Comments on: Consciousness, Sentience, Personhood Defined

By: Richard Karpinski

Richard Karpinski — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:01:37 +0000

As a confirmed nitpicker I find myself compelled to complain about “much fewer” since “much” seems to indicate continuous while “fewer” is clearly discrete.

I tend to empathize with both the cockroach, who may by then be my friend, and I know many of us take care not to offend our computers which are even less like ourselves than the postulated robot. I don’t think Jef Raskin mentioned it in his book but I’m pretty sure he tried to avoid constructs that a computer user might consider rude to the computer in the commands such users were expected to use to interact with computers, on the grounds that that would interfere with the utility of the computer.

In a stunning exhibit of synchronicity, I had just been watching a video at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8078322.stm about an Xbox 360 animated character who can recognize real people via the camera and microphone and both show and recognize emotional states as real people do. I think that’s what I saw there.

Given that thought, it seems to me that some people might have a hard time using computers because today, or perhaps yesterday, now, the computers do not show sufficient empathy-sympathy for the humans to be comfortable with interacting with them. What a weird thought, yet it may apply in some real situations.

Perhaps I shall return to this again one day and see if I can read further as I apparently did the first time.

By: Richard Hollerith

Richard Hollerith — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:56:37 +0000

if you rile folks amygdala you get fight or flight resistance to new ideas.

Good point, old friend.

And thanks again for helping me get on the Internet years and years before I would have gotten on it without the help.

By: Richard Karpinski

Richard Karpinski — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:20:03 +0000

Sneaking up on change.

Note: if you rile folks amygdala you get fight or flight resistance to new ideas.

Let’s try to sneak under the radar by changing minds in tiny steps.
Let’s find and track small ways to open an intelligent mind to a new thought.
This is to argue against trying to make a fundamental change all at once.
We get to use this on ourselves and others, if it works in any useful way.

If we try this with any large audience, we get lots of raw data about what works.
We can then develop and test a wide range of tiny steps toward any goal.
This exploits having many participating intelligences at work on an issue.

By: mitchell porter

mitchell porter — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:57:40 +0000

You “propose that consciousness or personhood is what the operation of the empathy-sympathy system feels like from the inside.” That sounds like a general theory; you’re saying what consciousness *is*.

By: Richard Hollerith

Richard Hollerith — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:15:03 +0000

Mitchell, I do not claim to have a general theory of consciousness or to be able to explain all the aspects of consciousness: that sounds like a lot of work!

Do you think that the existence of aspects of consciousness I have not explained is evidence against a claim I have made?

By: mitchell porter

mitchell porter — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:42:51 +0000

Empathy and sympathy only pertain to intersubjective experiences – experiences in which certain external entities are posited as conscious. What about all the other aspects of consciousness?

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:59:53 +0000

So close and yet so far.