dlthomas comments on GAZP vs. GLUT - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 April 2008 01:51AM

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Comment author: Monkeymind 16 May 2012 07:42:35PM *  1 point [-]

How can you be 100% confident that a look up table has zero consciousness when you don't even know for sure what consciousness is?

Why not just define consciousness in a rational, unambiguous, non-contradictory way and then use it consistently throughout. If we are talking thought experiments here, it is up to us to make assumption(s) in our hypothesis. I don't recall EY giving HIS definition of consciousness for his thought experiment.

However, if the GLUT behaves exactly like a human, and humans are conscious, then by definition the GLUT is conscious, whatever that means.

Comment author: dlthomas 16 May 2012 08:58:39PM *  3 points [-]

Things that are true "by definition" are generally not very interesting.

If consciousness is defined by referring solely to behavior (which may well be reasonable, but is itself an assumption) then yes, it is true that something that behaves exactly like a human will be conscious IFF humans are conscious.

But what we are trying to ask, at the high level, is whether there is something coherent in conceptspace that partitions objects into "conscious" and "unconscious" in something that resembles what we understand when we talk about "consciousness," and then whether it applies to the GLUT. Demonstrating that it holds for a particular set of definitions only matters if we are convinced that one of the definitions in that set accurately captures what we are actually discussing.