Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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Wayne92587
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Wayne92587 »

Yes! a computer can become conscious, in the same way that a Rock is Conscious.

Conscious is the Holy Grail, the vessel that holds the Essence, the Soul,
the Spirit of each and every Individual Person, Place or Thing, the seed, the Passion, of all Living things.

The Vessel itself being without form, shape, design.

In its own Right said Vessel has no relative, numerical, physical, material, worth, value, has a numerical value of Zero-0, being that is omnisciently Infinite, Immense, Boundless.
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Wayne92587
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Wayne92587 »

Consciousness can be likened only to a Great Void.
Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Jan Sand »

A void is nothingness. There is a hell of a lot of stuff going on in my consciousness. I cannot imagine a consciousness with nothing going on.
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Atreyu
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Atreyu »

Ashurean wrote: January 25th, 2018, 1:31 pm To answer this, you would have to define what consciousness really is. I'm non-religious, so I'll be ignoring the concept of an immutable "soul" or essence that gives us definition. In essence, consciousness appears to be a kind of chaotic principle filtered down into a different, comprehensible form. However, saying that this is something that is unique to humanity is foolish. Consider the concept of the Boltzmann Brain, in which even inanimate matter can, with significant chaotic intervention, become conscious. But the full concept of consciousness in this and other examples may not even be something we would recognize. We may possess one of many forms of consciousness, a result of the specific predicaments and evolutionary changes our species has dealt with. Consider the process of unsupervised deep learning, which uses a process similar to the ones we use to learn. It is my belief that a computer can become "conscious", using processes such as that. To what degree and in what form this consciousness makes itself apparent may vary.
How very strange. You say that one must define consciousness in order to answer the question, then you proceed to answer the question without defining consciousness!

But I do agree with your point.

However, it's very difficult to define consciousness because it's ordinarily something we only imagine in ourselves. And, as everyone knows, it's not possible to define something you've never experienced, or something you've perhaps briefly experienced but have completely forgotten about...
Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Jan Sand »

I have thought about my sense of existence for a long time and, as I've indicated elsewhere, consciousness seems to me to be an instrument of the brain to navigate life through simulating reality by manufacturing a personal version of it by arranging the continuous patterns of nerve stimulations into some kind of sensible self consistent totality which it modifies continuously as new stimulants arise. In other words its a dynamic map of whats going on within and outside the body. The consciousness is a representation of itself on that map. Aside from nerve input, the brain is more or less isolated from what goes on outside the body but this reality simulation contains enough information to permit the entire person to exist and, hopefully, prosper.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Sy Borg »

Ashurean wrote: January 25th, 2018, 1:31 pmConsider the concept of the Boltzmann Brain, in which even inanimate matter can, with significant chaotic intervention, become conscious.
Yet would it have qualia? It seems to me that the body's energetic processing is at least somewhat responsible for qualia, a sense of being.
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Belindi »

Greta wrote: March 14th, 2018, 7:10 pm
Ashurean wrote: January 25th, 2018, 1:31 pmConsider the concept of the Boltzmann Brain, in which even inanimate matter can, with significant chaotic intervention, become conscious.
Yet would it have qualia? It seems to me that the body's energetic processing is at least somewhat responsible for qualia, a sense of being.
I suggest the following necessary and sufficient preconditions for a quale event:

1. Short term memory
2. Primal evaluation of pleasure/pain.
3. Unbreachable and privileged access to individually differentiated brain/mind events.

I think that computers are okay for 1. Not sure about 2. with regard to computers. With regard to 3. computers replicate events with 100% accuracy therefor they lack this precondition for qualia.
Wayne92587
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Wayne92587 »

Man's, Consciousness is created in the Image God and as such exist without form, shape, design, is likened unto God, the Mystical Female, the Great Femininity, the Great Void.

How Great is the Great Void, Infinite !

Consciousness is likened to a tea cup that can never be Filed, and Empty Space, exists without form, shape or design.

Consciousness is omnipresent, omniscient, Boundless, Infinite, is not measurable as to Location and Momentum in Space-Time, falls under the vale of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

Consciousness is a non-Material, is a Spiritual Reality, Consciousness indwelling in the Flesh Body of Man as the Immoral Spirit of God.

So say I, Hermes Trismegistus, "Lord of the Ring, Keeper of the Holy Grail, ---->0, Ye, amen, Make it so"!
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JamesOfSeattle
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by JamesOfSeattle »

Belindi wrote: March 15th, 2018, 6:20 amI suggest the following necessary and sufficient preconditions for a quale event:

1. Short term memory
2. Primal evaluation of pleasure/pain.
3. Unbreachable and privileged access to individually differentiated brain/mind events.

I think that computers are okay for 1. Not sure about 2. with regard to computers. With regard to 3. computers replicate events with 100% accuracy therefor they lack this precondition for qualia.
Belindi, I’m not sure about 2 either. It seems a qualia of “red” could be had in the absence of pleasure or pain.

With regard to 3, I agree with the precondition, but disagree that it disqualifies computers. (BTW, what does accuracy have to do with it?) When considering computers with regard to access to mind events, you need to consider it from the perspective of the software that is running on the computer. It’s the software that has access to “feels”.

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Belindi
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Belindi »

James of Seattle wrote:
With regard to 3, I agree with the precondition, but disagree that it disqualifies computers. (BTW, what does accuracy have to do with it?) When considering computers with regard to access to mind events, you need to consider it from the perspective of the software that is running on the computer. It’s the software that has access to “feels”.
What accuracy has to do with it is that computers' memories are all the same memories whereas humans' memories are peculiarly interpreted by each of the individuals that have the memories. So computers don't interpret as individuals. In this lies their weakness. Unless there is dialectic there isn't any change, there's nothing but agreement and so the end of history and the end of being itself.

The information from computing is like mathematics, closed. Insofar as reality is information reality is open-ended information.It may be objected that computing is merely a tool with a tool's limitations and uses the better the tool generally the better its specific application to a task.You may use a bit of cheese rind as a book mark but it isn't a very good one for obvious reasons. A computer and its software is a tool and the better it is the less it adapts to genuine novelty. The users of the tool which is a computer may of course use the machine and its software for open-endedly synthesising all manner of things
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JamesOfSeattle
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by JamesOfSeattle »

Belindi wrote: March 16th, 2018, 6:51 amWhat accuracy has to do with it is that computers' memories are all the same memories whereas humans' memories are peculiarly interpreted by each of the individuals that have the memories.
Belindi, I don’t think you understood my point about software. AlphaZero is the computer that taught itself to play Go, except that AlphaZero is not the computer, it’s the software. If you ran AlphaZero on a different computer it would still teach itself to play Go, but it’s play could be be slightly different. It’s “memories” would not all be the same as the original.
So computers don't interpret as individuals.
They can if they are programmed to..
The information from computing is like mathematics, closed. Insofar as reality is information reality is open-ended information.
If you program the computer to learn about reality, it’s learning is as open-ended as reality itself.
It may be objected that computing is merely a tool with a tool's limitations and uses the better the tool generally the better its specific application to a task.
It may be objected that a chicken is merely a tool for making eggs with a tool’s limitations. You may use a chicken as a guard dog, but it isn’t a good one for obvious reasons. My point is that the status of being a tool really doesn’t have anything to do with consciousness.
A computer and its software is a tool and the better it is the less it adapts to genuine novelty.
I don’t think you really mean this. Adaptation to novelty is likely to be a very important capability of computer/robots.
The users of the tool which is a computer may of course use the machine and its software for open-endedly synthesising all manner of things
Like when I use my computer(robot) by saying “Go to Mars and build me a nice hotel there”, and it does.

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Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Jan Sand »

Much of this argument reminds me of when I was a kid back in the early 1930's and the Moon would float by at night and the most optimistic technical people would talk about going there in about three or four hundred years. If anybody spoke about really going there in about thirty years it was considered a big joke. We simply do not know what we do not know. Nobody seems to have been able to get a handle on some strange psychological suspicions and the field seems full of fakers but some quantum effects don't fit into our current logic either. My doubts remain strong in the area but I'm willing to suspend judgment.
Gertie
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Gertie »

Jan Sand wrote: March 13th, 2018, 8:21 pm I have thought about my sense of existence for a long time and, as I've indicated elsewhere, consciousness seems to me to be an instrument of the brain to navigate life through simulating reality by manufacturing a personal version of it by arranging the continuous patterns of nerve stimulations into some kind of sensible self consistent totality which it modifies continuously as new stimulants arise. In other words its a dynamic map of whats going on within and outside the body. The consciousness is a representation of itself on that map. Aside from nerve input, the brain is more or less isolated from what goes on outside the body but this reality simulation contains enough information to permit the entire person to exist and, hopefully, prosper.
I think that's a neat functional summary of consciousness.

The big mystery lies in how a functioning physical system gives rise to experiential states.
Gertie
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Gertie »

Belindi

''Insofar as reality is information...''

Can you explain what you mean by ''information'' here? My idea of ''information'' is that it's no more than a type of representation of reality, so this doesn't make sense to me
Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

Post by Jan Sand »

Aside from the radically different physical,structural difference between a living brain, human or otherwise, and a computer with a static data structure and a very limited way that the "thinking" process is utilized and structured, A human brain develops its data base out of predefined necessities for survival and other functional necessities inherited from a very complex inter-relationship with its environment which takes years to develop in order to function properly in an environment that has a limited predictability. The environment that a computer is designed and programed in is limited far below that of even a single celled organism. The "environments it is designed to function within is not only pitifully lacking in any real complexity but it is fed by a user or programmer for a highly limited interaction with its potentials but also, to a large extent, it is temporary, and erased to begin again in a new exercise. It is as if a human awoke each morning with the same knowledge as a newborn baby to deal with the problems for that day alone, with almost no accumulation of random data that fills each of our lives each moment as a possibility to build some sort of cohesive totality that can be used somehow for a new way to handle a new problem. Only recently, with deep learning where millions of experiences are accumulated as a data base source with only vague indications requested by a programmer giving some direction to the search processes. This is what makes it seem more alive.
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