“If you captured and simulated every neuron in the human brain, you’d be left with a feedforward process simulating a particular neural state of a particular person. No feeling, no reflection, no introspection, no semantic meaning. Just a neat toy.”
Seems to me you think there’s something special about humans, I don’t believe there’s any proof to that.
Yes its orders of magnitude more complex then a fly brain, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to simulate.
There’s no proof to a soul, our whole existence is our meat which evolved naturally over extreme timescales via random forces and natural selection, I see no reason to believe we could not do the same with our intelligence in a much shorter period of time comparatively.
Seems to me you think there’s something special about humans, I don’t believe there’s any proof to that.
I don’t, though. I get where you’re coming from, because I too often point out other people’s hidden assumptions about things like a soul or magic sauce to consciousness. I don’t subscribe. I follow something closer to a procedural understanding of consciousness.
that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to simulate.
I think it does. You aren’t going to simulate human consciousness if human consciousness is a procedure. At least, not how you’d simulate stock exchanges.
The difference is simulation versus synthesis. Your simulation would be a feed forward process and humans are not feed forward processes. Humans are phenomenologically driven entities. Your simulation would be a behaviorally consistent model at best — no phenomenology. Sorry to say, but that’s just not the same thing. It wouldn’t work the same way, wouldn’t feel the same, and you definitely wouldn’t have “figured out consciousness” just by building such a simulation. It would be a neat toy, like LLMs, but it wouldn’t be sentient. That’s obvious to me.
There’s no proof to a soul, our whole existence is our meat which evolved naturally over extreme timescales via random forces and natural selection, I see no reason to believe we could not do the same with our intelligence in a much shorter period of time comparatively.
Yeah, and I’m really not arguing for a soul. I’m arguing that simulation is subpar to recreation. If you simulated every neuron, you haven’t achieved anything really remarkable — except an awesome benchmark for computer power and a place in the history book. That’s it.
If you want a grand unifying theory of consciousness, you need to understand that phenomenology (the thing science ignores) is pretty damn central to the whole thing. That’s not arguing for a soul. That’s saying, pinch yourself — you are awake and you are not a robot.
At what point to you would it move from simulation to essentially the same configuration just in a different container?
Never.
Intelligence is substrate independent, and does not depend on consciousness or phenomenology. Phenomenology is probably substrate dependent, though. Meaning, the meatbag wrapped around our skeletal system really does matter. Phenomenology is also what makes us feel anything at all.
You can make all the intelligence you want, bootstrapping it off our neural architecture. You’re still doing us a disservice if you call it human. It’s more like a new species, with much more intelligence and virtually no phenomenological experience.
But calling it a new species is also arguable, because whether or not it would be “alive” is arguable. I’d just call it a neat toy.
I don’t understand why you think it’d be out of the question for it to have phenomoligcal experiences, why couldn’t we build a way for it to smell if it has the same pathways to be able to interpret that? How would that be meaningfully different?
Think about hearing aides or other similar “enhancements” wherein were simply adjusting the input in a way and the brain is still able to process it.
I would agree it wouldn’t be the same as a literal human, thinking like Fallout 4 style synths, I consider them people (in universe of course lol) even if they’re not literally humans.
“If you captured and simulated every neuron in the human brain, you’d be left with a feedforward process simulating a particular neural state of a particular person. No feeling, no reflection, no introspection, no semantic meaning. Just a neat toy.”
Seems to me you think there’s something special about humans, I don’t believe there’s any proof to that.
Yes its orders of magnitude more complex then a fly brain, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to simulate.
There’s no proof to a soul, our whole existence is our meat which evolved naturally over extreme timescales via random forces and natural selection, I see no reason to believe we could not do the same with our intelligence in a much shorter period of time comparatively.
I don’t, though. I get where you’re coming from, because I too often point out other people’s hidden assumptions about things like a soul or magic sauce to consciousness. I don’t subscribe. I follow something closer to a procedural understanding of consciousness.
I think it does. You aren’t going to simulate human consciousness if human consciousness is a procedure. At least, not how you’d simulate stock exchanges.
The difference is simulation versus synthesis. Your simulation would be a feed forward process and humans are not feed forward processes. Humans are phenomenologically driven entities. Your simulation would be a behaviorally consistent model at best — no phenomenology. Sorry to say, but that’s just not the same thing. It wouldn’t work the same way, wouldn’t feel the same, and you definitely wouldn’t have “figured out consciousness” just by building such a simulation. It would be a neat toy, like LLMs, but it wouldn’t be sentient. That’s obvious to me.
Yeah, and I’m really not arguing for a soul. I’m arguing that simulation is subpar to recreation. If you simulated every neuron, you haven’t achieved anything really remarkable — except an awesome benchmark for computer power and a place in the history book. That’s it.
If you want a grand unifying theory of consciousness, you need to understand that phenomenology (the thing science ignores) is pretty damn central to the whole thing. That’s not arguing for a soul. That’s saying, pinch yourself — you are awake and you are not a robot.
At what point to you would it move from simulation to essentially the same configuration just in a different container?
I still think you’re conflating the aspect of life we experience as somehow separate from the procedure our brain takes to present that to you.
Never.
Intelligence is substrate independent, and does not depend on consciousness or phenomenology. Phenomenology is probably substrate dependent, though. Meaning, the meatbag wrapped around our skeletal system really does matter. Phenomenology is also what makes us feel anything at all.
You can make all the intelligence you want, bootstrapping it off our neural architecture. You’re still doing us a disservice if you call it human. It’s more like a new species, with much more intelligence and virtually no phenomenological experience.
But calling it a new species is also arguable, because whether or not it would be “alive” is arguable. I’d just call it a neat toy.
I don’t understand why you think it’d be out of the question for it to have phenomoligcal experiences, why couldn’t we build a way for it to smell if it has the same pathways to be able to interpret that? How would that be meaningfully different?
Think about hearing aides or other similar “enhancements” wherein were simply adjusting the input in a way and the brain is still able to process it.
I would agree it wouldn’t be the same as a literal human, thinking like Fallout 4 style synths, I consider them people (in universe of course lol) even if they’re not literally humans.