Welcome to LW! First I was like “hmm, new user, first post is about consciousness, expectations low” but this is actually pretty good.
Not sure our detector of other-consciousness is very informative. People got into relationships with frickin ELIZA. But examining our detector of self-consciousness is definitely the right way.
Thanks! Delurking after a long time to try and give something useful back to the community.
I would count this success of ELIZA as evidence towards this detector being quite a simple heuristic. Not sure if that is what you meant by “not informative”.
Actually, this simplicity, together with complexity of prediction modules the detector activates (as per Said Achmiz’s comment below), could be contributing to the confusion surrounding it.
I think intuition 1 would be correct by definition, since colloquial meaning of the word “conscious” is close to “having the same introspective experience as me”. With “experience” roughly being “information reaching the story-building module of the brain”
Welcome to LW! First I was like “hmm, new user, first post is about consciousness, expectations low” but this is actually pretty good.
Not sure our detector of other-consciousness is very informative. People got into relationships with frickin ELIZA. But examining our detector of self-consciousness is definitely the right way.
Thanks! Delurking after a long time to try and give something useful back to the community.
I would count this success of ELIZA as evidence towards this detector being quite a simple heuristic. Not sure if that is what you meant by “not informative”.
Actually, this simplicity, together with complexity of prediction modules the detector activates (as per Said Achmiz’s comment below), could be contributing to the confusion surrounding it.
I think it goes like this.
Intuition 1: I know I’m conscious
Intuition 2: This thing seems to behave like me
Conclusion: This thing is probably conscious
You’re right that intuition 2 could come from a pretty simple detector. But that doesn’t say much about where intuition 1 comes from.
I think intuition 1 would be correct by definition, since colloquial meaning of the word “conscious” is close to “having the same introspective experience as me”. With “experience” roughly being “information reaching the story-building module of the brain”