Science addicts here?....

[Wayne Evans]

Forum interactions of the future could get interesting .... miscer-to-miscer interface?

Hey Steffo...

Ho-ly shvt.....I for one, would not be interested in such a direct form of communication.
Seems to me there is some dark unknowns about that technology should it actually become a reality....and I see them as unpleasant (understatement).
I'll be below dirt by then.

Hope all is well....carry on.

[ElrondHubbard]

Hey Steffo...

Ho-ly shvt.....I for one, would not be interested in such a direct form of communication.
Seems to me there is some dark unknowns about that technology should it actually become a reality....and I see them as unpleasant (understatement).
I'll be below dirt by then.

Hope all is well....carry on.

It's coming, and it will be wireless. It'll have it's good aspects, and its frightening ones. It all depends on who's able to take charge of it.

[mcbourque]

It's coming! Are y'all ready

http://www.wired.com/2016/07/watch-l...upiters-orbit/

watch live tonight on NASA channel below:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/6540154

[Wayne Evans]

It's coming! Are y'all ready watch live tonight on NASA channel below:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/6540154

My favorite science teacher!

Sheesh....I was born ready.
Thanks a bunch for that link.....hmmm....that's 20:18 PST!

Elrond: " It all depends on who's able to take charge of it. "
You're right, its' coming....and much of the darkness is in your statement above.

On spread with you both for contribution.....back to it.

[weiss1967]

with all that space talk, anybody follows EM drive? Cannae drive etc? What is your take on it?

[ElrondHubbard]

with all that space talk, anybody follows EM drive? Cannae drive etc? What is your take on it?

I'm still trying to figure out how it works.

[steffo99]

Neat little clip. Not a single dot on my local map till 1600 something.

[Wayne Evans]

Neat little clip. Not a single dot on my local map till 1600 something.

Hey Steffster....

Ha....those ancients probably thought it's too damn cold up there....let hang out in this southern turf.

Yes...cool vid and watching it now.
That growth spurt from 15th century forward is stunning.

Thanks for keeping this one alive.

Back to it....

[steffo99]

33 hrs of cell division - neat.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...-frog-egg.html

[ElrondHubbard]

This is going to change our lives, maybe without us even realizing it.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2017...flight-ses-10/



Whether we appreciate it or not, I don't think the significance of this achievement can be overstated. As far as Elon Musk is concerned, it's a step on the road to colonizing Mars. For the rest of us, it's going to mean applications and connections we haven't even imagined yet.

[Wayne Evans]

Well......

The eclipse is coming.....per a different map site link looks like I'll get lucky and be able to witness the 8/21 eclipse event at 10:15.
I can't recall if I've seen a total one in the past but I do remember seeing a partial a loooong time ago.

https://www.nasa.gov/eclipselive

A good day to all....

[whatevergirl]

Have any of you seen this? It's really interesting. Digital copies of brains, telepathy, AI that is designed to be clones of humans, etc. Basically, the future of artificial intelligence. Eventually, the ''theory'' is that traditional thought and humanity will be gone someday, and humans will be all computer. Could technology eventually make humanity obsolete? I think this stuff is so interesting. (but a little scary)


http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...-year-million/

[Karl_Hungus]

Have any of you seen this? It's really interesting. Digital copies of brains, telepathy, AI that is designed to be clones of humans, etc. Basically, the future of artificial intelligence. Eventually, the ''theory'' is that traditional thought and humanity will be gone someday, and humans will be all computer. Could technology eventually make humanity obsolete? I think this stuff is so interesting. (but a little scary)


http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...-year-million/

In the 1950's, futurists imagined what life and technology would be like in the year 2000. They predicted space wars, flying cars, robots serving us dinner, crazy automated cleaning kitchens, moon colonies, etc...they were so hilariously wrong. Futurists can't even get it right 50 years into the future, but now they think they can predict a million years? I don't believe it. I think there is a decent chance that in a million years, humans won't even be here (disease, self-destruction, astronomical event, etc.).

[whatevergirl]

In the 1950's, futurists imagined what life and technology would be like in the year 2000. They predicted space wars, flying cars, robots serving us dinner, crazy automated cleaning kitchens, moon colonies, etc...they were so hilariously wrong. Futurists can't even get it right 50 years into the future, but now they think they can predict a million years? I don't believe it. I think there is a decent chance that in a million years, humans won't even be here (disease, self-destruction, astronomical event, etc.).

Well, they're predicting that automation is going to literally wipe out many jobs performed by humans, in 2030. Automation has already taken over in some industries. But, I hear ya. I wouldn't mind a clone of me going to work in my place though, so I can sleep in and do what I want.

[ElrondHubbard]

I worry a lot about automation reducing the great majority of humans to irrelevancy. It hasn't happened yet, despite many dire predictions of the past, so I hope I'm wrong. But previously, for every job that automation eliminated, there was at least one extra job that was created to help design, service, operate, or take advantage of the opportunities the new machines afforded. Will this continue to happen? The problem now, is that the maintenance and operations and design tasks can all now be done by the machines as well!

I don't know, maybe it will work out for the best. But I think we as a society need to be prepared for the possibility of a lot of permanently displaced workers, and find ways to deal with them and keep their dignity and usefulness intact.

[whatevergirl]

I worry a lot about automation reducing the great majority of humans to irrelevancy. It hasn't happened yet, despite many dire predictions of the past, so I hope I'm wrong. But previously, for every job that automation eliminated, there was at least one extra job that was created to help design, service, operate, or take advantage of the opportunities the new machines afforded. Will this continue to happen? The problem now, is that the maintenance and operations and design tasks can all now be done by the machines as well!

But, the challenge is that if the US wants to compete in having a shot at these tech jobs, we need to start shifting the education system, because right now, the US has been said to be ''getting dumber'' each year, as compared to other countries.

Immortality would be cool, though. Your brain lives forever. But, I don't know if ''you'' would be ''you'' anymore. I think science can go too far though.

[ElrondHubbard]

In the 1950's, futurists imagined what life and technology would be like in the year 2000. They predicted space wars, flying cars, robots serving us dinner, crazy automated cleaning kitchens, moon colonies, etc...they were so hilariously wrong. Futurists can't even get it right 50 years into the future, but now they think they can predict a million years? I don't believe it. I think there is a decent chance that in a million years, humans won't even be here (disease, self-destruction, astronomical event, etc.).

I think we can just about guarantee that humans as they exist today will no longer exist within the next 100,000 years, much less a million. Even if extinction doesn't do us in, biotechnology and genetic engineering will modify us into something unrecognizable within a few thousand years. Our lineage is likely to continue, but our descendants in that lineage are likely to be more different from we their ancestors than we differ from our primitive mammalian ancestors of the Cretaceous.

Those descendants will possibly be living prosperously in the Kuiper belt and maybe even the Oort Cloud by then, as well as Earth, so not only will they be very different from us, but they will have developed multiple divergent lineages that are greatly different from each other.

And we worry about diversity nowdays!

[ElrondHubbard]

But, the challenge is that if the US wants to compete in having a shot at these tech jobs, we need to start shifting the education system, because right now, the US has been said to be ''getting dumber'' each year, as compared to other countries.

Immortality would be cool, though. Your brain lives forever. But, I don't know if ''you'' would be ''you'' anymore. I think science can go too far though.

We needed to start shifting the educational system years ago. It's never too late, but I don't think our "getting dumber" is accidental. Despots and demagogues loving having mindless unthinking worshippers, and no, I'm not talking about Trump. This tendency predates him by quite a long time.

Democracy can't work with an under-educated citizenry. And I'm not talking about just technical skills. Those are a lot easier to come by than the skills of critical thinking and rigorous skepticism. We can easily become a society of gullible PhDs, but it's a society that won't last long.

Science as a method can't go too far. Those who control it can.

[whatevergirl]

We needed to start shifting the educational system years ago. It's never too late, but I don't think our "getting dumber" is accidental. Despots and demagogues loving having mindless unthinking worshippers, and no, I'm not talking about Trump. This tendency predates him by quite a long time.

Democracy can't work with an under-educated citizenry. And I'm not talking about just technical skills. Those are a lot easier to come by than the skills of critical thinking and rigorous skepticism. We can easily become a society of gullible PhDs, but it's a society that won't last long.

Science as a method can't go too far. Those who control it can.

You're so right! It's not just the educational system, it's a culture that kind of wants sheep thinking. There's also group think, which I loathe...not enough people thinking for themselves, anymore.

[Karl_Hungus]

Immortality would be cool, though. Your brain lives forever. But, I don't know if ''you'' would be ''you'' anymore. I think science can go too far though.

It would absolutely NOT be you. It would simply be a copy of you placed in silicone or neurobiological vehicle. You, and your consciousness would end just as surely as if you died today. A simple thought experiment can confirm that. If your brain's configuration were scanned and imprinted onto a neurobiological copy of yourself while you were still alive, would your current consciousness shift to the other organism? Of course not. Interestingly though, if you died, and a copy was created, that copy would insist that the procedure was a smashing success because she/it would wake up from the procedure with all of your memories intact, and therefore perceive the situation as nothing more than waking up from a simple surgery.

I worry a lot about automation reducing the great majority of humans to irrelevancy. It hasn't happened yet, despite many dire predictions of the past, so I hope I'm wrong. But previously, for every job that automation eliminated, there was at least one extra job that was created to help design, service, operate, or take advantage of the opportunities the new machines afforded.

The problem is that the new jobs created are not the ones that those who were displaced can actually do. Some of us are going to be reduced to irrelevancy faster than others. The grim reality is that a sizable percentage of the population will simply be unable to perform certain cognitively demanding jobs regardless of how much education and training they are offered due to the natural distribution in ability. Advancements in genetic engineering might obviate some of these problems, but unlike the Chinese, Americans and Europeans are notoriously squeamish about such genetic tinkering. In the future, we may need a bioethical revolution in our thinking if we don't want to create a permanent underclass who are largely dependent on a system for which they are incapable of contributing.

Those descendants will possibly be living prosperously in the Kuiper belt and maybe even the Oort Cloud by then, as well as Earth, so not only will they be very different from us, but they will have developed multiple divergent lineages that are greatly different from each other.

And we worry about diversity nowdays!

Well, everybody knows those Oort "Cloudies" are a bunch of degenerates and reprobates!

[ElrondHubbard]

It would absolutely NOT be you. It would simply be a copy of you placed in silicone or neurobiological vehicle. You, and your consciousness would end just as surely as if you died today. A simple thought experiment can confirm that. If your brain's configuration were scanned and imprinted onto a neurobiological copy of yourself while you were still alive, would your current consciousness shift to the other organism? Of course not. Interestingly though, if you died, and a copy was created, that copy would insist that the procedure was a smashing success because she/it would wake up from the procedure with all of your memories intact, and therefore perceive the situation as nothing more than waking up from a simple surgery.

I agree with your conclusion, but maybe not the specifics of the argument. If it were possible to completely copy a person's neurobiology to another template, the consciousness would not shift, but would possibly replicate. Then there would be two "yous". If both clones survive, then that consciousness diverges between them over time, and it would be impossible to determine which is the "real" you. It would be like cellular division, with an original cell dividing into two identical daughters. Mutations will accumulate over time, and eventually both lineages would be different from both their ancestors and each other.

In a lot of ways, I'm already a different person than I was 20 years ago, and I think that's probably true for all of us.

The problem is that the new jobs created are not the ones that those who were displaced can actually do. Some of us are going to be reduced to irrelevancy faster than others. The grim reality is that a sizable percentage of the population will simply be unable to perform certain cognitively demanding jobs regardless of how much education and training they are offered due to the natural distribution in ability. Advancements in genetic engineering might obviate some of these problems, but unlike the Chinese, Americans and Europeans are notoriously squeamish about such genetic tinkering. In the future, we may need a bioethical revolution in our thinking if we don't want to create a permanent underclass who are largely dependent on a system for which they are incapable of contributing.

I do agree. To some extent the idea of "retraining" is a myth. At least for some people. At a previous job I was an advocate of cross-training nearly everyone on the crew to be able to do each others jobs, but except for the simplest tasks, it didn't turn out well. Lesson learned.

The danger of a permanent underclass is real, and we need to figure out how to address it before it causes a lot of damage.

Well, everybody knows those Oort "Cloudies" are a bunch of degenerates and reprobates!

Yeah, but would you want your daughter to marry one?

[ElrondHubbard]

You're so right! It's not just the educational system, it's a culture that kind of wants sheep thinking. There's also group think, which I loathe...not enough people thinking for themselves, anymore.

We're all individuals!

[whatevergirl]

It would absolutely NOT be you. It would simply be a copy of you placed in silicone or neurobiological vehicle. You, and your consciousness would end just as surely as if you died today. A simple thought experiment can confirm that. If your brain's configuration were scanned and imprinted onto a neurobiological copy of yourself while you were still alive, would your current consciousness shift to the other organism? Of course not. Interestingly though, if you died, and a copy was created, that copy would insist that the procedure was a smashing success because she/it would wake up from the procedure with all of your memories intact, and therefore perceive the situation as nothing more than waking up from a simple surgery.

I tend to agree with this, so I take you don't buy into the idea that AI could ever operate on its own, or ''develop'' its own sense of awareness? I don't buy into it. Not sure why some in the science community like to project that human beings are really no different than machines/robots.

[ElrondHubbard]

I tend to agree with this, so I take you don't buy into the idea that AI could ever operate on its own, or ''develop'' its own sense of awareness? I don't buy into it. Not sure why some in the science community like to project that human beings are really no different than machines/robots.

I don't think it's likely that an AI entity would develop human awareness, any more than a poodle could. Nor could a human develop poodle awareness. Yet both beings are aware.

There's no reason a solid state being could not have an sensory awareness of its surroundings, an understanding of its own place in those surroundings, knowledge of the possibility of danger or reward emanating from its environment, and a sense of self-interest to avoid dangers and collect rewards. If you have all that, then the entity can arguably be said to have "awareness".

[Karl_Hungus]

I agree with your conclusion, but maybe not the specifics of the argument. If it were possible to completely copy a person's neurobiology to another template, the consciousness would not shift, but would possibly replicate.

I agree with this -- I was focused more on the first-person experience. If you die, your first person experience ends regardless of whether your neurobiology/states are cloned. To the external observer, and to the clone's subjective experience, there would be no difference at all.

I tend to agree with this, so I take you don't buy into the idea that AI could ever operate on its own, or ''develop'' its own sense of awareness? I don't buy into it. Not sure why some in the science community like to project that human beings are really no different than machines/robots.

The problem is that we do not really know what causes consciousness or what processes give rise to it. Those who study it are limited to noting correlations between conscious experience and neural activity. Not terribly informative in a deep sense. Searle argues convincingly that it can't simply be an emergent property that arises as a result of sufficient computational complexity, which adds a great deal of skepticism to the idea that any Turing-style silicone computational device can produce human-like conscious states ... regardless of how computationally advanced it is (even if it wildly exceeds what human beings are capable of). My own thinking is that machines in their current incarnation will not produce anything close to what we would regard as consciousness. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of neurobiological material performing action and cognition. I tend to agree with this perspective and therefore believe that any AI that produces human-like consciousness would require the use of actual neurobiological material, not simply simulated ones via some artificial substrate.

I don't think it's likely that an AI entity would develop human awareness, any more than a poodle could. Nor could a human develop poodle awareness. Yet both beings are aware.

There's no reason a solid state being could not have an sensory awareness of its surroundings, an understanding of its own place in those surroundings, knowledge of the possibility of danger or reward emanating from its environment, and a sense of self-interest to avoid dangers and collect rewards. If you have all that, then the entity can arguably be said to have "awareness".

I think what she is referring to is probably qualia. What you describe above is simply a cognitive problem. With a sufficient set of properly tuned algorithms/programming, it is quite possible to create some kind of neural network that can distinguish self from others, and seek out rewards and avoid danger/punishments, but it could do so without the slightest bit of qualia. The philosopher David Chalmers has talked a lot about this: Is it possible for a machine to be indistinguishable from a human in terms of its observable output, yet lack any kind of qualia? I think it is, but it is something we can't know for sure, or even study with any degree of acceptable rigor ... which is probably why it is referred to as "the hard problem".

[DuracellBunny]

I agree with this -- I was focused more on the first-person experience. If you die, your first person experience ends regardless of whether your neurobiology/states are cloned. To the external observer, and to the clone's subjective experience, there would be no difference at all.




The problem is that we do not really know what causes consciousness or what processes give rise to it. Those who study it are limited to noting correlations between conscious experience and neural activity. Not terribly informative in a deep sense. Searle argues convincingly that it can't simply be an emergent property that arises as a result of sufficient computational complexity, which adds a great deal of skepticism to the idea that any Turing-style silicone computational device can produce human-like conscious states ... regardless of how computationally advanced it is (even if it wildly exceeds what human beings are capable of). My own thinking is that machines in their current incarnation will not produce anything close to what we would regard as consciousness. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of neurobiological material performing action and cognition. I tend to agree with this perspective and therefore believe that any AI that produces human-like consciousness would require the use of actual neurobiological material, not simply simulated ones via some artificial substrate.



I think what she is referring to is probably qualia. What you describe above is simply a cognitive problem. With a sufficient set of properly tuned algorithms/programming, it is quite possible to create some kind of neural network that can distinguish self from others, and seek out rewards and avoid danger/punishments, but it could do so without the slightest bit of qualia. The philosopher David Chalmers has talked a lot about this: Is it possible for a machine to be indistinguishable from a human in terms of its observable output, yet lack any kind of qualia? I think it is, but it is something we can't know for sure, or even study with any degree of acceptable rigor ... which is probably why it is referred to as "the hard problem".

That feeds in to what I refer to as, the "is it a cat?" argument.

A technologically advanced race observes earth and builds a robot cat to live amongst us and collect data. The robot mimics a cat in every way, it even has the same physical construction as a cat if you dissect it. Any observation of, or test performed on, the robot, returns results identical to if it were a cat.

If you cannot experience the robot as anything other than a cat, is it a cat?

I came up with the idea as an undergrad, and lots of drunken arguments (sometimes with people shouting, "no, it's not a fking cat") were had with other students, regarding whether it was a cat or not. The whole thing is very tongue in cheek, but it has serious implications to the topic at hand, in that does it matter whether something is conscious or not, if you experience it as if it were conscious?

[ElrondHubbard]

I agree with this -- I was focused more on the first-person experience. If you die, your first person experience ends regardless of whether your neurobiology/states are cloned. To the external observer, and to the clone's subjective experience, there would be no difference at all.

Yeah, we're on the same page here, I think.

The problem is that we do not really know what causes consciousness or what processes give rise to it. Those who study it are limited to noting correlations between conscious experience and neural activity. Not terribly informative in a deep sense. Searle argues convincingly that it can't simply be an emergent property that arises as a result of sufficient computational complexity, which adds a great deal of skepticism to the idea that any Turing-style silicone computational device can produce human-like conscious states ... regardless of how computationally advanced it is (even if it wildly exceeds what human beings are capable of). My own thinking is that machines in their current incarnation will not produce anything close to what we would regard as consciousness. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of neurobiological material performing action and cognition. I tend to agree with this perspective and therefore believe that any AI that produces human-like consciousness would require the use of actual neurobiological material, not simply simulated ones via some artificial substrate.

I can give a limited agreement here. As I said before, an artificial system is not going to have human consciousness, simply because it is not human. But that can't be used as an argument that it will not have consciousness at all. I agree that it's not a product of mere computational complexity, but again, that doesn't mean it's a state that non-biological systems can't reach. The difference between a neuron and even a subnetwork of transistors is vast, they work in very different ways, they respond differently to stimuli, and I don't think, at least from what little I know, that you can accurately simulate one using the other - yet.

However, I can think of a couple of ways around this limitation.

The first is the idea that consciousness is something like what Chaos Theory would call a "strange attractor", that is, a process with behavior that can be, and inevitably will be achieved by any system that expresses a particular set of subproperties. A simpler example would be Darwinian evolution, which is characteristic of biological populations, but can also be performed by any system, including virtual objects residing in computers, that share the traits of birth, death, ancestry, reproduction, and mutation. Genetic algorithms that use evolution to solve problems are almost trivial to create now. In our own species, self-awareness is a product of that evolution, just as are our physical features, so I don't see that there's any defined demarcation that makes it possible for evolution to achieve it in one type of lineage system, but no others.

The second approach simply attempts to replicate the kind of behavior that neurons engage in. Transistors are simple linear off-on devices, while neurons are massively analog, massively parallel, and apparently endowed with some sort of not-yet-understood decision-making properties in themselves. Figuring out how to do this might be one of the hardest problems in computing. But, I'm not sure its absolutely necessary for solving the problem, since again, it doesn't have to be "human" consciousness in order to be consciousness of its own, and not necessarily inferior for being different.

I think what she is referring to is probably qualia. What you describe above is simply a cognitive problem. With a sufficient set of properly tuned algorithms/programming, it is quite possible to create some kind of neural network that can distinguish self from others, and seek out rewards and avoid danger/punishments, but it could do so without the slightest bit of qualia. The philosopher David Chalmers has talked a lot about this: Is it possible for a machine to be indistinguishable from a human in terms of its observable output, yet lack any kind of qualia? I think it is, but it is something we can't know for sure, or even study with any degree of acceptable rigor ... which is probably why it is referred to as "the hard problem".

It would be presumptuous of me to interpret whatevergirl's meaning for her, when she's nearby and can explain it herself. But going by the simple meaning of the words as posted, ' ''develop'' its own sense of awareness', it reads to me very much as a simple cognitive problem.

And ultimately, I think that's all we need to deal with. I'm not a big fan of the concept of "qualia", mainly because every time I see someone use it, they mean something slightly different by it. It's almost sectarian in its many translations, and each one seems to me as 'revealed' as any faith. If it's a hard problem because it can't be studied with rigor, is it even a problem at all, or simply a specialists meme?

I tend to side with Daniel Dennett on it's being a non-problem, more of a shadows-on-the-cave-wall issue for Platonists than an actual phenomenon that has any objective meaning in the world. I know Dennett gets a lot of grief from other philosophers, some have called him a fraud. I suspect that's because he tends to be more friendly to the scientific method than those who are still locked within the Platonic/Aristotelian world of logic and form rather than the Galilean/Newtonian world of measurement and falsification. A lot of philosophical problems, when seen in the latter context, appear to me to be little more than Deep Thoughts of Jack Handy with a larger vocabulary.

So when it comes to machine consciousness, I'll stick with cognitive possibilities, and not require anything conceptually beyond that. And I won't try to get into the argument about whether or not a robot can have a soul, either.

[whatevergirl]

I did mean cognitively. AI has no cognition. As best that can be determined, consciousness comes from the part of our brain responsible for cognition. This is why if someone is 'brain dead,' then they can't be aware any longer. Do you agree/disagree?

[Karl_Hungus]

That feeds in to what I refer to as, the "is it a cat?" argument.

A technologically advanced race observes earth and builds a robot cat to live amongst us and collect data. The robot mimics a cat in every way, it even has the same physical construction as a cat if you dissect it. Any observation of, or test performed on, the robot, returns results identical to if it were a cat.

If you cannot experience the robot as anything other than a cat, is it a cat?

I came up with the idea as an undergrad, and lots of drunken arguments (sometimes with people shouting, "no, it's not a fking cat") were had with other students, regarding whether it was a cat or not. The whole thing is very tongue in cheek, but it has serious implications to the topic at hand, in that does it matter whether something is conscious or not, if you experience it as if it were conscious?

I would say in pragmatic terms, the answer is "no". We can't ever really know whether anything is conscious (including our fellow humans). That is an inherent limitation of the field -- we can only focus on observable outputs. The problem was outlined elegantly in Nagel's essay "What is it like to be a bat?"

I can give a limited agreement here. As I said before, an artificial system is not going to have human consciousness, simply because it is not human.

I disagree -- human consciousness isn't a magical state that can't be reproduced under the right conditions. Given the right physical construction (e.g. neurobiological substrates), we may very well be able to create human-like consciousness. But to your other point, suggesting that a machine might have a "different" type of consciousness that is utterly unlike human consciousness is simply re-defining consciousness to be something else. IMO, if it isn't on the same continuum (at the very least) of human consciousness, then you are just taking something else and calling it "consciousness".

The first is the idea that consciousness is something like what Chaos Theory would call a "strange attractor", that is, a process with behavior that can be, and inevitably will be achieved by any system that expresses a particular set of subproperties. A simpler example would be Darwinian evolution, which is characteristic of biological populations, but can also be performed by any system, including virtual objects residing in computers, that share the traits of birth, death, ancestry, reproduction, and mutation. Genetic algorithms that use evolution to solve problems are almost trivial to create now. In our own species, self-awareness is a product of that evolution, just as are our physical features, so I don't see that there's any defined demarcation that makes it possible for evolution to achieve it in one type of lineage system, but no others.

Limited agreement here. I agree with your premise, but not with your limited definition of consciousness. As I mentioned before, a system programmed with the correct set of algorithms/rules should be able to develop a concept of “self” that distinguishes itself from other entities, and can operate in its own "self"-interest. I wouldn't call this consciousness. By the same token, other organisms may not have the ability to develop such a concept (even newborn infants), yet still have some type of consciousness/qualia.

I tend to side with Daniel Dennett on it's being a non-problem, more of a shadows-on-the-cave-wall issue for Platonists than an actual phenomenon that has any objective meaning in the world. I know Dennett gets a lot of grief from other philosophers, some have called him a fraud. I suspect that's because he tends to be more friendly to the scientific method than those who are still locked within the Platonic/Aristotelian world of logic and form rather than the Galilean/Newtonian world of measurement and falsification.

So when it comes to machine consciousness, I'll stick with cognitive possibilities, and not require anything conceptually beyond that. And I won't try to get into the argument about whether or not a robot can have a soul, either.

I don't know that Dennett is necessarily more friendly to the scientific method. Many of his own points rely on elaborate thought experiments rather than hard scientific truths. That isn't a condemnation of him, but rather a limitation of the field as a whole. I completely agree that qualia has no functional utility in the world, yet I also agree that it exists because I experience it. I think consciousness is separable from cognition, and if we are talking about machine consciousness, I believe that to be a different question than whether a machine can adequately pass a Turing test. In terms of whether you "need" consciousness, it depends on what you are trying to do. If your mission is simply to explain human outputs, or create a machine that produces purely human outputs, then I would agree, thinking about consciousness/qualia is unneeded. If however, you are talking about machine consciousness, and the degree to which a machine can have internal conscious states similar to humans, then it becomes relevant. It sounds to me that the latter question is one you find uninteresting and irrelevant, and I can accept that. For me, it is a fascinating one and something I enjoy thinking about. Given our different perspectives, I suspect we may be doomed to talk past one another in the discussion, but I appreciate it nonetheless as it is a topic I enjoy.

I did mean cognitively. AI has no cognition. As best that can be determined, consciousness comes from the part of our brain responsible for cognition. This is why if someone is 'brain dead,' then they can't be aware any longer. Do you agree/disagree?

I would say that a machine can have cognition, but that cognition and consciousness aren't necessarily the same. With regard to specific cognitive tasks, some machines can already greatly exceed what humans can do.

[DuracellBunny]

I would say in pragmatic terms, the answer is "no". We can't ever really know whether anything is conscious (including our fellow humans). That is an inherent limitation of the field -- we can only focus on observable outputs. The problem was outlined elegantly in Nagel's essay "What is it like to be a bat?"

The concept is much more far reaching than how it applies to consciousness, in that it actually applies to the whole of scientific advancement and is a defining cornerstone of human psychology.

We construct theories and test their predictions against observable phenomena. If predictions and observations repeatedly match, we hold the the theory to be true. Whether the theory is actually "true" or not, is largely irrelevant, as long as it allows us to make sense of the world.

Flat earth and geocentric astronomical models, explained the world in a manner that agreed with observation to the layman and were therefore "true". Assuming them to be true, allowed the human race to make advances in scientific understanding that would then expose them to be false; but those advancements could never have taken place, without first believing something that was false to be true.

Bringing that full circle back to consciousness, we need an intellectual construct of consciousness that allows us to match predictions to observations. Whether that construct is "true" or not, is irrelevant. It just needs to be "true" for long enough for people to stand on it to create the next construct.

The first step is for people to agree that the robot is a cat