Hacker News Reader

If you believe that humans creating a system that could develop self-awareness is a meaningless game, then yeah, it's all just semantics I guess. By this standard human consciousness is meaningless as well, if all behavior is just a kind of elaborate pre-programming then human beings have no agency either.

View on HN

Yes, what you decide to call a system that exhibits the properties of "self-awareness" is entirely meaningless. The consequences are exactly the same. You can call it "fake self-awareness" or whatever you want but that doesn't change anything.

If I say you are conscious, it's simply an assumption based on actions I observe from you.

If I instead say, "No, yborg just has 'fake consciousness'", guess what ? Nothing changes for the rest of the world. If punched you, I'd expect retaliation. Whether I said that was real anger or pretend anger is again irrelevant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com