[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Please define consciousness, and show your evidence that it exists elsewhere.

I've already done it previously. In case you missed it, here it is.

Please refer me to your definition of consciousness.

I only use the word to denote an ability to respond to a stimulus via some neurological process. My taste buds are far less sensitive than they were in my youth, and instead of screaming when I cut myself, I swear a bit and wait for the blood to coagulate. So your suggestion that adults have a higher level of consciousness than children doesn't seem to hold water.

here it is.
Defining consciousness as the core concept in the universal terminal goal using only the requirements from the phrase and some basic knowledge of computational process.

In a more concise words, consciousness is capacity to pursue goals.

If you think that the definition and model of consciousness in the video can be improved, or even if you have your own definition or model which you think is better in any way, please let me know. We can discuss further to get the best possible definition and model that we can come up with.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Please define consciousness, and show your evidence that it exists elsewhere.

So far, we have no direct evidence that consciousness exists outside of our solar system. But to declare that it cannot exist elsewhere is like declaring that fish don't exist in the ocean after scooping seawater at the beach and found no fish.
We already know that our solar system is not that special in our galaxy, while our galaxy isn't that special in observable universe. There is no reason to declare that what can exist here cannot exist out there.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Please define consciousness

For comparison, Google Bard said.

Consciousness is a complex phenomenon that has been studied by philosophers, scientists, and theologians for centuries. There is no single definition of consciousness that is universally agreed upon, but it is generally understood to be the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings.

Consciousness is often divided into two main categories:

Subjective consciousness: This is the awareness of one's own thoughts, feelings, and sensations. It is the feeling of being "in your head" and having a sense of self.
Objective consciousness: This is the awareness of the external world. It is the ability to perceive objects and events in the world around you.

Consciousness is thought to be essential for a number of cognitive functions, such as:

Attention: The ability to focus on specific stimuli and ignore irrelevant information.
Memory: The ability to store and recall information.
Language: The ability to use symbols to communicate with others.
Reasoning: The ability to think logically and solve problems.
Decision-making: The ability to choose between different options.
Consciousness is also thought to play a role in our emotions, our sense of morality, and our capacity for creativity.

The exact nature of consciousness is still a mystery. There are a number of theories about how consciousness arises in the brain, but no single theory has been able to fully explain it. Some possible explanations for consciousness include:
The Global Neuronal Workspace Theory: This theory proposes that consciousness arises from the synchronized activity of neurons across different parts of the brain.
The Integrated Information Theory: This theory proposes that consciousness is a measure of the amount of information that is integrated across different parts of the brain.
The Attention Schema Theory: This theory proposes that consciousness is a product of the brain's attention system.

The study of consciousness is a rapidly growing field, and there is still much that we do not know about it. However, the research that has been done so far has helped us to understand the importance of consciousness and the role it plays in our lives.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The Track Record Argument for Utilitarianism

Currently, there are several versions of utility function which utilitarians want to maximize. Some of them want to maximize the sum of individual happiness, or some alternatives like pleasure and wellbeing.
Some want to minimize the sum of individual suffering, or some alternatives like pain and misery.
Some assign the same weight to every individual. Some other assign more weights to less fortunate individuals.
Some only consider immediate consequences of a decision, while some others also include indirect and longer term consequences. What's still lacking is the reason why they chose those parameters, instead of the alternatives?

They seem to only consider individualistic point of view, because in their life time, only human individuals can think and communicate about morality. They had no idea how it looks like from the perspective of systems which are lower or higher than individual levels.
From unicellular perspective, human individuals are supersystems consisting of many individual cells with different shapes and functions. From the perspective of human civilization, human individuals are subsystems with different shapes and functions.

[alancalverd]

So Google has provided a mostly irrelevant torrent of words as usual, and does not distinguish between consciousness and symptoms of life.

From unicellular perspective, human individuals are supersystems consisting of many individual cells with different shapes and functions. From the perspective of human civilization, human individuals are subsystems with different shapes and functions.

Wow! People are distinct collections of cells. Who would have thought it?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

So Google has provided a mostly irrelevant torrent of words as usual, and does not distinguish between consciousness and symptoms of life.

It's a summary of text data about consciousness that were trained to the LLM. I asked what the sources it used. Here's the answer.

I got my information about consciousness from a variety of sources, including:

Wikipedia: The Wikipedia article on consciousness provides a comprehensive overview of the topic, including different definitions, theories, and research findings.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on consciousness is a more in-depth and technical resource that provides a critical analysis of the different theories of consciousness.
Scientific American: Scientific American has published a number of articles on consciousness, including "What is Consciousness?" by David Eagleman and "The Mystery of Consciousness" by Christof Koch.
Nature: Nature is a scientific journal that has published a number of articles on consciousness, including "The Neural Correlates of Consciousness" by Francis Crick and Christof Koch.
The New York Times: The New York Times has published a number of articles on consciousness, including "The Quest to Understand Consciousness" by John Markoff and "The Hard Problem of Consciousness" by David Chalmers.

If you think you have a better answer, you can publish it. Or just write it down here.

Not all life forms pass the threshold commonly used to distinguish between conscious and non-conscious beings.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Wow! People are distinct collections of cells. Who would have thought it?

Not many people thought about it until the idea of biological cells became widely accepted.

[alancalverd]

So there are plenty of articles and lectures about consiciousness, but no single definition. I think that consigns the subject to the dustbin called "philosophy" rather than a serious science forum.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

So there are plenty of articles and lectures about consiciousness, but no single definition. I think that consigns the subject to the dustbin called "philosophy" rather than a serious science forum.

Google Bard also says that there's no single definition of time. Does it mean that time is not a serious scientific concept?

What's your preferred definition for consciousness?

[alancalverd]

Google Bard is not to be taken seriously. I have just switched my search engine to DuckDuckGo in order to get factual answers to my searches instead of childish essays about vaguely-related subjects.

AFAIK all scientific discussions involving time make sense if it is "what separates sequential events", or in the words of Einstein, "what stops everything from happening at once". Only a philosopher would try to pretend that we don't understand that.

[alancalverd]

Not many people thought about it until the idea of biological cells became widely accepted.

I think that's a tautology. Did you get it from AI?

[paul cotter]

Alan, every time I look at the forum I see activity from your good self on Hamdani's philosophical threads! Is this a change of focus? dumping science for philosophy!!! Hamdani, apologies for butting in like this. I will have hide now for I fear my life will now be in danger.

[alancalverd]

On the contrary, I'm trying to persuade him not to flush his brilliant intellect and experimental skills down the infinite and sterile toilet of philosophy. HY is an investigator and creative educator who asks important questions and seeks practical answers. Philosophers are a pollutant.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Google Bard is not to be taken seriously. I have just switched my search engine to DuckDuckGo in order to get factual answers to my searches instead of childish essays about vaguely-related subjects.

AFAIK all scientific discussions involving time make sense if it is "what separates sequential events", or in the words of Einstein, "what stops everything from happening at once". Only a philosopher would try to pretend that we don't understand that.

DuckDuckGo also employ some algorithm to provide the links of what it "thinks" as the most relevant web page to your query. Just like LLM AI model, they use statistics of online traffic, which is prone to the pitfall of group thinking or herd mentality.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Not many people thought about it until the idea of biological cells became widely accepted.

I think that's a tautology. Did you get it from AI?

It's part of rhetoric to persuade people to think from different perspective. Here's the persuasion.

The Track Record Argument for Utilitarianism

Currently, there are several versions of utility function which utilitarians want to maximize. Some of them want to maximize the sum of individual happiness, or some alternatives like pleasure and wellbeing.
Some want to minimize the sum of individual suffering, or some alternatives like pain and misery.
Some assign the same weight to every individual. Some other assign more weights to less fortunate individuals.
Some only consider immediate consequences of a decision, while some others also include indirect and longer term consequences. What's still lacking is the reason why they chose those parameters, instead of the alternatives?

They seem to only consider individualistic point of view, because in their life time, only human individuals can think and communicate about morality. They had no idea how it looks like from the perspective of systems which are lower or higher than individual levels.
From unicellular perspective, human individuals are super-systems consisting of many individual cells with different shapes and functions. From the perspective of human civilization, human individuals are subsystems with different shapes and functions.

A universal moral standard is necessary to defend against extreme moral relativism.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

On the contrary, I'm trying to persuade him not to flush his brilliant intellect and experimental skills down the infinite and sterile toilet of philosophy. HY is an investigator and creative educator who asks important questions and seeks practical answers. Philosophers are a pollutant.

Not all philosophers are the same.

Here's Noam Chomsky's criticism of post modernism.

The lack of direct personal consequences for being wrong might be the reason why they can't have agreements on important topics, except perhaps the agreement to disagree.
Philosophy of morality is becoming more important with the advancement of AI towards AGI and ASI. Getting extremely powerful AI without strong fundamental terminal goal in mind which will be the basis of its decision making process would lead to unnecessary costs, which may include human lives and other precious resources, especially time. They might even pose an existential risk for consciousness on earth, which is the only one we know so far.

At least for now, that task is mostly in the hand of AI researchers which are generally more familiar with practical problems such as voice and image recognition. Their system usually have short term goals. The longer term goals are then obtained by extrapolating those short term goals for further future and larger systems. Using this inductive/analogical thinking requires a lot of data sample to cover most possible cases, while still have a risk of missing outlier cases.

[paul cotter]

Hamdani, I don't believe AI exists or will ever exist. A computer is only as good as it's programming and it lacks what humans have, ie the motivation to learn, to advance one's self. Yes, you can program a computer to learn new routines from it's interactions but does this constitute intelligence?, I don't think so.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Hamdani, I don't believe AI exists or will ever exist. A computer is only as good as it's programming and it lacks what humans have, ie the motivation to learn, to advance one's self. Yes, you can program a computer to learn new routines from it's interactions but does this constitute intelligence?, I don't think so.

Where did you think humans come from?
When does a human individual start to become conscious?
When did a human as a species start to become conscious?
Will it make a difference if the computer running AI is made of organic materials?

[alancalverd]

DuckDuckGo also employ some algorithm to provide the links of what it "thinks" as the most relevant web page to your query. Just like LLM AI model, they use statistics of online traffic, which is prone to the pitfall of group thinking or herd mentality.

But unlike Google and Bing, it doesn't try to write a childish essay about the subject. I'm quite capable of scanning through the raw articles until I find what I need.

Here's an example. I needed a Briggs and Stratton carburator. Bing AI told me that B&S was founded in god knows when, manufactured small agricultural gasoline engines, and has ceased trading......yada yada  yada. DDG showed some images of small B&S carbs and the websites of several parts stockists. Next, I needed a small AF spanner, not an essay on the history of spanners.....

[paul cotter]

Hamdani, you posed 4 questions, alas I can only answer the first. Humans evolved from some now extinct anthropoid ape. The others involve consciousness which is an enigma and hard to analyse.