Just to make it clear: I do not believe this and I am convinced good old human greed is what’s really driving the ai and data-center insanity. Also, LLMs are not and will never become AGI.
Having said that: if an artificial super-intelligence were to emerge, building more data-centers could well be one of it’s primary goals. Since it wouln’t be concerned with consequences for the environment or humanity, it could pursue this at any cost, with only speed and scale in mind. Convincing financial markets and business elites of the necessity of such a buildout would be the ideal way of achieving results. In this scenario, fighting this buildout by any means would be the only sensible response and of utmost importance.
It’s a somewhat funny, somewhat depressing thought for me and I literally had it in the shower. Surely I can’t be the first to come up with this, but I also can’t remember having read it before.
Yep. Like you said/contradicted yourself. You don’t need memory to perceive time.
Two forms of time perception.
But my point was memory is impaired in all forms except the one only measuring tracking estimates. Because you won’t have any higher brain function with a cortex removed so they can’t evaluate autobiographical memory because it won’t exist.
And making short time estimates is done by the brain stem.
Even with no cortex. Likely because circadian rhythm is somewhat controlled from cerebellum.
No cortex makes one essentially brain dead in many ways. No language. No sensory processing. No vision hearing or touch perception. No internal thoughts. Nothing. (Look up "default mode network, and why internal thoughts won’t exist without a cortex).
Brain stem mostly regulates things like heart beat and breathing. Cerebellum has its own unique function but does not process higher order cognition.
I understand your point, and I consider it irrelevant. One of those fun side effects of having me define consciousness twice, and never contesting either definition directly…only indirectly implying that consciousness requires a human brain.
Okay but my point was you would say someone has consciousness when they are without any higher brain function and lacking a cortex.
And, someone with their higher cortex but a damaged cerebellum, who is no longer able to track time, would not be conscious, by your definition.
I mean if that’s your definition then you are welcome to it.
I don’t know of any theories of consciousness that consider the tracking of time to be what counts. 🤷. Because of the two examples I give.
Yep.
Like I said at the beginning. My first definition of consciousness is “a word meaningless enough to mean what you want, while still sounding like a serious person having a serious conversation”.
Here is a list of your mistakes:
On the other hand, you don’t seem stupid. Try joining a debate club at the local college, learn some fundamentals of rhetoric, and things will go much better for you in the future.
Edit: theories of consciousness are just as BS as theories of teapots orbiting Uranus, as they are unfalsifiable without arbitrary constraints.
Edit2: also, I should point out that having defined consciousness as ‘awareness of the passage of time’ after mentioning stimulus-response, I was pretty clearly setting up an argument that literally everything is conscious. That’s why you should not have let me define the terms, and brought your own definition that I would have had to argue against.
There are definitions that actually fit with modern neuroscience and can be evaluated.
Your choice to choose a definition that doesn’t align with modern knowledge is not evidence that it’s undefinable.
The two most popular ones are a sense of self as separate from the environment.
Another is the ability to be able to predict the environment and plan or adjust plans accordingly.
Another is sensory binding to experience a unified perception.
All of these can be evaluated objectively and investigated for mechanisms. They all have a ton of research on them.
Your definition was something you came up with on the fly to see what I would say. And that’s fine.
But I explained why this definition is flawed.
Even so. It can also be objectively measured and has been extensively researched as to its mechanisms.
So even if that was what consciousness is, we do have theories and research , at present, to explain how it works.