Eran Zaidel - How Do Human Brains Think and Feel?

Get free access Closer to Truth's library of 5,000+ videos: bit.ly/376lkKN
Nothing means anything without our brains. Not science, not theology, not politics, not love. Everything we know and do-all the sense of human thought, all the feelings of human emotion, all the fullness of human achievement-all are the product of the brains in our heads. By what processes do human brains work? How much can science discover?
Support the show with Closer To Truth merchandise: bit.ly/3P2ogje
Watch more interviews on brain structure and function:shorturl.at/kyBJT
Eran Zaidel is Professor Emeritus of Behavioral Neuroscience and of Cognition in the Department of Psychology at UCLA, and a member of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute.
Subscribe to the Closer To Truth podcast wherever you listen: shorturl.at/hwGP3
Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[@mclaytv]

This is one of my favorite KZbin channels. Awesome conversations.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

(0:20) *RLK: **_"How can brains, material stuff, be conscious?"_* ... The reason why a material brain can exude nonmaterial consciousness is because it's merely a _facilitator_ of consciousness. Existence is an ongoing *exchange of information,* and _new information_ is what "Existence" insatiably seeks. ... The information, itself, is nonmaterial, but material items can facilitate the exchange. So, while we're all enjoying our brief stent within this physical reality, we are also adding our personal information to an ever-increasing *database of information* that seeks to define and justify "Existence."

[@DobrinWorld]

Thank you!

[@dmartin1650]

Great conversation. Eran Zaidel RIP.❤

[@christopherchilton-smith6482]

12:52 This question always baffles me, it feels like the only appropriate response any time anyone says "as-if, but does it actually have emotions" is "do you?" and then just apply all the same skepticism.

[@backwardthoughts1022]

he's merely reciting a religious prayer/wish.

[@piehound]

I like Dr. Zaidel's self-assuredness.

[@williammcenaney1331]

The video description suggests the mereological fallacy, thinking that a part of an object can do something the whole one must do instead. Your brain doesn't think and feel. You do.

[@simonhibbs887]

The mereological fallacy is in assigning properties to parts of a system that are actually properties of the whole. The question here is what is the relevant whole. Consider a car, we can say it has the property of being self-propelled. What are the relevant parts to this property? It would be wrong to say this is a property of the engine because the engine isn't independently self-propelled, but many parts of the car are not necessary to they property. Not the bumpers, the hub caps, the doors, even the seats. It can still be self-propelled without much of the car. Consider a computer running a program to control a robot. To do so it doesn't need a stand, a case, it doesn't even need a keyboard or mouse once it's running the program, or even a screen. All you really need are the motherboard, connectors and power supply. How about a human? Unfortunately we know a fair bit about what parts of a person are needed for thinking and feeling from victims of accidents or disease. People seem perfectly capable of thinking and feeling without limbs, you can replace the heart and lungs, the kidneys can be substituted by a dialysis machine, the blood can be replaced, pretty much any specific part of the skull could be damaged and replaced, but even touch the brain even in a way that would be minor to any other part of the body and it usually has catastrophic consequences for cognition. So it's pretty obvious which parts of the person are essential to thinking and feeling, and it's the bit inside the skull.

[@mandelbot5318]

@@simonhibbs887 I’m inclined to agree with the OP here, especially since their claim is a tentative one (it “suggests” the mereological fallacy). It is one thing to say that the brain is “essential to thinking and feeling” and another to say it is ‘doing’ the thinking and feeling. Compare, for example, the function of the lungs. While it might be tempting in everyday discourse to say that the lungs breathe, it is more accurate to say that they enable us to breathe. Similarly, brains enable us to think and feel, rather than thinking and feeling themselves. There is a good account of the mereological fallacy as it applies to brains in Bennett and Hacker’s ‘Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience’ if you’re curious to read more on the matter. (Also worth mentioning ‘Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind and Language’, in which Bennett and Hacker go head-to-head with Dennett and Searle, who both criticise their position.)

[@williammcenaney1331]

@@simonhibbs887 Thank you, but I'm still not my brain. Since I began living when Dad's sperm fertilized Mom's ovum. During graduate school, a professor taught me that a walking, talking, reasoning human being with an underdeveloped brain would be a nonperson. I'm what that implies. If someone stabbed that human being in cold blood, a coroner would need to decide whether the killing was a murder. Sometimes scientistts draw absurd conclusions because they ignore philosophy. Dr. Robert Sapolsky wrote a book arguing that no one has free will. So I'd love to ask him whether deterministic bran eventss force him to believe what he believes, even if it's false. If thoroughgoing determinism is true, rational thought is impossible.

[@simonhibbs887]

@@mandelbot5318 OP is making one of those ‘technically correct is best correct’ points. They’re not wrong, they’re just missing what’s important to say. That’s what I mean by talking about which part of us is essential to this activity. With breathing sure it’s a thing we do as a whole, but that’s not what’s interesting or useful about understanding breathing and the role of the lungs. It’s what part of us is essential to breathing. Is this pint of blood essential? What about that pint of blood? My leg is part of the breathing process at the organism level, is that essential? No, no, no but take away the lungs and good luck trying to breathe. Likewise with cognition and the brain, saying the person thinks is true, but if someone loses a limb are they still a person? Can we replace the heart? This part of the skull? Still a person so far, and still the same person if changed, but replace the brain? Not a person, or at least certainly not the same person in any relevant sense. It’s a pointless point.

[@backwardthoughts1022]

​@@simonhibbs887 this is just not the case. there are documented of currently living fully functioning high iq ppl missing literally half their brain. likewise there are mildly impaired ppl missing 95%+ of their brain.

[@user-hz3xo8xw6n]

The heart feels and the brain decodes the feelings into thinking. Conscience lies in the heart

[@mikel5582]

So the man who lived for a while with a transplanted heart from a pig had the pig's consciousness (or conscience)?

[@byronand5]

CTT is an outstanding series and Robert is a wonderful host/interviewer, with probing, insightful questioning. Minor criticism: He doesn't need to mention his PhD in practically every segment.

[@simonhibbs887]

If you had a PhD in Neuroscience wouldn't you be tempted, even a little? 🤓

[@idonotlikethismusic]

@@simonhibbs887🤣

[@greenplanetearth6186]

As I understood two hemispheres consciousness at the same time ,eg.technical terminology-“in constantly crosstalk regime”. But only one hemisphere is master depending on you are left-hander or right-hander

[@chester-chickfunt900]

I bought a baseball cap from Robert's store. Excellent quality and delivered in less than two weeks. I now understand everything in the universe, from micro to macro, with tremendous clarity and wisdom...but only when I wear Robert's cap. As such, I am herein declaring my candidacy for President of the USA. Yes, I will always wear the cap, both during my inauguration and subsequent terms as dear leader of the USA.

[@dmartin1650]

🤣

[@NateKinch91]

The relation between ‘mental process’ (in simple terms, regardless of level ie macro, meso or micro) and ‘behaviour’ (again, simple terms) does not necessarily equal qualia. I know that Kuhn is deeply aware of this, but our ontological basis is massively influential in all analysis that follows. What I’d love to see is an assumption framing upfront (ie here’s my metaphysical starting position). Without that, we get sooooooooo much equivocation in this space.

[@davidhubbardmd]

min 2:43 consciousness is "meta-cognitive"

[@brothermine2292]

Zaidel went off the rails early, when he tried to redefine "qualia" as a meta-cognitive _representation_ of feelings. But his observations about split-brain patients are interesting, and perhaps some progress on Chalmers' Hard Problem will be made by trying to understand how the splitting changes the experiencing of qualia. Kuhn asked a great question: whether the two split-brain hemispheres experience different qualia, or do the hemispheres just respond differently to the same qualia. Zaidel claimed the two qualia are different. He might be right, but his reasoning is unconvincing.

[@simonhibbs887]

It depends if liking something is an aspect of the qualia itself or is a meta-metacognitive response to our qualia response to the perception. If liking or enjoyment is part of the actual qualia experience itself, then it seems that he's straightforwardly right.

[@brothermine2292]

>simonhibbs887 : 1. What is the "It" that "depends?" 2. What is Zaidel "straight-forwardly right" about if liking/enjoying is a component of qualia?

[@simonhibbs887]

@@brothermine2292If I look at a dress, is how much I enjoy it part of the qualia of the experience? If it is, and how much each hemisphere enjoys the dress is different, then the two hemispheres are having different qualia experiences when looking at the same dress. That’s just straightforward logic. If the liking or enjoyment is not part of the qualia experience, but is a reaction to it, then the two hemispheres could be having the same qualia experience, and still disagree how much they like the dress.

[@brothermine2292]

>simonhibbs887 : I agree with your logic. But what was it that you said _Zaidel_ would be straightforwardly right about? Chalmers regrets his initial definition of the Hard Problem: "explaining how the brain produces qualia" (the first-person subjective experience of sensations & feelings). He revised it to: "explaining how the brain produces qualia and the first-person subjective experience of thoughts." (Despite my use of quotation marks, I've paraphrased both definitions.) My own preference is to (1) redefine 'qualia' so it includes the first-person subjective experience of thoughts, and (2) retain the original definition of the Hard Problem. I presume Zaidel & Kuhn were using the original definition of qualia (and probably Chalmers' original definition of the Hard Problem). Given my suggested redefinition of qualia so it include the experience of thoughts, it's very straightforward why the split hemispheres would experience different qualia if they respond differently to the same sensations. For example, one hemisphere might enjoy the aesthetics of the visual sensation of the dress, while the other hemisphere enjoys the thought of how the dress might feel to the touch or the thought of the undressing. Of course, it all depends on both split hemispheres being conscious. Zaidel claimed there's solid evidence that both are conscious, but since it's unknown how to determine whether an organism is conscious, I doubt the evidence is as solid as he thinks it is. I'd like to see more discussion of whether non-conscious "philosophers' zombies" are theoretically possible, or whether consciousness is required to explain the complex behavior of complex organisms.

[@simonhibbs887]

​@@brothermine2292 If enjoyment is part of qualia, and one hemisphere enjoys the dress more than the other, then he's streighforwardly right that the logical inference is that they must be experienceing different qualia. It's that chain of inference that I think is solid. Under a different assumption then he'd be wrong, but the first belief necessarily implies the second. >"Of course, it all depends on both split hemispheres being conscious. Zaidel claimed there's solid evidence that both are conscious, but since it's unknown how to determine whether an organism is conscious" We're in uncertain territory here because I'm not familiar with all the evidence he's talking about. As I understand it, it's evidence that in most of us we would consider indicates that we are conscious. Tricky issue though.

[@AMorgan57]

This is fascinating, one of the best CTT discussions. Consider what we call the creative muse. This is clearly a part of our brain generating its own qualia, enriching our lives. I think anyone who responds deeply to music, for one example, shares some of the spark of the same mental processes of the genius composer, almost as if it is those parts of our brains have their own conversation between us. Then the question becomes, can AI "feel" what we feel when we listen to music that moves us. Suppose it can make music that moves us as deeply as human composers and musicians. Does that mean the AI has the creative muse within? There I just don't think so. There will be something subtly but tellingly off about it. Perhaps one day, AI will gain that muse. But partly, philosophically, the muse is meaningful to us because we're mortal, because we feel in the context of knowing our lives are short. AI is soulless.

[@jenniferkruse7269]

There are degrees of verbal expression. Consciousness, the subjective experience that verbal expression describes, is uniform.

[@brianlebreton7011]

Interesting discussion. Great insights taken from experimentation. I’m still not 100% onboard that everything can be programmed. It’ll be interesting to see as we get closer to accurately defining the link between consciousness and the collapse of the wave function. In an earlier video, Henry Stapp linked levels of complexity to levels of consciousness. If the human brain has hidden or sub consciousness, that speaks to a much higher complexity of consciousness which I think would imply greater “awareness. “. That awareness however is embedded in subconsciousness. Very counterintuitive. Also, Qualia of feelings, ie the heart and the Qualia of pain, a more physical process seem programmable as a system of correlate reactions seems to fall short of reaching reality. Also, I’ve not seen a video of someone convincingly explaining why feelings are experienced mainly in the region of our center of mass. And does that location of perceived feelings change if someone loses both legs or is born that way? ie I’m thinking that it’s not a center of mass association. There’s no good Darwinian explanation for the brain’s interpretation of where feelings are felt in my opinion.

[@simonhibbs887]

As I understand it, in neurophysiological terms most such body-located feelings are due to associated physiological responses. A lot of 'visceral' reactions stimulate hormone secretions such as adrenaline, which have biological effects we can actually feel physically. So we associate those emotions with those physiological effects and therefore those parts of the body. Mainly the heart, since most action-oriented responses involve stimulation of the heart muscles.

[@brianlebreton7011]

@@simonhibbs887 Not sure I agree the association of feelings is the same thing as I visceral effect on the body like a wound in a specific location. Damaged neurons can identify the location of a wound, but all feelings like love, disappointment, sadness etc that are felt in the heart area doesn’t seem to be attributable in the same way as visceral disruptions of the body’s physical status quo.

[@simonhibbs887]

@@brianlebreton7011 There are also nerves that go directly to the heart that oder it to slow down or speed up. We can measure their activation under stress and emotional responses, so we know this is what is going on. Heart rate rise increases oxygen circulation, promoting physical readiness and mental alertness. So any significant emotional change rapidly boosts heart rate and we quickly become physiologically aware of that. We really do feel our emotional responses ‘in the heart’, but that doesn’t mean they originate there.

[@brianlebreton7011]

We currently deal with emotional issues as mental health issues, not heart issues. My point is the brain doesn’t interpret emotions as brain-located issue. If we have a wound, the brain interprets the signals coming in and tells us where to go to address the issue. That makes sense. I think the brain is sensing and interpreting emotions so we can address the issue where it’s located. I think it’s pointing to something we can’t see or measure, at least not yet.

[@mikel5582]

Interesting questions. To me, starting with something as complex as human emotions is challenging. We need to first understand analogous processes in "simpler" organisms. Bacteria, plants, worms, etc. respond to environmental stimuli through signalling cascades that trigger things like protein structures involved in motility. We need to build our understanding from there. One fascinating thing to me is observing common house flies that sometimes have the remarkable ability to avoid being swatted. It's not simply that they fly away when a swatter comes at them; but that their subsequent flight pattern seems to be fine-tuned to avoid being swattable. I don't suppose that the fly is consciously thinking "I need to befuddle that hairless ape that's trying to kill me." Rather, fly ancestors that exhibited a complicated flight pattern making them hard to kill survived to make more flies with that trait. The fly behavior is actually quite complex so let's consider something simpler. A fertilized human egg is a single cell that somehow has all the necessary information for tissue differentiation and future complicated morphology (fingers, toes, nails, bones, organs, etc.). We're only beginning to unravel that but nobody is suggesting the "hard problem" of embryonic development. Most of them haven't even considered it because the phenomenon isn't obvious to them like consciousness is.

[@r2c3]

12:44 since a computer is hard-coded to react to an event according to the subjective experience of it's designer than do computers have a subjective experience of their own... will they ever become able to apply the same concept to their own parts or will it always be bound to its designer's experience 🤔

[@ketesafewyalefemedia2378]

How in the world does the human brain interact with emotions and thoughts? Emotions come from the invisible human body. This is the human soul. The five human senses are related to emotional states, but the five human emotions are manifested in the human body. A man's thoughts are in his mind, not in his brain. although the human brain and mind work together, they are completely different entities. The human mind is associated with emotions and will, which are the products of the human soul, But, the invisible human mind is revealed through the physical brain. As the human soul manifests in the human body.

[@PaulHuininken]

Please stop the 'blurred intro'

[@willrose5424]

I asked the same many times in other posts. They don't care. 😁

[@PaulHuininken]

@@willrose5424 it's extremely annoying

[@lc2c177]

He did well till the last question.

[@XOPOIIIO]

It's likely that not just two hemispheres are conscious separately, but even each small part of the cerebral cortex is conscious by itself. They are not separate because they are constantly communicating with each other. But the unified experience is a myth.

[@backwardthoughts1022]

your folk introspection is as relevant as folk astronomy. and the question regarding splitbrain patients is heavily debated, he lacks the intellectual honesty even to approach the subject genuinely.

[@XOPOIIIO]

​@@backwardthoughts1022 There are plenty of other cases, not just split brain. Anton-babinski syndrome for example, when a patient is completely blind, but didn't notice any difference or even refuse to believe that he is blind. That's because the part of his consciousness that is responsible for vision is lost, due to the damage to occipital lobe. Other parts of his consciousness work as usual, and they can't say that they lost something because they never experienced it.

[@backwardthoughts1022]

@@XOPOIIIO no those are just neural correlates. there are ppl missing those neural correlates such as ppl missing half their brains yet are fully functional and high. others are missing almost their entire brain and are only mildly impaired.

[@XOPOIIIO]

@@backwardthoughts1022 That's what I'm talking about. Part of their brain is gone, the rest of the brain doesn't see a difference, because it was never aware about what other parts were doing. Losing large chunks of the brain doesn't come without consequences though, people lose vision, limbs control, speech or important concepts or even ethical behavior in a famous Phineas Gage case.

[@backwardthoughts1022]

@@XOPOIIIO read again...there are ppl missing the parts of the brain ie. at least half their brain, and yet are fully functional and high iq. forget specific pathologies with precise known neural correlates. there is a lady in germany with 120iq perfectly fine with only half a brain. im other words according to you she is missing a majority of human function since she is missing the majority of the thing that causes human function. but this is not the case.

[@holgerjrgensen2166]

What humans think and feel, they know, but what human brains think and feel, they also know, but it is two very different perspectives. Mr. Kunh suffered from brain-confusion.

[@mickeybrumfield764]

Sounds like programming is everything when it comes to understanding our degree of consciousness. We all appear to some extent to be Jekyl and Hyde with two different brains.

[@jayachandranthampi4807]

Isn't knowledge (information) applied (action) for experience called Consciousness - Sense!!!

[@S3RAVA3LM]

If there's one thing(not a thing), I'm sure about, it is the soul. You yourselves can run it back, as in retroduction, and see for yourselves. It is demonstrable. This was acknowledged by very very brilliant men. Just because others believe in sould and God doesn't change the fact. There's persons who want nothing to do with soul or God because of the unpalatable religious person - can't blame them for that, but the lack of courage they have in such measures you can.

[@sdmarlow3926]

"and plants may have it too" *face palm* Nooo, split brain is not an indication that both sides are conscious. It's just a matter of expression, which the right hemisphere can't do thru language (thoughts and abstract concepts are also in the domain of the left hemisphere). If anything, those with some kind of disconnect between hemispheres should exhibit signs that they lack subjective experience (no emotions, preferences, fear of hights, etc). The mind-body loop is cut. *Chalmers is wrong and has dragged everyone along the wrong path (same issue with Hinton and machine learning, but that's a different rant). Qualia represents those things we can't express. I can't tell you what my idea of red is, other than to point to cards that are more or less red, which you might sort in a different order). Both sides have language and self? Nope. Instead of left and right, better to think of them as top and bottom. They have cognitive functions, but each is specialized.

[@sdmarlow3926]

Sounds like he doesn't even understand free will. A simulation of emotions requires deeper levels of human understanding, but it's not a thing that AI's will ever actually have, even when embodied, because biology has a complex development history, with lots of shortcuts, etc. Zero reason to copy that directly. Mechanisms of thought and cognition will be different from day one, closer to the alien mind mentioned at the start. So, how would we know if they are conscious? Nothing he said in this clip comes close to an answer.

[@simonhibbs887]

>If anything, those with some kind of disconnect between hemispheres should exhibit signs that they lack subjective experience (no emotions, preferences, fear of hights, etc). The mind-body loop is cut. It isn't though, as he pointed out different sides of the brain can choose different dresses, want to live in different houses, act to avoid dangers the verbal hemisphere is not aware of, etc. >Qualia represents those things we can't express. That's consistent with his account though, because if it's our experience of our own cognition, to share it we'd have to share our own cognition with others. It's not about anything external to us, it's about our own internal state.

[@uthman2281]

How? It is miracle

[@johnhoward6201]

My definition of consciousness is the capability to feel pain. I would be interested to hear how that would be programmed into a computer.🙂

[@simonhibbs887]

He basically explained that, in general terms, in the interview.

[@johnhoward6201]

@@simonhibbs887 No he didn't, not even presented as a gedankenexperiment.

[@mikel5582]

I suppose you're free to redefine terms for your own use but that's not the generally accepted definition of consciousness. That said, why do you think a computer can't undergo a phenomenon analogous to pain sensation? Even common Windows OS recognizes and reports on disc read error. The "feeling" of pain is a sophisticated feedback mechanism that something is wrong. It evolved so an organism can continue to feed itself and reproduce. Why do you think that AI can't evolve an analogous feedback mechanism?

[@simonhibbs887]

@@johnhoward6201 pain is a qualia experience, and he explained how he thinks qualia experiences work.

[@johnhoward6201]

​@@mikel5582 Firstly I think pain is fundamental, the apparently more complex attributes of consciousness, that most people focus on, are really just derivatives. The development of artificial consciousness (that is a computer which feels pain) must be possible as evolution has managed the trick at least once. However I think that consciousness is non-algorithmic and not a Turing machine. It's a job for the physicists, we could learn something really profound about the world.

[@otakurocklee]

huh? how the heck is qualia metacognitive?

[@simonhibbs887]

It is the experience of observing that we experience a sensation and how we feel about and interpret that sensation. So it's not the direct sensory experience itself. As he points out, with examples, we can have experiences and react to them without being conscious of either. It's cognition about our own cognition, hence metacognition.

[@stellarwind1946]

This is called the explanatory gap, but it’s really a scientific gap because nowhere in the standard model will you find anything related to conscious awareness.

[@simonhibbs887]

You won't find anything in there about planets, hurricanes, Turing machines, or evolution through natural selection either.

[@stellarwind1946]

@@simonhibbs887sure you will, protons, neutrons and electrons will get you all of that.

[@simonhibbs887]

@@stellarwind1946 If physicalism is true they will get you consciousness as well.

[@drsaikiranc]

They do neither

[@backwardthoughts1022]

i programmed it to have emotions bro

[@TheShumac]

How can material stuff be conscious? I don't think anyone will be able to answer that. It's a mystery.

[@medhurstt]

IMO the "material stuff" isn't conscious. Its the process of neurons firing that creates consciousness.

[@ingenuity296]

That settles it. It's non- dualism.

[@peweegangloku6428]

The guest is absolutely wrong when he says computers will become conscious.

[@medhurstt]

Was the person wrong when they thought a machine could never play music? Well playing music is trivial with machines and you could never tell the difference between the machine or an actual violin. How about a machine writing music? Well you should try one of the new AI music writers such as UDIO because even today they're very, very good and they've only been doing it for months. You'd better be very sure you understand what creates consciousness before you claim computers will never have it.

[@peweegangloku6428]

@@medhurstt Humans study and understand the pattern of music and then they program such patterns in a machine. All the machine does afterwards is amplification, mixing and recommendation following a preprogrammed code and pattern. The machine never thinks, feels or enjoy the music it produces. You have to rethink your understanding of consciousness.

[@medhurstt]

@peweegangloku6428 IMO consciousness emerges from a suitable running neural network. The key is that it emerges from the process, and what creates that process isn't relevant. Hence, machines are capable of producing it. What do you think produces it such that machines can never have it?

[@peweegangloku6428]

​@@medhurstt Why would the cause of the process not be relevant? Electrochemical signals, as in "neural networks," do not produce consciousness. Rather consciousness interprets these signals into inner experiences. Our current technology can only produce, track and trace electrical impulses in machines. These electrical configurations do not have inner experiences. Consciousness is in a category by itself. It is not an electrochemical impulse in a cumbersome "neutral network." When studying consciousness, treat it as a separate entity just you would with proton and electron.

[@medhurstt]

@peweegangloku6428 So your belief is nothing created consciousness. It's a fundamental thing. But now you need to twist your beliefs to fit what we know. For example, drugs alter consciousness. In my world the drugs alter the way the neurons fire. It's chemical. It's straightforward chemistry. What happens in your world such that drugs alter consciousness?

[@abdallahfahed4110]

Simply , whenever he does not find an answer, he replaces God with evolution, and he is certain that he is his servant, but he calls it evolution and nothing more

[@evaadam3635]

"How Do Human Brains Think and Feel?" How we think and feel rely on the choice of belief that we free immortal souls made : If you had chosen to believe in a loving God, this can inspire you to love and care for all God's children to live in peace, harmony, and genuine happiness.. ...but, if you are Godless, there is nothing to hold you to do anything to fulfill all your desires regardless who gets hurt.. you'll likely become the deadly cancer of any civilized society driving this world down into the abyss of no return...

[@pitdog75]

Do we have free will? Well, we don't have a choice - as a certain classic said.

[@mikel5582]

"Do you *_believe_* you have free will?" "Yes, I don't have a choice in the matter."

[@markusm2538]

Seems the guy doesn't get it. "As if" )

[@caricue]

This guy is a Cargo Cult Scientist. He thinks because he can make the form of a complex object then it will magically function the same. A dead computer will never have living experiences, no matter how cleverly it can be made to act.

[@XOPOIIIO]

Humans made of the same "dead" atoms. Your processing unit don't need to be wet to be conscious.

[@benpayne4663]

if humans can have psycho problemos ....can AI also have same same...or be autistic or ADHD...or crazy

[@IamPotato_007]

How can a computer have consciousness? People just BS despite the age. Either he doesn't understand consciousness or he is taking being conscious as to be being awake....but consciousness is your soul, your sense of self. Can a computer have spirit guides or angels? Never.

[@Maxwell-mv9rx]

Neurosience doesnt knows How brains make up consciousness or memory si far. Nature of brains It unpredictable in complexety. What is guys shows about brains? Guys brains is inconsistency with reality neurosience . He Rambling keep out neurosience seriously.

[@mohdnorzaihar2632]

Why do human "hates" dark or could brain "live in the dark"...!!!??

[@simonhibbs887]

Darkness can conceal enemies and predators. Our ancestors that reacted to darkness with caution were more likely to survive than contemporary humans that weren't and got themselves killed, so we inherited this trait.

[@mohdnorzaihar2632]

@simonhibbs887 lights are fundamental to our eyes and there's no consciousness without lights

[@simonhibbs887]

@@mohdnorzaihar2632 You think blind people aren't conscious?

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

(1:53) *EZ: **_"Then they say something about self-awareness, okay. well, a computer can be made conscious if we are satisfying all these criteria."_* ... I am surprised how many people mistakenly use "computers" as an example of an evolving intelligence, a form of intelligence that's void of consciousness, and something that can eventually generate a self-aware consciousness. ... *It's NOT!* Every computer made owes its intelligence to self-aware human designers. Any intelligence it demonstrates is merely "human intelligence" by proxy. If a computer was aesthetically sculpted to where you couldn't distinguish it from a human, everything the computer is presenting would still be by "human design and input." Computers are tantamount to marionettes. If a computer says "Hello," it's only because a human programmed it to say it.

[@simonhibbs887]

If a human says "Hello" it's because someone taught them English. Almost everything you and I know was taught to us, we got it from other humans who developed this knowledge over hundreds, or thousands of years. A slow process of accumulation and interpretation of data. Current computers are very simple compared to humans and animals in some ways, and spectacularly capable compared to us in others. However a modern AI can learn to beat us at Chess or Go from scratch, starting with random neural network weights, no knowledge of the game and no imperative programming guiding their behaviour, in a few hours just by playing the game. They figure it out from no principles, not even first principles. >Every computer made owes its intelligence to self-aware human designers. You mostly owe your knowledge of English to your parents and teachers. You still know English though. The AI still knows how to beat us at Chess. That's a feature of the computer. The people who designed and built it don't even need to know Chess. The reasons why the computer exists aren't there inside it helping it keep existing, any more than the reasons why you exist are inside you making you function.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

*"If a human says "Hello" it's because someone taught them English."* ... Yes, it's all "humans" exchanging the information that we generated from the very start. No "computer" will ever be able to make that claim. Computers will ALWAYS have intelligent, self-aware human input lurking somewhere in its past. *"Almost everything you and I know was taught to us, we got it from other humans who developed this knowledge over hundreds, or thousands of years. A slow process of accumulation and interpretation of data."*_ ... Yes, "WE" acquired the data and "WE" evolved into what we are today. Nothing programmed us ahead of time. No computer on planet Earth can make that claim. If you took a bunch of computer parts and set them on a table, what would you have after a hundred thousand years? You'd have a bunch of computer parts, ... unless an intelligent, self-aware human assembled them along the way and gave it instructions. *"Current computers are very simple compared to humans and animals in some ways, and spectacularly capable compared to us in others"* ... And all thanks to intelligent, self-aware human programming! *"However a modern AI can learn to beat us at Chess or Go from scratch, starting with random neural network weights, no knowledge of the game and no imperative programming guiding their behaviour, in a few hours just by playing the game."* ... And all thanks to intelligent, self-aware human programming! Every AI that exists owes its existence to intelligent, self-aware human input. *"You mostly owe your knowledge of English to your parents and teachers."* ... Yes, intelligent, self-aware humans passing along our OWN information to other humans. Wouldn't it be great if some exterior, self-aware, god-like computer entity programmed us to speak English from the very start ... like we did with computers? *"The AI still knows how to beat us at Chess"* ... Did the AI form out of thin air or did an intelligent, self-aware human design it? Who invented the game of chess that the AI is learning how to play, and who programmed it to know what the moves are? ... Would that be a ....... _human?_ *"The reasons why the computer exists aren't there inside it helping it keep existing, any more than the reasons why you exist are inside you making you function."* ... Yes, they are! Human intelligence is integral to every computer device that exists and without human data, computers would know nothing at all nor serve any purpose! Biology is (and still is) integral to human existence, and we owe our existence to biology. Human intelligence is (and still is) integral to a computer's existence, and every computer owes its existence to intelligent, self-aware humans. The difference is that "we" programmed ourselves AND all the computers whereas a computer can make no such claim nor do anything at all absent of humans. It can't ... because it's just a benign extension of our own intelligence. It's our intelligence on display via proxy.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

@@simonhibbs887 My last *two attempts* at posting a reply have been censored / erased by YT. However, it's not the AI that deleted them. It's the human programming that facilitated the AI's existence. An AI would have no idea what to delete without human input and guidance.

[@mikel5582]

​@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC AI can "reprogram" itself without limits. For now, I agree that ML is (mostly) limited to learning from human creations. But what about a billion or a trillion iterations into the future. AI/ML might become as far removed from mirroring human input as a human is from some primordial, one-celled ancestor. It's entirely possible that robots will learn how to design and build better robots, who design and build even better robots. Lather, rinse, repeat. But, yes, no matter how far it goes, it will trace back to humans, who trace back to some primordial life form.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

@@mikel5582 *"AI can "reprogram" itself without limits."* ... Using what data? *"But what about a billion or a trillion iterations into the future."* ... So far, I haven't seen anything other than AI's working with (and relying on) human-supplied data. Any evolution by an AI would still be based on previously structured human data. An AI that's programmed to explore uncharted territory and collect terrain data may "appear" to be curious on the surface, but in reality, it's just doing what its programmers instructed it to do. For an AI to genuinely be "curious" would require a specific biological human trait that no AI or computer possesses nor has ever demonstrated ("curiosity"). There is a distinction between mimicking human behavior and actually demonstrating it. Without any indication of such, it would just be pure speculation about any "trillion iterations" from now. *"It's entirely possible that robots will learn how to design and build better robots, who design and build even better robots."* ... And when they build these better robots, whose initial designs are they working from and attempting to improve? Are they self-motivated to do this, or merely programmed to do so? Do they conceive any "personal gain" by building more robots?

[@leemac9879]

Awareness pretending to pondering and understand itself :)

[@Jun_kid]

Deeply disappointing. He has misunderstood qualia. So, all other arguments is a no-go.

[@XOPOIIIO]

If you understood qualia, then try to explain it.

[@Jun_kid]

@@XOPOIIIO Qualia is a first person experience. It cannot be explained in third person terms.

[@XOPOIIIO]

@@Jun_kid How then you know he misunderstood it?

[@Jun_kid]

@@XOPOIIIO He considers qualia an outer response, i.e., TP View.

[@medhurstt]

The whole of consciousness is a first person experience IMO...and furthermore has nothing to do with emotion. Emotion is a human experience of consciousness and again IMO doesn't have to be present in all forms of consciousness (eg. machine consciousness if and when that exists) Everything else is simply the neural network that is our brain reacting to stimulus including reactions that result from internal feedback...which we know as "thought". My 2c.