Re:Ask HN: What would it take for an AI to convince us it is...
by kelseyfrog on Sunday February 19, 2023 @11:56AM
(#34859321)
Are there any other processes in our universe which are non-computable?
Re:Ask HN: What would it take for an AI to convince us it is...
by DennisP on Sunday February 19, 2023 @12:16PM
(#34859562)
How do you know qualia is a process at all?
Re:Ask HN: What would it take for an AI to convince us it is...
by kelseyfrog on Sunday February 19, 2023 @12:40PM
(#34859829)
Ignoring qualia, does the universe contain non-computable processes?
Or maybe it's computation. But we really have no idea. Any of these would be compatible with materialism, but we haven't made any real progress in even conceptualizing how qualia can emerge from any physical system. Of course that could just be because we haven't figured it out.
Philosophers of mind look at other possibilities too though. One approach is to say each particle has its own fundamental consciousness, and somehow this aggregates in larger complex systems. But nobody's figured out how that might work either. Then there's Kastrup, who argues that the only truly skeptical approach is full-fledged idealism, because qualia are the one thing we directly experience. But even that doesn't imply that anything outside the bounds of physics could possibly occur, so it's not necessarily "supernatural" even if it's not materialism.
Assuming that qualia somehow comes out of a computation, without any sort of explanation, is at least as much a magical leap as anything else.