
The Mind Bleeds into the World: A Conversation with David Chalmers - benbreen
https://www.edge.org/conversation/david_chalmers-the-mind-bleeds-into-the-world
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cypherpunks01
For anyone interested in this, I would highly recommend "The Rise of Human
Consciousness" panel discussion hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences
with David Chalmers, Michael Graziano, Hod Lipson, and Max Tegmark. They
discuss consciousness from the perspectives of philosophy, neuroscience, and
robotics, it's 1h30m and an extremely good discussion.

[https://livestream.com/newyorkacademyofsciences/physics4](https://livestream.com/newyorkacademyofsciences/physics4)

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visarga
With regard to Chalmers emphasis on simulation: I think simulation is really a
central point in AI and future human development. Not only that we crave the
web and the VR, but AIs also need VR for virtual training. It is sometimes
costly and other times impossible to encounter certain specific situations in
real life, but agents need to be prepared. Human pilots train in simulators as
well - for the same reason.

So simulation for AI agents is like school, or a lab where they can
experiment. Simulation, in my opinion, is what can turn simple DL systems into
agents capable of deep reasoning and creativity. AI will learn mostly from
analysing and discriminating in the results of multiple simulation runs.

Gaming, VR and and DL run on the same kind of hardware - GPUs. In fact DL has
benefited from the availability of gaming GPUs in the last five years. The
same hardware, the same emphasis on simulation for both fields. Other
simulation examples: AlphaGo did MCTS on top of neural nets (a simulation of
Go playing), and self driving cars reconstruct a virtual scene of the world,
where they do path planning and risk avoidance.

In my opinion, reasoning is also a simulation task - once we map into a graph
all the relevant entities and the relations they hold between them, it is a
matter of doing signal processing on graph (kind of like electronic circuits)
to determine the answer for a number of reasoning tasks. So graph based,
object relation representations could be used as cognitive simulators.
DeepMind has a paper recently on graph based NNs.

Simulation might look different from games to weather, proteins and cognitive
reasoning, but in all these cases we input a complex problem state and run the
simulation to observe the outcome. We can do research and learning by this
process.

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youdontknowtho
I like Chalmers because he's not a dualist in the traditional sense. I tend to
disagree with the ideas, but take that with a grain of sand because I'm not a
philosopher. For instance, I find the zombie argument kind of contrived.
That's me though.

Personally, I'm a strict physicalist. I don't even think my own consciousness
is magic, much less other matter in the universe.

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Dzugaru
The idea that we may be living in a virtual reality someone created is a
disturbing one. It doesn't matter if objects around us are fundamentally real
or simulated - that's true. What matters is our minds may be simulated too.
What if that simulation has some deep flaws in it? What if there are things we
could never understand no matter how we try because of that?

~~~
thrawy67
Refer to Yoga Vashishta:

The idea that we might be living in someone else's dream or meditation was
expressed in there. And the worlds are all dreams stacked within dreams. [0]
[1]

Also Jung, that we might be living in someone's else's meditation and when the
meditator wakes up all is gone.

"I had dreamed once before of the problem of the self and the ego. In that
earlier dream I was on a hiking trip. I was walking along a little road
through a hilly landscape; the sun was shining and I had awide view in all
directions. Then I came to a small wayside chapel. The door was ajar, and I
went in. To my surprise there was no image of the Virgin on the altar, and no
crucifix either, but only a wonderful flower arrangement. But then I saw that
on the floor in front of the altar, facing me, sat a yogi in lotus posture, in
deep meditation. When I looked at him more closely, I realized that he had my
face. I started in profound fright, and awoke with the thought: "Aha, so he is
the one who is meditating me. He has a dream, and I am it." I knew that when
he awakened, I would no longer be" [2]

An interesting take on the Yoga Vasishtha and the Philosophy of the film
Inception.[3] Note: I do not have any affiliation with the organization or
teachings etc., It's just a random link I googled, but thought can give a
quick summary of the book without having to read through the whole book.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_Vasistha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_Vasistha)

[1]
[http://www.venkatesaya.com/241_vasistha01_months_tags/index....](http://www.venkatesaya.com/241_vasistha01_months_tags/index.vasistha01_months_tags.php?d=9&m=3)

[2] Memories, Dreams, Reflections - Carl G Jung

[3] [http://www.that-
first.com/show/article/yoga_vasishtha_and_th...](http://www.that-
first.com/show/article/yoga_vasishtha_and_the_philosophy_of_the_film_inception/)

Edit: Wikipedia link

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Also the famous 'butterfly' passage in the Chuang Tzu[1]

1:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=_BqCCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA...](https://books.google.com/books?id=_BqCCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA31#v=onepage&q=butterfly&f=false)

