We have at this moment countless processes happening in our bodies - cells dying and dividing, reacting to their environments, communicating amongst one another, and we are totally oblivious to nearly all of it, let alone do we experience a sensation of pleasure or pain in each of these processes.
Not all matter, not all living cells or fully formed organisms even, have the ability to experience consciousness or sense pain and pleasure any more than they automatically have the ability to see, hear, or taste.
It's all dependent on complex systems that evolved specifically to create each of those sensations, and on even then on those systems functioning properly. In humans, consciousness can be totally disrupted by things like sleep or general anesthesia, disrupting any of the senses is as simple as cutting the nerves that feed these inputs into the brain or damaging the brain that is interpreting those inputs.
It seems sensible to me that we would be more wary of growing literal brains on a chip as we know for certain that brains have the capacity to produce consciousness. It's also sensible to me that we should be somewhat wary of creating that same consciousness in non-biological systems, even though we aren't yet certain whether they're capable of it.
For example, matter isn't formed by the composition of atoms, atoms are already matter to begin with. And due to various physical properties of atoms, they compose together. This is reasoning by analogy, which is inductive, but at least the line of reasoning is more consistent with what I understand about other areas of physics and logic.
It seems much more plausible to me that there would be some fundamental component of first-person experience. The sentient components could then compose together into complex sentient systems.
Some supporting evidence is that first-person experience in sentient systems, as far as I've observed, is usually motivated to preserve sentient systems, which indicates an emergent behavior of sentience directing motion and energy to orchestrate a self-perpetuating system, rather than the reverse.
Why do you think first-person experience is fundamental? It seems to me it's way more likely to be an aggregate phenomenon, like fire. There's no low level fundamental fireyness, it's a chemical reaction like any other, we humans just label reactions that meet certain criteria of scale, setting, and composition as "fires".
> Some supporting evidence is that first-person experience in sentient systems, as far as I've observed, is usually motivated to preserve sentient systems
I suspect this has more to do with the fact that you are far more likely to observe systems that seek to preserve themselves, since they are more likely to continue to exist. It doesn't indicate an emergent behavior of sentience, it's just observation bias.
An emergent behavior is a macro phenomenon that arises from simpler ones. We can say that an emergent behavior exists if we can find just one example of it, so the probability of it happening isn't as central. However, establishing for one example that both a structure and its components are sentient is a tall order -- each of us knows only one first-person experience first-hand. We can accept that we are sentient, but could we conclude that each tissue and cell has its own experiences? Thinking about the subconscious helps persuade me that it's possible.
Not all carbon exists in crystalline form, but just one example of graphite or diamond makes properties of carbon atoms apparent.
you mention consciousness relative to organisms and their possession of it. Yet if it is not understood well-enough in ourselves, how can you say something does or does not possess it?
back the original idea, if these intelligence of scale have existed as a guiding force (ONE can hope).... I imagine there is going to be a flag that will have to be flipped before there is the "imagined threat of doom timeline" transpiring.
The "feeling" could only be "experienced" via an enormous number of other "bits" flipping.
Neurons don't feel pain- they are how you experience pain.
I've heard the phrase "don't confuse the medium with the message", but this is like wondering if a pencil prefers writing fiction vs non fiction.
Neurons do not have a brain. They do not have emotions or feelings or thoughts. This conversation is so absurd that it's well into the realm of fantasy.
I'm not against this sort of research, but we shouldn't make assumptions about systems that we still understand relatively poorly.
Absolutely, but the guy I responded to suggested that "all physical processes involve a sensory component", which is utter insanity.
If you get unlucky and your BPU is a little like me your compiler would stop working, oops.
Sure it is possible but we have way more evidence neurons have a sensory component, or at least things made of neurons.
When you're throwing a ball in a computer simulation, it's performing millions of mathematical calculations to perfectly describe the result of your action. When you're throwing a ball in real life, your brain is basically going "Ok, so last time I did this it felt like X so I'm going to recreate X". Completely different.
We know very little about consciousness and this is kinda scary to me.
I don’t know what the experience of a bit in memory flipping feels like. Maybe rapid changes in charge are excruciating, maybe they’re blissful.
Do we at least know what a neuron looks like in states associated with pain? There might be more information in this case to work with, to ensure there is no hell on earth that’s being mass-produced.