Understanding how a brain works may only require a mechanistic model, but consciousness is different.
Consider the following thought experiment: suppose that we had a complete understanding of how neurons work (as well as the brain more broadly). I think this is totally reasonable. Then suppose that we created artificial neurons that acted identically to biological neurons. If we replaced the neurons of a brain with these manufactured neurons, I would imagine that the resulting brain would still be conscious. Now imagine taking some of these neurons and removing their interior structure instead routing the inputs / outputs to a machine somewhere else where the correct computation takes place in order to determine the output from the neuron. From the rest of the brain's perspective nothing has changed so presumably it's still conscious.
Now take this to the extreme: replace all of these neurons with empty shells and route the computation to a billion people in the world to perform on pen and paper. Is it still conscious? If so, what if you removed the brain altogether and just performed the computations directly on paper, is the paper conscious?
The paper would definiy still be intelligent, it would possibly come up with interesting inventions, claim that it was sad or happy etc, but would it actually be sad?
>> It’s a win-win because you get to gamble on quicker immunity.
Yes. I am very worried that countries are leaning towards "immunity passports". If we tell people that in order to work you must have gotten and recovered from this disease, everyone will suddenly seek to be infected. How many people will sign up for this simply because they feel they need to get this disease in order to return to work? The disease could become a valuable commodity to be sought, even purchased. If the choice is between getting the virus or remaining unemployed for the foreseeable future, I'll roll the dice.
Consider the following thought experiment: suppose that we had a complete understanding of how neurons work (as well as the brain more broadly). I think this is totally reasonable. Then suppose that we created artificial neurons that acted identically to biological neurons. If we replaced the neurons of a brain with these manufactured neurons, I would imagine that the resulting brain would still be conscious. Now imagine taking some of these neurons and removing their interior structure instead routing the inputs / outputs to a machine somewhere else where the correct computation takes place in order to determine the output from the neuron. From the rest of the brain's perspective nothing has changed so presumably it's still conscious.
Now take this to the extreme: replace all of these neurons with empty shells and route the computation to a billion people in the world to perform on pen and paper. Is it still conscious? If so, what if you removed the brain altogether and just performed the computations directly on paper, is the paper conscious?
The paper would definiy still be intelligent, it would possibly come up with interesting inventions, claim that it was sad or happy etc, but would it actually be sad?