/sci/ - Science & Math

babby's first pseudobiology

you are retarded.
thats all.
think more.you dont make any sense actually.

>>3480428

consciouness is irreducibly complex and unnecessary in a materialist world

organisms should simply evolve as mindless robots...reacting to environment without knowing

It makes absolute sense that organism's experience a negative reaction to stimuli that can damage or kill them, and thus stop them from reproducing.

0/10

>>3480433

because your conciousness is material retard

>>3480433

>Irreducibly Complex

Lol... Im done with this thread.

Enjoy being trolled folks.

>>3480436

it makes no sense and is superfluous, they should only react like robots do, without any internal feeling or perception of the world

"awareness" is totally absurd and can't be selected for by nature

functionally there is no difference between a robot (unconscious organism) that responds appropriately to damage and a conscious organism that feels pain and then responds

>>3480421

this is actually a really hard problem and no one on can really provide a good answer

not surprising most people on /sci/ just give up and make useless posts. good try oP

>>3480433

consciousness is necessarily to change and adapt to previously unknown circumstances.

Which is better suited in their fluctuating environment: the microbe, dependent upon remaining in a suitable temperature range, that can sense temperatures of its surroundings - or the same type of microbe which cannot sense those things?

OP is a gigantic boob.

WTF is the picture in the OP? Mine is better.

>>3480428
>>3480431
>>3480436

Not OP but this is why /sci/ is sucks.

You all respond to troll threads but if anyone asks a legitimate question you call him an idiot.

The joke is none of you could even answer the question properly.

>>3480437
>conciousness is material

thats a statement of faith, it has never been detected and has no physical structure we are aware of

the brain =/= consciousness
touching my brain doesn't mean you are touching my dreams

looking at my brain doesn't mean you know what im thinking or feeling, etc

>>3480457
>consciousness is necessarily to change and adapt

no, that would be "intelligence" consciousness is just awareness of things, thoughts, etc...

an organism can be intelligent and unconscious

The fact of the matter is that complexity arises from the simple. Big fucking deal? If you have some type of psychological hang-up about how trivial it makes everything feel, that's your problem. We developed consciousness and awareness because it aided in our survival. If you're looking for a deeper philosophical meaning to the evolution of thought then you're spouting religious claptrap which has nothing to do with science, so kindly stfu and gtfo.

>>3480478

>mad cuz he doesn't know the answer

its ok, you tried

the question is: why & how did consciousness evolve?
wouldn't it be simpler to have unconscious organisms that simply react to stimulus without being aware?

Answer: lol I dunno

Consciousness can move according to it's own free will, and therefore requires "pain" to force it to react.

Machines only do what they're programmed to do, Implying a programmer.
> Pain disproves God

Organisms evolved to feel pain in order to continue living. Pain was evolved for the continuation of our species. Because pain and not being awareness leads to death organisms evolved ways of identify things that hurt. Thank you OP for further solidifying my belief in evolution.

>>3480464
he is trolling
look at the picture he posts
dont get trolled idiot

>>3480488

consciousness doesn't imply free-will, you can be conscious of not being in control...

being in control is another matter

fact is, you can have fully functional and surviving organisms that are simply unaware of the environment (i.e bacteria)

>>3480489

>>3480473

consciousness is a result of high intelligence.

>>3480489

feeling pain doesn't help them survive

what helps them survive is simply the proper reaction, the proper reaction could simply be instinct, like pulling your hand away from fire---it's so fast it's unconscious.

consciousness is useless, it simply adds another layer of complexity to the equation

your body does a million things without your consciousness helping--heart rate, immune system, involuntary reactions--quicker than you can think---etc

>>3480506
So what you're saying is that our ability to plan, manage, invent, and prevent (or mitigate) future events has no biological advantage. You realize how retarded that is, right? Because if it wasn't an advantage, it wouldn't have evolved. Fucking dummy.

>>3480506

Except that the proper response is often a complex and can only be done with higher brain function.

>>3480520
>if it wasn't an advantage, it wouldn't have evolved.

while I agree with your analysis in general, that is the most retarded thing I've yet seen said about biology on /sci/. Congratulations, you must get an award of some sort.

About pain - if you just sensed, for example, fire, and it wasn't connected to some negative(painful) feeling, you would have no reason to pull your hand out. It's that simple.

About consciousness - human evolution went that way. Intelligence. Other species went other ways - agility, strength, etc.

>>3480543
>>3480543
It's simply a condensed version of a more complex thought. Stop taking simple statements and trying to find fault with them. If you knew shit about the topic you would understand that I meant: "If an adaptation is not a superiour adaptive trait then the frequency of those alleles in a population will likely be inferior in number."

Also bite me, it's friday night and you're arguing this shit like a typical rhetorician.

>>3480557
I think it's saturday night.

apologies, I couldn't resist.

>>3480520
>So what you're saying is that our ability to plan, manage, invent, and prevent (or mitigate) future events has no biological advantage. You realize how retarded that is, right?

you dont have to be aware to do those things
computers can plan and manage shit
your immune system prevents and mitigates damage

etc...

you can't even comprehend the discussion bro, lol, it's funny seeing your totally irrelevant comments, tell me more

>>3480557
> saturday night.

>>3480561
Computers can't plan and manage shit.

>>3480574
they can once programmed

bacteria do all sorts of complex shit without knowing whats going on, all mammals should operate the same way

consciousness is spiritual mumbo jumbo and shouldn't exist

>>3480554

This.

Also, there are many stimuli that humans react to without their conscious knowledge or have any conscious control over. If you become consciously aware that you are in pain, then whatever wacky ass solution your consciousness comes up with to prevent that pain is above and beyond simple reflex.

There is a kind of wasp that follows the same procedure when feeding, like a robot. It lands with its prey, cleans its nest, then brings its prey into its nest. If an endeavoring, troll-faced biologist comes along and moves the prey just a little bit, the wasp resets its feeding routine. It brings the prey back, cleans its nest, then comes out to find the prey has moved again.

You can do this to them for hours evidently. They never realize that all they have to do is NOT react appropriately because they are not conscious of how many times they've repeated themselves or that they can just sting Richard Dawkins in the face for fucking with it's food.

Human > Wasp

>>3480586

programmed by who? Computer programs are just a extension of human intelligence.

Oh fuck I lost my leg... I react appropriately
Tree loses a limb... either had more limbs ready or died
Starfish loses a limb... grows a new one (or two)
Fly loses a limb... too dumb to know
Robot loses a limb... Profit?

>>3480596

Rather, all of the wasps that don't learn to sting Dawkins go exinct until a breed of super wasp emerges with the intelligence to build turbo advanced warships and lay waste to humanity.

If you want to avoid this fate, you should go punch Dawkins in the face and let the wasps stay ignorant.

>>3480561
OK, on face value this sounds like a legitimate argument. But it isn't. You are stating that there are at least two ways for things to be: aware or unaware. You then state that awareness is not required for survival therefore it's extraneous. You still haven't given a reason other than your own opinion that it's absurd to have evolved awareness when the alternative is 'simpler.' Too bad that that isn't how things are always prone to go in a complex environment where multiple situations must be managed at once and frequently. For humans and other complex organisms awareness and recall of pain is a great way to ensure survival. I really don't see what you're trying to drive at with this anyway, some of the most successful strands of protein have no functional awareness at all. Does that mean that unawareness is the ideal trait just because those organisms are suited to their environment? That doesn't logically follow. Congratulations on your non sequitur.

>>3480586

This is such a dumb argument, do I really need to spell out for you why basic reactionary intelligence was out competed by thoughtful higher intelligence.

The blind idiot god isn't that smart. Evolution is not a human programmer who can simultaneously refactor whole code architectures. Evolution is not a human programmer who can sit down and type out instructions at sixty words per minute.

For millions of years before hominid consequentialism, there was reinforcement learning. The signals were events that correlated reliably to reproduction. You can't ask a nonhominid brain to foresee the results of different types of bodily damage in different situations so as to act appropriately. So the DNA builds a protein brain that just generates a negative signal when the body is hurt in specific ways. Then it's up to the organism to learn which things hurt it the least.

DNA constructs protein brains with signals that have a long-distance correlation to reproductive fitness, but a short-distance correlation to organism behavior. You don't have to figure out that cutting yourself will lead to infection which will kill you and stop you from reproducing anymore. Cuts simply feel bad, and your brain just has to plot out how to avoid getting cut.

because if you didn't feel pain but just "hey this is bad" you would be like "LOOL WHATEVER BRO IM HARDCORE IMMA IGNORE THAT" and people would do really dumb shit all the time, but pain is excruciating to keep people from doing dumb things and it works good 99% of the time

Interesting thing: There are people who are born unable to feel pain. Terrible affliction and, fortunately, exceedingly rare. If I could only remember the name...

>>3480692

it took this long for someone to answer a simple question

>>3480722
And they often don't live very long after birth.

>>3480722

CIPA, the wikipedia article lists some pretty exciting ways in which not being able to feel stuff makes you die.

I was also reading about anencephaly. Feti that survive birth are born blind, deaf, unconscious and unable to feel pain (wikipedia). If they are born with a brain stem they will have motor reflexes such as breathing and response to sound or touch.

Prognosis is death.

We need to feel pain to know some thing is wrong you idiot. Also why the hell would you make a robot that feels pain? That would just seems fucking evil, maybe a sensor to detect when something is wrong with it or it is damaged so it can be fixed but no need to program something to suffer you vile pig

>>3480498
Since when did atheist say nothing turned into something? The big bang doesn't state what happened before it. And (most) atheist just believe this doesn't lead to the conclusion that we don't know so it must be god. I know that image is a troll image, but it still pisses me off.
>>3480421
Survival of the fittest (and evolution) doesn't mean the most efficient thing possible is going to happen, it just means that if something better happened it is more likely to survive. Why wouldn't everything just be one perfect organism instead of many different species and lifeforms.
Simply put, feeling pain is better for survival than not feeling pain. But that doesn't mean feeling pain is the "best" survival method. No clue what Okham's razzor is but I'm sure if its widely believed your probably doing or saying something wrong and you just don't understand the concept.

>>3480692
>because if you didn't feel pain but just "hey this is bad" you would be like "LOOL

no because you wouldn't be aware of the world, your body would simply react appropriately to the "pain/damage" sensation...

survival would be fine, in fact it could be better if we weren't conscious

so does OP's question basically just boil down to "WHY DID AWARENESS EVOLVE" or some variation?

not that it's not a legitimate question
it's just one nobody has a great answer to so far

>>3480733
This is the story of /sci/

Wait, is some guy ITT seriously arguing that awareness and unawareness are indistiguishable and that, evolutionarily speaking, we should just be philosophical zombies?

Does he not realize that this argument simply REEKS of dualism?

>>3480957

the only thing dualistic is consciousness itself, it doesn't belong in my materialist conception of the universe

it should have never evolved, it's too mysterious and superfluous

bacteria get the job done without knowing wtf is going on, your heart beats fine, your immune system fights millions of pathogens a minute without you knowing....you have instinctual reflexes that happen without a thought---

ALL LIFE FORMS SHOULD BE UNCONSCIOUS.
They would all be functionally the same, responses can be programmed and selected for.

I am going to assume by consciousness you mean self-awareness. As in I am aware that my body is in pain, and I can choose how to react to it. I actually think only humans have this, animals just react, and we call that reaction pain. Animals don't dance on coals, cut themselves on purpose, or commit suicide because they don't have self-awareness.

Why would such a thing would evolve is pretty easy. If every reaction is pre-programmed genetically then you have to wait for the very slow process of genetic evolution to reprogram appropriate responses to new situations. Consciousness allows us to think about how we currently are reacting to something and adjust those reactions to evolve a new responses quicker. Just think of how fast human culture evolves new responses to problems compared to the immense amount of time it takes for animals to evolve in response to new conditions. In fact we learn to hunt new prey so quickly that those prey often go extinct before they can evolve responses to our hunting techniques.

>>3481000
Bacteria are very small and maybe consciousness for them is unimportant. Them having a thought process of their options wouldn't really effect them in any positive way. On the other hand, animals being able to think about what can be dangerous and what is worth the risks could be a benefit. I don't know but it seems very reasonable to me.

>>3481010
also what he said about being able to react to new things without having to evolve. ex. animal species first going to a colder climate. They may find new habits of staying warm. while bacteria would just die or be forced to evolve.
I don't agree with him saying animals have no consciousness though. It really doesn't make sense to think humans are only things with with consciousness. Do you have any reasoning behind these thoughts or is it just an assumption?

>>3481018

all that processing could happen unconsciously, i dont see the need for the organism to be aware of whats going on

the macro world isn't anymore complicated than the micro, consciousness isn't needed here either

What exactly is Econometrics?
How does it work?

>pic related

>>3481042
I pretty much said my reasoning, animals do not hurt themselves on purpose or commit suicide. They react according to genetically programed impulses without any self-awareness.

OP has low IQ. consciousness and pain are what led to developing reactions.

>>3481064
>cat torturer detected

>>3481070
> OP LOW IQ

then how did his troll thread get 58 replies?
then how come you can't answer his question.

so you can't react unless you are conscious of the action? you breathe manually?

>>3481071
lol, no. We have a lot of unconscious reactions, too, that we can do nothing about, and for that reason we can sympathize with animals that are in pain. I do not believe in animal rights, though.

>>3481080
I guess it got so many replies by the grace of trolling not requiring a high IQ.

>>3481088

>They react according to genetically programed impulses without any self-awareness.

so humans evolved from unconsciousness animals?

>>3481055
I'm sorry I don't really understand this and don't know if mine, or his argument is invalid or already explained because of it.
>>3481050
What if the subconsciousness isn't aware of what this scenario is? I don't think the subconsciousness can really learn (or at least not at the rate or level) of the consciousness.
Going back to robots I think this is the same as programming a robot to be able to write new code if it doesn't have any code that doesn't already exist vs a robot who has a set code and makes everything relate to only that.

>>3481080
no, but evolutionarily it makes sense that manually breathing would have been a mutation that eventually led to full-scale automated breathing, etc w/ other examples

>>3481000
>>the only thing dualistic is consciousness itself, it doesn't belong in my materialist conception of the universe

this is weird
are you being sattirical of materialists? or something? if so it's too subtle

because it seems like you've already made a dualistic assumption about consciousness (i.e. that it can in fact be subtracted from organism function without any impact on survivability) before making any of your arguments

>>3481050
>>all that processing could happen unconsciously

I would strongly suggest that it in fact, cannot, as consciousness and awareness are intractable facets of higher intelligence

and that to believe otherwise is, well... yeah, a bit dualist

>>3481064
Well my friends dog killed itself. But probably just unintelligent dog.
But you really don't have an argument here. Your just repeating that animals aren't suicidal. I'm not suicidal does that mean I have no consciousness. I don't think animals really can get depressed which is the only reason I've heard of suicide. I also don't know if animals understand the concept of death, so why would they kill themselves? Your just making a bunch of assumptions.

Not sure if troll.
No other animal on the planet is capable of simply reacting appropriately to the negative stimulus. They lack the mental capacity to do so, and would forget about it when other instincts kick in, like the desire to chase prey while bleeding and weakened from blood loss for instance. Pain and thhe like came about as a result of overriding peramiters to the default operational programming. We still have it today as humans as a genetic throwback to our animal ancestry.

>>3481105
>consciousness and awareness are intractable facets of higher intelligence


awareness doesn't do anything, your intelligence is what crunches the numbers, awareness just means you see it...

functionally a computer can do it

>>3481117
...this is almost so dumb a response I am not sure if I should bother, but here goes. You, because you are human, have self-awareness and can evaluate what happens to you. You can say "the rest of my life is just going to be full of pain, so I might as well kill myself," or, alternatively "the rest of my life is going to contain feelings that are worth living to experience, so I shouldn't kill myself." Animals aren't self-aware, and cannot make such evaluations of their own feelings. They simply react to the feelings they have, which they have been programed genetically to feel in certain situations. They might get depressed because they are programed to by genetics to respond that way to certain situations, but they are not going to kill themselves in response because they are not self-aware and cannot make evaluations of their own feelings. They cannot have the thoughts which I expressed earlier. Now, since we can't read their mind, the only way I have of proving that they can't have those thoughts is the fact that they don't commit suicide. I think you are simply anthropomorphizing you friend's dog when you say he killed himself, I doubt that is what happened.

>>3481264
It jumped of a balcony probably misjudging the height. It was old and possibly going blind. It wasn't really a serious comment though and was meant to be disregarded.
Anyways, animals could have self-awareness without realizing that they can cease to exist. If someone thought they were immortal they wouldn't try and kill themselves no matter how much pain and depression they had. So you would have to assume that animals understand that they can kill themselves and not just cause more pain.
Your point to start of with isn't very thought out. why is suicide the only thing your relating to self awareness? Suicide is something that requires enough intelligence to realize that their life will cease to exist, and that ceasing to exist is better than existing in pain.
I could go on.. but I don't really see why that would be necessary.

>>3481264

Animals do commit suicides, this has been scientifically documented and recorded.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35798594/ns/technology_and_science-science/print/1/displaymode/1098/

feel pain to know your dying to stop dying?

didnt even read thread

>>3481301
Thank you. I can now tell my friend his dog committed suicide on purpose.
But on a serious note, thanks that's something very interesting that I never would have known about.

>>3481194
>>awareness doesn't do anything, your intelligence is what crunches the numbers, awareness just means you see it...

actually since we do an awful lot of parallel thinking
I would suggest it's entirely possible that "seeing it" is in fact required and necessary for this type and degree of higher intelligence to be carried out

>>functionally a computer can do it

again, I would disagree (or at least not a computers in their current format)
I think awareness and consciousness are necessary for what we do

and that a computer couldn't think like we do unless it had a similar sort of system

although I'll admit the main basis I have here is just the fact that it did evolve, and that no such intelligence exists without it, as far as we can tell

>>3480421
>He believes in evolution

>He doesnt understand the benefit of pain

>He still reacts to pain

Typical butthurt atheist.

>>3481358
this is typical atheist?
wat this got to do with atheism?

>>3481180
>Has no idea whats hes talking about

>>3481366
Because no theist would make such an illogical claim.

I've always seen consciousness as a computational shortcut. What is 'to us' the self is a computational heuristic for processing information.

Instead of hard-wiring all the possible sources, types and contexts of pain, you wire together a sense of agency, which is much more flexible and efficient.

>>3481380
It's true. Theists are the most logical people around.

That's why none of them ever agree on anything!

>>3481385
Exactly. Consensus proves nothing

>>3481390
Right. Especially not scientific consensus, which is pretty clearly just faith-based.

>>3481294
Yeah, you are right about the possibility of animals being self-aware, but not knowing that suicide is a possibility, or simply not know how to kill yourself. The assumption I really made is that suicide is something that would never genetically evolve, since there is no advantage in it. Thus it must evolve through some other process, and I am thinking of consciousness as a way of evolving new behaviors. Thus I attribute suicide to the existence of consciousness. However the article pointed out by
>>3481301
shows a possible genetic advantage to suicide. It might help the survival of the species as a whole, even if it hurts the individual.

In any case I think there are many indicators that animals don't have self-awareness. Personally, I believe that self-awareness is a product of language.
Without words like "pain" and "depression" we would not be aware that those are what we are feeling. Thus I think that not even human babies are self-aware, they slowly develop awareness as they learn language.

>>3481399
Glad you understand. Otherwise we'd still believe the earth was the center of the universe.

>>3481301
Dog is confused and dies as a result. Syas its commiting suicide.

>>3481411
I know! It was awful when all of those scientists tried to use their political power to quash the discoveries of the Catholic Church!

>>3481430
>scientists
It was only one.

>>3481441
>implying the Catholic Church doesn't routinely deny new scientific discoveries for about a century or longer

>>3481452
Which is why consensus is wrong.

>>3481408
I personally don't think self awareness has to do with language. I think it just relates to any understanding of any of your senses. If you can think about something you remember from any of your senses I feel thats awareness. I don't know about "self" awareness, but that might just be awareness when some thing is intelligent enough to realize that it is thinking.

It gets me thinking though, self awareness might as well be kind of like another sense and that we are just along for the ride and our thought process is just all subconsciousness (so to say) and we are just "viewing" that. Not sure if what I said makes much sense or if I'm doing a legitimate job of explaining it.

>>3481423
I didn't read the dog part in detail, but the beetle part was interesting. I also thought of the fish that bites onto the female to impregnate it and dies (or lives stuck onto the fish idk) as a result. self-sacrifice for the greater good might have nothing to do with consciousness though.
But anyways, wouldn't the dog getting confused be an example of it having consciousness.

>>3481460
I meant "consciousness might as well be..."

>>3481477
Who said it didnt. There are different levels of consciousness. The dog is not a tree.

>>3480421 imagine a robot that when damaged it reacts appropriately

I've considered building something like this myself a few times. There are plenty of robots that exude cute fuzzy joy. I think the opposite could be an interesting piece of art and psychological experiment. See if people avoid talking loudly or standing in a certain area if it makes a robot simulate suffering. Question what makes the robot's actions "just a simulation".

>>3481500
the fact that its not conscious and can be computed.

>>3481485
he said it didn't and was arguing that for awhile.
>>3481264
sorry simple mistake, I thought it was still him.

>>3481507
Can't consciousness be computed to an extent?

>>3481527
No. Because the concept of pure and corruption do not apply to it.

>>3481531
what does the words pure and corruption have to do with computing something? are you saying pure and corruption apply to all things that can be computed?

>>3480421
Oh you! Implying that evolution picks the best solution and isn't path dependent, and that it's not restrained to work in small incremental changes. Good joke there.

>>3481539
Yes.

>>3481552
I'm very confused then. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

>>3480421
As a learning tool to avoid damage in the first place.

A robot can detect the damage but will that make them 'avoid' the damage?

Not unless they are programed to do so.

Consciousness/pain is like a 'programming' (aka learning) so you avoid the problem in the future and the pain/consciousness is just something that helps to seal the deal.

>>3481575
Computation can be corrupted.

>>3481597
Not only can computation be corrupted from badly operating logical circuits, but we can actually program in logical corruption and failure!

One of those fun things about computers people don't understand, we can intentionally make them go wrong. It's still logical.

>>3481617
Thats not what I was implying.

>>3481500
This is actually considered an alternative to the Turing test. NPR did an amazing show about this. I think it was on Science Friday. Maybe TAL, I don't remember.

>>3481458
Of course. It's not like a position supported by hard evidence invariably eventually results in near-complete global consensus even in the absence of communication while a position based on faith varies wildly by individual, region, upbringing, etc.

Most importantly of all, history has shown that scientific consensus does not change when new evidence comes to light! Why, if it did, that might even be an indicator of the strength of science, which is totally unreasonable.

>>3481617
So your going to really try and convince me someone's consciousness can't be corrupt? And your going to try and tell me that because we 'can' corrupt a program that relates at all to nature doing something or not doing something?

>>3481623
what are you implying?

>>3481638
The means of computation itself is subject to corruption.

>>3480433
>implying there's a difference between us and a "mindless robot"

>>3481664
What do you mean by corruption?

There are people who don't feel pain due to a rare disease. They often end up biting off their own body parts, especially the tongue, accidentally because without pain there is no negative assosciation to the painful stimulus and we are therefore not conditioned to avoid it. In later life when we actually have the knowledge of what would cause pain and how it will negatively affect us then we could probably survive ok without pain. Still though there are situations where it is beneficial, for example, if you develop cancer and you don't feel pain you may not realise you have a cancerous growth developing inside of you.

>>3481811

thats because they evolved to depend on being aware of pain

im saying you can evolve in a way that your body does all the proper reactions for you, while you are unconscious of anything

The sensation of pain doesn't make sense when you think about designing a robot. But living organisms weren't designed (inb4 butthurt creationalists), we evolved. All these incredible and sometimes completely illogical traits were just accidents that didn't halt the propagation of the species.

>>3483485

Depends what you mean by "proper". Yeah, it may be able to instinctively pull away from something that hurts, but it takes a mind that can imagine and plan ahead to think several steps into the future and know "Wait, if I do X, there's a chance I'll get hurt. I will take measure Y and Z to prevent that." That's more than an instinctive physical reaction can do.

The answer is simple: Accept that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe.

The brain is just a way of taking that fundamental consciousness and complicating it.

>>3483588

Simple, yes, but not sensible. There's no evidence for that yet, it's only speculation (at best).

Proper automatic responses to damage take a long time to evolve, while conscious painful responses to damage let you adapt your behavior very quickly.

>>3480433

no. You area faggot. Consciousness is just a feedback loop in a sufficiently large neurological system. Find one shred of evidence to suggest otherwise.

sage

goes in all fields

>>3483635
>>3483630

102% retard