Hacker News Reader

Comment by artificialLimbs | Hacker News Reader

>> it seems reasonable to assume that one day, we could arrange atoms in a specific way to produce consciousness from an atom-based computer system.

There is no evidence for this. It does not seem reasonable to me at all. Internal dialog is not consciousness.

Many of the people who discuss consciousness at length do not need or simply do not engage in any internal dialog at all.

We will never 'build' consciousness. It is not possible. Consciousness comes from a source outside of our realm of experience as a gift. It does not come from the micro or small things (though it is entwined with them and everything), but from the macro, that which is above all.

View on HN

> There is no evidence for this.

It's a little unreasonable to expect a speculative statement about what might happen in the future to have evidence at the present time.

> We will never 'build' consciousness. It is not possible. Consciousness comes from a source outside of our realm of experience as a gift. It does not come from the micro or small things (though it is entwined with them and everything), but from the macro, that which is above all.

And yet there is even less evidence of any of this.

You cannot have a measure of consciousness in the same way that you cannot have a measure of anger. You can only possibly see its effects, and maybe not even that. But you can experience it.

Cheap and harmless infrared coupled with ML imaging is being worked on by companies I know of that can deeply see into the brain with micron-level precision and without the need of expensive MRI or CAT Scan room-filling equipment (OpenWater and Neurable for example). This tech could eventually be turned into a phone app or similar cheap device that we could directly train our emotional state on. The app would see our various emotions and degrees of intensity as it happens. That is entirely different if we can both experience our emotions and also see them directly confirmed by an app in real time. This helps take the 3rd person observation problem of consciousness into 1st person. That still doesn't solve the problem of knowing an artificial consciousness is actually experiencing things but at least its a step closure to understanding it.

This implies that consciousness is some sort of “magic”, not obeying the laws of the physical universe as we know them. I’m not willing to completely discount this idea. However, it seems likely that both mammals and birds all have this magic. It’s pretty wide spread. Why assume that humans can never figure it how it works, and replicate it?

As far as most people are concerned, it may as well be magic. It certainly doesn’t lend itself to understanding in the general sense. We must explore wholeheartedly and with integrity to even begin at comprehending the possibilities of connecting with it.

Even rocks and dead sticks have it. Some of us know how it works. I don’t claim to know, but I know more about it now than I did, let us say, some years ago. So it is like learning most any other complex thing, it is done over time. It can’t be replicated because it cannot be contained, and it is too expansive to be emulated or cloned with any sufficiency to have any substantial meaning.

I think Tom Hanks was in a film where he believed a volleyball was a person at some point in his journey where things weren't going so well. He would talk to it and it talked back (in his mind). We knew it was a volleyball and not a person. We know everything is not a person. If we said everything was a person, then it kind of doesn't make sense at that point to use that word. We should just use the word "everything". We would have to have another name for person that meant a person. It's just easier to call it "person".

What I mean by consciousness is more like how some chatbots (fake it) and animals demonstrate it (like us and dogs etc). Person's in a brain-lock situation even have activity that can be sensed by machinery and produce cursor movements on a screen where they can answer questions so they can demonstrate consciousness. That's more what I mean. Maybe I need to call it...sentience?

So far, rocks and sticks can't do that, but if this text is also conscious as its some magnetic charges on some discs somewhere, then I may be offending it.

Meaning rather, if atoms can produce consciousness, then why can't a computer system based on atoms produce consciousness? I don't see a reason why not. It may be beyond our capability but physics should permit it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com