A mind discussion

[Rubbermaid]

I've been thinking for a while now about the brain, about four months ago I came across a sentence on 8ch.net tulpa threads that said 'some people don't believe there's such thing as consciousness just different levels of complexity'

 

I've been thinking if this is true, our mind is just a computer and our personality is just a program. Could tulpas then just be a (albeit complex) program? I think about my tulpa like that, and he agrees that's pretty much what he is. I force him like I'm adding lines of code to a program, like how he looks in different lighting or responses to scenerios.

 

I figure here's a good a place as any to have a discussion about the mind.

[jean-luc]

I would agree that a human brain could effectively be just a very very complex computer, and that it's possible for a human brain to be simulated on a computer (but likely not with current technology).

 

The human brain has an amazing ability for self-inspection and self-improvement. You 'start off' with a few basic skills like breathing, and a few instincts. Past that, you learn absolutely everything. Brains, especially at a young age, are very flexible.

 

However, I would also argue that even if everything is "just different levels of complexity", there can still be consciousness. These seem like two separate issues.

[Carpenter]

The brain is absolutely a computer. No question about it. But that doesn't mean that consciousness is an illusion. It's just a different kind of computer.

 

Simulating a neural network which can act like a brain is a new and exciting field of research in computation. Using neural networks computers can do things previously thought impossible, doable only by humans, or at least several decades away. Look at this website to double the size of an image without losing detail, a gallery of images combined with neural networks, and the first computer to beat a top Go player where the previous best computers lost to intermediates. Soon a computer might beat the Turing test. After that, who knows?

 

Bringing consciousness into the picture is where things get fuzzy, because obviously there's no way to objectively tell if "yup, my laptop is conscious now." But I think it's wrong to suggest that there can't be different levels of consciousness just as there are different levels of complexity. The alternative, that there's a level of complexity where consciousness (or the illusion of it or whatever) can arise, but nothing less can be conscious, doesn't make sense to me. I use "complexity" as a concrete concept here. You can't apply this to a lamp or the universe because the levels of complexity aren't quantifiable in the same way. (The universe is doomed to entropy anyhow.)

 

I should stop now.

 

Side note: I stared at my lamp very intently as I wrote that last part.