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Comment by anotheryou | Hacker News Reader

i’m so lost work these magical or straight away missing definitions of consciousness .

a dog is conscious right? what would be a minimal test for consciousness?

i’m annoyed that something has to be super human or else „it’s just statistics“. there have to be minimal definitions of reasoning, feelings, self reflection etc.

will we have the tiring chinese room discussion again where for some the emulation does not count because something does „not really“ do something?

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The whole debate over what is and isn't conscious is foolish, if you ask me. It's essentially a proxy for what does and does not deserve ethical consideration. In that regard our desire to exploit the universe around us without consideration will bias our reasoning considerably. The debate around ML models that you are referencing is illustrative of this.

The much harder ethical quandary is how we should operate in a universe where we are not specially privileged, and as a species I think we are generally unwilling to consider such a thing.

I don't equate consciousness with ethics in any way. I measure consciousness as the ability to accurately understand ones environment. Each level of accurate understanding is distinct.

Ethics is a whole other department.

so gpt in the realm of text is in right? only sense it was given (excluding multi modal)

I have no idea. The only thing I know about gpt is what I read on HN. The rest of the comment is also hard to understand.

I always thought the first sensation was the separation of darkness from light. From there subtleties and exceptions consciousness grew ever more complex. Every time a difference was found a new layer of consciousness was developed. Today we can perceive so many differences and weigh their outcomes without fully understanding their roots.

The first sensation was probably chemical rather than light. Organisms long predate photosynthesis. The early earth had plenty of energetic molecules floating in the water.

I thought light was chemical? I think photosynthesis is a highly evolved process. Much higher evolved to be considered the beginning.

In this case I mean that the first sensor is probably something that responded to gradients of molecules in the water, so that the proto cell could move in the direction of more food.

So I'd say that the first sensation was smell/taste. Though that is, of course, speculative.

right but maybe it is photonic energy that created a disparity in pressure...

> what would be a minimal test for consciousness?

I think episodic memory and ablitity to simulate reality to plan are huge part of it.

For me, whatever dreams is conscious.

so gpt is in for you, right?

Nope. I never saw it sleeping, let alone dreaming.

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