LessWrong Community Weekend 2019 Keynote: “From Predictive Engines to Conscious Machines and Uploading?”
Marcel Ackermann
TL;DR:
Keynote by Dr. Wanja Wiese: “From Predictive Engines to Conscious Machines and Uploading?”
Spots are still available! Apply here: tiny.cc/lwcw2019_signup
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When? Fr 30.08 - Mo 02.09 Where? http://jh-wannsee.de How much? €200
We are very delighted to announce this year’s inspiring keynote by Dr. Wanja Wiese with the title:
From Predictive Engines to Conscious Machines and Uploading?
Dr. Wanja Wiese is a mathematician, a philosopher and a leading expert on predictive processing. During his sharp rise to academic notoriety, his writing has been widely published and he has made important contributions to a newly emerging understanding of what consciousness is. Find the full abstract for the keynote attached below.
From Friday August 30th to Monday 2nd September aspiring rationalists from across Europe and further afield will gather for 4 days of socializing, fun and intellectual exploration. There will be scheduled talks, but the majority of the content will be unconference style and participant driven.
On Friday afternoon we put up four wall-sized daily planners and before you can spell “epistemology” the attendees fill them up with 50+ workshops, talks and activities of their own devising, such as sessions about rationality techniques, acrobatic yoga and authentic relating; you can learn all about new hyper-cost-effective altruistic interventions, whether a dragon could hover and much much more.
This is our 6th year and we feel that the atmosphere and sense of community at these weekends is something that’s really special. If that sounds like something you would enjoy and you have some exciting ideas or skills to contribute do come along and get involved. This year is the biggest one yet and it’s an entire day longer than previous years!
The ticket price of €200 includes accommodation for 3 nights, on-site meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and snacks, as well as a tasty welcome lunch on Friday at 12:00 with a shuttle taking you directly to the venue.
We still have spots available! Apply here: tiny.cc/lwcw2019_signup and make sure to let us know what experience and ideas you may contribute to this event: tiny.cc/lwcw2019_contribution.
If you would not attend due to financial constraints or if you have any questions, please email us at lwcw....@gmail.com.
Looking forward to seeing you there,
The Community Weekend organizers and LessWrong Deutschland e.V.
From Predictive Engines to Conscious Machines and Uploading?
Predictive processing approaches continue to play an influential role in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of cognitive science. According to predictive processing, perception and action are underpinned by inference processes on sensory signals, based on an internal model of the world. Since predictive processing is a type of computation, it can also be implemented in artificial, silicon-based systems. But would this endow artificial systems with the same types of mental properties that intelligent biological systems, such as ourselves, possess? A lot hinges on whether the neural mechanisms underpinning consciousness and cognition can be regarded as implementations of predictive processing. If implementing certain forms of predictive processing is sufficient for consciousness, non-biological conscious machines will be possible. In principle, this would also enable us to upload our minds, thereby transcending the limits of mortal biological organisms. But would an uploaded version of myself really be me? And to what extent am I real in the first place, especially if what I experience as ‘me’ is the result of an evolved inference process?