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Comment by fellowmartian | Hacker News Reader

Being conscious is embodiment in its own right: you decide to think a thought and you see your thought being thought.

Incorrect. If I say “ think of a famous actor”. (Please do it benefit reading on..) l, aha you actually look back at the process and study it, you’re not actually choosing what you choose. It’s a mere illusion. The famous actor has in fact just come into your mid on its own. There was really no choice.

A corollary to this is that you didn't arrive at this conclusion as a result of analyzing the possible perspectives and choosing the best one. Similar to what you said, you didn’t choose to believe this, the veracity of this conclusion just came into your mind on its own. So why should we, or you for that matter, take this claim seriously?

I knew somebody would bring free will into this :) I should've said "you decide to think a thought (for some definition of "decide" according to your free will stance) ...". I mostly agree with you, but I decided to compartmentalize it out for the sake of this particular discussion, as I don't think it matters - a machine with these properties would be as conscious as a human.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

The fallacy of composition is an informal fallacy that arises when one infers that something is true of the whole (all forms and manifestations of thinking) from the fact that it is true of some part (your single example) of the whole.

Also: the truth value of your theory is subject to your theory itself.

This isn’t what everybody else means when they use the term “embodiment”. It refers to sensing and actuating in the world (or a simulation!) in realtime.

It’s explicitly referring to the opposite of a “brain in a jar” scenario.

It is explicitly compatible with the formal definition of embodiment, which is roughly: select an action from the action set, observe results of the action taken, update internal state, in a loop.

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