but u are a camera attached to a computer
No that’s the apparatus I use to interact with the world, the critical element is in the extrapolation of information from that, and the ability to change that [to know and think] then put the changed information back into the world by the same means it has been taken out.
btw i dont think the idea of artificial consciousness is implausible, you just need something that can do the above so as to make it a thinking living artificial being.
I think everyone is not realizing how a computer works. World of Warcraft is not a real world, it is an illusion. All it is are lights emitted from your monitors resulting in what is pieced together as an image that we perceive as looking like a real world. It is all illusiory, a result of electrical signals turning things on and off inside of your computer through electrical current controls. What you see in World of Warcraft is not 3 dimensional space; it is an illusion of lights flickering on and off on your monitor. If your monitor was not plugged in, it would just be a complex work of electric current passing through a myriad of internal controls inside your computer resulting in a dead end of electrons where it stays put until the outlet is released into your monitor by turning it on or whatever. Everything you see on your monitor is pure light emitted that has been manipulated and grouped together in various ways to result in an identifiable image. What came before that was nothing but electrons passing through things. This is far from life, computers provide illusions of thinking and “calculating”…
Good point, and I might add that the image on the screen does not exist until it is experienced by the consciousness/subjective mind.
humpty, also consider…
I was watching a documentary the other day on artificial diamonds, the conductivity is incredible; a guy held a diamond disk against an ice cube and the heat from his hand melted the ice as he pushed the disk right through the ice cube in a matter of seconds. The next generation of computing [inc, nanobots etc] will use such technology to produce super small processors. There is no reason why something similar or virtually identical to the brain could not be produced on a microscopic level, indeed with its conductivity levels one could produce artificial brains without the size limit of a human brain, something many times greater in its processing power than the brain.
Now imagine we made that and gave it a transparent artificial diamond skull, such that you could see right into the ‘brain’ of it and watch the electrical impulses fire off as it 'thinks’ [?] about things in much the same way as the brain does. Then ask yourself if you would see a qualaic [colour qualia etc] representation of the physical world going on in there? What would its subjective mind be ‘seeing’ through its interface [camera] with the world. A similar thing applies for information, all we would see are electrical impulses and exchanges, but no info, its brain would appear to be making decisions just as our brain does, and indeed I think our brain makes decisions for us all the time ~ but critically it is not us the consciousness making those decisions that is occuring in that electrical and chemical activity.
Hmm…
It’s really, really easy to make a program that simulates a bouncing ball. It’s really easy to make a program to simulate magnets, and friction, etc… Simulating a 3d glass being broken when a rock hits it, is a challenge, but it’s still possible. A working CRT tv is possible to simulate too. Biological things (like a growing mushroom) are WAY more complicated and need A LOT more storage and processing power (unless you want to dilate time)
So… why wouldn’t it be possible to simulate a fertilized egg growing into a baby? Or are you saying that it will never really “feel” anything since it’s not real? In it’s simulated universe; it’s neurons would fire the same way ours do in real life. If our neurons fire and we “feel” stuff and are aware of our selves, why wouldn’t he be aware of itself?
none of that is impossible for a computer
That should be fairly selfexplanatory.
Ofcause not!
A computer program only knows what the programmer have programmed it to do, unless there are some weird bugs that causes unintended functions, which happens alot.
Recently in 2011 there has been a super computer dong a quiz show, it totally misfired on very simple conversations, but it’s raw database of knowledge made it win over it’s 2 human competetors.
True - programs always only know what we tell them to know, AND we only know what we sense and what we deduce from what we sense and what we deduce from the thing we deduced from what we sensed and so on…
This “perfect program” I’m talking about - factors in all possible variables to simulate the nature of matter and energy. If I show the virtual baby an apple, it will see an apple - if I show it an orange, it’ll see an orange. If I show a newborn baby an apple or an orange the result is the same neurons firing.
A baby only sees what we make it see, and hears what we make it hear - his brain does the rest of the interpretation; this results in very unpredictable behaviour; e.g. if we show a newborn an apple and an orange, he might say “ra ra gaga goo lala.” If we have simulated the universe perfectly, and show the virtual baby copies of that apple and orange that look the same; then the virtual baby should utter a similar string of nonsense. Since his brain interpreted the signals and made connections accordingly.
What’s so “magical” about this real world that we live in? Neurons wouldn’t know the difference between a simulation and the real world… would they?
Just to give you people an idea of why it’s impossible to do this using today’s resources:
- We’d need to factor in every single atom; thats ~200 trillion atoms for both cells. Plus a few trillion for the invitro equipment.
- When that cell divides once - that’s 400 tril, one more division; 600 tril… 1200, 2400,etc… In a few months the number of cells would be VERY large - multiply that very large by 200 trillion. A new born has atleast a trillion cells, 10^16 x 10 ^ 14 = a very big number (10 ^ 30), that’s just the number of atoms. Now we need an x and z and y co-ordinate for each atom. Then, we need properties of each atom to calculate stuff…
BTW that’s 1.16415322 × 10^21 gigabytes to give each cell an id number - multiply that by 4 to factor in the amount of space the x,y,z coordinates will take. TOO CONFUSING](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/uploads/default/original/2X/7/7c349bf1053f368a5729d053e1e91215f22ce66c.gif "Brick wall")
but still within the realm of possibility - We’d need to factor in each of the four fundamental forces of nature, and calculate their effects on each atom - like every 1/10000th of a second, the fake universe would be hologramic
so… yes… impossible right now
I didn’t say it wasn’t possible to simulate anything. It is all it is though, a simulation. Correct, it will never feel anything because it is non existent primarily. When you see this baby on your computer screen you are viewing not a baby but pure light… emitted in a way to look like a baby to your eyes. It is an illusion. When the code for neurons “fire” for the programmed “baby”, all that occurs is a direction for electrons to flow through your computer hardware to react in a certain way that will change the appearance of this light now or in the future at some predetermined time, or possibly on a hiatus based on other occurrences happening (other electrons sent in a specific manner as programmed by the software and hardware). While you claim its nuerons would fire the same way ours do in real life, no that is not true, It has no neurons, it has software instructions that will interact with the hardware in a certain way. (Per your hypothetical, if pain is sensed by us if we are stabbed then the if we stab the computer baby all that occurs is a electrons are fired to hardware in certain ways to provide new images and sound (pre-determined-sound waves files) that would (if done properly) would resemble exactly as if it happened to a real human. (We already have limited software examples of this currently available) Increasing the complexity of the simulation simply does not give rise to true consciousness.
Somehow I get the expression that you don’t really know the deeper meaning of what you say.
If you knew anything about 3D development, it’s extremely difficult to create perfect humans, and hair in motion, all the minescule things is so hard to capture.
It’s like you want to belive in your own words.
Humpty
Would you say your computer is conscious and has a mind, thinks, exchanges info [not the mechanistic kind] with the world? Yet it is more powerful than many forms of life.
What I am saying is that those things are impossible for computers, unless you can get them to read and write informations ~ the critical element that computers don’t have.
I don’t know what it is about an artificial brain or indeed the organic brain, that makes it think, create and understand qualia and info and simply be alive. I do believe we could e.g. replicate artificially simple forms of life like a jellyfish, but I also think it would be a zombie jellyfish.
However there must be something about organic beings which interact with universal consciousness in a way that makes them thinking living creatures. In that sense you either do something similar to the op and mix organic with artificial elements [which doesn’t solve the problem], or you create an artificial brain that induces the interaction of consciousness with it. You would I feel have to create a quantum computer, which has an unknown element [as it fluxes in and out of quantum states in a partially undefined manner] ~ to wit I feel is the key to getting universal consciousness to interact with it.