Is this hat conscious? | Ben Goertzel on consciousness, panpsychism, and AGI | Big Think

Is this hat conscious?
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Panpsychism is the idea that there is an element of consciousness in everything in the universe. The theory goes like this: You're conscious. Ben Goertzel is conscious. And his hat is conscious too. What if consciousness isn't about the brain at all, but it's as inherent to our universe as space-time?"Now, panpsychism, to me, is not even that interesting, it's almost obvious — it's just the foundation, the beginning for thinking about consciousness... " says Goertzel. It's what comes after that excites him, like the emerging technology that will let us connect our minds to bricks, hats, earthworms, other humans, and super AGIs like Sophia, and perhaps glimpse at the fabric of consciousness. Goertzel believes brain-brain interfacing and brain-computer interfacing will unfold in the coming decades, and it's by that means that we may finally crack the nut of consciousness to discover whether panpsychism makes any sense, and to learn why humans are so differently conscious than, for example, his hat.
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BEN GOERTZEL:

Ben Goertzel is CEO and chief scientist at SingularityNET, a project dedicated to creating benevolent decentralized artificial general intelligence. He is also chief scientist of financial prediction firm Aidyia Holdings and robotics firm Hanson Robotics; Chairman of AI software company Novamente LLC; Chairman of the Artificial General Intelligence Society and the OpenCog Foundation.His latest book is AGI Revolution: An Inside View of the Rise of Artificial General Intelligence.
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TRANSCRIPT:

BEN GOERTZEL: Consciousness is one of these great vexing and confusing words and concepts, which intelligent people take different positions on and could argue about forever. My own perspective on consciousness is rooted in what you could call a sort of panpsychism, by which I mean the idea that consciousness is in essence a property eminent in existence, as much as space and time are. I mean everything that we see around us somehow is situated in time and in space, in our space-time continuum; panpsychism is the idea that everything around us and within us has some element of consciousness to it also, so that it's not really meaningful to think of: 'Here's this non-conscious matter and then there's this thing called consciousness, which is attached to some matter and not to others.' Now panpsychism to me is not even that interesting, it's almost obvious — it's just the foundation, the beginning for thinking about consciousness because then you have interesting questions like why is the consciousness associated with my brain so much more self-reflective and dynamic and in some senses intense than, say, the consciousness associated with my hat? I mean, it's a cool hat, it may be more conscious than the average hat, but in the end the brain has these complex feedback loops, the brain can model itself, the brain responds very differently to slightly different stimuli coming in and many properties of the brain seem associated with the more powerful and dynamic states of consciousness that it has relative to other things. So, if you accept panpsychism, that everything is imbued somehow with an element of consciousness, some things can still be more conscious than others and some things are differently conscious than others. And then that's where things get interesting.

When you talk about AI — so I would imagine if I were able to tap a wire into my brain or wi-fi connection into my brain and wire my brain into your brain, then as I increase the bandwidth of that wire between my brain and your brain, I would feel your mind there on the fringe of my mind, like almost as if we were fusing into one shared mind or something. That would be a bit freakish, it could be a lot of fun. But on the other hand, if I took my mind and wired it into my hat, I might feel what it is to be a hat, but I would imagine that whatever consciousness I feel on the other end of the wire, it's not going to be quite the same as a melding my mind with the mind of another human; it's going to be melding my mind with something that doesn't change very much or have much variety to its state. On the other hand, what if we think of Sophia version 10.0 with her mind enhanced by the SingularityNET blockchain-based AGI mind cloud — what if I wire my brain into that? Does it feel like wiring my brain into a human brain? Does it feel like wiring my brain into a hat or a brick o...

[derrickcarter]

I dont know about the whole "everything has consciousness" thing, but ive been thinking a lot about this idea with relation to the nature of processing in consciousness. If consciousness is about cogs in motion, could electronics be conscious? Sure we didnt make them to feel pain or emotions, but as far as we know, insects arent like that either. Depending on if you think of insects as having consciousness or not, it may be justified to say that your computer has the consciousness-level of an ant. An ant that has no senses. Just an interesting idea, and the reason for why I think a movie-like AI could in fact have a "soul, " if youd call it that.

[aleistersatrjan]

"If consciousness is very complicated form of minerals, aren't minerals very primitive form of consciousness ? If I hit this bell it resonates inside and we resonate the same but in very subtle way : with colors, sounds thoughts etc"
~ Alan Watts

[Gulgathydra]

0:21
"My own perspective in consciousness is rooted in what you could call..."

*LSD?*

[aaronh]

We can already wire into all of these things because our awareness of them is greater than that of themselves. Exercise for the mind.

[MonisticIdealism]

Panpsychism is right in that consciousness is irreducible and fundamental, but fails due to the combination problem: subjects do not combine neither in whole or part. You can dissolve this problem with the whole as prior to its parts and thus a single mind subsumes the universe with metaphysical explanation dangling downward from this one mind.

[rea]

Wanted to leave a smart comment, but it is late here and I am just barely more conscious than that faboulous hat. But you definitely made me think!

[razzledazzle]

If a hat isn’t conscious. How did it sort Harry Potter into Gryffindor? Checkmate atheists

[TrueBlueCat]

That hat just told me this brother is high high

[RhythmicShenanigans]

makes me think of the sorting hat in yudkowsky's HPMOR

[estudiordl]

I make the same mistake I see in many comments, then I listen him for real. You know? HE IS NOT TALKING ABOUT A HAT. Metaphors men, are so hard to grasp these days...

[mr.chrli_]

This guy is literally the Doc Brown of A.I

[davidmartins]

Panpsychism is a curious idea.

Does a hat have a consciousness?
What if you cut the hat in half? Will each half have a different consciousness? Can you just create consciousness out of nothing?
But a hat is made from many, very different inanimate objects that come from all over the planet, assembled by human beings in a factory or in a shop by a tailor.
Do the different string fibers in the hat have a consciousness?
Do the pigments used to dye the hat have a separate consciousness?
Do molecules themselves have consciousness? Atoms? Fundamental particles? How small of a conscousness can you get? If you argue yes, and all individual fundamental particles have a consciousness, what difference does it make if everything in the universe is conscious or not? Their consciousness is apparently just the manifestation of the fundamental properties of the fundamental particles that they're made of, so argueing that everything is conscious, is the same thing as saying that consciousness has no meaning whatsoever, it is ubiquious and its value is close to none.


This is all an abstraction. One can believe that consciousness doesn't even exist, it is an illusion that biological entities with complex nervous systems experience in order to perceive the environment and be able to extend their existence through-out time and space.
All of our senses only gives us an interpretation of a small portion of what the universe is really like. Our eyes only perceive a limited spectrum of the electromagnectic field. Our ears managed to evolve and detect changes pressure waves in the air (something so fascinatingly ingenious if you think about it) of only a limited range of frequencies. And our own brain lies on those flawed and incomplete sensorial perceptions to form a concept of self and awareness that we call consciousness.
Much like the illusion of choice and free will, consciousness is just another fabrication of our brains, and I do not believe it can be injected into other non living things, no matter how much we want to anthropomorphise the universe.

If I can argue that consciousness doesn't even exist, how can it be argued that even inanimate objects?

Don't get me wrong though, the same way our brains can fool ourselves into making us think we are conscious and have free will, maybe one day we'll be able to build machines that can emulate this experience, essentialy creating what we call a "sentient computer", so I'm not calling shenanings on all the Mr. says on the video.

[coma-body-stilllife]

To think that a hat and a human are singular entities, that is to say that each unit, whether it's a hat or a human with a start and stop to what differentiates it from other things, doesn't seem to fit in with this idea of a spectrum-consciousness. If this idea wants to be plausible, it would have to be more of a "3 dimensional heat map". A human mind, all the bodily nerve endings and all that is perceived by mind and body would light up orange on this map, while a hat, and the air surrounding it would have to be some a mix of blues. There would be no singular units, just a smooth gradient of consciousness throughout all matter in a seamless tapestry.

[MotorGoblin]

I see the same possibility but I'm drunk and wondering how this got so many downvotes? Can someone explain why what he is saying is unlikely or did people just downvote for the lack of evidence or did people just downvote because it sounds crazy? Consciousness is a scale, right? E: or "scales" more likely.

[StonerMorningShow]

I suppose there could be spectrums or levels of both consciousness and awareness

[anasalattar]

This guy got point. Smoke some salvia and you’ll become that hat and feel what the hat feeling because the Hat somewhat conscious. Not like us obviously you wouldn’t enjoy being a hat. Even time go slower then human time in hat world. Time, dark matter and our consciousness and everything in this reality connected in way we don’t yet comprehend.

[technolus]

Yes... Lets just assume things that have no basis and start from there...

[chestbuster]

People judging the guy on his looks..listen to him on Joe Rogan's podcast..you'll be pleasantly surprised

[FirstRisingSouI]

A lot of the comments don't get the difference between the easy problem and the hard problem of consciousness. Yes, consciousness as we know it is a process within the human and animal brain, and we can formulate theories and understand it as such. That's the easy problem of consciousness. The hard problem is, what is the ontology of consciousness? How is it possible that it exists, rather than us all just being unconscious automatons who wrongly believe we are conscious? What are the smallest elements of consciousness that consciousness as we understand it is made of, and what bits of matter or physical processes are they attached to? And if your response is "those are dumb questions stop thinking about them, " then you can f*** off.

[Infinity-painted-white]

Oh man, it would be awesome if we could connect our minds