[HN Gopher] Is Consciousness More Like Chess or the Weather? ___________________________________________________________________ Is Consciousness More Like Chess or the Weather? Author : dnetesn Score : 16 points Date : 2023-05-20 11:12 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (nautil.us) (TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us) | simonh wrote: | So he says that he doesn't think consciousness is computational, | but in the rest of the article pretty much everything he says | about it is in terms of processing information. | | " In fact, the brain is always making predictions about what's | out there in the world or in the body. And using sensory signals | to update those predictions. What we consciously experience is | not a readout of the sensory data in a kind of outside-in | direction. It's the predictions themselves. It's the brain's best | guess of what's going on." | | So, processing information, then. | | " I argue that this entails that the brain is or has a predictive | model of its own body, because prediction is very good for | regulation." | | Sounds like information processing to me. | | " A conscious experience, typically for us humans, brings | together a large amount of information about the world, from many | different modalities at once--sight, sound, touch, taste, smell-- | in a single unified scene that immediately makes apparent what | the organism should do next. That's the primary function of | consciousness--to guide the motivated behavior of the organism | that maximizes its chances of staying alive." | | Do I have to say it again? Every single function he ascribes to | consciousness consists or receiving and processing information, | and making decisions. | | We know the answer to this. Any Turing complete system is capable | in principle of any information processing task. Whatever else | brains are, we know they are information processing systems. | Perceptions go in, and decisions come out. All of our conscious | experience is of information. Feelings, sensations, emotions, | decisions, they're all information. I really don't understand why | this seems to be so hard for people to grasp. | furyofantares wrote: | * * * | InDemoVeritas wrote: | Clouds are thoughts in the mind of the sky. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-21 23:00 UTC)