Project 1: Expanded Middle + New Research

Thesis: Societal need for an acceptance of the complexity of consciousness and a desire to push towards the truth of who we are despite uncertainty and ego.

What is it about technology that makes it inferior to biology? If we are able to replicate biology with tech, will there be a difference and does it matter as long as we are aiming to replicate the good parts of the human psyche or even make them better?

• Even if we do not understand it, we must understand that we do not understand it.

  • We must aim to understand it as much as possible in order to use technology in a way that helps us the most.

• We won’t be able to replicate it in a non-destructive way if we first understand it.

• If we don’t understand consciousness, we will only be able to replicate the brain’s structure but never its full function.

• What if there is no difference between biological and computational machines

• Ultimately it is worth it to try - this could be the way to end all suffering

Outline:

1. Human consciousness is complicated (con)

2. Robot consciousness is making progress though (pro)

3. Why not go for it? + try to preserve what is good and seek truth

Part 1:

As Tingley writes, the uncanny valley is the idea that humans want robots to do what they do, but the moment when the difference between what is human and what is robotic becomes unrecognizable, humans have a “visceral response” (Tingley).

• The difference between robots and humans is a lack of consciousness/complexity

• Robots are slaves and do exactly as humans tell them

  • Even AI just functions based on the data it is given and the code inside it

  • There is no creativity

• Observing consciousness is the point when we refuse to hurt other people

  • People care about dogs

  • Soldiers purposely miss in battle

The nuances of human thought and action are much more complex than they seem. What exactly makes us human?

Tingley points out that collaborative robots are “multifunctional and reprogrammable as opposed to major investments whose functions are determined at purchase — they offer employees … power to influence how they will be used to maximize the time [they] spend on the facets of their jobs that they find most fulfilling.”

• There are certain things that can be easily automated that have been for decades

• The best robots are responsive to human input and work alongside them.

• That being said, robots are getting better and better at doing human things

  • Talking to people, driving cars, and being collaborative aren’t very robotic things

Things like “dowsing rods, Oujia boards, pendulums” are “all devices whereby quite a small muscular movement can cause quite a large effect” (McRobbie).

• The human brain cannot comprehend just how many factors are at play in the body and mind

• One way would be to replicate every atom exactly, but even then we may not understand the universe well enough at the atomic level

  • There is so much more to discover and somethings may be impossible to discover.

  • “Moreover, to scan and analyze a human connectome with today’s technology would cost billions of dollars and take thousands of years. And of course, no one knows if even a perfect simulation of a mind would retain the self-awareness of the original” (Harmon).

Researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Visual Cognition Lab designed an experiment to test whether individuals would know the answers to more questions if they allowed their subconscious to decide. In the experiment, “when participants were asked, verbally, to guess the answers to the best of their ability, they were right only around 50 percent of the time, a typical result for guessing. But when they answered using the board, believing that the answers were coming from someplace else, they answered correctly upwards of 65 percent of the time” (McRobbie).

• The unconscious retains more information than we know.

• Perhaps being able to replicate and control it will lead to super human abilities.

• If we don’t have it, perhaps we won’t be able to have any intelligence at all.

• People are defined as conscious if they are aware of themselves, respond to stimulus, and are able to process things.

Side tangent (humans are complicated):

Consciousness in history/ the spiritual idea of it (could research this aspect) - beginning part

• People who are “unconscious” do what they are told

• Humans are a product of their own biology and environment

• “Consciousness” is defined as coming up with original thoughts and seeking truth.

These ideas are central to the human desire to be alive. Our passions are much more complex than functions being called over and over again to reach a certain threshold.

Part 2:

A young woman dying of cancer says that “the prospect of life in a computer simulation did not faze [her or her husband]: “How do we know we’re not in one now?” (Harmon).

• The difference between reality and virtual reality may not actually exist

• For all we know, machines could be conscious

• We are trying to replicate one way of creating order with another one when we don’t fully understand either

Mr. Kurzweil, the google engineering director and “others who call themselves transhumanists have argued that exponential increases in computing power will generate an assortment of new technologies that will enable us to transcend our bodies and upload our minds onto a computer” (Harmon).

• This is the other side of the story: our brains are basically just biological computers

• This is convincing but nihilistic? - How can there be meaning when we are just matter

“‘You’d ask yourself how many mistakes could you make and still have the same person,’ Joshua R. Sanes, director of the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University, said in an interview. ‘The ability of us to keep being ourselves in the face of changes in our nervous system is pretty amazing’” (Harmon).

• Perhaps consciousness is more to do with memory than with having exactly the same thought processes

• We grow older and our brains are entirely different, yet we are the same person.

  • Perhaps we aren’t - lead in to stroke speaker from podcast

Part 3:

“In what Mr. Suozzi recalls as a heated conversation, Josh called to urge him to reconsider. “What are you saying?” Josh demanded. “Should we just give up on trying to treat her cancer now, too?” (Harmon).

• We are devoted as a species to trying to preserve consciousness in whatever way we can. Why not extend that to replicating it?

• This is tangentially related but cool

• If the goal is to make the world as good as it can be with the least amount of suffering, wouldn’t prolonging/replicating consciousness do that?

  • Especially for young people who have a consciousness that really really wants them to live.

  • Isn’t it worth it to try?

“Why destroy the wisdom we build up individually and communally every generation if it’s not necessary?” he prodded reporters, fellow scientists and potential donors. (Harmon?)

• We have the internet. Lots of stuff is preserved which makes us smarter. - but why not preserve more

• Argument for downloading consciousness and not having people die.

New research:

TED Radio Hour episode titled “The unknown Brain” by NPR.

Jill Bolte-Taylor, a neuroscientists at Harvard describes how having a stroke changed her brain for the better and allowed her to understand herself:

“So this never would have happened with that other character. So, no, I see myself as a very different person with a very different value structure than I had before. And there was a lot of pain in my past that got relieved. And wasn't that a lovely thing to be able to hit the reset button on my emotional circuitry so that I'm then capable of functioning fresh and new without any antagonism towards anybody? I didn't know if there was anybody I was supposed be mad at because it was all gone” (Bolte-Taylor).

• The only thing that makes her the person she was before is her memories

• Her way of behaving is entirely different, and in her view, better

  • She’s seen both sides because of the memories

    • As long as memory centers weren’t changed nothing is “lost”

    • Our value in ourselves and feeling of maintaining existance is in memories. As long as we feel like nothing is lost we are fine

• Her emotional trauma was cured - if changing the brain means less suffering, why not try?

Haroon Siddique article in The Guardian describes how Psilocybin treats patients via changes in “brain activity that were associated with marked and lasting reductions in depressive symptoms and participants in the trial reported benefits lasting up to five weeks after treatment” (Siddique).

• This is another case where changing the brain has a beneficial effect

• Why not try something new with our idea of consciousness and the self

TED Radio Hour episode titled “The Digital Industrial Revolution” by NPR.

Erik Brynjolfsson is a professor at MIT

When asked if it is possible to create an artificial thing that behaves as a human, he says: “in between your ears is a proof that there's a physical object that can do all those things. And I don't think there's some ghost in there. I think it's made of atoms and obeys the laws of physics” (Brynjolfsson).

Also,

“What they had was better teamwork, and they showed that a team of humans and computers working together could beat any computer or any human working alone...Technology is not destiny. We shape our destiny” (Brynjolfsson).

• This revolution is what we make out of it, but it is going to happen anyway because we are constantly looking for ways to improve our lives.

“We're talking about a world with vastly more wealth, vastly more power to solve all sorts of problems, vastly less need for us to work...Shame on us if we mess that up and turn that into a bad thing” (Brynjolfsson).

TED Radio Hour episode titled “The unknown Brain” by NPR.

“If you can't explain consciousness in terms of the existing fundamentals - space, time - the natural thing to do is to postulate consciousness itself as something fundamental - a fundamental building block of nature. The second crazy idea is that consciousness might be universal. This view is sometimes called panpsychism - pan, for all - psych, for mind. Every system is conscious. Not just humans, dogs, mice, flies, but even microbes. Even a photon has some degree of consciousness” (Chalmers).

• Way more ethical and moral dilemas

• Ties back to my computer being conscious idea - how do we know if it is or isn’t

• Consciousness can be built! Machines are capable

Multimodal evidence:

ASAPscience: Could You Transfer Your Consciousness To Another Body?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r1Sl8DKjf4

Panpsychism: Photons are people too!

if future == technology: brain = concert_to_digital(brain)