consciousness

Using the politically-charged “scientific misinformation” term to describe the reasonable articles that the letter cites is—and I’m not going to mince words here—Machiavellian. Unless merely saying anything about IIT should be forbidden, which is what the claim of the letter appears to be.

Eastern philosophies and yogic systems have developed incredibly sophisticated, broad-spectrum models of consciousness. Western science, on the other hand, has managed to construct an edifice of physics and neuroscience while thinking in 15-30 Hz that pretty much exclusively describes phenomena we experience in 15-30 Hz, relegating everything else... See more

One might point out that movie characters or videogame NPCs give off a similarly deceiving impression of being conscious, and yet it would surely be extreme to condemn this. However, what makes the illusion particularly worrying in the case of AI companions is that it involves an interaction that is direct, mutual, and persistent: the feigned... See more

“ Consciousness is what is like to be you. It is the set of experiences, emotions, sensations, and thoughts that occupy your day, at the center of which is always you, the experiencer. You lose consciousness when you go under anesthesia and when in a dreamless sleep, and you gain consciousness when you wake up in the morning or come up from... See more