Awareness can ultimately be found in very strange places. “
– Christof Koch
The canonical question in the philosophy of consciousness was asked by Thomas Nagel in 1974: “What is it like to be a bat?”
The idea of Nagel was that consciousness is easily defined by what it feels like to be something – the inner, subjective experience of life and being aware.
“An organism has conscious mental situations like and only if there is something that it is to be that organism,” he explained.
Many have found this subjective answer unsatisfactory circular: what is this something???
David Chalmers later stated this question “the hard problem of consciousness” because it uncovered a gap between subjective experience and objective science.
In 2004, however, Giulio Tononi confronted Chalmer’s hard problem with a paper with a mathematical model for consciousness: integrated information theory (IIT).
Consciousness, he argued, is a mathematical characteristic of physical systems – something that can be quantified and measured.
But can one system conscience?
After interviewing the computational neuroscientist Christof Koch, the co-hosts of the new scientist podcast concluded that computers, those systems were, could theoretically reach consciousness if they could ‘integrate’ the information they process.
And almost everything can be a system: even a rock can register a trail of consciousness if its atoms form the right type of structure (as proven in the scientist documentary Everything everywhere at the same time).
That made me think: Ethereum is a world computer, right?
And critics accuse Bitcoin of being a pet rock.
So … if computers and rocks can be aware, can block chains be?
Blockchains actually tap a lot of Iit’s boxes.
For example, IIT states that a system can only be aware if the current situation reflects everything that it has experienced – just like your memories shape who you are and builds on the last one moment.
Block chains such as Ethereum work in a similar way: the current ‘status’ of a blockchain is a function of its history and each new block depends entirely on those in front.
That history dependence gives it a kind of memory and because thousands of nodes agree on a single shared version of reality, it also creates a uniform “now” (or “state”) that IIT says is a characteristic of consciousness.
Unfortunately, IIT also says that it must be aware of a system, the “causal autonomy” – that is, his parts must influence each other internally and not only in response to inputs that it receives passively from external actors.
Of course, block chains don’t work that way.
Instead, they trust external inputs (such as users who send transactions and validators that add blocks) to act and move forward – and the nodes that carry out the network do not influence each other internally, they simply follow the same set of rules blindly.
There is no spontaneous activity, no internal cause – not even the aimless vibration of molecules that you would get in a lifeless piece of granite.
So I am sorry to report that, on the IIT spectrum of consciousness, block chains rank under rocks -and that the “Pet Rock” -Jab can therefore be a compliment to Bitcoin (or an insult to rocks).
But maybe not long!
In 2021, the computer scientists (and the couple) described Lenore and Manuel Blum co-author of a paper and described the consciousness in machines.
Their framework treats consciousness as a calculations – feasible with AI algorithms that are designed to produce systems with the “causal autonomy” needed for conscious experience.
The AI would not be aware in this case, but a system that uses it.
Now imagine an AI-compatible blockchain that not only performs code, but thinks of Perform code.
Instead of waiting inert ledgers for inputs, block chains can stand on their own, “causally integrated” machines-lake as synthetic brains than distributed databases, with the type of internal autonomy that IIT researchers consider essential for consciousness.
This can be useful!
Such a system may reason about its own security, detect anomalies in real -time and decide when they have to forks themselves (perhaps after a period of soul -seeking introspection).
In short, it would do things, not because it was told, but because it was understood What happened – both in itself and in the outside world.
It is not impossible.