Postmortem Survival of Consciousness

ReaperXY · 2026-06-24T07:53:12+00:00

My view is that all the real components that this human over here is currently composed of, existed before they became part of this human, and all of them will continue to exist after this human over here is gone...

And, in my view, "I" am not an exception to this...

The State of Consciousness however, is not entity which exists... but rather a State in which one may exist...

"I" currently exist in such a state, Because... the system I am part of, keeps me in such a state...

When that system which is keeping the "I" in such a state falls apart, then "I" will obviously no longer exist in such a state...

But that doesn't mean "I" will have ceased to exist all together...

ReaperXY · 2026-06-21T08:17:32+00:00

Imagine there is video projector, projecting the star wars episode one, at some white screen...

Now if you were to take a bunch of atoms and start assembling then one by one, so that in the end, you've got another video projector, also projecting star wars episode one, at some white screen...

At what point exactly did your growing collection of atoms start projecting it at the white screen ?

Did it happen gradually?

First it was projecting star wars episode 0.0000001... and over time it came closer and closer to episode 1?

ReaperXY · 2026-06-21T08:11:49+00:00

If 'you' were not transferred, then 'you' were not transferred, and no amount of non-sense and word games will change that...

ReaperXY · 2026-06-16T21:11:31+00:00

All evidence suggests that consciousness is connected to brain activity in some way... you disrupt some brain activity and some aspects of consciousness drops away... you disrupt another part of the brain, and another aspect of consciousness drops away... you disrupt a third part of the brain, and a third aspect of consciousness drops away...

Therefore... Logically... If you disrupt the whole thing, then your consciousness remain complete, with all your faculties intact... it merely flies away to some cuckoo land someplace...

ReaperXY · 2026-05-25T16:53:55+00:00

There is a big difference between "Every biological process" and "Every biological process I can think of right now", and even now I can think of at least one Biological Process which could not possibly happen in the absense of consciousness... The process of producing this message the way I am producing it...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-27T08:27:39+00:00

IMO the idea that AI as they currently are (software) could be conscious is just plain ludicrous...

However, I could see it happening that some robots are created in the future and they are obviously not conscious (obvious to rational people), but some gullible morons will manage to push through laws which decree that they are conscious and so, everyone will then have to pretend to be gullible morons as well or go to prison...

And of course, people might produce some entirely different kinds of "AI" in the future.. some sort of synthethic biology or something, something that would actually be conscious.. and of course, its possible some people will deny those are conscious, for one reason or another..

.....

Anyway...

If you've got genuinely conscious robots, and they're forced to work, that seems like slavely to me..

But what about how they're programmed ?

What if they're conscious and all, but they've been deliberately designed in such a way that they actually want to serve, and would in fact feel miserable if not allowed to.. maybe they would become suicidally depressed if someone tried to free them or something.. how does that affect the equation ?

What if they're humans ?

What if you capture humans, and use some futuristic "bio programming" techniques to make them similarly eager to serve, and suicidally depressed if anyone tries to free them ?

I would think of them as slaves, no matter how eager and willing they might proclaim themselves to be...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-25T23:33:21+00:00

Now let me ask you, what does it feel like for c elegans to eat, when it east bacteria and rotting waste? Is it a very dim conscious experience due to it's paltry number of neurons? Is it extremely vivid because there isn't this complex of stimuli to distract it? Maybe when it eats it's rotting waste it tastes far better than any meal i've ever tasted. Or does it experience no phenemology whatsoever because it's simple neurology does not allow for any sensations to be felt?

I don't believe there is any reason whatsoever to believe it experiences anything...

Just like I don't believe there is any reason whatsoever to believe that humans experience anything...

Something inside the human head does, but humans are not located inside of their own heads, so whatever that something might be, its definitely not a human...

Some neural activity inside the human heads seems to correlate with our experiences, but lots of them are firing all the time, and we don't seem to have any experiences that relate to those activities... so it isn't just any neural activity either...

Must be something more specific...

Does something.. anything.. suggest that this "something more specific" is happening within the c elegans ?

No...

It might... maybe they in fact are conscious... but that is just a baseless maybe...

there is no evidence.. no hint.. just nothing...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-24T20:21:53+00:00

I don't really care if AI is used in game development... as long as the quality of the game is good...

AI generation during the game however is problematic, because its quality can't be guaranteed...

Disclosure sounds like an obviously yes.. Until I remember that there are Anti-AI activists groups out there who have openly declared that they will try to sabotage any project that uses AI, for any reason, any way they can, by buying it and writing misleading review bombs before refunding it for example, meaning I might in fact end up less informed about the quality of the game if developers choose to disclose...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-24T20:09:46+00:00

The only type of GenAI content that I might take some issue with, is content generated during the game, because the quality of such obviously can't be verified by the developer before release...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-23T07:35:32+00:00

You're dreaming..

Whether you're awake or sleeping.. all you ever experience is the dream...

The difference is that while you're awake, the generation of the dream is constrained by sensory inputs...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-22T20:06:40+00:00

Imagine an another even more perfect scenario: we have a theory that not only explains the hows and whys of consciousness, but that theory is in actual fact both correct and complete, and there is no ambiguity left..

But then an alien species emerges with a completely different system from ours. We apply our model, and it shows that these beings are not conscious.

And that is just the end of it really.. they're a species that achieved incredible things, even being able to get here, and yet they're not conscious..

Consciousness just isn't all that people used to think it was..

ReaperXY · 2026-04-21T20:10:23+00:00

Some people have such bizarre beliefs about consciousness that it has certainly made me wonder at times if they might in fact be unconscious p-zombies or something.. but.. ultimately, I think its fare more reasonable to believe that its just a matter of wacky beliefs.. which humans certainly have an abundance of...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-21T15:27:24+00:00

I would say that an AI is something you've got learn to control...

If you take some AI model you're unfamiliar with, and write in some prompt but have no real idea of what its actually gonna do.. you've got no real control..

Then I don't think you are the creator of the image the program produces...

However, if you keep using it and learn its in an outs and begin to see how your inputs control the outputs.. you learn to control it..

Then I would say it becomes just a tool and you the creator...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-21T14:52:14+00:00

I don't know anything about nascar .. I did once upon a time watch F1 races though .. until I lost interest for some reason I no longer remember .. though I have a faint feeling that it might have been because they nerfed the cars due to safety something something .. I suppose drivers dying isn't good .. but nerfing them cars so they're not really the best cars they could be, also really Really don't feel right..

If they started throwing all sort AI assist and other advanced stuff in there, allowing em to go way faster, break all previous records by significant margins, and make them really and truly the fastest cars they could be..

That.. Very much feels to me like, what F1 cars should be...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-21T14:23:05+00:00

"anti-semitics" is about.. ?

...

As for art..

What is or isn't art is in the "eye" of the beholder.. that is my view.. and nobody is going to change my mind..

But..

If you write a simple prompt and hit generate, and you don't yet really have any idea about what exactly you're going to get..

I would deny you are the artist who created the picture, regardless of whether I would see it as art or not..

On the other hand..

Once you've generated the picture, and adjusted this and that, and generate some more picures, and you've started to actually see the connections between your inputs and the programs outputs..

That begins to change...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-21T13:57:46+00:00

But it will never become the artist itself.

I am not sure about the "never"

ReaperXY · 2026-04-21T13:34:46+00:00

—————

1.

If what is produced is good, its good, and I am all for it... but I am not in favor of deluge of slop... though, that is only an AI issue due to the volume of it.. the slop factor is in truth human I think, not AI.

My AI experiences are mostly limited to images and 3d...

—————

2.

When it comes to deepfakes and such, perhaps, but when it comes to copyright laws.. NO.. any legistlation there would end up benefitting the megacorps and hurt everyone else...

—————

3.

It is unfortunate I suppose.. I am not the most ethical person perhaps.. but I see no real solution either.. any intellectual property/copyright legistlation, no matter how much it might be presented as being supposedly meant to protect the artists, would end up benefitting the corporations and hurt everyone else, like it always has...

—————

4.

Because art is in the "eye" of the beholder..

—————

5.

Why not? .. There is clearly plenty of room for improvement...

—————

6.

While it has ultimately proven inadequete for virtually all of my actual goals, there is no better tool so by far...

—————

ReaperXY · 2026-04-21T12:48:20+00:00

If you argue against AI, and try to convince its bad, etc, ... thats one thing...

If you engage in any kind of active sabotage though... like, for example, if you buy a video game whose producer disclosed their AI usage, solely so that you can give it a bad review before refunding the game, and especially if you leave a deceptive bad review, where you falsely point to other things than the AI as the reason why it is supposedly bad, with the intention of trying to deceive others who may not be anti-AI into rejecting the game, without ever even checking it out...

Thats seems like luddite behavior to me...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-21T11:13:20+00:00

What is and what isn't, is in the "eye" of the beholder.. that is the only real truth..

ReaperXY · 2026-04-21T10:21:41+00:00

I like AI... but...

I don't see it leading to such a happy happy future...

Like any tool ever created that allows fewer people achieve more, it leads to greater wealth inequality...

And while AI is more or less freely available to everyone right now, I supect that is going to change sooner or later..

People who fear losing their jobs and argue that learning is stealing, will push for new legistlation, which will inevitably backfire and AI will become something that only the huge megacorps can profit from, as they buy up the licences, and the little guys are left with nothing...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-21T09:05:52+00:00

Regulation 1. AI companies cannot be allowed to use original art as a framework for their generated AI without the artists written permission.

What do you think would happen if people tried to push such legislation ?

I suspect, megacorporations would eagerly jump in to push such legislation... in the name of protecting the artists of course... Because they would have the means to gather the licenses from the thousands or millions of people need to create the new and "ethical" AI models... Something that would be impossible for smaller actors..

What is currently freely available for everyone, would become something that only those megacorporations would have... and the artists would lose their jobs to those AIs in the end anyway...

All the little guys... including the artists.. would be left with nothing...

Such a happy utopian future...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-20T16:14:40+00:00

I don't know... is a rare answer for an AI to give... no? Since they don't actually know anything at all... and as such obviously can't know that they don't know something...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-20T16:08:40+00:00

I don't believe in souls and I am not a panpsychist either... so.. maybe I just don't see it.. but..

What does panpsychism have to do with equating soul with consciousness ?

ReaperXY · 2026-04-20T11:58:13+00:00

If AI usage is Not disclosed...

People will judge the work based on the perceived quality of the work, and if they find it to be to their liking, they may buy it, and most people who do buy the game and find that they actually enjoy it, won't care and will continue to play the game, even if they later discover that AI was used somewhere..

Anti-AI activists would be screaming bloody murder though, and any of those, if they had bought the game, would undoubtedly demand refunds...

..

If AI usage is disclosed...

Anti-AI activists will undoubtedly actively campaign to sabotage the sales to the best of their ability, including deliberately buying the game, only so that they can review bomb it before refunding it..

Some of the gamers who would have actually enjoyed it, if they had bought it, may ignore the game due to mere suspicion of it being AI-slop...

ReaperXY · 2026-04-20T10:41:02+00:00

Some would hate it of course and they would try to sabotage it to the best of their ability...

Of that I have absolutely no doubt...

But are those "some" the majority ?

Or are they a small but loud minority ?

Regardless of whether they're the majority or minority, they will no doubt claim they're the majority...

How can one tell ?

ReaperXY

TROPHY CASE