An annoying philosopher would ask whether you could glean knowledge of your “meta-qualia” aka what it consciously feels like to experience what something feels like. The problem is that fully understanding our own consciousness is sadly impossible. If a computer discovers that in a certain location on it’s hardware it has stored a picture of a dog, it must then store that information somewhere else, but if it subsequently tries to know everything about itself it must store that knowledge of the knowledge of the picture’s location somewhere else, which it must also learn. This repeats in a loop until the computer crashes. An essay can fully describe most things but not itself: “The author starts the essay with writing that he starts the essay with writing that...”. So annoyingly there will always be experiences that are mysterious to us.
I can also “print my own code”, if I make a future version of a MRI scan I could give you all the information necessary to understand (that version of) me, but as soon as I look at it my neurological patterns change. I’m not sure what you mean with “add something to it”, but I could also give you a copy of my brain scan and add something to it. Humans and computers can of course know a summery of themselves, but never the full picture.
An annoying philosopher would ask whether you could glean knowledge of your “meta-qualia” aka what it consciously feels like to experience what something feels like. The problem is that fully understanding our own consciousness is sadly impossible. If a computer discovers that in a certain location on it’s hardware it has stored a picture of a dog, it must then store that information somewhere else, but if it subsequently tries to know everything about itself it must store that knowledge of the knowledge of the picture’s location somewhere else, which it must also learn. This repeats in a loop until the computer crashes. An essay can fully describe most things but not itself: “The author starts the essay with writing that he starts the essay with writing that...”. So annoyingly there will always be experiences that are mysterious to us.
There are computer programs that can print their own code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)
There are also programs which can print their own code and add something to it. Isn’t that a way in which the program fully knows itself?
I can also “print my own code”, if I make a future version of a MRI scan I could give you all the information necessary to understand (that version of) me, but as soon as I look at it my neurological patterns change. I’m not sure what you mean with “add something to it”, but I could also give you a copy of my brain scan and add something to it. Humans and computers can of course know a summery of themselves, but never the full picture.