Consciousness

[Machinesworking]

This thread has been locked due to homophobic/sexist comments.

H20nly has been locked due to Napoleon complex.
Any attempts to communicate with him will be met with graphs and wiki links!

[knotkranky]

If I lack the consciousness to recognize any consciousness in any 'thingBeing', am I right to say it has none?

You could come to the conclusion you alone have consciousness and you 'd be wrong because only I do

Naw, I know you have consciousness.

I think I'm thinking about animals and my lack of empathy. Dogs have souls, but cows don't because they are delicious.

[ikeaboy]

I agree also I suspect we dismiss consciousness in animals particularly the ones who don't display "intelligence" I.e. not the " higher mammals" because we need to feel our lives have more value than the hordes of creatures that die cruel and meaningless deaths everyday. If we were equal to animals we'd lose our sanctity so we're superior by measurements we decided upon.

Not sure if I'm explaining myself well, I'm not far off the bed

[H20nly]

edited.

my virus scanner tells me the .jpeg is bad M'Kay. sorry about that guys.

[H20nly]

[Machinesworking]

[d.reamonn]

I agree also I suspect we dismiss consciousness in animals particularly the ones who don't display "intelligence" I.e. not the " higher mammals" because we need to feel our lives have more value than the hordes of creatures that die cruel and meaningless deaths everyday. If we were equal to animals we'd lose our sanctity so we're superior by measurements we decided upon.

Not sure if I'm explaining myself well, I'm not far off the bed

On the contrary, I consider man to be no better than animals (morally speaking, of course), which is why I'll be happily smack the shit out of them to make meat.

[knotkranky]

Wtf? no Cream Pie?

[Dillinger63]

If I lack the consciousness to recognize any consciousness in any 'thingBeing', am I right to say it has none?

You could come to the conclusion you alone have consciousness and you 'd be wrong because only I do

Naw, I know you have consciousness.

I think I'm thinking about animals and my lack of empathy. Dogs have souls, but cows don't because they are delicious.

[ikeaboy]

I agree also I suspect we dismiss consciousness in animals particularly the ones who don't display "intelligence" I.e. not the " higher mammals" because we need to feel our lives have more value than the hordes of creatures that die cruel and meaningless deaths everyday. If we were equal to animals we'd lose our sanctity so we're superior by measurements we decided upon.

Not sure if I'm explaining myself well, I'm not far off the bed

On the contrary, I consider man to be no better than animals (morally speaking, of course), which is why I'll be happily smack the shit out of them to make meat.

That's the spirit! You're probably a man to avoid in a post apocalyptic lawless food crisis then. You'd have a Mohawk and a selection of throwing hatchets maybe?

[scott nathaniel]

That's the spirit! You're probably a man to avoid in a post apocalyptic lawless food crisis then. You'd have a Mohawk and a selection of throwing hatchets maybe?

You nailed it. he was giving us his future Cherokee name:

I'll be: Happily-Smack-the-Shit-out-of-Them-to-Take-Meat.

[Machinesworking]

That's the spirit! You're probably a man to avoid in a post apocalyptic lawless food crisis then. You'd have a Mohawk and a selection of throwing hatchets maybe?

You nailed it. he was giving us his future Cherokee name:

I'll be: Happily-Smack-Meat.

fixed

[H20nly]

i am consciously laughing.

[crumhorn]

Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.

[Forge.]

I have to say I think that the singularity the AI people talk about is so remote it may not happen before we bomb the planet back to the dark ages.

It seems to be based on what we think the computational power of the human brain is (while disregarding any quantum computational power it might have) , when a computer(s) reach that level it'll suddenly go 'Hello Dave'. IMO a huge underestimation of what consciousness is.

I think it's a symptom of the over confidence of modern science and it's our age looking to the future and seeing moon bases and jet packs just like we did thirty - forty years ago.

It's also a symptom (IMO) of the fear of death, as the next step would be uploading your consciousness to a capable computer as a way to live forever. Providing you could experience embodiment inside the ultimate Facebook profile (Which I sincerely doubt).

It would be cool if I (and many others more informed then me) was wrong, I love Sci-Fi (So sad about Ian M Banks)

I actually agree, but it is the logical conclusion of the materialist perspective which a lot of people subscribe to - if our brains are just glorified machines then we have to consider what it means when we can make machines as complex. The EU has just given a guy a Billion Euros to make one: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... brain.html

it's something I'm reading about quite a bit at the moment. I've just started reading Ray Kurzweil's "How to make a Brain" and he does make some interesting points. I just find it really hard to accept that we will ever be able to completely duplicate a human brain complete with the conscious experience we have. I tend to think there is another element to it that we can't currently measure. But this field of reasearch is what leads to it, and there's a lot of clever people who really believe we will be able to upload our minds to a computer within the next 50 years. Kurzweil expects the Singularity by 2029. Others, like David Chalmers think it's still 100 years off if it all.

But however we look at it, it will be one of the big questions of this century.