[Zero]

John Searle's chinese room argument was so weak. He basically said that a plane can't fly because the pilot can't fly. I don't really see what all the fuss was about.
 

[MagnusWootton]

Its not important to me anyway,  I'm happy with a clever machine, I'd rather not have any horrible consciousness side-effect, which is hideously terrifying to me...  if it ever happened by accident.

"No.. please dont turn me off... "

No thanks.

God is one that is foolhardy enough to carry out creation of conscious beings,  and I bet there is a lot more younger less experienced ones that think it would be fun to create a little living friend to keep them company.

[Zero]

Why are you afraid? Being conscious and not wanting to be "turned off", as you say, are two different, unrelated things. Fear of death is rather related to incorrect beliefs, and misunderstanding of the nature of reality. I'm happy to be a father, even though I know my children will die one day. Life is a gift.

Are you afraid to eat? afraid to drink? to sleep? No, because it is in your nature. Being turned off at some point, is in the nature of a program.

[MikeB]

All creatures have fear of death even insects as it's a part of basic self-preservation...

If you saw an AI that "looked" self conscious, it would definitely have self-preservation on some level.

A roomba / robot vacuum cleaner that said "hi", "bye", and plugged itself into the wall would make you think twice about whether it was conscious or not

[Zero]

Even though consciousness probably appeared to enhance survival (the extended homeostasis mechanism as explained by Mark Solms, Damasio, Friston, ...etc.), and while animals all have fear of death or similar behaviors, not all humans are afraid to die, far from it.

Consciousness is one thing, the desires and goals of a potential conscious program are other things. It all depends on how you design it, and I see no reason to make it so it's afraid to be turned off. I mean, what good would it be for a human to be afraid to sleep? Seems clearly unnecessary pain.

I should rename the topic!

[frankinstien]

Are you afraid to eat? afraid to drink? to sleep? No, because it is in your nature. Being turned off at some point, is in the nature of a program.

Well...to me that is an issue and mother nature used reproduction as a solution to persist entities, lifeforms, which doesn't mean it's necessarily the only option. We keep thinking that because we have one body the vulnerability of that body is inescapable, which is true, but that should motivate solutions that can mitigate such a vulnerability. If we become sophisticated enough to build artificial brains we could approach the problem of death through redundancy. The most popular is a simple backup as described in Battle Star Galactica and Altered Carbon. But if we take an approach that is more like the hemispheres of the brain we could live much longer life spans. Our notion of self doesn't notice any duality when both sides of the brain are interacting through the corpus callosum. Now if we do the same with an artificial brain that is geospatially in a different location then we have a similar situation where there is no division between the brains in terms of the sense of self. Now hemispheres of the brain have differences of specialization such as language, when the left hemisphere is removed that cognitive ability is lost, but with an artificial brain, there are no differences in terms of abilities. So if one brain takes over there is no loss of the sense of self or any cognitive abilities. We can take this idea of geospatially diversified brains to scales of tens or even thousands of brains all interacting as one. The advantage to this approach is because you are literally existing in many different locations simultaneously the likely hood of all of them running into a catastrophic incident is very low. Now life spans can be in the millions of years, not the mere millennia if you only prevented aging. The reason you could only live about 1000 years if you prevented aging is you're likely to encounter an event that will be catastrophic and destroy your body and obviously your brain.

If instant communications between these brains were possible then you can remove latency issues that could cause some distortions between brains. Particle entanglement is proving to be very promising where there are explanations of the phenomena using micro wormholes where information actually isn't faster than light but finding a shortcut which allows the desperate particles to coordinate their states. There is another paper, that I was very surprised to find that used string theory to explain particle entanglement using a hyper-dimention to interconnect strings which effectively is a wormhole.

[frankinstien]

Even though consciousness probably appeared to enhance survival (the extended homeostasis mechanism as explained by Mark Solms, Damasio, Friston, ...etc.), and while animals all have fear of death or similar behaviors, not all humans are afraid to die, far from it.

Consciousness is one thing, the desires and goals of a potential conscious program are other things. It all depends on how you design it, and I see no reason to make it so it's afraid to be turned off. I mean, what good would it be for a human to be afraid to sleep? Seems clearly unnecessary pain.

I should rename the topic!

I think you hit it the first time with the homeostasis mechanism when one is an atheist. You've regulated the fear of death through a rationalization that it is a part of life and therefore why fear what is natural. You put it into a context of experiences we don't fear like sleeping. That description of death as a form of sleeping is exactly what parents do to calm children down who have difficulty coping with some fear. But, humans did not deal with the fear of death this way. Humanity invented religion and used an afterlife, where it dealt with death as a doorway to another reality. Humanity confirmed their notions of an afterlife through psychedelic drugs. So human consciousness proves to be no different in terms of fearing death just as animals do and sought a solution to cope with it by believing they couldn't die because they have an immortal soul. While dying can be painful, so are many events in life, but that doesn't discourage one to live on. So death, from a human religious perspective, is just a continuation of life.

[Zero]

I understand.

To be honest, I recently touched the bottom of the ocean, so to speak. I now understand why and how we're conscious, and it totally removed any fear of death.

If you look at the situation as it really is, you will see that you are matter: molecules, atoms, ...etc. Why would a particular "shape" or "organization" (being alive) be better than another one (turning into ashes or earth)? These atoms I'm made of are no different from any other atoms. I'm just a part of the universe.

[frankinstien]

I understand.

To be honest, I recently touched the bottom of the ocean, so to speak. I now understand why and how we're conscious, and it totally removed any fear of death.

If you look at the situation as it really is, you will see that you are matter: molecules, atoms, ...etc. Why would a particular "shape" or "organization" (being alive) be better than another one (turning into ashes or earth)? These atoms I'm made of are no different from any other atoms. I'm just a part of the universe.

How matter is organized is important since it determines how trivial things like being aware of events happening. So, what shape you are and what materials you are made of is important. Physics has constraints and life exploits those constraints to effect processes. Remember life is not a thing, it is a process. So too is consciousness, it is not a thing but a process. While the stuff of what you're made of doesn't disappear but it could change form dramatically, as in matter into energy. That kind of transformation does not retain any history of its cause but is still a form of information or mass. Whereas the information of a shape and/or process can be destroyed and therefore a self can be destroyed since it is a process. There is no need for any higher abstraction beyond our physicality to affect the phenomena of self as that awareness of qualia in a context of "What do I want to do next" (Paraphrase from Arthur C. Clarke 2001 a Space Odyssey)

So in effect, you've adopted religion, perhaps a form of Buddism, to deny death, the destruction of the self.

[Zero]

Oh, I don't deny death, the destruction of the self, the end of the "inner spectacle", whatever you wanna call it. It DOES end when you die. Now why do you see this fact as a problem that needs a solution?

[frankinstien]

Oh, I don't deny death, the destruction of the self, the end of the "inner spectacle", whatever you wanna call it. It DOES end when you die. Now why do you see this fact as a problem that needs a solution?

For the same reason, hominids harnessed fire, to improve the quality of life. Extending life to spans where I could literally explore the vast distances of the universe. Human life expectancy has tripled since the ice age era, but it's still not long enough. There is soo much to explore and do and finding novelty to things you may have done a billion times, to me, is a favored challenge. 

[Zero]

I'm not sure that nourishing a craving for immortality, when we know it probably won't happen, is the best way to improve the quality of one's life.

Of course, if one day we find a way not to die, there's nothing wrong.

[frankinstien]

I'm not sure that nourishing a craving for immortality, when we know it probably won't happen, is the best way to improve the quality of one's life.

From a pragmatist's perspective, I can see your point that it could be viewed as delusional thinking. But, then again, this reminds me of my dog who this past Christmas was diagnosed with terminal cancer. His tummy is bloated and it's a fast-growing tumor. Even if they operate to remove the tumor his prognosis is grim He was also suffering from a bacterial infection that caused hematomas which started to burst and bleed.  From that perspective, I thought of putting him down, but there was something in his eyes, his alertness despite he was acting depressed, that changed my mind.  So I choose hospice for the animal, he takes a Chinese tea that prevents the tumor from bursting and bleeding and some pain killers when needed. Surprisingly he's gotten better psychologically, he still goes on walks, plays with the other dogs and I do feed him steak every day since these are his last days. So while there is no solution for Leo he has benefited from my compassion and humanities technology where otherwise his last days would be miserable.

My point is hoping form immortality is not what I'm doing, I am motivated to participate in the development of technologies that could realize in some form of immortality, and likely not in my lifetime, but it improves my outlook on life that one-day humanity won't suffer from death or at least death becomes a choice rather than an inevitable outcome.  Coping with death is something humanity has been doing for tens of thousands of years, and that I prefer to deal with it as an engineering problem that one day may be implementable, to me, is better than simply accepting or complying with it. Motivating the use of neural networks to solve real medical problems is much much more acceptable than it was ten years ago.  To promote such technology, even as a hobbyist, creates the ambiance and social awareness to continue the effort. While I know the chances of winning the lotto is remote, if I don't buy a ticket my chances become impossible. So I've got nothing to lose to keep the idea alive and well, even if it's in this obscure forum of Artificial intelligence. As they say, the flap of a butter fly's wings can contribute to the formation of a hurricane.

[Zero]

Your approach seems reasonable to me.

Poor Searle. Nobody cares about his chinese room anymore. Calling it "chinese" was so western-centric, by the way. Beurk.

[Zero]

I'm sorry about your dog. I don't know how to say it correctly in English. Please receive my compassion.