namark @namark@qoto.org

@phryk I happy to clarify any specific part. Absolutely nothing to latch on to in the entire paragraph for you?

I'm not challenging your assertion but the quoted justification of it, which I consider "weak".

@phryk nah that's not strong enough. It's a "whoops, we didn't notice those thousands of inventors, our bad, we will notice from now on and give them credit, no problem, this is why we need patents!". It is not thousands of inventors it is everyone(or most people). We create communities and specialize to make it easier for each other to live, we trade goods and services. Inventing is a service and once it is done it is done. It is not a product that requires work to continuously produce. If I provide a room cleaning service, I quote a price for cleaning and do my job and leave. I don't quote a price and then additionally demand that everyone entering the room pay me a fee, cause they are benefitting from my "creation". That is absurd. Even more so when it's not me demanding it, but some sort of a middleman. Once the room is clean hundreds of people might enter it and benefit from my work, or none at all, that is not a concern of mine, I move on to clean the next room.

@georgia that is possible?! hmmm... this thing is more complicated then I thought...

@freemo @metapsyche

@georgia yeah, I got it form all the staring, that makes me feel bad for using them as bookmarks. One of these days I'll learn to social network!

@freemo @metapsyche

@freemo I was sarcastic claiming to be sure that human mind has a clock speed, a discrete measure of thought and a loop. If you are convinced in that, then well, I guess that's a most reasonable assumption of sorts. Sounds a little overzealous though.

As far as I know the Information loss/reduction is not through the loop, it is through the layers, meaning each step is reducing not the loop itself. That reduction doesn't matter cause each step itself (the way I understand your analogy) is a whole new thought that is in no way reduced. It will need to be fed in as input entirely, or reduced by some other means. Maybe another network? If yes does the operation of that network constitute a thought? What's going to reduce that? In other words, what would you define as a thought of this machine?

@metapsyche

@georgia
>:(
:P
@freemo @metapsyche

@freemo We don't exactly perceive or observe every single thought though, right? I would imagine it would be much easier to define them if we did (or at the very least we would know our clock speed... do we have a clock speed? I think the article in OP had something about clock speed... I believe it yes... of course... hard science). On the other hand to observe one's thought would be an infinite loop wouldn't it? The machine would be stuck continuously observing itself observing itself observing itself... though I guess it's a machine and it can cheat, accumulate several thought and then observe them with one thought (hmm, one thought, sure, that's a thing for us too, no doubt). Or observe a thought and do something else in one thought. Still it will be forever behind itself, unaware of its current thinking.
@metapsyche

@freemo Yes, but still don't get why you call it an illusion, but I guess that doesn't really matter much.

@metapsyche

@georgia
It was not natural... this time I did it intentionally... I'm sorry...
@freemo @metapsyche

@freemo I though the definition of consciousness as "thinking that I can think" was satisfactory. It is still nebulous though by the virtue of thought being nebulous. I have never seen a definition of thought that would not be in some sense circular. In my opinion that is where the actual mystery is. You of course can conjecture that this seemingly common notion of thought that we have is just a complex mechanical computation, but you still can't define the thought itself unless you somehow demonstrate said complex computation, not just the simpler version. You can make generalization in theorems such as "anything that is more complex than this is such and such" but that is still not a definition. Just like saying that an elephant is made of atoms, doesn't really define the elephant, not in any useful way at least.

And yes, we might think completely differently and just appear same to each other in communication, but that is not the best bet, or the most reasonable guess. We tend to prefer consistency in our assumptions.

@metapsyche

@freemo You assume thought process that is similar to yours. Otherwise all you communication is pointless. I already tried to explain why consciousness is not an illusion. Which part do you disagree with?

I guess from your assertion, consciousness = thought (which I disagree with), and consciousness is illusion, follows thought is illusion? That seems pointless, whether it is an illusion or not, it is what it is. I don't know what it is, so there is no conclusive test I can devise. I simply brought an example of what would make the chat bot mysterious enough for me, to justify the assumption that it can also think. The own language part was to exclude random success by parroting, the convince part is more relevant fundamentally.

@metapsyche

@freemo in case of me (or any other, whom you believe to be a human) you have preemptively assumed it, cause you had no reason to doubt. Just like you don't constantly worry that the ground is going to fall under your feet when you walk, or that the next object you drop is going to fly up. You can not definitively prove to yourself that I can think, it's just your best bet and only hope. @metapsyche

@freemo no, that is just sophisticated parroting, which unfortunately again draws way more attention that actual work on AI.

If the chat bot would develop it's own language, and teach it to me, and then convince me that it is suffering from the same condition that I call consciousness, I will have to assume it is indeed the same. Still I would not know what it is (I guess I would if I wrote it, but lets face it, at this stage it would just be a neural net, and I would have no clue, and it would be just as big a mystery for me as my own brain).

@metapsyche

@freemo subtle difference between
consciousness = think
and
consciousness = think that can think

The latter makes more sense to me and is clearly a correct thought. If you think something, then you can indeed think, so that something being "I can think" is just correct, and not an illusion.

The thought itself is a mystery, and is what makes consciousness a mystery as well. Calling it ability to reason smells like another circular definition. Neither mathematics nor physics have a conclusive answer on weather it is or can be equivalent to a machine in principle.
Pretty much the only thing we know for sure about it is that brain chemistry affects it, so that's our lead, and simpler forms of life are our best clues.

@metapsyche

@metapsyche literally every observable process is a flow of energy, so the headline and the conclusion basically admit they know nothing. They can just barely tell if you are passed out or not sometimes.
@freemo Isn't thought the defining part of consciousness? Boiling your statement down to "we are programmed to think that we can think"... well then we are programmed right... how is that an illusion?

Why would anyone attempt to decipher the brain of a human being before even being able to do it for a much simpler organisms? I guess "look guys I modelled the nervous system of this worm in its entirety" is not as appealing as "look guys I figured it all out, cancel philosophy, check mate atheists!".
https://github.com/openworm/OpenWorm

@sir wait @Sajori? I though I'm the one doing that...

@Sajori

You think your average web developer is concerned about chrome becoming the standard? You think they cry and moan while (apparently literally everyone at) google is force feeding them? No, they rejoice that they no longer need to support another stupid browser. The so called web platform was doomed since its inception. It was just an attempt to escape the tyranny of proprietary OS, which is why it eventually turned into an OS itself, but you can't fix a foundation by building the right type of balcony. The web would have stayed simple and narrow scope, if the native OS platforms adopted the free software culture.

@sir

@sir I simply meant to express my opinion, so I'm not sure why are you arguing the meaning of an analogy that isn't even yours in this context. Nevertheless a quick search reveals, that snake oil originally indeed was an actual snake oil, made out of snake. Ineffective but not harmful, so nothing. The ability to sell this nothing as something, is what allows you to then replace the nothing with another cheaper nothing that might also be harmful. It being harmful does not matter and is not a necessity for such industry. It being nothing is. The cheapest nothing just so happens to be harmful. Nobody advertises snake oil as "this will cure all your diseases by killing you".

@Sajori

Not sure who you are quoting. I see the "what you do don't define who you are" was discussed but not in this thread. My point was that in snake oil industry the buyers and sellers are more at fault than the bottle makers, and retiring the bottle makers will not solve any problems.

@sir

@sir snake oil is nothing sold as something. It takes no effort to make it, it only takes effort to sell it. Are you saying everyone working at google is a salesperson?