. This allowed
both of his hemispheres to be independently interviewed:

Paul was unusual in that he possessed verbal capacities in both his right
and left
hemispheres. This enabled each of his minds to be interviewed concerning
their thoughts, beliefs,
and desires. When asked his name, both hemispheres answered "Paul." When
asked his location,
both answered "Vermont." But when asked what he wanted to be, his right
hemisphere answered
"Automobile racer" while his left answered "Draftsman." These experiments
took place during the
Watergate scandal, and so Paul's opinion of President Nixon was queried.
His right hemisphere
expressed "dislike" while his left hemisphere expressed "like." One wonders
how Paul would have
voted. It might depend on which hand he used to pull the lever.

In addition to preferences, hemispheres can differ even on fundamental
beliefs. The
neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran recounted the case of a patient with
a right hemisphere that
believed in God and a left hemisphere that did not. Sometimes these
conflicts manifest physically.
In a condition known as alien hand syndrome, split-brain patients may find
one hemisphere, and the
limbs it controls, behaving independently from and contrary to the will of
the other. One patient
struggled to get dressed in the morning. While his left hemisphere (and
right hand) tried to pull his
pants up, his left hand would pull them down. On a separate occasion, this
same patient became
angry at his wife. His left hand attacked her while his right hand tried to
protect her!

Roger Sperry, who received a Nobel prize for his work on split-brains,
remarked "Although
some authorities have been reluctant to credit the disconnected minor
hemisphere even with being
conscious, it is our own interpretation, based on a large number and
variety of non-verbal tests, that
the minor hemisphere is indeed a conscious system in its own right,
perceiving, thinking,
remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically
human level, and that both
the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in
different, even in mutually
conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel."

Jason

> On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 10:17 AM Gadersd via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> The split-brain phenomenon is illustrative of this point. Due to epilepsy
>> some people have had their brain split in half to prevent each hemisphere
>> from communicating with the other. However, each hemisphere is able to
>> function independently from the other which implies that each hemisphere
>> produces a separate consciousness in these people. "In a particularly
>> dramatic recorded demonstration, the famous patient “Joe” was able to draw
>> a cowboy hat with his left hand in response to the word ‘Texas' presented
>> in his left visual half field. His commentary (produced by the verbal left
>> hemisphere) showed a complete absence of insight into why his left hand had
>> drawn this cowboy hat. Another astonishing example involved the same
>> patient. MacKay and MacKay (1982
>> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7305066/#CR66>) flashed a
>> digit in the left visual field and trained the patient to play a version of
>> ‘20 questions’ across hemispheres. The left hemisphere guessed the answer
>> vocally, and the right hemisphere provided responses by pointing ‘up’
>> (meaning ‘guess a higher number’) or ‘down’ with the left hand. In this way
>> the patient managed to vocalize the right answer. This suggests two
>> independent conscious agents communicating with each other (one steering
>> the left hand, the other agent controlling vocal expressions).”
>>
>> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7305066/
>>
>>
>> On Feb 24, 2023, at 6:18 AM, Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 2:31 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Thanks, Ben - another question:  why do we, or they, or somebody, think
>>> that an AI has to be conscious to solve the problems we have?  Our
>>> unconscious mind solves most of our problems now, doesn't it?  I think it
>>> does.  bill w
>>>
>>>>
>>
>> Why do we assume our "unconscious mind" is unconscious, rather than
>> another mind whose consciousness we don't have access to?
>>
>> Jason
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> .
>>> On Thu, Feb 23, 2023 at 12:24 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> bill w asked:
>>>>
>>>>  >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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I like silly questions! (some of them anyway)
>>>>
>>>> 1) How would you know?
>>>> Probably you would never know for sure, just as you don't know for sure
>>>> that I'm a conscious mind. But I'd say we'd use the same criteria as we
>>>> do with each other, or for the existence/non-existence of gods, so
>>>> while
>>>> we never absolutely know for sure, we can make a damned good guess,
>>>> based on the evidence at our disposal.
>>>>
>>>> 2) Why do it?
>>>> Because we're transhumanists, and want the sum total of self-awareness
>>>> and intelligence in the universe to increase. Because we recognise the
>>>> severe limitations of biological life, and if we can create artificial
>>>> minds, we can overcome these limitations. Because we know that humans
>>>> have a limited lifespan, both as individuals and as a species, and this
>>>> is a way of going way beyond that.
>>>>
>>>> 3) What makes it necessary?
>>>> Well, that depends on your priorities. People who think that humanity
>>>> is
>>>> a stain on the world and things would be better without it, probably
>>>> think it's not only not necessary, but undesirable. I think it's
>>>> necessary because we are tragically weak, fragile and confused, and
>>>> anything we can do to correct or side-step that is a good thing.
>>>> Artificial minds are our chance to pass down our most significant
>>>> quality to the future, in a form that has a chance of surviving and
>>>> thriving in the long-term (very long-term, as in billions of years and
>>>> more).
>>>>
>>>> Oh, and it may be the only realistic way to achieve mind uploading. We
>>>> probably aren't capable of figuring it out, or at least of actually
>>>> doing it, by ourselves.
>>>>
>>>> And it may be the only way we're going to get out of the many pickles
>>>> we're getting ourselves into, too. Maybe we need a non-human
>>>> perspective
>>>> to solve the various seemingly unsolvable problems we've got. I don't
>>>> need to make a list, I'm sure you can think of plenty.
>>>>
>>>> Ben
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