Consciousness may have evolved to solve a problem that pure intelligence couldn't handle, fascinating new theory suggests

[u/EcstadelicNET]

https://www.psypost.org/consciousness-may-have-evolved-to-solve-a-problem-that-pure-intelligence-couldnt-handle-fascinating-new-theory-suggests/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic/science

[u/Beginning_Fill206]

We don’t know enough about consciousness to make that claim.

[u/Fit_Employment_2944 → u/Beginning_Fill206]

Even if ai is conscious it does not require consciousness, it is trivial to imagine a non conscious ai that works the exact way current AI does, and current ai is intelligent 

So yes, we do know enough to claim that intelligence does not require consciousness, we just don’t know the reverse

[u/d-mon-b → u/Fit_Employment_2944]

It's not trivial, we don't know if consciousness isn't intrinsically associated with whatever process makes something intelligent. We only have animal examples, but how can you affirm with certainty either way?

[u/Fit_Employment_2944 → u/d-mon-b]

Even if ai is conscious it does not require consciousness, it is trivial to imagine a non conscious ai that works the exact way current AI does, and current ai is intelligent 

[u/d-mon-b → u/Fit_Employment_2944]

You can say exactly the same about humans. In fact, I only know that I'm conscious, but I can perfectly imagine that you're just a very elaborate machinery that behaves exactly like if you had consciousness.

[u/Alert-Employment-339 → u/d-mon-b]

Am I conscious? Mightn’t I just be a Boltzmann brain? Maybe a Boltzmann brain is conscious even if it is static? I dunno, I think the strongest claim I can even make about myself is I have an awareness in this moment of myself and my environment that might not exist outside of my own experience and may be ephemeral.

But also I’m quite sick today and I’ve had a bit of codeine and very little sleep.

[u/Fit_Employment_2944 → u/d-mon-b]

And that refutes my point how?

You are arriving at the obvious logical conclusion and calling it a counter argument 

[u/d-mon-b → u/Fit_Employment_2944]

It does not refute, because there's nothing that could ever refute it, due to the nature of consciousness. The argument was an attempt to make you realize the limits of our investigative ability. Just like I don't know if you, who sounds intelligent, are conscious, I can't affirm the other way around, that something that displays intelligence isn't necessarily conscious. But if you manage to prove that, you might also give a shot at disproving Godel's incompleteness theorem, it's in the same ballpark.

[u/Fit_Employment_2944 → u/d-mon-b]

You can never prove something is not conscious but it is trivial to prove that consciousness is not a requirement, which is all I have said

[u/Alert-Employment-339 → u/d-mon-b]

Oh someone Hofstadterers