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Re: Scary AI

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

Followups directed to: alt.philosophy

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Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
> ["Followup-To:" header set to alt.philosophy.]
> On 2025-04-18, Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> wrote:
>> On 4/17/2025 6:40 PM, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>> Newyana2:
>>> 
>>>> If you believe in scientific materialism then you might
>>>> believe that consciousness is an emergent quality, arising
>>>> from chemical reactions in the brain.
>>> 
>>> Is this compatible with us perceiving our own consciousness
>>> and being able to discuss it, which means it is casually
>>> active?
>>> 
>>> Do you mean strong (aka miraculous) emergence, or weak
>>> emergence? IMHO, the weak variety is out of the question:
>>> chemmical, electrical, and other material processes can
>>> produce only other material processes, but not feelings,
>>> emotions, qualia...
>>> 
>> 
>> I don't support either premise. Do we perceive
>> consciousness? That seems questionable. "I think,
>> therefore I am" is a desperate grasping at ground,
>> not an observation.
>> 
> 
> Consciousness being an emergent quality seems like handwaving to me.
> "We don't have the foggiest idea of how it works, so I suppose a
> computer would become conscious because are like computers".

Biology is full of emergent properties that, on the surface, seem to break
physics principles. Life, for example, violates the principle of
conservation of energy. 

A tiger violates newton's third law. You poke it with a stick and it's
response won't be "equal and opposite". 

Emergent properties are a fundamental result of truly complex systems. It
isn't unique to biology. 

> Computation and intelligence are two different things, and our brains,
> our minds work fundamentally different to a Ryzen chip.  Also, if
> conciousness arises from chemical reactions, why not elsewhere?  Why not
> in a beaker?

Depends how complex the beaker is. 

> Consciousness doesn't make sense outside of a living thing, 

Why not? It is possible to explain consciousness without dependency on a
(biological) living thing. It's arguable that a conscious entity then is
also living then gives to ethical discussions around right to life etc.
i.e. if an AI becomes conscious do we have the right to turn it off?

> and it
> likely was selected for during evolution.  This leads to two suggestions
> 
> 1: Consciousness has a real-world difference in how a brain thinks,
> which provides an evolutionary advantage.

Maybe. We would need to be able to disassociate intelligence from
consciousness in terms of their evolutionary advantage. 

> 
> 2: It isn't wholly emergent simply by virtue of a brain being a brain,
> but is something that has to be specifically catered for.  That is to
> say, a computer could only become conscious if we designed it to become
> conscious, which we haven't.

That sounds like an intelligent design argument. 

> 
> I suspect Roger Penrose was onto something when he suggested a link
> between consciousness and Quantum Mechanics, and somewhere during
> evolution nature 'stumbled' on a way of introducing some chaos into
> information processing which made sorting through alternatives much
> faster.
> 

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Thread

Scary AI Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> - 2025-04-08 16:26 +0100
  Re: Scary AI "Alan K." <alan@invalid.com> - 2025-04-08 11:45 -0400
  Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-08 12:39 -0400
    Re: Scary AI Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> - 2025-04-08 19:07 +0100
      Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-08 14:45 -0400
        Re: Scary AI Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> - 2025-04-08 20:35 +0100
          Re: Scary AI jetjock <jetjock@unkown.com> - 2025-04-09 14:01 -0500
        Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-08 20:57 +0000
          Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-08 17:16 -0400
            Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-09 19:53 +0000
              Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-09 16:47 -0400
                Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-11 12:23 +0000
                Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-11 13:31 -0400
                Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-13 02:30 +0000
                Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-13 07:49 -0400
                Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-13 13:08 +0000
                Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-13 02:38 +0000
            Re: Scary AI Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.moc> - 2025-04-18 01:40 +0300
              Re: Scary AI Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> - 2025-04-17 20:22 -0400
                Re: Scary AI Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> - 2025-04-18 02:12 +0000
                Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-18 06:44 +0000
                Re: Scary AI Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com> - 2025-04-18 14:34 +0300
      Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-08 20:46 +0000
        Re: Scary AI Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> - 2025-04-08 22:48 +0100
          Re: Scary AI Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> - 2025-04-09 09:50 +0000
    Re: Scary AI occam <occam@nowhere.nix> - 2025-04-18 16:45 +0200
  Re: Scary AI Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> - 2025-04-09 05:29 +0200
  Re: Scary AI Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.moc> - 2025-04-18 01:02 +0300

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