You reported that you found investigation from the perspective of how consciousness evolved to be wanting. Do you think there might be relatively high potential upside in encouraging more and better theoretical work and discussion of this sort? Based on what you’ve seen in other fields, what might that depend on?
Do you suspect things in that space could be usefully incorporated into a model of progress towards a theory resembling your six step GDAK-inspired cognitive architecture approach?
In spite of concern over just-so stories (and I think anthropic bias... (read more)
I'm not sure I'd say the literature on the evolution of consciousness is especially "wanting" — it's just a really hard problem, and so as with theories of how consciousness works, I didn't find any theories of how consciousness evolved that were even moderately persuasive.
In our current state of uncertainty, little bits of "partial progress" can be made from many angles, and the evolution of consciousness is one of those angles. I don't think I'd highlight it as especially promising, though (in terms of reduction of uncertainty per unit effort). On the present margin, I'm probably more excited about the potential informativeness of (1) computational modeling of the sort I describe in section 6.2.4, (2) certain kinds of studies of human consciousness (Ctrl+F in the report for "perhaps the most promising path forward"), and (3) improvements to tools and techniques of human neuroscience that could help with (2) (Ctrl+F in the report for "we need fundamental breakthroughs").
The "GDAK-inspired cognitive architecture approach" tackles the problem from a different angle. It asks: "What are all the consciousness explananda we can identify and describe in some detail, and which cognitive algorithms might we combine with each other to build a computer program that would exhibit as many of those explananda as possible (including "internally," not just in its "external" behavior), with as much precision as possible?" My current hunch is that further theorizing about the evolution of consciousness wouldn't contribute to that project in an especially direct way, though it might help guide the search process for consciousness explananda, or contribute in some other somewhat indirect way.
You reported that you found investigation from the perspective of how consciousness evolved to be wanting. Do you think there might be relatively high potential upside in encouraging more and better theoretical work and discussion of this sort? Based on what you’ve seen in other fields, what might that depend on?
Do you suspect things in that space could be usefully incorporated into a model of progress towards a theory resembling your six step GDAK-inspired cognitive architecture approach?
In spite of concern over just-so stories (and I think anthropic bias... (read more)