Eliezer Yudkowsky: First, as I started reading, I was going to correct you and point out that Daniel Dennett thinks a GLUT can be conscious, as that is exactly his response to Searle’s Chinese Room argument, thinking that I didn’t need to read further. Fortunately, I did read the whole thing and find out, when I look at the substance of what the two of you believe, it’s the same. While Dennett would say that the GLUT running in the Chinese Room is conscious, what you were really asking was, what is the source of the consciousness? Since that GLUT would have to be written by a consciousness, you two are in agreement.
Second, I don’t think you have ruled out (shown to be low enough) the possibility of randomly picking out a GLUT that just happens to be conscious. While there is a low probability of picking just the right GLUT that happens to implement just the right lookup table, it’s no different than any of the other unlikely things that had to happen for us to all be here. I mean, a certain group of people will point to the low probability of physical constants being just right/self-replicating molecules forming/single-celled organisms becoming multicellular/wing or flagellum or cell or blood clotting evolving, as evidence it couldn’t have happened by chance (that there was a consciousness behind it). In response, one can just point to the anthropic principle—why wouldn’t that apply here? We could only be here to observe the universes where random processes grabbed that one GLUT that implemented something functionally similar to consciousness.
Finally, I had assumed through this series of posts that you were taking some position sharply divergent from Dennett. I mean, if the whole concept of qualia is incoherent, a universe lacking that incoherence isn’t so impossible, right?
While there is a low probability of picking just the right GLUT that happens to implement just the right lookup table, it’s no different than any of the other unlikely things that had to happen for us to all be here.
No. No. No. No. No.
The probability of picking the “just the right” GLUT is vastly smaller than any mere physical chain of events – there’s no chance!
Wow, a lot of things to say at this point.
Eliezer Yudkowsky: First, as I started reading, I was going to correct you and point out that Daniel Dennett thinks a GLUT can be conscious, as that is exactly his response to Searle’s Chinese Room argument, thinking that I didn’t need to read further. Fortunately, I did read the whole thing and find out, when I look at the substance of what the two of you believe, it’s the same. While Dennett would say that the GLUT running in the Chinese Room is conscious, what you were really asking was, what is the source of the consciousness? Since that GLUT would have to be written by a consciousness, you two are in agreement.
Second, I don’t think you have ruled out (shown to be low enough) the possibility of randomly picking out a GLUT that just happens to be conscious. While there is a low probability of picking just the right GLUT that happens to implement just the right lookup table, it’s no different than any of the other unlikely things that had to happen for us to all be here. I mean, a certain group of people will point to the low probability of physical constants being just right/self-replicating molecules forming/single-celled organisms becoming multicellular/wing or flagellum or cell or blood clotting evolving, as evidence it couldn’t have happened by chance (that there was a consciousness behind it). In response, one can just point to the anthropic principle—why wouldn’t that apply here? We could only be here to observe the universes where random processes grabbed that one GLUT that implemented something functionally similar to consciousness.
Finally, I had assumed through this series of posts that you were taking some position sharply divergent from Dennett. I mean, if the whole concept of qualia is incoherent, a universe lacking that incoherence isn’t so impossible, right?
No. No. No. No. No.
The probability of picking the “just the right” GLUT is vastly smaller than any mere physical chain of events – there’s no chance!