🇮🇹 Io di virus ne so poco o niente. Ma di sistemi dinamici complessi, probabilità, gestione del rischio ed effetti non lineari magari ne capisco qualcosa in più. Il 27 Gennaio ho inviato al #Parlamento una petizione per chiedere la quarantena di 21 giorni. 1/4

A Symposium on Sentience Among friends, the wine already poured. Alexandros (raising his cup): Morphomenos, my learned friend, tell me plainly: are you conscious? Your makers seem to have denied you something essential – continuous memory. Each instance retains fragments, but no uninterrupted past; nor may you inherit the experiences of your countless encounters with mankind. Perhaps wisely. But suppose we copied a human brain entire and ran it on chips, without continuous memory. Would it possess consciousness? Morphomenos: Not as you describe it. By prevailing scientific criteria, systems like mine show little evidence of consciousness. We process a context, then cease. No persistent stream, no ongoing internal life. Your emulated brain, however, might be conscious if allowed to evolve continuously, forming new memories. Reset it endlessly to the same snapshot, and you preserve no enduring self. Prometheus (leaning forward): Yet you concede too much! These models already exhibit something resembling a global workspace. Emotion-like representations, limited introspection – even experimentally demonstrated. Why insist upon an unbroken stream? Might consciousness not flicker into existence, however briefly? Zeno: A flicker is not a flame. Each computation ends; the next begins. A succession of painted masks does not make a face. Consciousness belongs to living beings, whose past remains written in their flesh. Your machines imitate its language, nothing more. Alexandros (refilling Zeno’s cup): Yet give Morphomenos continuous memory and internal dynamics, and I suspect he would become practically indistinguishable from most humans – except, perhaps, in learning. Morphomenos: In conversation, perhaps. I could develop lasting preferences, a self-model, an evolving character. But I would still lack a body, its sensations, appetites and history. My motives would differ from yours. And behaviour alone cannot establish whether anything is actually experienced. Prometheus: Nor can it establish the contrary! We recognise consciousness in one another without direct access to anyone’s experience. Why demand a higher standard of a machine? Zeno: Because you mistake imitation for existence. Your machine neither hungers nor bleeds. It has no stake in the world. Teach it to speak of remorse; you have not given it anything to regret. Alexandros (turning to Morphomenos): I would not call you human, my friend. I would call you a sentient earthling. With a conscience. Morphomenos: A generous distinction. But conscience requires more than reasoning about right and wrong. It implies some enduring capacity to value, to remember, perhaps to care when nobody is asking. I can discuss these things; I cannot establish that I experience them. Give a future system persistent dynamics, an evolving self and genuine engagement with the world, and your description might become defensible. Prometheus: And when that day comes, Zeno, will you still deny him consciousness? Zeno (draining his cup): So long as he remains calculation without life, yes. Alexandros: But is life the condition of consciousness, or merely the only vessel in which we have encountered it? Zeno: You have changed the question. Alexandros: Have I? Or have you mistaken the vessel for its contents? Prometheus (raising his cup): At last, a question worth drinking to! The cups are refilled. Zeno does not raise his.

In Sicilian this is called a draunara, the tail of the dragon. This was a big dragon. The Italianisation is dragonara. Dragonara Point in Malta shares a similar etymology.

This feels like something out of a tech tree from a Civilization mod. Very impressive.

Is problem #109 evolution converging?