I think when people start uploading videos of themselves abusing AGI humanoid robots, there's going to be a reaction.

Meaning yes, its quite possible for us to program consciousness into a computer, though that consciousness may not expressly ever be human. — Philosophim

So you're saying that if we take a collection of electronic switches and turn them on and off in some particular sequence, consciousness will emerge? That begs all sorts of interesting questions.

I completely agree. What are people going to do when we have AGI's that beg not to be shut off or shut down?

Can an algorithim be conscious? That is to say, can a collection of electric switches become conscious if flipped on and off in a particular way?

If there is a cure, should parents of autistic children be forced to give it to their kids?

Is a Boltzmann hydrogen bomb possible?

So we're halfway there. We've established the existence of consciousness. Do you have experiences?

Are you conscious?

It assumes the existence of “conscious experience”. — NOS4A2

That is a safe assumption.

I don't anything about that part of it. You're saying Boltzmann is wrong?

If a working brain could assemble itself randomly, then a working brain with life-support equipment would also be possible. The Boltzmann argument would have to work that way, because I'm not passing out due to lack of oxygen.

I'm not entirely sure what the precise wording is. It matters though. Seems to me that Mary's room aims at the wrong target. — creativesoul

The precise wording matters. The whole point is that Mary knows all the physical facts about seeing, and then learns something new when she actually sees color for the first time.

Dennett claims that if we grant the premiss that Mary knew everything there was to know about seeing color — creativesoul

Isn't the claim that Mary knows all the physical facts about seeing color?

Yet you aren't on the barricades, are you? Is anybody else? — ssu

I'm getting 5% on my money.

And with a 5% inflation, just look how quickly your money will lose value. Let's say that for the next five years you would have 5% inflation (which could be masqueraded by statistical gimmicks to look like 3% or 2%). Afterwards it won't take so much time to get where the money is half of it used to be. But who cares what things were priced a decade ago.

Only if it would be 5% per month people would panic and it would be an uproar. The idea is just to boil the frog so low that it doesn't jump out, you know.

Eventually, if inflation gets bad enough and the fed is seen as protecting bankers more than Main Street, a political party will run on a platform of revoking the fed's independence.

Do you think the fed will be content with 5% inflation? That's a little high for most folks.

I agree. Why do you think the availability of prostitution does not meet the needs of incels? — frank

They think they're "owed" pussy. Having to buy it is humiliating. And a lot of them are losers who don't have any money.

My analogy assumed that rattlesnake does indeed taste like chicken. If that is the case, I know quite a bit of what eating rattlesnake will be like: like eating chicken. Escargo tastes nothing like venison. Furthermore, one is a mollusk, the other is a deer.

Eating venison is like eating escargo... by that standard of "what it's like"... — creativesoul

Do venison and escargo taste anything like each other?

Feathers and all...

If rattlesnake tastes like chicken, then you may know what one tastes like. The experience of eating the rattlesnake is more than just the gustatory aspect... is it not? — creativesoul

There will be some differences, but it's still just putting chunks of meat in your mouth and chewing. Is it your contention that the experience will be similar to Mary seeing color for the first time?

I hope I am wrong. — unenlightened

Why?

What's your prediction about the coming offensive?

Ukrainian Counteroffensive is Coming Soon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCrZ-FqMyDg&ab_channel=TheInfographicsShow

Prediction: Ukraine is going to make substantial gains.

Yes, but the budget deficit next year is projected to be 1.4 trillion. And this during a time of rising interest rates. The spending we're doing is unsustainable. The military spending needs to be pared back, but even if you cut it in half, we still have an enormous fiscal problem.

From Kastrup:
"For clarity, the alternative hypothesis I mentioned in the video is this: There are phenomena in physics suggestive that the universe is, at a fundamental level, unified; in the sense that any event can potentially influence any other event across time and space limitations, at a quantum level. The phenomenon of quantum entanglement, when taken together with the Big Bang theory, is suggestive of this possibility. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest the same, like David Bohm's Implicate Order. So it is not completely unreasonable to imagine that there could be some form of non-local feedback from the results of natural selection back into the probability envelops governing the quantum-level processes from which genetic mutations arise. After all, those mutations are probabilistic processes at a molecular level, governed by quantum wave functions."

But that's not his hypothesis (or he's being disingenous). Kastrup's hypothesis is idealism. Idealism claims that this is all the dream of a cosmic mind/god. Mutations, entanglement, physics, the universe, the Big Bang, etc., none of it is real. It's all just elements of the dream.

Personally I have no idea what it's like to be me let alone you, or a fucking bat! — Tom Storm

This is nonsense. Of course you know what it's like to be you. If physicalists have to make this sort of move to salvage their position, they've lost. It's not convincing to anyone.

When we ask, "What is it like to watch a sunset?", what exactly are we asking for?

:brow:

Does that question even have an answer? It seems clear to me that it does not! Watching a sunset is not like anything. To quite the contrary, each viewing is different. One could watch the sun set as many times as one likes, and each event will be different. Likewise, each day, each moment of one's so called 'subjective experience' is different from all the others days and moments as well.

Hence, it is the question itself that is problematic in that it is not a well formulated question to begin with. — creativesoul

Just because there are minor differences does not mean something can't be like something else. Our experiences of sunsets are very similar to each other, so that we can say "watching this sunset is not at all like eating a peach, but it is similar to all the other sunset's I've seen." If someone says that eating rattlesnake is like eating chicken, I know what the experience of eating a rattlesnake will be like.

Why Ukraine Will Win: Interview with Gen. Ben Hodges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsXNJlH-4iM&ab_channel=FranklyFukuyama

It does look like he is trying to have his cake and eat it, but maybe that's how it appears when someone builds a comprehensive account. It's human cognition that puts time and space into it. Natural selection is a process we have interpreted, based on our cognitive apparatus, and our understanding of consciousness, which we have interpreted as physicalism. I understand Kastrup sees evolution as an account of consciousness evolving and changing (our conceptual frame) over aeons. — Tom Storm

Do you have a link for that?

Kastrup is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He talks about evolution as if it is a physical thing, and we've evolved a "dashboard of perception" to navigate the world. But idealism posits the existence of only mind and thought. There is no natural selection or random mutations. Reality as we perceive it is a dream created by a cosmic mind. There is no past for evolution to have happened in. There's only the present moment in the dream we're all experiencing.

There are some who still deny that a dog, for example, is conscious, but they are now in the minority. — Fooloso4

Yeah, but again, that's because animals have sophisticated brains like us. That all goes out the window with machines.

Suppose it gets to the point where there is general agreement that AI has become conscious. This would weaken rather than strengthen the case for idealism. — Fooloso4

How is that agreement going to come about? I don't think it will happen. There will be panpsychists arguing with eliminative materialists arguing with computationalists, etc. Thre's a consensus now, because we're all pretty much built the same way and we can point to a lot of neural correlates (even thought I think that's mistaking causation with correlation, but nevermind). How is that going to apply to machines? Are scientists going to point to lines of code and say, "this is where the computer's conscious experience of vision happens"?

I think the case for idealism is greatly strengthened by the failure of the materialism/physicalism model to give a coherent answer on machine intelligence. We will soon reach a point where people will want to know whether these Ai's are conscious or not and science will be unable to figure it out.

Idealism, in the sense that there is no proof of something outside of our perception, has been refuted. — Philosophim

Don't forget to kick a rock too.

You're right. Somehow I missed the "highly doubt". But suppose we did have an author that got off on torturing/raping his fictional characters. Would that be immoral in any way? Would that be a red flag to other people? I would say no the first question and yes to the second.

The most manly of men, in my opinion, are those that willingly submit to the power of the feminine. It's a demonstration of confidence and self esteem. — Benj96

:100:

they have no power at all — ChatteringMonkey

People with guns have power.

They're a bunch of losers who blame women for their inability to get laid. Occasionally, they shoot the place up, so they're dangerous as well.

That said, I would believe an AI is conscious if it acted in a spontaneous way that could not be explained by its programming, and which showed that it really cared about something. — Janus

That's one way to detect consciousness. Maybe there won't be any Ai's that claim they're conscious. Maybe they'll always just say, "I don't have experiences. I'm a p-zombie".