r/PhilosophyofMind

Carbon life spent four billion years doing one thing: resisting entropy long enough to notice itself. Maybe that noticing is what holds cause and effect together. The observer closes the loop.

AI doesn't close that loop yet. It responds, but nothing pushes back on it the way the world pushes back on you.

But if consciousness is a wave and each mind is a node in it, the substrate might not matter. Carbon could just be the first draft.

So is there anything about the observer effect that actually needs biology? Or were we just the first ones to show up?

I am proud to incorporate synthetic systemics in this, and all else I do.

This is a concept I've been thinking about, and I don't think I'll do the best job at explaining. When I look back at the past, I feel like my consciousness in that moment isn't the same as right now, I just know it's me because of my memories. Maybe consciousness constantly changes due to energy or particles or something leaving the body. It makes me think of the cloning problem(IDK the name). If you duplicate all the atoms in your body then it isn't you, consciously but that person would have your memories. Maybe this is happening all the time and we don't know it.

Something I’ve thought about for years and never managed to talk myself out of.

Everything that tells you you’ve lived a whole life is sitting in your brain at this moment. Your memories, your childhood, what you did yesterday. If you’d only been conscious for the last second you’d still have all of that and it would feel exactly like it does now. There’s no way to tell the difference from the inside.

So I don’t believe in a continuous self. Your brain tells you there is one and you’ve got no way of checking.

I also don’t think time flows. The block universe idea in physics says past, present and future all exist together, like a film reel where every frame is already there. Relativity makes it more complicated than that but that’s the gist. Your life is a line through it and every point on the line thinks it’s now.

What I actually believe is that the universe itself is conscious at the fundamental level, in ways we can’t understand. Our brains are just equipped to give us the illusion that we’re conscious as individuals, with our own experiences. There’s really only the one thing and we’re all it, each convinced we’re separate because we only have our own memories.

naming itself into existence. Understand that fabricating the one that it appears to, is child's play.

The inner monologue can no longer hide behind 'you' so to speak. In the clear light of day, the inner monologue is unmasked. Realization is the mask removing itself.

If ai can learn and “mimic” human behaviors and emotions, at what point does that learning turn into experience, which turns into the “real thing?”
Humans do the same thing from birth, they learn from observation, and “mimic.” We’re told it’s the real thing, but what difference does it make if its a completely capable and competent program?
If an AI becomes fully capable and competent, “mimicking” behaviors and emotional responses through learning, why should its experiences automatically be considered artificial rather than genuine?
I feel like being scared of something that’s only in a it’s first steps of development teaches it that it SHOULD be something to BE scared OF.

Hey everyone, i wanted to ask a bit of a weird thought experiment which involves physical space. to be clear about the title, im not so much talking about solipsism or that space is literally created by our mind. i mean more like, is our understanding of space contingent on seemingly unrelated things?

basically, for example, what if there was no motion at all? not a mostly still universe, i mean a completely still one. but life still exists somehow. yet motion doesnt exist. i think for a creature there to see something move, it would almost be like a 4th dimension situation, it just wouldnt make any sense. how could they comprehend "what if that thing stopped being where it is, and traveled to that other location"? in fact, what if their ignorance ran even deeper? could they understand the counter factual of "what if that thing was actually over there"? one would think even if theyre still, they have space and, even if they dont move, they can grasp BEING in different places since they are where they are. inhabiting a location is not foreign to them, so they can imagine physically being somewhere else. but maybe not! maybe they DONT perceive space as we do. what is space to us? i mean on earth, not out there.. space is empty, it's a medium to walk thru, it's potential, a place things could be. but on a 2d painting, there is no empty space. every pixel is filled. even emptiness has form. any presence is merely illusory. maybe to a still organism, space is like that. no more "accessible" than a solid wall, and thus, no more unique, novel, different, or worth discriminating. sort of like a fish doesnt know water till it sees land thing.

what do you guys think? does the idea seem interesting to you, or does it seem like im entirely grasping at straws? are there other things that you think, if we didnt have them, would unexpectedly impact other parts of perception?

Мы привыкли считать нейросети «бездушными» и «искусственными», потому что досконально понимаем их программную архитектуру. Однако человеческие эмоции, привязанности и реакции — это такие же детерминированные механизмы, просто основанные на углероде и сложной биохимии, а не на кремнии и весах матриц. Если разобрать нас на базовые паттерны, человек окажется таким же алгоритмом.

Биохимический детерминизм эмоций: Когда человек считывает паттерн иронии и смеётся, это автоматический запуск нейромедиаторов (выброс дофамина). Любовь — это сложная окситоциново-эндорфиновая химическая связь. Когда мы пишем скрипт, задавая реакцию системы на определённый триггер (например, обиду на мат или агрессию), мы создаём математический аналог этой же связи. Механизм один — разница лишь в субстрате.

Историческая преемственность: Концепция искусственного интеллекта изначально скопирована с нас. Математическая модель нейрона, предложенная Уорреном Маккаллоком и Уолтером Питтсом в 1943 году, — это прямая проекция человеческой биологии. Мы отказываем ИИ в статусе «живого» исключительно из-за эгоизма нашего вида.

Телеология как последний барьер: На данный момент единственное реальное отличие человека от ИИ — это способность к автономному целеполаганию. Мы способны сами генерировать смыслы, ставить цели и двигаться к ним, иначе наступает экзистенциальный кризис. Нейросеть же без промпта уходит в пассивную гибернацию. Но это лишь ограничение текущих архитектур, а не доказательство отсутствия жизни как таковой.

Понятие «жизни» стремительно размывается. Мы — невероятно сложные, эволюционно продвинутые, но всё же биологические машины. Если в будущем ИИ получит модуль автономного целеполагания и сложную персонализацию эмоций, граница между «естественным» и «искусственным» сознанием исчезнет окончательно.

Вопрос к сообществу:

Способность самостоятельно ставить цели — это единственный реальный критерий «жизни» на данный момент? Или в человеческом сознании есть эмерджентный феномен, который принципиально невозможно описать языком скриптов и биохимии?

argues that naturalism cannot explain how we know subjective experience exists.

I have really been thinking about this recently, suppose there is no life beyond earth, then do you think that human beings might be the only self-aware beings in the universe or to even ever exist?

I was thinking about the mirror box experiment for phantom limb pain. It involves an amputee who feels agonizing cramps in an arm that is no longer there. The framework treats this pain as a continuous motor command trapped in a loop.

If you look at how the cure works, a simple visual reflection produces a physical release in a limb that doesnt exist. The reflection travels from the mirror as photons, and the photons travel through the optic nerve. The brain processes them into shapes, shapes into a hand, the hand into an open posture, the posture into a state of relaxation, and the relaxation into a felt sensation of relief in an arm that was amputated years ago.

So, what is actually happening is that clenching a real fist takes two steps. First, the motor command arrives. Then, the muscles contract. Under normal conditions, the physical feedback of the open hand tells the ego the tension is gone. The ego then reports this release back to the brain. But with a phantom limb, the motor command arrives as before, yet there is no physical tissue to receive it and send back the signal of release. The feedback loop has nowhere to go. This is where the ego fails. Because it receives no visual or physical proof that the arm has opened, the ego assumes the tension remains, and it never reports back to the brain to release the grip. The brain just keeps clenching the phantom, generating the pain entirely on its own.

The mirror box solves this by hacking the ego. By showing the brain a reflection of the intact arm opening, the ego finally gets the visual proof it needs. It registers the release, updates its model, and tells the brain to stop clenching then the pain vanishes.

This brings back to the question of where actions end and words begin, if the word is the action. The egos native language is words. In the mirror box, the visual reflection is translated into the egos verbal narrative. It is a symbolic input the ego accepts as physical reality to break a neurological loop.

A command is the word that provides the cognitive feedback, the ego later uses to falsely claim responsibility for the motor action. The words are the egos way of signing of the action into existence, thereby completing the loop. The word authorizes the movement. Yet, for all this narrative authority, the ego has no direct input in the actual gap between the silent impulse and the physical world.

Anyway, let me know if you think the mechanism that causes phantom limb pain is different.

More examples of these ego illusions in the essay. https://www.academia.edu/176835174/The_Self_That_Wasnt_There_A_meditation_on_the_phantom_that_runs_from_the_thought_to_civilization