What behavior would unambiguously tell an alien that humans are conscious?
I have no idea, but there needn’t be one. The alien may be just out of luck. He’ll still be mistaken. My point is that you cannot use an outside view that you know to be mistaken, as an argument for anything in particular.
This can be simply an instinctive reaction related to saturation of some resource or a chemical reaction due presence of some inhibitor (e.g. auto emissions).
Well yes, it could; but are you genuinely asserting that this is in fact the case? If not, what’s your point?
I don’t understand what you’re trying to argue here. You presumably do not actually believe that humans are non-conscious and care only about replication. So where are you going with the alien?
My point was that, were we to see the “future of humanity”, what may look to us now as “replicators who only cared about making more copies of themselves and might not even be conscious” could be nothing of the sort, just like the current humanity looking to an alien as “replicators” is nothing of the sort. We are the alien and have no capabilities to judge the future.
Ok, but we are discussing hypothetical scenarios and can define the hypotheticals as we like; we are not directly observing the posthumans and thus liable to be misled by what we see. You cannot be mistaken about something you’re making up! In short, you’re just fighting the hypothetical. I suggest that this is not productive.
Am i? Fighting the hypothetical is unproductive when you challenge the premises of the hypothetical scenario. Kaj Sotala’s hypothetical was “If all that remained of humanity were replicators who only cared about making more copies of themselves and might not even be conscious”. I pointed out that we are in no position to judge the future replicators based on our current understanding of humanity and its goals. Or what “being conscious” might mean. Does this count as challenging the premises?
I have no idea, but there needn’t be one. The alien may be just out of luck. He’ll still be mistaken. My point is that you cannot use an outside view that you know to be mistaken, as an argument for anything in particular.
Well yes, it could; but are you genuinely asserting that this is in fact the case? If not, what’s your point?
I don’t understand what you’re trying to argue here. You presumably do not actually believe that humans are non-conscious and care only about replication. So where are you going with the alien?
My point was that, were we to see the “future of humanity”, what may look to us now as “replicators who only cared about making more copies of themselves and might not even be conscious” could be nothing of the sort, just like the current humanity looking to an alien as “replicators” is nothing of the sort. We are the alien and have no capabilities to judge the future.
Ok, but we are discussing hypothetical scenarios and can define the hypotheticals as we like; we are not directly observing the posthumans and thus liable to be misled by what we see. You cannot be mistaken about something you’re making up! In short, you’re just fighting the hypothetical. I suggest that this is not productive.
Am i? Fighting the hypothetical is unproductive when you challenge the premises of the hypothetical scenario. Kaj Sotala’s hypothetical was “If all that remained of humanity were replicators who only cared about making more copies of themselves and might not even be conscious”. I pointed out that we are in no position to judge the future replicators based on our current understanding of humanity and its goals. Or what “being conscious” might mean. Does this count as challenging the premises?