Thread: The more I learn and the more I think about the existance of aliens

Originally Posted by Sandform

I have observed debates on this as to "why" consciousness arose in life, because wouldn't something without consciousness that acted exactly as if it were conscious survive just as long? This becomes the core of the problem with alien life. Are they conscious or are they unconscious things that seem conscious. Further more is all life on Earth conscious? Of course we can assume with no great leap of faith to assume that any animal with a brain is conscious, since it runs in the same fashion as ours, however until we narrow down to an exact knowledge of what consciousness is, or rather how it arises, we can never know for sure if an alien life form that shares no common ancestry with us would in fact be conscious. For that matter we could never be sure of an AI's consciousness. I have no doubts that if we communicate with alien life it would be intelligent, in the same way as our current computers are, however I would remain healthily skeptical as to the consciousness of such a being, excluding of course the possibility that it developed a brain exactly, or near enough, as ours.

I suppose this leads back to the initial formation of the brain. There is no doubt that these primitive brains were much more simpler than ours. I think I mentioned earlier that they are basically sort of like "reformatting machines". Imagine these flatworm creatures (that had basics brains and basic eyes) were selected for if they were in the dark most of the time (just a stupid example). The brain might take the signals from the basic eyes (which were basically just slightly curved patches) and convert that into muscle movement. The stronger the light signal, the stronger the muscle movement, meaning that when it's in light it will swim until it reaches the dark.

I wouldn't call this consciousness, but when you have to add a new module when your eyes get more dish-like, to recognise where light is coming from, then this is an extra process. The more and more modules you add, the thoughts rise exponentially. It is my belief that what we think of as "consciousness" (deliberatelly put in inverted commas) is tightly bound, if not synonymous with these processes.

I think however that this only happens in the way the brain has these "thoughts", as I (practically) formally defined in my previous paragraph. What makes AI different is that in programming terms, to make some sort of Turing machine, it is just a list of if/then statements, which work completely differently, even though they make them appear the same to us. The reality is that the actions the AI takes doesn't come from the same place (or reasoning should I say) that real intelligence has.

So I suppose it follows that consciousness isn't really a boolean term: conscious, or not conscious (like the processes going on in a Venus fly trap). I would say that it has a scope, like a gradient. A fly is conscious because it is capable or reasoning, but it is less conscious than me because it is capable of less reasoning (this morning I saw a fly keep trying to fly through the glass of my window).

@Minervas Phoenix:

You just gave me the lawl of the day. You are joking of course? ^^

You should take a look at the Schizophrenia link giving to you... it might help you

Originally Posted by Zotoaster

I suppose this leads back to the initial formation of the brain. There is no doubt that these primitive brains were much more simpler than ours. I think I mentioned earlier that they are basically sort of like "reformatting machines". Imagine these flatworm creatures (that had basics brains and basic eyes) were selected for if they were in the dark most of the time (just a stupid example). The brain might take the signals from the basic eyes (which were basically just slightly curved patches) and convert that into muscle movement. The stronger the light signal, the stronger the muscle movement, meaning that when it's in light it will swim until it reaches the dark.

I wouldn't call this consciousness, but when you have to add a new module when your eyes get more dish-like, to recognise where light is coming from, then this is an extra process. The more and more modules you add, the thoughts rise exponentially. It is my belief that what we think of as "consciousness" (deliberatelly put in inverted commas) is tightly bound, if not synonymous with these processes.

I think however that this only happens in the way the brain has these "thoughts", as I (practically) formally defined in my previous paragraph. What makes AI different is that in programming terms, to make some sort of Turing machine, it is just a list of if/then statements, which work completely differently, even though they make them appear the same to us. The reality is that the actions the AI takes doesn't come from the same place (or reasoning should I say) that real intelligence has.

So I suppose it follows that consciousness isn't really a boolean term: conscious, or not conscious (like the processes going on in a Venus fly trap). I would say that it has a scope, like a gradient. A fly is conscious because it is capable or reasoning, but it is less conscious than me because it is capable of less reasoning (this morning I saw a fly keep trying to fly through the glass of my window).

I pretty much agree with you completely. My only point is that it is entirely possible there are beings out there with workings different than ours which may exhibit near parallel actions as ours even though they have no real "consciousness" to speak of.

If a human being can create a machine which will more or less be capable of comprehending things without consciousness and seeming near humanlike, and certainly animal like, then I don't see a reason why evolution couldn't the same.

So my only point is that until we know what exactly makes a thing conscious we could never know for sure whether alien beings are conscious or absolute perfect mimics of consciousness. For all we know we could be fooled just as easily as someone fooled by a robotic human...except evolution molded this creature vs. human minds.

I think (as well I think you do as well) that consciousness arises from patterning. Now if something could be patterned differently, in a way that mimics but does not produce consciousness, there would be no difference between capabilities between the two. Even an appearant "imagination" could be formed. After all computers have "imaginations." Heck the sims will have your characters create entire lives without you even looking...


I'm assuming your point is that massive processes lead to consciousness while smaller processes do not. I would agree, since we both know that is
putting it simplistically I really don't have to go on about speed and modules...

Of course from the paragraph in which you said "So I suppose it follows that consciousness isn't really a boolean term: conscious, or not conscious" it would seem that you think anything capable of reason is conscious...which would mean that you would think that computers (in some sense) are conscious. (edit: Which I disagree with. I do not think computers are conscious, though I have no supporting evidence that they aren't, I see no supporting evidence that they are.)


Edit: Of course I guess you could argue that it is impossible to mimic consciousness without being conscious.

Originally Posted by Sandform

I pretty much agree with you completely. My only point is that it is entirely possible there are beings out there with workings different than ours which may exhibit near parallel actions as ours even though they have no real "consciousness" to speak of.

If a human being can create a machine which will more or less be capable of comprehending things without consciousness and seeming near humanlike, and certainly animal like, then I don't see a reason why evolution couldn't the same.

So my only point is that until we know what exactly makes a thing conscious we could never know for sure whether alien beings are conscious or absolute perfect mimics of consciousness. For all we know we could be fooled just as easily as someone fooled by a robotic human...except evolution molded this creature vs. human minds.

I think (as well I think you do as well) that consciousness arises from patterning. Now if something could be patterned differently, in a way that mimics but does not produce consciousness, there would be no difference between capabilities between the two. Even an appearant "imagination" could be formed. After all computers have "imaginations." Heck the sims will have your characters create entire lives without you even looking...


I'm assuming your point is that massive processes lead to consciousness while smaller processes do not. I would agree, since we both know that is
putting it simplistically I really don't have to go on about speed and modules...

Of course from the paragraph in which you said "So I suppose it follows that consciousness isn't really a boolean term: conscious, or not conscious" it would seem that you think anything capable of reason is conscious...which would mean that you would think that computers (in some sense) are conscious. (edit: Which I disagree with. I do not think computers are conscious, though I have no supporting evidence that they aren't, I see no supporting evidence that they are.)

Ah, yes, you happened to bring up a couple of things that I forgot to mention.

I think it is possible for a Turning machine to recreate the exact actions of a human (given enough work) but without having any consciousness. There are two things I have to say about this though: Firstly, I think it is because they have been designed and manually programmed (analogous I suppose to your Sims example) to make certain actions. The second point though seems to present a sort of paradox (let's call it Zoto's paradox so I feel all scientific ) is that the "reasoning" the actual program has to make to calculate the agent's next action would have to be very similar to the reasoning that we make, even if it is executed differently. The fact that we know so little about consciousness and whether it's the actual reasoning that goes into it, or the method of which the reasoning goes into it is disputable.

My other point is related to what I said about design. I don't think a computer is conscious (in self awareness terms), but it is certainly capable of some reasoning. Imagine a processor as the brain. If you stuck in a webcam and put your computer out in the wild to survive (yes we can assume it can mate and pass down genes, etc, even if they are formatted differently to ours), then, if the processor within the first few generations was able to survive without our aid, would you then consider it conscious? I still don't know what to think of that.

Luckily though, a processor of this type doesn't just evolve. I think that the easiest way in Darwinian terms is through neural networks, which I believe can create consciousness, but as I said, not in boolean terms. The more complex (in technical terms, as I described earlier), the more conscious. You can see this in the fly example I mentioned (fly trying to get through glass).

Originally Posted by Zotoaster

Ah, yes, you happened to bring up a couple of things that I forgot to mention.

I think it is possible for a Turning machine to recreate the exact actions of a human (given enough work) but without having any consciousness. There are two things I have to say about this though: Firstly, I think it is because they have been designed and manually programmed (analogous I suppose to your Sims example) to make certain actions. The second point though seems to present a sort of paradox (let's call it Zoto's paradox so I feel all scientific ) is that the "reasoning" the actual program has to make to calculate the agent's next action would have to be very similar to the reasoning that we make, even if it is executed differently. The fact that we know so little about consciousness and whether it's the actual reasoning that goes into it, or the method of which the reasoning goes into it is disputable.

My other point is related to what I said about design. I don't think a computer is conscious (in self awareness terms), but it is certainly capable of some reasoning. Imagine a processor as the brain. If you stuck in a webcam and put your computer out in the wild to survive (yes we can assume it can mate and pass down genes, etc, even if they are formatted differently to ours), then, if the processor within the first few generations was able to survive without our aid, would you then consider it conscious? I still don't know what to think of that.

Luckily though, a processor of this type doesn't just evolve. I think that the easiest way in Darwinian terms is through neural networks, which I believe can create consciousness, but as I said, not in boolean terms. The more complex (in technical terms, as I described earlier), the more conscious. You can see this in the fly example I mentioned (fly trying to get through glass).

I suppose this comes down to my last edit with some editing to that editing =).

Edit: Of course I guess you could argue that it is impossible to mimic consciousness without being conscious via evolutionary means.

Originally Posted by Xei

Fuck's sake people, you're just feeding it what it wants.

The more that you fear us the bigger we get, and don't be surprised. Don't be surprised if we discovered it.

Edit: Of course I guess you could argue that it is impossible to mimic consciousness without being conscious via evolutionary means.

That's a fair point, and I would certainly like to believe it, but, like all science, in humility we just have to agree that we don't know currently, and it is yet to be found out.

Originally Posted by Zotoaster

That's a fair point, and I would certainly like to believe it, but, like all science, in humility we just have to agree that we don't know currently, and it is yet to be found out.

Doesn't that suck! Hehe.

Btw I was trying to get at what I think you were trying to get across, did my quote accurately decribe what you were trying to state?