Comment by e12e | Hacker News Reader

Comment by e12e | Hacker News Reader

My initial thought about this is to reformulate the question as: "Can humans become conscious?". I don't think most people would claim that sperm and egg cells are concious. I also don't expect many people to argue that all humans come from joining these two, non-concious elements. Most (but maybe not all!) would probably agree that that embryo, consisting of a handful of cells, is not concious.

Yet, we interact with people all the time, and at least some of those we consider to be concious. So, by definition the answer to the question is yes. But I think that exploring why that is so, can also shed some light on what we mean by "being concious", how one might demonstrate that something is (or isn't) concious -- and how much of being concious relates to being able to relate to other that we consider to be concious as well.

If we could (and was willing) to raise a child without any human contact, what would such a thing become? Would it really become something we would call human? Concious?

I think that going down this line of questioning, we'll find some ideas about emergent systems, part-whole relations and in general a lot of complexity.

I think it also hard to claim that if we can merge a sperm and egg cell, and create a new concious system, that we couldn't be able to create some artificial (meaning, constructed by us, not "found" in nature) system that develops into being concious.

INMHO, the controversy isn't if an artificial construct can become concious, but what conciousness is, and how we know it's there.

Consciousness is no bright line rule. Humans like to believe that we are on one side of a great divide between conscious and unconscious animals. But all there is is a gradient between us and the bacteria, with infinite stops in between.

The interesting twist in Enders Game (and other scifi) is that the alien invaders do not understand humans as conscious beings. I see no reason to believe that there aren't beings on earth, animals, who are farther up the spectrum than we. There are some very large brains out there that we do not understand.

There are many interesting lines of reasoning around this. The idea of Gaia as a concious system is one. If the earth thinks at the speed of one thought every year, or 100 years -- and perhaps communicates with other such beings -- how would we know? (I don't have strong feelings about concrete ideas about Gaia as a concious system, one way or the other -- other than that I find it an interesting idea, and a good storytelling tool)

A pair of conjoined twins can read each other's thoughts and see through each other's eyes. Are they two people, or one?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331769/Doctors-stun...

A person has left and right hemispheres in their brain. Under some circumstances, losing one of these hemispheres will result in an almost normal functional human being. Imagine, with advances in biology and medicine, one day we can separate one person's brain, and place one half in one body, and the other half in another (artificial body or one whose original owner became brain dead), and both functioning as people. Are they two people, or one?

I think it depends on the observer. Some people would choose to see (one or both cases) as two people, and some would choose to see them as one.

But let us go back into history. The universe started from the big bang, as a big expanding cloud of hot gases. It was one point, and then it became one cloud. Billions of years and lots of things happening later, bits of that cloud grew eyes, legs and started to think for themselves. Are those individual bits of the universe, many individuals, or one universe?

I think, both. It's like asking a network of neurons, are you one, or many?

The universe is a conscious system. It can see itself through many eyes. It sees different parts of itself. It is having many thoughts.

I, a shard of the universe, have replied to you, another shard of the universe, by typing this on yet another shard of the same universe, at the same time as my own neurons are communicating to each other.

I think the metaphor I would point to here is "whirlpools in a river." Movements of movements of movements ... ad infinitum.

Another interesting way of articulating this might be: "The universe splits itself into two parts - an observer and an observed."

As an aside, in the Xeelee novels there is an intelligent species that are formed from vortices in liquids...

When I was talking about part and whole, I was more thinking about a person really can become concious alone, or if being concious is also partially at least influenced by being part of a culture and group communication and so on. This also goes into if or how language is connected to thinking. Can we have language without having someone to communicate with (ever)? Can we become concious without communication and language? (I'm not saying we cannot, but that these are interesting questions to ask).

Also related to part and whole, and emergent systems, I was thinking about things like ant colonies - and how they might (or might not) relate to big organism that happens to be made out of cells with the same DNA, like us.

Humans like to believe that we are on one side of a great divide between conscious and unconscious animals. But all there is is a gradient between us and the bacteria, with infinite stops in between.

The interesting twist in Enders Game (and other scifi) is that the alien invaders do not understand humans as conscious beings. I see no reason to believe that there aren't beings on earth, animals, who are farther up the spectrum than we.

Ahh, that's funny. It's the Blub Paradox [0] all over again! People generally seem to believe that they are special. That they live in a singularly special time in history. That their generation is on the cusp of some indefinable revolution. This bias seems to be extremely pervasive. Another pervasive example is the belief among evangelical Christians that Jesus will return to earth during our lifetime [1].

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

[1] http://www.people-press.org/2010/06/22/section-3-war-terrori...

Also note that the situation doesn't seem like it can really be framed in terms of the usual: "an observer is investigating something which is distinct from herself." In this situation there is not a hard distinction between what we are and what we are trying to describe.

Consciousness appears (intuitively, on the surface) to be the thing which creates the possibility of describing consciousness. A description of consciousness must account for itself. A theory of consciousness must be written such that it writes itself.

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