On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 7:12 PM 'Brent Meeker' < [email protected]> wrote:
>> Even if we got super mega ultra lucky and Evolution just happened to >> produce a mutated gene that gave a being consciousness it would be lost in >> just a few generations due to genetic drift because however much we may >> value consciousness natural selection can't see it or hear it or touch it >> or detect it or be effected by it in any way. > > > * > But that assumes consciousness has some cost in terms of survival and > reproduction. * > Even if it was neutral and the cost was zero a gene that did nothing but generate consciousness would soon disappear due to genetic drift; errors in dupacation always happen and the consciousness gene would accumulate such errors because they would not reduce the survival chances of the animal that had them , and after a few generations the gene would have so many errors it would stop working entirely. Of course it's possible that I won the lottery and out of the 7.6 billion people on the planet I have the fewest errors in my consciousness gene, I have the only one that still works. It could be, but somehow I don't think so. * > Maybe it's just a spandrel. * > I don't think there is any maybe about it. I am conscious and if I am the product of Darwinian Evolution then consciousness MUST be a spandrel. *Or maybe it has a function in the way human intelligence is implemented, > but it wouldn't have a function is some other implementation.* > Evolution is unlikely to have stumbled upon a complex method of achieving intelligence if there was a much simpler basic procedure to do the same thing, therefore if we use Occam's razor we must conclude if a robot is intelligent the best hypothesis is it's conscious too. To put it another way, it would be harder (probably infinitely harder) to make a brilliant non-conscious AI than to make a brilliant conscious AI. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv01nS_aCR-7bc%3DwtEW-Yz%3Dj%3DWkB4EWs3M6HrZFJeWsWUw%40mail.gmail.com.
