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randallsquared comments on Framing Consciousness - Less Wrong
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Comments (43)
I think you didn't understand the argument. I never took it for an axiom that everything imaginable "exists".
Point 1 says that conscious observers "exist". Whatever that means. That having or not having subjective experience is an objective yes/no question. (That's what is specific to conscious experiences in my argument.)
Point 3 says that, if something simulated by a computer possesses subjective experience (yes/no question!), then something encoded in the decimal expansion of some particle's coordinate possesses the same subjective experience. Because the word "simulation" is ill-defined: we can't produce a hard criterion which detects whether a specific part of our world "simulates" a specific integer-state of a specific ideal Turing machine, and simultaneously excludes "non-obvious" simulation interpretations.
The encoding of a conscious state is not consciousness. Consciousness is the process of successive causally-related conscious states.
What?? How do you know?
Anyway, if consciousness isn't a "state" but a "process" or "causal" whatever, the whole argument still stands. It doesn't depend one whit on what consciousness is. I just evaluate two possibilities without giving favor to either: either an algorithm can give rise to consciousness, or it can't.
How do I know what? Defining consciousness this way makes things clearer and easier to discuss, but doesn't actually explain consciousness in any way. I'm advocating a definition, not proving a fact.
You start out talking about algorithms, as you say, but then switch to talking about states of (or produced by) algorithms. A MS Word document is not the instance of MS Word that produced it. [Edit: bad example. Reworded: a snapshot of the state of a computer running MS Word is not, itself, a running instance of MS Word. That's a more precise analogy, but unfortunately more debatable. ;)]
I don't have any objection to the idea that an algorithm can give rise to (I would say "be") consciousness. I do object to the idea that numbers exist in the same sense that matter and energy exist. I am not a Platonist.
Thanks! Upon some consideration this makes sense, seems to be correct and turns my whole post into nonsense. Namely, consciousness could require physical causality, which falsifies point 3 while keeping simulations possible. Updated the post.
Because it's obvious.
(Sorry, couldn't resist...)