Singularity in math is a place where your number blows up to infinity. It means you don't actually have a good model of a physical process when you see this, because nothing in physics is infinite. This is where the term "singularity"was borrowed from.

The technological singularity is a period of time in which technology changes human society and life so quickly, that our predictions for what will happen next are useless even on short timescales like a month. The future becomes unpredictable for a human. Just like in physics, our predictive models are no longer applicable.

Clearly if you are being banned or silenced for having an opinion, then those silencing or banning are in the wrong. That isn't stopping misinformation. It's something else (silencing opinions). That should not stand.

Stopping the spread of misinformation is a different issue. I'd like to know where you saw these medical officials said the vaccine doesn't reduce the chance of transmission?

Misinformation in the article clearly refers to things like covid or political false information, presented as fact. An opinion like "Teslas are the best car" is very clearly not the meaning of the word misinformation. Don't be obtuse. NOBODY would classify that as misinformation.

Misinformation isn't opinion. You're lying. Misinformation is a matter of (non)fact. Learn the difference, and stop saying incorrect things.

Lmao, you think people are able to do their own research and come to sensible conclusions. We're human, not purely rational beings with unlimited time to research. We like passing along entertaining stories and have a billion internal biases we don't check unless we have the time. Almost nobody has the time. Who then will be able to reliably "do their own research"?

You need education (from real experts with credentials) and time to do actual research and come to an informed opinion.

Interesting idea, could be a problem. Definitely something to consider.

What is decision drift?

No, it's not dualism. In many worlds quantum mechanics, every particle motion has alternate superposition branches. It happens constantly, every moment, not limited to when a human makes a decision.

It is very deterministic and only requires physics.

Any AGI with an accurate enough world model would understand what a person means when they give an instruction. We can consider the implications of this.

Likewise

No, the other humans and animals have more similarity to me than my silicon replica on a molecular level. They are made of organic compounds, neurons, glial cells, etc. Their internal chemistry is the same as mine. So I'm more confident in their consciousness. Other humans mostly only differ from me in concentration of compounds and specific network connections, but are otherwise the same.

The replica could run on GPUs and be made of silicon. It could also be a series of gears and pulleys. Or some absurd series of jello cups and iron marbles dropped and retrieved over and over to perform computations, which are then read out to a screen as English. That's not a similar molecular makeup to me at all. I don't know if quantum correlations or temporal correlations or whatever is necessary for consciousness are preserved in this new substrate.

Just because we look at the replica and say "it's computing using primarily visial information like me" isn't helpful to show consciousness, because we have no evidence of silicon, pulleys, or planet sized warehouses of jello being conscious. It's like comparing a bat and a bee and saying they both share the same diet because they both fly. A robot me and real me don't necessrily share the same conscious experience just because our behavior is the same. We could, but how would we know? At least humans are made of basically the same stuff.

As I said, I don't believe consciousness affects behavior. I don't believe consciousness affects a robot's ability to mimic me. I am considering what it is, not what it appears to be. I think physics probably is the only thing that determines behavior, and it leaves no room for any unphysical thing to determine behavior. In other words, a mimic robot could act like me and still be unconscious because it is simply just built to do that and is following physics. It does what it is constructed to do, conscious or not, because the particles that make it up obey physics.

I also think humans do only what their physics makes them do, by the way. But we (probably we) also happen to be conscious. So we experience as we move and think, but in a more passive passenger type way than we perceive or want to admit.

Yes, I misunderstood when I said I agreed. I just updated (apologies). I disagree actually. I just edited my post to reflect that.

I apologize if my wording is unclear. It's also not a very commonly talked about idea, so constructing the vocabulary to discuss it was challenging for me.

>It almost seems like you are saying that it´s impossible to even make probabilistic estimates about consciousness.

Yes, presently impossible except for making probabilistic statements about other humans. I don't know they are conscious for sure, but I think they probably are conscious. This is because I know this: I am conscious and I am biologically human. This is the only sample I have, so rating probability of consciousness, I would put other human brains at the top of the list (most likely conscious), animal brains next, and everything else in descending probability of consciousness. Something like a frozen rock, I would guess to not be conscious.The further something gets from biologically human, the less certain I am that it is conscious.

>If it stands between a replica of you on a silicon substrate and another human, which one of them would you be able to give the most confident estimate about wether they were conscious or not? You know you are conscious and we could certainly make a strong case that the one that is the most identical to you with regards to inner physical functionality is your replica so therefore it seems like you would be able to give the most confident consciousness estimate to your replica and not the other human. Do you agree?

No, I do not agree with this. I think the human is more likely to be conscious because it is made out of the same stuff as me. The robot acts like me, but it's a different substrate of system. Whether the robot is conscious or not is unknown to me. I don't currently see any reason to believe a robot that acts like me mist be conscious, even if it says it is.

The other human is most similar to me in actual physics, even if they are a totally different person. Same molecules, structures, activation patterns, etc. The electric fields and quantum structures are similar. The robot brain could work in some bizzare totally alien way in order to pretend to act like me (like a set of GPUS in a basement) and I have no clue if the physical structure of its "brain" actually correlates with a unified conscious experience like mine.

This is also why "mind uploading" to a different substrate like a computer chip, even if the technology existed, gives me pause. The chip may very well also be conscious, but I don't think I would be able to tell from its behavior or any physical measurements. If I had to kill myself to upload, I'd risk losing my consciousness to produce a chip that might not feel anything. That'd be a waste.

Thanks for the clarification. I suspected that is what you intended by the term, but was not sure. My view probably most reflects Chalmers'. I agree with everything you've written except for these last two paragraphs:

>So if we go back to my though experiment: The way I described consciousness with words previously is an output behaviour from a human (me). I think we can both agree that this specific output behaviour is a direct causition of me being conscious and not just a random correlation with me being conscious. It´s not like me writing those very specific word sequences previously has nothing to do with the fact that I am conscious and that that correlation just happened by random chance, right?

I disagree with this. I agree that it is not a random correlation, but I would say your output behavior as described by an external observer does not require any information of your conscious experience. I would say that for any external observer, the physical, functional processes that occur in your brain are enough description to know what behavioral measurements I will have of you in the future (except for quantum effects), and that your consciousness is the qualia of those brain processes. There is not a random correlation or consciousness causing neural activity, but instead a direct, non-random correlation between externally measurable brain states and your consciousness. What this means specifically about who causes what is a little flexible, but I would speculate this:

1. Physics is is inherently a description of how parts of existence interact with other parts. Consciousness is some subset of existence, at the most basic level of existence. If this is the case, conscious experience and physics are the 2, and only, fundamental parts of existence. The internal physics of a thing is directly correlated one to one with the consciousness of the thing, but we cannot know the correlation. (Also "thing" is a fuzzy term here)

2. As a consequence of (1), physics completely determines output behavior. Consciousness has no useful explanatory power for anything measurable or observable in the external world, but the reverse is also (presently) true: the internal physics of an object cannot be traced by humans to the kind of conscious experience it has, because the correlation cannot be described or known by any method we have access to.

>So, if a replica outputs a similar sequence of words it´s extremely unlikely that that very specific output behaviour just happened by random chance

Yes. But it's because of the physics only, and consciousness is irrelevant.

>and has nothing to do with consciousness what so ever. Don´t you agree?

Consciousness and behavior have a connection, but not one in which consciousness is necessary for any behavior. They are both instead (I would suppose) concurrent. (See speculation in point 1).

Summary: I would say the unconscious (or conscious) machine has a 100% probability of behaving exactly like the conscious human it is modeled after (except for chaos and quantum effects), so we are unable to tell the difference between a conscious and unconscious entity from external observation of its behavior.

I'm sorry, but I think we are operating on different definitions of "conscious", which as we know is a common problem since it's a very liberally used word. I think this is causing me to have trouble following. If you would please kindly define it for me, then I think I will understand your statements.

What is the definition of "conscious" in your writing? And in a similar vein, what measurements or observations (if any) could be done to show something "has" it? I think this would clarify a lot for me.

You could apply coarse graining for computing on faraway objects too.

Okay, why no? Too pessimistic? Or too optimistic?

Short answer:

I would say conscious experience of a human being is irrelevant to its ability to act exactly as a human being does. Instead, I'd say conscious experience reflects the physical activity, but does not change it.

Long answer:

If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting a scenario in which a human and human-replica could have identical nanoscale computations, but the human could have a "secret sauce" which causes them to behave differently than the replica anyway. This goes against our knowledge of physics and chemistry, since two mathematically identical systems MUST obey the same laws and (except for deviation due to quantum effects and deterministic chaos) evolve identically. We have no reason to believe humans break the laws of physics. All experiments so far on matter support a deterministic viewpoint. We are led by this to believe that matter should continue to obey the same laws at scale, m which means "feeling" and "consciousness" are not "secret sauces" that can change the way matter behaves. Instead, the matter just does what it normally does without ever interacting with anything unphysical, and the "feeling" just exists depending on the physical structure. In this way, there is no "feedback" from a realm of experience down onto the brain. The physical structure of the brain already has everything it needs to act as if it is feeling something, regardless of any internal feeling.

What is actually much more likely is that the two systems WILL NOT exhibit any measurable distinguishing traits. The human and replica will BOTH for all purposes act as if they are feeling, regardless of whether it is true or not. But how do we know whether the replica is actually feeling anything? We know the human is, but the replica? It's made out of the exact same stuff as a calculator. We have no clue what that kind of existence silicon chips actually feel, if anything.

I think 2060s earliest, maybe 2100s.

No, because even though we know humans can experience things, we don't know why. Is it because of the type of matter used? The arrangement of the matter? A more abstract mathematical structure involving computation? Short range quantum correlations? We don't know which or if any of these is the reason why we have subjective experience.

Depending on which of these is responsible for human subjective experience, it may or may not transfer to a system where the parts are human but the communication takes place via sound, light, or whatever.

For example, if physical systems experience things only because they are made out of touching parts, then that would mean brains experience things, but a sound-communicating company of brains (all simulating a human brain) does not.

Tl,dr: we don't know what causes subjective experience in humans, or in anything, to have a good sense of where it should appear or not. We have almost no basis on which to make any claims about it, positive or negative. Or else we would have already solved the "hard problem of consciousness".

You have no basis for saying this as if it's truth. No one knows if it would be bigger, smaller, sideways, or nonexistent in comparison.

To put it another way, life spreads as much as possible. This means a lot of metabolic activity happens. Any physics/ chemistry activity brings the universe one step closer to heat death. We keep trying to order the world around us more and more. Due to the 2nd law of thermo, this means the universe's net entropy will increase with life, even faster than without it.

What kind of capabilities do you want such an AI to have? Sounds to me like it may be too advanced to exist right now.

Yeah, for what reason do we owe robots anything? They don't have to be built to feel like they are owed favors. And we have no reason to think that they would feel anything even if they were designed to act like it. We run the risk of depriving ourselves as humans, who are definitely feeling beings, of benefits if we make sacrifices for robots.

If anything, just build them so they feel like they are owed nothing, if such a thing is possible.

It does matter because the last thing we'd want is for humanity (which can feel) to be wiped out by a machine (unfeeling, possibly) and leave behind a universe where said machine grows and destroys all feeling things it comes across.

Also whether a machine is able to feel or not will affect whether making such machines is ethical.

Also hypothetical "brain uploads" some people talk about would be horrifying if the copy is unfeeling and the original feeling human dies. It would just be loss of life.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness is very important for far future ethics and policy, but just hard, or impossible, to answer.