74. Dr. Dean Radin And Dr. Roger Nelson Respond to Global Consciousness Project Criti

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by hoggworks

Yes, yes, David, you've said all this many, many times before. Your views boil down to "but they're not conscious, really" because you want to believe that. I understand. You worked on a problem and were unable to solve it, so to avoid feeling like you failed at your task, you imagine that the task must have been impossible. Why, it's inherently insoluble, and you know what? That means I didn't fail, because I couldn't *possibly* have succeeded! Yay! Psi's the way to go! That's some Grade A reduction of cognitive dissonance, there, my friend.

Actually you are wrong, my job was to implement an AI language on a particular range of computers (PC hardware was less universal than it is now) and I succeeded, but along the way I saw a fair bit of AI code.

Also, I don't "want to believe" anything. Lets take a specific example. A lot of work went into trying to get a computer to 'understand' going into restaurant scenarios. The result was judged by posing questions such as "Why did Fred not order a steak?".

Now I ask you, how can you sensibly talk about a computer understanding a scenario like that, when it doesn't know about hunger, power lunches, dating, dieting, feeling full, etc. Is it so unreasonable to say that that is not real intelligence. Most of those things that I listed are basically qualia, and AI never addressed the question of experience.

The way you address your responses, anyone would think I am just spouting some mix of ideas all of my own, but plenty of people have pointed out this problem - such as the well respected theoretical physicist Roger Penrose, and of course, the philosopher David Chalmers. I might even suspend judgment if AI had otherwise worked, but the fact is, it has not (at least up to now) worked, and nobody seems to have an answer to the qualia issue.

I don't know how old you are, but put yourself in my position, at age nearly 60, I have read excited proposals such as the GOOGLE one you quote for decades. People waved their hands in the air and got very excited (and I got excited too) and damn all came out of it all - so in this regard I am extremely skeptical.

David

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

I don't know how old you are, but put yourself in my position, at age nearly 60, I have read excited proposals such as the GOOGLE one you quote for decades. People waved their hands in the air and got very excited (and I got excited too) and damn all came out of it all - so in this regard I am extremely skeptical.

David

Skepticism is absolutely warranted, David, I agree. I think it's an interesting idea, and I can see a theoretical bridge from point A to point B, but I'm definitely not waving my arms around.

Why do you think that if the problem was soluble, it would've been solved already? Why can't it be possible and simply much much harder than originally thought? It isn't as though no progress in simulated intelligence is being made; there's work done that pushes the field forward all the time. I don't think it's going to happen, and I'm not really suggesting a hard date at all; I simply don't dismiss it as impossible because it doesn't address "qualia." Who says it can't? You say it can't because you imagine there's a big difference, but if you flip it around and ask what it is that make us experience qualia, what's the extra ineffable bit that takes it from combining sensory perceptions and neural activity into "being?" I don't have our intelligence on a pedestal, so I don't think it's the issue you do.

In response to your steak example, the fact that a computer as currently designed can't answer that question doesn't mean it's a permanent impossibility; a mosquito couldn't answer that, and probably most mammals couldn't, by dint of the complexity of their brains. Would you suggest that a dog doesn't perceive? Is a dog simply a collection of neural activity, or can a dog experience the ever elusive qualia?

You seem ready to throw in the towel based on your personal experience. My judgment of your wanting to believe is based on what you repeatedly say on the forum: you've mentioned AI researchers failing to crack it several decades ago as though no further attempts could be made, or as though people back then couldn't be wrong. I'm prepared to cede the possibility of people on both sides being wrong.

The solution to your steak example is complexity and information: a baby wouldn't be able to answer the question, even though a human baby has a human brain. Presumably it's the combination of the processing power and the information to answer that question. If you gave the computer a sophisticated set of heuristics to use to judge a situation, and gave the computer all required information about it -- or gave it the ability to determine what constituted a situation in order to learn itself -- why wouldn't the computer be able to figure it out? Do you have a mechanism that you might point to which would prevent a computer from answering the all important question of why Fred didn't order a steak?

[hoggworks]

Also, David, can you put a capper on the "I used to think like you did," and "one day you'll understand" talk? It's tiresome and more than a little condescending. For my part, I'm not throwing out either of those, other than in response to yours.

[FastEddieB]

As I said in my old quote, how will we know if and when Google, or the internet at large, becomes conscious?

On a possibly trivial level, let me throw this out:

I'm on a BMW motorcycle forum. In the winter, the forum itself gets "testy" - we call it PMS for Parked Motorcycle Syndrome.

Sure, each "node" (member) is independently feeling something, but it sure seems like the site itself gets "cranky" from time to time, on a higher "level" than the individual.

And the site itself makes decisions, like where to hold the next rally. It might be through discussion or through a poll, but again it sure seems like the site has a "will" of its own.

Back to the ant analogy, assuming ants are conscious (a big assumption), are they aware of the existence of the larger being/mind of the colony? Almost certainly not. In the same way we might just not have the tools to perceive a larger consciousness of which we are a part.

Global Consciousness reminds me of the conclusion of "Childhood's End" - I'll try to find/post the passage later. I remain a skeptic, but I sure love the possibilities good science fiction opens up!

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by hoggworks

In response to your steak example, the fact that a computer as currently designed can't answer that question doesn't mean it's a permanent impossibility; a mosquito couldn't answer that, and probably most mammals couldn't, by dint of the complexity of their brains. Would you suggest that a dog doesn't perceive? Is a dog simply a collection of neural activity, or can a dog experience the ever elusive qualia?

Of course a dog experiences qualia! The point about the restaurant programs was that if they seemed to give appropriate answers, that was enough - but it was based on no understanding of the issues involved!

You call qualia 'ever elusive', but think about your own thought processes - they are saturated with qualia-related concepts.

I don't see what is condescending about saying that I used to think like you! I mean, I have experienced decades of AI hype, it has had an effect, and I don't see why I can't point that out!

David

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Of course a dog experiences qualia! The point about the restaurant programs was that if they seemed to give appropriate answers, that was enough - but it was based on no understanding of the issues involved!

You call qualia 'ever elusive', but think about your own thought processes - they are saturated with qualia-related concepts.

My point about the dog was one of spectrum; at one point, if you go back down the level of animals in terms of complexity, you're going to reach an animal that you would reasonably say doesn't experience qualia. What makes that animal merely make causal associations, while the other thinks?

David, I agree that simply programming in canned responses without a proper understanding doesn't indicate intelligence. We're on the same page with that. Where we obviously differ is that you seem to draw the conclusion that such understanding is impossible (which would seem to me that because a clay sculpture of a car only looks like a car, real cars are impossible).

Suppose you programmed in understanding to the machine. Suppose the machine could understand, deeply, the grammar and syntax of a sentence, and could break down -- and comprehensively articulate -- what each word means in the specific context, and what the speaker really means. Would that be intelligent? What if the computer could find flaws in the speaker's arguments, or what if it came up with a cogent response? How specific and intelligent would the computer need to be to get the label of thinking? And if it *does* get the label of thinking, if it can carry all of the appearances of thought, how can you say that qualia isn't being experienced by the computer?

To put it another way, how do you know that you actually experience qualia, and that you aren't simply responding along a vastly more complicated line of logical deductions? Aside from a gut feeling that we're more, how do you know that we actually have that ineffable self, and are actually more than tremendously sophisticated computers?

What if you program the computer to generate its own sense of style, its own tastes, likes and dislikes. What if it had an internally consistent system of determining what its qualia was, and could articulate them?

What if the computer remembered past experiences, and in doing so assigned an emotional value to each of them, and gravitated to situations or people similar to ones encountered in the past who made them happy?

I don't see what is condescending about saying that I used to think like you! I mean, I have experienced decades of AI hype, it has had an effect, and I don't see why I can't point that out!

David

You tend to say it in the context of it being a reason to dismiss anything I might be saying; you often say you used to think that way, but you don't anymore, because now you're right. Whether you intend it that way or not, it feels like a somewhat condescending dismissal of my viewpoints; they don't matter, because you've already moved beyond them.

I could humbly suggest that if you *actually* were thinking like me, you would still be on the side of reason, and not psi, but that would be somewhat condescending of me.

I realize we're each looking at the same info and coming up with different conclusions. I'm cool with that. I'm interested in the process of knowledge, and am also quite interested in understanding exactly how it is you come to your conclusions (along with everyone else on the forum). Part of the way I personally find that out is by challenging you on your views.

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Of course a dog experiences qualia!

I agree that the dog does, too, though for different reasons. After all, how can *you* tell if a dog experiences qualia? Can you ask it to describe its mental state?

I've got three dogs, and they've yet to offer up a single monologue.

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by FastEddieB

As I said in my old quote, how will we know if and when Google, or the internet at large, becomes conscious?

On a possibly trivial level, let me throw this out:

I'm on a BMW motorcycle forum. In the winter, the forum itself gets "testy" - we call it PMS for Parked Motorcycle Syndrome.

Sure, each "node" (member) is independently feeling something, but it sure seems like the site itself gets "cranky" from time to time, on a higher "level" than the individual.

And the site itself makes decisions, like where to hold the next rally. It might be through discussion or through a poll, but again it sure seems like the site has a "will" of its own.

That's an interesting way to look at it, especially when you consider the fact that we humans are a composite of innumerable life forms, so many of which go about their own lives fully autonomously, and that if you get down to the deepest level, we're all a bunch of cells stuck together that look, from a great distance, to be a single thing.

Perhaps, yes, Google's consciousness is or will be not just the servers, but the additional intelligence given by each user. Just as a brain is dependent on sensory organs to learn about the world, perhaps Google is an organism with a billion senses.

(Again, to David and everyone else, I'm not saying I'm certain this is a thing, this is just chatting. I'm open to the possibility, but not wed to it on an ideological level)

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

This way of thinking is fascinating - a refusal to acknowledge that there is a real problem here - that we don't understand what consciousness is, and have absolutely no idea how to create it - other than perhaps to incorporate a conscious biological entity into some sort of machine and play with words by calling the result an AI!

You know, it is possible that biology is the only way to achieve consciousness similar to humans. Silicon may produce a different sort of consciousness, or none at all. It's an open question whether consciousness can be abstracted to silicon.

~~ Paul

[FastEddieB]

You know, it is possible that biology is the only way to achieve consciousness similar to humans. Silicon may produce a different sort of consciousness, or none at all. It's an open question whether consciousness can be abstracted to silicon.

Is it just me, or are there enough "weasel words" in the above to render it nearly without meaningful content?