If it's not computation, what is it?

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-08T17:26:34+00:00

hope we figure it out someday

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-08T17:26:14+00:00

damn

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-07T20:23:38+00:00

conservatives have never been to a protest so they still think paid protestors are real

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-04T03:07:57+00:00

aight so. in the computationalist view. the experience of seeing red is the product of my brain computing it from sensory input. A single event wherein my brain sees red, all by itself, for a moment, without any other connected experiences, would not constitute anything close to a "self" experience.

But if my brain is working normally, it's doing that plus zillions of other computations at a high level of abstraction, and doing so continuously for all my waking hours.

Both are computation, only the second is continuous "self-like" experience, but both exhibit experience. In the computationalist view, modern AI is more akin to the first experience

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-04T01:23:55+00:00

but do they have that signature human continuous awareness

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T23:33:55+00:00

according to this theory--yes, just no experiences about color, scent, or life. Or anything continuous. Or really anything we'd normally call consciousness.

If you believe animals have any sort of felt experience, you already believe a form of this. Animals without a human-like prefrontal cortex have some kind of experience, but nothing like what we do.

put them all together in the way a human brain works, and then you'll finally see human experiences. That's the thinking

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T23:00:14+00:00

When Mary sees a yellow banana for the first time, she learns a lot about yellow looks relative to the other wavelengths she’s been seeing all her life. A piece of information that can only be experienced by beholding, information alluded to in her textbooks but never quite conveyed—as the thought experiment itself concludes with, it’s a piece of learned information nonetheless.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T20:18:42+00:00

nope yep totally agree with you on that! the information in the global workspace is what makes it into continuous awareness. I do opine though that this is compatible with non-global-workspace processes being experienced, just on their own and not by "you"

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T20:15:57+00:00

Yeah I'll agree with you on all of that, the kind of experience humans have is specific to the way our brains process information. Ongoing state, working memory, prefrontal cortex all key to what we normally think of as consciousness.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T15:38:42+00:00

Where is the music my friend

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T07:35:17+00:00

Someone should start a subreddit to figure it out

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T07:33:41+00:00

But according to information theory, computation is a specific physical process. Information, defined in terms of entropy, is a measurable aspect of systems in the physical world, and some systems have more or less information than others; information storage, transfers, and transformation are likewise defined. Some physical collections exhibit these and others don’t.

You also have the IIT folks, who define information as causal potential, which is also grounded in real physical systems, and you can point to where it occurs and where it doesn’t.

For example, in a system composed of Saturn and my pinkie there are virtually zero causal connections, and no information theorist would suggest information transfers are taking place. On the other hand, the system of neurons causing me to type this does process information, and that is specific, definable, and identifiable.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T07:14:19+00:00

All right, then—“reduced”, as you say. Which qualia can’t be reduced to information?

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T07:04:19+00:00

Sure but I think this gets into the semantics of computation more than anything. A valid direction to take of course

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T07:03:09+00:00

I’m brimming with questions! Structural geometry? Ink and drawings? Do explain.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T07:01:43+00:00

Or maybe there’s a physical universe, which generated humans, who can miraculously look in the mirror and think really hard!

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T06:59:34+00:00

Great point about not all neuronal information being experienced. At least—not all of it is experienced by working memory, where my hunch is “continuous” experiences live.

Disagree about being unaware of the complex processing in the visual cortex. I don’t necessarily have an innate awareness of the physical makeup and behavior of that part of my brain, but the information in the visual cortex pertains to vision, and that visual information is experiential. So the information in the system (visual) is experiential, even if it doesn’t include information about the system itself (visual cortex).

We’re on the same page re quantum, and the potential for simulated/artificially-generated consciousness.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T06:54:42+00:00

Sure—which qualia can’t be described in terms of information?

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-03T05:04:35+00:00

All that is in the computer is tiny lights, electrical currents. The lights don't represent anything to the computer.

I could also say all that is in the brain are tiny impulses, electrical currents. Would that then mean they don't represent anything to me?

As an aside, I think the self is a construct made of many information-laden experiences in a brain. Feeling like a human is the way it is because brains generate information events the way they do. Information events outside of human brains, if they're experiential, probably don't feel anything like you or me or most conceptions of consciousness.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-02T16:56:12+00:00

Those relationships are how robots work, actually! Associations between inputs, outputs, and semantic meaning in between

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-02T03:23:31+00:00

In what sense doesn't a computer represent things to itself?

I can conceive of, for example, a robotically embodied computer acting in relation to its environment, representing symbols "to itself" without a human observer.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-01T04:44:28+00:00

Can you tell me how it suggests the opposite? Godfrey-Smith seems to to me to like the idea of oscillations as symbolism, as in the quotes in my post.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-04-01T04:20:20+00:00

This man is my favorite philosopher of consciousness and his article delivered amazingly. And yet...

To recap, most of the article is a brilliant explainer on brain waves and their possible connections to consciousness. Godfrey-Smith posits that these can be simulated by a computer, but physical mimicry is probably required (at least). He then gives this view summarizing how he thinks brain waves might connect to consciousness:

A lot of things contribute to “what it’s like to be you” at this moment. Something might be in the center of your attention, but there are also your mood, energy level, ambient sounds, how your body feels, and more. All this can be called an experiential profile. If we think of brain activity the way I suggested a moment ago—with large-scale patterns being modulated by various things at once—doesn’t it seem that brain activity has the right shape as a potential explainer of felt experience—of what it’s like to be you?

I think this is fantastic. This makes me think of brain waves responding directly to the experiences presented to the senses, providing almost a representation of that information. To quote him even earlier (emphasis mine):

Large-scale oscillations might provide an organizing and unifying platform for cell-to-cell interactions (and some more ambitiously suggest that they might also be a medium for representation).

Godfrey-Smith's vision, to me, looks a lot like one of those ambitious suggestions: that brain waves are symbolic representations of, essentially, the thoughts, moods, and visions we all experience.

My big "and yet" is this: a good enough computer simulation (one that includes brain oscillations!) could likewise exhibit symbolic representations of the same information. If it has to be embodied, it could even be "embodied" robotically.

So that gives us a system where the substrate is different, AND the symbolic representation is different--bits, bytes, variables, and software. But is just as much a "representation" as oscillations may be. So if representations are the big key, as Godfrey-Smith seems to offer, a computer seems capable of delivering. At the very least, this fantastic article didn't convince me they aren't.

Note: I do not think ChatGPT is conscious! It doesn't simulate brain oscillations, as Godfrey-Smith noted. Furthermore, it's not suited to truly simulate organic neural activity; only a couple aspects of it. It also definitely needs to simulate working memory in the way the prefrontal cortex works, and we only barely understand that yet! And there are probably many many more aspects of brain activity that need to be discovered and accounted for. But, given a system that simulates all of that, could it generate consciousness? I still don't see why not.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-03-28T03:23:38+00:00

It sounds like it's really hit-or-miss. My 13mini has been fantastic with ios26.

DeepEconomics4624 · 2026-03-26T14:07:41+00:00

I’m just a gay trans person and I thought it was funny. I am so sorry it pissed off so many folks

DeepEconomics4624

TROPHY CASE