You are indeed conscious, and do indeed have thoughts. What the article discusses is that the overwhelming evidence seems to show your thoughts are generated by deterministic/proabilistic physical processes, and that in fact your conscious thoughts occur after your decisions are already made and often serve only as post-hoc justifications of what you already did.
Consciousness is just another component in the car. It doesn't determine or influence where the car is going. Perhaps the most valuable part of consciousness is it provides an effective way to use reflection which can communicate data about the internal state of the car to the other cars. (Often this data is objectively inaccurate, but still serves the interest of the car or the fleet.)
You do realize those aren't the same thing, right? In fact, they're basically opposites. Deterministic is "if/then", while probabilistic is "maybe". Something is either deterministic or probabilistic, and it matters which it is.
In your metaphor, consciousness is the learning system which is used to generate the model which drives the car. Our brains are semi-supervised learning, and our models get retrained when they drift far enough.
I say "deterministic/probabilistic" because I am thinking about physical laws; i.e., what we know of physics and quantum mechanics. The intent is to exclude the idea that consciousness is somehow above the rules of cause and effect. It probably would be safer to just say "deterministic" to prevent all the magic-shoehorning people sometimes attempt with QM, but I was being pedantic.
> In your metaphor, consciousness is the learning system which is used to generate the model which drives the car. Our brains are semi-supervised learning, and our models get retrained when they drift far enough.
No, in my metaphor, consciousness is totally unrelated to learning, as the article suggested. In my metaphor consciousness is basically just part of the network stack.
I recommend you read the works of the scientist upon which my pseudonym is based (not the Unicode part, that's just a dig at HN for the type of characters they allow)
Briefly, you cannot fully describe a complex system using merely the axioms of a less complex system (or more simplistically, all metaphors are (subtlety but importantly) wrong).
This is especially true of quantum mechanics, but in general it's a good rule to keep in mind. It prevents comfortable but naïve assumptions like "physics is just Newton because that's what we can perceive", or assuming that cognition is just summing neurons together.
In every aspect of life, you can safely assume that It's More Complicated Than That.
Although, after making that point, is there really a difference between a self driving car and a car and a driver in your example? Probably not. They're both being driven by something, and the answer shouldn't change based on what the driver is.
Which is the aforementioned firing of neurons. Consciousness is not supernatural.
Prove it. And update the wiki while you are at it.
How do you prove a negative?
That aside, if the "supernatural" exists it's just laws of physics we do not understand yet.
At this point in time, the overwhelming majority of evidence indicates that consciousness is deterministic. If you disagree, you'll need to provide concrete proof to the contrary.
At this point in time, the overwhelming majority of
evidence indicates that consciousness is deterministic.
Regardless if we're a brain in vat, can we not enjoy the ride?
I'm not claiming it is supernatural. I'm only challenging the definitive statement that it is not supernatural and asking for proof.
Consciousness is definitely not deterministic.
Still I do not see how indeterminism would actually enable free will. Would an automa without free will acquire it if a higher counter was added to its brain?
"The NSA is not spying on anybody"
"Prove it"
"Burden of proof error, those claiming the NSA is spying on somebody must prove it. Not spying is the null hypothesis and backed by mountains of evidence"
The problem is that I wasn't making a claim either way. I only requested proof of a definitive statement made by OP.
Which would also be the correct burden of proof. Burden of proof isn't about who's making the claim, it's about whether the claim is positive or negative. You can't logically prove a negative, i.e. you can't prove the NSA isn't spying on you, you can only prove they are. It only takes one example to prove they are, but no number of checks of their equipment can prove they aren't because you might not have seen them all and they could be hiding some. The same applies to claims of anything, regardless of which side is making a claim, the claim itself can be looked to, and phrased in the positive and that's where the burden of proof lies. So whichever side is on the side of "X is true" suffers the burden of proof, never the side that says "X is false".
If I say God doesn't exist for example, the burden of proof still lies upon those who believe he does despite my poor stating of my side of the argument because God exists is still the positive claim and thus the only one that's provable.
That's simply not true. You can prove a negative, it just takes a lot more effort.
Imagine if computer scientists took the same approach:
"Hey everybody use our new crypto, there are absolutely no flaws in the design"
"Prove it"
"Nope, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that there is a flaw"
That type of "burden of proof" argument is not helpful or productive in real life, which is why algorithm/hardware designers go to great lengths to mathematically prove there are no flaws in their design. It's called Formal Verification. If you toss the burden of proof on your customers, you'll have no customers.
I can certainly challenge any claim that anyone makes, positive or negative, and I have no obligation to spend time and energy proving or disproving anything. It all comes down to who wants the other party to change more.
> I can certainly challenge any claim that anyone makes, positive or negative
Yes you can, but it doesn't make your challenge logical. If you challenge someone to prove a negative claim, you are logically wrong and are demanding the impossible. Yes, they may have made a negative claim, the correct response is to say the claim itself is invalid and rephrase it to a valid form and then determine where burden of proof lies.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
If you say "Fish definitely don't have dreams", I'll say that can't ever be proven, there may be one mutant fish somewhere that does dream and you can't examine them all and thus the claim is simply logically invalid. So the claim should be rephrased as "fish dream" and whoever is on that side suffers the burden of proof. However, just because it hasn't been proved that fish dream doesn't mean it's true that they don't, what it does mean is lacking evidence that they do, the answer is unknown.
OP's original claim was "Consciousness is not supernatural." Here, I'll define supernatural as "beyond our understanding of the laws of nature". Thus, OP's claim rephrased is:
"Consciousness is within our current understanding of the laws of nature."
Now we have a positive claim, and the burden of proof is back on OP.
No, I've been very clear how to deterministically determine it, you're not listening or responding to anything or any point made; You're having the same argument with several people yet are unable to admit you're wrong; so we're done, you don't know how to converse or the capacity to change your mind when shown your mistakes.
Oh yes, you've been very clear indeed. "All" I have to do is prove that consciousness is supernatural in order to be right. And how do I do that? You've basically cornered me with an impossible task by shaping the semantics to be in your favor.
You want proof that consciousness is supernatural? Just wait until you die and then you can marvel all day long at the fact that you can still think without a physical body. I'll reserve my "told you so" until then (~50 years?)
No all you have to do to be right is not demand impossible proofs of negative statements. The correct answer to a claim that "consciousness is not supernatural" is say it's an invalid claim as it's impossible to prove a negative statement except in maths. Done, simple as that. Negative claims are invalid and ought simply be rejected out of hand. Only falsifiable claims are valid claims, this is basic science, if it isn't falsifiable it's garbage.
Fish definitely don't have dreams.
Dark Matter isn't real
There are no undiscovered artifacts left in the amazon jungles.
There are no sunken ships in the seas that we are not aware of.
By your logic nobody can contest any of the above claims without the burden of proof being on them. That's great. It means I can say anything negative I want as truth and then everybody else has to do the work to disprove me.
Please review the HN guidelines, which include this:
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.
Edit: impossible to prove if we consider this a self-referential first order logical system
But research also supports the plasticity of the brain/mind and we know that we can build/change habits and personality traits (apparently) through conscious effort. Perhaps "free will" should be defined more specifically as the ability to consciously shape the deterministic systems that are our minds?