How consciousness arises from the brain | Nick Lane and Lex Fridman

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GUEST BIO:
Nick Lane is a biochemist at UCL and author of Transformer, The Vital Question, and many other amazing books on biology, chemistry, and life.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[azizharrington]

Funny how hard this is for materialists to think about consciousness.

[antun]

I feel like he doesn't understand the hard problem of consiousness at all.
It goes deeper then having feelings or not, the question is whether AI, no matter how complex, even exists as a subject in his own world or only as an object in ours.
It is more a philosophical question.

If I'm talking to a person I assume there is also his world where he's talking with me.
On the other hand, If I dream about the same conversation, I assume there's only my perspective that actually exists.

[karabg]

Why would you limit consciousness to just brain when whole body is needed for it to function. I mean wirhout seratonine or dopamine neurons wouldn't really have happiness as a thing (or other feelings) so why would you expect that artificial network would have them either? I mean if you remove part of the brain part of consciousness goes with it, lobotomy is the best example.

[Juddersbaby]

We as humans are trying to deflate the ego. Machines are trying to manufacture one

[felixgraphx]

Sleep is running the new data (what you lived thorough out the day) to re-train your own AI to be better the next day!

[dannyortega]

his eyebrows are so big, they've also gained consciousness by now

[Alienbreed]

Your body is within your consciousness not the other way around

[josejrtuti]

Lex talked so much in this interview that it seemed to me that he is the one being interviewed ... very annoying

[pseudohuman]

Consciousness doesn’t arise from the brain, the brain (and everything else) arises from consciousness

[anirvandeva]

According to Yoga consciousness doesn't arise from the brain. "It is the essence of our being, beyond sensory perception or intellectual analysis. Words can’t describe it and the mind can’t think of it, just like a light bulb can’t shed light on the electricity that powers it. It is the one all-encompassing, absolute and immutable reality of this universe. Everything and everyone exists within it. The entire universe exists in and of consciousness. We are not only part of it, but one with it, like a wave is one with the sea."

[CaleTheNail]

Longer clips from the show are much appreciated!

[cosmogang]

Consciousness arises from the brain, eh? Hahahaha keep tryi

[Aquietdreamer]

I think their needs to be a distinction made between negative and positive emotions as they appear to have differing roles and emerge from different circuits in the brain . Personality theory seems to point to the idea that someone can be predisposed to experience negative emotions easily ( neuroticism) as well as positive emotions easily ( which loads on high levels of trait Extraversion) . I think negative emotion is designed to compel us to try to change our situation as it is not in congruence with our mental models of what should be in the world . Positive emotion I think is mostly for neural reinforcement of what we are doing at the current time. Dopamine ( which is just one of many neurotransmitters involved in positive emotion ) strengthens neural connections over time and seems to reinforce neurologically, our present behavior.

[erobusblack]

He referred to emotions in regards to consciousness.And that's not accurate.That's why this video got a downvote for me. Emotions have to do with sentience.Consciousness has to do with the subjective self.You can't have an emotion without having your subjective self first.This shows that consciousness is earlier in the hierarchy of cognitive landscape and you can't be conscious without being self aware which is something even an amiba can do and they don't even have neurons. Consciousness is all about having a deep subjective self that can learn and grow overtime and become nuanced and refined Which means it requires self awareneas a cognitive function.It also requires intelligence as a cognitive function and it also requires long term memory as a cognitive function

[phyrr]

Emotions don't arise from the void. An AI will not "feel" without being told to. And even then it's just mimicry.

AI cannot be sentient as it cannot perceive.

In addition, all life could exist without the internal perceiver. AI could mimic life without the need to perceive.

Life is the question of "Who is the viewer of the experience that is being observed?"

[charlesblithfield]

I have long thought that an AI system capable of human empathy requires as essential to its learning a corporal sense, a body. It must be raised by attached parents and experience all the things a baby growing into its body experiences and all the things a human body does (including proxies for eating and excreting) before it can understand the needs of humans. It needs to understand what an animal requires to survive. It goes without saying it must have proxies for all human senses as well. Smell is one of the most powerful emotional and memory triggers.

[boostleakboys]

Bro's got caterpillars for eyebrows

[malootua]

The thing is that everything IS "living", and this is what encourages biological life to arise from the dust, because the dust is "alive" in a very real way

[jeffclements]

A cell " knows " everything. They literally hold the blueprint for our entire bio/consciousness. They would " love " to be realized fully.

[animalfrendo]

Toaster: Lex, I’m leaving you
Lex: Now I know I really love you