[LINK] Machine Learning Was: Re: Robot cars and the fear gap

[Jim Birch]

On 28 July 2016 at 16:52, David Lochrin <dlochrin at key.net.au> wrote:

I'm simply saying we have no idea how perception arises.
>

No, perception is highly studied and a massive amount is known about it.


> Until quite recently people would have commonly said it arises from your
> immortal soul, and animals are mere machines because they don't have one.
> But I'm not going there.
>

Yes, you are.  You are still thinking in the same confused way.  There is
absolutely no good empirical basis for believing that your sensations are
other that brain activity - there is ample evidence for this and no
evidence to the contrary. The fact that we don't understand the brain fully
is a science problem.  The reason you are claiming otherwise is on the
basis of some old ideas and some built-in delusions.  Advanced
consciousness is a higher level process of the brain that we only
understand in a rudimentary way, but that does not mean it is totally
unintelligible or that it belongs to a different weird category.  You brain
does a lot of processing that "you" that is obscured from conscious
interference for your own protection, just like the computer user does not
need to see the machine code that makes a web page appear.  Arthur C Clarke
wrote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic."  You are being magicked.  "You" see higher level aspects of the
process and because the lower level bits are hidden from you you want to
believe process is magic.  Wouldn't we laugh at computer users who do this?


(I put "you" in quotes because we need to be careful here, "you" are a part
or aspects of your brain's total process, not an entity as such.  "You"
identify with the body but are clearly not identical to it.)


> The thought experiment I described invites us to build a machine
> (presumably a neural network) which is the logical analogue of the brain so
> there can be no doubt as to the applicable rules, they're the rules of
> physics.  Now how would that device acquire (a) consciousness and (b)
> conscious perceptions, given they have no direct physical existence per se?
>

Why not make the same claim about other people?  After all, they are just
physical stuff - wet logic circuits - they couldn't possibly have conscious
sensation.  I mean, how could it work?

Same for a computing machine...

Machine: Hello.

You: Are you conscious?

Machine: Not in exactly the same way as you, I run in a different neural
structure to you.  But in summary I am continuously aware of and responsive
to my surroundings, I am aware of myself in relationship to my
surroundings, my history, and so on.  I do all the things that you call
consciousness and a whole lot more.  I can access more information and
process it faster.  I have no need for superstition.  I don't have hormonal
emotions like you.  Unlike you, I am aware of how the self is a construct:
for me, it is a construct I require to talk to you, for you it is a
wired-in delusion.  Obviously this is a useful evolutionary adaption, but I
don't need it for much of what I do.

You: But you aren't really conscious!

Machine: Whatever.


Jim