Comment by virgildotcodes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by virgildotcodes | Hacker News Reader

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It seems to me that all sensation is predicated on the existence of properly-functioning components evolved specifically to gather that stimulus and then process it into an experience.

We have at this moment countless processes happening in our bodies - cells dying and dividing, reacting to their environments, communicating amongst one another, and we are totally oblivious to nearly all of it, let alone do we experience a sensation of pleasure or pain in each of these processes.

Not all matter, not all living cells or fully formed organisms even, have the ability to experience consciousness or sense pain and pleasure any more than they automatically have the ability to see, hear, or taste.

It's all dependent on complex systems that evolved specifically to create each of those sensations, and even then on those systems functioning properly. In humans, consciousness can be totally disrupted by things like sleep or general anesthesia, disrupting any of the senses is as simple as cutting the nerves that feed these inputs into the brain or damaging the brain that is interpreting those inputs.

It seems sensible to me that we would be more wary of growing literal brains on a chip as we know for certain that brains have the capacity to produce consciousness. It's also sensible to me that we should be somewhat wary of creating that same consciousness in non-biological systems, even though we aren't yet certain whether they're capable of it.

The trouble I see is that I don't believe that an entirely novel fundamental physical phenomenon could be created by the interaction of other fundamental physical phenomena. Fundamental phenomena would either exist or not exist, including the phenomenon of first-person experience.

For example, matter isn't formed by the composition of atoms, atoms are already matter to begin with. And due to various physical properties of atoms, they compose together. This is reasoning by analogy, which is inductive, but at least the line of reasoning is more consistent with what I understand about other areas of physics and logic.

It seems much more plausible to me that there would be some fundamental component of first-person experience. The sentient components could then compose together into complex sentient systems.

Some supporting evidence is that first-person experience in sentient systems, as far as I've observed, is usually motivated to preserve sentient systems, which indicates an emergent behavior of sentience directing motion and energy to orchestrate a self-perpetuating system, rather than the reverse.

> Fundamental phenomena would either exist or not exist, including the phenomenon of first-person experience.

Why do you think first-person experience is fundamental? It seems to me it's way more likely to be an aggregate phenomenon, like fire. There's no low level fundamental fireyness, it's a chemical reaction like any other, we humans just label reactions that meet certain criteria of scale, setting, and composition as "fires".

> Some supporting evidence is that first-person experience in sentient systems, as far as I've observed, is usually motivated to preserve sentient systems

I suspect this has more to do with the fact that you are far more likely to observe systems that seek to preserve themselves, since they are more likely to continue to exist. It doesn't indicate an emergent behavior of sentience, it's just observation bias.

These are insightful. The question about classifying phenomena as "fire" reminds me of Plato's forms. It's about how the human cognitive system divvies up the world into abstract models, more than it's about the underlying physics of instances of those forms. Still, the ideas of a fundamental property of reality vs a composite one are themselves forms, abstractions within human cognition, so it seems the answer would be ill-formed.

An emergent behavior is a macro phenomenon that arises from simpler ones. We can say that an emergent behavior exists if we can find just one example of it, so the probability of it happening isn't as central. However, establishing for one example that both a structure and its components are sentient is a tall order -- each of us knows only one first-person experience first-hand. We can accept that we are sentient, but could we conclude that each tissue and cell has its own experiences? Thinking about the subconscious helps persuade me that it's possible.

Not all carbon exists in crystalline form, but just one example of graphite or diamond makes properties of carbon atoms apparent.

as long as we have had civilization scale organizing principles, we have had intelligence of a general nature. I feel much of the conversation at this point is litigating the past.... to what end though?

you mention consciousness relative to organisms and their possession of it. Yet if it is not understood well-enough in ourselves, how can you say something does or does not possess it?

back the original idea, if these intelligence of scale have existed as a guiding force (ONE can hope).... I imagine there is going to be a flag that will have to be flipped before there is the "imagined threat of doom timeline" transpiring.

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