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Comment by mjburgess | Hacker News Reader

To throw a dissenting voice into the mix:

I do not think intelligence is a consequence of structure. Transparency is a consequence of how light interacts with objects. There is no "transparent gold". And being transparent is not something we can program gold to do.

Programming is the application of an electric field across a silicon surface: this can no more transmute silicon into gold as it can into a nervous system.

Consciousness is a biological activity. It is not something wood, silicon, sand, metal, glass, water, etc. can do by virtue of moving around in an interesting pattern. To me, this is akin to believing magic, or to thinking that the issue with Bug's Bunny's consciousness is that the ink wasnt laid out in the right way. Rather, there isnt any.

As scientists we should begin very clearly by identifying the target phenomenon. Line up everything in the known universe that is conscious and you will find that it engages in a highly specific biochemical activity that requires a whole set of highly specific chemical interactions.

To believe these can be achieved by applying an electric field across some silicon seems like the victorian superstition that a person could be raised from the dead by doing likewise.

Rather, all we are able to do is imitate in the weakest sense. People fooled by chatbots are no more enlightened than the early victorians who were shocked to watch the movie of a train coming at them. Fooling people is a very easy thing to do. And esp. in the area of consciousness when "alertness to things that might be conscious" seems a deep psychological preoccupation of almost every animal to the point of absurdity (eg. being scared at the wind).

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> Transparency is a consequence of how light interacts with objects. There is no "transparent gold". And being transparent is not something we can program gold to do.

Your remark made me research this, and apparently transparent gold exists, we can create it, and you can buy it [1]. The trick appears to be making the gold thin enough.

> Line up everything in the known universe that is conscious and you will find that it engages in a highly specific biochemical activity that requires a whole set of highly specific chemical interactions.

Line up everything in the known universe that engages in this highly specific biochemical activity, and you'll find a whole lot of things that most people wouldn't call "conscious". So the biochemical activity can't be enough on it's own to create "consciousness". If you compare those "unconscious" organisms with "conscious" ones, you'll find that that the "conscious" organisms have a large amount of cells with this biochemical activity arranged in an intricate network structure.

Now why do you think it's not this structure that creates "consciousness"? Why do the details of the biochemical activity matter beyond being a particular physical realization of some differential equations? Why would a machine made out of silicon, when it precisely emulates the behavior of that biochemical activity, be unable to replicate it's large-scale properties (including "consciousness")?

[1] http://www.reynardcorp.com/products/optical-components/coati...

Sure, I meant we cannot impart the property of transparency to a gold bar by "programming" it. Programming isnt a magical spell that can rewrite the causal interactions that take place in the universe.

> and you'll find a whole lot of things that most people wouldn't call "conscious"

I disagree. I cannot think of anything with a nervous system engaging in the particular neurochemical reaction I'm talking about not being conscious. No example comes to mind?

I dont mean any old reaction. As, the digestion of wheat. I mean the specific kind that define neurological systems.

> why do the details of the biochemical activity matter beyond being a particular physical realization of some differential equations

Because the "details" we're talking about are the causal effects.

> precisely emulates the behavior of that biochemical activity

For the same reason you cannot programme a gold bar into transparency. Or program a table into an elephant.

Or to put it another way, a program which "precisely emulates the behavior of gold" doesnt turn machine into gold.

A program which "precisely emulates the behavior of digestion" does not digest pizza.

A program which "precisely emulates the behavior of" consciousness isnt conscious.

By "emulation" you mean, "imitation in form". Since it is only the FORMS the program and the nervous system share (or, gold, whatever). Ie., that they can be both described to an extreme level of abstraction in the same way. But the universe isnt abstract. It isnt a form.

A program simulating a gold bar may be an instance of some equation that a gold bar is -- but possesses none of the properties that make it gold.

A machine which imitates some highly abstract equational description of thought is as close to thinking as a bird is to an aeroplane. The bird's heart will burn as much jet fuel as your machine will think.

The universe isnt taking place in the abstract, it's taking place in the concrete. You have no soul. Your mind is not a program. You consciousness is not ideal. It isnt a number. A pattern, a structure, an equation. These are descriptions. Your mind is something your body is doing -- as so it is for every known thing that has a mind.

To speak as if the mind could be abstracted enough to a description that may be realized in silicon is to believe in an almost magical power of electric.

>> and you'll find a whole lot of things that most people wouldn't call "conscious"

> I disagree. I cannot think of anything with a nervous system engaging in the particular neurochemical reaction I'm talking about not being conscious. No example comes to mind?

Is a jellyfish conscious? Does it have the particular neurochemical reaction you are talking about?

> A machine which imitates some highly abstract equational description of thought is as close to thinking as a bird is to an aeroplane. The bird's heart will burn as much jet fuel as your machine will think.

This is actually a good analogy for our disagreement. Your definition of "thought" seems to inherently depend on the implementing substrate; and if it doesn't burn jet fuel, a bird doesn't really "fly".

But for me the substrate is irrelevant; I don't care whether a machine "really thinks", so long as it can solve any problem which I might have to "think" about otherwise.

> I don't care whether a machine "really thinks", so long as it can solve any problem which I might have to "think" about otherwise.

OK, well then your calculator satisfies your definition of "thinking".

I'm concerned to know whether a machine is doing what my dog is or I am. And mostly when people become hysterical or tedtalky (which is the same thing most of the time) about AI they are presenting an "I, Robot" future where androids dream of electric sheep.

> and if it doesn't burn jet fuel, a bird doesn't really "fly"

When I think, "I'd like my pen" and subsequently my arm moves to get my pen, my thinking is causally connected to my arm moving. My arm moving is some chemical my muscles do, in order to be connected at all with my thinking, my thinking has to be something broadly chemical too.

The plane doesn't move air out of the way because its flying. It does that because its burning fuel (etc.). "Flying" as a description of what the bird and the aeroplane are both doing isnt actually any physical process at all. Is a pattern they both very abstractly follow that we have invented. In this sense nothing in the universe actually flies: the bird does its thing, the aeroplane does its thing --- and from our point of view, they are both abstractly similar.

IT's our pov which makes them similar though. The airplane isnt distressed to burn too much. The bird is.

> Or to put it another way, a program which "precisely emulates the behavior of gold" doesnt turn machine into gold.

> A program which "precisely emulates the behavior of digestion" does not digest pizza.

> A program which "precisely emulates the behavior of" consciousness isnt conscious.

If my goal is probing the behavior of gold, I don't care if it's real or emulated.

If my goal is having a list of chemicals pizza turns into, I don't care if the digestion is real or emulated.

If my goal is having a conversation, I don't care if they're a p-zombie.

Tell me if I'm missing anything here:

Either a computer can perfectly imitate a neuron's behavior, or it can't.

If it can, then a giant computer should be able to make either a conscious being or a P-zombie. (Do you make a distinction there? If you do, can you justify it?)

If you say it can't, then I accuse you of magical thinking. There is no evidence of physical interactions that cannot be emulated.

> To speak as if the mind could be abstracted enough to a description that may be realized in silicon is to believe in an almost magical power of electric.

Here's the thing. The idea of emulating a person does not depend on abstracting the mind. The 'proof of concept' is just building a computer so big that you emulate an entire nervous system, fully intact, every single atom.

A simulation of digestion, does not digest pizza.

> Either a computer can perfectly imitate digestion, or it can't.

Yeah, it cant.

What you seem to think is that "imitation in form" means being the same as. A photograph of me is imitation in the form of me, it isnt me. It doenst have a pulse.

The universe is not an idealised abstract world of Forms, and so anything with the same abstract pattern is equivalent.

Abstract patterns exist only form our point of view. They are our way of describing things.

To say a computer imitates anything is only to say that when we look at it, we can use it to inform ourselves. Simulating digestion is a means of learning about digestion because we design it to correlate across systems.

Without a point-of-view to impose correspondence, the two systems are a like in no respect. "Being a simulation of" is like Beauty. Its not a process in the universe, its not a property of objects.

A piece of silicon with an oscillating electric field across it remains the same regardless of whether it is running the "digestion simulation" or the "consciousness simulation". It is only a matter of electrical frequencies and amplitudes.

This acquires meaning to us when we look at them. In the case of digestion one 01010 pattern means "too acidic", in the case of a lifelike chat bot "01010" means "hi!".

The cinema screen is not a train. It's a movie. Its just light hitting a canvas. It wont hurt you. 01010 isnt acid. It isnt thought. It's just a voltage fluctuation, it cant talk to you.

> The cinema screen is not a train. It's a movie.

Ooh, this is a good example!

When I watch a movie, I don't care if the camera was pointed at real events, or if it was CGI.

I care about the actual movie experience. It's the same either way.

When I have a telephone call with someone, I don't care if the microphone is pointed at flesh. I care about the conversation.

> What you seem to think is that "imitation in form" means being the same as. A photograph of me is imitation in the form of me, it isnt me. It doenst have a pulse.

Actually my thought process is not that at all. My goal is to create an identical photograph with my computer. Or more specifically, 60 of them per second, plus audio.

Do you think that's possible or impossible?

If it's possible, then I have something that claims to be real, that claims to feel, that responds as intelligently as a human in every way... That's good enough for a lot of people to call it conscious. It's definitely good enough to drive a car, or translate a book, or fill out a captcha, or do whatever "AGI" is supposed to do.

If it's not possible, then why? If everything is a purely physical process, can't a computer can use math to figure out where atoms would go, and where photons would bounce?

> When I watch a movie, I don't care if the camera was pointed at real events, or if it was CGI.

We call something conscious because it actually thinks, not because it can fool human beings into believing it does.

The foolishness of a human audience is not the measure of all things. Whether neo exists or not matters.

We have moral obligations to thinking things, we have none to non-thinking things. etc. We have none to fictional things.

What evidence do you have that you are conscious?

What if your neurons are running a biological program that merely emulates thinking, and fools humans into believing that it thinks?

But all of that is philosophy, right?

In terms of external behavior, you're admitting this machine could match a human?

Because that's enough for AGI. You don't need "genuine consciousness".

They are not "running a biological program". Acid melting metal isn't a "program" it's a chemical reaction.

Consciousness is what I am doing. That's my definition of the term. It's incoherent to say "what's my evidence for it".

> In terms of external behavior, you're admitting this machine could match a human?

No. I am only saying that a stupid human being using only stupid human faculties of speaking to something might be fooled, by their stupidity, into thinking they were speaking to something as equally stupid as their are.

A dog which observes a toy dog walking around may bark at it as-if it were another dog. But that toy dog isnt. it doesnt think, it has no emotion, experiences no pain. has no goals, no interests, no skills, etc.

No piece of silicon will every amount to more than a toy dog. Neuroscientists will not be fooled by it. Incraesingly sophisticated tests of cognition and goal-directed behaviour won't be fooled by it.

People on the street might be. But their foolishness is no guide to the temperature of the sun, the cause of the tides, nor whether the toy dog thinks.,

So you think no silicon computer could ever correctly calculate the way atoms move, and photons bounce?

Because that's the only way for it to fail cognition tests! It has to calculate different photons than you'd get from a real body.

And I feel like the idea that some physical processes just can't be simulated is magical thinking.

Does simulating a gold bar turn the simulation into gold?

I feel im going round in circles here. A description of a system, even if that description is "active" (ie., it evolves over time)... is not the same as the system.

I can take a photograph of a mountain. My hand has no mountain in it, but a photograph.

I can describe any system with mathematics. I can give every atom in your body a number for all of its properties, and a location with respect to the centre of the earth and then append all those numbers together to form a massive number X.

Over time because your position and properties change the number which describes you X2 differs from X.

If I start by writing X down, then X2, then X3, etc. then the ink on the page describes you as a changing system.

The ink isnt you. It isnt alive. It's ink.

That is all a machine is. We have replaced ink with electricity and paper with silicon, but it is only correlated with a changing number.

WE perform the translation from this number to something else in the world. The person who reads the ink on the paper is the person who knows what X becoming X2 means as it pertains to you. The paper and ink do not mean anything alone, they are not you and share none of your properties.

When a chat bot says "hi" it is just a change to an LCD screen caused by an electrical fluctuation caused by a prior electrical fluctuation. It is just a new line of ink on the page.

There is nothing thinking, saying, speaking, understanding, "hi". It is just a change to some liquid crystal which fools you as you read it. YOU impart meaning on it when you look at it. It isnt a person, it's just ink.

The most ambitious we can be about machines is that they fool people into thinking they are having a conversation with someone. Ie., that paper shreds with ink phrases on them tumble out of a folder in just-the-right-order as-if a conversation was happening. But it's a tumbling of electric, there is no conversation.

> If I start by writing X down, then X2, then X3, etc. then the ink on the page describes you as a changing system.

> The ink isnt you. It isnt alive. It's ink.

> That is all a machine is. We have replaced ink with electricity and paper with silicon, but it is only correlated with a changing number.

Okay, good. Now here is the important part.

I am not making the claim that this machine is a real person.

I am making the claim that if you video-call the machine, it will produce lights and sounds that are identical to video calling a real person.

If the simulation is accurate, isn't that a straightforward consequence?

You keep saying that the machine won't be real AND that it will fail sophisticated cognition tests.

Those are not the same issue.

I'm not arguing that it's real. I'm arguing that it will pass every cognition test you can throw at it.

Is there a flew in my very short chain of logic?

There are tests to distinguish gold from silicon. And so there will be for however your machine works. I cannot say now what those test will be, any more than you can make such a machine.

Something not being the thing it is simulating entails there will be tests to distinguish it.

The tests cannot be "cognative" because there is no cognition going on.

A simulation of an animal does not live in the world, experience and understand it -- nor render the world intelligible to itself and others. A simulation of an animal is just a current flowing around a wire.

I would guess the tests will always, actually, be quite simple -- perhaps not expressible as a single conversation -- because somehow like a chess game it has every infinite sequence of conversations available to it.

Perhaps, in a novel social situation adapting to evolving minds as they respond to each other. Suppose this is recorded today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99IitWYZ0aU#t=60s

and your machine is sat in the audience.

The question is then: "What does Kenneth think about the audience's laughter?"

> There are tests to distinguish gold from silicon. And so there will be for however your machine works.

Unless something was coded wrong, gold inside the simulation will give the same numbers as gold outside, so you can't tell which is which.

Let me be clear here. You don't touch the machine directly, you get the numbers the simulation spits out. The 'proof of concept' interaction is that you are on a video call with the atoms and photons inside the simulation. The video looks like a person, and your job is finding any difference between it and a video call with a real person.

> Something not being the thing it is simulating entails there will be tests to distinguish it.

That implies that the atoms and photons are being simulated incorrectly. Are you saying it's not possible to have an accurate simulation of atoms and photons?

> A simulation of an animal does not live in the world

The simulated atoms interact with a simulated cage, so they should give the same results despite being mere electricity.

> I would guess the tests will always, actually, be quite simple -- perhaps not expressible as a single conversation -- because somehow like a chess game it has every infinite sequence of conversations available to it.

> Perhaps, in a novel social situation adapting to evolving minds as they respond to each other.

> The question is then: "What does Kenneth think about the audience's laughter?"

The simulated atoms will change simulated orientation the same way real atoms would. If you look for physical evidence of learning you'll find the same molecules moving the same way. Why would the simulation fail this test?

> You don't touch the machine directly, you get the numbers the simulation spits out.

So you're restricting the use of this machine to a situation designed to fool human beings?

The criterion for general intelligence is actual intelligence, not putting it in ideal conditions and seeing if people are fooled.

> Why would the simulation fail this test?

It seems like you think this machine is going to simulate the entire universe, evolve its model of the universe and therefore perfectly predict its next state -- and on the basis of this prediction provide an answer.

Sure, perhaps I will concede: if you are able to simulate the universe in infinite detail you might be able to perfectly predict its next state.

This isnt any ambition of any one however. And has nothing to do with AI. If the precondition of AI is "a perfect simulation of everything", then that's close enough -- for me -- to call it impossible.

Even so, in this sense however, we do not " simulate gold " . What it means to "simulate gold" is to take some small number of aspects, model them with equations, and run those equations.

A video game that allowed you to perform mass-spectrometry on any possible compound, along with everything else you could possibly do to everything -- would I think, be a video game which requires a whole other universe to exist.

And so, it seems your argument is that "when scientists can model the universe in infinite detail so as to perfectly predict its next state, we will have AI!" (and, as far as the quantum state of brains go, it's close enough to inifinity to model all of that)..

OK, sure. I don't know how scientists are going to build a universe simulator without a "theory of everything" and how, even with such a theory, a machine can predict the next-state of a large system in sub-infinite times. Processing merely some particle collisions in the LHC takes months.

I cannot see how a machine is going to actually track the evolving entangled state of an audience of human beings.

"Infinitely precise information about the universe" I think actually requires you to actually be the universe. That's maybe a speculation however, but I would be surprised if the universe could be described in less volume than it occupies. And if an infinity of precision (ie., perfect parity in every simulated result) is actually possible without the target system.

A machine can only simulate what is known. The actual behaviour of the universe is much larger than what is known. As soon as we discover something new, then we have a test to prove the machine is a machine.

> The criterion for general intelligence is actual intelligence, not putting it in ideal conditions and seeing if people are fooled.

Having to do it across a wire is "ideal conditions"?

The initial comment was about "artificial general intelligence". Every single one of those problems can be done across a wire.

Every word that has ever been spoken, every gesture that has ever been made, you can do across a wire.

It's good enough to solve any practical problem in the world. It just won't be "real".

> It seems like you think this machine is going to simulate the entire universe, evolve its model of the universe and therefore perfectly predict its next state -- and on the basis of this prediction provide an answer.

No, it's going to simulate a tiny cubicle with a person inside.

I guess you could call it a simulated universe, but the universe is only two cubic meters.

> I cannot see how a machine is going to actually track the evolving entangled state of an audience of human beings.

Put cameras in the seat in the theater. One copy of the feed goes to a real person, the other goes to the machine. Both can track the evolving state of the audience fine. Neither one should be expected to perfectly simulate the rest of the audience.

> I would be surprised if the universe could be described in less volume than it occupies.

Don't worry, I don't expect the machine to be smaller than two cubic meters!

> A machine can only simulate what is known. The actual behaviour of the universe is much larger than what is known. As soon as we discover something new, then we have a test to prove the machine is a machine.

That's fair. So version 1.0 will have slightly-wrong physics. Do you think that will necessarily make the simulation go awry? Do you think we'll never know enough about physics to simulate a small box with a person in it?

> Do you think we'll never know enough about physics to simulate a small box with a person in it?

In the sense you mean simulation, ie., describe with all required detail some system -- we can barely simulate a few atoms let alone a room with a human being in it.

Im not sure this is even a question of knowing the physics. The problem is that even an atom has an infinite density of "descriptive information"... ie., in order to describe in toto we would be calculating forever.

This is not what any one in AI is even trying to do by the way. This isnt machine learning. This isn't AI.

I'm not convinced simulation in this depth will ever be achieved, I cannot imagine it could ever be performant. Every single causal interaction taking place over a second is an entire universe in itself. To have this second alone described in simulation is a vast undertaking, let alone a conversation.

Maybe I would agree that while this system would be "good enough", if it could predict an appropriate response by simulating a target human being to this depth... all the way down to how dopamine bonds to receptors in the frontal lobe, etc. -- then sure, I could see that it would be close enough.

However this isnt what anyone means when we say something is "simulated". They mean that it a single aspect alone is idealised into a single equation and treated under perfect conditions without any other factor being relevant, and then a calculation involving this equation is run.

People in AI are not even considering animal consciousness as being a relevant thing to simulate (even though that's what consciousness is). They think it is just a matter of some idealized formal structure.

If they realised that it would require an electronic system to calculate every descriptive quantity regarding every particle of some animal, computational general-AI research projects would be binned for the next millennia at least.

In the case of AI, no one is trying to "simulate a human being" in the sense you describe. They are trying to find an extremely simplified highly idealized equation to describe thinking.

They are trying to model intelligence as if the salient features of animal consciousness were not biological but equational. "Good Bye" follows "Hello" because insert program...

No, "Good Bye" follows "Hello" because people who speak english have lived a life of speaking it in which experiences have been acquired in response to the world ie., their brains have developed under sociolinguistic conditions: with light and sound bouncing off their bodies and the bodies of those around them such that their neurological structure as evolved to causally associate "hello" with akind of social circumstane and "goodbye" with likewise.

There is nothing apart from this connected social-neurological system that constitutes why "goodbye" follows "hello". That is how it comes to be. Any rule or system which appeals to an equation that isn't modelling this entire process to its full depth is just "accidentally correlated" with english-- and will be trivially easy to expose.

And so on for every aspect of consciousness.

the problem with your suggestion is that it is merely affirming the consequent: brains are conscious and robots are not brains therefore robots are not conscious. actually the real question is why are brains conscious? if we could answer that, then we could gather conscious things together (human brains, dog brains, slime mold, not trees, not grass) -- you see. its not sufficient to just say "brain" or "organic matter". the diversity of life (ex bird brain vs squid brain while both creatures demonstrate self awareness) suggests a compelling hypothesis: multiple realizability. if multiple realizability is true then perhaps the explanation is that it is not the substrate that is relevant but the arrangement, the programming, whatever... point being, im guessing you have a bio background and so you're a skeptic about virtual minds and in the more strict sense that is a very valid point -- most in the field of AI do not have any bio background at all and as you say, the only thing known for certain to be conscious being your own mind, well, you'd think understanding the bio would yield some insights. well actually it has, ex hinton's work is very much inspired by actual biology (neurology) /end rant

Who said anything about consciousness? Intelligence does not equal consciousness.

Line up all the things in the universe that are intelligent. They are all conscious.

Unless you mean "imitating intelligence", but that's not what AGI (artificial general intelligence) is targeting.

An AGI robot would be one to include in any future line-up of "all the things that are intelligent". My view is that unless an AGI robot has a nervous system, it will never belong in that category.

It is fashionable in tech today to speak metaphorically with abandon and to call whatever we like "intelligent" (and to have, machine "learning", etc.). These systems are no more intelligent than an abacus: upon inventing a wood-to-lcd converter, we could run Win95 on a few million wooden beads.

Metaphorically, these are intelligent. They fill the role of prior uses of genuine intelligence -- ie., they can help us calculate and therefore substitute our calculative conscious behaviours for non-conscious substitutes. They are tools.

My hammar is no more intelligent than my laptop however. Neither possess thoughts, nor can conceptualize or understand anything. A concept is a (biochemical) technique an animal acquires through a biochemical interaction with the world: an electric field can not have concepts.

The argument that machines-which-seem-intelligent are intelligent is only a fallacy of ambiguity. What we mean, of machines, is a tool-which-helps-conceptualizing. We we mean of general intelligence is conceptualizing. The former and the latter are not the same. In a universe only of tools, nothing thinks to use them.

> Line up all the things in the universe that are intelligent. They are all conscious.

The words “intelligent” and “conscious” are not sufficiently well defined to make that claim. By “intelligence”, do you mean:

1) “the ability to learn or understand or deal with new or trying situations”? Even current AI can do that.

2) “the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment”? That’s another rabbit hole itself.

3) “think abstractly as measured by [tests]”? I think current AI fails at this.

4) the thing which is separate to “body” in Cartesian Dualism? I don’t believe in that (i.e. souls) any more, so I can’t claim any AI would pass this test (nor any human).

And “conscious”? Is that:

1) Opposite of unconscious? I’d say they are.

2) Opposite of subconscious? ‍️

2)a) As in, not just autonomous functions like breathing or the equivalent for a robot? I’d say they are.

2)b) As in, “System 2 thinking”? ‍️I don’t know.

3) Critical self-evaluation? Generative adversarial networks pass, other than that I think AI fail this test.

4) Mirror test? Pass, but in a special case I don’t know the details of and which might well be newspaper fluff rather than proper AI.

> Even current AI can do that.

No it can't. A machine's output is not deterministic from its input and can be sensitive to conditions not anticipated at-programming-time. That isn't understanding.

A spinning top may spin on many surfaces not anticipated by the designer and acquire all sorts of interesting behaviors by doing so.

"The opposite of consciousness" is not a meaningful criterion of interest. I'm not even sure it's a meaningful term. It seems to commit the buddhist fallacy that causal processes at work in the universe are differentiated into opposites. That whatever causes rocks to fall must be the opposite of the thing that causes fire to rise. It isnt -- there isnt really anyway to define "opposite" with respect to what causes what.

Many of these tests you're outlining arent relevant to the question "does this robot have what we are interested in". Ie., is this piece of lead actually gold. Not "is it shiny with a brass coating" -- but can it participate in all the causal interactions gold can. I'm not concerned with how good the tool is, or how close we are to fooling people, i'm concerned with whether the robot can think.

Does the robot posses any concept? Any idea? Any understanding?

No, only metaphorically. It seems as-if it does to people who use it to aid in their understanding. It is only a trick, no more than an ancient human being being scared of a spinning top and wondering how it is so well able to navigate around the grain of the wood -- better than any beetle!

Intelligence as it is possessed by the relevant subset of animals which we're targeting possess concepts. They are biochemically connected to their environment. The understand it. The dog's finding its bone is NOT the same as the spinning top find its grove. Only by an extremely confused metaphor.

The dog puts to use thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination (and many other things besides) that are about its environment. That it has acquired in its direct understanding of its environment. The spinning top merely topples towards its final point as-if it understood.

Machines are rivers of electrical current that topple toward and outcome that it sensitive to their current state, like a top spinning about a board. They have no active, navigating, biochemical motivated concernful goal-directed action.

My view is that they never will, since on all the best evidence, skillful concernful action is a neuro-bio-chemical process.

> Even current ("real") intelligence can do that.

No it can't. A biological creature's output is not deterministic from its input and can be sensitive to conditions not anticipated at-programming-time. That isn't understanding.

A spinning top may spin on many surfaces not anticipated by the designer and acquire all sorts of interesting behaviors by doing so.

[...]

Many of these tests you're outlining aren't relevant to the question "does this biological creature have what we are interested in". Ie., "is this piece of lead actually gold". Not "is it shiny with a brass coating" -- but can it participate in all the causal interactions gold can. I'm not concerned with how good the tool is, or how close we are to fooling people, i'm concerned with whether the biological creature can think.

Does the biological creature posses any concept? Any idea? Any understanding?

No, only metaphorically. It seems as-if it does to people who use it to aid in their understanding. It is only a trick, no more than the sun being ascribed agency by ancient human being.

Intelligences which we're targeting do not possess concepts. They are not meaningfully connected to their environment. They don't understand it. The dog's finding its bone is just the same as the spinning top find its grove. The spinning is only much more intricate, and the nature of and interaction with the surface much less easily understandable.

The dog experiences illusions of thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination (and many other things besides) that are about its environment. Those have been caused by the nature of its environment. The spinning top topples towards its final point as-if it understood, just like the dog.

Biological creatures are rivers of biochemical and electrical currents that topple toward and outcome that it sensitive to their current state, like a top spinning about a board. They have no active, navigating, motivated concernful goal-directed action.

My view is that they never will, since on all the best evidence, skillful concernful action does not exist. It is merely illusions that emerge from chemical and electrical interactions.

It is not obviously clear whether your argument is any more valid than the above (or the other way around).

To expand, if a robot in every imaginable way behaves exactly like another human would, how can you know know that one possesses "intelligence" (or rather, consciousness), while the other doesn't?

Why would it be possible to construct the high level structures from which intelligence emerges on top of one set of primitives (electrical/chemical in biological context), and not the other (electrical-based logic on silicon).

The argument you pose have many signs of being an appeal to the ghost in the machine.

For anyone interested in exploring ideas around (self)consciousness and the mind, The Mind's I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett is a good read.

What you've done here is expose an epistemological problem but not the ontological one under consideration.

My ontological premises are: consciousness exists and it is a neurochemical process.

From this follows: machines which are not instances of this process are not conscious.

Now you have basically said: but we do not know for certain that it is this neurobiochemical process that accounts for consciousness. Isnt it reasonable to suppose that we might encounter things not actually conscious and think they are? YES. Isnt it reasonable, therefore, to suppose that "consciousness" isnt actually ontologically the same thing as this neurobiochemical process? NO!!

The magnitude of human foolishness is no guide to what exists and what it is like: our being able to be fooled by anything tells us little.

Yes, we can reverse the picture for the spinning-top and dog. But this is an epistemic reversal: we can suppose we are being fooled by the dog, but the spinning top is the truth!

This seems highly unlikely for reasons basically summarized as, "science works".

The spinning top isn't thinking and the dog is. That it is possible to doubt this claim, ie., that it fails to be certain, tells us nothing. Almost all scientific claims fail to be certain, that's neither here nor there as to whether they are accurate.

And I am appealing to no ghosts to draw distinctions between dogs and spinning tops. I am appealing to a reasonable scientific inference: let us modify the dogs behaviour and let us modify the spinning tops. Cocaine might well be involved in the former, or neurosurgery -- and in the latter, wood carving.

The distinction between a chisel and cocaine is hopefully clear enough: they act on their target objects in extremely different ways. The way that cocaine acts informs what stuff I take to comprise "consciousness" -- that is how the behaviour of the dog is modified.

> skillful concernful action does not exist. It is merely illusions

I dont know what you mean by "illusion" here. I don't see why the observation that skilllful actions is a bodily process somehow diminishes its reality. Skillfull action is just what people do in order to achieve their goals, we have discovered all of these things are biochemical but that doesnt make them fake.

If we observe the target phenomenon "skillful action" we discover is it biological. This rules out silicon and electric doing it. Or, in other words, to modify the behaviour of a machine I cannot use cocaine. It has no thoughts to disrupt. I'd have more luck with a chisel.

No, the issue is with the very premise, then.

It is not clear that consciousness necessarily only emerges from a neurochemical process.

What was basically said was "We do not know for certain that it is this neurochemical process that accounts for consciousness. Isn't it reasonable to suppose that we might encounter things that actually are conscious, but whose consciousness is not accounted for by the same property (neruochemical) of the underlying process."

I'm not sure that stated premise is very useful, since it borders on the tautological.

The dog (or even a human doing some task) is akin to an intricate state machine whose next state depends on the current state and its environment. Just like the spinning top. For each of those we modify the lower level mechanisms to effect a different high level behavior. Changing the thing in the former case (Cocaine/neurosurgery) or its environment (steal the bone). Changing the thing in the latter case (cutting out part of the spinning-top) or its environment (carving the surface it spins on).

The difference in the two cases being the number of intermediate steps (or abstraction layers if you will) between the high level behavior and the low level mechanisms from which it emerges, and the complexity of the emergent behvaior.

Illusion: the low level mechanisms (biochemical or otherwise) that, using the current state and the environment, transition to the next state, and in the process "present" an experience that we interpret as ourselves thinking, making decisions, taking skillful actions and so on.

If we observe the target phenomenon "skillful action" we discover that all known occurrences are biological. This doesn't really preclude the possibility of other mechanisms producing it.

To modify the behavior of a machine, you cannot use cocaine. That's because the machine has no receptors for the comprising molecules - not because it has no thoughts. You could instead modify the logic gates it possesses instead by applying a certain pattern of electromagnetic radiation which would cause interference, just like the cocaine interferes with the normal workings of the brain.

Scientific claims are not necessities. I'm not saying I can prove consciousness is a biological process only that its overwhelming reasonable to suppose so.

Emergence is a result of causal interactions between parts of a system being different than the internal causal interaction within one part. It doesnt mean "complexity" and it really has nothing to do with a machine.

The oscillating electric field acquires no new causal interactions as the program complexity increases. Adding more H20 to a single H20 creates new causal interactions (eg. wetness).

> That's because the machine has no receptors for the comprising molecules - not because it has no thoughts

Right, so you're supposing a contrary entirely bizarre ontological view: that thoughts are something independent of a biological process.

Of all the known things in the universe which think, to remove their nerves is to destroy their capacity to think. I cannot see any reason to suppose thinking is not merely their activity.

I do not find it bizarre to pose that it could be possible to use another set of primitives (than biochemical ones) to create something analogous to the higher level structure in a human brain that produces thoughts.

> Of all the known things in the universe which think, to remove their nerves is to destroy their capacity to think. I cannot see any reason to suppose thinking is not merely their activity.

You appear to be using circular reasoning. You assert that only biological-neuron entities are intelligent, use this assertion to create the set of intelligent entities, and then say that this is valid because to remove the neurons in those entities also removes their intelligence.

Indeed, it does — but then I get to assert that only silicon-logic-gate entities are intelligent, because their ability to process sensory inputs and translate this into signal outputs goes away when you remove their doped silicon wafers. It doesn’t help.

It would be circular if it were an argument. I haven't made an argument for it only offered it as the start of our scientific investigation. All observations of brute fact, phrased as arguments, are circular -- because the universe goes unargued for and merely exists.

What I mean is this:

You and I are having a conversation about consciousness. To do this scientifically we're going to have to point out those things in the universe that we're talking about. (We cannot begin, as socrates thought, with definitions because we dont know them yet).

So I shall collect for you all the things we have been talking about when we have said "this is conscious!". And you do the same. And my claim is that everything in this group is in this group... because ... it has a nervous system.

That is a hypothesis. My view is that this hypothesis is true and extremely well-evidence. My view is further that the only thing you can add to this group without a nervous system is something of pure imagination -- a cartoon character.

This is possible for any group: I draw a golden rabbit speaking to a silver duck. There are no such things because ducks cannot be both alive and made of gold -- as a brute fact about our universe that at its base causal interactions only play out in that way.

To believe that an electrified piece of metal could ever belong in the group of things united by their common feature "consciousness" is profound bizarre to me: what exactly is that thing meant to possess that I have?

Of what do I have when I am hungry and think of food that a piece of silicon may have? I dont know what that it, but it seems to throw away all known neuroscience to suppose it exists.

That is it not merely a cartoon fantasy, that really, the thing that makes me conscious is some peculiar abstract property of me that current running around a wire can also instance.

I have grave suspicions that neuroscientists will ever find that I possess this "structure", not least, because modifications to the way I think are easily done by insufflating cocaine (or whatever else). A drug which operates biochemically and yet modifies thought.

I'm not sure how a chemical modification to thought makes sense if the latter is an abstract property.

I don’t think I follow you.

> So I shall collect for you all the things we have been talking about when we have said "this is conscious!". And you do the same. And my claim is that everything in this group is in this group... because ... it has a nervous system.

That would be great if we were in 1930 and asking which pre-existing creatures are conscious, but you are asserting that no members of a group which was created to implement all the forms of intelligence that have yet been made quantifiable (as opposed to qualitative judgements of intelligence) are in your set.

I assert that you have a list, and that you have merely defined your words to be a shorthand for that list, rather than made a hypothesis that those words are descriptive properties that allow us to even ask if other things can be in that list, nor to ask if all members of that list truly belong there. (I.e. “is a dog intelligent?”)

For example, you now assert the list is synonymous with “nervous system” (previously “conscious”, previously “intelligent”) without explaining why a digital- or semiconductor-based nervous system would fail your test.

> To believe that an electrified piece of metal could ever belong in the group of things united by their common feature "consciousness" is profound bizarre to me: what exactly is that thing meant to possess that I have?

That’s my question, too. What is that thing which you are meant to posess which supposedly cannot exist on artificial substrates? Why is a biological neuron fundamentally better at thinking than a computer simulation of a biological neuron?

Still, I’m not sure I actually follow what you’re trying to say, because your last three paragraphs seem to be distorted by either autocomplete or google translate. Either way I just cannot extract your point from them.

> The distinction between a chisel and cocaine is hopefully clear enough: they act on their target objects in extremely different ways.

No. Both change target state. And when "running"(spinning, living) will act differently.

> The dog experiences illusions of thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination (and many other things besides) that are about its environment. Those have been caused by the nature of its environment. The spinning top topples towards its final point as-if it understood, just like the dog.

I think it's the same case with humans. We wouldn't differ from monkeys without ability to store information and imagination/abstraction(I think animals might posses those as well). Biologically-wise we are striving for same goals just in different environment(influenced/created) by us and more means(posibble acions).

> "The opposite of consciousness" is not a meaningful criterion of interest. I'm not even sure it's a meaningful term.

Then let me rephrase: The state that you are in when you are not asleep nor anesthetised nor in a coma. (I’m assuming you wrote consciousness rather than unconsciousness as an autocomplete typo not as a misreading, I’m having to edit a lot of comments for that reason today).

(Also, strange example with fire and rocks, given there is one axis on which fire does rise for the opposite cause of rocks falling: buoyancy)

> Many of these tests you're outlining arent relevant to the question "does this robot have what we are interested in"

I listed them because it was not clear what you are interested in when you say “intelligence”. You have improved one step by saying “understanding”, but that has nine meanings lf its own, half of which point back to “intelligence” without adding anything useful to my mental model of what you might be trying to describe.

Now, with regards to your dogs-vs.-spinning-tops comparison. I totally accept that spinning tops are not intelligent. I do not understand how you decided to fit spinning tops against definition 1. I believe dogs are intelligent. I cannot prove dogs are intelligent by definitions 2, 3, or 4, only by definition 1 — can you? Can you demonstrate that a dog has any of “thoughts, concepts, ideas, imagination”? Again, I believe they do, but I cannot prove any of those things and I am aware of both the risk of anthropomorphism and of dehumanising (ironic word in this context, but it fits) their minds.

Finally, why do you believe that neuro-biomechanical processes are fundamentally capable of things that silicon cannot do? What makes it special?

Where do you think human consciousness comes from?

I think all consciousness (a feature of most animals) is a specific kind of neuro-bio-chemical process.

To put it another way, to improve your focus I can give you Modafinil. To stabilize your mood lithium. To give you hallucinations, lsd. To distort your visual perception, ketamine. To make you more empathetic, trusting and less hostile: mdma. To speed up your thinking, cocaine. To make you aggressive, too much cocaine.

And this applies across the animal kingdom, in large part.

Where in this list is a program?

A program source is a description. A running programming is an electrical field across a piece of silicon. A description has no causal effect (the mere act of writing a description down does nothing). An an electrical field across a piece of silicon has effects, but none meaningful on consciousness.

Consciousness is not hiding somewhere. It takes only a baseball bat to deprive someone of it. And its various parameters are easily enough mapped about by chemical manipulation.

The modern (general/strong) AI sort follow in the tradition of Descartes who imagined that consciousness was its own sort of substance apart from the body. That its effects and structure were idealizable. Whether we call this idealization a "soul" or a "program" seems to make no odds to the mistake being made...

Consciousness is something animal bodies do. It is not a pattern in the sand, or a current in a wire. An certainly not a soul, a number, a program (which is only a number) or any other idealized abstraction.

To be even more explicit: no, you will not be able to upload your consciousness. The suggestion and its homology to heaven ought concern anything modern thinking scientist.

A description of water (H20) is not some water. I can no more upload a drink to amazon, than I can upload a thought you are thinking. A thought is a biochemical reaction. A description of a thought, even if very accurate, doesnt think. The internet may one day hold very detailed descriptions of people's brains. These will sit like textbooks and tombs though, and not care/wish for/consider/want/desire/understanding anything.

> An certainly not a soul

OK we agree on the basics - that consciousness is not due to some mystical external factor but that it is contained within a brain.

However, your description of consciousness is a particular combination of electrical fields (NB that those chemicals are acting by changing how electricity is transmitted)...

If it's purely physical process then it can be simulated. If it is process then it has some state. You can save state.

> The internet may one day hold very detailed descriptions of people's brains. These will sit like textbooks and tombs though, and not care/wish for/consider/want/desire/understanding anything.

Same would be if you saved state of biological world without running(simulating) it.

People are conscious (actually self-aware?) because we say we are. Which isn't actually evidence. I'm doubtful there's anything to explain.

Lots of other animals are self-aware (they can identify themselves for example). This isn't just a human thing, but an advanced brain thing.

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