/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.6179900]

/sci/ Do you think it will ever be possible for robots and computers to have consciousness?

[Anonymous No.6179907]

>>6179900
Yes. Now stop making these threads, there's nothing special about consciousness.

[Anonymous No.6179919]

>>6179907
>there's nothing special about consciousness.

So you solved http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness ?

Where can I see your peer reviewed publication? How many prizes did you win for your discovery? Why hasn't this breakthrough been covered in the media? You just revolutionized science! Such a paradigm shift should get more attention.

[Anonymous No.6179963]

The real question is:

Will it ever be possible for robots and computers to be good enough at pattern recognition to score high on an IQ test?

[Anonymous No.6179965]

>>6179919
>hasn't read Dennett

[Anonymous No.6179971]

>consciousness?

please define that.
It means so many different things in different contexts.
Does the toaster "know" when the toast is done?
If you could aask a bird why it flys south for the winter would it know why?
Do I have any explaination why I blew a perfectly good Sunday afternoon here?

[Anonymous No.6179974]

>>6179965
>philosophy

You must have misclicked. This is /sci/, not /x/.

[Anonymous No.6179978]

>>6179963
that would make them more useful tooks and aviod a lot of the problems that a machine that says "please don't turn me off, I want to live" would generate,

[Anonymous No.6179982]

>>6179965
The senile ramblings of a self-proclaimed "philosopher" are of no importance to science. Come back when you have scientific education, kid.

[Anonymous No.6179984]

>>6179919
>doesn't realize there can only be one 'I' as there can only be one (uni?)verse

[Anonymous No.6179993]

>>6179974
>thread about consciousness
>not a philosophical problem
top lel

>>6179982
>ad hominem
>hasn't read any of his publications

[Anonymous No.6180003]

>>6179993
This is a science board. We discuss science here and the hard problem of consciousness is a scientific problem: I have subjective experience and it requires a scientific explanation. The uneducated sophistry of an old man who never studied science and doesn't even understand the problem surely adds nothing of value. Keep your philosotard garbage on /x/.

[Anonymous No.6180008]

>>6179993
Scientific problems are solved by designing testable hypotheses and verifying them in experiment. Semantic bullshittery does not solve anything. If we transferred Dennet's retardation to physics, we would have never build the LHC because "lol the Higgs boson doesn't exist because I say so and I'm gonna defend this unscientific position by repeating my assertion over and over again, only interrupted by occasional ad hominems". Sorry, kid, but philosophy and science are incompatible.

[Anonymous No.6180016]

>>6180003
>and the hard problem of consciousness is a scientific problem
"Any neurobiological theory based on an experience/function division cannot be empirically confirmed or falsified and is thus outside the scope of science." -Daniel C. Dennett et al

[Anonymous No.6180026]

>>6180016
>dualism
>on a science board

[Anonymous No.6180027]

Everything always has. It's not always vivid, though.

[Anonymous No.6180028]

>>6180003
The hard problem of consciousness is NOT a scientific problem, which is precisely what makes it hard. Subjectivity -- like any other unmeasurable and unverifiable thing -- is outside the realm of science by any reasonable definition.

[Anonymous No.6180032]

>>6180026
>tossing intuition out the window and clinging to the established scientific method

[Anonymous No.6180031]

>>6180016
Are you seriously quoting the same philosotard who has just beeen criticized for not know anything about science?

[Anonymous No.6180035]

>>6180016
Nothing is outside the scope of science.

[Anonymous No.6180039]

>>6180016
What a great way of _not_ addressing the problem. I still have subjective experience and it requires scientific explanation.

[Anonymous No.6180042]

>>6180032
The scientific method is inerrable, impeccable and infallible.

[Anonymous No.6180045]

>>6180028
>The hard problem of consciousness is NOT a scientific problem

How is "please SCIENTIFICALLY explain how subjective experience arises" not a scientific problem? What kind of brain damage did you suffer, philosotard?

[Anonymous No.6180046]

>>6179963

>http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120214100719.htm

>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2102577/A-genius-born-New-programme-intelligent-96-cent-humans-IQ-150.html

>'Genius' computer with an IQ of 150 is 'more intelligent' than 96 per cent of humans


Don't know how valid you guys might find it, but it should make for an interesting discussion.

[Anonymous No.6180053]

>>6180045
For the reason I already gave. Just because you can string together the words "explain subjective experience scientifically" doesn't make it meaningful.

[Anonymous No.6180057]

>>6180053
It's a very meaningful question. I want an explanation for my subjective experience. And that explanation better be scientific, i.e. backed up by observation and experiment. I don't want any philosophical mumbo jumbo.

[Anonymous No.6180108]

The question is inherently unanswerable.

Why? Well, what reason do I have to assume you're conscious? Because you and I are very similar, in terms of macroscopic structure. It's literally just faith, based upon my own experience.

A computer hypothetically could be conscious; we have it, so they have the potential to have it as well. However, you can never look into the mind of another being. Without a shared substrate, there's no reason to assume that the computer would be conscious, because I can't judge the thing in question, since as I said before I can't look into it's mind.

Even if we were to connect ourselves together via DNI, that wouldn't constitute proof; DNI can do nothing but produce the same effects in my brain by emulating what's going on in another. Our minds would never touch, only display the same thing on our inner 'screens.' There's no reason to assume there's another person in the other room to watch the screen.

I think it's possible, but practically pointless. This opens up a nasty can of worms; what is conscious, and what isn't? Does someone die when I turn off my computer? Am I enslaving that person? Does the person love to do the work I set to it, via the UI?

We'll probably never know.

[Anonymous No.6180134]

>>6180035

If it can't be subjected to logical positivism, it can't be subjected to science.

Science can say nothing about whether or not there's a teapot around Jupiter, since it has no evidence to positively say such things do or don't exist.

It's actually a very narrow type of logic, and that's why it's useful. If you limit yourself only to what you know is true, you have a very good chance of making a correct prediction.

But it isn't the only form of logic, nor does it trump all other kinds. On top of that, it's one form of codified philosophy among many.

This is /sci/ though, so unless you worship at the alter of non-scientific popular academic opinion, you suddenly hate and despise all of the things engineering has created for us, and don't deserve them, and want us to go back to living in trees.

[Anonymous No.6180139]

>>6180134
>Science can say nothing about whether or not there's a teapot around Jupiter, since it has no evidence to positively say such things do or don't exist.

Do you even Hitchens' razor?

[Anonymous No.6180180]

Shocked that no one seems to have mentioned Artificial/Synthetic Consciousness.

[Anonymous No.6180181]

>>6180057
>my subjective experience
Can you show it to me?

[Anonymous No.6180184]

>>6180181
Sure. Pic related is how red looks to me. How does it look to you?

[Anonymous No.6180200]

>>6180184
That's not red. It doesn't fall in the 625-750 nm range.

[Anonymous No.6180219]

>>6180200
Colors are not defined by wave length. Colors are the subjective interpretation of electromagnetic waves. lrn2neuroscience

[Anonymous No.6180426]

>>6180139

That's kind of the point; science stays silent about that which it has no evidence to base anything on.

It's why we get hilarities like this.

[Anonymous No.6180454]

>>6179900
They are fundamentally different from out brains, they work with discrete 1s and 0s, while our brains have some properties that resemble computers, for example brain waves resemble tick rates, synapses represent 1s, our brains are still essentially continuous, when we think "1+1=2" we are not computing it to an abstract degree of perfection, there is a whole set of complex processes going on depending on our personalities and experience, we recall the memories we have of this simple sum, perhaps we might actually go through the process of adding it together, counting to 2, all of this done by neurons, each synapse of a different intensity and duration, depending on how long we have been awake, our mood, other distractions, occasionally misfiring. Not like the perfect "either or" of transistors and logic gates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

Some superstitious people want to believe in fate so hard that they want to believe everything is essentially discrete and predictable, that they have uncovered some brilliant underlying feature of the universe, but from the purely scientific viewpoint there is no evidence of this. What we can do is narrow things down to the different properties of neurons and transistors and the differences between brains and computers and clearly there are big differences.

I think the answer is diversity, just to make sure we don't make a horrible mistake and eradicate all sapient beings to replace them with simulations of sapient beings, civilization should keep organic beings like us around, maybe genetically modified superhumans or something. I'm talking about the very distant future here. Or maybe create a computer which is based on the same physical properties as the brain, rather than just being a simulation with discrete 1s and 0s with transistors as I explained.