/sci/ - Science & Math

>>14745671
Transhumanism will pick up later this century. Genetically modified elites who are further enhanced through other means will simply become better at everything that matters economically. AI will also increase returns on capital, which have already been growing steadily as a source of all income. Labor will eventually make up less than half of all income.

At that point the problem will resolve. Drone armies will allow small populations to wage war against large ones. Post-humans will end up culling base model homosapiens. The population will stabilize with a much smaller number of post-humans and AIs, and a small human zoo/reservation population.

For folks who think we basically understand how consciousness works, what is the mechanism that creates subjective first person experience?

I have yet to find an explanation of this despite reading a lot on the topic and doing my undergrad degree in neuroscience. There are always appeals to the tremendous complexity of the brain, but how is it exactly that complexity is supposed to generate first person perspective?

To be sure, information theoretic approaches and neuroscience explain pretty well how vision can be processed, how behaviors that mimic self-awareness could arise, etc. These theories normally center on a global workspace for consciousness and a "theory of mind center," that evolved to increase our social aptitude, which simulates what it is like to have other experiences. However, none of this gets at home first person perspective actually arises.

Complexity itself is notoriously nebulously defined. In Tegmark's book, he posits that consciousness arises as a function of complexity and information content (he also slides in some panpsychism without much comment). But then information appears to be defined nebulously as semantic meaning, which is begging the question.

3,000 kilos of hydrogen gas in a vat exhibits complexity. Gas laws are emergent phenomena resulting from countless relationships between molecules, which are constantly sharing information with each other. Arguably, gasses are less complex because they are too networked. Information content wise, mapping the phase space of a large volume gas takes up more information than mapping the phase space of a human brain. So if complexity and information content alone cause consciousness, galaxies should be conscious.