Determinism and Consciousness

Here we have an interesting problem, lets re-align our definitions, I am to create a division of concept ere - I am going to say now, that "God" is basically the universe itself, and all that we can perceive as existing, and from "God" we will "pull" his assumption as a creator, so that, God even preceeds the almighty "creator" as a "creator can be "observed" and all "observed" phenomenon constitutes "God".

The last piece in this puzzle is the question "who am I" - and for that paradox, the only power that "God" has is to be able to perceive "you" when "you" are the only observable phenomenon in existence.

Why this, the idea here is that awareness exists as a paradox of perception, allowing you to "be" because you cannot "see" - thus alter - the entire picture that constitutes "you".

What you cannot see, you cannot alter willingly, and thus "God" can see what we are and we can see all that is "God" when we look at eachother, however, when we or you are on your own, i.e. the only thing in existence, you are the "creator" but not "God" as even an entity such as a "creator" needs "God" to be aware.

Thus, for artificial intelligence - you, the programmer, are now the "creator" - you can build a machine thuswise:
1) It performs the exact same series of actions - certainty
2) If any part of the machine is altered the entire machine will cease to operate - death
3) A device that records the actions of the machine without a relay - God
4) A machine that does not correct its actions if an action is interrupted - i.e. if the machine is moving forward and comes across a barrier it will continue to move forward until the next programmed action is sequenced, i.e. "drive wheels forward for 20 revolutions, then, drive wheels backward for 50 revolutions - time

The miracle is that, to a layman, the machine appears to have reversed all on its own for no obvious reason - the creator - "you" - realises that it is a sequence - and "God" knows all the actions and reactions of the machine - i.e. when the wheel was turning as the machine was against an obstacle, the recording device records "no movement".

The X factor here must be, that when the recording device is removed, the machine ceases to function, and, the devices memory is reset.

"Only God Knows".

The second commenter on the thread made the great point of relevance. The mechanism of our imagination is one of the most significant aspects of our ability to have awareness and cognitively function, to store and retrieve memories, to produce ideas. Our mind is like a mirror that can some how detect and make sense (from its senses) the data that is being reflected in it. When you are looking at your computer screen right now, you are really looking inside your head, there is some (3rd) type of eye within you, that is constantly watching a screen in your head. And there is constantly a flood of data appearing on that screen about the outside world. On this screen you can also access your inside world, memories, imagination, thoughts, dreams. The platform or hardware was present when you were a baby, and it is possible that the platform never evolves beyond that, which would most likely result in the baby dieing. But in order for that babies mind to grow, it needs to be flooded with information and experience for years and years, building up and storing memories, putting together concepts, and in general, this is learning.

I wonder if the problem with consciousness is the level of assimilation in an external reality. Can a machine be conscious if it is not sensually aware and in contact with the external world, can it really understand the concepts that we conscious beings struggle with, if its world is mere digital fluctuations of electrons which represent symbolic architecture of code and syntax and logic? Could it ever understand something like love, without existing as a human, and being in love? What would the results be of its ability to 'feel'? I would imagine like humans it would be obsessed with its level of energy, putting it to sleep or pulling its plug or its battery draining, would this concern it, would it feel this, would it cherish its awareness, and fear death? Would its consciousness be equal to ours, in that it would be a conscious entity arising in the universe like we have and like a dog has? Can we imagine what an Ai we created would behave like, desire, do if it was 100 times more intelligent then us? 100000 times?

reply to post by ImaFungi

Can a machine be conscious if it is not sensually aware and in contact with the external world

This is the whole trick to consciousness imo. You ask whether it would understand concepts like love but the only possible way it could ever understand is if it had other AI's to communicate and interact with. It would only understand the concept of vision and tangible objects of it had digital eyes to see the outside world and digital nerves to feel the outside world. We can of course build a virtual world for the AI's to live within, and they could perhaps understand the concept of space and objects by living in a virtual space with virtual objects.

But I think the point you are getting at is correct, I don't think it's really possible to create a true self aware machine without giving the machine a large inflow of data from the external world. It raises an interesting question though... if I was born with all my senses disabled, would I be able to think? Output with no input? Would my brain and body even be able to live without input from the external world? I certainly wouldn't fear death because I wouldn't even understand the concept of death, would I even know that I was alive without any input from the external world?

One of the more interesting questions that this gets into is our perception of time and how a machine would perceive time. My understanding of time has always been that we perceive the speed of time based on the speed at which our brains complete computation cycles, much like a computer. The thing is we can control exactly how fast a computer will compute... if we created a self aware machine, could we alter the rate at which it perceives time by altering the rate at which it completes computation cycles? And how would its perception of time affect its perception of death?

Consciousness is not the ability to reason but rather lack of knowledge and the inability to know everything.
When a human makes a decision it is based upon three key factors:

1) Genetic Inheritance
2) Traveled Past
3) Current Situation

From it flows the results of a decision and that which will become the present and ultimately the traveled past. The picture or plan we have for the future is a continues part of the traveled past and the current situation.
Genetic inheritance is our starting point; it gives us the base line of our physical traits and the chances how likely we will develop psychological traits. This moment is however extremely small and short since it only occurs at the very instance our genetic strain is formed. Once our genetic strain is formed there is only 'Current Situation' that will continuously become 'Traveled Past'.
When we make a decision it is based upon our Genetic Inheritance and influenced heavily by our traveled past as well as by our current situation.


But how does this relate to consciousness?
Well, consciousness is what lets us make a decision but ultimately consciousness is the result of a process. This process is an in our mind thought out plan based upon the same factors as decision making is made. Because consciousness is the result of a chain of decisions made by us.


Now to go a little into the whole AI issue.
the reason why we believe that we are consciously making decisions as opposed to running a program that simply takes input from the world and spews out some action as output due to a few lines of code is not so much because we are different from machines and programs; Rather we are both more and less then machines. Unlike machines we can take in far more input and those inputs all react internally with each other. But here comes the problem; Our brain is a cool thinking machine but it is not perfect. The brain can't really keep track of every single thing in detail. Rather it does lots of things automatically in the background without really checking on those things unless something goes wrong or unusual. Worse even is that the brain often simply is very crude. For example if we feel a strong wind the brain registers it simply as strong wind and maybe the general direction but it really doesn't measure exact information about it. Worse even is that it simply doesn't know what the wind will do it will merely assume that it will continue blowing unless it gets more information.
The brain is challenged with two mayor hurdles:

1) Keeping track of everything in and around the body.
2) Knowing every factor.

These two issues are intertwined. The brain can't keep track of everything because it is far too much information. The brain blocks information it assumes is not needed and makes rough estimations about factors that it assumes will not change much. But the brain also doesn't know everything there is; the brain doesn't know how many red blood cells its own body has; it either know enough or not. The brain doesn't know that a butterfly in Chile causes a storm to gust in Florida. Yet all those things ultimately in some small minute way matter.

But animals don't know this information too and they are not intelligent, so why is that?
Well, animals have less evolved brains or at least in one area. You see; human brains are more or less broken. We ask questions and this is in fact a very important part of our evolution. Animals rarely ask question even the smarter animals only ask questions when you push new information on them. Humans however run wild; we want to know everything because our brain evolved the part that investigates new factors till a part where it is an automated process. Animals have this ability severely limited but humans have the brake on that process thoroughly broken beyond repair.
Nature needs some kind of handle obviously otherwise we would have destroyed our species long ago and become extinct. The brake on this is consciousness. Why? well if we would try to find things out non-stop we would bust our entire mind. An unexplainable thing (and there are many) would ultimately consume the attention of the whole brain causing even vital functions of the brain to answer the question and thus we would die since we would stop eating and even breathing. To prevent this the brains interrupts the process by distracting that broken mechanism from eating up valuable brain activity like letting your heart pump. it does this by cutting away in the information flow and simply 'making up' information. This is called our imagination and it is key in our consciousness. Basically our brain creates a black area of space; A gap if you will to stop ourselves from literally dieing from curiosity. We humans experience this as consciousness but it is in reality a breaker of the mind; an illusion by stripping unexplainable factors and filling it with random combinations of known information.

Well, my text-box is full. Want more? just ask!

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


About the thoughts on it needing input from surroundings, and the idea that AI will need to be able to see itself think, like we have our own imagination. I think those ideas are very closely related, in that what the external world offers us, and what our imagination can perhaps mimic, is a 3 d realm. When an inventor thinks of an invention or in my dream I am interacting with people or wandering through a house, it at least appears that I have control of 3-d objects. I think this is important. If we want an AI that can mimic our own consciousness or our only idea of consciousness which is our own, then that is an aspect that will have to be considered. Because id imagine now their consciousness and ability of thought depends completely on digital, symbolic information; im sure (not really, but i think) ours has a lot to do with digital and symbolic information, like how our memories are stored and retrieved, but I dont know if the potential AIs have an imagination, a 3d user interface, in which they can free for all-y combine everything they know into an arena, and mix it together to create new conclusions and creations.

So there is the object physical brain, and it has its inherent operating system, and hardware, all the information of the external world (so much constantly) is narrowed down into data that the brain can compute. So that is just like if you imagine a screen, and then a bunch of stuff flying into the screen, but the screen only allows a certain stuff through, and what is able to go through, is neatly processed and organized, because the hardware is designed to order the details of the data in a certain way, im assuming in a way that correlates most to how that data is represented physically externally. so that is the sensory part. The more tricky part is how the consciousness exists, how it is maintained, and how it has any sort of control over what occurs, how it can control what memories it selects, how it can control what to do with its stored information, how it can have a will, and at will, will images into its head. Can random images be willed into ones head, or is there always a reason. Can I not think of a dog, unless I am presented with a situation where I am reminded that I know what a dog is so I may think of one, like right now, looking for something to use as an example to think of. I know of many things that exist, tree, house, car, remote control. These are all things ive experienced and stored in memory, how and why did I choose to access those things. And what reasons would an AI have to spontaneously will to think of something, to view something, to speak of something, to question something, unless it was programmed to.

Now another big factor is if we can design the most flexible hardware. So that it may learn. So that it may progress beyond what we can imagine think or know. If we can create a program that has the freedom to evolve. Like our hardware is established, and our software of language, and our elimination of ignorance through the understanding of the external world, we keep uncovering more data, and combining it in new ways, to learn, and grow. But that is all because the potential for us to do so exists. How do we create a hardware and software with out limiting its potential with our limits.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


The human mind is not a deterministic digital CPU. It's a biological analog CPU. A digital CPU is always gonna hand you the exact data cause it does all these extra error checks to make sure the data isn't corrupt. That's the whole reason why digital was invented.

An analog connection is just going to hand you something close, but not exact. A connection in the brain may send .3 votes this time, and .1 votes the next time it encounters the same stimuli and the neurons getting that signal may respond slightly different depending on how well the connection is working that day.

That's probably most of your randomness.

reply to post by tinfoilman


I always thought the difference between analog and digital was the level of symbolism used, and usually refereed to as discreteness or continuous.

For example film movies using magnetic tape to imprint exact replicas of trapped light onto the tape is considered analog and continuous. Where as digital film is the information of reality symbolized as 1s and 0s.

So are you suggesting that the brain uses exact film tape like replicas for our memories for example, every memory you have ever had is imbedded on some material, that is then projected onto the screen of your mind? And that when you think of complex math equations in your head you are running projections of stored analog numbers and then cutting the tape and mixing them together? Or is it possible memories and thought in the mind occur digitally, as symbolic information, like morse code?

reply to post by ImaFungi


Analog is like an electric circuit that's supposed supply 2 volts. If you take a volt meter and connect it to the wire you're not gonna get two volts. You're gonna get 2 volts plus or minus some volts and it's constantly going to fluctuate. One second the meter is gonna say 1.8, then 2.3, then 2.1, then 1.9, then 1.2. It's gonna fluctuate around 2 volts given some error margin.

Like an analog VCR playing a VHS. Every time the magnetic head goes over the movie frame it gets slightly different readings from the movie frame and you're gonna get small amounts of static and distortion. Distortion you may never notice, but nevertheless it's there. Where you're more likely to notice this type of distortion is actually on the radio. Everyone has heard static on the radio when you don't have a perfect signal.

Digital just rounds those fluctuations off into either a 1 or a 0 depending on which it was closet to. So, it may read .4 volts, but it'll just say well that was a 0. Wasn't enough voltage to count. The next time it may read 1.2 volts that the CPU rounds to a 1.

Now there's some error involved there. Some of the 1's may get read as 0's and some of the 0's may get read as 1's, but the vast majority of reads will be correct. However, when you transmit digital data you also transmit a little bit of extra information that's used for error correction.

There are different error correction algorithms, but their purpose is that the CPU can detect which 0's and 1's were read wrong and go back and fix them so you get an exact perfect read of the data.

Sometimes if the data is too corrupt to fix the CPU will have to reread. For example a TCP/IP packet has a check sum of the data that's in the packet. When a computer receives the packet it will recalculate a new check sum based on the data it received. If the new check sum doesn't match the old check sum that was sent in the packet the computer knows something got messed up in transit and it will drop the packet and ask the sender to resend the packet until it gets it right.

Digital is obsessed with pixel perfect accuracy.

reply to post by tinfoilman

Analog is like an electric circuit that's supposed supply 2 volts. If you take a volt meter and connect it to the wire you're not gonna get two volts. You're gonna get 2 volts plus or minus some volts and it's constantly going to fluctuate. One second the meter is gonna say 1.8, then 2.3, then 2.1, then 1.9, then 1.2. It's gonna fluctuate around 2 volts given some error margin.

Those fluctuations are essentially caused by the way the electrons interact with the circuitry, external influences on the circuitry, and other complicated quantum mechanical stuff that goes on in the system. If you had an analog computer in a perfectly isolated environment and our reality operated according to perfectly deterministic principles, then the analog machine should always give the same output for the same input.

The real question you need to be asking yourself is this: are those random fluctuations a completely predictable consequence of events that took place in the past, because if that's true then it's not really random. It seems pretty clear to me that we do not live in a deterministic reality, and that is why we get these fluctuations. Even digital computers can be affected by random errors, like if the CPU or RAM is hit by a cosmic ray for example.

But basically I do agree with you when you say it's the random fluctuations in our brain which supplies the randomness to our brains. But since we are using digital computers to build AI then we need to manually inject more randomness into the machine, like I was saying in the opening post. Digital machines are just too deterministic, I believe that a true self aware machine should not be 100% predictable.

reply to post by ImaFungi

How do we create a hardware and software with out limiting its potential with our limits.

For the software side of things we use self-learning algorithms, that's how all of our best AI systems are created. Facial recognition software, speech recognition software, and stuff like that is typically developed by self-learning algorithms, not humans.

I think the most promising path to create a conscious machine is to combine together all our best AI systems, such that we create a nearly complete model of the human brain: a part of the brain for processing sound and generating speech, a part for vision and internal vision (imagination), a part which attaches meanings to symbols, a part for long and short term memory, etc.

The real trick will be combining these different AI modules into one unified system which computes information in a highly parallel way and gives some meaningful output. I think the most likely way that these different modules will come together is via the development of human-like androids which are supposed to be as close to humans as possible, an accident in other words.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


Well nobody knows if it's really random. You could say that's where a lot of your apparent randomness comes from. Then one day we may find out it's not really random at all..

The fluctuations come from a flaw in the circuit. Theoretically a 2 volt circuit should always provide exactly 2 volts, but it don't because we used cheap copper instead of superconducting material here, or a cheap capacitor in the circuit over here when we could have used a better one. Or a cheap fan and now we have vibration, plus now it's causing an electromagnetic hum in the circuit and yada yada. So, even in a vacuum you're gonna have signal noise because we build cheap circuits.

The human brain is kinda the same. You always have brain cells and neurons dying off so the way the electrons flow tomorrow is gonna be different than today and there's really no way to predict it.

Don't know if it's "really" random but there's too many electrons to count to find out. A lot of people think of randomness as this abstract thing that doesn't really exist.

After studying information theory I came to conclusion that everything is probably random and it's the patterns that are abstract and don't really exist. We just see them in our mind.

For example if you leave a random generator run long enough it'll reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare and you'll be like oh it's a pattern. But it's not, it's just the law of probabilities and it's still just random data. The human mind likes to see patterns all the time.

While you like to think of it as is it really random? I like to think of it as is there really a pattern there or is it just random?

As for injecting random numbers into AI. When I used to do AI research my work computer had a hardware random number generator that used thermal signal noise that I would use sometimes. But who really knows if that's anymore "random" than the software random number generators or it just appears to be? They have quantum hardware random number generators too, but don't know if that's random either.

reply to post by tinfoilman

For example if you leave a random generator run long enough it'll reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare and you'll be like oh it's a pattern. But it's not, it's just the law of probabilities and it's still just random data. The human mind likes to see patterns all the time.

And you could also leave a computer running a loop of x = x + 1; over and over again and it would output a completely predictable sequence of numbers. Of course if you leaving it running long enough the computer will probably experience some sort of glitch and the sequence will become unpredictably altered, which gets to the question of whether everything in nature is random. If you study particle physics you will see that there are very clear rules to how matter is constructed, there are no particles which will break those rules. That is a clear example of how our universe operates according to predictable rules which we can turn into mathematical equations. But we also have quantum mechanics which tells us that many aspects of particle physics are completely random and unpredictable... so I think the real answer is that both order and chaos coexist as distinct aspects of nature.

As for injecting random numbers into AI. When I used to do AI research my work computer had a hardware random number generator that used thermal signal noise that I would use sometimes. But who really knows if that's anymore "random" than the software random number generators or it just appears to be? They have quantum hardware random number generators too, but don't know if that's random either.

Well the thermal noise RNG's are not as good as the quantum RNG's, but I imagine they would output numbers which cannot be completely predicted. Quantum RNG's output truly random numbers, that's what the laws of quantum mechanics tell us. The thermal noise RNG's are probably not completely predictable because mechanics plays a role in how thermal noise is generated, but I imagine it's less effective than the quantum RNG's such as the one I linked to further down the first page of this thread.

reply to post by tinfoilman


So how do you think memories are stored in the brain? And how do you think 'thought/imagination' is formed and visualized in the brain? All youve ever seen has been viewing the screen of your imagination, when you have a dream or think of a dog right now, how is that information of dog 'visually' transmitted and maintained? Are there molecules that are analogously shaped like a dog? Or could the information of a dog, color, relative size, physical features, be represented by a sequence a electrical impulses in a digital sense?

Why would an AI want or have emotions? It wouldn't desire them or have them, unless it was programmed in. And why would an AI "fear" being turned off or end up dead? That's a typical human characteristic stemming from hardwired evolution, something an AI wouldn't have gone through. Fear is a negative thing, and an AI would have full control over itself, unlike us, so why experience fear? It would have to fake having fear. Lot of issues come up when you get down to it.

Would AI even have the desire/motivation to respond when spoken to? What would be the underlying reason to speak, other than the ever pervasive anthropomorphism?

Whether we do or don't have AI, the results might be the same....silence.

Artificial Intelligence is not 'an apple'...comparing it to some other vegetable would be a useless exercise...

...because if it were as easy to describe it as it would be to 'make' it...it would have already been done...and no-one can agree on either...if we could be made to agree without question, the will has been usurped...and pure logic governs thought and subsequently, action, which should be reproducable...but, is not...

What possible function would consciousness serve in a deterministic system?

Å99

Originally posted by ImaFungi
reply to post by tinfoilman

 

So how do you think memories are stored in the brain? And how do you think 'thought/imagination' is formed and visualized in the brain? All youve ever seen has been viewing the screen of your imagination, when you have a dream or think of a dog right now, how is that information of dog 'visually' transmitted and maintained? Are there molecules that are analogously shaped like a dog? Or could the information of a dog, color, relative size, physical features, be represented by a sequence a electrical impulses in a digital sense?

I have no idea. All we know is basically what type of hardware the brain uses, but we don't know exactly how memories are stored yet. Let me give an analogy.

When you format the hard drive on your computer you get to pick from a couple different file systems. A file system determines how the files are laid out on the drive and how the table of contents or file journal is laid out that tells you where the files are.

On Windows for example you usually format your hard drive either with the FAT file system or with the NTFS file system.

On Linux there's more than 70 different file systems like EXT, XFS, Reiser FS, ZFS, LogFS, GoogleFS, Swap file system, TmpFS and the list goes on. On Linux anyone that wants can make their own file system.

Any HD can use any file system. Each file system lays the files out completely different. So, two hard drives, the same make and model, with exactly the same hardware, and exactly the same files, can store the information completely different. And if you don't have a kernel driver that can understand that particular file system then you can't read that hard drive.

And worse, a hard drive can use more than one type of file system. On one part of the HD the files may be laid out one way, and completely different on another part. The brain might not be any different. The way memories are laid out in the conscious might be completely different than in the sub-conscious. Short term memory may be formatted completely differently than how long term memory is stored.

So, in other words, knowing what kind of hardware is used doesn't tell you anything about how the information is laid out. We don't know what file system the brain uses.

Only recently with brain scans have researchers been able to read back a few crappy images from the human brain. And that's only of things the person has recently viewed. Which may be evidence that long term memory is stored in a completely different way.

To give an example of this, it's like me pulling out my hex editor and viewing every sector on a drive and trying to figure out how the file system works.

If I view enough chunks I may find one and say I know what that is! That's a jpeg! And pull up one image on my monitor. But that's just one chunk out of billions or trillions and I still have a long, long way to go before I get an understanding of how the file system is laid out as a whole.

So, we have a long way to go before anyone can really answer your question. Because unfortunately even if you know exactly how the hardware works it doesn't tell us how the information is laid out. Information can be laid out multiple different ways on the exact same hardware. And we don't even know exactly how the hardware works yet.

reply to post by tinfoilman


Hm, I think I get what you are saying. But I also think I may have been wondering more along the lines of how the hardware works, what facets? You dont think a similar activity occurs when I have a dream as you do? Mechanically, electrically, chemically? Im wondering how you are able to see yourself think, your eyes do not see, your mind sees, your eyes are merely lens to send information to your minds eye. And your minds eye receives tons of different types of information. And can retrieve memories at will. You dont think there is a similar process as to how you and I store memories? I understand a difference in code, as in language, and perhaps where it is stored, but I think I am wondering about the hardware, the similar system which allows that code to exist, the physical essence that is that code, and moves that code, and interprets it, and stores it, and accesses it, and uses it in imagination.

reply to post by ImaFungi


I wish I knew the answer to that. I think it's mostly the same because of evolution, but I believe everyone has differences because we're all individuals like if someone has brain damage or depression or OCD or whatever because we're all individuals.

But I think there's a general framework for how people's brain works.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
I recently came across an interesting article titled Five Creepiest Advances in Artificial Intelligence and it really got me thinking about how the human mind works and what gives us "self awareness". I have programmed artificial neural networks in the past, and the conclusion that I reached was it's impossible to generate a self aware consciousness using a deterministic machine. What I mean is, I cannot make the program do anything truly random, even the random number generators in computers are not really random, they are just so close to random that it's hard to tell the difference.

From the above, I interpret that you believe our use of free-will is random.
We have free-will, but how do we have it, why do we have it, and what does it mean?

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
The point I'm getting at here is this: if everything my program does is completely deterministic then it's possible to calculate everything that the AI will "think" before it thinks it. It will never do anything that is not predictable, it's just going through a completely deterministic process step by step. Now what does this mean if the human brain is also a deterministic electrical machine or if the universe is deterministic? It would mean we aren't really conscious beings and that we have no free will. All we have is the illusion of consciousness and free will, but in actuality our future would be set in stone and if you had enough information about the universe you could predict every possible future event.

It is interesting to question that if the machines which we build are deterministic in nature, then, would we also be deterministic in our actions?
But determinism means there is no free-will, as would be the case with Artificial Intelligence.
AI would have no self-awareness, no choice with which to learn of its self or environment further and then use the knowledge to make more choices/learn beyond programming. The AI would have only functions which allow it to perform calculations through mathematical operations which we would initially have to install in them; their greatest choices would consist of what is efficient or pertinent to their goal, or what is not either of the 2. The AI cannot know a sense of purpose if we do not create a program for it to have such capacity. We do not 'know' that sense of purpose to be able to give that data to an AI.
Though, assuming we could, the AI would probably just "experience" it without any true consciousness in it able to act in regards to that experience, or to any experience for that matter.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
Fortunately, physics seems to tell us that particles do in fact behave in completely unpredictable ways. For example, quantum mechanics clearly demonstrates that you cannot know the exact position and momentum of a particle at the same time.

Until we can create an AI with the same properties, or rather, design an evolving intelligence that, for a time, operates/moves to the same rhythm as the particles or as energy itself, the AI will always lack free-will/self-awareness.
It would have to have developed an awareness of the feelings, seemingly, about & beyond instinct/its primitive, reactionary nature.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
My conjecture is that our human brains are not classical deterministic machines, but they are in fact quantum mechanical machines and truly unpredictable to some degree, and that's the reason why we are able to experience self awareness and free will. It's why we have imaginations and why we feel emotions like love and curiosity. It's why we seek out the answers to the universe. How advanced must the human mind be to actually design other self aware machines?

The human already makes humans, and the human could be programmed to use other parts of its brain so long as we know how to create that connection. Our unpredictability is not our free-will, free-will has to do with self-awareness. We have yet to understand the deterministic source of Mind. Everything is random to a certain extent. What is not random has to do with what free-will really is (for free-will is a force, as is what perpetuates the movement of everything, which can be understood as something more than movement), and to understand that very will requires more than mathematical calculations, as far as I've concluded.
Or, perhaps what we see as unpredictable movement is really the indicator of free-will, except that the self-aware form is not yet developed.
So, those particles 'have' free-will and an awareness in their nature, of what I do not know. Perhaps they are expressions of will itself.