Outline: 1:10 - Universality of consciousness across species 3:25 - First aware of consciousness 5:15 - What is consciousness 6:05 - Conscious machines & the nature of consciousness 13:40 - Why do we need consciousness 15:10 - Measuring consciousness 19:10 - Panpsychism 25:20 - Does intelligence require consciousness 33:00 - Special aspects of human consciousness 34:10 - Religion 36:45 - Root of being 39:05 - Free will 41:00 - Subconscious 45:20 - Literature 47:00 - Timescale of conscious beings 52:45 - Advice for AI researchers 55:20 - Future research on claustrum
The question in min. 31:15 about the role of the fullness or an extensive range of experience is possibly underestimated. And the answer too poor. Humans have approximately 100 neurotransmitter or so. They contribute to a fullness of experience that make them (also animals) sentient beings. To ignore this is possibly to ignore a way of giving an AI the possibity to be sentient. May be this is an essential factor for consciousness. Even if this can be simulated, it may be a step further to consciousness for a machine. The Portuguese scientist Damasio did great research in a related field. And what if scientists create accidentally a sick "psyche" which has the power to reach the terminal of all users.
I will definitely be coming back to listen to this again in the future. He seems like an incredibly fascinating and brilliant person. Thanks for the content, Lex.
Having recently taken a relatively deep dive into Vedanta, specifically the Advaita tradition, much of the first half--indeed, it is all I've watched thus far--of this conversation can be answered according to the principles found there, namely that consciousness is experience itself, the foundation of all being.
Commenting on my own comment--a pathway leading to Hell, perhaps 🙏 However, Koch gives almost the absolute rationale for Advaita, when stating (at ~37:00) that there seems to be these two "things," namely the physical and consciousness, but that the physical is only experienced in--or reveals itself of--the awareness of consciousness. Namaste 🙏🙏🙏🙏
Care to elaborate? I'm not sure I've ever had a single experience that I could say was my 'boom, wow I'm a conscious being' moment. Curious what it was for you, if you don't mind. I'm also aware your comment is 11 months old so you may not ever get this but I'll try anyway 🙂
i had the luck to experience floating in tank, and that was one of this moment like he explained... of course, i "know" but this is the result of experiences but like in a tanl, never !
@@stiggystone79I distinctly remember around the age of 3-4 I was sat in one of those walker things, where you have different toys around you, and I recall being at home in a room alone wondering where my mother was, then I distinctly remember realising that she still does exist even though I cannot see her and I remember looking at the walls around me and the floor and ceiling and realising closed spaces and that there's more outside that I cannot see, and then I realised I existed within this space and that I am distinct. Even typing that sounds absolutely absurd, maybe it's a false memory but I do definitely have vivid images in my mind of the room I was in which I've corroborated with old photographs
I SO appreciate Lex Friedman for giving such a solid foundation for the understanding of machine learning (in its many forms), and further, how we might approach AGI from an engineering perspective. His course MIT 6.S099: Artificial General Intelligence, and his complementary course on Self Driving Cars, have enlightened me in so many ways, and I applaud his choice of guest lecturers. I also applaud him for 'speaking and enquiring' outside the discipline. Thanks, Lex for bringing this to us. More power to you, MIT and 6.S099, and I look forward to hearing more from you as your career progresses, and who knows, perhaps one day working with you!
Professor Koch has a distinct manner of speaking which is reminiscent of speaking while angry. And yet, Lex managed to get a smile out of him at 44:15 :)
These conversations are so inspiring. Thank you for making the MIT experience so accessible. I've never heard an explanation of dreaming like 11.46secs. Obviously only one of Christof's incredible insights. Wow!
It's so rare that I get to listen to a human speak that is so insightful into consciousness -- many intelligent people seem to want to sweep it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't exist, etc. Really enjoyed listening to Christof.
37.00 in the flow . Thank you for sharing all these interesting visitors and your conversations. Kept my brain from getting moldy with presumptuous idleness, at least for now.
Can’t believe I just came across this interview. I read The Quest For Consciousness not long after it came out. Needless to say, Koch became out of my heroes.
Great interview!.... By the way, don't put tbe guest in front of a large window, the camera will expose for the window and you get your guest in silhouette!..... Or manually expose the camera to the guest...
I´m going introduce an idea that I haven´t heard yet from all the brilliant people that speaks in Lex Podcast. This is about the nature of conciousness. For me the truly nature of what is commonly understood as conciousness is memory. Memory + complex language make us able to talk with others and with ourself is what give us humans the feeling or being "ME" . My intelligence serve the aim of my needs and desires. This is clear. But it is the "me" that remembers what I did yesterday, what I like and what I don´t like, what I want to do (a projection here can be understood as "remembering the future"), this rememberer/ projecterer "me" who settles the base for the sense of self awareness
Yes! By Jove I think you've got it! It is my self that is conscious. I can't imagine something other that could possibly be conscious, unless that something is also a self. Seven months have passed since you submitted your comment. Have you elaborated the idea? Do you find your self like me, more convinced than ever?
Thank you so much ... I really think that talking about these deep topics as well as God, religion and all other stuff makes a great and rich discussion ... Awesome interview !
Dont forget this is professor Poggio’s first student! Demis Hasabis is also Professor Poggio’s student. Perhaps you should invite prof Poggio ;) Director of CBMM MIT
I love the question about reading literature: I could read before kindergarten and my mother belonged to a monthly book club which offered mostly fictional books such as many famous classics. I would plead to read a selection after she had read it and she allowed me to read those selections. These novels presented fictional lives of people in vast diversity and whereas I did not fully understand sexual aspects clearly one of the most striking aspects I discovered was all the various religions, or lifestyles or aspects such as wealth vs poverty. By the time I began to be raised in my family’s strict fundamentalist Christian lifestyle my views of that special view of Christianity had already been compromised by my already generalized view of the variety of world-wide religious practices and human lifestyles.
Thank you Cristof and Lex for such an interesting interview, 4 years later it is still very relevant. I think humanity needs to develop AI but adding the empathy piece as well as having a better idea of how our brain works.
Book list for this Christof Koch podcast. Thanks for asking about aliens immediately :) - The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach by Christof Koch - Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist by Christof Koch - The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby - The Black Cloud by Colin Swatridge and Fred Hoyle - Solaris by Stanisław Lem - The Invicible by Stanisław Lem
On my way to uni. Same path every day. But that morning I woke up (I am lucid dreamer) with a strong memory of somebody from my distant past whom I know very well (I am a single child who enjoyed imaginative friend company). One by one I excluded my childhood friends who didn't match the memory in this or that detail. I was puzzled: Who else am I missing? Until it hit me: I was trying to remember myself.
like you looked at yourself from the eyes of the imaginative friend? so that you would've been both yourself & the imaginative friend? I'm struggling a bit to understand the remembering yourself bit. I'm trying to think for myself, but there's really a lack of memory for, not like I wasn't conscious in the past, but I just dont remember a lot about being a kid
Regarding the black hole simulation argument.. Airplane "simulates" birds and actually flies. Robotic animal "simulates" both a dog and a human hand. Walks around, opens doors and grabs beer cans. There has to be a distinction between a purely virtual simulation and functional replication. In case of consciousness we won't be able to tell as long as we can't define/detect/describe consciousness in general without referencing our own subjective experience. .. And let's not forget the entire conscious experience as we perceive it is not actually the "real thing" but a virtuality "simulated" in the brain.
You're talking about outwards behavior rather than internal experience. An airplane can fly but it doesn't have any of the internal experience of a bird whose consciousness is stimulated to fly when it sees a tasty worm or an oncoming car or hears a mating call.
Simulates or emulates? Simulation is a copy of the system, by means of a conceptual model, emulation is a functional equivalent of the system. You are not flying when playing flight simulator x, but an airplane does fly as birds do.
And as for our conscious experience, our brains only simulate it in sleep, when we wake it generates a coherent stream, negotiated by our experiences. Thus two people can see differently looking at the same thing. However, the underlying principles remain the same, with the exceptions of physiologically aberrant cases.
@@jeremycripe934 There is no internal experience (or external) because experience is an abstract notion thus without material existence or location. Are you perhaps referring to the substrate? You assume a bird is conscious but can't know that for a fact (and when Thomas Nagel assumes a bat is conscious he makes the same mistake). Bat or bird, it's unlikely they are what we mean by conscious. They have no language, no metaphors, no culture and no civilization to navigate. What need have they to be conscious? Do we think that instinct is a kind of conscious? A flying robot could do what they do. No insult to birds or bats intended. And we eat them. Terrible to be eaten conscious.
There are a couple of applied scientist I would really like to see/listen interviewed by you. Some of them like to stay outside of public view, but your profile and track record of pleasing conversations might convince them: - Edward Thorpe - Margaret Hamilton - Jim Simons Keep up th egood work!
Christof is making very definitive statements about machine intelligence ‘never’ being conscious without ever giving a mechanistic explanation of what consciousness is and why we have it. Frustrating.
@@siriusleigh24 "Experience" and "it feels like something" is not an explanation. It's just a description, which is old and obvious and entails no new insights. I was looking for something like the 'Attention Schema Theory' of consciousness, a specific mechanism of *how* consciousness arises. If you don't understand the *mechanism*, how can you make any statements about it?
This interview really reminded me of John Vervaeke's series on consciousness. It would be very interesting to see you interview him! He works at the University of Toronto, not sure if you or he can make the trip, but a Skype call would suffice my thirsty mind. Best regards
Thanks for uploading as always Lex, this content is fantastic. I'm very interested in the point about a complete, ideal, perfect simulation of the human brain NOT being conscious. Stepping back (nearly as far as possible) isn't consciousness a function of the arrangement of the atoms in this finite volume we call a skull? It't not in the air, it's not stored in a device we keep safe at home, surely our consciousness - whatever it is - exists (however it exists etc) inside our heads. By extension, wouldn't a perfect simulation of a human brain, complete with artificial neurons that interact just like those in a human brain, also experience consciousness. Isn't it an emergent property of the interactions between neurons? If not, in the physical world that we live in, what could it be? Thanks again Lex!
consciousness is fundamental and not caused by the brain, as demonstrated by quantum physics. particles - which the brain is composed of - don't even exist before conscious observation. look up the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment for evidence of that. the brain accompanies the working of fundamental consciousness, but does not create it, in the same way a CD encodes the music, but isn't the music, or a TV set receives a broadcast, but isn't the broadcast.
we don't live in a physical world, we live in a virtual reality, as many scientists are now coming to say, that's computed by consciousness/spirit/god. there's no real objective things in real space-time, it's an experience in consciousness made of consciousness, which is created by conscious observation, as shown by quantum physics. since you are consciousness, your experience of the world is actually you, modulated according to information you receive every planck time from the consciousness server, like the movie playing in a cinema is modulated light according to information, the film reel. the brain is an image/graphical representation of information processing going on in consciousness, like a video game is an image of information processing going on in the computer's cpu. you may wish to check out the simulation hypothesis and tom campbell on this :)
I interpret what he is saying as the follow: The lack of casual power comes from the fact that it would be a simulation done by software on top of silicon gates, on the other hand if it is done with artificial neurons in which matter interacts just like in our brains then its level of integrated information would mean consciousness. The Integrated Information Theory predicts very low level of integrated information on silicon gates arrangements, just like it predicts low level of integrated information on the Cerebellum (contrasting well with real life where the Cerebellum despite having almost %80 of all neurons doesn't seem to contribute much to consciousness experience) So, if in your experiment matter interacts just like in our brain is not really a simulation, it is the actual thing. Like in the example of the simulation of the black hole, the computer does not create similar forces in the world because matter is not interacting like in a real black hole. I don't know if I made myself clear because English is no my first language.
Thanks for doing this Lex, you are a great interviewer! I love this format. To really explore human consciousness it is useful to have (subjective) experience with non-ordinary states. I highly recommend checking out the book Stealing Fire and trying some of the techniques/technologies contained within e.g. mindfulness meditation, sensory deprivation, holotropic breathwork, psychedelics, and brainwave entrainment.
I found about you a few days ago when I saw the Whitney Cummings podcast. Having just finished my studies in IT, like a lot of people my age, I figured that I have no clue where I am and what I want to do. I want to know everything and yet I don't know what but I do know that I don't know anything which made me tap in one place. You pushed my back a bit with these podcasts and considering the lack of motivation and the mental state that I was before I found this it seems that you have kind of pushed me in a direction of what seems interesting to me and what I would like to know more about. I just wanted to thank you for that and I hope you know how much people appreciate what you do. So, yeah, thanks. I don't do emotional comments often and English is my second language so sorry about possible mistakes.
At 50:14 he mentions a novel by Stanislaw Lem named "the victorious". I looked for it but didn't find such a novel. I think he is referring to the novel "the invincible". Can anyone confirm, please? thanks.
I disagree with him about the simulated brain not having consciousness. If conciseness is about information processing, why should the embodiment of the conscious agent matter?
I can have an amazing dream that feels even more real or emotional than waking life without any of those experiences being stimulated by my physical body interacting with my environment. Does that mean my sleeping consciousness isn't actually conscious? Or not happening? I experience it and yet from an outsider perspective I'm not physically flying or having an OOBE or being haunted by tornados.
I agree with you. Although the digital computer is simulating another physical system, it itself is still a physical system. I don't believe/disbelieve that it would be conscious or not but it seems silly to assume not. The simulating gravity analogy doesn't work either, as in that instance you are only simulating physical relationships / maths, but when 'simulating' consciousness, you are actually setting up a self-organising physical system, so its sort of like you are setting up a physical brain, just in a very abstract way.
That's a really great response. So on one level I would agree that consciousness is different and special from physical systems. Looking at Integrated Information Theory it suggests that sufficiently Integrated Systems experience consciousness. A blackhole or the phenomenon of wetness is an emergent property, I believe, but not one borne of a sufficiently integrated system to experience consciousness. So simulating either of the latter and saying it's equivalent to simulating a brain is a bad comparison. I think that's right?
I would like to get to another level but first to reestablish, the dreamer or simulating computer doesn't know that its physical body isn't wet or sucking in outsiders watching it's physical body when simulating wetness or gravity respectively. Yet it is still experiencing both as well as experiences that it is simulating within it's own consciousness or simulation. It may simulate bodies that can feel wet or being sucked in with gravity while telling itself that these are simply actors independent of itself. Just like in your dreams you may populate the landscape or stage with actors but still identity with a main character representing yourself in the dream. Trying to make this simple; an Outside Observer watching a Computer Simulation or a Dreaming Person would say that their subject isn't really conscious because their extremely vivid experiences aren't effecting the observer. But they are effecting the subject. A deeper question is are they effecting the subjects of your subject's experience?
At 53:35 Dr.Koch talks about something which the c.captioning shows as "Klaus poem" which I am sure is wrong and it sounds to me like "Cloud storm". Later he talks about a neuronal reconstruction he is doing in the lab he calls, again according to captioning "crown of song"...(56:48) I listened many times but can't figure out what exactly he's saying. I'd love to learn more on the subject but Google hasn't helped because I am not sure what to ask. Would appreciate any clarification on this. Thank you.
"Simulating consciousness is not the same as a conscious experience" -Okay, let's define what it means to experience something - loosely: 1. Data from the environment can be processed and stored in the brain 2. The information that gets processed at a given time can be combined with prior knowledge to make inferences What if machines are invented to experience something? Could they then be intelligent / conscious?
You can look up Searle, Putnam, Chalmers also Oliver Sacks is interesting. these names focus on mind or mental states I can not think about a book about reality or life itself. Most interesting subject is consciousness if u ask me.
Marvelous subject, marvelous man! I stumbled onto the 18.06 open course a few years back; Professor Strang really opens the subject up to the average math fan. Thanks for interviewing him.
Lex your videos are an oasis in the youtube desert. Thank you so much for sharing all of this awesome content.
Lex might try to speak more distinctly.
I'm on episode #2 of watching all episodes in order.
@@agrojester1156 Same
@@agrojester1156 uly
@@agrojester1156I'llplyok loo
uilkooo
uuuoly
Outline:
1:10 - Universality of consciousness across species
3:25 - First aware of consciousness
5:15 - What is consciousness
6:05 - Conscious machines & the nature of consciousness
13:40 - Why do we need consciousness
15:10 - Measuring consciousness
19:10 - Panpsychism
25:20 - Does intelligence require consciousness
33:00 - Special aspects of human consciousness
34:10 - Religion
36:45 - Root of being
39:05 - Free will
41:00 - Subconscious
45:20 - Literature
47:00 - Timescale of conscious beings
52:45 - Advice for AI researchers
55:20 - Future research on claustrum
thank you
Thank you
Thank you for putting the timestamps
The question in min. 31:15 about the role of the fullness or an extensive range of experience is possibly underestimated. And the answer too poor. Humans have approximately 100 neurotransmitter or so. They contribute to a fullness of experience that make them (also animals) sentient beings. To ignore this is possibly to ignore a way of giving an AI the possibity to be sentient. May be this is an essential factor for consciousness. Even if this can be simulated, it may be a step further to consciousness for a machine. The Portuguese scientist Damasio did great research in a related field. And what if scientists create accidentally a sick "psyche" which has the power to reach the terminal of all users.
Lex, I can‘t thank you enough for creating high quality content like this. Can we somehow support you?
That's hands down the best interview I saw for a long long time. Thanks for posting!
I fully agree. Great questions and perfect answers.
same.i can't remember alot of times that i enjoyed a more exciting 60mins than this one!
As a student of psychology and AI this has been amazingly valuable to me. Thank you greatly, Lex!!
I really curious how your life going cause your life choices is on trend right now
One of the most intelligent interviews on consciousness I've heard. Thanks Lex for providing these podcasts!
consciousness explained, and more facebook.com/guillermo.b.deisler/posts/10222050618470453
I found this interview very thought-provoking, thank you Lex and Koch.
Lex. I work 12 hours a day .... and you have now occupied 2 more hours of my day the past 2 weeks with these damn pod casts of yours :) All the best,
8 hours of my day!!! I just started from podcast #1 because I can’t wait for the new ones
I will definitely be coming back to listen to this again in the future. He seems like an incredibly fascinating and brilliant person. Thanks for the content, Lex.
He may be brilliant, but he is irritating in his hyperactive presentation.
Having recently taken a relatively deep dive into Vedanta, specifically the Advaita tradition, much of the first half--indeed, it is all I've watched thus far--of this conversation can be answered according to the principles found there, namely that consciousness is experience itself, the foundation of all being.
Commenting on my own comment--a pathway leading to Hell, perhaps 🙏
However, Koch gives almost the absolute rationale for Advaita, when stating (at ~37:00) that there seems to be these two "things," namely the physical and consciousness, but that the physical is only experienced in--or reveals itself of--the awareness of consciousness.
Namaste 🙏🙏🙏🙏
@@hellofriend8446 I've been following Francis Lucille. This is great, I would love him interviewed by Lex.
Thank you for your beautiful energy. ❤
Christof would make the ultimate "Die Hard" baddie !
Lex: need a round 2 buddy , this guy is awesome 😀
Thanks for all of these videos! I never wanted to study when i was young. Now i am learning a lot
Fantastic. These interviews are a wonderful resource. Thank you so much Lex and MIT. I would love to see John Searle or Eliezer Yudkowsky.
I had a definite experience when I was about 8 where I suddenly realized that "I exist". I have remembered that all my life.
Care to elaborate? I'm not sure I've ever had a single experience that I could say was my 'boom, wow I'm a conscious being' moment. Curious what it was for you, if you don't mind. I'm also aware your comment is 11 months old so you may not ever get this but I'll try anyway 🙂
i had the luck to experience floating in tank, and that was one of this moment like he explained... of course, i "know" but this is the result of experiences but like in a tanl, never !
@@kirilchi me 2 , crap and incredible knowledge on youtube
@@stiggystone79I distinctly remember around the age of 3-4 I was sat in one of those walker things, where you have different toys around you, and I recall being at home in a room alone wondering where my mother was, then I distinctly remember realising that she still does exist even though I cannot see her and I remember looking at the walls around me and the floor and ceiling and realising closed spaces and that there's more outside that I cannot see, and then I realised I existed within this space and that I am distinct.
Even typing that sounds absolutely absurd, maybe it's a false memory but I do definitely have vivid images in my mind of the room I was in which I've corroborated with old photographs
I SO appreciate Lex Friedman for giving such a solid foundation for the understanding of machine learning (in its many forms), and further, how we might approach AGI from an engineering perspective. His course MIT 6.S099: Artificial General Intelligence, and his complementary course on Self Driving Cars, have enlightened me in so many ways, and I applaud his choice of guest lecturers. I also applaud him for 'speaking and enquiring' outside the discipline.
Thanks, Lex for bringing this to us. More power to you, MIT and 6.S099, and I look forward to hearing more from you as your career progresses, and who knows, perhaps one day working with you!
I love listening to your voice . And you ask really good questions.
Consciousness is an addictive state
fantastic interview with very deep and essential questions about consciousness. so enjoy it!
Christof is brilliant. what a great episode, thank you!
Fantastic podcast. I had to double check my playback speed setting, I thought it was set at 1.25x
Professor Koch has a distinct manner of speaking which is reminiscent of speaking while angry. And yet, Lex managed to get a smile out of him at 44:15 :)
These conversations are so inspiring. Thank you for making the MIT experience so accessible. I've never heard an explanation of dreaming like 11.46secs. Obviously only one of Christof's incredible insights. Wow!
It's so rare that I get to listen to a human speak that is so insightful into consciousness -- many intelligent people seem to want to sweep it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't exist, etc. Really enjoyed listening to Christof.
37.00 in the flow .
Thank you for sharing all these interesting visitors and your conversations.
Kept my brain from getting moldy with presumptuous idleness, at least for now.
I watched a lot of Christof's interviews, this is one of the best, congrats
Can’t believe I just came across this interview. I read The Quest For Consciousness not long after it came out. Needless to say, Koch became out of my heroes.
One of the most brilliant talks in Lex's Podacast.
Thanks so much.How lucky we are,
This episode was excellent!
wow the 2nd pod ever!
This is such an important topic. Koch and Tononi's Integrated Information Theory is such a fascinating idea. Thanks for this interview
Thanks Lex for another great video and what an amazing guest.
Great interview!.... By the way, don't put tbe guest in front of a large window, the camera will expose for the window and you get your guest in silhouette!..... Or manually expose the camera to the guest...
Lex your channel is amazing, thank you.
Awesome. It's a real privilege to be able to hear the thoughts from so many great minds, thanks very much.
Who the hell spoke at 36.44? That was not Lex's voice. Was it his conciousness? Why did they cut of 'Jack'?
I´m going introduce an idea that I haven´t heard yet from all the brilliant people that speaks in Lex Podcast. This is about the nature of conciousness. For me the truly nature of what is commonly understood as conciousness is memory. Memory + complex language make us able to talk with others and with ourself is what give us humans the feeling or being "ME" . My intelligence serve the aim of my needs and desires. This is clear. But it is the "me" that remembers what I did yesterday, what I like and what I don´t like, what I want to do (a projection here can be understood as "remembering the future"), this rememberer/ projecterer "me" who settles the base for the sense of self awareness
Yes! By Jove I think you've got it!
It is my self that is conscious.
I can't imagine something other that could possibly be conscious,
unless that something is also a self.
Seven months have passed since you submitted your comment.
Have you elaborated the idea?
Do you find your self like me, more convinced than ever?
Qn: What discipline should I take on? Is it neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy, computer science?
Ans: YES :-)
With r That's impressive. How did you manage to study all of those aspects? And what about the mystical experiences he was talking about?
no one asked u.
go back to the woodwork u pompous troll.
Robik Shrestha research what interests you in all the different fields.
@@MrRobikshrestha Right now I'm studying all those listed. How? A lot of time, and borderline crazy determination.
@@honestexpression6393 I guess either. University's overrated, you can take tons of free courses or do MIT OCW
Whenever I hear German accent, I automatically consider this person to be very intelligent.
I´m german and would actually find it hard to speak with such a strong german accent ;)
@@timmbrockmann959 That is 'German humour' which is another story.
Two of my favorite thinkers. Great show guys!
You set a very high bar back in 2018, Lex!
Thank you so much ... I really think that talking about these deep topics as well as God, religion and all other stuff makes a great and rich discussion ...
Awesome interview !
Excellent interview. His accent was a bonus
Dont forget this is professor Poggio’s first student! Demis Hasabis is also Professor Poggio’s student. Perhaps you should invite prof Poggio ;) Director of CBMM MIT
Brando Miranda interesting!
I started your podcast at Elon lol. So riveting now gonna watch all your podcasts, here I am at 2 now so far. Thx
Hey, I'm doing exactly the same! Started yesterday.
Same gonna watch 3 now :)
you've come a long way, looking back to this one! keep going!!
Fantastic interview! I especially loved the questions and answers about the place of literature in the study of science.
I think your channel is one the most useful channels in the entire youtube
Its an incredibly feeling watching this beautiful interview now in 2023 with all the advantage in the field of AI like ChatGPT, Bard and others 😅
This interview series is great.
I love the question about reading literature: I could read before kindergarten and my mother belonged to a monthly book club which offered mostly fictional books such as many famous classics. I would plead to read a selection after she had read it and she allowed me to read those selections. These novels presented fictional lives of people in vast diversity and whereas I did not fully understand sexual aspects clearly one of the most striking aspects I discovered was all the various religions, or lifestyles or aspects such as wealth vs poverty. By the time I began to be raised in my family’s strict fundamentalist Christian lifestyle my views of that special view of Christianity had already been compromised by my already generalized view of the variety of world-wide religious practices and human lifestyles.
5 years down the road and those captions look antedeluvian!!
Thank you Cristof and Lex for such an interesting interview, 4 years later it is still very relevant. I think humanity needs to develop AI but adding the empathy piece as well as having a better idea of how our brain works.
27:09 Damn it man. You are breaking my mind
Yea. So fundamental and often overlooked these days.
He insists this but lacked a good explanation as to why. He assumes that we must be real and anything that isn't us is not.
what word does he say at 55:34 ? Theres this structure called " ....." really would like to know, but can't understand his accent.
Claustrum!
Awesome content, thank you very much!
Best Christof Koch interview - Have read his books, just finished his latest one! All great! May I suggest a chat with Ed Boyden?
Emergence..!!! Conciousness will find the way...
Lex is Awsome an Handsome!!,Stay Smart Everyone 🤓 👍
Book list for this Christof Koch podcast. Thanks for asking about aliens immediately :)
- The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach by Christof Koch
- Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist by Christof Koch
- The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
- The Black Cloud by Colin Swatridge and Fred Hoyle
- Solaris by Stanisław Lem
- The Invicible by Stanisław Lem
Love this conversation! ❤️
On my way to uni. Same path every day. But that morning I woke up (I am lucid dreamer) with a strong memory of somebody from my distant past whom I know very well (I am a single child who enjoyed imaginative friend company).
One by one I excluded my childhood friends who didn't match the memory in this or that detail.
I was puzzled: Who else am I missing?
Until it hit me: I was trying to remember myself.
like you looked at yourself from the eyes of the imaginative friend? so that you would've been both yourself & the imaginative friend? I'm struggling a bit to understand the remembering yourself bit. I'm trying to think for myself, but there's really a lack of memory for, not like I wasn't conscious in the past, but I just dont remember a lot about being a kid
Thank you kindly.
Interview Douglas Hofstadter or Demis Hassabis, please!!
Yes please!!!
Regarding the black hole simulation argument.. Airplane "simulates" birds and actually flies. Robotic animal "simulates" both a dog and a human hand. Walks around, opens doors and grabs beer cans. There has to be a distinction between a purely virtual simulation and functional replication. In case of consciousness we won't be able to tell as long as we can't define/detect/describe consciousness in general without referencing our own subjective experience. ..
And let's not forget the entire conscious experience as we perceive it is not actually the "real thing" but a virtuality "simulated" in the brain.
You're talking about outwards behavior rather than internal experience. An airplane can fly but it doesn't have any of the internal experience of a bird whose consciousness is stimulated to fly when it sees a tasty worm or an oncoming car or hears a mating call.
The thing is, simulated black hole has simulated gravity... seems pretty obvious. So we have causal powers in our tiniverse, and so on
Simulates or emulates? Simulation is a copy of the system, by means of a conceptual model, emulation is a functional equivalent of the system. You are not flying when playing flight simulator x, but an airplane does fly as birds do.
And as for our conscious experience, our brains only simulate it in sleep, when we wake it generates a coherent stream, negotiated by our experiences. Thus two people can see differently looking at the same thing. However, the underlying principles remain the same, with the exceptions of physiologically aberrant cases.
@@jeremycripe934 There is no internal experience (or external) because experience is an abstract notion thus without material existence or location. Are you perhaps referring to the substrate?
You assume a bird is conscious but can't know that for a fact (and when Thomas Nagel assumes a bat is conscious he makes the same mistake).
Bat or bird, it's unlikely they are what we mean by conscious.
They have no language, no metaphors, no culture and no civilization to navigate.
What need have they to be conscious?
Do we think that instinct is a kind of conscious?
A flying robot could do what they do.
No insult to birds or bats intended.
And we eat them.
Terrible to be eaten conscious.
There are a couple of applied scientist I would really like to see/listen interviewed by you. Some of them like to stay outside of public view, but your profile and track record of pleasing conversations might convince them:
- Edward Thorpe
- Margaret Hamilton
- Jim Simons
Keep up th egood work!
awesome knowledgeable talk.
You deserve more views, a lot more
Dark matter is lost socks. With all the intelligence in this conversation, that's the insight I'm taking away.
Christof is making very definitive statements about machine intelligence ‘never’ being conscious without ever giving a mechanistic explanation of what consciousness is and why we have it. Frustrating.
5:17 "What is consciousness?". Koch answers this question.
@@siriusleigh24 "Experience" and "it feels like something" is not an explanation. It's just a description, which is old and obvious and entails no new insights. I was looking for something like the 'Attention Schema Theory' of consciousness, a specific mechanism of *how* consciousness arises. If you don't understand the *mechanism*, how can you make any statements about it?
This interview really reminded me of John Vervaeke's series on consciousness. It would be very interesting to see you interview him! He works at the University of Toronto, not sure if you or he can make the trip, but a Skype call would suffice my thirsty mind. Best regards
Blessings for All.
💭
When I think about a rainstorm in my head, it also doesn't get wet
And when a character gets rained on in a simulation, he actually does get wet in the simulation.
@@TanzanianRoots exactly.
beautiful explanation of Consciousness
Many many thanks Lex!
Consciousness is an epiphenomenon. A meta-analysis of our world model inside our brain.
Well said. Along that train of thought, I would modify the definition given by Christof to be awareness of perceived experiences.
Thanks for uploading as always Lex, this content is fantastic. I'm very interested in the point about a complete, ideal, perfect simulation of the human brain NOT being conscious. Stepping back (nearly as far as possible) isn't consciousness a function of the arrangement of the atoms in this finite volume we call a skull? It't not in the air, it's not stored in a device we keep safe at home, surely our consciousness - whatever it is - exists (however it exists etc) inside our heads. By extension, wouldn't a perfect simulation of a human brain, complete with artificial neurons that interact just like those in a human brain, also experience consciousness. Isn't it an emergent property of the interactions between neurons? If not, in the physical world that we live in, what could it be? Thanks again Lex!
consciousness is fundamental and not caused by the brain, as demonstrated by quantum physics. particles - which the brain is composed of - don't even exist before conscious observation. look up the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment for evidence of that. the brain accompanies the working of fundamental consciousness, but does not create it, in the same way a CD encodes the music, but isn't the music, or a TV set receives a broadcast, but isn't the broadcast.
But we live in a physical world? How can it not be caused by the brain? I'm still amazed by this idea!
we don't live in a physical world, we live in a virtual reality, as many scientists are now coming to say, that's computed by consciousness/spirit/god. there's no real objective things in real space-time, it's an experience in consciousness made of consciousness, which is created by conscious observation, as shown by quantum physics.
since you are consciousness, your experience of the world is actually you, modulated according to information you receive every planck time from the consciousness server, like the movie playing in a cinema is modulated light according to information, the film reel.
the brain is an image/graphical representation of information processing going on in consciousness, like a video game is an image of information processing going on in the computer's cpu.
you may wish to check out the simulation hypothesis and tom campbell on this :)
I interpret what he is saying as the follow: The lack of casual power comes from the fact that it would be a simulation done by software on top of silicon gates, on the other hand if it is done with artificial neurons in which matter interacts just like in our brains then its level of integrated information would mean consciousness. The Integrated Information Theory predicts very low level of integrated information on silicon gates arrangements, just like it predicts low level of integrated information on the Cerebellum (contrasting well with real life where the Cerebellum despite having almost %80 of all neurons doesn't seem to contribute much to consciousness experience)
So, if in your experiment matter interacts just like in our brain is not really a simulation, it is the actual thing.
Like in the example of the simulation of the black hole, the computer does not create similar forces in the world because matter is not interacting like in a real black hole. I don't know if I made myself clear because English is no my first language.
Agi - empathetic response
Hypothalamus - pleasure
Buddha - minimize suffering
Feature or bug?
Thanks for doing this Lex, you are a great interviewer! I love this format. To really explore human consciousness it is useful to have (subjective) experience with non-ordinary states. I highly recommend checking out the book Stealing Fire and trying some of the techniques/technologies contained within e.g. mindfulness meditation, sensory deprivation, holotropic breathwork, psychedelics, and brainwave entrainment.
Thanks for sharing this.
I wish to hear Slavoj Zizek on your podcast. Please thanks.
I found about you a few days ago when I saw the Whitney Cummings podcast. Having just finished my studies in IT, like a lot of people my age, I figured that I have no clue where I am and what I want to do. I want to know everything and yet I don't know what but I do know that I don't know anything which made me tap in one place. You pushed my back a bit with these podcasts and considering the lack of motivation and the mental state that I was before I found this it seems that you have kind of pushed me in a direction of what seems interesting to me and what I would like to know more about. I just wanted to thank you for that and I hope you know how much people appreciate what you do. So, yeah, thanks. I don't do emotional comments often and English is my second language so sorry about possible mistakes.
So fucking cool. Watched it all. Enjoyed every second.
It will be nice to "cut" (put pointers on the different subjects) the old episodes like the new ones.
At 50:14 he mentions a novel by Stanislaw Lem named "the victorious". I looked for it but didn't find such a novel. I think he is referring to the novel "the invincible". Can anyone confirm, please? thanks.
Did you find and read it?
Yes, English name is The Invincible.
This guy is very good and quite passionate about his work too. Very interesting!
I disagree with him about the simulated brain not having consciousness. If conciseness is about information processing, why should the embodiment of the conscious agent matter?
"The computer isn't wet"
"Does the computer ~feel~ wet?"
I can have an amazing dream that feels even more real or emotional than waking life without any of those experiences being stimulated by my physical body interacting with my environment. Does that mean my sleeping consciousness isn't actually conscious? Or not happening? I experience it and yet from an outsider perspective I'm not physically flying or having an OOBE or being haunted by tornados.
I agree with you. Although the digital computer is simulating another physical system, it itself is still a physical system. I don't believe/disbelieve that it would be conscious or not but it seems silly to assume not.
The simulating gravity analogy doesn't work either, as in that instance you are only simulating physical relationships / maths, but when 'simulating' consciousness, you are actually setting up a self-organising physical system, so its sort of like you are setting up a physical brain, just in a very abstract way.
That's a really great response. So on one level I would agree that consciousness is different and special from physical systems. Looking at Integrated Information Theory it suggests that sufficiently Integrated Systems experience consciousness. A blackhole or the phenomenon of wetness is an emergent property, I believe, but not one borne of a sufficiently integrated system to experience consciousness. So simulating either of the latter and saying it's equivalent to simulating a brain is a bad comparison. I think that's right?
I would like to get to another level but first to reestablish, the dreamer or simulating computer doesn't know that its physical body isn't wet or sucking in outsiders watching it's physical body when simulating wetness or gravity respectively. Yet it is still experiencing both as well as experiences that it is simulating within it's own consciousness or simulation. It may simulate bodies that can feel wet or being sucked in with gravity while telling itself that these are simply actors independent of itself. Just like in your dreams you may populate the landscape or stage with actors but still identity with a main character representing yourself in the dream.
Trying to make this simple; an Outside Observer watching a Computer Simulation or a Dreaming Person would say that their subject isn't really conscious because their extremely vivid experiences aren't effecting the observer. But they are effecting the subject. A deeper question is are they effecting the subjects of your subject's experience?
At 53:35 Dr.Koch talks about something which the c.captioning shows as "Klaus poem" which I am sure is wrong and it sounds to me like "Cloud storm". Later he talks about a neuronal reconstruction he is doing in the lab he calls, again according to captioning "crown of song"...(56:48) I listened many times but can't figure out what exactly he's saying. I'd love to learn more on the subject but Google hasn't helped because I am not sure what to ask. Would appreciate any clarification on this. Thank you.
What an amazing conversation
The best video I enjoyed during this course. In the future, how about inviting a philosopher to talk about such a topic?
55:31 claustrum
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claustrum
Thank you!!! I was rewinding over and over. All I could hear was Cloud Storm.
"Simulating consciousness is not the same as a conscious experience"
-Okay, let's define what it means to experience something - loosely:
1. Data from the environment can be processed and stored in the brain
2. The information that gets processed at a given time can be combined with prior knowledge to make inferences
What if machines are invented to experience something? Could they then be intelligent / conscious?
What you just defined is intelligence, not consciousnnes
Any book recommendations on life and consciousness , reality ?
You can look up Searle, Putnam, Chalmers also Oliver Sacks is interesting. these names focus on mind or mental states I can not think about a book about reality or life itself. Most interesting subject is consciousness if u ask me.
Marvelous subject, marvelous man! I stumbled onto the 18.06 open course a few years back; Professor Strang really opens the subject up to the average math fan. Thanks for interviewing him.
Dr. Courtney Hunt would be a guest you should consider
Love you Lex
Amazing interview, quite inspiring too !
Amazing Lex, thank you
That was excellent.