I’m not sure he is read widely by people under 40. The poem “If” shows up on social media from time to time, but that’s all I can really think of beyond the Jungle Book movies.
Maybe there is something to feminization so far as the transmission of literary taste is concerned.
Your comment that both the humanities and the sciences produce useful knowledge reminded me of a wonderful essay by Abraham Flexner called ‘The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge.’ He argues that the desire to satisfy curiosity is more important (personally and practically) than the desire to be useful. And as a Brit educated in America in the sciences who now writes a literary Substack newsletter, I am all for wandering across lines into other intellectual (and physical) realms.
There are good reasons that consciousness is a substrate-dependent contingent evolutionary development.
That is, It can not be simulated. That everything is essentially quantitative is a big assumption. Physics abstracts from reality so physics leaves something out.
I like the Smith quote Scott relays, and I think it's instructive: "Unless some extremely weird quantum stuff is going on." Umm, yeah: extremely weird quantum stuff is going on. See e.g. the double-slit experiment. Not to say that correlating thoughts to brain activity isn't worthwhile. But looking at the brain to find out where consciousness comes from could be a lot like looking at our TV to find out where CBS comes from.
Thanks for a great post, Scott. This one-time blogger has been tempted to get back into the game, and this was inspiring. (No promises!)
You wrote "your critics are usually right (apart from trolls)." Isn't there a gray area between an ill-informed and energetic, but earnest, commenter and a troll? Maybe there literally is a definition I am unaware of.
Would some angelic, hyperintelligent blogger regard a well-intentioned comment of yours as trolling, because your human brain lacks basic angelic understanding of right and wrong?
Is this like a pornography definition, though? What are you using to define "trolling?" You mean the commenter is just trying to tick you off, as opposed to eanestly advancing the discussion?
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
Many philosophical problems can be resolved by attending to Father Stanley Jaki's dictum:
"Every philosophy is a message. For conveying that message there has to be a tangible means, such as a book. Therefore, for the sake of a minimum of consistency, the philosopher's message or system should account in full for the reality of the means."
The neural correlates of consciousness approach concerns me because it is just not clear to me at all that there is one single pattern of neurons firing (or something like that) that leads to consciousness. I'd be very worried that we'd figure out what correlates with consciousness in the human brain, not see that pattern in AIs, and use that to ignore their possibly genuine cries of pain.
I suspect (with low to medium confidence) that your idea of looking at AI expression is more robust to the problem of false negatives for AI consciousness, but I think it comes with the price of a higher chance of false positives: I'd place a higher probability than you that unconscious AI will be able to produce content or have behavior that appears to us to have internal meaning, but doesn't really. As someone worried about potential future mistreatment of AIs (among other problems in this space!), I wouldn't mind erring on the safe side in this regard, but I doubt most people feel that way.
Well, I suppose one other possibility is that you could be the only conscious entity in the universe, a sort of brain floating in space imagining everything including yourself, Knausgaard, and his books. But I guess possibilities of that nature belong to the 0.001%.
I am of the view that all living humans are conscious (some more than others as you suggest) and self-awareness is associated with something we don’t yet understand about living cells and how they interact.
I have no doubt AI will become able to mimic consciousness well enough to convince us that it meets all the tests we can set to define consciousness, but that will just show the limit of understanding (of both AI and us, since AI can “know” more but never “understand” more than we do). It won’t ever be self-aware in the sense that living humans are until we can make live AIs.
As far as our current understanding goes we may learn that as Smith says “some extremely weird quantum stuff is going on”
In saying this I am minded of Chandler Burr’s “The Emperor of Scent” book about Luca Turin and the still unresolved puzzle of how two molecules with the same shape can smell different.
Perhaps, as the author quotes in the Epigraph, “I should think that we might fairly gauge the future of biological science, centuries ahead, by estimating the time it will take to reach a complete comprehensive understanding of odor. It . . . contains, piece by piece, all the mysteries. —LEWIS THOMAS
A reasonable position in an absolute sense. Though my comment was prompted rather by the thought that until we can satisfactorily and completely explain what human consciousness actually is, and how it is, we can never design the test that discriminates a perfect mimic from the real thing...
I'd put it this way. I could imagine an AI writing a book that was so vivid that I was equally convinced of its consciousness as I am of another human being. But if you want to say we cannot be absolutely certain then I don't disagree.
Interesting she names Galsworthy as an excellent writer who will not endure, and he hasn’t.
Good point. Kipling is still read, but perhaps has declined in influence in a relative sense.
I’m not sure he is read widely by people under 40. The poem “If” shows up on social media from time to time, but that’s all I can really think of beyond the Jungle Book movies.
Maybe there is something to feminization so far as the transmission of literary taste is concerned.
"Kim" is worth reading.
Added to my list!
The Stranger is especially relevant poem but not appreciated among libertarian-leaning conservatives
Beautiful poem
Your comment that both the humanities and the sciences produce useful knowledge reminded me of a wonderful essay by Abraham Flexner called ‘The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge.’ He argues that the desire to satisfy curiosity is more important (personally and practically) than the desire to be useful. And as a Brit educated in America in the sciences who now writes a literary Substack newsletter, I am all for wandering across lines into other intellectual (and physical) realms.
Thanks for the tip on Flexner. And I'll check out your blog.
Pleasure, Scott. And thank you! Looking forward to reading more from the pursuit of happiness.
There are good reasons that consciousness is a substrate-dependent contingent evolutionary development.
That is, It can not be simulated. That everything is essentially quantitative is a big assumption. Physics abstracts from reality so physics leaves something out.
I like the Smith quote Scott relays, and I think it's instructive: "Unless some extremely weird quantum stuff is going on." Umm, yeah: extremely weird quantum stuff is going on. See e.g. the double-slit experiment. Not to say that correlating thoughts to brain activity isn't worthwhile. But looking at the brain to find out where consciousness comes from could be a lot like looking at our TV to find out where CBS comes from.
Thanks for a great post, Scott. This one-time blogger has been tempted to get back into the game, and this was inspiring. (No promises!)
You wrote "your critics are usually right (apart from trolls)." Isn't there a gray area between an ill-informed and energetic, but earnest, commenter and a troll? Maybe there literally is a definition I am unaware of.
Would some angelic, hyperintelligent blogger regard a well-intentioned comment of yours as trolling, because your human brain lacks basic angelic understanding of right and wrong?
I can usually tell which bad comments are trolling and which are not. There are tell-tale signs.
Is this like a pornography definition, though? What are you using to define "trolling?" You mean the commenter is just trying to tick you off, as opposed to eanestly advancing the discussion?
Yes.
And speaking of pornography:
https://x.com/grok/status/2047676835119472720
What! I was going to watch her deliver a lecture on the Efficient Market Hypothesis! So cynical. . . .
Anybody who thinks philosophy is useless should read this essay
https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Philosophy-Who-Needs-It-text.pdf
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
Thanks, that sounds interesting.
You're welcome.
Many philosophical problems can be resolved by attending to Father Stanley Jaki's dictum:
"Every philosophy is a message. For conveying that message there has to be a tangible means, such as a book. Therefore, for the sake of a minimum of consistency, the philosopher's message or system should account in full for the reality of the means."
The neural correlates of consciousness approach concerns me because it is just not clear to me at all that there is one single pattern of neurons firing (or something like that) that leads to consciousness. I'd be very worried that we'd figure out what correlates with consciousness in the human brain, not see that pattern in AIs, and use that to ignore their possibly genuine cries of pain.
I suspect (with low to medium confidence) that your idea of looking at AI expression is more robust to the problem of false negatives for AI consciousness, but I think it comes with the price of a higher chance of false positives: I'd place a higher probability than you that unconscious AI will be able to produce content or have behavior that appears to us to have internal meaning, but doesn't really. As someone worried about potential future mistreatment of AIs (among other problems in this space!), I wouldn't mind erring on the safe side in this regard, but I doubt most people feel that way.
Good comment, but I doubt that an AI could fool a serious literary scholar.
Well, I suppose one other possibility is that you could be the only conscious entity in the universe, a sort of brain floating in space imagining everything including yourself, Knausgaard, and his books. But I guess possibilities of that nature belong to the 0.001%.
And if I had to defend the .001% estimate I'd have trouble doing so, other than "gut feeling."
Good advice on writing. Thanks.
I am of the view that all living humans are conscious (some more than others as you suggest) and self-awareness is associated with something we don’t yet understand about living cells and how they interact.
I have no doubt AI will become able to mimic consciousness well enough to convince us that it meets all the tests we can set to define consciousness, but that will just show the limit of understanding (of both AI and us, since AI can “know” more but never “understand” more than we do). It won’t ever be self-aware in the sense that living humans are until we can make live AIs.
As far as our current understanding goes we may learn that as Smith says “some extremely weird quantum stuff is going on”
In saying this I am minded of Chandler Burr’s “The Emperor of Scent” book about Luca Turin and the still unresolved puzzle of how two molecules with the same shape can smell different.
Perhaps, as the author quotes in the Epigraph, “I should think that we might fairly gauge the future of biological science, centuries ahead, by estimating the time it will take to reach a complete comprehensive understanding of odor. It . . . contains, piece by piece, all the mysteries. —LEWIS THOMAS
I disagree. As I suggested in this post, I don't think a non-conscious entity can mimic all the signs of human consciousness.
A reasonable position in an absolute sense. Though my comment was prompted rather by the thought that until we can satisfactorily and completely explain what human consciousness actually is, and how it is, we can never design the test that discriminates a perfect mimic from the real thing...
I'd put it this way. I could imagine an AI writing a book that was so vivid that I was equally convinced of its consciousness as I am of another human being. But if you want to say we cannot be absolutely certain then I don't disagree.
It is sad that books are falling out of favor.