These are the kinds of sci-fi-ish posts that keep me from wanting to become very involved with this site :P
1) RE your collection problem:
Collect what? There is no empirically-validated working model for consciousness, you do not know what you need to collect. (Is a connectome enough? Catalogue of genes expressed in every neuron? Epigenetic regulators of those genes? Post-translational modifications of the gene products? Positional information of where each protein is within a cell, or just the expression level? If you think any of these are dispensable, is there an argument as to why they should be dispensable?) You don’t even know if you should just be collecting a brain. (Gut microbes have massive influence on personality, intellect, and vulnerability to mental illness. The state of the digestive system has giant effects on the state of the CNS. Do you plan to collect your endocrine system too? If you think any of these are dispensable, is there an argument as to why they should be dispensable?)
2) RE your creation problem:
In what sense would a simulation of your physiology constitute immortality? We now have exquisitely sophisticated models of weather patterns, but they never ACTUALLY rain. We can describe some interesting aspects of weather mathematically, and make some predictions based upon our simulations, but this does not create weather in any meaningful sense. Similarly, we might one day have a near-complete model of a lung, down to subcellular detail. It won’t actually respirate. No real oxygen will be exchanged, some numbers will just be crunched and we can check if the outputs are similar to what real lungs do. Perfectly simulating an organ is VERY different from actually producing what that organ produces. Consciousness is produced by brains. What is the reason to think that simulating a brain will produce actual consciousness or simulating a lung will produce actual respiration? At best this is useful for making predictions about the output, no? If you think that mathematically modeling of consciousness IS sufficient to produce consciousness, what is that argument?
3) RE both collection and creation problems:
Pretend that your “collection problem” were well defined, and solved. What is the argument that you’d be able to create or simulate a brain or mind from that static image? Do you think you could form a useful simulation of time varying process in the stock market from a static image of trades at a given instant? Do you think from that set of trades you could derive complex time varying concepts like “trade war” or “inflation”, or from a set of synaptic connections you could derive complex time varying processes like “curiosity” or “sense of humor”? Maybe that’s possible, but it’s not AT ALL clear to me. Why do you think so?
I find discussions like this not worthwhile (if you’re not going to get into the actual nitty-gritty specifics, IMO it’s better not to get into stuff like this at all, you’ll just confuse yourself and other people). But users on this site seem to really like this kind of stuff, so maybe just LW isn’t for me :P
I’ll start with the positive: I understand that there’s a certain “sci-fi bullshit” feel to my original post. I expect that many people will be turned off by the tone of it, and I appreciate the feedback in that regard. If my post comes across as too cosmic and thus causes people to not pay attention to it or dismiss it out of hand, I need to work on that.
But, I really get the sense that you did not actually read the post and simply skimmed it. The three major points that you made were all either thoroughly addressed preemptively in my post, or thoroughly inapplicable.
RE your collection problem: Collect what? There is no empirically-validated working model for consciousness, you do not know what you need to collect.
I know that there is no empirically proven model for consciousness, which is why I explicitly said “the brain” is meant as a hypothesis, not the answer. Implicit in solving the Collection Problem is correctly creating a valid model.
In what sense would a simulation of your physiology constitute immortality? etc. etc. etc.
I was quite specific about wanting to avoid the “Is simulated consciousness the same as real consciousness debate”. I acknowledged it as a potential solution, and further acknowledged it may not be the correct solution, then went on to explain why it didn’t matter. Let’s say you are correct regarding your criticism of simulation as a valid means of reproducing consciousness. It doesn’t change the nature of the Creation Problem. The problem still exists, and an answer still exists.
What is the argument that you’d be able to create… a brain or mind from that static image?
That is, quite literally, a rephrasing of the Creation Problem (“Once we have that information, how do we create a physical representation of it?”) I don’t have an answer to that question. If I did, it wouldn’t be a “problem”.
These are the kinds of sci-fi-ish posts that keep me from wanting to become very involved with this site :P
1) RE your collection problem: Collect what? There is no empirically-validated working model for consciousness, you do not know what you need to collect. (Is a connectome enough? Catalogue of genes expressed in every neuron? Epigenetic regulators of those genes? Post-translational modifications of the gene products? Positional information of where each protein is within a cell, or just the expression level? If you think any of these are dispensable, is there an argument as to why they should be dispensable?)
You don’t even know if you should just be collecting a brain. (Gut microbes have massive influence on personality, intellect, and vulnerability to mental illness. The state of the digestive system has giant effects on the state of the CNS. Do you plan to collect your endocrine system too? If you think any of these are dispensable, is there an argument as to why they should be dispensable?)
2) RE your creation problem: In what sense would a simulation of your physiology constitute immortality? We now have exquisitely sophisticated models of weather patterns, but they never ACTUALLY rain. We can describe some interesting aspects of weather mathematically, and make some predictions based upon our simulations, but this does not create weather in any meaningful sense. Similarly, we might one day have a near-complete model of a lung, down to subcellular detail. It won’t actually respirate. No real oxygen will be exchanged, some numbers will just be crunched and we can check if the outputs are similar to what real lungs do. Perfectly simulating an organ is VERY different from actually producing what that organ produces. Consciousness is produced by brains. What is the reason to think that simulating a brain will produce actual consciousness or simulating a lung will produce actual respiration? At best this is useful for making predictions about the output, no? If you think that mathematically modeling of consciousness IS sufficient to produce consciousness, what is that argument?
3) RE both collection and creation problems: Pretend that your “collection problem” were well defined, and solved. What is the argument that you’d be able to create or simulate a brain or mind from that static image? Do you think you could form a useful simulation of time varying process in the stock market from a static image of trades at a given instant? Do you think from that set of trades you could derive complex time varying concepts like “trade war” or “inflation”, or from a set of synaptic connections you could derive complex time varying processes like “curiosity” or “sense of humor”? Maybe that’s possible, but it’s not AT ALL clear to me. Why do you think so?
I find discussions like this not worthwhile (if you’re not going to get into the actual nitty-gritty specifics, IMO it’s better not to get into stuff like this at all, you’ll just confuse yourself and other people). But users on this site seem to really like this kind of stuff, so maybe just LW isn’t for me :P
I’ll start with the positive: I understand that there’s a certain “sci-fi bullshit” feel to my original post. I expect that many people will be turned off by the tone of it, and I appreciate the feedback in that regard. If my post comes across as too cosmic and thus causes people to not pay attention to it or dismiss it out of hand, I need to work on that.
But, I really get the sense that you did not actually read the post and simply skimmed it. The three major points that you made were all either thoroughly addressed preemptively in my post, or thoroughly inapplicable.
I know that there is no empirically proven model for consciousness, which is why I explicitly said “the brain” is meant as a hypothesis, not the answer. Implicit in solving the Collection Problem is correctly creating a valid model.
I was quite specific about wanting to avoid the “Is simulated consciousness the same as real consciousness debate”. I acknowledged it as a potential solution, and further acknowledged it may not be the correct solution, then went on to explain why it didn’t matter. Let’s say you are correct regarding your criticism of simulation as a valid means of reproducing consciousness. It doesn’t change the nature of the Creation Problem. The problem still exists, and an answer still exists.
That is, quite literally, a rephrasing of the Creation Problem (“Once we have that information, how do we create a physical representation of it?”) I don’t have an answer to that question. If I did, it wouldn’t be a “problem”.