Blindsight dismantles a lot of noble myths about what it means to be human and human exceptionalism. The things you read and see in all kinds of stories. It makes you appreciate how easy and unconscious it is to settle for comfortable lies over truth about how smart or great you are. I think this is what freaks a lot of people out about whether AI is conscious, actually.
I think the hope comes in if you embrace the implications for yourself, because to be otherwise is to be unconscious.
We're unconscious of how unconscious we are?, and it's good to… what's the term, suffer gladly and give gladly? To own one's unconsciousness and raise it, and expect and see others' unconscious going about major things in life - to see it coldly as well as warmly.
I find this is more accurate and safer than assuming consciousness in everyone, and it also reveals so clearly people who do cast that light; and see.
It's less desolate! I promise! Sounds like it's worse but it's not. That's the tricky-get-into-words part, you know?
I came to my conclusions on this mostly through my own studies on Illusions and other studies on consciousness. Knowing basic facts of how we see, and all the ways that our sight, touch and hearing really, fail us. Seeing the studies of how people who have their hemispheres separated can have parts of their body act independently of each other really blew my mind when I first learned about it.
Too many people believe that they themselves are sitting in a box and looking out through windows when really we're in a dark room reading a bunch of instruments and guessing what's out there. Plato's Cave is real and we are, all of us, already inside it.
I think free will is possible but it requires a level of training and introspection and practice that most people find unpleasant, so most people revert to autopilot.
Blindsight poses the question, in essence, "What if consciousness is a competitive disadvantage, in which case non-consciousness would be Better™?"
I can't make a conclusive case one way or the other w/r/t the premise—it may perhaps be the case that consciousness is a competitive disadvantage. I don't know how we could test that without something to compare ourselves against (which is why the book resorts to introducing vampires and aliens—this question is untestable otherwise). But the conclusion, that non-consciousness is somehow "Better™," falls absolutely flat for me. "Better™" is a value judgement. Values and Judgements are both features of consciousness. Without consciousness, there is no such thing as "better" or "worse", there is only "is" and "is not."
So: speaking as a conscious being (you'll have to take my word for that), I'm quite comfortable saying that I like being conscious. And with unconscious living organisms—like, I don't know, coral reefs or whatever?—it's not so much that they like being unconscious as that they don't "like" anything at all.
So I think I'm quite comfortable continuing on being a "competitively disadvantaged" thing (supposing that's even the case, which it just as plausibly is not), that is at least able to conceive of questions like this one and make value assessments of its own, rather than despair over the alleged competitive disadvantage inherent in the fact that I experience myself and the world.
A computer can beat me at chess, sure, but it cannot care that it has done so.
The terms "value" and "judgement" have a broad semantic range. I mean to use them here in a sense that presupposes an exercise of subjective preference.
Machines, amoebas, programs, etc. can make choices, yes, and they can weigh alternatives, sometimes by assigning scores (aka "values") to differing outcomes. When I say that "Making value judgements is something that, by definition, conscious beings do and that non-conscious beings do not do," I'm trying to establish a narrower, more restricted definition than the broadest possible meaning of "value" or "judge."
So it's not that I "know" that values and judgements have anything to do with being conscious; I'm using these terms in such a way that by definition they do, because that's the set of things I want to talk about. The question then is not whether I'm right or wrong yet, but rather once we restrict the set of all things that could be called a "value" or a "judgement" to only the ones that I'm trying to make qualified assertions about, whether that set is empty (in which case everything I'm saying still evaluates to True, but vacuously and therefore uselessly so!).
I'm arguing this way because I think that narrower set a) exists and b) is relevant to the argument I'm making.
> Is the dog conscious?
I think dogs are unquestionably sentient (i.e. they are able to detect and respond to outside stimuli), and seem to display, in some minimal degree, at least an approximation of sapience (i.e. they are able to understand themselves and the world around them; hold and express preferences; form relationships and make decisions based on them).
I don't have a way to test whether a dog is conscious or not, and the dog has no means of trying to persuade me one way or the other; so I have to remain frustratingly agnostic on that point (frustrating to myself as much as I'm sure to you).
Did you mean dogs don't have values and judgements? I suspect they do, and those might be much more different than dog consciousness vs human. And one judgement might be "human gone; i do wtf i WANT bro" or, you know, something vaguely like that.
(kidding!
It's oversold, or beautiful artistic expression of something. Bleak, yes; Stark; Also beautiful.
The thing it expresses is… a thing. We're not at all as conscious as… we think?, as we portray ourselves?, to others and/or ourselves? And it's magical to view people as… partially unconscious to a significant degree while also loving them and with respect.)
I'd say the case it was making has only become more relevant with the chatbot age.
Exactly. The central thesis, consciousness not being necessary for intelligence, is very relevant today.
Of course, the existential horror background in the book was also quite well done.