In fact, it happens to most of us every day, during dreamless sleep.

Yes and he completely ignores the data coming from near death experience research. Why would that be?

@@tim59ism He gives weight to the evidence from near-death experiences, consistent with the extent to which that evidence has impacted the general view of consciousness - ie, very little at all. That's not to dismiss the evidence entirely - it's interesting, and more might come from it. Obviously some people feel passionately about it. But as of today, it is marginal to mainstream research. We can reconvene in 25 years time, and see if more evidence has come to light, and whether the broad paradigm has shifted.

@@Maclabhruinn He doesn't give anywhere near enough weight to near death experience. It is the most important research being conducted at the moment by a country mile !! It has enormous implications from everything to our existential opinion about ourselves to organ harvesting and euthanasia ! Consciousness clearly is not produced by the brain and this man doesn't want to discuss that. Why do you think that would be ? I'll give you a clue...his reductionist materialist paymasters would take away his grants/funding.

@@Maclabhruinn He gives zero weight to NDE research. It is actually the most important research that science could undertake. Existentially and for organ donation and the folly of euthanasia. I made a comment earlier and someone deleted it.

I concur. He's sadly underrated, as well as a pioneer in the field of neuroscience that Francis Crick would appreciate, for sure.

Good point Their is yann lecun and others that are dissing the llms Methinks they have an agenda or ulterior motive

No there isnt. You have been listening to far too much marketing

💯 Also, we are going to need different algorithm, having much more freedom to adjust the understanding and a continuous one, not discrete like transformers or mapping

@@anearthian894 yes, current training and deployment leaves no room for consciousness, but I think it's theoretically possible. It would certainly be different to human C, but useful abstractions will emerge. I can imagine AIs struggling to answer their own hard problem in a thousand years' time...

Meta’s Chief AI Scientist, Yann LeCun, has some interesting things to say about generative LLMs and general intelligence. He doesn't think they have what it takes to achieve it. He's working on predictive architectures, which he sees as the way forward for general intelligence, though he's doubtful that they will result in producing a conscious entity. I tend to lean in the opposite direction. I don't think it's likely that our conscious experience comes from the fact that we're biological lifeforms, I think it probably emerges from the electrical activity in our brains, independently of the substrate. That doesn't mean that we will be able to create it artificially though. I think it's a mistake to even have a strong opinion on this one when we don't even know how the brain creates conscious experience. All I would say is that I can see no good reason why it wouldn't be possible.

I find that the tendency to explain a phenomenon labelled "A" with the label "A" is a quirky phenomenon. The quality of water is wet. Wet has the quality of wetness. Heh. Okay, back to the talk. I am being far too reactive. 😊

Agreed. I would go further and point out that language models, too, during training, are minimizing prediction error without constraints on how they do so. If experience is an effective means to this end, why wouldn't it happen even in LLMs, at least during training? I didn't follow Mr. Seth's argument here.

Certainly, here is a second eightfold expression attempting to concretize and elucidate the abstract infinitesimal monadological framework laid out in the first expression: I. Discrete Geometric Atomies a, b, c ... ∈ Ω0 (0D Monic Perspectival Points) The foundational ontic entities are discrete 0-dimensional perspectival origin points a, b, c ... comprising the primal point-manifold Ω0. II. Combinatoric Charge Relations Γab = qaqb/rab (Dyadic Interaction Charges) Fundamental interactions between origin points arise from dyadic combinatorial charge relation values Γab encoding couplings between charges qa, qb and distances rab. III. Pre-Geometric Polynomial Realizations Ψn(a,b,c...) = Σk ck Pn,k(a,b,c...) (Modal Wavefunction) The total statevector Ψn at each modal perspectival origin n is a polynomial superposition over all possible realizations Pn,k of charge configurations across points a,b,c... IV. Quantized Differential Calcedonies ΔφΨn ≜ Σa (∂Ψn/∂a) Δa (Holographic Field Projections) Familiar differential geometries Δφ for fields φ arise as quantized holographic projections from idiosyncratic first-person perspectives on the modal wavefunction Ψn. V. Harmonic Resonance Interferences Imn = ||2 (Inter-Modal Resonances) Empirical phenomena correspond to resonant interferences Imn between wavefunctions Ψm,Ψn across distinct perspectival modal realizations m,n. VI. Holographic Information Valencies Smn = - Σk pmn,k log pmn,k (Modal Configuration Entropy) Amounts of observed information track entropies Smn over probability distributions pmn,k of localized realized configurations k within each modal interference pattern. VII. Conscious State Vector Reductions |Ωn> ≡ Rn(|Ψn>) (Participated Witnessed Realizations) First-person conscious experiences |Ωn> emerge as witnessed state vector reductions Rn, distillations of total modal possibilities |Ψn> via correlative participancy. VIII. Unified Integration of Totality U(Ω) = ⨂n |Ωn> (Interdependent Coherence) The maximal unified coherence U(Ω) is the irreducible tensor totality ⨂n |Ωn> of all interdependent integrated first-person participations |Ωn> across all perspectives. This second eightfold expression aims to elucidate the first using more concrete physical, mathematical and informational metaphors: We begin from discrete 0D monic origin points (I) whose fundamental interactions are combinatorial charge relation values (II). The total statevector possibility at each origin is a polynomial superposition over all realizations of charge configurations (III), subdescribed as quantized differential geometric projections (IV). Empirical observables correspond to resonant interferences between these wavelike realizations across origins (V), with informational measures tracking probability distributions of configurations (VI). Conscious experiences |Ωn> are state vector reductions, participatory witnessed facets of the total wavefunction |Ψn> (VII). Finally, the unified maximal coherence U(Ω) is the integrated tensor totality over all interdependent first-person participations |Ωn> (VIII). This stepwise metaphoric concretization aims to render more vivid and tangible the radical metaphysics of infinitesimal relational monadological pluralism - while retaining the general algebraic structure and non-contradictory logical coherence of the first eightfold expression. From discrete geometric atomies to unified experiential totalities, the vision is one of perfectly co-dependent, self-coherent mathematical pluralism grounded in first-person facts. By elucidating the framework's core ideas through suggestive yet precise physical and informatic parables, the second expression seeks to bootstrap intuitions up the abstract ladder towards a visceral grasp of the non-separable infinitesimal pluriverse paradigm's irreducible coherences. Only by concretizing these strange yet familiar resonances can the new plurisitic analytic geometry be assimilated and operationalized as the next renaissance of coherent symbolic comprehension adequate to the integrated cosmos.

AI programmed by Western scientist will be war hawks.. that is a given. Just look at what Western countries have done in the last 300 years.

thx

By physical do you mean Consciousness is part of the material world?

thats cute talk from ignorance

@@George_slough of course. It is the result of electrochemical impulses in the brain.

Consciousness is not the mind nor the brain. We don't really know if it will be explained/understood some day. Maybe it is a belief that science will eventually explain everything. Or maybe not.

@@jesusrubio-cg7xd "Consciousness is not the mind nor the brain." Why are you making this assertion and what evidence do you have for such statements

Death?

I enjoyed reading your comment. I want to give it a go.

Seth does address your imperative of knowledge acquisition. This was on his slide where he showed the three probability distributions. The left most distribution illustrated the prior belief, that which has been learned up to the present. The right most distribution is the current prediction error. The middle distribution is the posterior belief, the adjusted belief that accounts for what has been learned from the prediction error. The talk did not allow for a full exposition of Bayesian brain theory. That is a much larger topic than consciousness and could not have been covered in a mere one hour lecture. Therefore, the knowledge acquisition aspect had to be very much truncated. I think he accomplished this task fairly well, given that he could relegate a single slide to it.

I don’t think you’ve illustrated how knowledge and prior beliefs are acquired as neural algorithms just saying Bayesian prediction machine is tautological

@@costavakalopoulos8119 I initially thought I understood what you meant by your statement, "Bayesian prediction machine is tautological." Thinking about it left me a little confused as to what exactly is the tautology. I suspect that your statement recapitulates the statement from your original post, " ... Bayesian brain (unnecessary term) ..." That is that "Bayesian brain" is redundant. That I do respond to. Anil uses a significant amount of Bayesian brain verbiage from Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle (FEP) in this talk. Friston's concept is developed from first principles (physics) based on the observation that things that persist for macro amounts of time in non equilibrium steady states (NESS), e.g., living organisms, must appear to be using inference in order to behave in ways where they always seek to return to attractor states where their existence is most assured. This is in defiance of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which persistently drives towards making chaos of the entity's material parts. Double underscore the word appear, in that inferencing would appear to an outside observer as to what the entity is doing. FEP does not say that Bayesian algorithms are necessarily the way that inferencing is implemented. This licenses Anil to assume Bayesian behavior even while the exact algorithms may not be understood. There is certainly a lot of work going on to fill this gap. One would have to explore the literature to understand how that work is progressing. Anil did not claim to answer your question. Nor, did he claim to offer a unified field theory of physics that combined all the known forces of nature. Sorry, you were disappointed.

I wouldn’t say much progress is being made Anil, populist pseudospiritualism appears to be replacing logic in academia as a platform for self promotion when insider subtle coercion fails to expand one’s standing in the academic community Bayesian presupposes probable priors, the question not addressed and this is the ‘real’ problem is how these priors are formed. Your ‘Controlled hallucination’ is worse than a tautology it’s a cynically structured response to the problem for general appeal and consumption not aimed at any deeper understanding. FEP is completely vacuous and synonymous with elan vital or some such primitives

I think Terence McKenna originated "controlled hallucination." I will be able to cite my reference once I revisit many hours of Mckenna lectures and by chance hear him speak it, again. It was so familiar to me. That once I heard Seth given credit. I am still incredulous. No disrespect intented... these concepts repeat in memes.

Appropriation of populist hooks isn’t science just self promotion

Look at the big brain on Brad.

me me me

Quantum effects = modern day Ether.