Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere?
by tosser0001 on Thursday March 18, 2021 @03:49PM
(#26506776)
Being able to model consciousness mathematically opens up some grotesque possibilities.
Human suffering presumably has some sort of limit based purely on our physical makeup. Suppose though the very concept of subjective suffering could be modeled in some way. Is there any law in the universe that says there is a limit to suffering, pain (or pleasure)?
Could an investigator of the future test out an algorithm on a conscious entity modeled in software, just to see what the mathematical limit of pain is? Maybe that's what Hell is...
It's interesting that our minds automatically turn to the worst possibility, even though this also implies that we could find out what the mathematical limit of joy is. Chances are, there would be a lot more processes simulating joy than pain.
Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere?
by lobo_tuerto on Thursday March 18, 2021 @04:08PM
(#26507018)
Why would there be more of those if it's "just" a simulation after all?
I would suspect that the pleasant simulations are where research money gets poured into, to figure out how to replicate the feeling of joy in regular humans
Has been explored in Altered Carbon ( the book ). Digitised conscience loaded into computer simulation and torture for practically infinite amount of time
Re:Is Consciousness Everywhere?
by cercatrova on Thursday March 18, 2021 @11:29PM
(#26509928)
As well as in Black Mirror
I imagine an unfortunate and unwilling architect of a genocide thinking softly, "Lucky for me suffering is limited by the exclusion axiom. Suffering can never exceed the Whole."
Excellent reference. I see that Aaronson is pointing to articles more than ten years old, so the lack of progress goes on longer than the five years I mentioned.
For Scott Aaronson's take on "Integrated Information Theory": https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799