OSDev.org

It's pretty clear we're all part of one insane consciousness that has a serious case of multiple personality disorder and believes itself to be a whole multitude of individuals.

:p

It's just pure electronics, actually a computer doesn't think, it are just laws of physics in action. The reason people use 1 & 0 is because of logic gates. These are a couple of transistors hooked up to react on certain combination of voltages, i.e. 1 for 5-1.2?V or 0 for any lower voltage.

If you would crack open a memory stick it would depend on how that one works, I don't really know how flash works but essentially it's also wih 1 and 0's but I do know how CD/DVD/BD works: When you burn a file on a cd, your computer will latterly burn tiny parts of the cd so that the structure of the elements will change. When you read that CD afterwards your laser will reflect if a bit hasn't been burnt, giving you a zero, or won't reflect giving you a one (or the other way around).

With these bit you can represent letters, numbers, actually just anything that you want.

Back in the early days people first tried to build computers that would work on the exact voltage level, so you could have 1 or 1,2 or 2,54863 but this was harder and had some issues: it could be affected by noise creating false answers and it was also slower, because those voltages had to be measured to compare.

If you want tp learn more about all of this: search the internet, search google for: logic gates, bits/bytes, transistors....

SDS wrote:I don't have time to reply to everything I want to in this, but I just want to pick up on two bits that leap out:

DavidCooper wrote:Beyond known physics, certainly - if we're limited to known science, there is no such thing as consciousness and no possibility of people feeling real pain, and that means there is no need for any kind of morality as it doesn't matter how much you abuse other people - they cannot be hurt by anything in any real way, but merely generate data which wrongly reports pain that isn't actually real.

This is a truly absurd statement, and a very poor representation of both the scientific process and the state of scientific knowledge. A great deal is known about the manner in which the brain supports thinking (I can dig out specific review papers if you are interested, although it isn't my field...), but our understanding of how you get from there to the larger remit of consciousness is more incomplete.

The issue isn't about how the brain supports thinking: it's about consciousness. The brain is producing data which documents a phenomenon which simply doesn't fit with science. Pain cannot be felt if nothing feels it, and there is nothing there which can feel pain if you go by the laws of physics as we know them.

Even without that, the lack of a complete explanation built from the lowest levels of physics does not imply that science would indicate that 'there is no such thing as...',

If consciousness is real, things have to be consciously felt by something. Physics completely fails to identify that thing and further appears to rule it out as impossible. You are smuggling consciousness in by magic and sweeping that magic under the rug of "emergence from complexity". That is not science.

and it certainly would never support statements which draw a moral position in that way.

If nothing feels pain, you can damage it, but you can't harm it. Morality is a system of rules designed to minimise harm. If harm is impossible, morality has no role.

DavidCooper wrote:Indeed - the thoughts are like the data going through a CPU, but with a CPU which claims it feels qualia triggered by the data being processed.

The thoughts could be thought of as being linked to data. Consciousness would be closest to the evolving state of a self-aware program being run by the CPU. Although not a perfect analogy, the whole point is to say that the atoms or geometry of the brain is not what feels pain or other sensations, in the same way that a CPU doesn't claim to feel any sensations.

Until you understand the point that pain can only be real if it's felt by something, you simply won't be able to understand the fundamental problem of consciousness. You can fool yourself into thinking there is no problem with it if you like and just go on hiding the injected magic by sweeping it under the carpet, but it isn't good enough: the problem is still there for those who can see it.

Here are some electronic components. I stick them together in a particular arrangement such that when the button is pressed, pain is generated. None of the components feel anything. The arrangement feels nothing. The electric current feels nothing. Nothing involved in the experiment is allowed to feel anything. And yet pain is supposedly generated? B***ocks!

Pain is the four-letter code we have given to the mostly uncontrollable urge to prevent further damage to our body.

Any learning algorithm includes a fitness function that determines if a certain behaviour is acceptable. The algoritm under scrutiny is modified repeatedly by the learning process over which itself has no control. In essence the program is experiencing the same urge to prevent bad results from happening, and therefore experiences the technological equivalent of pain when it makes a wrong decision.

Solar wrote:Consciousness is a result of a certain neuro-chemical setup. You create the same setup, you have the same consciousness. It doesn't matter if you create that setup from matter directly, this energy, or that energy. That's the point.

So, two people normally have different consciousnesses, but if two of them happen to be identical in every aspect they suddenly have the same consciousness, a shared one, and yet it behaves as if it is not shared at all (stick pin in one, the other feels nothing). You have two people who are copies of each other, and each one has its own independent consciousness.

Merely hinting at standard issue biology studies. Not "dead people", but dead frogs, for example. How can you argue the finer points of a field in which you are unaware of basic research?

If they're brain dead, there's no way for them to be conscious of your attempted torturing. You apply electric currents and get them to twitch, but you can do the same with an electric motor.

No, not similar to the concept of the soul, that's the very point of my argument: That, from a scientific standpoint, there is no such thing as a "soul" or other "magic thing that is 'me'", beyond what persons perceive as such.

I'm talking about something utterly minimal - merely sufficient to do such things as feel pain. If you rule that out, there can be no such thing as pain and we are just machines.

Here's a question to help you focus your mind. I'm going to put you into one of these machines, then you'll come out of it not knowing whether you're the original or the copy, though I will know. I will then kill one of you, and you can choose which one I will kill in advance of the copy being made. Would you prefer me to kill the original or the copy?

It doesn't matter. One "me" will die, one "me" will live, either way.

It seems that science fiction is more dangerous than I'd ever imagined - it turns out that it can mess with people's minds to the point where they don't care if they suddenly cease to exist so long as they're replaced by someone identical, somehow imagining that they will continue to exist as the copy.

Edit: Actually, there is already an error in the way the question is asked: "I" can chose? Which of the two identical "I" you are facing is getting asked the question?

The beginning of this thought experiment was that the copy would be perfect. If it's perfect, both the original and the copy are a perfect "me". If the copy process is a loud flash and a bang, both "me's" will remember stepping inside the machine, experiencing the flash-and-bang, and stepping out of the other side.

There's no error in the question - it states very clearly that you're asked to choose before the copy is made. After the copy is made, the original and the copy don't know which is which, but I do.

Edit: Both would be certain they were the one "me" who entered the machine. Neither would "feel" a copy, and as the experiment is about a perfect copy, there would be no justification to call one "original" and the other "copy", because both are (up until very recently identical) humans.

Of course there's a justification for calling one the original and the other a copy - one of them is the original and the other is a copy. You're inventing new physics where whenever you make a copy so good that it's identical to the original, the original is no longer the original.

The fact that you don't seem to have any objections killing the copy simply "because it's a copy" raises some not so nice questions about your morality. What makes the copy any less human than the original, the killing any less murder? The fact that you "made" it? That implies you would also feel justified to kill your own child if the mother agrees, because the two of you "made it". Would you?

Do you understand how thought experiments work? Or is this a wind up?

You seem to be describing a machine with no room for consciousness in it.

Right, and wrong. When you are talking about "consciousness", you seem to have some "magical spark" in mind that is non-copyable by a mere physical copy. When I am talking about "consciousness", I understand it to be a result of neuro-chemical complexities, nothing more - but that makes "you" and "me" no less valuable (though, for the sake of our thought experiment, copyable).

Your neuro-chemical complexities can't feel pain. If pain isn't real, there's no real you or me in the machine.

Known physics is completely sufficient to explain consciousness, with just a touch of imagination applied where we lack the detail in observing and the complexity of understanding, and thusly I refuse to accept anything "metaphysical" in the equation. Occams razor.

There's a hell of a lot more magic involved in your model than there is in mine.

That "pain" is a neuro-chemical reaction to stimulus, in a very deterministic way (which is merely a bit too complex for us to understand fully at this point), does not make it less "painful" or less real, and the application of pain to a being no less amoral, even if there is no "magical spark" in there.

You pretend that you understand something which science cannot explain - consciousness is a major problem and I'm not the one here claiming to understand it. I've shown you where the problem is, but you're determined to ignore it and pretend it isn't there. I don't think we're going to make any further progress here, so I'll declare myself out.

___________________________________________________________________________

If a mod decides the thread should be split, the following information may make the job easier: the 8th post on the second page (one by Bonch which ends by asking "Do you think computers could ever be conscious?") should be the first post of the new thread, but the last post on that page (one of mine) and the 2nd, 4th and 6th posts on the third page (one of mine and two of gerryg400's) would then need to be extracted and put back into the original thread. [That all assumes that 15 posts appear on each page.] After splitting the thread, the four posts to extract and move back to the original thread will have become posts 8, 10, 12 and 14 of the new thread.

It's become more complex now: post 6 on page 7 belongs in the original thread too.

You're inventing new physics where whenever you make a copy so good that it's identical to the original, the original is no longer the original.

Not new physics, 14 year old physics. Actually, because things are made from elementary particles that are identical (i.e. every electron is fundamentally identical etc.), it's entirely possible to make a copy that is, in every measurable way, the original. Fortunately the copying process necessarily modifies the original to the extent that the original no longer exists. This type of copying of single photons has been done many times in the lab and there appears no reason that it couldn't be theoretically done on a grander scale.

I'm talking about something utterly minimal - merely sufficient to do such things as feel pain. If you rule that out, there can be no such thing as pain and we are just machines.

I think we are just machines. And consciousness is just the program that's running. Flitting about, taking inputs and performing actions as it's programmed to do. Pain is just an input. The 'feeling' of pain, that thing that annoys you and interrupts your more pleasant thoughts is just there to make sure that you are interrupted and do something to ease the pain.

gerryg400 wrote:Not new physics, 14 year old physics. Actually, because things are made from elementary particles that are identical (i.e. every electron is fundamentally identical etc.), it's entirely possible to make a copy that is, in every measurable way, the original. Fortunately the copying process necessarily modifies the original to the extent that the original no longer exists. This type of copying of single photons has been done many times in the lab and there appears no reason that it couldn't be theoretically done on a grander scale.

That isn't physics - it's just a philosophical (mis-)interpretation of something pretending to be physics.

DavidCooper wrote:

gerryg400 wrote:Not new physics, 14 year old physics. Actually, because things are made from elementary particles that are identical (i.e. every electron is fundamentally identical etc.), it's entirely possible to make a copy that is, in every measurable way, the original. Fortunately the copying process necessarily modifies the original to the extent that the original no longer exists. This type of copying of single photons has been done many times in the lab and there appears no reason that it couldn't be theoretically done on a grander scale.

That isn't physics - it's just a philosophical (mis-)interpretation of something pretending to be physics.

We're getting OT here, but actually it is pretty good physics. A hypothesis was made, a number of predictions drawn from the hypothesis, an experiment designed and performed that gave the predicted outcome. If that's not physics, I'm afraid there is no physics.

DavidCooper wrote:So, two people normally have different consciousnesses, but if two of them happen to be identical in every aspect they suddenly have the same consciousness, a shared one...

Listen, we're really running in circles here. You simply don't acknowledge anything as understood, you don't make your position clear, you don't ask when you didn't understand, you're only giving the same pseudo-philosophical / linguistic flak to every other statement people make over and over. This discussion is going nowhere, and I'm tyring of it.

It doesn't matter. One "me" will die, one "me" will live, either way.

It seems that science fiction is more dangerous than I'd ever imagined - it turns out that it can mess with people's minds to the point where they don't care if they suddenly cease to exist so long as they're replaced by someone identical, somehow imagining that they will continue to exist as the copy.

The idea of the thought experiment was a perfect copy being made. Please elaborate how a perfect copy of me would be any different from me (i.e., not perfect).

You seem to be describing a machine with no room for consciousness in it.

Right, and wrong. When you are talking about "consciousness", you seem to have some "magical spark" in mind that is non-copyable by a mere physical copy. When I am talking about "consciousness", I understand it to be a result of neuro-chemical complexities, nothing more - but that makes "you" and "me" no less valuable (though, for the sake of our thought experiment, copyable).

Your neuro-chemical complexities can't feel pain.

Please prove. Experimental evidence of undergraduate Biology studies (which I attended) are against you.

Any part of an organism can be "triggered" in a way that is equivalent to what happens when the organism as a whole "experiences pain". You can stimulate a pain receptor. You can make a nerve trigger without a pain receptor attached. You can trigger the pain center in the brain without a nervous system attached. You can make an adrenal gland produce adrenalin without a brain or blood stream attached. Every single part of the organism can be observed and studied in isolation, and the results are deterministic (to a point). The only thing modern Biology and Psychology lacks is a detailed understanding of how it works all together, because the involved networks, feedback loops etc. are of enormous complexity. But it is understood what "feeling pain" is for each part of the organism.

And the part of you that "feels" pain and "thinks" about it is the grey matter in your skull, and the "feeling" and "thinking" is a complex exchange of neuron pulses and releases of messenger chemicals. No more, no less.

(Somewhat like weather prediction. The mechanics are well understood, but we lack the processing power to fully harness the complexities involved.)

I've shown you where the problem is, but you're determined to ignore it and pretend it isn't there.

No, you failed to show where the problem is, and I'm trying to nail it down.

Do you understand the concept of hypothesis, antithesis, synthesis? It's a process of explaining, asking, questioning, understanding. That thought experiment of yours with the copy machine was a good first step, but you never fully formed your hypothesis, and when I formulated my antithesis to what I understood your hypothesis to be, you didn't elaborate on your hypothesis or argued the finer points, but started to weazel your way around the topic.

I still do not understand what you are actually trying to say. You repeatedly refuted the idea that a human is basically a neuro-chemical machine; you claim that consciousness is something beyond that. At the same time you refute the suggestion that what you're implying is a metaphysical concept of "soul" or "consciousness" beyond physics, chemistry, and biology. You talk about perfect copies, yet still insist that the copy, however perfect, is inferior and may be killed with no moral dilemma. You aren't even consistent with yourself, and that makes the discussion somewhat... pointless (pun intended).

There are real world examples of "two consciousnesses, same being" - they're called identical twins. They are comprised of the exact same genetic material initially and live separate lives.This is not the same as xeroxing a consciousness, as in the Star Trek example, but it is a physical example of the same "person" existing in two places.

I think copying a person is made bizarre by the twin being derived from an adult 20 (or whatever) years after the "mould" was first was born. When I first thought about it I imagined the derived twin would have no idea he was derived, but then I realised he would inherit the first twins memory of entering into the cloning process so I guess he would be fully aware.

I have to disagree with you DavidCooper, it seems to me rather obvious that a copied twin would have his own consciousness and feel his own pain. People are made of matter. You copy the matter, the copy is its own thing. It's just like instantiating an object in OO - the derived class inherits all the properties of the base class but gets it's own chunk of memory to do its job. It's behaviour after instantiation is completely separate from the base class. I do know this does not really address your point (which I'm finding hard to pin down) :p

DavidCooper wrote: Beyond known physics, certainly - if we're limited to known science, there is no such thing as consciousness and no possibility of people feeling real pain, and that means there is no need for any kind of morality as it doesn't matter how much you abuse other people - they cannot be hurt by anything in any real way, but merely generate data which wrongly reports pain that isn't actually real.

I think if the idea of consciousness could be appropriated under "known science" there would be no reason for debate, it would just be a fact. Consciousness = xyz and is made because zyx.

You could say what you're saying about every open problem in science - "the answer isn't clear yet, so it's beyond science!". You could also go back 1000 years and use the same logic to defend the proposition that the earth is flat. There are a lot of open questions. But you would be a brave man to declare them beyond the purview of scientific inquiry.

bonch wrote:You could also go back 1000 years and use the same logic to defend the proposition that the earth is flat.

Just like with the "feet fallen asleep" thing earlier, please bear with me pointing out a common myth. The earth being flat was not a common belief in the middle ages. The earth being round was proven by the Greek over 2300 years ago (including a pretty precise calculation of its circumference), and the myth that "medieval people believed the earth was flat" didn't surface until between the 17th and 19th century. Check out Wikipedia if you like.

(The funny thing about it was the gross miscalculation of Christopher Columbus. That man was an imbecile when it came to navigation.)

Did not know that. I had a feeling while I was typing that analogy that it was going to fly back in my face. :p

Anyway I think the analogy can be substituted without ruining the point.

DavidCooper wrote:So, two people normally have different consciousnesses, but if two of them happen to be identical in every aspect they suddenly have the same consciousness, a shared one, and yet it behaves as if it is not shared at all (stick pin in one, the other feels nothing). You have two people who are copies of each other, and each one has its own independent consciousness.

Now you are just playing linguistic games. I'm not sure if you are being intentionally perverse, but anyway, you are conflating two meanings of the word same. Two perfect copies have the same consciousness, as in they are identical, rather than that they are 'shared' in some metaphysical manner.

DavidCooper wrote:

No, not similar to the concept of the soul...

I'm talking about something utterly minimal - merely sufficient to do such things as feel pain. If you rule that out, there can be no such thing as pain and we are just machines.

Unless you state what you mean by 'something utterly minimal', then you are being incoherent here. Either a metaphysical soul/consciousness exists, or it does not. Within a scientific explanation, you have to assume the latter unless given very good evidence of the former - beyond simply saying that you don't like a partially-incomplete explanation based on simpler principles.

DavidCooper wrote:It seems that science fiction is more dangerous than I'd ever imagined - it turns out that it can mess with people's minds to the point where they don't care if they suddenly cease to exist so long as they're replaced by someone identical, somehow imagining that they will continue to exist as the copy.

Hardly. Both the 'original' and the 'clone' would not want to cease to exist. If I knew which of those two I would be, then I would choose to stay alive. However, I would be unable to express a preference between two identical "me's" without further information. That hardly implies that I wouldn't mind ceasing to exist.

Indeed, I would have issues destroying a conscious clone of myself. I suspect I would enjoy my company .

Your neuro-chemical complexities can't feel pain. If pain isn't real, there's no real you or me in the machine.

This is a statement which needs a lot of substantiation. If it is possible for the neuro-chemical processes to support thought, and therefore consciousness, it is possible for pain to be felt. It is not necessarily felt by the neuro-chemical system, but by the thoughts that are supported by it.

You pretend that you understand something which science cannot explain - consciousness is a major problem and I'm not the one here claiming to understand it. I've shown you where the problem is, but you're determined to ignore it and pretend it isn't there. I don't think we're going to make any further progress here, so I'll declare myself out.

*sigh*

Consciousness isn't my field, and I don't get the impression that it is Solar's. I don't think either of us would claim to fully understand consciousness - and I don't think any scientist would. However, we are able to sufficiently nail the domain of the problem down to the level where we can see that it is comprehensible. We understand enough of the neuro-chemical machinery of the brain to see that it is able to support thought, as well as just deterministic stimuli-response patterns, and by extension consciousness. Even if the full details of these processes (and associated complexity) are not that well understood.

A neuro-chemical understanding of thought and consciousness is consistent with modern science, even if not complete. The additional *spark* of consciousness, especially with the possibilities of 'shared' consciousness as you talk, are not consistent with modern science. The conclusion of this is not to throw out modern science.

Solar wrote:Any part of an organism can be "triggered" in a way that is equivalent to what happens when the organism as a whole "experiences pain". You can stimulate a pain receptor. You can make a nerve trigger without a pain receptor attached. You can trigger the pain center in the brain without a nervous system attached. You can make an adrenal gland produce adrenalin without a brain or blood stream attached. Every single part of the organism can be observed and studied in isolation, and the results are deterministic (to a point). The only thing modern Biology and Psychology lacks is a detailed understanding of how it works all together, because the involved networks, feedback loops etc. are of enormous complexity. But it is understood what "feeling pain" is for each part of the organism.

And the part of you that "feels" pain and "thinks" about it is the grey matter in your skull, and the "feeling" and "thinking" is a complex exchange of neuron pulses and releases of messenger chemicals. No more, no less.

I can see what both of you are saying here. If you put someone under an anesthetic, it would be generally accepted that they cannot feel pain. However, you can stimulate the associated pain receptors in the nervous system, and still observe some level of autonomic response to said stimulus. The same can occur even after brain death, while the cells in the body are still alive (this is the same as the frog-leg twitching).

The indication here is that there is a distinction between responding to a stimulus and feeling pain which is to some degree a conscious construct of thought. That doesn't, however, mean that there is any magic, as the conscious processes are very much physically based.

Edit: quote tags work best if you can actually spell 'quote'

@ SDS: Thank you. Nothing to add to this.

gerryg400 wrote:We're getting OT here, but actually it is pretty good physics. A hypothesis was made, a number of predictions drawn from the hypothesis, an experiment designed and performed that gave the predicted outcome. If that's not physics, I'm afraid there is no physics.

The physics part of it was replicating the idea of the killer-teleport: the state of one atom is transferred to another at a distance. The philosophical part of it is then going on to assert that the atom to which the state has been transferred has become the original. It is always important to be able to separate out the parts of physics that are genuinely physics from the parts which are merely philosophical interpretations, and sadly most people who think they know a lot about physics are completely incapable of doing this, so it isn't surprising that it's such a neglected skill, even amongst physicists.