Nothing. The test doesn't tell you if the machine is not conscious because its not complex enough or if its not conscious because machines can't be conscious. (Unless you can prove somehow its a matter of complexity and prove your machine has enough complexity but still is not conscious.) For all I know the threshold could be at plants or it could be that only biological things can be conscious. Basically the test in and of itself only tells you if its conscious not why or why not.

I love Sith threads. People post not understanding some of the physics terminology and his explanatory post involves more physics terminology.

I need to start reading up on QM again though, I feel rusty after reading this thread.

Don't worry- in theory my job is fiddling with quantum mechanics but I don't understand lots of it.
As for the topic- it is certainly interesting but I don't have much to add unfortunately. It seems plausiable enough.

That's not quite where my confusion lies. How does the test tell that the AI is not conscious? You suggested in your scenario #1 that if the information could be erased from a human's mind, it could uncollapse the wave function. And your scenario #2 suggests that the is some siginifcance to conciousness that would cause the wave function to remain collapsed, even if the memory were erased. But then you said that in either case if deleting the AI's memory caused the wave function to uncollapse, it would prove it was not conscious. I guess I'm failing to see how that result is any different from the conscious human in scenario #1.

Sorry to pick at this detail, but I felt like I understood most of what you said, so I want to clear up this sticking point to my comprehension.

Ah in case one it'd be all about how difficult it is to erase the memory. Like if the machine is complex enough you could erase the area where the information is stored in the AI's brain without actually removing the information from the universe. Its kind of a strange thing to think about but information is essentially negative entropy. If in the first case deleting the computers memory doesn't revert the wave function than it is obviously conscious and erasing things from the human mind would probably have the same result. In the case where even erasing human memory reverts the wave function you're essentially screwed in that you know have to arbitrarily choose a point where the difficulty in erasing memory indicated consciousness. Then you perform the test on your AI and try everything up to that level of difficultly. For example you might be able to revert a wave function by killing everyone who observed it or the consequences of it and incinerating their corpses. That would be a very difficult erasing procedure. So you might choose the point of having to destroy the system to erase the data the point of consciousness. If that is the only way to revert the wave function after the AI looked then its conscious if hitting the delete key is enough then its not. Its a bit of a subtly but it still works just a bit more arbitrarily.

The alternative in case one is to accept there is nothing special about consciousness and making the distinction is pointless. But that's just no fun really.

Ah. That makes more sense. Thanks.

In a flat world, West is peril.
http://www.flapjackfan.com/assets/im...st_800x600.jpg

Oh, that's easy. Just use "cut/paste" instead of delete.

I learned that from Clippy! I'm sure he'll teach me about quantum chromodynamics next.

Does this long rant have anything to do about that novel where some guy makes an alternate universe by making digital copies of himself and others, and then deleting them en masse, creating a universe that only they observe? That then goes to shit when the people also end up creating life forms in this digital universe, who end up not believing that they (the people) exist, and begin wiping them from that existence as well?

Darned if I can remember the name of the book, but it was weird and seemed to be built on that principle, but followed the assumption that it would be easier to create a virtual duplicate intelligence of a human than create an AI. It had some keen visions of what it'd be like if the Matrix had low bandwidth (a week in digital time would actually be years!)

...I've understood something like 80-95% of what Sithdarth has said here.

This, though?


This... is... I don't even...