Don’t think there is a conclusion, just more puzzling situations the deeper you go:
“Scott Aaronson: To my mind, one of the central things that any account of consciousness needs to do, is to explain where your consciousness “is” in space, which physical objects are the locus of it. I mean, not just in ordinary life (where presumably we can all agree that your consciousness resides in your brain, and especially in your cerebral cortex—though which parts of your cerebral cortex?), but in all sorts of hypothetical situations that we can devise. What if we made a backup copy of all the information in your brain and ran it on a server somewhere? Knowing that, should you then expect there’s a 50% chance that “you’re” the backup copy? Or are you and your backup copy somehow tethered together as a single consciousness, no matter how far apart in space you might be? Or are you tethered together for a while, but then become untethered when your experiences start to diverge? Does it matter if your backup copy is actually “run,” and what counts as running it? Would a simulation on pen and paper (a huge amount of pen and paper, but no matter) suffice? What if the simulation of you was encrypted, and the only decryption key was stored in some other galaxy? Or, if the universe is infinite, should you assume that “your” consciousness is spread across infinitely many physical entities, namely all the brains physically indistinguishable from yours—including “Boltzmann brains” that arise purely by chance fluctuations?” Link
The point here is that you could have a system that to an outside observer looked random or encrypted but with the key would be revealed to be a conscious creature. But what if the key was forever destroyed? Does the universe then somehow know to assign it consciousness?
You also need to fully decide when replaying vs computing apparently conscious behavior counts. If you compute a digital sim once, then save the states and replay it the 2nd time what does that mean? What about playing it backwards?
Boltzmann brains really mess things up further.
It seems to lead to the position then that its just all arbitrary and there is no objective truth, or uncountable infinities of consciousness in un-causal timeless situations. Embracing this view doesn’t lead anywhere useful from what I can see and of course I don’t want it to be the logical conclusion.
Don’t think there is a conclusion, just more puzzling situations the deeper you go:
“Scott Aaronson: To my mind, one of the central things that any account of consciousness needs to do, is to explain where your consciousness “is” in space, which physical objects are the locus of it. I mean, not just in ordinary life (where presumably we can all agree that your consciousness resides in your brain, and especially in your cerebral cortex—though which parts of your cerebral cortex?), but in all sorts of hypothetical situations that we can devise. What if we made a backup copy of all the information in your brain and ran it on a server somewhere? Knowing that, should you then expect there’s a 50% chance that “you’re” the backup copy? Or are you and your backup copy somehow tethered together as a single consciousness, no matter how far apart in space you might be? Or are you tethered together for a while, but then become untethered when your experiences start to diverge? Does it matter if your backup copy is actually “run,” and what counts as running it? Would a simulation on pen and paper (a huge amount of pen and paper, but no matter) suffice? What if the simulation of you was encrypted, and the only decryption key was stored in some other galaxy? Or, if the universe is infinite, should you assume that “your” consciousness is spread across infinitely many physical entities, namely all the brains physically indistinguishable from yours—including “Boltzmann brains” that arise purely by chance fluctuations?”
Link
The point here is that you could have a system that to an outside observer looked random or encrypted but with the key would be revealed to be a conscious creature. But what if the key was forever destroyed? Does the universe then somehow know to assign it consciousness?
You also need to fully decide when replaying vs computing apparently conscious behavior counts. If you compute a digital sim once, then save the states and replay it the 2nd time what does that mean? What about playing it backwards?
Boltzmann brains really mess things up further.
It seems to lead to the position then that its just all arbitrary and there is no objective truth, or uncountable infinities of consciousness in un-causal timeless situations. Embracing this view doesn’t lead anywhere useful from what I can see and of course I don’t want it to be the logical conclusion.