this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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To be honest the thing that confuses me is that I am conscious. That’s weird, how am I aware, there is no explanation of this. Assuming we pretty much understand all physics and science and there isn’t anything surprising around the corner. Consciousness has to be a physical thing, a computation. But that’s weird as hell too? What rule of the universe governs whether or not something is aware. A brain could do everything it does now without being really aware just pretending. And if that’s true does that mean it’s just the flow of information that can become conscious? Could anything become conscious? If I made a marble Rube Goldberg machine complicated it enough and doing the right calculations could it be conscious?? It feels wrong it feels like we are missing something
This is exactly what puzzles me. Or at least you seem to be talking about what puzzles me. The problem is that when I mention this to others, most missunderstand what I mean by "being aware" or "conscious", and im not sure its possible to refer to this phenomena in a much better way. But that is exactly the argument i usually make, that an automata could behave exactly like me, following the supposed physical laws, but without being aware, or having any sensation, without seeing the images, hearing the sounds, only processing sensorial data. Processing sensorial data isnt the same as feeling/hearing/seeing it.
i disagree with your assumption that an automata could somehow behave exactly like you
like, that doesn't make any sense, you can't know what your actions are without you performing them, we can't magically step outside of space and time and look at our reality like the pages of a comic book, your actions are per definition unique to your specific configuration of particles. It's like how two books can be identical but obviously they're not literally the same book, because they're in different places in space.
your line of reasoning feels a lot like all of the paradoxes, it's a neat thing to think about but ultimately there's the extremely trivial solution of "well that's not possible so it's a nonissue"
I don't understand your second paragraph and how it relates to what I said.
What about what I said depends on stepping outside space and time?
Do you think I meant that an automata could copy me? thats not really what i was talking about.
I believe the academic label for your concern is the mind-body problem, or the hard problem of consciousness which specifically questions the gap in explanation between the physical process and the subjective experience. Going against the grain of the OP picture, this is definitely still firmly within the realms of philosophy, not at all a settled science.
We absolutely are missing something. Clearly it requires more than just a lot of intelligence, otherwise we'd have seen a computer become sentient by now instead of ChatGPT proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they absolutely will not be anytime soon.
Also, I am very interested in the question of, why me? Why am I in charge of this body's consciousness. How was it decided that of all conscious being that ever and will exists, I am conscious of this world from my point of view, at this point of time.
This is the only existential question I can't seem to let go, especially since I am a non-theist. It will be easier to answer if I am a believer, or at least spiritualist.
Consciousness is the AI assistant in meat mecha suit.
It seems like we make decisions, but we don't. Think of a decision you've made - you think over it, you sleep on it, you imagine outcomes and might decide intellectually - but you don't lock it in. That just happens - sometimes it even flips at the last second, and you don't know why you did it - for better or worse
Our brain does a lot of preprocessing - vision, hearing, balance, walking, language...
Our conscious minds preprocess time. It turns our senses and our experiences into stories, abstract predictions, laterally pattern matching, and ultimately - analysis and recommendations