alt Hacker NewsYou bring up an interesting point, but I would pose the following: where does will come from?
To me, consciousness is the seat, or root, of where will comes from. Let's say you get expert level surgeon or politician training, what then?
There is nothing that specifically silos a surgeon or politician's knowledge-set. Meaning a politician's skillset isn't purely in a domain that doesn't cross into a surgeon's and vice-versa. There are nuances to being a politician and a surgeon that extend beyond diplomacy or "being able to cut real good".
What you're left with is just high-skilled workflows. But what utilizes these workflows? To me, the answer is that consciousness needs to be powering these workflows.
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What specific properties of consciousness do you think are required, and why couldn’t those be replicated algorithmically?
To me it seems a bit like just guessing that one thing we don’t understand might explain another.
> where does will come from?
your gut bacteria, navigating "you" towards novel nutrition to ingest and preprocess for them
Do you think bacteria have will? Or plants?
When their actions are sped up to match the speed at which we move, movies of their behavior will start to look like there's intent and will. Plants move towards the light, tendrils "reach" for supports, etc.
Clearly this is humans projecting our mental model onto plants, but... are you sure we're not also projecting it onto ourselves?