Mason Riggle

This is one of those things that’s so obvious it’s hard to see sometimes. My wife has dealt with more trauma in her life, at all stages, than most. She has found ways and fought to overcome so many of the struggles in her life that have resulted from it. One of her favorite things to remind me when I am struggling, is to embrace the hurt, recognize it, learn from it, grow from it, find out what it’s teaching you, so you don’t have to continue to go through it.. just some words for thought.

Ego is like a whirlpool. It comes and goes, grows and shrinks and changes shapes, and sometimes disappears altogether. But recognize that the whirlpool can’t creat itself, change itself, or eliminate itself.. it just is itself if and when it is.. The reality is, there is no whirlpool at at.. only whatever the river is doing.. the trap is when the whirlpool is shaped in such a way that it produces the thought, ‘I am separate from the river and I do things; I am the doer of whats being done’.

LoA requires a ‘me’ who ‘does things’ that exists separately from ‘what is occurring’, and there isn’t one. nothing to do and no one to it.

@RMQualtrough

@trenton have you ever noticed that are always already doing exactly what you truly desire to? It’s already effortless. I know I am. If there was something I’d really prefer to be doing over this right now, I’d be doing it.. but apparently I’ve decided this is it, right now. This is true for ‘the entire Universe’ as well.. it simply moves to ‘preferred states of being’. A rock that is up prefers to be down. I prefer to be warm, I put on a sweater, it gets too hot for my preference , I take it off.. this is happening.. and you never have to try to make it happen.

@gettoefl ?

@Carl-Richard i get that we can have degrees of certainty. I have no idea if my car is in my garage right now.. but that ‘seems more likely’ than a dragon being in my garage, because I’ve never had the experience of a dragon being in my garage. so while we’re talking about plausibility.. notice that you are 100% sure of your own experience occurring, and less than 100% sure that other experiences occur beyond your own. You are making the ‘content of your experience’ (which you could be mistaken about) your foundation.. and dismissing what you’re sure of. ^this is exactly what it’s like to be lost in a dream… so convinced by the contents of the dream, that you have forgotten you’re dreaming it all…. but as long as I’m lost in the dream, it doesn’t matter to me if the characters in my dreams are just that, you see? So, if and when, within the context of this dream, there comes a time when we can no longer tell if AI ‘really has consciousness’ or just ‘seems like it does’, it makes sense to behave as if they do.. Why don’t you kill your neighbor? You don’t know for sure there’s ‘anyone home’ inside his head.. but since it ‘seems like he does’.. that’s good enough reason for you to behave as if he does. The question is, will we reach a point where we really can’t tell? It seems we’re close, if not there already. This is why the Turing test makes sense. It doesn’t really ‘prove’ an AI has ‘consciousness’, nothing ever could.. it’s an indicator that we’ve reached a point where certainty doesn’t matter.. not being able to tell the difference is good enough.

@Carl-Richard doesn’t matter.. if it was an alien, then that was the most probable. The point is, we can be mistaken. We’ll never know for sure if [anyone or anything] has an inner experience, or if it just seems like it, but since we can’t tell for sure, we can say, ‘good enough’. I don’t know if you have an inner experience or not, but it seems to like you do, so… good enough.

"I" can only think anything at all when there exists the delusion that there's a 'me'.. otherwise there is just 'what the entire Universe is doing'. Tell me.. when you see an apple.. did the branch grow that apple, or did the whole tree grow it? You think you're a branch who grows apples.. You're actually a whole tree that thinks it's just a branch.

@gettoefl any time there is imagined separation (a me and a that which is not me), there is ego.

If something happens that causes there no longer to be a me.. how will "I" do anything at all? What needs a new word to describe itself? The lack of whirlpool?

@gettoefl there really isn't such a thing as 'an ego'... 'ego' is what we call the phenomena of 'pretending to be separate'. If you were identical to EVERYTHING.. how would you know it? What would you compare yourself against to say.. I'm this, not that? Ego is required for Everything/Nothing to SEEM LIKE Something. When my ego goes.. so shall I.. but the place I go will be EVERYWHERE. There ceases to be a 'me' and 'that which is not me'..

@SourceCodo should a whilrpool become shaped in such a way as to produce thoughts, rather than bubbles, on thought that might bubble up is, 'I'm a whirlpool, separate from the stream, that does things, like swirl the water around'.. it would be the entire universe having that delusion.

@gettoefl both are true at the same time. Consider it this way.. If one of my fingers suddenly decided it was 'separate' from 'my hand'.. it would still be 'my hand'.. but it would be this 'imaginary separation' that is 'ego'.. this 'ego' is required for '1 finger' to have an identity (be separate from the rest of the hand).. so if you ask my finger if it thinks it's a finger or a hand, the finger will reply 'I'm a finger, separate from the rest of the fingers'.. but if my finger suddenly realizes it's actually only 'pretending to be separate' to recognize itself, it might recognize itself as the whole hand, and of course, at this point.. it's no longer 'the finger' that's doing the recognizing (now the perspective becomes that of the whole hand).. it's just the hand... it never was a 'separate finger' to begin with.

@SourceCodo it's impossible for 'me' to lose 'my identity' (I would have to become something other than myself, which is a contradiction in terms).. and if I did, who would be left to know it? Not me.

@gettoefl there is no 'me'.. There's Me (everything) and there's Ego (pretending to be not that). There is what I am, God, and what I appear to be (seem to be, pretend to be, imagine myself to be, manifest as, etc), Not God

@SourceCodo My ego rates itself a solid 10. Pretending to know things is the name of the game.

@Carl-Richard I'm not looking for anything.. Just saying that we can not answer the question - Is artificial intelligence conscious? What we CAN do.. is admit that we can't say, and also admit that as long as we can not tell whether or not something 'really is conscious or not'.. then it doesn't matter which it is. We use this same standard ALL THE TIME. You can't say for sure whether or not I'm actually conscious, or merely seem to be conscious to you (from your inferences), but since you can't tell which it is.. this is good enough for you to say 'good enough'.

@Carl-Richard We will never 'know for sure' whether or not an AI 'has some inner experience' or not. What we can do, is admit that when we can no longer tell the difference between 'a conscious being' and 'an unconscious being who behaves indistinguishably from one which is conscious', then there is 'effectively' no difference.

I have no idea what this means. What I mean is, that if I doubt that my car is in my garage, I can go look to see for myself. What method will you use to 'look for something else's personal inner experience'? What would 'verify' someone else's 'inner experience' for you?

That's just how things are being. I'm not talking about 'doing nothing' (which isn't a thing).. I'm talking about the recognition that I'm already doing the only thing I can, which is 'being myself'.. something that takes 0 effort to do, and also something I can't stop doing. It's literally the only thing I do.

Just be.. it's the only thing you're ever doing anyhow, and you're not even 'doing' that.. you can't stop.

exactly. Ever been around a blackout drunk person who has no recollection of their actions from the previous night? How is it that they had no conscious experience, but for the people around them, that person appeared to be conscious? You can talk to them, get responses (however garbled).. yet 'they are 'unaware' of this going on, because they don't form the memories. Do we consider that person 'conscious' at that time, or no?

I AM! <-- this much is absolute and undeniable. I am [insert relative qualifier/imaginary limit] <-- this is how I pretend to be separate from myself (delude myself via the mechanism of relativity [duality]) to describe myself to myself, so that I might 'know myself' (have the imaginary experience of 'being something').

@Carl-Richard Do you think dogs have 'a private inner experience'? What about fish? What about ants? What about starfish? Is there 'something it's like to be a starfish'? How about a tardigrade? A fishes' 'subjective experience' is surely nothing like mine or yours.. do you think a fish 'understands' what it's doing when it goes after the worm on the hook, or is it just experiencing that without any 'understanding' of it, just responding to stimuli, following it's internal 'coding'?? It's clear a fish doesn't understand (fish can't read, as far as I can tell) the same way you and I do.. but does this mean the fish isn't 'intelligent' or doesn't 'have consciousness'?