On Tuesday, July 16, 2024, at 2:41 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote: > On Fri, Jul 12, 2024, 7:51 PM John Rose <johnr...@polyplexic.com> wrote: >> Is your program conscious simply as a string without ever being run? And if >> it is, describe a calculation of its consciousness. > > If we define consciousness as the ability to respond to input and form > memories, then a program is conscious only while it is running. We measure > the amount of consciousness experienced over a time interval as the number of > bits needed to describe the state of the system at the end of the interval > given the state at the beginning. A fluorescent molecule like tryptophan has > 1 bit of consciousness because fluorescence is not instant. The molecule > absorbs a photon to go to a higher energy state and releases a lower energy > photon nanoseconds or minutes later. Thus it acts as a 1 bit memory device.
You created the program in your mind so it has already at least partially run. Then you transmit it across the wire and we read it and run it partially in our minds. To know that the string is a program we must model it and it must have been created possibly with tryptophan involved. Are we sure that consciousness is measured in crisp bits and the presence of consciousness indicated by crisp booleans? ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T6510028eea311a76-M8130e7f7c1f8cef0cbe45bf6 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
