Before airplanes, the only form of flight was organic.
That doesn’t help your argument at all - flight was being demonstrated long, long before humans even existed to observe it. Can you say the same for non-organic consciousness?
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen too many scientists rushing to find ways of measuring the consciousness of rocks.
You are making my point. For millenia, we had examples of organic flight, yet many believed we couldn’t mimic that, and some thought it would be an affront to God to try, as it implied his perfect creation was lacking. And yet, now people fly every day.
No, there are no examples of inorganic consciousness at this time, but the same was true for flight 200 years ago. And we have a number of examples of organic consciousness. Scientists know better than to look for conscious rocks, just like the Wright brothers knew better than to look for flying rocks.
So where is your millenia’s worth of proof that inorganic consciousness is a thing? Do you have any proof that any mountain range on earth has managed consciousness in the last few hundreds of billions of years?
but the same was true for flight 200 years ago.
No, that’s not true. The Chinese have been making sky lanterns since the 3rd century BC - and doing so in a way that no organism on earth has managed (as far as I’m aware). So please stop with the useless “everybody once believed the earth was flat” nonsense.
No, there are no examples of inorganic consciousness
Correct. Your (so-called) “smartphone” is about as “conscious” as my rusty garden shears.
Scientists know better than to look for conscious rocks,
No, but to prove your point you will have to. I also have no idea why you’re so willing to die on this hill, because, even if you do manage to find a conscious rock that consciousness will still not function like software.
Speculation on organic consciousness is pretty much esoteric, too, given that science can’t even reach a consensus on a definition of “consciousness” yet.
For that matter, the scientific boundary between “organic” and “inorganic” is really fuzzy.
Speculation on organic consciousness is pretty much esoteric, too,
I don’t disagree. I just don’t see any reason for even an esoteric basis to speculate that consciousness is in any way analogous to computer software simply because “we invented this thing so we must apply it’s logic to ourselves.” It smacks of the “machine” view of how the human body works that became prevalent in medicine after industrialisation - and even today it is still a way of understanding human physiology that causes far more problems than it solves.
That’s a different point to the one I was replying to. I was replying to your dismissal of the conversation as esoteric, based on it discussing specifically non-organic consciousness.
That’s because everybody arguing with me is conflating me saying that consciousness is not software with an attack on their favourite sci-fi genre (cyberpunk). And they’re completely missing the whole point of cyberpunk by doing so, if you ask me.
I don’t think that’s something that will be solved as it’s not something really tangible.
The most simple theory and the one I lean towards is that every time you go to deep sleep you effectively die, and when you wake up (or enter REM sleep) you are effectively a whole new consciousness who just happens to have the memories of the many consciousness who previously inhabited your body. This theory is nice because it solves the teleporter paradox, but doesn’t answer the question if an emulated brain actually thinks or just pretends to think. The so called philosophical zombie.
But also, it’s funny to think that if I truly believed this theory, then I would spend all my money right now and let “whoever inherits my memories” to deal with the consequences.
You will never be able to make a perfect copy of the brain and anything less means you wouldn’t be “you” anymore. Any of these schemes about copying the brain are moot because of that, I think.
That depends on their definition of software. If software is partly defined as something we can create, and consciousness is something we can’t even fully understand, let alone create, then they are correct.
Yeah… and it’s a dumb idea. Consciousness is not software.
What I consciousness though?
It’s clearly not hardware, if either an emulated brain can be conscious or just pretends to do so is impossible to prove or disprove.
It’s organic.
The point is moot - the consciousness of the frozen billionaire is non-existent in either case.
Why? Why could there not be a non-organic consciousness?
Going to take it a step further and say artificial life is just organic life with extra steps.
The concept of robots that continued to evolve post creators is not new to scifi.
In some ways our own body is simply an emergent complex machine of regenerative biodegradable micro hardware.
There maybe could, but it would be a different one from the person. A second consciousness that was copied.
To my knowledge we are nowhere close to being able to actually transfer a consciousness
Of course we aren’t close. But the above poster was making a categorical statement that consciousness must be biological.
The premise behind the videogame SOMA.
Exactly! One of my favorite game stories to date.
The only consciousness we have ever encountered is organic in nature - speculation on non-organic forms of consciousness is pretty much esoteric.
Ie, it depends on your religious beliefs.
Before airplanes, the only form of flight was organic. This was also a firmly held religious belief.
Our ignorance doesn’t mean something isn’t possible. It just means we don’t know if it is possible.
That doesn’t help your argument at all - flight was being demonstrated long, long before humans even existed to observe it. Can you say the same for non-organic consciousness?
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen too many scientists rushing to find ways of measuring the consciousness of rocks.
You are making my point. For millenia, we had examples of organic flight, yet many believed we couldn’t mimic that, and some thought it would be an affront to God to try, as it implied his perfect creation was lacking. And yet, now people fly every day.
No, there are no examples of inorganic consciousness at this time, but the same was true for flight 200 years ago. And we have a number of examples of organic consciousness. Scientists know better than to look for conscious rocks, just like the Wright brothers knew better than to look for flying rocks.
So where is your millenia’s worth of proof that inorganic consciousness is a thing? Do you have any proof that any mountain range on earth has managed consciousness in the last few hundreds of billions of years?
No, that’s not true. The Chinese have been making sky lanterns since the 3rd century BC - and doing so in a way that no organism on earth has managed (as far as I’m aware). So please stop with the useless “everybody once believed the earth was flat” nonsense.
Correct. Your (so-called) “smartphone” is about as “conscious” as my rusty garden shears.
No, but to prove your point you will have to. I also have no idea why you’re so willing to die on this hill, because, even if you do manage to find a conscious rock that consciousness will still not function like software.
Speculation on organic consciousness is pretty much esoteric, too, given that science can’t even reach a consensus on a definition of “consciousness” yet.
For that matter, the scientific boundary between “organic” and “inorganic” is really fuzzy.
I don’t disagree. I just don’t see any reason for even an esoteric basis to speculate that consciousness is in any way analogous to computer software simply because “we invented this thing so we must apply it’s logic to ourselves.” It smacks of the “machine” view of how the human body works that became prevalent in medicine after industrialisation - and even today it is still a way of understanding human physiology that causes far more problems than it solves.
Ie, there’s no speculative basis for it.
That’s a different point to the one I was replying to. I was replying to your dismissal of the conversation as esoteric, based on it discussing specifically non-organic consciousness.
That’s because everybody arguing with me is conflating me saying that consciousness is not software with an attack on their favourite sci-fi genre (cyberpunk). And they’re completely missing the whole point of cyberpunk by doing so, if you ask me.
For real
There’s a whole field of philosophy dealing with that question, there’s no consensus yet, though interesting ideas have surfaced
I don’t think that’s something that will be solved as it’s not something really tangible.
The most simple theory and the one I lean towards is that every time you go to deep sleep you effectively die, and when you wake up (or enter REM sleep) you are effectively a whole new consciousness who just happens to have the memories of the many consciousness who previously inhabited your body. This theory is nice because it solves the teleporter paradox, but doesn’t answer the question if an emulated brain actually thinks or just pretends to think. The so called philosophical zombie.
But also, it’s funny to think that if I truly believed this theory, then I would spend all my money right now and let “whoever inherits my memories” to deal with the consequences.
You don’t know that. Literally, you don’t. Nobody does. This might be your opinion and that’s fine, but stating it as fact is disingenuous
I also don’t know whether ghosts exist. Will you go to bat for them, too?
Pretending that consciousness is software because movies and videogames portrays it working like software is far more disingenuous, I’d say.
You will never be able to make a perfect copy of the brain and anything less means you wouldn’t be “you” anymore. Any of these schemes about copying the brain are moot because of that, I think.
Given advanced enough technology making a perfect scan on the brain seems perfectly duable, you’re not breaking any laws of physic that I know off.
That depends on their definition of software. If software is partly defined as something we can create, and consciousness is something we can’t even fully understand, let alone create, then they are correct.
“I call myself a millionaire because I might win the lottery someday”
We are legion. We are Bob.
But but software can think now, it’s totally not copying and pasting together random segments it scraped online
Not yet