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Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

In theory, and this is a pretty airtight theory, it is computation. Because if it isn't, it's magic.

In practice, it is only implemented in one type of animal, or maybe a few types, depending on how it is defined. And we do not have a practical answer for how and why. Partial at best. And not in a way that would enable enough understanding about what kind of computation it is to implement similar-enough computation in a machine.

It feels like the scale of computation needed is now, or soon will be, available. The 100 billion neurons with 100 trillion connections seem daunting until you look at the connection and neuron (and sensory) data rates. It was clearly never going to happen in a Symbolics 3600. It is not clear it could not happen in a modern data center.

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I think you only regard that theory as "airtight" because you accept the premises of ontological naturalism. What you're basically saying is that it must be this way, because there is no other way to for it to be.

But it remains the case that there is exactly no evidence at all for the belief that consciousness is an emergent property of computation. Not some evidence -- no evidence.

We know factually that there is computation, because we can observe it happening using wires inserted at the inputs and outputs. The burden is on people who insist there is something else besides computation. Thus far, no evidence means, exactly, no phenomenon, and nothing to be explained.

You may be right about where the burden lies, but your explanation renders the thermostat conscious.

Edit: I should put that differently. Your sense of the criteria by which the problem may be considered solved does not preclude thermostat consciousness. And if that is allowed, then yes: the problem is solved. But I sense, again, the assumption of physicalism (or ontological naturalism), and I don't know why that premise admits of no dissent or argument.

When a term is undefined, any application of it is undecidable. Are you conscious? Is the thermostat? Y/Y, Y/N, N/Y, N/N are all equally valid conclusions.

Would you accept the statement "If physicalism is true, then there is nothing here to explain."

I'm not setting a trap. I'm just trying to clarify your position.

If physicalism is true, then there is nothing here to explain. If physicalism is not true, then there is nothing here to explain.

Biologists used to talk about a "vital force". Alive things had it, dead things didn't. Now biology is mature enough to recognize that there is no such force. People chasing consciousness are in the position of the biologists who insisted, in the face of biochemistry, that there was still a vital force.

There is a physical phenomenon: we observe people insisting there is such a thing as consciousness. Why do they do this? That is something an explanation could address. Not everybody insists. Are people who don't not conscious? What is common to everybody who insists, and also everybody they insist it about? They all observe themselves experiencing, and act on those observations. So, if there is anything to be defined, it is probably defined by that.

We could make a machine that perceives, and perceives itself perceiving. If that machine would not be described by insisters as conscious, I would expect a reason why not.

We know there is computations done in the brain. We don't know whether this is sufficient to create a consciousness. Consciousness doesn't exist as a phenomena in physics, hence there is no scientific explanation how or when it would appear, saying it is an inherent property of computation is therefore nonsense. Humans just know it exists, that is all we can say, everything else is just pseudoscientific bullshit until we can properly tie consciousness to some physics phenomena.

Or in another way, if you say "it is an inherent property of computation", then I'd counter "define computation in terms of laws of physics". You can't. Computation is as ill defined as consciousness from the laws of physics perspective.

I understand what you mean when you say "pseudoscientific bullshit," but it might be better to simply say "non-scientific" in the sense of "beyond the ambit of what science is designed to explain."

The problem of "being" (why there is something rather than nothing) is similar. It's not just that we don't have a physics explanation for why anything exists in the first place; it's that physics may not be able to answer that kind of question at all.

None of that is necessarily "pseudoscience" or necessarily bullshit (though it's easy enough to find examples of both).

I am skeptical of the circularity of the argument, though. There must be a "physics explanation" because physics explains everything. And we know that, because if physics can't explain it, it doesn't exist. And we know that, because physics explains everything.

(Not accusing you in particular of making that argument . . .)

Physics is the field of explaining everything in the universe. Therefore, if physics can't explain a phenomena we don't understand it, as physics is the ultimate explanation we have. I didn't say that if physics can't explain it then it doesn't exist, as you seem to think, just that if physics can't explain it then our understanding of the topic doesn't exist.

No, no. I did not think you are saying that (that if physics doesn't explain something it doesn't exist). That's why I put in that last line.

But now I'm actually not so sure. You seem to not admit of a category of things that physics can't explain. There are things it does not currently explain, things it has not yet explained, things it has explained wrongly, and things it may never explain as an historical matter. But not things it can't explain ("can't" in the sense of "is incapable of").

Do I have you right on that?

If physics can't explain it then humans can't explain it. That is my stance.

If there is a separate world outside of this world etc, then that would get incorporated into physics. I don't see how any scientific explanation for consciousness wouldn't become a part of physics.

Basically, physics describes all the rules of this world. Consciousness exists and is a part of the world, so it is a part of the rules of the world, so it is a part of physics.

If you think computation is undefined, you have a much bigger problem than consciousness. We have a physics of information. Computation is operations performed on information. We build machines to do it, on purpose. But a bacterium moving toward a rising gradient of sugar concentration is seen to be computing and acting on the result. The physics involved is in no way mysterious.

> Computation is operations performed on information.

How would you define an operation that doesn't just makes every process in the entire world a computation?

Some computations you are interested in, others you are not. You don't have enough interest to go around to every process in the entire world.

Nature doesn't distinguish. But we do, for practical reasons.

So basically you are saying that computation is either a meaningless concept or it is subjective and therefore doesn't help. Which was my point.

No, computation is objectively observed. But not all computation is equally interesting. What is subjective is just how interested you or somebody is in a particular instance.

If what you imagine to be consciousness is a recognizably interesting computation, the details that make it recognizable are objective, but your interest in it as a topic to talk about is purely subjective.

> it is computation

OK, but what is "computation"?

If you perform the computation with a lot of pencils and a lot of paper, is it conscious?

This is basically the Chinese Room argument and the answer is: yes, the system as a whole is conscious.

That's one answer. Another is that you would be within your rights to draw the inference that the system you are observing is conscious (which is slightly different, and deeply unsatisfying to many).

Can you explain the difference?

For Turing, the criteria for intelligence was a matter of observers (if it walks like a duck . . .); what is "actually happening" inside is irrelevant. Searle's objection was that what is happening "inside" is surely not irrelevant. So while some answered that in the Chinese Room argument the "whole system is conscious," others argued that Turing's point still stands. Someone observing the system would have to conclude that the system was intelligent, regardless of what was happening inside.

The two answers are roughly on the same side of the argument, but subtly different in important ways.

Ok thanks. Yeah I think that Turing came up with the best solution for detecting intelligence. If it passes that test then either the system is truly intelligent or a “zombie” which only appears intelligent. As mentioned in some other replies on this post, I think “zombies” are something created by philosophers but do not exist in real life. So i think the observation of intelligence is equivalent to actual intelligence.

The Chinese Room argument is tendentious because scaling a Chinese Room metaphor to a human brain's neurons and connections is hard to imagine. It is still hard-ish to imagine because, currently, it would take a large data center and 4-6 orders of magnitude the power consumption.

The other side of the coin is that we are asked to believe that what happens in an animal brain turns into magic when the animal is human. That is even harder to imagine.

> The other side of the coin is that we are asked to believe that what happens in an animal brain turns into magic when the animal is human. That is even harder to imagine.

Nobody is saying that animals aren't conscious. Or maybe a few are, and maybe human brains have some unique properties, we can't tell since we don't know what we are looking for. But animals display many of the same things as humans, and we know for a fact that humans are conscious so it isn't a stretch to imagine animals being as well.

> magic

Yes, we have no formula to describe consciousness, so as far as we know today it is magic. But if we manage to properly map that out in the future then consciousness will be science.

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