Raw LLM Responses

AI will never be conscious. It will become an increasingly convincing simulation of consciousness. In fact, already a lot of people superstitiously seem to believe AI is conscious. To argue that AI is conscious makes no more sense than arguing that a mouse trap is conscious because, after all, it "knows" when to shut on a mouse. But because people cannot see the millions of tiny "mouse traps" of which AI is composed, and see only an output, people project consciousness into AI, as primitive peoples used to project consciousness into idols and other inanimate things. But today people often feel compelled to the notion that consciousness could arise from computer circuits, because after all, or so people believe, consciousness arises from the physical brain. But consciousness arising from the physical brain is not something that anyone has ever directly observed -- no one has actually ever SEEN that. And many acknowledge that consciousness is not something you can SEE with your eyes. That's part of why they call the emergence of consciousness from the brain the "hard problem" of consciousness. But in fact it is not the "hard" problem. It is the impossible problem. And here's why: Something fundamentally, inherently invisible and non-physical cannot be created by something visible and physical. For example, you will never, if you are looking at someone's brain, experience what that brain's owner experiences as thoughts. A brain surgeon will never, in cutting open a brain, be suddenly experiencing the ideas of the patient. Those ideas are not visible things like the brain cells into which the surgeon cuts, nor will ideas ever start pouring out of some tissue the surgeon cuts open, because ideas are not like some physical substance in the brain. The fact that mental functions disappear if a part of the brain is damaged does not show that the brain creates thoughts, any more than a radio creates the music you hear through it, even though if you damage the radio, you will no longer hear that music. The music was created by artists many miles away, and at another time. That is not to say that the brain is exactly like a radio, though. The brain is an expression of mind, not a mere machine or tool of mind. But as an expression of mind, the brain does not create mind. The brain is more like a condensate of mind, a condensate developed over eons of evolution (but not purely physical Darwinian evolution). The brain is a condensate of mind and enables mind to reflect itself, take hold of itself as a non-physical power within the physical world. To say that the brain is produced by incorporeal mind is much truer than to say that mind is produced by the physical brain. Not just the brain, but all matter is a condensate of immaterial realities, though the nature of various "condensates" is extremely varied. A pile of sand is not a brain. Nevertheless, the material universe gradually formed and condensed out of a non-material realm over multitudes of eons of evolution. How minerals and brains and other material things have different relationships to their immaterial origins is a question for another comment, as this one is far too long already. But something like choruses and hierarchies of non-physical creative beings are involved. In any case, to see all this, it is necessary to develop the ability to experience the non-physical at a deeper level than ordinary consciousness. Ordinary abstract thought does not suffice, though it can help in some respects. Thinking must develop the power to descend into the kind of consciousness where we are usually asleep. To remain conscious while the body is in deep sleep, thinking consciousness must develop within itself a force much stronger than that of ordinary awareness. And there, in the realms normally of deep sleep, thinking can under certain conditions become something different, something more alive, more metamorphic, more real, and more concrete, than the abstract thought of ordinary consciousness. The kind of thinking that can maintain itself in those deeper or higher states of awareness can convey and advance new knowledge in detail of the world, but at more than one level. To mess with this sort of thing without continually working to strengthen the health and ethics of one's life is dangerous, however.