Morphospace / Is consciousness popularity?

Is consciousness popularity?

In one paragraph

Narcis Marincat, who studied psychology and neuroscience and later computer science and until recently led AI work in industry, presents his "popularity theory of consciousness". He starts from two ideas: cells, including neurons, are cognitive agents, and human society can be seen as an organism made of people. He then defines consciousness as the process by which information made by an organism's basic units becomes popular within that organism, and applies it to binding, the unconscious, the self and the hard problem. In the discussion Levin talks about frame rates of minds, training sets of logic sentences, a "boredom theory of aging" his lab is testing, and why he doubts that most of the universe is unconscious.

Main ideas (plain words)

  • Marincat argues the brain-as-computer analogy undersells neurons, and proposes comparing the brain (really the body) to human society instead.
  • His definition: consciousness is information made by an organism's units becoming popular inside that organism. Unpopular pieces make up the unconscious.
  • He argues a "zombie" copy with the same processing but no experience can't be built, because the experience is the popular information itself.
  • Levin says parts can be faster or in some ways smarter than the whole, for example cells solving problems in a gene-expression space with about 20,000 dimensions.
  • Levin describes upcoming work with a student training sets of logic sentences as dynamical systems. The liar paradox becomes an oscillator rather than a contradiction. He says the paper should be out in a couple of months.
  • Levin links popularity to his word "compelling": large-scale goals hold collectives together only while the goal stays compelling to the parts. His lab is testing a boredom theory of aging along these lines.
  • Levin says goals can only be shown by perturbation experiments, by putting a barrier between a system and its goal, not by watching alone.
  • He argues that since the one thing we can check (ourselves) is conscious, assuming most things are not is backwards, and agnosticism is the defensible position.

Key quotes (word for word from YouTube's auto-generated captions)

"consciousness is the the process by which pieces of information created by an organism's basic units become popular within the organism in question."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Qr82cqI3A&t=1260s

"one of the things that our cells do, for example, is solve problems in a 20,000dimensional gene expression space, which I think we can't do."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Qr82cqI3A&t=2730s

"it's only a paradox if you insist on a single stable value."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Qr82cqI3A&t=3090s

"we actually have a a testable theory of aging that we're currently testing in the lab"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Qr82cqI3A&t=3360s

"we call it the boredom theory of aging in a sense"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Qr82cqI3A&t=3390s

"100% of the things we were able to check are conscious."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Qr82cqI3A&t=3780s

Source: YouTube auto-generated captions, speakers not labeled; wording is provisional. Timestamps point to the start of the 30-second stretch that holds the quote.