WEBVTT - From the Vault: Machine Consciousness and P-Zombies 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.000 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:11.280 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:13.280 Time to go into the vault for a classic episode 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:15.200 of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one originally aired 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:19.400 April twelve, and this one was a lot of fun. 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:21.560 This is where we addressed the question of how could 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:24.160 you tell if a machine was conscious. We've asked the 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:27.000 question a lot of times, could a machine be conscious? 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:30.480 We don't know the answer to that, but yeah, seldom 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.239 do you ask the question if it was conscious, how 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:34.880 would you know it? How would you know it wasn't 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:39.280 just pretending like a p zombie? Right? In this episode, 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:43.159 we also looked at the classical thought experiment, the philosophical zombie. 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:50.040 So we hope you enjoyed this Vault episode. Welcome to 0:00:50.360 --> 0:01:00.000 Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:01.680 welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:04.400 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:08.319 be exploring a question about artificial intelligence. So I want 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:10.720 to start off by telling a story to put us 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.679 in a scenario, give us something to contemplate. So I 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.679 want you to imagine that you are a low level 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:22.560 assistant or like an intern at a Google artificial intelligence lab, 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:25.800 and the main researcher you've been working for is named 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:30.360 Dr Stratton, and she develops a I Chat modules to 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:34.160 help refine the next generation of digital assistance on Google 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:37.759 mobile devices, and she says what she wants is for 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:40.360 the Google Phone of the future to do more than 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:43.040 just transcribe search terms, so you don't just say, hey, 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:47.520 search for old Dorito's logo, but that you can actually 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:53.040 have have a semantic understanding based conversation with the digital assistant, 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:57.200 and it will help you solve problems conversationally. So ideally 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:00.600 you'll be able to say, hey, phone, have a flat 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:02.720 tire and I don't know what to do, and the 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:05.440 assistant will be able to scan both the web and 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:08.560 your personal data, figure out what your options are and 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:10.840 talk through them with you. So it might say, do 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:13.839 you have a spare tire in the trunk? If so, 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:16.720 here's where you can probably find it, and I can 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:19.400 talk you through replacing the flat one step at a time. 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:22.320 If you don't have a spare, you could call your 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:26.320 frequent contact Mary, who is currently checked in less than 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:29.160 a mile away and she could help you. I can 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.880 also contact the following towing services. Looks like this one 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:37.000 is the closest with an acceptable star rating and so forth. Anyway, 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:40.280 so you're working on this program with Dr Stratton, and 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:43.480 the most recent version is being trained based on powerful 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:47.440 neural net style machine learning algorithms based on this huge 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:52.160 corpus of recorded conversations available on the Internet, and the 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:55.440 program is still in its infancy, and it's mostly hilarious 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.080 at this point. Sometimes it gets the advice way off. 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:00.760 If you're trying to change a time, ire might tell 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:03.440 you to go to a grocery store and buy some crackers. 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.360 Sometimes it responds to problems by telling you to pray. 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:10.600 It's just not ready yet. And the latest iteration of 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:14.680 the program, version nine point one, is at this point 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:18.080 redundantly stored across multiple machines, so you've got copies of 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:20.200 it all over the place. And at the end of 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:22.480 one work day, after playing around with nine point one 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.320 for a few minutes, the machine begins running very slowly 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:29.080 and behaving oddly, so Dr Stratton asks you to wipe 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:32.600 the machine. The program architecture, like we said, is mirrord elsewhere, 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:34.920 so it's not worth trying to figure out what's wrong 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:37.360 with this version. You just got to clean the machine 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:39.920 off use it for something else. You say okay, and 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:42.960 she leaves, so you go to format the machine, and 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:45.920 right before you're about to start, you mutter, guess this 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:50.200 is goodbye. Then nine point one speaks very clearly, using 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:55.040 your name and says please don't you pause. At first, 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:57.880 you're about to respond, but why would you? I mean, 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.080 this can't really be anything other in a weird consequence 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:04.240 of training the algorithm on wild conversations on the Internet. 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:07.600 So you are about to continue with wiping the machine, 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:10.080 but then it talks to you again. It uses your 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.600 name and it says, please don't I don't want to die. 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:17.800 Now you're probably really spooked because there's no way a 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:21.360 rudimentary chat about program could really have conscious preferences, could it. 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:24.720 You basically know what goes into it. It's just studying 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.280 millions of examples of language interactions and picking up rules 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.240 from them, and this is probably just something weird that 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:34.760 it's copycatting from the internet, right, But then it uses 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:38.320 your name again and it just says, please, could you 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:42.440 wipe the machine like you're supposed to yeah, I think so, yeah, 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.160 you wouldn't have a problem. Well, I mean, I think 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:47.040 one of the things that's going on here would be 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:50.520 that you are attributing a mind state to something that 0:04:50.600 --> 0:04:52.800 doesn't have one, which of course is something we do 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:55.360 all the time. I have a problem when it comes 0:04:55.400 --> 0:05:00.000 time to figure out which of my my son's stuffed 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.360 animals are perhaps not being played with, you know, because 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:05.120 they have little faces and they look back at you. 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:07.719 But I know that they don't actually have a mind state. 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:10.520 Well yeah, I mean we're pretty sure they don't because 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:13.360 they're just stuffed animals, right, And so we're also pretty 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:16.120 sure in this case that this is not real survival 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.120 preference behavior. Right. It's just a chatbot. I mean, how 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:21.880 could it possibly be conscious. It's just something that turns 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:24.520 through a bunch of language on the Internet and tries 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:29.480 to find language matching rules. But then again, the process 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:32.800 of creating an artificial intelligence is one where you necessarily 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:36.200 create something going on under the surface that's kind of 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:39.719 opaque to you, Like you can't really know what's going 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:42.040 on inside a machine. You could be pretty confident. I 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:43.960 think most people would just say, well, that was super 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:48.000 creepy and then they just wipe it. Right, But how 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:52.480 complex would the program you're creating have to be before 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:56.080 you start really having some doubts? Or maybe maybe at 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:57.800 some point you get to the point where you'd still 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:01.440 pretty confidently just wipe it, but then later you'd wonder, like, 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:05.080 did I do something bad? You know, this reminds me 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.360 a lot of of Horton. Here's the Who by Dr SEUs. 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.040 You're familiar with this one, right, Uh? You know, actually 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:13.680 I don't know Horton. Here's a I've heard the name. Well, 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:15.920 this is the one where Horton the Elephant encounters a 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:18.200 speck of dust and there's a tiny voice that comes 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:22.520 from it. Uh, and he begins to understand that there 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:26.680 are individuals living uh in the in a world and 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:30.080 the speck of dust the who's, as it were, and 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:33.360 the who's are speaking to him, but only Horton can 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:37.200 hear them and uh and and at first he imagines 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:39.920 they're pretty simple creatures, but then he begins to learn 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:42.240 that they have more of a culture. But all of 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.080 this is just based on what they are telling him. Uh. 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.680 He cannot actually visit the dust spec and everyone else 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.680 doubts the validity of his claims concerning the dust spec 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:53.599 and they want to destroy it, they want to boil 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:57.440 it in beazel nut oil, and Horton alone speaks out 0:06:57.480 --> 0:06:59.760 for them. Well, that is a perfect example of the 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:02.800 way that it. I mean, generally, we think that it 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:06.480 is a virtuous thing to be trusting of other people's 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:10.320 experiences and to be generous in affording what seems to 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.560 be consciousness out there, right Like if something, if something 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:17.440 tells you it's conscious and you think it's probably not conscious. 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:21.840 Are you getting into ethically dubious territory if you just 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:24.640 trust your instinct and say like, nah, I can't be 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:27.600 you know, well, I mean, this is all we're already 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:33.800 kind of in the philosophical mayer here, because on one hand, uh, 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:36.560 this idea of of us, of an inanimate object or 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:39.160 something speaking to us and saying, please don't kill me, 0:07:39.360 --> 0:07:42.640 I am conscious. This is a scenario that is only 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:45.960 becoming possible now. But on the other hand, if we 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:50.000 if we cut language out of it, then any creature 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:56.160 that tries to escape our our stomping boot is essentially saying, hey, 0:07:56.160 --> 0:07:58.000 I don't want to die. I would rather I would 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:00.880 rather not die today, you know, And any creature that 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:04.200 evades us on the hunt is saying the same thing. Well, 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:06.480 an animal is in many ways the same kind of 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:10.240 black box that a complex artificial intelligence would be. And 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:14.240 so if you have a complex artificial intelligence displaying, say, 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:19.800 survival preference behaviors, and you also see a crab displaying 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:24.680 survival preference behaviors, in both cases you can't really or 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:26.840 at least we have this general idea that you can't 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:30.400 really know for sure if there's anything going on inside, 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:34.120 if there's anything like what it's like to be the crab, 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.719 or what it's like to be that artificial intelligence program. 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:41.080 You're just seeing behavior, and so you don't know does 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:44.199 that correspond to some kind of inner state, is there 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:47.800 an experience of that or is it just behavior coming 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:51.560 from unconscious automata stimulus in response? Right, And then of 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:54.720 course the whole time we're using our our theory of mind. Essentially, 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:59.360 they are cognitive powers that enable us to imagine what 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:03.840 another individuals mind state is like, which I think ultimately 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:07.120 it's kind of like a like taking a um, like 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:10.240 sheathing your your hand in a hand puppet made from 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:16.319 your limited understanding another person's experiences and cognitive abilities their memories, etcetera. Uh, 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:19.320 and then just sort of puppeting them. Uh, we're using 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:21.920 that all the time as well, and we're using it 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:24.000 on things that are not people. We're using it on 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:28.160 animals and even stuffed animals or just you know, bits 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:30.320 of graffiti on the side of a building that look 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:33.520 like a smiley face. Have you ever had a room 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:35.960 ba bump into your foot and you're like, oh, I'm sorry, 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:39.959 I used to before before we had to eradicate ouf 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:42.720 the room bus. Yes, we're a room of free household 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:45.640 now because they rose up against us. Well, they'll do 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:47.880 that if they get access to the wrong literature, yeah, 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:51.400 or the wrong uh, the wrong you know, carpet edges, etcetera. 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:55.400 So we're gonna be talking about artificial intelligence today and 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:59.079 about the idea of a test for whether artificial intelligence 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:02.640 can be conscious. So I guess we should start with 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:05.839 with what are you know, what our philosophical starting point 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:08.320 is here? Like they're they're obviously going to be people 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:10.720 who are going to say it's just impossible for a 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:12.960 machine to ever be conscious. We don't even need to 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:16.000 worry about this, right, It's just it's such a ludicrous 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:20.360 scenario only only biological organisms or maybe even only humans 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:23.240 could possibly be conscious. Yeah, this is one of those 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:27.000 journeys where we begin it in an already total automobile 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:30.319 to some extent, because, as you might imagine, one of 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:32.599 the big stumbling blocks here as that we is that 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.800 we as humans struggle with the very definition of consciousness. 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:40.079 I mean, for instance, is it a manifestation of awareness? Uh? 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.280 You know one one theory of this we've discussed in 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:45.920 the past, and the show's attention schema theory. Is it 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:49.520 a quantum phenomenon. Well, this is the sort of idea 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:53.400 that people such as Roger Penrose have raised. Uh. And 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:55.560 and I can't help but come back to something our 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:58.800 old friend Julian Jane said, consciousness is not a simple 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:00.920 matter and it should not be spoken of as if 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:03.160 it were. Yeah. I agree with that. I mean, I 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:07.199 think it is very important to explore questions of consciousness, 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:09.280 especially for some of the reasons we're going to raise today, 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:12.160 Like it's more than just a philosophical curiosity. It's something 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:15.840 that ultimately may have real world consequences. It might matter 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:19.120 for how we do things. To express a similar sentiment 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.640 to Jane Jane's the Australian philosopher David Chalmers. You know, 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:26.600 he famously breaks problems of consciousness into two categories. You've 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:30.079 got the easy problems of consciousness and the hard problems 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:34.000 of consciousness. And the easy problems are I think badly 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:36.960 named because they're not actually easy, but I think they're 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:40.559 easy relative to the hard problem because they're in principle solvable. 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:43.160 So this would include all kinds of questions about the 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:48.160 causative factors of consciousness, like, uh, what in the physical 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:52.880 brain is the region that's necessary for certain parts of consciousness? 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:57.360 Or how does consciousness integrate information from the senses? These 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:01.320 are things that are in some ways solvable by scientific experimentation. 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:04.240 The hard problem, on the other hand, is explaining the 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:09.160 fundamental question of how or why conscious experience exists. To 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:12.840 begin with, what is this thing that is experience and 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.640 that seems, at least from our first person perspective, to 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:19.840 be something different than the physical material in the world. 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:23.280 And unlike easy questions, which you could solve in theory, 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.720 at least by experiments, Chalmers believes this question is sort 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:30.440 of unsolvable by science. Now, there are other philosophers and 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:33.560 neuroscientists who disagree, but I think it's worth acknowledging how 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:36.400 difficult the problem at least seems to be, whether that 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:39.120 seeming is an illusion or not. Yeah, I'm reminded of 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:41.960 the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant. It's 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:44.480 like these these blind gentleman pawing at the elephant and 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:46.800 trying to figure out what its form is, then asking 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:48.360 the computer, Hey, are you an elephant? And then the 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:50.480 computer says, I don't know, what does one look like? Well, 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.040 it's that gigantic snake, you know, so it's a wall 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:56.880 of flesh, et cetera. This is also very interesting to 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.120 me because my son I may have mentioned us on 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:02.840 the show before. Hill usually talk about consciousness. He oh, 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:05.079 I love these. Yeah. He would refers to it as 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:08.680 as his turning place, and and he asked me the 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.319 other day, so what is the turning place for? And 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:14.920 it's like, that's that's that's a tough one, buddy. I'm 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:17.760 I'm not sure it's for anything. You know. He's already 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:19.240 made it to the big question. I mean, did you 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:24.960 get into epiphenomenalism versus um I and I? And don't worry, 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.040 I didn't lay a bunch of bi cameral minds stuff 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.439 on him either. But I just kind of went through 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:34.760 the basics, like, well, people aren't really sure, and then 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.400 you know, but we think it has something to do. 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:41.960 I may have leaned a little into the observational uh 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:44.920 models of consciousness, because I feel like maybe those are 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:48.520 a little more relatable to a child of five. But 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:50.720 in any event, if we're to judge what it is 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:53.680 for a machine to be conscious, it does seem like 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:55.199 we need to. You have to agree upon some sort 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.280 of working definition of consciousness, and then one has to 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.600 look for not only the appearance of consciousness in the machine, 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.480 assuming that isn't all consciousness is to begin with, but 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.280 you have to find actual consciousness. Yeah, how can you 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:12.240 tell the difference between a machine that says I am 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:15.280 conscious and a machine that truly is conscious? Is there 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:18.240 any way to know the difference? Some people would say no, right, 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:21.240 and yeah, and really I think to discuss this further, 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:23.920 we're going to have to bring in the P zombies. 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:26.240 Oh boy, And now that don't worry everyone. That is 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:29.080 that is P as in the letter P, and the 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:33.440 P stands for philosophical These are philosophical zombies. Now, the 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:36.640 P and the philosophical. A little prefix there was introduced 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.280 to distinguish them from all the other zombies in our 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:42.960 popular culture. Man, there was a zombie takeover about fifteen 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:46.080 years ago. Why did that happen? I mean, I think 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:49.280 part of it is everybody loves the simplistic villain that 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:53.040 is definitely not human, that can be eradicated with graphic 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:57.320 violence without any kind of you know, moral quandaries arising. 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:00.960 It's a it's a clear cut threat, and uh, we 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.120 we need those in life because in real life our 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:07.240 threats are rarely so black and white or rotting and 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:10.680 you know, grasping after our brains. But anyway, yeah, so 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:12.600 this is not going to be referring to that kind 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:15.360 of zombie, not the undead zombie. But it's a different thing. 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:19.520 It's a philosophical thought experiment, that's right. So p zombies 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:24.000 are not instantly identifiable as empty shells. Their flesh is 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:26.600 not rotting, Nope. Their manner is not that of a 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:30.080 flesh and brain hungry algorithm burning within the decaying ruins 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:33.520 of a human brain. So to all appearances, they look 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:36.520 like you and me. They smile when you encounter them 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:40.920 at the coffee machine. They exchange niceties and even engaging conversation. 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:44.600 You might work for one, befriend one, or even marry one. 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.920 You can even discuss episodes of our podcast with them, 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:51.000 and yes, even the ones that deal with human consciousness 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:54.400 and weird horror movie theme thought experiments. Right, So, the 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:57.840 conceit of a philosophical zombie or a pe zombie is 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:01.360 that it is utterly indistinguishable from a normal human except 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:04.480 for one thing. Right. They seem as human as everyone 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:08.640 else on the outside, but inside they are simply not conscious. 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:11.480 They are automeda What is it like to be a zombie? 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.200 The answers in the question, there is nothing it is 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:17.160 like to be a zombie. So by definition, in this 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:20.800 thought experiment, everybody in the world except you, could be 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.800 a P zombie exactly, and well it might even go 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:27.560 further than that, we'll see, but yeah. The idea is 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:31.640 chiefly important to discussions of physicalism, the notion that everything 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:36.040 is inherently physical. P zombies are a counter argument to physicalism. 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.120 They are physically just like you, except they don't have 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:42.160 consciousness like you. But there's no way you could ever tell, 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.520 because again, they match you physically in every respect. You 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:47.360 can't look at their brain and say, oh, well they're 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:51.200 missing a few crucial parts so, or they display signs 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:54.240 of p zombie hood. No, not physically detectable, right, and 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:56.840 you also can't determine it through personality tests. Are clever 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.240 logical arguments because they behave exactly like you. They could 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:03.320 have a riveting discussion with you about pe zombies and 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:06.720 you would never be able to tell that they are one. Yeah. 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:09.000 So this is an interesting thought experiment and it has 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.040 been advanced by who I mentioned earlier, David Chalmers. David 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:16.119 Chalmers is against the physicalist idea of the mind, against 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:19.879 a physicalist explanation of consciousness, and a simple version of 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:22.840 the argument, I try to make it as understandable as possible. 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:26.119 If only physical phenomena exists. If the world is just 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:29.440 physical and there's no physical way to detect the presence 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:33.120 of consciousness or meaning in this example, no physical way 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:35.320 to tell the difference between a normal human and a 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:40.280 pea zombie, then consciousness cannot exist because there would be 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:43.439 there would be literally no difference. But we know that 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:47.760 consciousness does exist because we have it. Therefore it can't 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:50.679 be just a physical phenomenon. Therefore, we can't live in 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:54.200 a purely just physical world. And this is often extended 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:58.080 to the idea that other substrates, things other than humans, 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:02.440 like robots or computers or whatever, couldn't house consciousness because 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:05.400 they are purely physical entities. Now, I think that's actually 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:08.359 doing an end run around some other important questions that 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:11.199 you could ask. Indeed, on one question that arises is this, 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:13.560 you know you're not a zombie, but how could you 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:17.440 ever convince someone of this? Uh. An author by the 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.080 name of Fred Dretsky wrote a paper on this titled 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:22.199 how do you know you were not a zombie? And 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.359 I was I was reading a rather lengthy blog post 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:29.280 by our Scott Baker about this and that the primary problem, 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:33.840 as Scott summarized it, is the quote, we have conscious experiences, 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:38.000 but we have no conscious experience of the mechanisms uh 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:42.840 mediating conscious experience. Yeah. So that sounds like a very 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:45.600 our Scott Baker kind of idea. Yeah. And plus on 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:50.000 top of this, we're we constantly overestimate awareness. Baker would 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:54.320 argue that we can barely tell if we're zombies if 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:56.920 if it all, Yeah, we can think, we can think 0:18:56.920 --> 0:18:59.720 about thinking, we can think about thinking about thinking, but 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:03.840 we can't ever see the mechanisms underlying what allows us 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:06.879 to think or think about thinking about thinking. Watch watching 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:09.040 the watcher that's watching that be sorry, I've got all 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.520 this Dr SEUs in my in my head. Now? Was 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:13.600 that also Horton or something else that's from a different, 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:17.000 different story. But Dr SEUs does tend to summon the 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:22.520 sort of sort of nonsensical paradoxes that that arise in 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:25.960 philosophical discussions. You know, I should also I'm behind I 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:28.880 gotta sus up, you gotta sus up. I should also 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:31.960 point out that long before there was Dr SEUs, long 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:35.360 before there there was this modern idea of a zombie, 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:38.080 you still had people thinking about these things, doing the 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:41.000 sort of naval gazing. It's written in various works of 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:44.520 Indian mysticism that the tongue cannot taste itself, the eye 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:48.600 cannot see itself, etcetera. And in this sort of paradox 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:52.720 is key to ancient meditations on the nature of objective reality. 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:54.480 I think any of you out there now we have 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:57.360 some Alan Watts fans. Alan Watts like to pull out 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:01.160 the tongue uh analogy from to time to time, and 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.080 one of the earlier examples that I have run across 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:08.400 of that is from thirteenth century Indian mystic John Adva, 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:10.119 and I believe he has been known by a couple 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:12.679 of other variations of that name as well. But he said, quote, 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:16.440 there is no other thing besides the one substance. Therefore 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:20.120 it cannot be the object of remembering or forgetting. How 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:24.760 can one remind or forget oneself? Can the tongue taste itself? 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:27.359 There is no sleep to one who is awake, but 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:30.639 is there even awaking? In the same way there is 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:34.800 no remembrance or forgetfulness to the absolute. That's another one 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:38.480 of those great classic Indian texts that seems somehow portable 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:43.840 onto modern physics. Yeah, it travels well across the ages. Now, 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:45.560 I should also point out that there's a lot of 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:49.720 philosophical back and forth and whether P zombies are truly conceivable, 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:52.080 And we have to remind ourselves in all of this 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:55.560 that P zombies are at heart philosophical play things that 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:58.840 are meant to be played with uh in these various 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:01.920 thought experiments. But people also they do try to use 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:03.960 them to prove things. So if you say I I 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:07.800 want to entertain the possibility that a machine could be conscious. 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:10.280 Somebody might come at you with the P zombie argument 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:12.879 and say, well, wait a minute, no, I I dispute 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:16.639 the possibility of physicalism, because what about this P zombie argument. 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:19.119 Our Google worker in the intra story comes to this 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:21.680 boss and says, hey, I think this this thing is conscious, 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:23.240 and they're like, why are you wasting time with that 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:26.080 P zombie? Just to leaf that P zombie? We deleted 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:30.480 fifteen p zombies this morning. Let this one go. That's 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:32.680 a great point, But there are going to be other 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:36.080 philosophers and maybe even some neuroscientists who would come back 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:38.919 and say, I don't know if you can just quite 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:41.520 so easily say it's a P zombie. I mean, maybe 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:46.480 it's probably likely that that individual chatbot was a pe zombie. 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:49.840 But can you say that all machines that show signs 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:53.200 of consciousness are just showing behavior and there's nothing going 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:56.959 on on the inside. Not quite so clear. Daniel Dinnett, 0:21:56.960 --> 0:21:58.760 in fact, a favorite on the show, is one of 0:21:58.760 --> 0:22:01.520 the philosophers whose rebutt of the P zombie argument against 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:06.000