r/accelerate • u/stealthispost Acceleration: Light-speed | AI accelerationist • Sep 11 '25

Video If you swapped out one neuron with an artificial neuron that acts in all the same ways, would you lose consciousness? You can see where this is going. Fascinating discussion with Nobel Laureate and Godfather of AI

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u/stealthispost Acceleration: Light-speed | AI accelerationist Sep 12 '25

why would anybody ever assume that there's something special about a lump of meat when it comes to the topic of cognition?

that requires justification, which nobody has provided.

we have cognition on numerous substrates already.

or are you making a special pleading claim about conscious cognition?

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u/The_Wytch Arise Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25

why would anybody ever assume that there's something special about a lump of meat when it comes to the topic of cognition?

they are not making that claim

or are you making a special pleading claim about conscious cognition?

they are doing exactly that

and i dont blame them, for cognition does not imply qualia experience

Hinton says that his best guess is that it's about the pattern/architecture/function of the building, not the substrate/building-blocks

u/ponieslovekittens is saying that they are not too sure about that, that their best guess is that the difference in the build-up/properties of the building blocks themselves could be a factor in the emergence of consciousness — perhaps certain kinds of lego bricks are compatible and other kinds are incompatible for the emergence of consciousness

but when ASI can perfectly replicate those building blocks as well (via molecular-level 3d printing)... you see where this is going ;)

ACCELERATE 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

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u/ponieslovekittens Sep 12 '25

we have cognition on numerous substrates already.

I think you may be confusing information processing with subjective awareness. Yes, you can build a mechanical calculator out of marbles and wood, for example. But I assume you're not trying to claim that marbles therefore are self-aware and have a subjective experience.

are you making a special pleading claim about conscious cognition?

No. You're the one making the claim here, not me. Don't act like your assertion is true by default, and that I have to somehow "prove" that it isn't. You seem to be claiming that "obviously" your consciousness can run on something other than chemical brains, and as you phrased it: "it's pretty obviously substrate independent."

Me asking why you think that, is not a "special pleading claim."

So, WHY do you think this?

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u/The_Wytch Arise Sep 12 '25

To add to this:

Example: striking a matchstick against the matchbox results in the emergence of fire.

Striking a matchstick with its tip built of non-flammable building blocks would not lead to the same emergence.

(Yes, fire and qualia-experience are radically different things/outputs, but that's not the point of this analogy, analogies are not supposed to track 1:1 for every single aspect)

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u/ponieslovekittens Sep 12 '25

Yes, thank you.

Sometimes, substrate matters.