An existential problem.

[Avatar]

but whether I could truly be said to have ever had one at all!

Cogito ergo sum.

So, what will we be like when we are nothing? Get used to not knowing.

Agreed.

--A

[peter]

Wow - mega posts. Only got to read the first two before dashing for work (no work = no pay, therefore work) but a couple of points. Vraith - can you then conceive a degree of complexity of arangement/interaction of matter above that which, say, is exemplified in us - the human, but which is not sentient, self-aware, alive with it's own knowledge of itself (describe it how you will) but instead would conform to what we would describe as 'inanimate' (bad word but I hope you get what I mean). (nb stress here - this is a question as a question, not as a refutation of your post ).

Don. It's life I find troubling - death can take care of itself! But I take the point about Shamanism very seriously. It seems to me to be one of the rare areas (together with myth and cave painting) where we are given a glimpse of that vast expanse of human history of which we know nothing (and of which the scientific/technology revolution of the past 400 years has driven us even further away). I just can't believe we lived 200,000 years plus with the same mental faculties we now posess and learned nothing. I will follow the link later and see where it takes me.

[Krazy Kat]

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Z, you can Google Rupert Sheldrake on the staring phenomenon. There are also a number of well supported reincarnation claims out there as well. Naturally I'm supposing for the sake of charity that you have a bona fide interest in investigating the issues.

[Vraith]

Wow - mega posts.

Isn't it fun when a thread you start gets a surge?

. Vraith - can you then conceive a degree of complexity of arangement/interaction of matter above that which, say, is exemplified in us - the human, but which is not sentient, self-aware, alive with it's own knowledge of itself (describe it how you will) but instead would conform to what we would describe as 'inanimate' (bad word but I hope you get what I mean).

"Conceive" is a nicely laden term in that context. I can imagine such an inanimate arrangement...random circumstances that produce it, but in which it is unconceived, and does not reproduce.

I think those circumstances are likely much more rare than the ones that produce life.

Including "interaction" makes it still more difficult to imagine...

But self-organizing, interacting, complexity of our level [even significantly less than ours, not to mention greater!] without self-awareness? Nope, can't conceive of that at all.

I honestly find it much easier to understand Nothing than that.
[I don't actually find "nothing" all that difficult to understand in comparison to "something," all things considered, and given that both understandings will be flawed.

[Zarathustra]

Z, you can Google Rupert Sheldrake on the staring phenomenon. There are also a number of well supported reincarnation claims out there as well. Naturally I'm supposing for the sake of charity that you have a bona fide interest in investigating the issues.

No need for such charity! I'm the one who has been checking out your suggested Bigfoot Evidence blog for over a year now out of bona fide interest in investigating that issue (still waiting on the Ketchum DNA publication ... I thought that was going to happen soon). Just because I'm skeptical doesn't mean I immediately dismiss.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Yeah. There is that.

It's fair to say that I'm not inclined to presume that science has erected an unbroken palisade demarcating reality from unreality.

[peter]

Notes:- Ussusimiel, I like that idea. The idea of spirit as sepparate to both mind and body is one that had much more milage in years gone by than perhaps today but your explanation of the generation of ego at the interface of the two has a resonance about it.

It's a trite example Vraith, but we can certainly understand the idea of 'self-aware' computers not being alive by our definition (but if it's just a matter of ticking 'definition boxes' this could easily be sorted) - but I wonder how close we are to that ie if we take our most advanced computer system are we one hundred times more complex as a unit, one thousand, one million....? And can we ever surpass our own level in terms of what we ourselves can technologically develop.

re the 'sixth sense' points, in my work with animals over the years I experienced first hand too many times what we would call a 'supernatural' level of acuteness in the opperation of thier senses to pour any water on the idea that some of that 'super-sense' is retained in us.

Yes - I in my distant youth also did a bit of illegal mind expansion (well, hell, I was a child of the sixties!) with both man-made and natural psychotropic drugs. I had the trancendental experiences (I remember early one morning in the summer countryside seeing the underlying pattern and symetry of every leaf, petal, branch, tree and blade of grass in the glade) but in my stupidity it was just 'the trip'. Or perhaps they were just the trip and it's only in my stupidity now that I mistake them as trancendental. Real or illusion - (hippy voice) "It's acid man - just acid".

[Vraith]

I'd say that being self-aware is a sufficient condition for calling something alive. [though things can be alive without being self-aware, so not a necessary one...unless you expand the general meaning of self-aware a long way.]

I'm convinced we can create things that exceed ourselves. I'm most interested in things that are near, equal, or greater but are structurally different, "think" differently from the ground up. And in the potential to intentionally evolve/restructure ourselves, which I am also certain we can do.

I don't think either of those things is very far in the future, either.

Those "supernatural" animal senses...of course we have something similar. They are, quite literally, a state of mind. We can learn them, train them in ourselves. Well-practiced meditation often leads naturally to such, for instance. [the prime reason that almost every single effective martial art incorporates some form/practice/training associated with meditation-mind-state]

We, in fact, use a version of those preternatural senses all the time.
One example, demonstrated with brain imaging: in conversation we almost always begin speaking in response BEFORE our conscious minds have even begun to process the incoming information.

Almost no one thinks before they speak in ordinary life.

We're pretty good at it...or our conversations would never have integrity/coherence.

Also, though, the system is full of errors and gaps...which is why almost everyone believes they can spot a liar when all the evidence proves that almost everyone really, truly, sucks at it.

I don't believe at all [though I have space reserved for a miracle to park in, in case it drops by] in the supernatural.

But I know the mystical exists [though I also know that not EVERYTHING labeled mystical is real or true]. I think someday we'll be able to prove it does, and explain how it comes about. But that doesn't mean we will fully comprehend it. I'm sure we won't.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

I think that's about the best that can be hoped for, Vraith.

[peter]

I don't know Vraith - deciding what constitutes being alive and what doesn't is really difficult even now. It has only ever been done by box ticking in relation to a set of conditions and self awareness (to the best of my knowledge) has never been one of those. True, self awareness to date has always followed the simpler 'reproduce, respond to stimuli' type conditions but this may well soon change and then things are going to need to be seriously rethought. It may even be that (ridiculous as it sounds) posessing life and being alive will need to be separated and re-defined with special attention to self-awareness in mind.

Interesting story about the match between 'Deep-Blue' and Kasparov on the first occasion that a computer was able to beat a world champion at chess. A grand-master (human) can I believe process 3 strategies a second when deciding on a move. Deep Thought could process many millions. After a four hour first game in which Kasparov played agressively Deep Blue was forced to concede. In the second game Kasparov set a trap for Deep Blue, but the computer did not fall for it - instead it went completely quiet. For a full 15 minutes the computer gave no sign of activity and then it ignored the trap. Observers said it was just as though Deep Blue was thinking an indeed this was the turning point in the match. When forced to concede soon after Kasparov made the following observation "Deep Blue see's so deeply it plays like God".

[Holsety]

Interesting story about the match between 'Deep-Blue' and Kasparov on the first occasion that a computer was able to beat a world champion at chess. A grand-master (human) can I believe process 3 strategies a second when deciding on a move. Deep Thought could process many millions. After a four hour first game in which Kasparov played agressively Deep Blue was forced to concede. In the second game Kasparov set a trap for Deep Blue, but the computer did not fall for it - instead it went completely quiet. For a full 15 minutes the computer gave no sign of activity and then it ignored the trap. Observers said it was just as though Deep Blue was thinking an indeed this was the turning point in the match. When forced to concede soon after Kasparov made the following observation "Deep Blue see's so deeply it plays like God".

Awww. That's so awesome. To be honest, I kinda wish Deep Blue had feelings when Kasparov said that. "Thaaank you hyuu-man, you are a credit to your race." Maybe spelled out in chess pieces.

You know Kasparov played chess against the world and won, right?
I guess Deep Blue might be able to beat us peons as well.

[Vraith]

To be honest, I kinda wish Deep Blue had feelings when Kasparov said that. "Thaaank you hyuu-man, you are a credit to your race." Maybe spelled out in chess pieces.

You know Kasparov played chess against the world and won, right?
I guess Deep Blue might be able to beat us peons as well.

Hee..."thank you human..."

And if it was me instead of K, Blue Blue would have been ROFLing and telling me to go back to tiddly-winks.

But the reason [back to peter] I think self-awareness has to be taken into account for real "life" [and definitely for real intelligence] is somewhat related to this chess stuff. Deep Blue was huge, every piece of hardware and code was designed with chess in mind, and they were altering code in between games...it literally couldn't do anything except play chess.
Nowadays, there's software...I think even a free version...that plays grandmaster chess on cheap smart-phones. [one of them...I think Fritz...won a tournament in 09 or 10 IIRC]
But the level of "life," hasn't changed at all.

[SerScot]

I think the "Turing Test" is poorly thought out. What it tests for is an algorithm that can sucessfully mimic human speech, not for consciousness. We do not have a concrete enough definition for consciousness to properly test for it in an AI.

I also think consciousness has to be more than self-awarness. Are you really going to reduce sapience to the ability to ponder self-referential statements?

[peter]

Isn't one of the points here that we have no other way of establishing a beings sentience/self awareness other than the way it responds. If it can verbally interact in a self-aware fashion with another human without making a slip up, then it has to be judged self-aware; what other judgement could you make, after all what evidence do we have that we, each of us, are not totally alone but living in a world of self-aware imitating zombies. As the man said 'If it looks like an elephant and it sounds like an elephant - it is an elephant'.

[Vraith]

I also think consciousness has to be more than self-awarness. Are you really going to reduce sapience to the ability to ponder self-referential statements?

Reduce? I don't think it is reductive at all since it took, as far as we can tell, many billions of years for it to happen. Self-awareness is an enormously complex thing itself, not any kind of reduction.
And not the entirety of consciousness, but an essential element of it. Especially if we're going to talk sapience/intelligence.

peter...maybe we can't prove we aren't self-aware imitating zombies...if we are, nothing means anything at all anyway...we're just "made that way" and it is literally impossible for meaning to exist in such a case, so there ain't no existential problem.

I think there is a fatal shortcoming with that argument/view: it seems to me that it is a helluva lot more complicated/complex to postulate some kind of unknowable universe in which someone/thing [or no one/nothing] [non]-self creates a completely illusional real reality.
A "real" unreality like that is far more complicated than a real reality that is only subjectively approachable.

[SerScot]

Vraith,

How are you defining "self-awareness"?

[Orlion]

The eternal sin of man is to take himself waaay too seriously.

[Avatar]

The eternal sin of man is to take himself waaay too seriously.

Suicide is a symptom of this.

--A

[peter]

The eternal sin of man is to take himself waaay too seriously.

Suicide is a symptom of this.

--A

Exactly - An existential problem!

Yes Vraith - I think we are on the same side of the fence here. A computer will be self-aware at the point that it is able to make us believe that it is self-aware. To introduce the idea that it is a 'zombie' mimicing self-awareness is to introduce complication where none is required and by the maxim of Occams Razor (which has been vigorously defended in another place) must be ruthlessly struck out!