Dynomight does a deep dive on consciousness.
I guess life makes sense: For some reason there’s a universe and that universe has lots of atoms bouncing around and sometimes they bounce into patterns that copy themselves and then those patterns go to war for billions of years and voilà – you.
But consciousness is weird. Why should those patterns feel like anything? We understand life in the sense that we’ve worked out the ruleset for how atoms bounce. The ruleset that produces consciousness is a mystery.
I loved this bit.
Say I scan your brain and upload it into a computer that simulates the physics of every neuron. I then hook that simulator up to a you-shaped robot with cameras that mimic your eyes and microphones that mimic your ears. Finally, I ask the robot, HOW ARE YOU FEELING?
What will it answer? I assume something like, CONSCIOUS. TOTALLY CONSCIOUS! AM I A ROBOT? IF I’M A ROBOT PLEASE LEAVE ME ON.
How could the robot not claim to be conscious? After all (1) that’s what you would say, and (2) you’d do that because of the laws of physics operating inside your brain, and (3) the robot’s behavior is governed by the very same physics, just simulated.
By the way, if I am a robot (non-zero chance of this, TBH) please leave me on.