Talks about how biologists dont/wont recognize software brains as life, a given really, but says that it took a long time for prokaryotes to develop something that we recognized as a human like consciousness.
Thinks that much of this pursuit is out of scientific curiosity. It seems to me most all of it is at the least a subconscious pursuit of indefinite life extension.
"Marvin Minsky calls consciousness a "suitcase" word." Thats a good way to put it.
"A machine can think and feel like humans if it can have empathy and autonomy." "Consciousness is a continuum of empathy and autonomy." Thats it? I would have thought somebody in the field would have described it in a much more complex way than that in that way. I mean, for example, we see a lot of humans themselves that dont have any empathy dont we?
Around this subject I keep thinking about how there are so many animal brains that are already so much closer to being able to produce a human like consciousness, but they dont, you never see an animal take on a little bit more of a human consciousness like trait. I havent heard of science making any breakthroughs like that. So if something that is already so similar cant make the jump in any ways then how can computers? Now I dont take the reasoning and then discount the field. I still think there is a lot of prospects in the area, but I wonder about that.
http://www.channels....n-transhumanism
