Is the Universe Sentient?

[doublecross]

I do have some neuroscience under my belt. I just happen to be half asleep.


Again, I think the answer lies in the understand that there isn't necessarily a definite line between conscisouness and not-consciousness, or between awareness and not-awareness,  or between sentience and not-sentience.


Ozymandias' clever example with circuits makes the assumption that if consciousness were to develop, it would do so at some critical point. It is easy make the notion that the addition of just one more wire, or just one more sensor, or just one more switch or capacitor or resistor would magically add consicousness, because, in all likelihood, that is a silly thing to accept.


However, I don't think that in any way serves as proof that something like a computer could be conscious in the way that you or I are.  Is it not more reasonable to assume that there is a continuum, where there are points clearly not sentient, points clearly sentient, and an ambiguous middle ground?   I see no reason not to accept a gradient of consciousness- we see it between species, and even within our own species, both between individuals, and at different ages.

A fertilized egg is not sentient, but you and I clearly are, and I don't think there was ever an instance where BAM we became sentient.

Sentience isn't a boolean property.

I am quite confident that a computer could be equally conscious and sapient as humans are, or significantly more so, if one gives it more processing power.


There is no reason a sufficiently powerful supercomputer couldn't fully simulate a human brain, assuming it had enough processing power to calculate the interactions between all the neurons and all the chemicals.   


The human brain is, when you strip away any mystical notions about the soul and all that, a glorified computer of biological origin.

It is silly to put computers in one category and brains in another and to claim that they are fundamentally different things.  The only main differences are in how powerful is the strongest example of each the world has seen thus far, and what they are made of.   That's it.

We could, given time, resources, and delicate instruments, build a silicon equivalent of a human brain, and it would be just as sapient.

A sufficiently well devised (or evolved via genetic algorithm) computer program would also be easily capable of sapience.

[silux]

Human brain would be always better than silicon computers not for processing power but for the link skill.
(Note that pcs have already more processing power than me;i can't do the square root of 7462874in less than 4minutes, but my pc does it in 12milliseconds)
Neurons can be linked to many more others than what can be done with inorganic chips.
Add to the list regenerative links, constant power, fast and optmized image reading, tactile sensors, sound decoders, moderate output facilities and mproved multimedial communication with other units.

Altough we are not in the real center of the universe, all the universe we know is known by the human mind, so we are the ours center of universe.

Computer system can be capable of sapience. Computer programs do nothing but processing datas.Computer system can be able to build in non-genetic way, while programs can not

[doublecross]

Link Skill?
You should know that there is no reason that neural nets necessarily beat parallel processing.

The reason that they appear to thus far is that it is much easier for a powerful neural net to occur evolutionary that it is for something that works with parallel processing to do so.

However, in terms of processing power per square inch, silicon already can pwn the brain.


Additionally, we have built neural nets out of silicon that demonstrate just as much "link skill" as neurons.




Any argument that has the brain beating what you call "inorganic chips", is actually an example of what I like to call the established technology fallacy.


What I mean by this is that whenever something new enters the field, we tend to compare it to the best example of what is already there, which is unfair.

Imagine that you have just discovered a new fuel source.  Immediately, people criticize it because it doesn't have the same efficiency of cost-effectiveness as the leading other fuel out there.  You would be quick to point out that that other fuel had been around for hundreds of years, and people had spent all that time getting better and better at using it, and that it is totally unfair to compare your first attempt to the product of collective work over hundred of years.

You would say, you should be comparing my fuel to how good we were at processing the other fuel when it was first discovered.


To give another example, you would not expect the first ever thing made out of metal to be better than the best things we had made with wood up until that point.


On an evolutionary timescale, "inorganic chips" have existed for almost no time compared to biological computers, and already can rival them.

Don't be calling biological computers inherently better in any way. It is naive.

Also, I have absolutely no idea what your last line of text meant.

[silux]

Computers are way better at 'thinking' that what we are.(fully agreed)
However brain it's a living system and can't be replicated by non-regenerative tissues(silicon can be used instead of carbonium in a living tissue, but as far i know, there is still work to do)
Because its strenght is not the power but the ability to create new links.

That's what computer scientists call an 'hardware' problem.If we could build a computer system able to improve self and bypass damaged parts,i'd be so happy because we got smartest guy ever.

I'm not animist, creationist or humanist but a computer scientist.

Last paragraph means that computer programs can only get new datas but can't change itself without previous instructions.
Computer systems(aka hardware+operating system) can eventually solve problems that can't be solved by existant computer programs by creating another computer program that can solve it(and actually only humans can do it)