X-Message-Number: 21407
From: 
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 15:38:58 EST
Subject: Re: CryoNet #21399 Conciousness

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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.

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