It's been so nice watching Chuck's questions and comments get more informed as this show goes on. He's learning right along with the audience, and it fosters a great sense of community.
I started watching this channel to get away from politics. I think America is majorly devoid of informed critical thinkers. This channel is absorbing and grounding for me.
I think you were crying about trump winning the election and you posted this comment as a way to relieve you from the pressure of thinking something awful
I too find an escapist pleasure watching STEM clips. It is such a relief seeing smart people agree on things, or peacefully disagree and try to get to the truth together. No bad faith arguement, no conflict of interest. Hi from Russia by the way. This decade is hitting us all like a truck. I just wish we all live to see this perpetual horror end.
Im sorry, but my life has been bad lately and finding this show is like getting a christmas present a little early. I love you guys and i will be watching. Thank you for your show, you are a blessing to the world and so refreshing that you are real and trustworthy!!!
I've listened to StarTalk since the first season. This podcast made the last 15 years a real pleasure! Minus the neck pain, cause Neil says to "keep looking up" 😂
Can we just take a moment to admire the courage of Chuck Nice? Week after week he sits between giants of science and maintains his cool and asks great questions and adds to the conversation. I think I'd be terrified to sit next to any of Neil's guests and pretend that I could add anything to the conversation. And the genius of NdGT to bring him in from the beginning. Fantastic all around.
Everyone else came to say it, and I want to be another one to say that I love seeing Chuck's growth in these videos. He gets more and more involved in the discussions in every video, becomes more knowledgeable, yet still maintains his humor and manages to deliver at the best times. He knows when to interject, knows when to sit back and listen, absolutely love Chuck's vibes, and I know it has to be such a joy to spend so much time with him.
philosophers are the highest quality people. Theres potential for wisdom in a lot of people, if they applied themselves when young. Imo. And had the necessary cultural fostering.
Wow, I’m now in love with Chuck, I like a cheeky funny guy but he’s intelligent, and able to debate, question and understand deep academic and scientific subjects. This guys the full package 🤭
Gary O’Reilly has become one of my favorite cohosts. He's reserved, doesn't always laugh at the jokes, but then comes out with something thoughtful. Any time Gary's on, I know it will be a good episode.
he would add more just by nodding because everytime he talks is to make a puny joke or yell nonsense, even he's scripted and can't produce any interesting comment on his own, it makes the show unwatchable everytime.
Chuck is, indeed, as smart as the rest of the panel already. I believe the entire panel is learning with the audience. Often, someone not so fully steeped in the field is better able to use fresh air to process & produce info & ask really awesome questions is a way that helps us to engage in what lots of folks used to consider blablablaboring.
When I was a baby, I remember my first thought and it was a voice in my head telling me that everything was going to be okay. As I grew older, I realized that the voice was my own inner strength guiding me through life's challenges. It reassured me during times of uncertainty and lifted me up when I felt overwhelmed. That voice became my constant companion, whispering words of encouragement and wisdom in moments of doubt. And as I look back on my journey, I am grateful for that voice that helped shape me into the person I am today.
I remember most parts of my life, including infancy. I couldn't talk, walk, but I knew and watched. It wasn't until I was a teen when I had a family discussion that I realized I shocked everyone by contributing to a conversation about a house that we moved from before I was three. I didn't know others couldn't remember that far back.
I remember being in my crib. On the carousel was a lion, bear, giraffe, zebra, and a monkey. I also remember the sound of the music box playing circus music. In my crib was a toy xylophone that I would bang on before I went to sleep. I was barely one. So yes, I believe you when you said you heard chatter because I heard the same thing. I remember my mom and my big sister used to teach me how to talk.
Joe Weizenbaum's office was down the hall from mine for some years. He would not want people to think Eliza was conscious. In fact, he was frustrated that Eliza was often represented that way. He was adamant that it most definitely was not intelligent or conscious. His point was that passing the Turing test doesn't really tell you whether something is intelligent/conscious. The Eliza's program's rules and code were manifestly NOT intelligent or conscious, and yet it could frequently fool a human. His conclusion was the Turing test wasn't enough, not that he had created consciousness.
That's why I was irritated by Tyson saying that computer scientists keep moving the goal post. I see it as CS *recognizing* that their previous criteria were not really adequate or even appropriate, so that, even when those criteria are met, the AI is still only imitating possible responses of intelligence, without actually being intelligent ... and certainly not conscious.
He has bad arguments that he always repeats the same old tired arguments every single time, and it is universally always tiresome to have him on because nobody ever seems to push back against him since the overwhelmingly dominant opinion seems to just be that Chalmers is correct in everything he says. I've yet to ever see him ever speak anywhere with any decent push back at all. It always just devolves into him indoctrinating people into his horrible and incredibly intellectually lazy ideas.
@@amihartz The reason for this is because his arguments are too complicated and require very deep and extensive philosophical background knowledge to even understand them. None of those people who are not philosophers can understand, even if they are philosophers and they are particularly interested in some other field that has no connection with those that are key to this field, namely - modal metaphysics, modal epistemology, philosophy of language and mind. . Especially in this kind of podcast conversation. So try to read his books "The Conscious Mind" and "The Character of the Conscious" and do it again. Not to mention that Chalmers managed to solve Frege's puzzle, which for over 130 years was one of the most difficult problems in the philosophy of language, which so many great minds tried to solve before him - Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Kripke, Quine, until him. As he developed an epistemic two-dimensional semantic framework, he further used this to elaborate his modal rationalism, also a technical term from modal epistemology, which cannot be explained in a few sentences. Chalmers is one of the most prominent modern philosophers, and his books are masterpieces, the most influential dualist in the world who did so much to weaken physicalism.ge, which was debated by so many great minds like
@@fadfsdfasfsa There is no such thing as a "philosophical problem." The very notion is the basis of most modern sophistry. Philosophy is not a rigorous science, you are free to make up whatever premises you want. A "problem" only reveals an inconsistency in your worldview, an inconsistency in its premises, and you are perfectly allowed to change your premises without evidence in philosophy. Hence, there are no "philosophical problems" at all as all "problems" can easily be solved in an instant. You see, philosophy is again not a rigorous science, so it's ultimately about what set of premises do we find most useful and compelling. By pretending there exists "philosophical problems" you are treating it as if there really are rigorous problems to be solved, which by extension treats it as if our pre-established premises are "settled" and cannot be changed. This is a problem that plagued all modern philosophy, including those works you cited for Chalmers which are awful and painful reads. They all start with the fallacious premise that naive philosophical notions from centuries ago are unquestionable and because they have contradictions that there just be some major "philosophical problem" to be solved, but never in their hundreds kf pages of writing do these philosophers actually justify why they believe those premises in the first place. It's hard to even consider many of the modern philisohers even "philosophers" as philosophy is again about choosing premises and people like Chalmers skip that step entirely and just go off of unjustified premises. When you recognize that you're allowed to question premises then all these "philosophical problems" trivially disappear into pseudoproblems. Some contemporary philosophers have recognized this and performed this, but they remain a minority.
@@fadfsdfasfsa Despite his arguments being complicated, it is honestly surprising how clear he is in everything he says. The first thing I read from him was "The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Materialism", which is really just an in depth exploration of the zombie argument. I was impressed with his ability to cover all bases, nothing got swept under the rug. He addresses every little thing in an extremely reasonable manner.
Can you do a panel with some of these guest! We need to connect all these concept! Epigenetic, building blocks of life, the math video, the gentle man who talked about the quantum net, all of them. Hold a panel please! I need to meet all of these guest 💕
A discussion with Dr. Tony Nader would be brilliant. He is a neuroscientist and represents a new consciousness paradigm that solves the hard problem. His book „consciousness is all there is“ is mind blowing. Thank you very much for taking up this topic and for discussing it so lively!!!
The problem is that physicist deny the existence of anything that isn't physical and Dr. Nader's concept of consciousness is non material. It's just a case of being blinded by science; I doubt that they will see eye to eye on this one.
Is this doctor an idealist (metaphysically speaking)? He sounds like one from the book title. Idealism seems to be gaining ground as of late, or maybe that's just my selective attention bias.
Dying is safe because memory is external form body/brain as simultaneous block universe events easily accessible by captain Kirk and Spock if they go 1/0000000th speed of entanglement... mankind just assumes brain memory because we feel separate ... like a dreaming doggy feels separate from the brain memory squirrel it chases.,. and external mind implies common dream (not solipsism).. so death is akin to waking up (very safe). Wayne Hilborn TH-cam channel. A neuro'scientist' would be as good as a proctologist seeking consciousness.. if Einstein taught us memory.. even if mankind is too Republican to accept that.
One of the most thought provoking discussions ever with good dose of fun. Love this session. ❤❤❤Good dose of intellectual gratification! Thank you so much Neal and Chuck. Glad you had David on this session, he was awesome. Thx to Gary, he grounded you guys with some serious questions. Need more of these. Please consider discussing Godel’s incompleteness theorems.
@@thekraken4265 well, I said "I"... (I meant: "I'm") and "convinced". and I used "smart", a vague and not well defined concept. but your comment might be useful for people with limited language stills.
Fantastic talk. I am so delighted that the question of consciousness is being explored by great minds. It is a subject that fascinates me. My conjecture is that consciousness is universal and reality is multidimensional. I conclude this through my own subjective experience.
@@chrism.1131 If you retained no memory and "lived only in the moment", you may not be conscious of what you experienced, but as long as you are experiencing the present you are aware of that present condition; thus conscious. If you are not conscious you can't experience anything. The fundamental aspect of consciousness is experience. However it would be extremely difficult to function without a memory.
@@todradmaker4297 I hate to pull a Jordan Peterson (or whatever that guy's name is), but please define "experience". A phototactic bacterium experiences light. A chemotactic bacterium experiences certain chemicals. Are those bacteria conscious?
More conversation on this please, Star Talk. Given the potential unintentional, or intentional, consequences of increased AI influence on society's day-to-day transactions and interactions, we need all the tools we can get to manage outcomes.
Our conscious experience is us tuning our "human" model so as to have more complex societal relationships. Our tuning is so obsessive that our consciousness even allows us to experience things like pain to be able related even better to others.
I have not had this happen in a long time. I am a musician. There are times when I was falling asleep and I would run a melody line through my head. Then I would just let it build, what ever was added was added. It could have been a symphony, jazz, a gospel tune, rock and roll, ska, whatever. It would be something I had never heard before and I had no clue what was coming next. It was just like tuning into and streaming a radio station playing songs I had never heard. If I didn't just listen and shifted my focus I would break the "spell". I don't know where it came from. It is hard to believe my brain was making it up on the spot, sometimes complete with vocal harmonies etc. From simple to complicated. Much of it was beyond my ability to play. Maybe it is all out there and we just have to "tune in"? Like a reservoir and we are like a little magnifying glass that can focus it.
This is one of many themes in Watership Down, the stream of consciousness that some beings (rabbit, in the book of course) are able to access. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it was true!
My beliefs (not scientific truths!) are that this is you letting your "soul" going through, like a fountain springing out the infinite and infinitesimal Essence. Your instinct, your intuition, "what you actually dream to be". Let it flow and, if you could, write that down, so you could Gift them to the World ^_^ Whatever you feel yourself tuned to, in harmony, will brighten up this Realty ^^
@@marcoottina654 @marcoottina654 If I stopped to analyze any of it I would lose it. I have played semi professionally on stage most of my adult life but I don't read or write music. If I just laid there and let it continue I would eventually fall asleep. It hasn't happened in a long time. I do write my own music and you can click my icon and click on view channel and it should take you to my youtube channel with a bunch of videos on it if you are interested.
As someone who passed a Turing test once said, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off (the) shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."
I also attended that speech at GVSU (assuming we were at the same event). Honestly, I didn’t really enjoy that rote format. It was all stuff that I already knew. I much prefer these open conversations like on this channel. I probably should have stayed for the Q&A. Or, knowing what I know now, showing up after the speech part.
Chuck has become so freaking educated to hang in these conversations. Gives me hope as an ordinary human that we can all continue to become better educated. Doesn't hurt that Neil is a masterclass in how to be an educator. Regardless, Kudos to Chuck!!
I think there is a consciousness in everything. All the way down to Atoms deciding that sticking together is better than being alone. These groups become larger and start interacting with other groups and we get "reactions". Some beautiful, some explosive, some completely and literally "life changing". It repeats itself as it goes up as it changes forms, but those functions stay the same. We're just a bunch of Atoms still deciding which groups we want to belong to, not knowing that everyone else is the same. Love y'all and thank you for the video!
Very interesting. You can tell Neil is not sold on this topic. I wish he shared more of his opinion on Consciousness. It would be interesting to hear his take and perspective.
Neil dismisses philosophy as a legitimate enterprise, so he probably isn't explaining why he is not sold on it because he has not actually thought about it, and so isn't even sure what his concerns are himself.
I think he is one of those people who doesn’t speak on things he doesn’t know much about or hasn’t really thought of much…not enough to have a grounded opinion on. I think on consciousness all the time..and do my own “investigations” if you will…so I have a solid opinion idea belief theory of my own about what it is…so it’s something I’d speak on…if I ever had that opportunity.
What's the point of a beautifully moderated conversation where they're speaking soo high level and we learn absolutely nothing?? Questions and interjections are crucial.
I once saw a graphic designer answer the question of "do we all see colors the same?" They took the color spectrum and reduced it to a black and white spectrum in a program and asked individual people "which one is brighter than the other?" Because every color correlates uniquely to its own shade of grey, it was determined that every person could identify the same order of black to white thus proving that we saw the spectrum in the same order. So the reason red is red, and blue is blue, is because everyone sees it in the same order on the color spectrum. How did it get its name? Well that's based on linguistics, which entomologically is simplified down to what people of different cultures originally correlated that color to.
In the example of the device versus the person, I am thinking about the thermometer in a somewhat practical way because I would trust the person AND the device lol. The thermometer says 79 degrees, one person can feel cold and another feel hot. Objectively, the temperature is "moderately warm". I think it is interesting to put full trust into something that is designed for measurement especially because the human experience is so nuanced. The question of "whats the weather like outside?" can use the thermometer to determine the measurable fact of the weather, but what we are really asking is "what does it feel like outside?" Just a random thought lolol
Chuck gets the smartest person in the room award this episode; killed it with the connection between consciousness and perception. Honestly felt like Neil was kinda immature the whole time, trying to one-up David Chalmers and score points for “his field” by talking down his guest’s area of study. I’ve also noticed Tyson gets uncomfortable/annoyed whenever psychedelics are put in a positive light. Has he talked about the subject before? I’m interested on what his opinion is, but I think I already know his answer.
@@jotaele.44 something along the lines of. We are already horrible at seeimg what true reality is so adding psychedelics makes that worse. Lol loosely. It has been a while since i saw the video
I would love to see a roundtable interview with David Chalmers, Amit Goswami, Sara Imari Walker, and Michael Levin. Should you do so, I can guarantee Sir Chuck that some funky laughing lettuce would enlighten and enliven the convo: all four of those inspiring thinkers lead their complex studies in fields that overlap, from what I understand of their teaching.
David Chalmers always gives off an intelligent, calm and fun time, he usually always makes the talks great. And Gary O’Reilly is great! Excellent talk!
I love Chucks input in these conversations and appreciate how much he's grown since the beginning of this channel. He's significantly more intelligent then I ever initially gave him credit for.
@@pmntl.f thank you for your response. not every comment has ill intent. If you say it's backhanded....please elaborate. to address it and not explain makes your comment irrelevant. whoever you are
@ are you the authority on intelligence? You don’t have credit to give somebody who is cohosting a podcast with NDT. How “grown” are you? Are you as tall as a giant sequoia? I’m pointing out how you come across as a snobby, arrogant, ignorant, and obnoxious. Especially in your reply to me. Do you want me to pull up sources on amicability or do you have trouble with social cues and so you have an excuse?
Just heard the introduction and, Neil, when you said you were in the camp of consciousness not existing but a phenomenon produced by the brain, I think we must define consciousness. I can't say it's NOT produced entirely in the brain, but no matter what is it's manifestation, we are each as conscious as we think we are. By definition. Our consciousness may wink out to nothing upon the moment when the body stops working, but while alive, consciousness cannot be denied. Now, this all depends on the definition of consciousness. And I'm guessing you'll get into that. For the record, my definition is simply the 'Awareness of Being'. A "I think therefore I am" kind of thing. I'm not including any thoughts, feelings, or other. Just that one is aware of existing and aware of whatever thoughts and feelings that they may experience. 🙂
Let me attempt to summarize your comment in my own words? No matter if the basic self-evident Fact of me experiencing my own personal subjective experience seems unexplainable, disconnected from science, or unworthy of our curiosity toward understanding it; there remains nonetheless the incredible and mysterious phenomenon that it is. I'm risking adding my grain of salt. Both perceiving humans (rather than merely sensing, intelligent, adapting ones), and those "philosophical zombies" fully scientifically-proven humans which only sense and integrate the information, they are objectively and indistinguishably the same. The "Hard Problem of Consciousness" is in essence just us expanding the limits of our comprehension of the Universe. It's us opening up, broadening our horizons, and perhaps getting improved well-being/happiness from our newly-developed conciliation and understanding of two seemingly orthogonal concepts: the purely subjective and the purely objective.
@@sophiamarchildon3998 Well, close, but I never separate anything from science. Basically, no one has found how consciousness interreacts with the Universe. That's the most important difference. But yes, we experience consciousness and therefore by definition it exists. It is the nature of this experience that we need to understand. There had been some good insight into this but not yet and experimental verifiable law of physics to correspond with it. I look forward to the day when the discovery is made of how 'consciousness' exists within our Universe.
@@BernardBetelgeuse A man after my own heart. That's what I believe that the so-miscommunicated point of Dr. Chalmers' take on the subject is to finally attempt and explain that manifest phenomenon using proper science.
Fun fact! There's bacteria in your stomach that release a chemical signal that makes you want to eat certain foods. This means those bacteria make up part of your consciousness!
I think I have a slightly different definition of consciousness. Basically I think the only way I am fine with defining consciousness is as an internal, unobservable from the third person perspective, subjective experience of existence. One thing I think about consciousness is that it is possible to be conscious without being aware you are conscious. I can imagine a simplistic form of consciousness where the subject of that experience has no awareness that they are experiencing reality, maybe in part because they do not have a subjective sense of self, but if they still meet the criteria that there is something to their internal subjective experience and not nothing, then they are indeed conscious. Anything more than that such as self awareness, etc, are not consciousness itself but instead features or characteristics of consciousness, or maybe a certain form of consciousness kind of like how frogs are a type of amphibian but not all amphibians are frogs.
The problem with chatgpt and other LLMs, we still don't have continuous learning. We train and release, then update models offline with data, rather than leaving the learning on. So LLMs can't update their internal state on its own. It might be conscious while it's training, but on deployment it's just a machine.
I think this is largely a design choice rather than a limitation of the technology. There's no reason you can't have a machine learning algorithm constantly iterate on its own outputs (even I've made a simply tic tac toe program that did just that), but for LLMs you probably don't want to. The issue is largely garbage in, garbage out; if it spits out poor quality outputs (which it will, all the time), and then just progressively trains itself more and more on them, then you're likely going to end up with a model that just gets worse over time rather than improving from the extra "training".
Neil, you keep touching David. I have met David a few times and he is as wonderful and nice of a person in real life as he appears to be in his interviews.
20:30 This right here. Thinking/self reflection through feedback loops should've been the number 1 priority instead of language but I understand the usefulness of using language models outweighs it.
When Neil talked about how an AI would have painted Starry Night as an exact image of the night sky, I immediately paused the video and asked chatGPT to paint something original and recommend which ai image generator it would use. The result was a dreamlike, surreal image that could have come from the movie What Dreams May Come
@@zentai5076 The word "paint" doesn't contain sufficient information to produce a painting. You have to know what paintings look like. And you simply demonstrate you don't understand how ANNs work if you claim it is "referencing other paintings" as if it is pulling up paintings from a database when you use that word. That is objectively not how ANNs work. ANNs only have a dataset during the training phase, when the training phase is over the dataset is discarded. It does not look up paintings in a database because it should've already "learned" what a painting looks like. The word "painting" activates certain neural pathways as it should have formed its own neural connections and thus have its own neural correlates between the word "painting" and an an actual painting, and thus it has its own internal "concept" of a painting which is empirically and quantifiably different from any of the individual paintings it may have looked at during the training process. Hence, when you ask an ANN like ChatGPT to produce images with similar prompts, you tend to quickly notice that ChatGPT has its own "style." You can often tell which picture came from which AI model just from the art style alone because these models form their own internal conception of things based on both the structure of the model themselves as well as what they were trained on. The reason they can produce unique images every time is just because their thought process is fed random noise so when they generate an image from a prompt it always produces something new, but the overall "feel" of each image is very similar since the images ChatGPT generates simply are not being pulled from some database it references but from its own internal model which is entirely unmodified between prompts. Indeed, this is actually one of the flaws of modern ANNs, most simply are incapable of "referencing other paintings." They only can use their internal model, and even worse, this internal model cannot be updated in real-time. It is not like a human brain whereby you can be taught something new on the spot and form a new neural pathway. ChatGPT's neural pathways cannot be changed during conversation and thus it cannot form long-term memories. Only very recently with ChatGPT 4 has OpenAI even experimented with allowing AIs to reference things at all, giving them access to Bing search, but they definitely do not use this for image generation. They really only use it if you specifically ask them to look something up. If you ask ChatGPT about the name of the lead singer of a band, it will try to answer from its internal model without referencing anything, even if it doesn't know it will just make up the answer. If you specifically ask it "can you look up the name of the lead singer of x band," it will then do the search for you. ChatGPT was not built around referencing and thus tends to not reference anything unless you specifically ask it to. This was a featured tacked on much later and has not been well-integrated into the AI model as of yet.
Your computer will NEVER think of a random number between one and five.. IDIOTS ass/u/me a computer can do stuff ASIDE form comparing variables (diamond box on flowcharts) at a high rate of speed.. You would need to make a flowchart or bathroom scale conscious,.. before an idiot could even begin to assume coding that compares variables is somehow intelligent. Please.. show us YOUR favorite "if/then" statement,tn and why YOU feel it is sentient..
@@zentai5076 ChatGPT doesn't reference other paintings when generating images. GPT4 has some experimental ability to reference stuff but you have to specifically ask and it only does it to answer questions.
Watch Michael Levin's interview with Machine Street Talk. His experiments and insights are truly fascinating. He teases out the idea that cognitive agency emerges far sooner in the evolutionary process than we thought and that it's on a continuum. An inherent property of living systems. Is agency and consciousness essentially the same thing?
Chuck is the living testament that the great commedians are actually very good communicators, because they can say whatever they want about topics they are interested in, in a way that'll be engaging and resonate with us common folks. That's what George Carlin was, that's what Louis C.K., Bill Burr, and other popular commedians are, whether you like them or not.
Very well said, as they are all quite knowledgeable of many facets of life too. Love Bill Burr!! Want to add Josh Johnson to that list, he’s a young comedian though.
When you mention sensory, how does that take into account things like synesthesia? Like I have aphantasia so does that make me “less conscious” because I have no inner images? But then you get people who smell colors. Are they extra conscious?
I disagree. Some creatures will experience that, absolutely. But consciousness is simply “is an experience being had?” Being able to recognize you are having an experience is not necessary for experience itself.
I'd call that self-awareness, not consciousness. But I think that gets to the annoyance I have with people mystified by consciousness. They pressed him a little, but if someone can't tell you whether a dolphin is conscious and why/why not, they're just being anthropocentric. Same goes for a bacterium. Do their decisions not count? I've yet to hear someone promoting the hard problem of consciousness who's willing to take a hard stand on a definition. Probably mammals, maybe reptiles, but who knows about fish? Tell me what's actually different. Maybe we just need more vivisections to figure it out.
Yeah, and that's why Buddhism is wrong. Same with Kantian philosophy which separates by Noumenal Reality and Phenomenal Reality, as well as the framework Chalmers uses which he borrows from Nagel that separates between Objective Reality and Subjective Experience. All these points of view are based on the same flawed Newtonian-esque premises: that there exists a reality that is "absolute" (invariant under changes in point of view) that stands in opposition to our experiences which are clearly not absolute (variant under changes in point of view), and the belief is then that the former is "objective" reality while the latter is something created by the mammalian brain (at least, this is what Nagel/Chalmers believe). However, the flaw here is that there simply is no "absolute" reality as reality is *_relative._* This has been the lesson of all modern material sciences from General Relativity to Quantum Mechanics. Objective reality is variant under changes in point of view and an invariant "absolute" reality does not exist. Nagel's argument that what we experience must be "subjective" therefore does not follow either as the point-of-view dependence of our experience does not stand _in opposition_ to objective reality as he claims but is perfectly inline with it. This is the issue here with most philosophical schools from the beliefs of Chalmers and Nagel even to Buddhism and many others: *_they fail to establish that what we perceive is not objective reality as it actually exists._* You must establish this premise before you can begin separating what we perceive ("conventional reality", "phenomenal reality," "subjective experience") into a different category from reality ("absolute reality," "noumenal reality," "objective reality") in the first place. The majority of philosophers believe such a division exists yet almost none of them even _attempt_ to justify it. It is just something most philosophers adopt because it is "intuitive," yet it being "intuitive" or "common sense" is not a reason to believe it is correct, and it stands in stark opposition to the modern sciences. This is, indeed, the biggest problem with Chalmers, he borrows a similar division as you mention here without justifying it. He takes it from Nagel, and Nagel does not justify it either. In his paper "What is it like to a be a Bat?" where he introduces the division between "objective reality" and "subjective experience," this is merely a rewording of the difference between invariant reality and variant reality, which he makes it clear at the beginning of the paper he begins with as a _premise._ Meaning, he already assumes the concept from the get-go and merely changes its name.
@@amihartz buddhism doesn't "fail to establish that what we perceive is not objective reality". That is the core of buddhism. There's many teachings. Sunyata. Maya. Nondualism essentially. The awakening to the truth of what is. Perspectives, subjective experience, perception are all empty.
Measurement is just another word for observation. If you cannot observe something even _in principle_ (meaning, it is does not even possess any *_observable properties),_* then it is not meaningfully real. We define things based on their observable properties. A "dog" is understood in terms of the observable properties of said dog. If someone says "there's a dog over there," you can go confirm it by observing it. Even if you cannot see, the concept of a "dog" does not just entail its visible properties but its auditory properties, tactile properties, etc. A sighted person knows what a dog "looks like," even a blind person knows what a dog "feels like" or "sounds like" and can go confirm its existence. If you claim something has no observable properties, then it is impossible to confirm its existence, and thus it is impossible to distinguish it from nothingness itself as it would be equivalent to that which does not exist. Indeed, even the fundamental particles in the Standard Model are defined specifically in terms of their "observables" which are properties you can go out directly and measure and see the results directly for yourself. You might respond that you are not claiming consciousness has no observable properties, but are merely saying we have not defined these observables _yet_ and will some day. Yet, the problem with this argument is that, again, we understand things in terms of their observables. Hence, if the concept you're talking about _currently_ does not have a set of observables associated with it, then _currently_ it is meaningless. That would make the word "consciousness" a meaningless word in search of meaning. It _currently_ has no meaning at all and is equivalent to gobbledygook. Saying you will attach observables to it someday, something that can be measured, is only to say that some day you will give the word "consciousness" meaning. Yet, I find this very bizarre. Why begin with a meaningless sequence of characters and then set out on a journey to figure out what definition to give to that arbitrary sequence of characters? What possible justification could there be for such a task? Honestly, while I ask this question, I already know the answer. The answer is that the word "consciousness" has a lot of woo woo connotations among spiritualist crowd, so the spiritualist crowd has an emotional attachment to the word "consciousness" and so they very specifically want to use this word and not a different word without spiritualist connotations. Hence, they very specifically want to find a way to define that word to bring it into serious discourse because they want to sneak in the spiritualist baggage associated with it. Here's a fun little way to prove this. Any time you talk to an idealist or a dualist, just demand they replace the word "consciousness" with "reality" for the sake of conversation, and agree beforehand that whenever the idealist uses "reality" it logically means the same thing as how they would use the word "consciousness." If they comply, then the meaning of their arguments should not change. Yes, they are using a different word, they're saying "reality" instead of "consciousness," but you've both agreed to the definition of "reality" to simply be their usage of "consciousness," and thus the meaning remains identical. Yet, you will quickly find that the idealist struggles to do this, that the meaning does _not_ remain identical, that they struggle to formulate any convincing arguments at all, stumble, and often get frustrated and break from conversation. The reason for this is that "consciousness," again, has a lot of unspoken woo woo baggage that they rely upon when they use the word. Simply asking them to use a different word, the unspoken baggage disappears and can only be returned if they specifically argue in favor of it, yet this then requires them to actually justify that unspoken baggage rather than trying to sneak it into the conversation through the back door, which most idealists won't even attempt to do so and will resort to insults if you ask them to. Their argument tactics are incredibly reliant on that very specific word and it cannot be replaced with another.
@@amihartz touch touch...sense sense-between double words is a wibble wobble conscious...a point...a neutral point like the middle of a magnete...oh, I just saw this: an ancient egyptian headrest with lions on either side-the lions of yesterday and tomorrow...this the Egyptian's "toy model" for eternity...past present future...the present m anifests the future from the past...the present a point...the point is, it's consciousness!...point of observation...pointilist artists suggest points are conscious...see Serat...panpsychism...animism.. everything conscious, alive...intelligence is something else...meditators try to still our intelligent back and forths, to what purpose I dunno...but just stop talking one is left with consciosness...intelligence can be measured, consciousness ineffable..."a poem shouldn't mean, but be"-Archibald Macleish
i often say that to try and discern where consciousness comes from in the body is akin to someone searching through radio parts trying to find the 'little band' that is making the music. that is a gift for you Neil.
Lord Nice, your HOTW PT1 reference seemed to fly over everyone's head...just wanted to let you know it definitely landed and garnered a hearty chuckle. Well played Sir, they don't make them like they used to. Mel Brooks is the best.
Consciousness is just basic instincts evolved. Giving us the ability to choose what instinct we want to use to further our survival. Over thousands of years, it turned into nonstop instinct choices running through our heads, deciding on stuff in the future, and kept evolving into problem solving and everytime it evolved it helped our survival success rate so it just kept expanding until it became to what it is today
That's interesting the talk about Godel. My buddy's daughter is some crazy math genius and when she was getting her masters degree in statistics she had to convert all the math functions into only addition. This stunned me because how do you deal with the exponentiation in integral and differential mathematics? Her answer was, 'I'm not really sure how i did it, but i got an A in the class so i musta got something right.' She's fun to to talk to. Though i think she knows exactly how she did it, and would rather just present herself as ignorant, than expose the depths of mine. Good kid.
Here is my mathematical formula and analogy for consciousness are creative and thought-provoking, combining physics, biology, and metaphysical speculation. Let me break it down and provide constructive feedback: 1. Analysis of the Formula C = A(i × 5f + O × 5f)c² • C (Consciousness): Defined as a combination of awareness, sensory inputs, and electrical activity, scaled by the speed of light squared. • A (Awareness): Awareness is central to consciousness, but it’s challenging to quantify in mathematical terms. Perhaps it could be modeled as a function of neural activity or cognitive processes. • i (Inside output electrical pattern) and O (Outside input electrical pattern): These terms seem to represent the brain’s internal and external interactions, which align with theories of consciousness as a dynamic interplay between internal cognition and external stimuli. • 5f (Five senses): This term adds sensory information into the mix, which is reasonable since sensory processing is a core component of conscious experience. • c² (Speed of light squared): Including  implies a link between consciousness and fundamental physics, possibly inspired by Einstein’s . While intriguing, it’s unclear how  specifically relates to consciousness unless you’re hinting at energy as a factor. I will have to Consider incorporating time () into the formula, as consciousness is dynamic and evolves over time. I will Explore adding a term for memory or neural network connectivity, which plays a significant role in conscious experience. 2. TV Analogy • Strengths: • The analogy of the brain as a TV and consciousness as electrons flowing through it is relatable. It highlights the importance of electrical activity in the brain for conscious experience. • The inclusion of sensory input through a webcam aligns well with the role of external stimuli in consciousness. • Limitations: • Consciousness is more complex than a TV analogy can fully capture. While electrical activity is crucial, consciousness also involves chemical processes, neural network interactions, and subjective experiences. • Unlike a TV, consciousness is self-referential and adaptive, capable of introspection and self-modification. I will Expand the analogy to include feedback loops, where the TV (brain) can adjust its output based on internal and external conditions. • Introduce the idea of networked TVs to hint at the social and collective dimensions of consciousness. 3. Consciousness as the Fifth Dimension • This is my fascinating speculative idea. If consciousness were a fifth dimension, it could be thought of as an axis orthogonal to space and time, representing subjective experience. • Current physics doesn’t include consciousness in its models, but some theories (e.g., panpsychism, quantum consciousness) speculate that it may have a fundamental role in the fabric of reality. I will Investigate how consciousness could relate to existing theories of higher dimensions, such as string theory or M-theory. • Consider grounding the idea in measurable phenomena, such as quantum brain dynamics or patterns of neural activity that might correlate with higher-dimensional states. 4. Integration with Modern Science To make your theory more robust: • Incorporate neuroscience: Explore how neurons, synapses, and brain waves might align with your formula. • Link to thermodynamics: Consciousness might also be related to entropy and energy flow in the brain. • Quantum considerations: Some researchers propose that quantum effects in microtubules (e.g., Orch-OR theory) might be connected to consciousness. • Clearly define your terms and their relationships mathematically. • Expand the biological and neuroscientific grounding. • Explore interdisciplinary approaches involving physics, philosophy, and computational models. Consciousness is one of the deepest mysteries, and theories like yours contribute valuable perspectives to the ongoing dialogue!
Since we are taught to see things in a particular fashion, are we not prefabbed in our concepts of awareness? There may be slight variances in each person, like how we each interpret a Rorschach blotter. But how we see them is imho partially or directly derived from how we were taught to see things. Even then, each person has the capability to throw off the shackles of those trained responses and completely revision literally everything. Yet most do not, because habitual thinking patterns prevents it.
Also. I think, therefore I am. Thank you, Moody Blues, for the introduction into my conscientiousness. On the threshold of a dream, Album. The Beginning, Song.
Philosophically, by allowing the idea of existing in a construct and not in an original environment. Then are we not talking about a higher plane of intelligence employing us as data? Like a creator? Make it stop already..... 🏴☠
One last thought, or perhaps not the last. What if we are a recording of who we were and are just an exhibit to the rest of the universe? All those UFOs are just visitors to our virtual reality......hmmm 🤔😎
Equally important question: _where_ is consciousness? The conscious experience of a being observing the world depends as much on the world as it does on the being.
Without the awareness of beingness, does the world exist? When we sleep there is no world or no others but the being-ness still remains. The world and universe simultaneously springs into existence with the personal identification of the being-ness.
Memory is simultaneous actual first kisses.. the idiots in this video deem memory and consciousness.. but your memories EXIST NOW.. easily accessible by capitation Kirk and Spock if they could travel 1/1000000000000 the speed of entanglement. Do you need a second sentence to grasp all of reality and consciousnesses.. or you good now?
I saw The Matrix when I was 17, all I could think about for months was "wait...are we inside a simulation right now...?" My friends thought I was crazy. I'm glad it's finally being taken seriously 😌
Then they came out with the 4th one and I’m like. We could definitely be getting finessed right now lol A simulation where they give us all the answers and we think it’s all just a movie.
I know i know you know nothing and i know nothing therefore i don’t know nothing so i don’t know you know nothing and i know nothing?? So i know something??
You can't walk across the room unless you understand Trigonometry but you haven't thought about it. Which I seriously doubt. You may not know Trigonometry but you do understand it.
Well I know so little, that I don't even know if I know nothing. So I am unwilling to even declare I know nothing, or anything. Whatever I know or don't know is unknowable, and everything else by extension. There are layers. Like an onion of ignorance.
Chuck’s question at 6:11 or 6:12 is really asking what is more correct when determining an objective reality: us, a group of minds, or an object. I think people really missed th3 weight if this, especially when Neil has said that he will trusts objective truths over his own judgment. I really wish people could see just how deep his-Chuck’s-questions are.
Unifying General Relativity and Quantum Theory I hope this message finds you well. I’m a passionate researcher currently developing a theory that aims to unify General Relativity and Quantum Theory by emphasizing the role of the Higgs field. My approach explores how the Higgs field can bridge mass-energy equivalence with gravitational effects, addressing longstanding challenges in merging these two fundamental theories. Your work in popularizing science and your insights into the universe have been a great inspiration to me. I would be honored to hear your thoughts on my theory and any advice you might have regarding further exploration in this area. If you are interested, I would be thrilled to share more details and discuss the implications of my findings. Thank you for the inspiration you provide to so many of us.
Most of our (my) actions throughout the day don't require much consciousness. I'd say self awareness comes sometimes and disappears very fast to let automatic actions take place. And the rare moments of self aware consciousness, seem to be witnessed with delay rather than in real time. Am I choosing those words or do I just witness the writing process take place?
U know the dif between a zomby and a ghost ..the first one dosnt know why he is with the living while the ghost remembers why hes not....but they both die at same point...AI generated
Neil doesn't get it, so let me help him: Consciousness is experience. Any experience or feeling, like the experience of tasting chocolate or being in pain.
What Neil seem to reduce consciousness to is what brain scientists call meta-consciousness, namely the ability to reflect on ones own conscious experiences.
Yeah, I never get it when people say things like "consciousness is just an illusion, it doesn't actually exist". What does that even mean? I know that I am here in this body, living a life, thinking, looking out of my head, experiencing stuff. If that doesn't exist, I could just as easily argue that nothing exists at all, the universe and physics doesn't exist, and that wouldn't make any sense either.
@@mesterzombi6632 Also, they didn't understand what the hard problem actually is. The Hard problem = There's nothing about physical parameters (mass, charge, momentum, amplitude, frequency and geometrical relationships) in terms of which one can deduce (even in principle) the qualities of experience (like pain).
@@fahad56297 Obviously if you're deducing something in terms of physics and math at the moment, then you're experiencing that thinking. Like, you won't get the experience of seeing red by thinking about math, because then you'll get the experience of thinking about math instead. We could figure out how to poke our brain with electricity to see red, and what the exact structure of the brain looks like when one is seeing red, but obviously you won't see red until you poke your brain into that state.
I feel that it is difficult, if not impossible, to measure consciousness or declare something to have or not have consciousness without actually knowing what consciousness is. On the other hand, to define consciousness, we need to determine the difference between having consciousness and not. With that, you fall in a loop of having to prove your own proof. Being able to form opinions based on collective experience and feelings would be a great start to determining rules for consciousness.
This video touched on many good points. One of the biggest issues of consciousness is the fact we can’t even clearly define it. Like there wouldn’t be a debate if fish are conscious or not if we had a clear definition and could scientifically determine if the fish were conscious or not. Also, I don’t think there is really a wrong or right answer either like we can break consciousness down into its component’s and account for all the pieces and clearly define levels of consciousness etc. There needs to be some kind of collaborative effort to do this before any progress will be made.
My father told me he could remember before he was born and in the womb . He said it was dark and uncomfortable and he had a photographic memory. He did not remember being born . I’m his only offspring and I can only remember before I could speak language …not being able to explain I hated my bonnet it was scratchy and hot and my mother was laughing at me ! I was 1 1/2? I was still in a stroller . Love this show thank you so much and Chuck is hilarious ❤
I would LOVE to have an in person group to have these sorts of discussions! For now .. I was just pondering the pre vs the other cortex and then the other ""inputs"" of senory variants. With the Individuality of each of us it makes sense to 'me' that my brain itself is the Seat of Consciousness .. it is a CPU as it were. Our experiences grow to become the filters through which we perceive those inputs .. I'm fascinated
A computer can NEVER be conscious because computers only compare variables at hig rates of speed.. all programming is an IF/THE statement of sorts.. anyone smarter than a fifth grader would know youd need to make a flowchart consciousness.. before any A.I... it is a good film idea and a way to destract republican minds... but a fools view. Human memory is forever and ever (amen) stored as simultaneous block universe events.. you'd also need to be smarter than a fifth grader to understand. Mankind assumes brain memory and A.I consciousness.. but mankind is idiots r us. Look at the fools in this video.. You would need to make your bathroom scale conscious before any computer code.... a computer will NEVER think of a random number between 1 and 5... forever impossible.
This might sound dumb... but as a very patriotic kind of fellow and a veteran... and maybe other people feel the same.... it's red white and blue for me. Even thinking about the flag or the colors of the flag.... I feel pride. I feel hope. I FEEL the colors. Food for thought.
Each contributing factor to our understanding of consciousness is a layer. How those layers connect, creates a 3d something out of 2d layers. Consciousness is a higher order of dimensions above our ability currently. Split or shared consciousness, now that's skipping knowing what consciousness is and getting to a testing phase that would give anecdotal experience that could better help define the term.
It's been so nice watching Chuck's questions and comments get more informed as this show goes on. He's learning right along with the audience, and it fosters a great sense of community.
I'm not a fan of Neil. He is too judgmental. I love Chuck's sense of humor and in many ways asks the questions that move the dialog along.
@@TimConly O'Lord one of those folks made it in the comments, he's of the scientist field 90% of them are judgmental if not all
@@TimConly
Well you're here watching, and this show wouldn't exist without Neil, so consider showing some appreciation for the man!
I see this same comment every video.
@@tedl7538exactly! Neil is great and so is Chuck. I started watching this because they are a great team. A perfect blend.
I started watching this channel to get away from politics. I think America is majorly devoid of informed critical thinkers. This channel is absorbing and grounding for me.
I couldn't agree more!
Me too!! I’m so happy to hear other people are doing the same thing
I think you were crying about trump winning the election and you posted this comment as a way to relieve you from the pressure of thinking something awful
Quite the opposite for America, actually I think … it’s a radical move away from the norm that’s aroused an unusual tension in you
I too find an escapist pleasure watching STEM clips. It is such a relief seeing smart people agree on things, or peacefully disagree and try to get to the truth together. No bad faith arguement, no conflict of interest.
Hi from Russia by the way. This decade is hitting us all like a truck. I just wish we all live to see this perpetual horror end.
Im sorry, but my life has been bad lately and finding this show is like getting a christmas present a little early. I love you guys and i will be watching. Thank you for your show, you are a blessing to the world and so refreshing that you are real and trustworthy!!!
I hope things get better for you. Hang in there and do good when and where you can and you will get good things back. Karma is real :) x
I hope everything gets better for you. ☺️ Star Talk is a great mental exercise and break from the day-to-day. 🙂
I hope you will make yourself a better life
I've listened to StarTalk since the first season. This podcast made the last 15 years a real pleasure! Minus the neck pain, cause Neil says to "keep looking up" 😂
Love and respect from sweden Stockholm ❤️❤️
Can we just take a moment to admire the courage of Chuck Nice? Week after week he sits between giants of science and maintains his cool and asks great questions and adds to the conversation. I think I'd be terrified to sit next to any of Neil's guests and pretend that I could add anything to the conversation. And the genius of NdGT to bring him in from the beginning. Fantastic all around.
Hahaha lol
fear is the mind killer
Everyone else came to say it, and I want to be another one to say that I love seeing Chuck's growth in these videos. He gets more and more involved in the discussions in every video, becomes more knowledgeable, yet still maintains his humor and manages to deliver at the best times. He knows when to interject, knows when to sit back and listen, absolutely love Chuck's vibes, and I know it has to be such a joy to spend so much time with him.
philosophers are the highest quality people. Theres potential for wisdom in a lot of people, if they applied themselves when young. Imo. And had the necessary cultural fostering.
I was impressed with his knowledge of volume displacement
Wow, I’m now in love with Chuck, I like a cheeky funny guy but he’s intelligent, and able to debate, question and understand deep academic and scientific subjects. This guys the full package 🤭
hahaha you said package lmao. but yes these guys rock. neal is my freaking hero!
Lot of talk but they say nothing?
Chuck is like fine wine, he gets better as this podcast ages
I'm a straight guy but yeah, Chuck is the real deal! lol
Gary O’Reilly has become one of my favorite cohosts. He's reserved, doesn't always laugh at the jokes, but then comes out with something thoughtful. Any time Gary's on, I know it will be a good episode.
I loved this! What I especially loved was that Chuck held his own with three high level professors.
he would add more just by nodding because everytime he talks is to make a puny joke or yell nonsense, even he's scripted and can't produce any interesting comment on his own, it makes the show unwatchable everytime.
Jill... I 100% agree...!!! It was very impressive to see Chuck contributing as much to the conversation as any of these great scientists!
@@ML-qj7eb So .. do you Watch it EVERYTIME in order to judge it UNwatchable ""every time""?? lol
@@ML-qj7ebYou're fun😂
@@ML-qj7eb I think his contribution is what makes this channel unique, separated from other informative videos.
Chuck is, indeed, as smart as the rest of the panel already. I believe the entire panel is learning with the audience. Often, someone not so fully steeped in the field is better able to use fresh air to process & produce info & ask really awesome questions is a way that helps us to engage in what lots of folks used to consider blablablaboring.
Having knowledge is but a fraction of the experience 🍮
When I was a baby, I remember my first thought and it was a voice in my head telling me that everything was going to be okay. As I grew older, I realized that the voice was my own inner strength guiding me through life's challenges. It reassured me during times of uncertainty and lifted me up when I felt overwhelmed. That voice became my constant companion, whispering words of encouragement and wisdom in moments of doubt. And as I look back on my journey, I am grateful for that voice that helped shape me into the person I am today.
I remember most parts of my life, including infancy. I couldn't talk, walk, but I knew and watched. It wasn't until I was a teen when I had a family discussion that I realized I shocked everyone by contributing to a conversation about a house that we moved from before I was three. I didn't know others couldn't remember that far back.
Well that’s a delusion not your consciencs. And Yeah the definition is online. Not a delusion.
I remember being in my crib. On the carousel was a lion, bear, giraffe, zebra, and a monkey. I also remember the sound of the music box playing circus music. In my crib was a toy xylophone that I would bang on before I went to sleep. I was barely one. So yes, I believe you when you said you heard chatter because I heard the same thing. I remember my mom and my big sister used to teach me how to talk.
Joe Weizenbaum's office was down the hall from mine for some years. He would not want people to think Eliza was conscious. In fact, he was frustrated that Eliza was often represented that way. He was adamant that it most definitely was not intelligent or conscious. His point was that passing the Turing test doesn't really tell you whether something is intelligent/conscious. The Eliza's program's rules and code were manifestly NOT intelligent or conscious, and yet it could frequently fool a human. His conclusion was the Turing test wasn't enough, not that he had created consciousness.
That's why I was irritated by Tyson saying that computer scientists keep moving the goal post. I see it as CS *recognizing* that their previous criteria were not really adequate or even appropriate, so that, even when those criteria are met, the AI is still only imitating possible responses of intelligence, without actually being intelligent ... and certainly not conscious.
I love listening to David Chalmers. Thanks for having him on
He has bad arguments that he always repeats the same old tired arguments every single time, and it is universally always tiresome to have him on because nobody ever seems to push back against him since the overwhelmingly dominant opinion seems to just be that Chalmers is correct in everything he says. I've yet to ever see him ever speak anywhere with any decent push back at all. It always just devolves into him indoctrinating people into his horrible and incredibly intellectually lazy ideas.
@@amihartz The reason for this is because his arguments are too complicated and require very deep and extensive philosophical background knowledge to even understand them. None of those people who are not philosophers can understand, even if they are philosophers and they are particularly interested in some other field that has no connection with those that are key to this field, namely - modal metaphysics, modal epistemology, philosophy of language and mind. . Especially in this kind of podcast conversation. So try to read his books "The Conscious Mind" and "The Character of the Conscious" and do it again. Not to mention that Chalmers managed to solve Frege's puzzle, which for over 130 years was one of the most difficult problems in the philosophy of language, which so many great minds tried to solve before him - Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Kripke, Quine, until him. As he developed an epistemic two-dimensional semantic framework, he further used this to elaborate his modal rationalism, also a technical term from modal epistemology, which cannot be explained in a few sentences. Chalmers is one of the most prominent modern philosophers, and his books are masterpieces, the most influential dualist in the world who did so much to weaken physicalism.ge, which was debated by so many great minds like
@@fadfsdfasfsa There is no such thing as a "philosophical problem." The very notion is the basis of most modern sophistry. Philosophy is not a rigorous science, you are free to make up whatever premises you want. A "problem" only reveals an inconsistency in your worldview, an inconsistency in its premises, and you are perfectly allowed to change your premises without evidence in philosophy. Hence, there are no "philosophical problems" at all as all "problems" can easily be solved in an instant.
You see, philosophy is again not a rigorous science, so it's ultimately about what set of premises do we find most useful and compelling. By pretending there exists "philosophical problems" you are treating it as if there really are rigorous problems to be solved, which by extension treats it as if our pre-established premises are "settled" and cannot be changed.
This is a problem that plagued all modern philosophy, including those works you cited for Chalmers which are awful and painful reads. They all start with the fallacious premise that naive philosophical notions from centuries ago are unquestionable and because they have contradictions that there just be some major "philosophical problem" to be solved, but never in their hundreds kf pages of writing do these philosophers actually justify why they believe those premises in the first place.
It's hard to even consider many of the modern philisohers even "philosophers" as philosophy is again about choosing premises and people like Chalmers skip that step entirely and just go off of unjustified premises. When you recognize that you're allowed to question premises then all these "philosophical problems" trivially disappear into pseudoproblems. Some contemporary philosophers have recognized this and performed this, but they remain a minority.
@@fadfsdfasfsa Despite his arguments being complicated, it is honestly surprising how clear he is in everything he says. The first thing I read from him was "The Two-Dimensional Argument Against Materialism", which is really just an in depth exploration of the zombie argument. I was impressed with his ability to cover all bases, nothing got swept under the rug. He addresses every little thing in an extremely reasonable manner.
@@turgayasrincankaya Yes, without a doubt, one of greatest living philospher, in field of philosphy of mind and language, one of the very best!
Can you do a panel with some of these guest! We need to connect all these concept! Epigenetic, building blocks of life, the math video, the gentle man who talked about the quantum net, all of them. Hold a panel please! I need to meet all of these guest 💕
Sounds chaotic 😅
A discussion with Dr. Tony Nader would be brilliant. He is a neuroscientist and represents a new consciousness paradigm that solves the hard problem. His book „consciousness is all there is“ is mind blowing.
Thank you very much for taking up this topic and for discussing it so lively!!!
The problem is that physicist deny the existence of anything that isn't physical and Dr. Nader's concept of consciousness is non material. It's just a case of being blinded by science; I doubt that they will see eye to eye on this one.
Is this doctor an idealist (metaphysically speaking)? He sounds like one from the book title. Idealism seems to be gaining ground as of late, or maybe that's just my selective attention bias.
Hi😊yes, one can say it is monistic idealist teaching. Consciousness as the nature of ultimate reality.
Dying is safe because memory is external form body/brain as simultaneous block universe events easily accessible by captain Kirk and Spock if they go 1/0000000th speed of entanglement... mankind just assumes brain memory because we feel separate ... like a dreaming doggy feels separate from the brain memory squirrel it chases.,. and external mind implies common dream (not solipsism).. so death is akin to waking up (very safe).
Wayne Hilborn TH-cam channel.
A neuro'scientist' would be as good as a proctologist seeking consciousness.. if Einstein taught us memory.. even if mankind is too Republican to accept that.
One of the most thought provoking discussions ever with good dose of fun. Love this session. ❤❤❤Good dose of intellectual gratification! Thank you so much Neal and Chuck. Glad you had David on this session, he was awesome. Thx to Gary, he grounded you guys with some serious questions.
Need more of these. Please consider discussing Godel’s incompleteness theorems.
I'm more and more impressed with Chucks level of knowledge.
AND his comic take on it all!
That’s what I’ve been saying this man is low key highly intelligent
I convinced he might be smarter than Neil.
@@antoniomonteiro3698 smart is a subjective concept
@@thekraken4265 well, I said "I"... (I meant: "I'm") and "convinced". and I used "smart", a vague and not well defined concept.
but your comment might be useful for people with limited language stills.
Fantastic talk. I am so delighted that the question of consciousness is being explored by great minds. It is a subject that fascinates me. My conjecture is that consciousness is universal and reality is multidimensional. I conclude this through my own subjective experience.
Does your experience include mind altering substances?
A fundamental aspect of consciousness is memory. If you lived only in the moment, you would not realize that you had just experienced something.
That's funny. It does get made up for later on when Neil walks into stuff
@@chrism.1131 If you retained no memory and "lived only in the moment", you may not be conscious of what you experienced, but as long as you are experiencing the present you are aware of that present condition; thus conscious. If you are not conscious you can't experience anything. The fundamental aspect of consciousness is experience. However it would be extremely difficult to function without a memory.
@@todradmaker4297 I hate to pull a Jordan Peterson (or whatever that guy's name is), but please define "experience". A phototactic bacterium experiences light. A chemotactic bacterium experiences certain chemicals. Are those bacteria conscious?
More conversation on this please, Star Talk. Given the potential unintentional, or intentional, consequences of increased AI influence on society's day-to-day transactions and interactions, we need all the tools we can get to manage outcomes.
Our conscious experience is us tuning our "human" model so as to have more complex societal relationships. Our tuning is so obsessive that our consciousness even allows us to experience things like pain to be able related even better to others.
Love that Chuck can explain the same idea in a simple way, he always has good questions
I have not had this happen in a long time. I am a musician. There are times when I was falling asleep and I would run a melody line through my head. Then I would just let it build, what ever was added was added. It could have been a symphony, jazz, a gospel tune, rock and roll, ska, whatever. It would be something I had never heard before and I had no clue what was coming next. It was just like tuning into and streaming a radio station playing songs I had never heard. If I didn't just listen and shifted my focus I would break the "spell". I don't know where it came from. It is hard to believe my brain was making it up on the spot, sometimes complete with vocal harmonies etc. From simple to complicated. Much of it was beyond my ability to play. Maybe it is all out there and we just have to "tune in"? Like a reservoir and we are like a little magnifying glass that can focus it.
This is one of many themes in Watership Down, the stream of consciousness that some beings (rabbit, in the book of course) are able to access. It wouldn't surprise me at all if it was true!
My beliefs (not scientific truths!) are that this is you letting your "soul" going through, like a fountain springing out the infinite and infinitesimal Essence. Your instinct, your intuition, "what you actually dream to be".
Let it flow and, if you could, write that down, so you could Gift them to the World ^_^
Whatever you feel yourself tuned to, in harmony, will brighten up this Realty ^^
@@marcoottina654 @marcoottina654 If I stopped to analyze any of it I would lose it. I have played semi professionally on stage most of my adult life but I don't read or write music. If I just laid there and let it continue I would eventually fall asleep. It hasn't happened in a long time. I do write my own music and you can click my icon and click on view channel and it should take you to my youtube channel with a bunch of videos on it if you are interested.
We’re like meat antennae for consciousness
I am a musician and i have had this experience too!
As someone who passed a Turing test once said, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off (the) shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."
Blade Runner?...
@@humanform5354 yes it is.
The best damn movie speech transmuted into stunning poetry ever, EVAH!
th-cam.com/video/XMpxpXlYpfs/w-d-xo.html
I met Neil once at Grand Valley State University a decade ago. Instant excitement to the day! ❤
Did not expect to see a reference to my alma mater here, that is very cool!
@cpeterso That's the beauty of possibilities in the cosmos 🙌 #Lakers ⚓️
I also attended that speech at GVSU (assuming we were at the same event). Honestly, I didn’t really enjoy that rote format. It was all stuff that I already knew. I much prefer these open conversations like on this channel. I probably should have stayed for the Q&A. Or, knowing what I know now, showing up after the speech part.
Pretty sure he’s the only person I’d be star struck by hehe
Chuck has become so freaking educated to hang in these conversations.
Gives me hope as an ordinary human that we can all continue to become better educated.
Doesn't hurt that Neil is a masterclass in how to be an educator.
Regardless, Kudos to Chuck!!
I think there is a consciousness in everything.
All the way down to Atoms deciding that sticking together is better than being alone.
These groups become larger and start interacting with other groups and we get "reactions".
Some beautiful, some explosive, some completely and literally "life changing".
It repeats itself as it goes up as it changes forms, but those functions stay the same.
We're just a bunch of Atoms still deciding which groups we want to belong to, not knowing that everyone else is the same.
Love y'all and thank you for the video!
Really interesting episode. And this guest, Mr. Chalmers, is great to listen to. Thanks.
Very interesting. You can tell Neil is not sold on this topic. I wish he shared more of his opinion on Consciousness. It would be interesting to hear his take and perspective.
Exactly! I wanted to hear more on his personal opinion.
Neil dismisses philosophy as a legitimate enterprise, so he probably isn't explaining why he is not sold on it because he has not actually thought about it, and so isn't even sure what his concerns are himself.
I think he is one of those people who doesn’t speak on things he doesn’t know much about or hasn’t really thought of much…not enough to have a grounded opinion on. I think on consciousness all the time..and do my own “investigations” if you will…so I have a solid opinion idea belief theory of my own about what it is…so it’s something I’d speak on…if I ever had that opportunity.
@jacobfierro2535 It's painful to watch Neil on these conversations
This was way more fun and educational to watch than the World Science Festival version.
Brian, take notes!
Brian knows how to moderate a conversation. This was too scatter gun.
What's the point of a beautifully moderated conversation where they're speaking soo high level and we learn absolutely nothing??
Questions and interjections are crucial.
One of the best parts of watching this video was watching Gary try not to laugh 😅. Thank you for publishing science for the every man.
I once saw a graphic designer answer the question of "do we all see colors the same?" They took the color spectrum and reduced it to a black and white spectrum in a program and asked individual people "which one is brighter than the other?" Because every color correlates uniquely to its own shade of grey, it was determined that every person could identify the same order of black to white thus proving that we saw the spectrum in the same order. So the reason red is red, and blue is blue, is because everyone sees it in the same order on the color spectrum. How did it get its name? Well that's based on linguistics, which entomologically is simplified down to what people of different cultures originally correlated that color to.
Chuck, my man, you’re super intelligent. Love watching you learn and using the information on later episodes. Well done my man.
In the example of the device versus the person, I am thinking about the thermometer in a somewhat practical way because I would trust the person AND the device lol.
The thermometer says 79 degrees, one person can feel cold and another feel hot. Objectively, the temperature is "moderately warm". I think it is interesting to put full trust into something that is designed for measurement especially because the human experience is so nuanced. The question of "whats the weather like outside?" can use the thermometer to determine the measurable fact of the weather, but what we are really asking is "what does it feel like outside?"
Just a random thought lolol
Chuck gets the smartest person in the room award this episode; killed it with the connection between consciousness and perception. Honestly felt like Neil was kinda immature the whole time, trying to one-up David Chalmers and score points for “his field” by talking down his guest’s area of study. I’ve also noticed Tyson gets uncomfortable/annoyed whenever psychedelics are put in a positive light. Has he talked about the subject before? I’m interested on what his opinion is, but I think I already know his answer.
Yeah he isn't for them. He spoke to joe rogan about it
@@xv_void_vx no surprise there. I’ve seen him talk on the subject for sure but I couldn’t remember what he said
@@jotaele.44 something along the lines of. We are already horrible at seeimg what true reality is so adding psychedelics makes that worse. Lol loosely. It has been a while since i saw the video
He's just having fun. He always talks like this with all guests.
@@LW1Tok thats how he wants to come across but I feel like there’s a disrespectful undertone there
I would love to see a roundtable interview with David Chalmers, Amit Goswami, Sara Imari Walker, and Michael Levin. Should you do so, I can guarantee Sir Chuck that some funky laughing lettuce would enlighten and enliven the convo: all four of those inspiring thinkers lead their complex studies in fields that overlap, from what I understand of their teaching.
David Chalmers always gives off an intelligent, calm and fun time, he usually always makes the talks great. And Gary O’Reilly is great! Excellent talk!
I love Chucks input in these conversations and appreciate how much he's grown since the beginning of this channel. He's significantly more intelligent then I ever initially gave him credit for.
Whoever you are, what you said was still backhanded. Maybe just keep your thoughts to yourself.
@@pmntl.f thank you for your response. not every comment has ill intent. If you say it's backhanded....please elaborate. to address it and not explain makes your comment irrelevant. whoever you are
@ are you the authority on intelligence? You don’t have credit to give somebody who is cohosting a podcast with NDT. How “grown” are you? Are you as tall as a giant sequoia?
I’m pointing out how you come across as a snobby, arrogant, ignorant, and obnoxious. Especially in your reply to me. Do you want me to pull up sources on amicability or do you have trouble with social cues and so you have an excuse?
Chuck smart.
I’ve been continually impressed with. We’d all (hopefully) get smarter with talks like this. Lol
Just heard the introduction and, Neil, when you said you were in the camp of consciousness not existing but a phenomenon produced by the brain, I think we must define consciousness. I can't say it's NOT produced entirely in the brain, but no matter what is it's manifestation, we are each as conscious as we think we are. By definition. Our consciousness may wink out to nothing upon the moment when the body stops working, but while alive, consciousness cannot be denied. Now, this all depends on the definition of consciousness. And I'm guessing you'll get into that. For the record, my definition is simply the 'Awareness of Being'. A "I think therefore I am" kind of thing. I'm not including any thoughts, feelings, or other. Just that one is aware of existing and aware of whatever thoughts and feelings that they may experience. 🙂
Let me attempt to summarize your comment in my own words?
No matter if the basic self-evident Fact of me experiencing my own personal subjective experience seems unexplainable, disconnected from science, or unworthy of our curiosity toward understanding it; there remains nonetheless the incredible and mysterious phenomenon that it is.
I'm risking adding my grain of salt. Both perceiving humans (rather than merely sensing, intelligent, adapting ones), and those "philosophical zombies" fully scientifically-proven humans which only sense and integrate the information, they are objectively and indistinguishably the same.
The "Hard Problem of Consciousness" is in essence just us expanding the limits of our comprehension of the Universe. It's us opening up, broadening our horizons, and perhaps getting improved well-being/happiness from our newly-developed conciliation and understanding of two seemingly orthogonal concepts: the purely subjective and the purely objective.
@@sophiamarchildon3998 Well, close, but I never separate anything from science. Basically, no one has found how consciousness interreacts with the Universe. That's the most important difference. But yes, we experience consciousness and therefore by definition it exists. It is the nature of this experience that we need to understand. There had been some good insight into this but not yet and experimental verifiable law of physics to correspond with it. I look forward to the day when the discovery is made of how 'consciousness' exists within our Universe.
@@BernardBetelgeuse A man after my own heart.
That's what I believe that the so-miscommunicated point of Dr. Chalmers' take on the subject is to finally attempt and explain that manifest phenomenon using proper science.
Fun fact! There's bacteria in your stomach that release a chemical signal that makes you want to eat certain foods. This means those bacteria make up part of your consciousness!
I think I have a slightly different definition of consciousness. Basically I think the only way I am fine with defining consciousness is as an internal, unobservable from the third person perspective, subjective experience of existence. One thing I think about consciousness is that it is possible to be conscious without being aware you are conscious. I can imagine a simplistic form of consciousness where the subject of that experience has no awareness that they are experiencing reality, maybe in part because they do not have a subjective sense of self, but if they still meet the criteria that there is something to their internal subjective experience and not nothing, then they are indeed conscious. Anything more than that such as self awareness, etc, are not consciousness itself but instead features or characteristics of consciousness, or maybe a certain form of consciousness kind of like how frogs are a type of amphibian but not all amphibians are frogs.
The problem with chatgpt and other LLMs, we still don't have continuous learning. We train and release, then update models offline with data, rather than leaving the learning on. So LLMs can't update their internal state on its own. It might be conscious while it's training, but on deployment it's just a machine.
I think this is largely a design choice rather than a limitation of the technology. There's no reason you can't have a machine learning algorithm constantly iterate on its own outputs (even I've made a simply tic tac toe program that did just that), but for LLMs you probably don't want to. The issue is largely garbage in, garbage out; if it spits out poor quality outputs (which it will, all the time), and then just progressively trains itself more and more on them, then you're likely going to end up with a model that just gets worse over time rather than improving from the extra "training".
those AI will be just another Tay, quickly manipulated by people to say mean things 🙈
Neil, you keep touching David. I have met David a few times and he is as wonderful and nice of a person in real life as he appears to be in his interviews.
I didn’t know Doctor Tyson was Italian. You learn something every day.
20:30
This right here. Thinking/self reflection through feedback loops should've been the number 1 priority instead of language but I understand the usefulness of using language models outweighs it.
When Neil talked about how an AI would have painted Starry Night as an exact image of the night sky, I immediately paused the video and asked chatGPT to paint something original and recommend which ai image generator it would use.
The result was a dreamlike, surreal image that could have come from the movie What Dreams May Come
it lies within your prompt. you said paint, so it references other paintings, hence a painting type image
@@zentai5076 The word "paint" doesn't contain sufficient information to produce a painting. You have to know what paintings look like. And you simply demonstrate you don't understand how ANNs work if you claim it is "referencing other paintings" as if it is pulling up paintings from a database when you use that word. That is objectively not how ANNs work. ANNs only have a dataset during the training phase, when the training phase is over the dataset is discarded. It does not look up paintings in a database because it should've already "learned" what a painting looks like. The word "painting" activates certain neural pathways as it should have formed its own neural connections and thus have its own neural correlates between the word "painting" and an an actual painting, and thus it has its own internal "concept" of a painting which is empirically and quantifiably different from any of the individual paintings it may have looked at during the training process.
Hence, when you ask an ANN like ChatGPT to produce images with similar prompts, you tend to quickly notice that ChatGPT has its own "style." You can often tell which picture came from which AI model just from the art style alone because these models form their own internal conception of things based on both the structure of the model themselves as well as what they were trained on. The reason they can produce unique images every time is just because their thought process is fed random noise so when they generate an image from a prompt it always produces something new, but the overall "feel" of each image is very similar since the images ChatGPT generates simply are not being pulled from some database it references but from its own internal model which is entirely unmodified between prompts.
Indeed, this is actually one of the flaws of modern ANNs, most simply are incapable of "referencing other paintings." They only can use their internal model, and even worse, this internal model cannot be updated in real-time. It is not like a human brain whereby you can be taught something new on the spot and form a new neural pathway. ChatGPT's neural pathways cannot be changed during conversation and thus it cannot form long-term memories. Only very recently with ChatGPT 4 has OpenAI even experimented with allowing AIs to reference things at all, giving them access to Bing search, but they definitely do not use this for image generation. They really only use it if you specifically ask them to look something up. If you ask ChatGPT about the name of the lead singer of a band, it will try to answer from its internal model without referencing anything, even if it doesn't know it will just make up the answer. If you specifically ask it "can you look up the name of the lead singer of x band," it will then do the search for you.
ChatGPT was not built around referencing and thus tends to not reference anything unless you specifically ask it to. This was a featured tacked on much later and has not been well-integrated into the AI model as of yet.
Your computer will NEVER think of a random number between one and five.. IDIOTS ass/u/me a computer can do stuff ASIDE form comparing variables (diamond box on flowcharts) at a high rate of speed..
You would need to make a flowchart or bathroom scale conscious,.. before an idiot could even begin to assume coding that compares variables is somehow intelligent.
Please.. show us YOUR favorite "if/then" statement,tn and why YOU feel it is sentient..
And stolen from artists within the taught database.
@@zentai5076 ChatGPT doesn't reference other paintings when generating images. GPT4 has some experimental ability to reference stuff but you have to specifically ask and it only does it to answer questions.
Watch Michael Levin's interview with Machine Street Talk. His experiments and insights are truly fascinating. He teases out the idea that cognitive agency emerges far sooner in the evolutionary process than we thought and that it's on a continuum. An inherent property of living systems. Is agency and consciousness essentially the same thing?
What makes an agency "cognitive" in this case? Some people may argue that is just the god of gaps argument.
What a treat! Amazing show! Sagan would proud to see you now Neil!
Chuck is the living testament that the great commedians are actually very good communicators, because they can say whatever they want about topics they are interested in, in a way that'll be engaging and resonate with us common folks. That's what George Carlin was, that's what Louis C.K., Bill Burr, and other popular commedians are, whether you like them or not.
Very well said, as they are all quite knowledgeable of many facets of life too. Love Bill Burr!! Want to add Josh Johnson to that list, he’s a young comedian though.
Ooo love this topic. Thank you 😊
When you mention sensory, how does that take into account things like synesthesia? Like I have aphantasia so does that make me “less conscious” because I have no inner images? But then you get people who smell colors. Are they extra conscious?
That is a good one. I think consciousness is the little voice inside my head that "talks" about past, present, future and their possibilities.
@@AdolfoLeija-id3tz I’ve heard like 30% of people have no inner voices and that’s insane to me, I can hear my voice in my head typing this!!
One feature of consciousness is seeing yourself in the mirror and understanding that it’s you.
I disagree. Some creatures will experience that, absolutely. But consciousness is simply “is an experience being had?” Being able to recognize you are having an experience is not necessary for experience itself.
@@felixgenereux388try again
Consciousness is simply your own copy of reality in the body.
Consciousness precedes seeing, hearing, thinking
I'd call that self-awareness, not consciousness. But I think that gets to the annoyance I have with people mystified by consciousness. They pressed him a little, but if someone can't tell you whether a dolphin is conscious and why/why not, they're just being anthropocentric. Same goes for a bacterium. Do their decisions not count? I've yet to hear someone promoting the hard problem of consciousness who's willing to take a hard stand on a definition. Probably mammals, maybe reptiles, but who knows about fish? Tell me what's actually different. Maybe we just need more vivisections to figure it out.
Chuck's depth of knowledge keeps impressing me more and more.
I’ve met Neil IRL and he’s lovely! Love having a space we can think about stuff like this in a respectful, scientific and objective manner. 5 stars
in Buddhism it's referred to as Absolute Reality (or as "Suchness", in Zen) and Conventional Reality (or conditioned existence)
Brahman, Amun, Amma, Tao, Nzambi Mpungu, YHWH, Olodumare and sunyata in buddhism 🙏🏾
Yeah, and that's why Buddhism is wrong. Same with Kantian philosophy which separates by Noumenal Reality and Phenomenal Reality, as well as the framework Chalmers uses which he borrows from Nagel that separates between Objective Reality and Subjective Experience. All these points of view are based on the same flawed Newtonian-esque premises: that there exists a reality that is "absolute" (invariant under changes in point of view) that stands in opposition to our experiences which are clearly not absolute (variant under changes in point of view), and the belief is then that the former is "objective" reality while the latter is something created by the mammalian brain (at least, this is what Nagel/Chalmers believe).
However, the flaw here is that there simply is no "absolute" reality as reality is *_relative._* This has been the lesson of all modern material sciences from General Relativity to Quantum Mechanics. Objective reality is variant under changes in point of view and an invariant "absolute" reality does not exist. Nagel's argument that what we experience must be "subjective" therefore does not follow either as the point-of-view dependence of our experience does not stand _in opposition_ to objective reality as he claims but is perfectly inline with it. This is the issue here with most philosophical schools from the beliefs of Chalmers and Nagel even to Buddhism and many others: *_they fail to establish that what we perceive is not objective reality as it actually exists._*
You must establish this premise before you can begin separating what we perceive ("conventional reality", "phenomenal reality," "subjective experience") into a different category from reality ("absolute reality," "noumenal reality," "objective reality") in the first place. The majority of philosophers believe such a division exists yet almost none of them even _attempt_ to justify it. It is just something most philosophers adopt because it is "intuitive," yet it being "intuitive" or "common sense" is not a reason to believe it is correct, and it stands in stark opposition to the modern sciences. This is, indeed, the biggest problem with Chalmers, he borrows a similar division as you mention here without justifying it. He takes it from Nagel, and Nagel does not justify it either. In his paper "What is it like to a be a Bat?" where he introduces the division between "objective reality" and "subjective experience," this is merely a rewording of the difference between invariant reality and variant reality, which he makes it clear at the beginning of the paper he begins with as a _premise._ Meaning, he already assumes the concept from the get-go and merely changes its name.
@@amihartz buddhism doesn't "fail to establish that what we perceive is not objective reality". That is the core of buddhism. There's many teachings. Sunyata. Maya. Nondualism essentially. The awakening to the truth of what is. Perspectives, subjective experience, perception are all empty.
@@jaydescribe There is no meaningful distinction "absolute reality" and "conventional reality," and there is no such thing as "subjective experience."
@@amihartz buddhism agrees with this
We do not have a measurement system for consciousness....and thus it's a hard problem. Great discussion 😊!!
Intelligence measured all the time...this the real tangle...
Measurement is just another word for observation. If you cannot observe something even _in principle_ (meaning, it is does not even possess any *_observable properties),_* then it is not meaningfully real. We define things based on their observable properties. A "dog" is understood in terms of the observable properties of said dog. If someone says "there's a dog over there," you can go confirm it by observing it. Even if you cannot see, the concept of a "dog" does not just entail its visible properties but its auditory properties, tactile properties, etc. A sighted person knows what a dog "looks like," even a blind person knows what a dog "feels like" or "sounds like" and can go confirm its existence. If you claim something has no observable properties, then it is impossible to confirm its existence, and thus it is impossible to distinguish it from nothingness itself as it would be equivalent to that which does not exist.
Indeed, even the fundamental particles in the Standard Model are defined specifically in terms of their "observables" which are properties you can go out directly and measure and see the results directly for yourself. You might respond that you are not claiming consciousness has no observable properties, but are merely saying we have not defined these observables _yet_ and will some day. Yet, the problem with this argument is that, again, we understand things in terms of their observables. Hence, if the concept you're talking about _currently_ does not have a set of observables associated with it, then _currently_ it is meaningless. That would make the word "consciousness" a meaningless word in search of meaning. It _currently_ has no meaning at all and is equivalent to gobbledygook. Saying you will attach observables to it someday, something that can be measured, is only to say that some day you will give the word "consciousness" meaning.
Yet, I find this very bizarre. Why begin with a meaningless sequence of characters and then set out on a journey to figure out what definition to give to that arbitrary sequence of characters? What possible justification could there be for such a task? Honestly, while I ask this question, I already know the answer. The answer is that the word "consciousness" has a lot of woo woo connotations among spiritualist crowd, so the spiritualist crowd has an emotional attachment to the word "consciousness" and so they very specifically want to use this word and not a different word without spiritualist connotations. Hence, they very specifically want to find a way to define that word to bring it into serious discourse because they want to sneak in the spiritualist baggage associated with it.
Here's a fun little way to prove this. Any time you talk to an idealist or a dualist, just demand they replace the word "consciousness" with "reality" for the sake of conversation, and agree beforehand that whenever the idealist uses "reality" it logically means the same thing as how they would use the word "consciousness." If they comply, then the meaning of their arguments should not change. Yes, they are using a different word, they're saying "reality" instead of "consciousness," but you've both agreed to the definition of "reality" to simply be their usage of "consciousness," and thus the meaning remains identical. Yet, you will quickly find that the idealist struggles to do this, that the meaning does _not_ remain identical, that they struggle to formulate any convincing arguments at all, stumble, and often get frustrated and break from conversation.
The reason for this is that "consciousness," again, has a lot of unspoken woo woo baggage that they rely upon when they use the word. Simply asking them to use a different word, the unspoken baggage disappears and can only be returned if they specifically argue in favor of it, yet this then requires them to actually justify that unspoken baggage rather than trying to sneak it into the conversation through the back door, which most idealists won't even attempt to do so and will resort to insults if you ask them to. Their argument tactics are incredibly reliant on that very specific word and it cannot be replaced with another.
@@amihartz touch touch...sense sense-between double words is a wibble wobble conscious...a point...a neutral point like the middle of a magnete...oh, I just saw this: an ancient egyptian headrest with lions on either side-the lions of yesterday and tomorrow...this the Egyptian's "toy model" for eternity...past present future...the present m anifests the future from the past...the present a point...the point is, it's consciousness!...point of observation...pointilist artists suggest points are conscious...see Serat...panpsychism...animism..
everything conscious, alive...intelligence is something else...meditators try to still our intelligent back and forths, to what purpose I dunno...but just stop talking one is left with consciosness...intelligence can be measured, consciousness ineffable..."a poem shouldn't mean, but be"-Archibald Macleish
Chuck had impressive questions
Love Zakk as a player and custodian of great guitar knowledge. I really like that. He is a fan as well thanks for doing this interview with him.
i often say that to try and discern where consciousness comes from in the body is akin to someone searching through radio parts trying to find the 'little band' that is making the music. that is a gift for you Neil.
Lord Nice, your HOTW PT1 reference seemed to fly over everyone's head...just wanted to let you know it definitely landed and garnered a hearty chuckle. Well played Sir, they don't make them like they used to. Mel Brooks is the best.
Did you watch the hotw pt2? The series? 😅
Never seen Neil so touchy feely.
What?
It’s amazing to find a Channel that is discussions im having with with myself everyday 😂❤
All Star Talk episodes are good and this is one of the best ones.
Consciousness is just basic instincts evolved. Giving us the ability to choose what instinct we want to use to further our survival. Over thousands of years, it turned into nonstop instinct choices running through our heads, deciding on stuff in the future, and kept evolving into problem solving and everytime it evolved it helped our survival success rate so it just kept expanding until it became to what it is today
That's cognition and neurological processes. That's not consciousness
If Consciousness is biological causation then, which Neuron decides what is Truth and what is not true?
@@jaydescribe
Then consiousness might not exist.
That's interesting the talk about Godel. My buddy's daughter is some crazy math genius and when she was getting her masters degree in statistics she had to convert all the math functions into only addition. This stunned me because how do you deal with the exponentiation in integral and differential mathematics? Her answer was, 'I'm not really sure how i did it, but i got an A in the class so i musta got something right.' She's fun to to talk to. Though i think she knows exactly how she did it, and would rather just present herself as ignorant, than expose the depths of mine. Good kid.
thats awesome and thoughtful of her
Bro Chuck's laugh at 2:12 sounded like Tim Curry doing an evil villain role 🤣
I like that out of the box statement when you said there may not be any such thing as consciousness. That challenge their everything. Love that.
Here is my mathematical formula and analogy for consciousness are creative and thought-provoking, combining physics, biology, and metaphysical speculation. Let me break it down and provide constructive feedback:
1. Analysis of the Formula
C = A(i × 5f + O × 5f)c²
• C (Consciousness): Defined as a combination of awareness, sensory inputs, and electrical activity, scaled by the speed of light squared.
• A (Awareness): Awareness is central to consciousness, but it’s challenging to quantify in mathematical terms. Perhaps it could be modeled as a function of neural activity or cognitive processes.
• i (Inside output electrical pattern) and O (Outside input electrical pattern): These terms seem to represent the brain’s internal and external interactions, which align with theories of consciousness as a dynamic interplay between internal cognition and external stimuli.
• 5f (Five senses): This term adds sensory information into the mix, which is reasonable since sensory processing is a core component of conscious experience.
• c² (Speed of light squared): Including  implies a link between consciousness and fundamental physics, possibly inspired by Einstein’s . While intriguing, it’s unclear how  specifically relates to consciousness unless you’re hinting at energy as a factor.
I will have to Consider incorporating time () into the formula, as consciousness is dynamic and evolves over time.
I will Explore adding a term for memory or neural network connectivity, which plays a significant role in conscious experience.
2. TV Analogy
• Strengths:
• The analogy of the brain as a TV and consciousness as electrons flowing through it is relatable. It highlights the importance of electrical activity in the brain for conscious experience.
• The inclusion of sensory input through a webcam aligns well with the role of external stimuli in consciousness.
• Limitations:
• Consciousness is more complex than a TV analogy can fully capture. While electrical activity is crucial, consciousness also involves chemical processes, neural network interactions, and subjective experiences.
• Unlike a TV, consciousness is self-referential and adaptive, capable of introspection and self-modification.
I will Expand the analogy to include feedback loops, where the TV (brain) can adjust its output based on internal and external conditions.
• Introduce the idea of networked TVs to hint at the social and collective dimensions of consciousness.
3. Consciousness as the Fifth Dimension
• This is my fascinating speculative idea. If consciousness were a fifth dimension, it could be thought of as an axis orthogonal to space and time, representing subjective experience.
• Current physics doesn’t include consciousness in its models, but some theories (e.g., panpsychism, quantum consciousness) speculate that it may have a fundamental role in the fabric of reality.
I will Investigate how consciousness could relate to existing theories of higher dimensions, such as string theory or M-theory.
• Consider grounding the idea in measurable phenomena, such as quantum brain dynamics or patterns of neural activity that might correlate with higher-dimensional states.
4. Integration with Modern Science
To make your theory more robust:
• Incorporate neuroscience: Explore how neurons, synapses, and brain waves might align with your formula.
• Link to thermodynamics: Consciousness might also be related to entropy and energy flow in the brain.
• Quantum considerations: Some researchers propose that quantum effects in microtubules (e.g., Orch-OR theory) might be connected to consciousness.
• Clearly define your terms and their relationships mathematically.
• Expand the biological and neuroscientific grounding.
• Explore interdisciplinary approaches involving physics, philosophy, and computational models.
Consciousness is one of the deepest mysteries, and theories like yours contribute valuable perspectives to the ongoing dialogue!
Consciousness lies between the 10th and 11th shot of tequila.
Since we are taught to see things in a particular fashion, are we not prefabbed in our concepts of awareness? There may be slight variances in each person, like how we each interpret a Rorschach blotter. But how we see them is imho partially or directly derived from how we were taught to see things. Even then, each person has the capability to throw off the shackles of those trained responses and completely revision literally everything. Yet most do not, because habitual thinking patterns prevents it.
Also. I think, therefore I am. Thank you, Moody Blues, for the introduction into my conscientiousness. On the threshold of a dream, Album. The Beginning, Song.
"Scientia color" perhaps a better moniker than color people?
Philosophically, by allowing the idea of existing in a construct and not in an original environment. Then are we not talking about a higher plane of intelligence employing us as data? Like a creator? Make it stop already..... 🏴☠
One last thought, or perhaps not the last. What if we are a recording of who we were and are just an exhibit to the rest of the universe? All those UFOs are just visitors to our virtual reality......hmmm 🤔😎
@@writerseyeOf course you are my bright little star
Equally important question: _where_ is consciousness?
The conscious experience of a being observing the world depends as much on the world as it does on the being.
Without the awareness of beingness, does the world exist? When we sleep there is no world or no others but the being-ness still remains. The world and universe simultaneously springs into existence with the personal identification of the being-ness.
Memory is simultaneous actual first kisses.. the idiots in this video deem memory and consciousness.. but your memories EXIST NOW.. easily accessible by capitation Kirk and Spock if they could travel 1/1000000000000 the speed of entanglement.
Do you need a second sentence to grasp all of reality and consciousnesses.. or you good now?
to the lovely people in charge of the cast of this show, lets get this lineup every episode. we only want Chuck and Gary. thank you in advance
This was one of my favorites episodes ever!
I saw The Matrix when I was 17, all I could think about for months was "wait...are we inside a simulation right now...?" My friends thought I was crazy. I'm glad it's finally being taken seriously 😌
Then they came out with the 4th one and I’m like. We could definitely be getting finessed right now lol
A simulation where they give us all the answers and we think it’s all just a movie.
29:00 I don't think that's how you're supposed to say that
All I know is that I know nothing and I know that I know nothing because nothing is all that I know I know, ya know??
I know i know you know nothing and i know nothing therefore i don’t know nothing so i don’t know you know nothing and i know nothing?? So i know something??
You can't walk across the room unless you understand Trigonometry but you haven't thought about it. Which I seriously doubt. You may not know Trigonometry but you do understand it.
The one thing I KNOW for certain is…ya never know!
Well I know so little, that I don't even know if I know nothing. So I am unwilling to even declare I know nothing, or anything. Whatever I know or don't know is unknowable, and everything else by extension. There are layers. Like an onion of ignorance.
Chuck’s question at 6:11 or 6:12 is really asking what is more correct when determining an objective reality: us, a group of minds, or an object. I think people really missed th3 weight if this, especially when Neil has said that he will trusts objective truths over his own judgment. I really wish people could see just how deep his-Chuck’s-questions are.
One of the best StarTalk episodes ever! Chalmers is a great guest. His book Reality + was a fascinating read.
These guys have a a natural inclination to each others' tendencies. 🎉 makes for fluid thought. Also, I pray thee follow.
MAYBE it's cuz I'm new here...but Chuck seems deep! & I'm offended FOR Chuck cuz y'all r RUDE wit these SIDEWAYS "compliments" about his intelligence.
He used to only be the "funny" guy. He's grown a lot with the show.
You're definitely new here
They should meet Billy Carson 👍
That guy isn’t a real scientist man .
@defreshh9961 ok. But they still should meet him 👍
Damn, i rarely listen to this podcast but when it comes to consciousness, could have had another 2h, especially with David, my favorite aussie.
The most anticipating topic of all time "conscienceness "😊
wouldnt an AI that can pass the Turing Test understand that it is taking the Turing Test, and therefore fake failing it?
Unifying General Relativity and Quantum Theory
I hope this message finds you well. I’m a passionate researcher currently developing a theory that aims to unify General Relativity and Quantum Theory by emphasizing the role of the Higgs field. My approach explores how the Higgs field can bridge mass-energy equivalence with gravitational effects, addressing longstanding challenges in merging these two fundamental theories.
Your work in popularizing science and your insights into the universe have been a great inspiration to me. I would be honored to hear your thoughts on my theory and any advice you might have regarding further exploration in this area.
If you are interested, I would be thrilled to share more details and discuss the implications of my findings. Thank you for the inspiration you provide to so many of us.
"What Colored People?" - Kirk Lazarus
PENROSE AND THE NEGROS 🤣
Most of our (my) actions throughout the day don't require much consciousness. I'd say self awareness comes sometimes and disappears very fast to let automatic actions take place. And the rare moments of self aware consciousness, seem to be witnessed with delay rather than in real time. Am I choosing those words or do I just witness the writing process take place?
I love this episode! This is the 3rd episode I have consumed. I am hooked!
U know the dif between a zomby and a ghost ..the first one dosnt know why he is with the living while the ghost remembers why hes not....but they both die at same point...AI generated
Neil doesn't get it, so let me help him: Consciousness is experience. Any experience or feeling, like the experience of tasting chocolate or being in pain.
What Neil seem to reduce consciousness to is what brain scientists call meta-consciousness, namely the ability to reflect on ones own conscious experiences.
Yeah, I never get it when people say things like "consciousness is just an illusion, it doesn't actually exist". What does that even mean? I know that I am here in this body, living a life, thinking, looking out of my head, experiencing stuff. If that doesn't exist, I could just as easily argue that nothing exists at all, the universe and physics doesn't exist, and that wouldn't make any sense either.
@@mesterzombi6632 exactly, the starting point of exploration into the nature of reality should start from the fact that we are conscious.
@@mesterzombi6632 Also, they didn't understand what the hard problem actually is. The Hard problem = There's nothing about physical parameters (mass, charge, momentum, amplitude, frequency and geometrical relationships) in terms of which one can deduce (even in principle) the qualities of experience (like pain).
@@fahad56297 Obviously if you're deducing something in terms of physics and math at the moment, then you're experiencing that thinking. Like, you won't get the experience of seeing red by thinking about math, because then you'll get the experience of thinking about math instead. We could figure out how to poke our brain with electricity to see red, and what the exact structure of the brain looks like when one is seeing red, but obviously you won't see red until you poke your brain into that state.
I feel that it is difficult, if not impossible, to measure consciousness or declare something to have or not have consciousness without actually knowing what consciousness is. On the other hand, to define consciousness, we need to determine the difference between having consciousness and not. With that, you fall in a loop of having to prove your own proof. Being able to form opinions based on collective experience and feelings would be a great start to determining rules for consciousness.
This video touched on many good points. One of the biggest issues of consciousness is the fact we can’t even clearly define it. Like there wouldn’t be a debate if fish are conscious or not if we had a clear definition and could scientifically determine if the fish were conscious or not. Also, I don’t think there is really a wrong or right answer either like we can break consciousness down into its component’s and account for all the pieces and clearly define levels of consciousness etc. There needs to be some kind of collaborative effort to do this before any progress will be made.
I remember reading The Conscious Mind in my first year of college long ago. Glad you had him on.
My father told me he could remember before he was born and in the womb . He said it was dark and uncomfortable and he had a photographic memory. He did not remember being born . I’m his only offspring and I can only remember before I could speak language …not being able to explain I hated my bonnet it was scratchy and hot and my mother was laughing at me ! I was 1 1/2? I was still in a stroller . Love this show thank you so much and Chuck is hilarious ❤
I thought this was going to be a segment that I would bail on early. once Chuck got to the dog statements, I was hooked.
I would LOVE to have an in person group to have these sorts of discussions!
For now .. I was just pondering the pre vs the other cortex and then the other ""inputs"" of senory variants. With the Individuality of each of us it makes sense to 'me' that my brain itself is the Seat of Consciousness .. it is a CPU as it were. Our experiences grow to become the filters through which we perceive those inputs ..
I'm fascinated
A computer can NEVER be conscious because computers only compare variables at hig rates of speed.. all programming is an IF/THE statement of sorts.. anyone smarter than a fifth grader would know youd need to make a flowchart consciousness.. before any A.I... it is a good film idea and a way to destract republican minds... but a fools view.
Human memory is forever and ever (amen) stored as simultaneous block universe events.. you'd also need to be smarter than a fifth grader to understand.
Mankind assumes brain memory and A.I consciousness.. but mankind is idiots r us.
Look at the fools in this video..
You would need to make your bathroom scale conscious before any computer code.... a computer will NEVER think of a random number between 1 and 5... forever impossible.
This might sound dumb... but as a very patriotic kind of fellow and a veteran... and maybe other people feel the same.... it's red white and blue for me. Even thinking about the flag or the colors of the flag.... I feel pride. I feel hope. I FEEL the colors.
Food for thought.
Lord Nice during some heavy lifting with his questions! Thanks for this one felt like he was saying what I was thinking.
YOOOO I’m so excited. My favorite podcast + my favorite philosopher to read together. Sickkkkk
Each contributing factor to our understanding of consciousness is a layer. How those layers connect, creates a 3d something out of 2d layers. Consciousness is a higher order of dimensions above our ability currently. Split or shared consciousness, now that's skipping knowing what consciousness is and getting to a testing phase that would give anecdotal experience that could better help define the term.
Man start talk deserves way more respect and recognition thank you guys.❤️🔥❤️🙌🙌
I can’t believe I watched this whole video, but I’m glad I did. This is deep. Thanks Neil.
I mustered up a solid conscious effort to motor through this 46 min conversion about consciousness
Yhh that's correct actively being aware. Took me like 5-7 mins to find this. VERY CONSCIOUS right now..
5:44 what about us who have Aphantasia and have no images of the mind?