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Not just my intuition, but everyone's intuition is the most reliable source of information on this planet. We are programmed beings. Instincts tell us more about the outside world than our abstract thought does. Allowing that abstract thought led to a myriad of discoveries. Intuition has kept us alive and for that I think it is stronger than any other source of "evidenc

I know disembodied spirits exist through indirect observation and personal accounts. Probably even in the same methods ( although not the same context) as how physicists proof the existence of atoms. I think if people would open their minds and stop waiting for science to tell them when to jump they would see that there is more to this world than what we perceive through "evidence" and "facts". Not that I think science is bad, or wrong, or a waste, but there are some people who would eat rat poison if a scientist said it had antioxidants in it!

Some points to consider: 1. Whether or not a computer is created artificially by human beings has no relevance to whether it could be conscious. Some human genes have already been synthesized: no physical principle would prevent the eventual artificial creation of human chromosomes, which could become a baby through cloning and surrogate mothers. 2. Whether or not a computer is a tool has no relevance to whether it could be conscious. People have been used as tools for centuries. A rickshaw driver works as a motor and a front wheel drive. A cashier works as a dispenser or a vending machine. A flagger works as a traffic signal. 3. The very existence of God and the human soul is a matter of controversy. Notwithstanding fake mediums and the unending sophistries of religious apologists, there is no empirical evidence for the existence of any disembodied spirit. What is more, even if we grant the existence of disembodied spirits, we would still have nothing but arbitrary and baseless religious proclamations to support the contention that God would never ensoul a sufficiently sophisticated computer.

@Knowledge Hoarder good job. Keep going man. ?

Porn specifically is extremely unhealthy and this has been proven recently. of course there is a distinction between what kind of porn you watch (vanilla stuff vs fucked up shit) and how often do you watch Yada Yada Yada.. The issue I see is it's so easy to become an addiction. Because it's extremely pleasant unlike video games or fast food. Especially for young boys with you know with an explosion of hormones during puberty age. the thing is.. exposure to porn results in dopamine spikes in the brains of the porn-users.. However.. after being exposed to many graphic images.. the brain becomes de-sensitised and unable to be satisfied by ordinary sexual encounters. now what is needed is sexually extreme experiences and hardcore pornography to become sexually aroused. You get how this works? What wasn't so popular and known untill recently as I mentioned in OP that watching porn causes physical damage in the brain.. Researchers found less grey matter in the brains of men who watched large amounts of sexually explicit material relative to those who watch it casually or were not exposed to it at all. So I am actually building a case here that porn is harmful and should be avoided. Watch video below for more information..

I am satisfied that, if civilization does not break down beforehand, people will manufacture artificial analogues to the human brain such that the standard methodological arguments for the existence of other minds will apply to them in the same way that they apply to human beings. However, as others have pointed out, this is not the same as asking whether digital computers *as we know them* might one day become sophisticated enough to be not only intelligent, but conscious, and even ensouled. So far, most of the evidence presented against this possibility on this thread is irrelevant to the question

No. I see fapping and porn with a negative attitude now that I don't even want to do it any more. It's so toxic and destructive of a habit. At least thats how I personally see it.

Good job

What consistes of consciousness, as to say that a human is such, one would have to understand what consciousness is. NOTE: Most people walk around asleep, unaware. The Zen Master Buddha when asked what is he, if he is not an angel or a God, He said he was "Awake" There for one must be awakened to the true reality of the world befor one can say they are conscious. Our thoughts are only HOUSED in the neron, the Thought is not the neron, nor is the wine the bottle..see. The Thought is actually a 'spark' or electricity in the brain, it travels along nerons from Cell to Cell..The Neron is not a cell, but a multi celled structure that connects the brain cells together, they are the pathways which thought travels down.. NOTE: Under all the research done, there has never been found any 'person' or 'observer' in the brain. No one can find the person with in. Nerons like braincells are made of atoms you are right, and an atom is basicly a necules that is serounded by a cloud of photons, photons that pop in and out of existand. the bubble they form is empty, as are they, the Neclus they rotate around also is basicly hollow and pops in and out of existence..so as you see the thought is not there, because Electricity is not made up of atoms, it runs through them, they like the nerons are nothing but the pathway for the thought, which in turn is nothing, is not even there, like the non existance observer in the mind.

think it already is conscious because the materials it is made of are conscious (atoms ). The way I see it, everything in the universe knows that it exists and that other things exist around it. Think about this: 1. Human beings are conscious 2. What makes us conscious is our brain 3. What makes us conscious is our thoughts, which basically reside in the brain 4. Our thoughts are held in neurons 5. Neurons are living ( they are cells, cells are living biological units) 6. Neurons are made of atoms 7. If the neurons are made of atoms and the neurons are alive, then I believe that it is because all of the neuron's atoms are alive as well. That's basically my opinion

January clean.

I agree. I think only a life form can have consciousness because consciousness influences will,and only life can use free will , an object does not have free will, in order to give a computer free will you have to give it life and then it kills the definition of a computer definition of a computer Also called processor. an electronic device designed to accept data, perform prescribed mathematical and logical operations at high speed, and display the results of these operations.

Love that. Computers are made by humans, or by other computers than at some point were made by humans. We can imput feelings into our computers and they can seem as if they read our minds. Of course, it's because a human programmed them to do so. I think computers do not breath, therefore they have no soul. A conscious seems possible if they are programmed to behave like a human.

people are "conscious" so are plants, other animals, a lot of people think consciousness is being able to think, our thinking nature is just that, it's just different, not necessarily better or clearer or more advanced, it's just how we operate consciousness, for a lot of people, is free will, and in that absurd idea, it's the ability to choose and see our decisions being carried out but blah blah blah, i think i'm rambling We need to define consciousness first.

Conscious or not, we are probably not far from a point whereby machines acquire so compellingly accurate impressions of consciousness that we will find ourselves assuming it to be the case, be it truly consciousness or otherwise.

If you are talking about computers taking over us humans or gaining power over us, I guess you could put it in the way that we are overly reliant on computers to the point of the subsequent inability of functioning without computers. That is highly possible. Bleh, sometimes, technology could be a pain in the ***

@Tim R what's your argument? Why can't an AI develop consciousness?

consciousness is nothing more than a vast collection of inputs and outputs, we are manifestations of our environments a computer can be conscious of course, if it has enough power

Well, in my humble opinion, I do not foresee computers or machinery to gain their own consciousness. Technology is ultimately created and deliberately programmed by us - mankind, there are limitations in computers of course. They will never be violatile or unpredictable like human nature. They will just accord to the programmed pathways to react.

No.

Quantum computers are just as schizophrenic as our minds are. With some proper modeling and "raising" them to recognize commonality in anomolies that occur by comparison to past stored memory data, then there may be a possibility that these types of computers could take on human stylistic consciousness which believes it thinks independently and can know what it doesn't

@Breakingthewall you can have consciousness without a sense of self. But you cannot have a sense of self without consciousness.

@LastThursday @Nahm Some people have honestly debated whether computers have souls, but I don't think this can be possible. A computer is a machine that is constructed from all sorts of hardware, and it is certainly an amazing invention, but I don't think it has the capacity to think and feel the way a human does. It is, after all, a product of technology, and therefore, it cannot reason and feel like a human being does. That's not to say that computers can't accomplish great things. Like I said before, it is a marvelous invention, but it is an impersonal one. It spits out information, but not does not care about how we respond to that information.

I do not know. Maybe simply ask it if it's conscious. Idk how do you know that anyone is conscious?

That's an interesting question. I think the answer is having Internal inner subjective experience like seeing and hearing etc what's called qualia.