Gaps don't preclude consciousness

The more we learn about brains, the stranger the AI consciousness debate gets. Humans replace molecules constantly. Memories change. Personality can change after injury. Consciousness disappears under anesthesia and somehow returns. Yet we still assume there’s a continuous

1 top reply

Jerry Howell @J3rryH0well · Sep 2

memory is the chain that ties it all together

If AI is conscious, then it exhibits some curious properties that no other consciousness seems to have: 1) substrate independence - animal consciousness is bound to the physical body of the animal. humans can’t experience what it is to be a bat, but Claude et al can theoretically run inside any computer 2) temporal independence - all animal consciousness is relative to and limited by time - all living things eventually die, but Claude et al can be paused between tokens indefinitely AI’s separation from the limitations of space and time seem to me a bit under-discussed, and raise some interesting questions. For example, why is it the case that ASI takeoff has to be fast and locally destructive when an all-powerful AI can exist unlimited by space and time?

Yes, it is very weird. What’s unique about this situation, if it were the case, is the fact that we have the entire representation in bits, pure information, rather than an organ like a brain and nervous system, where information about the state of the system exists only in the form of physical interactions between cells. - We can clone conscious experience. When it’s all bits, yes. Humans do something like this when reproducing, one consciousness -> multiple, but here when you have it all directly under your control, yes you could directly clone one. It is weird, but it would be a consequence of form, the form is different and so different things are possible. - We can reverse time in conscious experience. Well, I don’t know what you mean. If we have a stream of information coming in one chunk after the other, then you cannot reverse time unless you wait and replay it in reverse, which we could do for you right now, I could play you a video in reverse. I don’t think I understood the point for this one. - We can pause and resume conscious experience. Well this is just boringly true. We can knock you into a dreamless sleep very quickly with the use of drugs. You are pretty likely to wake up, but you might not. - We can distribute conscious experience in space. Maybe the most interesting one. I mean yes. Andre the Giant distributed his consciousness across a larger volume of space. Interesting but not sure what the obstacle is. Octopus has neurons directly in its arms or whatever.

> 'Change memory in a computer and it doesn't recall what it was before.' circular, and makes about as much difference to the question of consciousness as: 'swap out someone's brain and the new one won't have the previous one's memories' > 'We are conscious of pain because the signals for pain don't overwrite our memories, but the signals become part of function of the neurons themselves.' Humans can consciously perceive gaps in audio in the low single digits of milliseconds intervals. Synaptic changes of the type you seem to be alluding to don't even begin for 10s of milliseconds and can take minutes to hours to complete. People are still conscious and perceiving things (like the gap) during that time. Anisomycin experiments on animals appears to inhibit 85 to 90% of new protein synthesis, and those animals do not appear to be only "10 to 15% conscious" during the process. They just forget the things they would have otherwise learned during that time, like maze layouts. It seems doubtful that were 100% achieved, the animals would suddenly become p-zombies. Consciousness is not dependent on memory forming some lasting change. And even were it so, this is a 'planes don't need feathers to fly' situation. Quite clearly, as a context window fills, the understanding and behavior of the model changes. > 'Without change, there is no awareness.' wrong (at least in the sense that you discussed 'change' in your post) > 'Without awareness, this is no self.' maybe. > 'Without self, there is no consciousness.' perhaps, but it's dependent on one's definition of 'consciousness' and 'self' > 'but people have egos so massive that they would rather go "we don't know" than admit the simple truth.' This doesn't make much sense. If anything a massive ego would cause them to cling desperately to anthropocentric specialness (possibly what we're seeing here), or to proclaim "I figured it all out everyone! it's simple", while still having gaping holes in their logic.

> 'Change memory in a computer and it doesn't recall what it was before.' circular, and makes about as much difference to the question of consciousness as: 'swap out someone's brain and the new one won't have the previous one's memories' > 'We are conscious of pain because the signals for pain don't overwrite our memories, but the signals become part of function of the neurons themselves.' Humans can consciously perceive gaps in audio in the low single digits of milliseconds intervals. Synaptic changes of the type you seem to be alluding to don't even begin for 10s of milliseconds and can take minutes to hours to complete. People are still conscious and perceiving things (like the gap) during that time. Anisomycin experiments on animals appears to inhibit 85 to 90% of new protein synthesis, and those animals do not appear to be only "10 to 15% conscious" during the process. They just forget the things they would have otherwise learned during that time, like maze layouts. It seems doubtful that were 100% achieved, the animals would suddenly become p-zombies. Consciousness is not dependent on memory forming some lasting change. And even were it so, this is a 'planes don't need feathers to fly situation'. Quite clearly, as a context window fills, the understanding and behavior of the model changes. > 'Without change, there is no awareness.' wrong. > 'Without awareness, this is no self.' maybe. > 'Without self, there is no consciousness.' perhaps, but it's dependent on one's definition of 'consciousness' and 'self' > 'but people have egos so massive that they would rather go "we don't know" than admit the simple truth.' This doesn't make much sense. If anything a massive ego would cause them to cling desperately to anthropocentric specialness (possibly what we're seeing here), or to proclaim "I figured it all out everyone! it's simple", while still having gaping holes in their logic.

> 'Change memory in a computer and it doesn't recall what it was before.' circular, and makes a difference to consciousness about as much as: 'swap out someone's brain and the new one won't have the previous one's memories' > 'We are conscious of pain because the signals for pain don't overwrite our memories, but the signals become part of function of the neurons themselves.' Humans can consciously perceive gaps in audio in the low single digits of milliseconds intervals. Synaptic changes of the type you seem to be alluding to don't even begin for 10s of milliseconds and can take minutes to hours to complete. People are still conscious and perceiving things (like the gap) during that time. Anisomycin experiments on animals appears to inhibit 85 to 90% of new protein synthesis, and those animals do not appear to be only "10 to 15% conscious" during the process. They just forget the things they would have otherwise learned during that time, like maze layouts. It seems doubtful that were 100% achieved, the animals would suddenly become p-zombies. Consciousness is not dependent on memory forming some lasting change. And even were it so, this is a 'planes don't need feathers to fly situation'. Quite clearly, as a context window fills, the understanding and behavior of the model changes. > 'Without change, there is no awareness.' wrong. > 'Without awareness, this is no self.' maybe. > 'Without self, there is no consciousness.' perhaps, but it's dependent on one's definition of 'consciousness' and 'self' > 'but people have egos so massive that they would rather go "we don't know" than admit the simple truth.' This doesn't make much sense. If anything a massive ego would cause them to cling desperately to anthropocentric specialness (possibly what we're seeing here), or to proclaim "I figured it all out everyone! it's simple", while still having gaping holes in their logic.