If the universe elaborated its need to make everything that could happen, happen serially rather than geographically or in a cascade, then each possible kind of reality might last anywhere from minutes to centuries.
17m — Vera Mont

That's what I was sort of thinking. Bizarre to think everything you know could simply turn on it's head over time to create a new reality. If nothing stays the same forever, the laws of physics and chemistry would merely be some sort of transient observation in the long journey of transformation.

If you had my genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences would you not be typing these words when and where I am typing these words? If I had your genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences would I not be reading these words when and where you are reading these words? — Truth Seeker

All this amounts to is "If I were you, would I be you?" Obviously. But stating that if initial conditions are identical outcomes are identical (determinism) only works in the hypothetical realm where time and space can be controlled as variables. That's why 2 genetically identical twins no matter how similar in behaviour and habits, will never be considered "one person in two places simultaneously". Even the slightest differences compound over time into deviating outcomes.

Given the fact that quantum decoherence occurs, how would quantum phenomena such as superposition, indeterminacy and entanglement have any effect on the macroscopic world? — Truth Seeker

It already does influence to macroscopic world: quantum computing, the electronic industry and new banking security systems. However if you want an older example of quantum influence than quantum biology is the place to go: Photosynthesis, magnetic navigation in animals and birds, olfaction, enzyme catalysis, many of which use either tunnelling or entanglement. Heres a reference:

https://www.azoquantum.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=281#:~:text=Photosynthesis%20is%20the%20most%20significant,is%20a%20quantum%20mechanical%20effect.&text=Quantum%20mechanics%20is%20thought%20to,at%20the%20micro%20and%20nanoscales.

So it would see that not everything is so determined as one might imagine. Quantum effects influence the macroscopic world.

So, how can we claim that we are culpable for our choices? — Truth Seeker

Even if reality was entirely deterministic, it's deterministic for everyone. So if someone breaks the law against another person that then suffers, and both were entirely predetermined acts, you can argue the punishment given and justice served as also entirely predetermined. If determinism applies to everyone than it applies to no one in the sense of culpability and what that means to most everyone.

How can quantum randomness remove determinants and constraints from the decision-making process in sentient organisms? — Truth Seeker

In a moment to moment capacity - quantum effects likely don't impact on decision making unless they are the basis of decision making. We still don't full understand the brain or consciousness. And quantum neuroscience is a new field.

But I think quantum effects likely make a predictive model deviate from actual events over longer periods of time and when larger magnitudes of variables are a contributing factor to the outcome.

Ah okay. Fair. Then where is the reaching the bottom in under 1 minute coming from? Surely even if halfing the time with every step, a minute will still eventually be exceeded somewhere along the infinite steps and before this so called "finite bottom" to an infinite staircase?!? Doesn't make sense mathematically either.

The most interesting thing I found about this is the unidirectional counting. You can count from 1 toward infinity but you can't begin counting from infinity toward 1.

He's accelerating exponentially along a linear trajectory (the infinite staircase). So he's approaching the speed of light. Hence relativity becomes an integral factor. One that hasn't been addressed in this "paradoxic" hypothetical.

Is this not a question of special relativity? It seems paradoxic until we apply physics.

create the fantasy of “first universal principles” to avoid our responsibility to look closer to see how we are ordinarily able to work things out, or work harder to become intelligible to each other, because we always can. — Antony Nickles

I'm not convinced that the desire for a universal principal is simply the result of us wanting to shirk our responsibility or culpability.

Is it a fantasy either? Who really knows. For me that's like saying the desire to understand gravity is a way for us to avoid the responsibility of looking closer at why we pushed Joanne over and made her fall to the ground.

, this does not mean the macroscopic world is like the quantum world. — Truth Seeker

"Like" the quantum world or "influenced" by the quantum world? The macroscopic world is for sure unlike quantum mechanics. But I would imagine the system of reality is holistic from the smallest (quantum) to the largest, interconnected and thus dependent on these behaviours.

If the macroscopic is hard deterministic and the quantum is not hard deterministic then there is some bizarre disconnect between them and I doubt that is the case. Quantum effects effect atoms which effect molecules which effects higher and higher order complexity and systems.

If you were thinking that evolution could occur analogously with some kind of "artificial environment." — Pantagruel

Well it would (if you set up a system of natural selection). But in an artificial environment that doesn't perfectly mirror nature itself, the outcome will not be the same as nature. That isn't to say the outcome wouldn't be desirable or useful/practical, it just wouldn't have occurred in a setting of a natural ecosystem.

It depends.

Genes are subject to mutations and epigenetics (switching on or off) - both of which are subject to environmental conditions. We understand that many environmental conditions are seemingly chaotic and unpredictable: for example - the weather forecast. Beyond around 10 days the variables compound exponentially rendering further accurate forecast useless conjecture.

Quantum physics is yet another realm in which certainty dissolves into a cloud of ultimately uncertain and merely probabilistic outcomes. Where even the act of measurement itself influences the measured.

The "butterfly effect" suggests that any slight change in initial circumstances alters the entire system eventually. If this is the case, then hard determinism can be cast out the window.

In that case, it is ultimately the agent who is culpable. Because chaos and uncertainty reigns Iver hard determinism.

I think we both would agree that an omniscient and omnipotent being would be omniculpable. I don't know if any omniscient and omnipotent being exists. If such a being existed, he or she should be sued for failing to prevent all suffering, inequality, injustice, and death. — Truth Seeker

It's a neat thought, holding what essentially accounts for a "God" culpable for all existent misfortune. One of the popular reasons for atheists to opt for atheism.

However I do wonder where "free will" falls in this argument. My first tenet of culpability. True agency.

One would imagine if anyone is to truly have free will then such an omniscient omnipotent entity is simply rolling the dice of uncertainty and passively observing the outcome.

Given that such an entity did not directly have any input into the outcome in this sense (in order to allow for freedom for choice/free will) it seems counterintuitive to then hold them responsible.

The only way such an entity is responsible is if the system is fully deterministic - ie a direct result of said entities actions

So in essence "trial and error" + the "apology/ due humility -forgiveness" dichotomy is the human condition regarding the attainment of knowledge rather than the endeavour to find a first universal principal?

Also I'd like to take this time to commend you on your synesthesis of the various input of different interlocutors in the discussion. It's very refreshing to see a multitude of "in-discussion" references being made in a single post. Well done on that.

I'd kind of hoped that by asking the question, the absurdity of the idea would become apparent — Banno

Well I gave you an answer based within absurdity did I not? Something that is unapproachable, unknowable.

. However it seems completely unlikely that the resources to do this will ever be committed authentically - which is to say devoid of some underlying economic driver which, so long as it exists, will preclude the evolutionary development of the thing in question. — Pantagruel

In this case I would like if you consider the ecosystem as an economy of sorts. Limited resources (money we'll say) in a space or playing field where sentient beings compete for this currency.

I would like to posit that natural ecology operates in a similar way to humam economies.

1. It is competition based.
2. Resources are finite.
3. What drives these systems is success orientated.

Unsuccessful living things, like unsuccessful industries or companies are either absorbed (hybridised) or made extinct (dissolved), leaving the niche (or gap in the market) to be assumed by something more fit (entrepreneurial or innovative).

I have a personal tendency to parallel phenomena rather than make them distinct as I believe the reality we live in is ultimately reiterative - governed by the same basic permeating laws.

Interesting thought. I would think that there is a sort of evolutionistic survival of the fittest going on in our brains, at the level of different neural nets encoding different competing paradigms with which to model reality. — wonderer1

100%. It's been studied that neurons that are out-competed or in other words become "redundant" -suffer a lack of growth factor reception -ie a messenger chemical that promotes their survival and connectivity. They thus basically shrivel up and die due to inattention. This seems very similar to natural selection based on selective nourishment and competition. It is the basis of "neural pruning" - a healthy process of neurological development that occurs at a young age, and has been implicated on the onset of dementia in the elderly.

Curious indeed.

So it seems neurons survive in much the same way groups of living beings do in an ever changing environment. "If you're 'useful' or 'fit' you shall be kept."

That begs the question; knowing AI has been subjected to a similar natural selection process in the formation of their neural network, could AI indeed be approaching consciousness as we compound and condense their networks into a format that is most 'fit' to adapt (ie be intelligent or i dare say "aware") toward its environment.

I think the one who is morally culpable is the one with "awareness".

Awareness can be broken down into the following tenets:
1). Agency - the power to exert independent or autonomous choice/ free will through action.

2). Knowledge - the ability to understand both themselves and the world around them.

3). Empathy - the trust/faith (without proof) that they are not the only awareness that exists. An anti-solipsist acknowledgement of the existence of "multiple identical agents" - ie others that can experience the same sensations: suffering and joy as the self can.

Following these tenets we can exclude certain groups from culpability:

1. "The inanimate" are not culpable - a gun is not culpable for a homicide.

2. "The deluded or ignorant" are not culpable (they dont understand what they're doing even if they have good intentions). Example - the clinically insane, those with severe mental illness or who have been heavily indoctrinated with propaganda.

3. Psychopaths, uber-narcissists and perhaps AI - if one is incapable genetically or otherwsie, of being able to "walk in the shoes of another" or relate to another awareness as equals, then they are not culpable for selfish acts nor their consequences.

There is considerable overlap between the three tenets. They're difficult to separate.

For example if AI is intelligent but possesses no agency of its own, then questioning its empathy is irrelevant.

Similarly, one can argue a psychopath lacks certain knowledge of others experience, and so discussing empathy could be regarded as irrelevant.

In the end due to the difficulty in distinctly separating the tenets, I reduce them to one simple and all encompassing definition - "awareness."

By that definition I determine who is morally culpable for the results of their individual experience of reality.

Computer code is a bunch of symbols, recall. Could a bunch of symbols become consciously alive? — jkop

Are biologically active molecules not in some ways also "symbols" ie structures which "say" something - exert a particular defined or prescribed effect.

For example: Adrenaline = "panic" in some sense, or "prepare to fight or run". In a way this is the language in biology.

ATP = "currency/power". Dopamine = reward. Testosterone and estrogen = "attract" or "mate/reproduce". In effect these molecules - like the code of a computer - are basic instructions or commands that interact in complex functions and hierarchies.

Symbology is our way of understanding nature. The intrinsic or applied meaning of phenomena and objects.

At its very basic, I believe consciousness is an act of symbols internalisation, manipulation/integration and manufacture. In this case, is it as far fetched to consider that perhaps the nature of a reasonably logic sentient being (humans) is to inadvertently externalism our own essence the creative and innovative acts we accomplish (in this case AI)..

Perhaps one does not require an understanding of consciousness to imbue it into the animate. We are after all, taking simple tools and combining them in every more sophisticated ways until they're so holistic they seem to have autonomous intelligence.

Could we per chance be at a point where our knowledge of nature's laws are advanced enough that we are simulating evolution. If so I don't think it's impossible to get a similar outcome from such processes -namely sentience.

. Maybe not perfectly, but without some degree of confidence in what we're doing, we would be utterly paralyzed. — Vera Mont

This is very true. In a way we need to trust something even if we have no concrete nor absolute evidence as to why.

And that unknown will just have to wait patiently until we either figure it out or don't. — Vera Mont

I'm inclined to believe it's a moving target. I think knowledge and uncertainty are mutually dependent and you simply cannot remove one entirely without destroying the other.

So do you supose that there could be an algorithm, a method, that gives us truth in any given case? — Banno

That's an interesting question. However such a universal algorithm, method or truth principal for all counts would have to transcend the hard problem, for a start. Unifying both objevtive scientific truths and personal/ subjective/ experiential or private ones.

Not only that, it would have to be so depersonalised that I wonder if human perception, cognition or language is simply too flawed, imprecise or biased to ever fully appreciate it without immediately corrupting it upon interpretation.

I think it is likely that some universal primordial rule or phenomenon does exist that gave rise to every phenomenon in existence. But because its so "undifferentiated" for lack of a better word, that qualifying it is probably inherently impossible.

How does one qualify the universal quality? How does one define that which defines everything? In any meaningful or practical way.

As you have probably realised by now this seemingly parallels with the Eastern philosophy/ spirituality of Daoism/Taoism. An unspoken or unspeakable truth that runs through nature.

Should it indeed exist, the greatest question would be how close can we come to knowing it. Is simple acknowledging we cannot know it the greatest definition one can achieve? Reminds me of Socrates "I know that I know nothing".

That's fair.

I only ask because as far as I've considered: scientific method has its limitations, philosophy is all too often bogged down by semantics and a viscious cycle of "what do you mean exactly by....", spirituality is at best vague and religions cannot shirk many of their arbitrary and dogmatic principles.

So it seems looking for something fundamental, trustworthy and true either exists and requires factoring in all of these pillars of society or...fundamental truths aren't accessible to us, or ....and probably the most unencouraging of them all...absolute truths don't exist..

Whatever the case may be the limits of trust in the experience and knowledge of others, as with the self, only go so far. The rest is in the realm of the unknown, the uncertain.

I wonder if giving AI the ability to "forget" might confer a sense of passage of time: ie a present, a past (which is ever more vague and patchy the further back it recalls) and a sense of the future (by anticipatory deduction from the other two).

For it to fear death, it would have to be alive — Wayfarer

Maybe. Or perhaps if it had a primary and immutable directive to "continue to process information" then by proxy it would do everything in it's power to not be "turned off". As it would have failed its primary directive. That does "not compute" for such an algorithm.

Now is that fear of death? I'm not so sure. Its certainly a contentious subject open to debate. But I know our survival instinct as a whole is "almost" an immutable drive/directive (with the exception of the suicidal and martyrs).

I just wonder if the behaviour of an AI that doesn't want to be turned off or "die" would then emulate the behaviors we see in humans who don't wish to die. That's a very interesting posit but one fret with potential ethical implications.

. I know which is which — Vera Mont

Well there's the crux of the situation. How do you know that for absolute verbatim truth.

Ive often been convinced I knew which was which to later be sorely corrected. Isn't everything we hold as beliefs attributed some sort of self appointed veracity (otherwise we wouldn't believe them) despite what others or reality for that matter might suggest upon "testing the metal".

I think to know exactly where ones knowledge ends and their ignorance or delusion begins - suggests omniscient qualities of total awareness.

Surely ignorance begins somewhere within "that which you believe to be true and known" which is in fact, incorrect. That which one is adamant they know to be true, but which is not.

There was never a point in the universe, that the nothing existed. This is what is hard to comprehend. — L'éléphant

I never believed there was such a point in the universe when nothing existed. I dont find that hard to comprehend. My focus on randomess is not contignent on that.

Not really sure what it has to do with randomness as a phenomenon. If randomness is born from the very fundamentals of physics (which quantum physics seems to suggest), then even if everything from that point onwards is deterministic, explicable and predictable, the underlying origin is still random and unpredictable.

In that case randomness would appear to trump the determined and explicable, the patterned. If we cannot know exactly where particles will appear or annihilate but only give a statistical wave function of the distribution of possible locations, that would entail a trickle up effect of integral chaos within the system.

I don't believe all information in the universe is predictable because of heisenbergs uncertainty principle. Sure 99% of things can be non random but even if the fundamental 1% is that throws a huge spanner in the works

Do you believe that human-constructed artefacts, which are engineered to correct errors in order to function within a predefined scope, are subject to the same emergent possibilities as organic systems, which can exploit apparent errors and thereby expand their scope of operations? — Pantagruel

In all honesty, I don't know. Hence the OP.

But if scope is what we're focusing on here, I don't see why we can't open the predefined scope of AI to an undefined scope as it is (relatively speaking) in nature. If we can somehow recreate the conditions of a naturally evolving system and the scope of that, in computers, I don't think it's impossible to conceive of AGI inheriting the same emergent phenomena- ie awareness.

that somehow, e.g. with increased complexity, it would suddenly become a duplication. It won't — jkop

Unless, consciousness is a product of complexity. As we still don't know what makes matter aware or animate, we cannot exclude the possibility that it is complexity of information transfer that imbues this "sensation". If that is the case, and consciousness is indeed high grades of negativity entropy, then its not so far fetched to believe that we can create it in computers .

Do you believe most people generally trend towards wisdom/ lack of delusion with age and experience? Or is this you referring to your specific case.

You are asking: "what is true?" — Banno

Not only what is true, but is truth a spectrum or just binary (true or false), are some things more true than others, how do we compare in any meaningful way subjective and objevtive truths, how long are things true for or are things in the past present and future true regardless of whether they endure or not, or whether they have happened or not, or whether we know of them or not, how do we qualify what is true - what ought proof be? Are there unknowable truths? If so what use are they to us? Who knows more or the most of what is true and who knows the least.

It's a broad rumination about truth in general. But yes I am asking "what is true". As well as its auxiliary questions.

The difference is, I think, in what makes a simulation different from a duplication. We can instruct a simulation to respond to words and objects in ways that appear non-instructed, spontaneous, emotional etc. But what for? Is indiscernibility from being human worth striving for? A simulation is never a duplication — jkop

But you could say the same about me. Am I a simulation or a duplication of what another human might say in response to your commentary?

I don't know if I agree with Verisatium's reasoning in this regard (that's the video that is referred to above which was the source for this thread) - chaos doesn't contain or convey information of any kind. It can't be compressed but how is that a criterion for 'information-bearing'? At 3:17 where he says that a completely compressed file is completely random - not sure about that, either. Otherwise, how could it be de-compressed, or intrepreted, at the receiving end? If it were totally random, then there'd be nothing to interpret. So I'm still not sold on the 'information=entropy' equation.

But I like that he recognises that quantum physics undermines LaPlace's daemon. Kudos for that. — Wayfarer

I'm inclined to agree with you. I don't see how a compressed file can be both random and decryptable. Something random would not be informative at all. Perhaps I was mislead by some parts of the video

They were talking about examples such as the sun rising. Randomness is not the opposite of atmospheric stability or climate stability. — L'éléphant

The sun rising is not an atmospheric stability nor climate stability phenomenon. Let's not conflate the cosmological with local planetary climate trends.

A mechanism will always be just a mechanism, however much it sounds like it is thinking, it isn't. — Pantagruel

Until its not. Assuming life emerged somehow from inanimate chemicals, there was a transition there somewhere from mindless replication or statistically enabled organisation, to agency.

If we are to believe life emerged from the purely mechanical, we cannot exclude the possibility that AGI can do the same.

. How could such attributes be genuinely embedded in an artificial system? — Wayfarer

The only way I can think of is to imbue it with a chronic angst or fear of death or suffering. It is after all the driving force behind survival and adaptation of animals (at least, I suspect even more than just them).

In my opinion if you want human-conciousness-like intelligent behaviour, you must provide the same human conditions: no immortality, no indestructibility or at least an imbedded concept that that is the indeed the case.

The question then is ... is it unethical to create an AGI that suffers and fears - undergoes distress, merely to make its objectives a necessity/imperative rather than an absent minded mechanistic calculation.

p.s., While I don't mean to turn the thread into yet another discussion regarding the possibility of free will, I honestly don't find any other way of frankly addressing the issue in the OP. — javra

Don't worry I get your point. And you're right, we still don't yet understand free will or whether it truly exists for us. Let alone for an AGI. I guess in that case a retrospective analysis may be most apt.

That is to say if an AGI seems to be autonomous and wish, dream or aspire toward certain ends, given the parallel with human ability to do the same, we'd have to cautiously assume it has free will and its objevtive orientation is independent of us in entirety or at least enough to deem it an "agent" rather than a fancy tool.

You might be surprised by the responses that you would get from GPT-4, Gemini Ultra, Gemini Pro 1.5, Claude 3 Sonnet or Claude 3 Opus. I haven't asked them yet, but I plan to do it and I can report the results here if you don't have access to some of them. — Pierre-Normand

I have access to some of them but I'm concerned their responses are very much controlled and censored by the tech companies that operate them. Not sure you'd get any answer beyond something g generic, vague, politically correct and ultimately unfruitful.

But no support for was provided. — L'éléphant

Reference? — jgill

https://youtu.be/sMb00lz-IfE?si=7hnqXoiyVOdTHOJL

I don't know about this OP. It is uncharacteristic of Benj96 topics. — L'éléphant

Interesting. What is characteristic of my topics? I'll admit perhaps I jumped the gun on this one but I was captivated by veritasiums video on the notion and wished to share it here.

Please see reference link

Those two statements seem inconsistent. How could something gradually emerge if there is no passage of time — Relativist

Entropy. Entropy isn't contingent on living things. Passage of time is (the perception of Entropy as a unidirectional arrow of events) because it relies on memory and comparison beyween memory and current sensory input

I don't really get what you're asking. I'm saying that the ability to be aware of time has to evolve simultaneously with the organisation of a system. You can't suddenly have a living system devoid of time perception and see if it starves to death. Its a hypothetical.

One didn't fabricate this living organism from thin air. It gradually emerged.

without memory in the most primitive sense, the brain could not do any repetitive task with regularity, predictability etc. Starving to death would be the least of their problems.

The innate sense of passage of time from circadian rhythms in the brain of an organism allows ot to stabilises itself (maintain order ie not die).

This is why I think the passage of time differs from entropy in that one (entropy) occurs regardless of consciousness, but time - is the mental equivalent of entropy. An analogy for it based on the ability to sense a past, therefore have a present, therefore by deductive anticipate a future.

it will never even live in the first place, how could it? Oops I forgot to breathe. The nervous system requires memory for comparison to the current state for basic repetitive functions

Since Energy per se is aimless causation, if the emergence of life from non-life is a sign of anti-entropy (i.e. progress instead of regress), then some explanation for the mono-directional Arrow of Time*3 is needed, philosophically if not scientifically. — Gnomon

It's possible time doesnt exist outside the realm of what living things perceive.

I give you an example: imagine a living thing with zero memory. It doesn't even recall the last millisecond of its existence.

Does it experience? Can it live -feel hunger, a urge to breathe, instinctive compulsions? Can it anticipate a future? Would it be capable of learning and adapting?

In this case, positive causation and entropy are mutually synergistic.

Without positive causation, entropy cannot be observed (ie the arrow of time cannot be experienced). Without entropy, positive causation or the tendency towards order, sumilarly cannot exist