Electronic Consciousness?
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Of course the stored data wouldn't be conscious, since from its perspective no time passes.
Ah. The passage of time! Could that not be an entirely human made idea? Could we not live in a universe where everything happened or is happening all in one go. Could we not have created an illusion of a linear existance by linking similar quantum states together in an order of most similar to least similar. Anyway, I've deviated from my own question. Could we not just include a clock battery?
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Ok.That is tough. How about Love: a chemical imbalance that makes the solutions to problems a higher priority than analising the problem itself, or the problem itself irrelevant due to the sudden high priority of being in close vicinity of another individual. You may have a point. I'm not sure I've done that justice, and don't tell my wife I described love like that. She maybe cross at my lack of punctuation. But even if it is necessary to have emotions to be conscious, emotions are just changes in chemical hormone levels. Could that not be replicated with an algorithm on an electronic mind clone?
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Ok.That is tough. How about Love: a chemical imbalance that makes the solutions to problems a higher priority than analising the problem itself, or the problem itself irrelevant due to the sudden high priority of being in close vicinity of another individual. You may have a point. I'm not sure I've done that justice, and don't tell my wife I described love like that. She maybe cross at my lack of punctuation. But even if it is necessary to have emotions to be conscious, emotions are just changes in chemical hormone levels. Could that not be replicated with an algorithm on an electronic mind clone?
I read an article on someone back in the 60ies who claims that he managed to programatically define love, it is clearly visible in this variable:
BitSequence Love = 1101011110001010010101001010010100100010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000000101010010101010011101011110001010010101001010010100010010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101000101000001010100101010100111010111100000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100100001001010010001010100101010100111010111100010100101010010100101000000101010010101010011101011110001010010101001010010100000101010010101010011101011110001010010101001010010100000101010010101010011101011110001010010101001010010100100010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001001010010100101000000010101001010101001;
I am not sure I agree, be he has a point there, doesn't he? :~
Never underestimate the difference you can make in the lives of others.
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Ah. The passage of time! Could that not be an entirely human made idea? Could we not live in a universe where everything happened or is happening all in one go. Could we not have created an illusion of a linear existance by linking similar quantum states together in an order of most similar to least similar. Anyway, I've deviated from my own question. Could we not just include a clock battery?
Maybe. In order for time to pass from the perspective of the stored consciousness, you'd have to emulate the electrical and chemical processes that go on inside a brain. That's not impossible, but hard to do efficiently: with current technology, even a small emulated brain would see time passing much faster than normally if it can look outside the emulation (because what's really going on is that it is running more slowly than usual). If it didn't have access to the outside, it wouldn't know the difference.
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Lee Chetwynd wrote:
how many of us believe that it will be possible to store a consciousness electronically.
Perhaps eventually, but I would place that as perhaps as much (or as little) as a thousand years from now. The main problem is with the term "consciousness." Consciousness is not a static thing that can be stored in memory cells - consciousness, as I recall it being defined somewhere once, is the self awareness of constant change, including one's own thoughts. So an electronic consciousness, in my definition, wouldn't just be a snapshot of the thinking and memories of a person at a particular point in time, it would also have to support continual changing perceptual awareness, and that adds another significant layer of complexity to the concept. And again, by "perceptual", I don't just mean the traditional five senses, I mean the perception of self, identity, the thing we are referring to when we use the word "I". Marc
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My BlogThat sounds promising. That makes me think we would need a huge amount of super fast, non persistent memory. The "I" would exist in this memory. If the power was ever removed completely it would cease. Unless of course a persistent copy of the entire memory state was made before hand.
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I view consciousness as akin to an operating system (not Windows 8, hopefully) with memories archived in a WORM-like storage area and accumulated experiences and knowledge executing as programs. Therefore, machine consciousness is possible once the proper computing environment is provided.
Lets just hope its not touch screen.
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I read an article on someone back in the 60ies who claims that he managed to programatically define love, it is clearly visible in this variable:
BitSequence Love = 1101011110001010010101001010010100100010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000000101010010101010011101011110001010010101001010010100010010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101000101000001010100101010100111010111100000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100100001001010010001010100101010100111010111100010100101010010100101000000101010010101010011101011110001010010101001010010100000101010010101010011101011110001010010101001010010100000101010010101010011101011110001010010101001010010100100010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001010100101001010000010101001010101001110101111000101001001010010100101000000010101001010101001;
I am not sure I agree, be he has a point there, doesn't he? :~
Never underestimate the difference you can make in the lives of others.
I think he missed a zero. :laugh:
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I am curious from the point of view of people from a programming sort of environment, how many of us believe that it will be possible to store a consciousness electronically. This could be either to store an existing conciousness (as in copying or backing up an existing mind electronically) or to develop a completely new conciousness that never existed biologically. I'm trying to stay away from the far reaching philosophical and moralistic implications of doing either of these things. That's a massive can of worms. I just wondered how many coders actually think it will ever be possible and how many think it is something that could never be achieved. I think it will be possible.
I see no reason why it wouldn't be possible. After all, the human brain is nothing but a big processor that obeys the laws of physics. Man-made systems with similar capabilities of cognition, affectivity, introspection... should be able to support consciousness. Wikipedia supplies interesting material on this topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading[^]). Moving consciousness from one being to another is something we (I) don't understand at the moment, and it seems to raise paradoxical situations.
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I am curious from the point of view of people from a programming sort of environment, how many of us believe that it will be possible to store a consciousness electronically. This could be either to store an existing conciousness (as in copying or backing up an existing mind electronically) or to develop a completely new conciousness that never existed biologically. I'm trying to stay away from the far reaching philosophical and moralistic implications of doing either of these things. That's a massive can of worms. I just wondered how many coders actually think it will ever be possible and how many think it is something that could never be achieved. I think it will be possible.
Hi, There is no doubt that consciousness can be implemented in 'artificial' mediums. There is nothing 'magical' about living matter - and 'natural' consciousness is just the result of an (as of yet not understood) process implemented in matter. When we understand that process, we will be able to implement it in an appropriate artificial/non-living medium. And it is, almost beyond doubt, a computational process - and I personally believe that consciousness can even be implemented in current-generation hardware and software. We just need to understand it first! Marius Myburg. http://mariusmyburg.wordpress.com/
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Ah. The passage of time! Could that not be an entirely human made idea? Could we not live in a universe where everything happened or is happening all in one go. Could we not have created an illusion of a linear existance by linking similar quantum states together in an order of most similar to least similar. Anyway, I've deviated from my own question. Could we not just include a clock battery?
Now that's stuff I really like thinking about. I find it rather interesting to think of time as an illusion, or really all of reality as an illusion. This is getting into pretty abstract stuff, but perhaps it is simply enough to create an initial state of a universe simulation with the *possibility* of it being computed for it really exist for all intensive purposes, without actually computing it. Perhaps our entire universe is nothing but the initial snapshot of a thought experiment in the mind of a being in another universe. I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this, but I've never heard anyone talk about this theory before. I should name it something in case it hasn't been named yet...I call it Marynowski Simulation Theory ;P :laugh: Regarding conciousness in computers: definitely going to happen, probably (hopefully) in my lifetime. People have a really hard time projecting exponential technological progress into predictions of the future and tend to measure the next 10 years based on what the last 10 years was like, which is very very wrong.
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Hi, There is no doubt that consciousness can be implemented in 'artificial' mediums. There is nothing 'magical' about living matter - and 'natural' consciousness is just the result of an (as of yet not understood) process implemented in matter. When we understand that process, we will be able to implement it in an appropriate artificial/non-living medium. And it is, almost beyond doubt, a computational process - and I personally believe that consciousness can even be implemented in current-generation hardware and software. We just need to understand it first! Marius Myburg. http://mariusmyburg.wordpress.com/
Hi Marius, The matter, with unimaginary matter, that I can only imagine (dimly) ... well, no matter ... I can only dog-paddle towards an ever-receding shore in the wake of Werner Heisenberg's words: "Atoms are not things." Or, (futilely) trying to look outside-the-box of the introjected syllogistic habits of mentation crammed into me by my "western" acculturation, I could try and back-stroke away from the prowling shark of subject-object (sacrifice my feet, not my head) to the words of Nisaragadatta: “Wisdom tells me I am nothing; love tells me I am everything: between the two, my life flows.” Who's that laughing: Alan Turing ? yours, Bill
“Humans are amphibians: half spirit, half animal; as spirits they belong to the eternal world; as animals they inhabit time. While their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imagination are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy is undulation: repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.” C.S. Lewis
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Hi Marius, The matter, with unimaginary matter, that I can only imagine (dimly) ... well, no matter ... I can only dog-paddle towards an ever-receding shore in the wake of Werner Heisenberg's words: "Atoms are not things." Or, (futilely) trying to look outside-the-box of the introjected syllogistic habits of mentation crammed into me by my "western" acculturation, I could try and back-stroke away from the prowling shark of subject-object (sacrifice my feet, not my head) to the words of Nisaragadatta: “Wisdom tells me I am nothing; love tells me I am everything: between the two, my life flows.” Who's that laughing: Alan Turing ? yours, Bill
“Humans are amphibians: half spirit, half animal; as spirits they belong to the eternal world; as animals they inhabit time. While their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imagination are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy is undulation: repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.” C.S. Lewis
Atoms may not - or may - be things. But either way - as Einstein is reported to have said, "Something is moving...". "Something" is not "nothing", and something IS moving. And some things are intelligent and conscious, or at least they experience an illusion of being conscious. Either way - that consciousness, exists. Cogito ergo sum. What is and what is not matter, in the traditional sense, does not really matter. There is 'something'. And that 'something' is... matter. :D But this is all kinda beside the point, I think :).
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I am curious from the point of view of people from a programming sort of environment, how many of us believe that it will be possible to store a consciousness electronically. This could be either to store an existing conciousness (as in copying or backing up an existing mind electronically) or to develop a completely new conciousness that never existed biologically. I'm trying to stay away from the far reaching philosophical and moralistic implications of doing either of these things. That's a massive can of worms. I just wondered how many coders actually think it will ever be possible and how many think it is something that could never be achieved. I think it will be possible.
Well, for some folks that I know it should be fairly easy to save their consciousness on a old-time 180K single-sided floppy disk, even together with some interresting data. For most others I would say "No-way, José!" You may store a snapshot of all the neuronic activities for >clik< THIS moment, but we are really not sure whether that is enough - what about the chemical state, how about the framework (I understand that the brains are wired differently from person to person) and so on. And then there are the ethical / spiritual / practical problems... Much easier to rely on a divine intervention! :wtf: :wtf:
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I am curious from the point of view of people from a programming sort of environment, how many of us believe that it will be possible to store a consciousness electronically. This could be either to store an existing conciousness (as in copying or backing up an existing mind electronically) or to develop a completely new conciousness that never existed biologically. I'm trying to stay away from the far reaching philosophical and moralistic implications of doing either of these things. That's a massive can of worms. I just wondered how many coders actually think it will ever be possible and how many think it is something that could never be achieved. I think it will be possible.
Yes, it will be possible IMO. This is how it can be done: It will not be a scan, or a download, it will be slow. Every cell in your brain can be replaced by a synthetic. Your consciousness is not in one cell, but is made up of a collection of all of your cells. Switching each one individual will allow your consciousness to switch over to electronics, at what point does that occur? It's not binary- at what spoonful of soil does a hill become a mountain? After the transition is complete, the body and be destroyed and electric brain removed.
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I am curious from the point of view of people from a programming sort of environment, how many of us believe that it will be possible to store a consciousness electronically. This could be either to store an existing conciousness (as in copying or backing up an existing mind electronically) or to develop a completely new conciousness that never existed biologically. I'm trying to stay away from the far reaching philosophical and moralistic implications of doing either of these things. That's a massive can of worms. I just wondered how many coders actually think it will ever be possible and how many think it is something that could never be achieved. I think it will be possible.
Don't. Build. Cylons.
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I am curious from the point of view of people from a programming sort of environment, how many of us believe that it will be possible to store a consciousness electronically. This could be either to store an existing conciousness (as in copying or backing up an existing mind electronically) or to develop a completely new conciousness that never existed biologically. I'm trying to stay away from the far reaching philosophical and moralistic implications of doing either of these things. That's a massive can of worms. I just wondered how many coders actually think it will ever be possible and how many think it is something that could never be achieved. I think it will be possible.
The question is premature, at least for Western science, as it hasn't even been figured out yet. Though an advanced Buddhist meditator who has studied the Abhidharma(Google it) might have some intersting ideas to relate. So how could you save it if you don't have a clue what it is? Mike
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You don't need compassion to be conscious, in fact you don't need any emotion to be conscious. Psychopaths don't have any and not just the murderous types. I'm sure they are still considered conscious. I'm not keen on having a back up made of my mind that was stripped of emotion however. But a part backup is better than none.
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But do you think it will ever be possible? :)
I wrote a short SF story to address that. Many stories, like James P. Hogan's Immortality Option, deal with transfer through a distructive process, others, make copies, one (title forgotten) dealt with an "entangled" cloud of particles to image the brain. Mine, uses a slow transfer from association. Ghost in the Works[^] Not surprisingly, I think my method has the likeliest chance of success, it gets past all the problems with imaging the brain to make a copy.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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I am curious from the point of view of people from a programming sort of environment, how many of us believe that it will be possible to store a consciousness electronically. This could be either to store an existing conciousness (as in copying or backing up an existing mind electronically) or to develop a completely new conciousness that never existed biologically. I'm trying to stay away from the far reaching philosophical and moralistic implications of doing either of these things. That's a massive can of worms. I just wondered how many coders actually think it will ever be possible and how many think it is something that could never be achieved. I think it will be possible.
The very detailed book "Astral Dynamics" by Robert Bruce provides first hand accounts of different types of consciousness in our different levels of bodies, saying that the physical body brain does indeed have a type of consciousness, even though it appears to be mortal and not the eternal consciousness of the soul. My own experience tends to agree with this. So, theoretically, I would say a qualified yes, to a degree.
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I am curious from the point of view of people from a programming sort of environment, how many of us believe that it will be possible to store a consciousness electronically. This could be either to store an existing conciousness (as in copying or backing up an existing mind electronically) or to develop a completely new conciousness that never existed biologically. I'm trying to stay away from the far reaching philosophical and moralistic implications of doing either of these things. That's a massive can of worms. I just wondered how many coders actually think it will ever be possible and how many think it is something that could never be achieved. I think it will be possible.
If we consider the brain as simple computing device, then the answer is yes, but first we must understand what defines a consciousness, the minimum detail level we need to emulate so it works and the appropriate platform to emulate it. Having said that, I believe that the time for everyone of us wearing and "Intel Inside" badge in our skulls, is a bit far away. ;P
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