(Balance!) Consciousness, identity, OBEs... (Identity)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, March 05, 2011, 22:08 (5011 days ago) @ romansh

David - No question about self-awareness. We have it, my dog recognizes himself in the mirror, so he has a little. Can computers ever achieve it? No.
> > 
> > I really think your dogmatic attitude on this point is forever annoying, lol. However, even if we get a machine that acts like us, walks like us, introspects like us--because we don't know how to 'test' consciousness--you can keep making that claim.
> My laptop seems to have a degree of self awareness. It knows when its batteries are low, it even tells me. It will shut itself down if I ignore it, all on its own. My laptop definitely is aware of its virtual memory - or at least it keeps telling me its virtual memory is low. Give a laptop a GPS, and it will be able to distinguish itself from other laptops with similar GPSs. 
> -This isn't quite the same thing. Understanding how a computer works gives me a huge advantage here, but the processor does nothing but continuously process instructions. Instructions tell it that there is a number that it needs to grab from the I/O bus--your battery level, and it sends it up to the Operating System. The OS has a set of predefined rules it follows, and if certain other numbers are reached--time away from the machine--it executes a set of instructions to shut itself down. The machine doesn't know why it's doing these things, it just does them. Mindlessly.-In the GPS example, the computer would only ever know that two numbers aren't equal. It won't know the meaning of the number, it won't know why it was even checking it. A program (that a human wrote) will test the two numbers and then execute some logic. But the machine only ever "knows" a stream of numbers and instructions, and other numbers that reference memory. It isn't the same thing at all. -> Of course I'm not claiming my laptop is aware to the same degree I am, but to claim machinery cannot have any form of self awareness is, for me, worrying.-The kind of awareness you're discussing here is like very rudimentary reflex-type actions, like when you touch your hand to a hot burner--no thought is required, you just respond.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"