Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
view the rest of the comments
But from what perspective?
If you take the perspective of someone inside the illusion/simulation, they could be simulated consciousness. But at the same time, from the outside, it isn't actually consciousness because it's all programmatic.
Now, it could be said that any sufficiently complex simulation that mimics consciousness within its parameters is creating consciousness, but it's still the illusion of consciousness rather than the actual thing. Which perspective is real?
Does realness, as in an absolute and objective reality, even matter for consciousness?
Me, I err on the side of any consciousness that is internally perceived as consciousness is real in any meaningful sense, even if it isn't objectively real.
If I dream, and other entities in my dream experience consciousness within themselves, I would call their consciousness real, even though they aren't real. It would be a created, artificial consciousness, it might even be a lesser form of consciousness, but it would still have a given value of realness.
Which, as a side note, dreams where you switch between multiple perspectives as different entities (not always people), and even have different thoughts as different entities are a fucking trip. They're rare, but so damn amazing to experience.
Maybe that kind of dream is creating consciousness, maybe it's perceiving some external consciousness. But it's still a discrete consciousness within itself.
In other words, if it's an illusion that the consciousness typing this is consciousness, then it is such a complete consciousness that it is the same as whatever external consciousness created it. It's subjectively real, and that matters more than any objective reality.