Consciousness is still a quandary and rationality is overrated!
Not just for computers and other artificial mechanisms but also for humans as well!
Imagine that!
The latest issue of the journal Nature carried the story under the headline
Neuroscience loses consciousness wager.
Decades-long bet on consciousness ends — and it’s philosopher 1, neuroscientist 0
Christof Koch wagered David Chalmers 25 years ago that researchers would learn how the brain achieves consciousness by now. But the quest continues.
Despite 25 years of earnest work, what consciousness is remains a huge philosophical mystery.
Many a bet has been made regarding building a truly conscious AI but the underlying question of “just what is consciousness” remains undetermined.
To the chagrin of many, consider behavioral economics, the discipline that studies the many and various non-rational biases that, unseen and unuttered, influence people’s behavior.
We are not the rational decision makers we think we are and we are not conscious of why we behave as we do.
So how conscious are we?
And how conscious might machines we build become?
One of the important aspects of this question for me is how do you measure consciousness? What are the aspects that indicate you are conscious and something else is not? Is a dog conscious or an octopus? I think most people would agree a rock is not conscious, but as things become more complicated then conscious seems to emerge.
Without a good way of defining what is conscious behaviors then this discussion seems to be one of philosophical questions and ideas.