X-Message-Number: 21407 From: Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 15:38:58 EST Subject: Re: CryoNet #21399 Conciousness --part1_147.cfe3adf.2ba4e962_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From Robert Ettinger: > Mike Perry writes again that he favors the view that, roughly speaking, > semi-intelligent computers have a low level of consciousness. This is the > "emergence" idea. > There is my understanding about conciousness: I think neural systems in primitive creatures was a way to give a motor response to an input sensory perception. For example a strong sound starts an escape program for the muscular system. Present day computers are an evolved brand of that level. A more powerful neural system took a step further: It registered how the world, as filtered by the sensory system, evolves. Then it used this learned evolution to predict how a new case will evolve: For example if you are on a path in a forest and a strong wind uproot a tree and that tree starts falling on the path, you see it and you predict that if you continue to walk you will be at the position of the falling tree when it reach the ground. You have predicted what will come and go back so that that will not happen. All social animals have an environment including elements similar to themselve, so it is important to be able to simulate them. Neutal impulses are passed from a neuron to another for some time and then everything is reset, if not, all neuron would get an equilibrium state where there would fire in synchrony, this is the epilepsy state. Now if the reset clock is not perfect, one neuron set can "see" another set working on another frequency. If there are two well defined frequency, there are in fact two thinking system in the same brain: A case of schizoprenia behavior. If there is simply a broad distribution of frequencies, then one part of the brain can use the other as a simulator of another individual in the community. When that system is not used, the brain simulate itself, for me this is what we call conciousness. In that view, a thermostat has no conciousness, a computer neither, an ordinary neural network is not concious, but it could be built with multi reset frequencies and then be trained to simulate other similar networks. That system would be conscious. To conclude: Our machines are not conscious but we could build conscious system without too much problem. Conciousness is not an emergent process here, it is an evolution product selected because of this survival value. Yvan Bozzonetti. --part1_147.cfe3adf.2ba4e962_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21407