What you are describing regarding inputs, brain activity on data stream, and how its just a recursive ETL function and such, is describing behavior and computation though

You have some input that goes into the brain, and produces neural firings that trigger actuators to respond to that stimulus

What I don't understand is why are we conscious beings instead of extremely complex bio-computation machines exhibiting memory, inputs, and complex behaviors such as attention and decision making models, all with behavioral actuators, and all this simulating thought and intelligence but really have no entity whatsoever thats actually experiencing stuff?

I've always wondered what ultimately makes neurons and all so special that they produce conciousness. Does a rock that undergoes vibrations have some sort of consciousness associated with it, if not much less than what is seen in a human?

So maybe consciousness is an inherent property of the universe that is in a plane beyond what the 5 senses can pick up on? But that in humans it finds a greater catalyst or something than in animals, plants, or minerals?

I dunno, what do you think? Is there anything rational in that train of thought or did I smoke too much crack again lol

TBH I take a lot of my inspiration of this from Baha'i Faith, which teaches that science and religion are essentially in harmony (i.e. different views on the same reality). To me a lot of the bahai teachings are really deep and elevating (i.e. making me a better person and less selfish by helping me see something more valuable than survival tendencies)

Hopefully I can live by it though

> What I don't understand is why are we conscious beings instead of extremely complex bio-computation machines exhibiting memory, inputs, and complex behaviors such as attention and decision making models, all with behavioral actuators, and all this simulating thought and intelligence but really have no entity whatsoever thats actually experiencing stuff?

Subjective experience and the "self" are just emergent properties of the system I described, on a scale that's difficult to comprehend.

> I've always wondered what ultimately makes neurons and all so special that they produce conciousness. Does a rock that undergoes vibrations have some sort of consciousness associated with it, if not much less than what is seen in a human?

There's nothing special about neurons, they are biological systems to encode information from the external world and produce action potentials that trigger other neurons. It's also a misconception that neurons are the only thing firing in the brain. Glial cells also play an important function here. Further, it doesn't make sense to talk about consciousness at the neuronal level. Consciousness is an emergent property of the nervous system.

You can't point to any molecule and call it wet, but a bunch of h2o molecules clumped together have an emergent property of wetness.

Likewise, a rock is hard and if you use it to crack open a walnut, it has physics that relates to the entire object. However, we could explain the entire system at the molecular level but it doesn't really explain the hardness and physical forces that emerge from the rock that allow us to crack a walnut.

> Subjective experience and the "self" are just emergent properties of the system

There are other systems with emergent properties where we can explain how the emergent properties are a function of the other properties of the system.

As of now, we can't do that with consciousness and brains/bodies.

You say on a scale difficult to comprehend. But where's the scale that's deep enough to be incomprehensible? It's usually doubted anything sub cell-scale is responsible (like quantum microtubules of Penrose are almost universally derided) for consciousness.

Your basically describing the P-Zombie thought experiment posited by David Chalmers.

I always thought it was a bad argument. If you assume consciousness is not required for some of the advanced “bio-computation” that we do, then of course it’s going to be superfluous.

You know at the very least that you feel conscious. And it feels like you are actively participating, guiding your body and mind to do cool and nuanced things everyday. So you probably need to be conscious to do what you do, so the P-Zombie just isn’t possible.

There’s some real philosophy that Chalmers is doing around feasibility when it comes to the P-Zombie argument, though that goes past my head.

Eh, I am not saying consciousness is not required for advanced bio-computation

I am saying that going from observation of behavior (computation, memory, actuation, etc...) to saying that "poof! that explains consciousness" is a leap of assumption without having deescribed the mechanism that brings about actual awareness

The P-zombie thing is pretty interesting honestly. So far on initial read it seems to make sense to me, except that to me the idea of "non-physical" doesn't mean anything magical or otherworldly. But rather that maybe theres more to the universe that the 5 senses do not interact with, and maybe someday we will discover physical artifacts of free will in living things that are able to manifest an attribute of consciousness like free will

For instance, quantum mechanics shows matter is intrinsically non-deterministic, although the statistics of outcomes are robust

Maybe that, or some other physics we have not discovered yet, can help show artifacts of consciousness that would not be feasible in a very complex and sophisticated classical computer?

Maybe there lies the distinction?

But again, I am not saying that such a physical artifact would cause consciousness, but rather shows that the human being allows consciousness to manifest in the human kind of like a mirror (the body) reflecting light (the conscious being, or the soul)

From Baha'i: "Know thou that the soul of man is exalted above, and is independent of all infirmities of body or mind. That a sick person showeth signs of weakness is due to the hindrances that interpose themselves between his soul and his body, for the soul itself remaineth unaffected by any bodily ailments. Consider the light of the lamp. Though an external object may interfere with its radiance, the light itself continueth to shine with undiminished power. In like manner, every malady afflicting the body of man is an impediment that preventeth the soul from manifesting its inherent might and power. When it leaveth the body, however, it will evince such ascendancy, and reveal such influence as no force on earth can equal. Every pure, every refined and sanctified soul will be endowed with tremendous power, and shall rejoice with exceeding gladness."

This doesn't really address the hard problem of consciousness. https://consc.net/papers/facing.html

> The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect.

Subjective experience is just the system I described happening extremely fast. What I describe seems simple and doesn’t explain experience, but when you acknowledge the scale of our computation, what emerges is the self.

Continuity, recursive loop between inputs, cortex responding to those inputs, and being fed through our prefrontal cortical decision making models. Then that feeds back into the system again with even more inputs in the next stack frame. It’s happening millions of times, causing bursts of brain activity. All at the same time our brains are also being molded by all this brain activity. Changing constantly.

It is absolute chaos.

It’s this recursive reduce function that gives rise to what we describe as the self and subjective experience.

We as humans are hopelessly biased here, we put consciousness on a pedestal, but I don’t think there’s a hard problem.

Going by this, what more do we need to make machines conscious, if anything?