😶🌫️ Consciousness, from a pragmatic perspective
Assuming natural selection holds, any evolved traits must have utility in its natural environment. This assumption allows us to view consciousness, an evolved trait, through the lens of utility. First, let's minimally define consciousness. There are many definitions, but most share the same core: the agent's awareness of itself and its existence. Awareness of self, I argue, is a mechanism to 1. Bias an agent's goals towards the self and its betterment 2. Allow recursive self-modification [1] The first adds another layer of motivation for self-preservation, on top of the evolved baselines which often exists at a group / species level, at least with life on Earth. The second enables targeted self-improvement of the individual, on a shorter timescale, without needing any lift in the underlying "hardware" (e.g. genetics, for life on Earth) Combining the two traits, we arrive at an agent possessing both the willingness and ability to self-improve, which has obvi...