i call an entity conscious if it produces conscious behavior. humans say they’re conscious, that they feel, and i trust them. my dog winces if she gets stung by a bee. pigs oink happily with loved ones. they all produce conscious behavior; therefore they’re conscious

@moreisdifferent Ah, nice analogy. I think I see where you're coming from. Let me have a go at explaining why that doesn't reflect Goffian panpsychism. It's a question that comes up a lot, perhaps because it's fiddly to set out. Paging @Philip_Goff to correct me... {big breath} Building out from

Why is anesthesia our best test for consciousness? ✅ Reversible - consciousness off, then back on ✅ Reproducible - works every time ✅ Universal - works across species (plants too) ✅ Measurable - specific molecules, doses, timing ✅ Agreed upon - no one disputes the phenomenon

Scientists from the University of Massachusetts have created artificial neurons that can communicate with human cells, at least in a petri dish. Image Credit: Jun Yao They created the neurons from proteins that are spun by bacteria into thin wire-like threads. They then hooked

“The hard problem of consciousness is… not solvable in its terms.” I agree.

Yesterday, I posted that large language models are non-deterministic, and people went bonkers. People called me stupid, asked me to go back to school, and used so many other names I can't remember. I had the crème de la crème of this site come after me. Today, I want to

8th JHANA, METACOGNITION, THE HARD PROBLEM & PROTO-QUALIA 💡✍️ 8th Jhana 'neither perception nor non perception' is a very important state and I think holds one of the keys to resolving the hard problem of consciousness; namely because it suggests, what I call, 'proto-qualia'.

This will age poorly. I largely have an optimistic view of LLMs; I use multiple LLM tools daily, and I don't think the LLM tech stack is a bubble—it will create a lot of value. I disagree that the length of tasks that LLMs can do has been doubling every 7 months. There are tasks

1/ It feels surreal to announce completion of the first human trial in the development of our neurotech platform for designing mental states, from the molecular level. Human experience is now programmable. A🧵on the sequel to psychedelics & the first new "emotion in a bottle."

holy crap, this is real! Some recent publications even issuing corrections (and retractions!) for this issue

@binarybits @chi_t_williams Is it worth trying to estimate how low crash rates would be if all cars were Waymos? One crude way is just to count the accidents where the Waymo was at fault (although this of course is fraught). From reading your post it seem like of the 45 crashes in the

Thanks. It’s not wet and noisy in the aromatic rings of organic aromatic rings, the essence of life chemistry. This is where anesthesia acts to selectively block consciousness, and supports quantum optical states, coherence, superposition and state reduction. It’s a

Today's blog post: The Social Semi-Solution to the Problem of AI consciousness Tenuous consciousness science will bend to support socially motivated reasoning about the consciousness, or not, of AI systems. We will come to think we know, even if we don't know. Link in comments

Thanks. It’s not wet and noisy in the aromatic rings of organic aromatic rings, the essence of life chemistry. This is where anesthesia acts to selectively block consciousness, and supports quantum optical states, coherence, superposition and state reduction. It’s a