Could billions spacially disconnected "Boltzmann neurons" give rise to consciousness?

post by Szymon Kucharski · 2021-03-31T19:58:04.749Z · LW · GW · 11 comments

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Imagine two cerebral hemispheres, materialized in a cosmic vacuum by unlikely fluctuations, simulated in advanced virtual reality, or physically disconnected and kept alive by advanced technology.

Both hemispheres are separated, but electrodes are attached to the nerve endings (or electrical impulses are simulated, or the fluctuations in their improbability recreate a given sequence of impulses), applying nerve impulses in a manner perfectly identical to what would occur in the brain if there were no spatial separation.

Assuming there would be a conscious state of mind in a given brain if it were not split, is the conscious mind also in two separate hemispheres? If not, why not?

And if it is in the hemispheres, does the distance between the hemispheres or the time in which they exist have any significance?

If we can imagine such a scenario, and if the described interpretation is to be taken seriously, despite its apparent abstractness, more advanced situations should also be considered.

We can imagine dividing the brain into 4 parts, 8 and 16, as well as disconnect the limbic system, the cerebellum and the individual lobes.

Imagine not all Boltzmann brains, but (much easier to create by random fluctuations) "Boltzmann neurons" (or create them in a simulated environment, or create them as random fluctuations in a simulated environment, we can also think of a planetary supercomputer simulating random neurons in arbitrary quantity). If in the set of these simulated or fluctuated neurons there were neurons receiving simulated or randomly fluctuated electrical impulses identical to those which would be realized in the conscious mind, would such a conscious mind, therefore, exist as a result of the mere existence of such neurons? If not, what is the difference between this scenario and having two separate hemispheres behaving as if they were transmitting impulses (although the impulses are only simulated or are fluctuating)?

While the formation of Boltzmann brains is improbable in a specific place (which does not change the fact that they seem certain in a sufficiently large or long-lived space), Boltzmann neurons can materialize more easily. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that they create consciousness if that is one of the possible interpretations.

Thinking in this way, Boltzmann's brains and related phenomena may constitute a greater proportion of our measure than previously assumed (no matter what fraction of the measure we assigned to them)

What would be the best argument against such an interpretation? Or why arguments in favor of that couldn't work?

 

{Interpretations that assume that conscious experience exists as specifically processed information, as a form of computation, do not necessarily require computation to exist in a particular place, integrated in a physically connected system. The paper describing the possibility of the spontaneous emergence of minds from information: https://quantum-journal.org/papers/q-2020-07-20-301/  }

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