[southernplaces7]

Since we don't yet have anything remotely like AGI and at the same time, don't even really know how the brain works or what consciousness is aside from being aware that we feel it, you and nobody else really know if our path to consciousness is just one of many. For all we know it might be the only one. There could be some very big unknown unknowns in those waters.

[glenstein]

I would say I think those are all pretty good observations, all perfectly true and I think AGI is more plausible than it's ever been in light of what we've demonstrated via LLMs. Our understanding really is that limited but I don't take it to be a counterpoint to the prospect of AGI.

[Traubenfuchs]

> what consciousness is

Probably an unavoidable property that emerges from the sheer and perverse complexity of the human brain, its 100 billion connections and the unimaginable amount of interactions between them, modulated by neurotransmitters + their reuptake, length, amount, location, quality and condition of pre/post-synaptic receptors, axons and other nano structures in the brain...

Comparing this disgusting moist, fleshy and electric masterpiece of nature with something primitive like a """neuronal""" network or LLM was always ridiculous.

[Windchaser]

> Probably an unavoidable property that emerges from the sheer and perverse complexity of the human brain

I don't think complexity alone leads to consciousness. Rather, consciousness is the mechanism by which information is integrated in a relatively resource-cheap fashion: dump all this info into a shared mental workspace, add some reflective awareness of that info/workspace, and bam, you can both process the information in an integrated way, and you're also now aware of it all. The higher-level information processing and the awareness go hand-in-hand.

There're good reasons why most of the leading theories of consciousness focus on information integration. (Baars' Global Workspace Theory, Graziano's Attention Schema Theory, Tononi's Integrated Information Theory, etc.)

[goatlover]

I don't see how the sensations of color, sound, etc come out of information integration. Sensory experience along with internal sensations form the hard problem of consciousness.

[LinuxAmbulance]

> Probably an unavoidable property that emerges from the sheer and perverse complexity of the human brain

Complexity alone causing consciousness, much like an infinite amount of monkeys coming up with Shakespeare's complete works, is a far flung pipe dream.

The hardware doesn't guarantee the software, but the software can't exist without the appropriate hardware is probably a better way to look at it.

There's so much life out there that survives just fine without consciousness that it seems like a very narrow stroke of luck that it occurred at all.