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Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

I don't have an explanation for the experience of digesting food at the cellular level either. But I still do it. You don't have to explain conciousness to have it.

As for qualia, I'm reminded of the people coming to my door asking, "Do you believe in Jesus?" I reply, "Do you?" and when they assure me fervently that they do, I follow up with, "Well, okay, how do you know you do?" I think you could do the same with r/Jesus/qualia/g.

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I don't understand where you're going with the analogy of digestion. Nobody is saying you have to be able to explain consciousness for it to exist. And science can easily explain the mechanism of digestion, but consciousness remains a mystery.

I don't think you need to explain consciousness to have it, or to produce it in an AI. I suspect that an AI consciousness will be grown from a (reasonably complex) seed, more than constructed. And it will probably require a huge amount of slow, human interaction at first. (Ted Chiang has a wonderful novella called The Lifecycle of Software Objects that is the only SF that I know that explores this possibility).

So you have a belief - the same thing as a person who believes in Jesus? The benefit of having an explanation is it doesn't matter at that point what one believes.

You suspect != it’s obvious.

A couple of your comments seem to imply you think my claim is that concious AI is objectively obvious. I was only asking if there are others for who it seems obvious -- clearly there are many that don't, and I don't take issue with them or their position! It's just I always read articles like this and it just strikes me as odd. I used an analogy in another comment about philosophizing about the possibility of heavier-than-air flight prior to us actually doing it. Which was a strange thing to get all worked up about, in hindsight.

The point is that without an explanation, claims of obviousness of the mechanics of consciousness are weak at best.

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