Is a neuron arbitrarily complex ≠ is a neuron non-computable.
Of course we can't simulate a structure we don't even fully understand with full accuracy. But it's not magic. We will understand one day.
Is a neuron arbitrarily complex ≠ is a neuron non-computable.
Of course we can't simulate a structure we don't even fully understand with full accuracy. But it's not magic. We will understand one day.
"Simulate" is not well defined (one can posit varying degrees of accuracy and complexity), but also there is the position that it doesn't matter. Simulating a thing doesn't create the thing.
Being able to make someone think a computer program is conscious does not make it conscious, because by that logic a Duke Nukem soundboard is conscious.
Do you genuinely think you've solved a problem that has confused humanity for centuries? Why don't you apply this brilliance elsewhere? Do we even need superintelligence if we have you?
Some epistemic humility is warranted.
I believe that a microprocessor is what it appears to be, that is, a microprocessor. That is the most epistemicly humble approach. You are rushing to ascribe personhood to a microprocessor with a certain kind of software running on it, or at the very least, saying that we can't rule personhood out. You are the one making the leap, not me.
Intelligence != consciousness, because believing that is so would require one to believe that the pain of a cognitively normal person is more real than the pain of someone with a developmental disability.
Also, I do not claim to have solved the hard problem of consciousness. Rather I have ruled out a particular answer, that is, the answer that consciousness arises from calculation in the abstract.
There is no such thing. Your observation could simply be short-circuited to make sense and you'd be none the wiser. If you are simulated, your perception and understanding is also fair game for manipulation.
Similarly, if consciousness is something that neurons do, simulating them through floating point numbers on a computer should also bring it about. I think dismissing LLM consciousness because they're parameterised through floating point numbers is only possible if one hasn't thought it through long enough. Other arguments are much more reasonable / harder to object to.
For instance, it's (unlikely, but) theoretically possible that it would require simulating them down to the level of subatomic particles, with perfect accuracy.
Right now, we're simulating them at a much, much higher and more abstract level, and AFAIK we barely even have the processing power to do that for the time being. So an artificial consciousness from simulated neurons may (again, assuming it's possible—which is a decent assumption, but not a certainty) take decades or even more for us to be able to achieve.