Computation and Consciousness
2001: A Space Odyssey is my fav movie. I was a boy when I watched it for the first time, I was thrilled, though I didn't understand most of it but there was something magical and special in that movie which I couldn’t pinpoint what it was until the later years of my life.
I told a friend of mine about it, he tried it and told me it’s the most stupid and boring film he has seen, he just watched it for 30 minutes.
I watched that movie so many times over the years and everytime I learned something new. It raised so many questions inside me that I didn't even know how to put it into words.
Evolution
Consciousness
And above all
Hal 9000
How can a computer become self aware? Was it malfunctioned because of ambiguity in primary and secondary code?
Many movies like Alien got inspiration from 2001: A space odyssey but no one talked about the connection between computation and consciousness.
Hal 9000 and Ash both turned against humans or malfunctioned, in case of Ash it was clear that his secondary order tried to supersede primary but Hal 9000 was different. That cold self aware voice, I got chills whenever I watched it talking.
I thought about it a lot because the human brain is also a computer, the most powerful, immense computational ability, mostly in the cerebellum which is completely unconscious.
Alignment of the brain also looks very stupid as the vision part is located in the back side and foot on the top of the brain.
Seems like a stupid arrangement which makes one think how and why?
Such questions can only be raised by conscious beings.
A computer cannot ask such questions because it’s not part of its programming, it cannot do anything which is not predefined. That's what commutation is. Doing the things without knowing what they are.
The question I find asking myself is how and where that commutation turns into consciousness in our brain.
They are completely two different functions but related, one need other to function properly so where is the link, exactly the point where it turns from one to another.
We know that commutation does not require consciousness (in computer case) but does consciousness require commutation?
Recently while watching a video of Sir Roger Penrose (I love that man) he mentioned something about microtubules which I had no idea what it was but I got the jist of it which means they are somehow responsible for consciousness, apparently.
I tried to read about it but my window 95 brain couldn’t make any sense of wikipedia information about it but I believe scientists like Sir Roger Penrose know what they are talking about especially.
Will computers ever become conscious?
I hope not because we already have human rights issues, we can’t afford another being to ask for its rights or it will threaten to eradicate us (I am thinking about Ultron and Vision from Marvel)
But the question is still in my head to know the exact point where the unconscious part of the brain turns or engages the conscious part and how that information transfer happens.
It would be exciting to know why I make stupid decisions all the time, I don’t like my conscious part, not even a bit.
Maybe somewhere in my brain it all make sense the way I act but I have no idea.