What is the secret of consciousness? | Steve Grand | TEDxOporto
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0:09 - 0:10Hi.
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0:10 - 0:13I have no idea
what Milton just said, so - -
0:13 - 0:14(Laughter)
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0:14 - 0:16If it was bad,
you will tell me, won't you? -
0:16 - 0:19(Laughter)
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0:21 - 0:25We human beings can be
quite clever when we try, -
0:25 - 0:29and over the centuries
we've managed to solve -
0:29 - 0:32many of the great mysteries
of the world, of life. -
0:33 - 0:37We know now that the sky is not really
held up with four tent poles -
0:38 - 0:41and that stars are not really
tiny little things. -
0:41 - 0:43They're just a very long way away.
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0:44 - 0:49We even know that teenagers
are not really possessed by demons. -
0:49 - 0:50(Laughter)
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0:50 - 0:53They're just clinically insane.
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0:53 - 0:55(Laughter)
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0:55 - 0:57But there are still some mysteries left.
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0:58 - 1:01There's the origin of the universe.
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1:01 - 1:03That's quite a big one.
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1:05 - 1:09And there's a lot of mysteries
about how a tiny little egg cell -
1:10 - 1:11can grow and develop
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1:11 - 1:18into something as complex and wonderful
and tremendously attractive as you. -
1:21 - 1:26And there's the mystery of consciousness,
the great secret of consciousness. -
1:26 - 1:29How come there's a me
inside my head looking out? -
1:32 - 1:34I'd love to talk to you
about all three of those things, -
1:34 - 1:37but I only have thirteen minutes,
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1:37 - 1:41so I'm just going to solve
the secret of consciousness. -
1:44 - 1:46I don't want to leave you in suspense,
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1:46 - 1:49because frankly, when you hear the answer,
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1:49 - 1:52you're just going to be
bitterly disappointed anyway. -
1:52 - 1:54So I'll tell you the secret straightaway,
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1:54 - 1:57and then I'll try to make you
feel better about it. -
1:58 - 2:01So, okay, here we go. Are you ready?
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2:02 - 2:06The great secret of consciousness is ...
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2:09 - 2:11No, actually, I'll tell you a story first.
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2:11 - 2:13(Laughter)
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2:14 - 2:18When my son Christopher
was a little boy, about that big, -
2:18 - 2:20one of his teachers asked him
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2:20 - 2:24what he wanted to be,
what he wanted to do when he grew up. -
2:24 - 2:27And Christopher very confidently answered,
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2:27 - 2:30"I want to study how one thing
affects another." -
2:32 - 2:34And as career plans go,
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2:34 - 2:38I think his teacher felt
that was a little bit vague, -
2:39 - 2:41but I was really proud of him.
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2:42 - 2:45For a start, you can never be unemployed
with a skill like that, can you? -
2:45 - 2:47(Laughter)
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2:47 - 2:48You want to solve the problems of cancer,
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2:48 - 2:52you want to find out why wars get started,
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2:52 - 2:54you want to design better spacecraft,
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2:54 - 2:58who better to ask than somebody who knows
how one thing leads to another? -
3:01 - 3:02But he was right.
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3:02 - 3:04You can study how one thing
affects another. -
3:05 - 3:07It's called cybernetics, in fact.
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3:09 - 3:13Because there's not that many ways
in which one thing can affect another. -
3:13 - 3:15And if you're quite good at patterns,
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3:15 - 3:18you start to see that the same
kinds of dynamics -
3:19 - 3:21occur in many, many levels of scale.
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3:23 - 3:27Chris was kind of simplifying -
because it was a teacher, you know - -
3:27 - 3:32and what he really meant
was not how one thing affects another, -
3:32 - 3:37but how one thing affects another
that affects the first thing again. -
3:38 - 3:42So something called
circular causality or feedback, -
3:42 - 3:45and cybernetics is the study of feedback.
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3:46 - 3:47This is really important
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3:47 - 3:52because basically everything
you see around you -
3:53 - 3:55exists because of feedback.
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3:56 - 3:59The atoms in the seat in front of you,
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4:00 - 4:04the mind and the body
of the person sitting in that seat, -
4:04 - 4:10the words I'm using, Portugal, even TED.
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4:10 - 4:13All of these things exist
because of feedback, -
4:13 - 4:18because they are self-reinforcing
or self-regulating in some way. -
4:19 - 4:21Because if they weren't,
they'd just disappear. -
4:22 - 4:26So everything is feedback
and feedback is everything. -
4:26 - 4:31Anyway, where was I?
Consciousness. Alright. This time. -
4:31 - 4:33(Laughter)
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4:33 - 4:37The great secret of consciousness is ...
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4:39 - 4:41By the way,
-
4:41 - 4:42(Laughter)
-
4:42 - 4:45have you ever spent much time
thinking about the fact -
4:45 - 4:50that you are actually
a colony of single-celled creatures? -
4:51 - 4:54It's kind of freaky,
but it's also quite wonderful. -
4:55 - 4:56You are.
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4:57 - 5:02You are a society
of 100 trillion little creatures, -
5:03 - 5:08and 90% of them are bacteria,
which is kind of embarrassing, -
5:08 - 5:13but you can't live without them,
so collectively they're you. -
5:14 - 5:17And even the ones that have human genes,
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5:19 - 5:21they're really just
little single-celled animals, -
5:22 - 5:24and they reproduce asexually;
-
5:24 - 5:27they divide into two, then four,
then eight and sixteen. -
5:28 - 5:32And almost the only thing
that's special about them -
5:32 - 5:35is the fact that they're covered in glue,
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5:35 - 5:39so they kind of end up
stuck together in a lump -
5:39 - 5:43instead of swimming off and living
happy independent lives. -
5:44 - 5:47So basically you are a lump
of sticky little creatures. -
5:50 - 5:52The reason I tell you this partly is
-
5:52 - 5:55that it kind of explains
what I do for a living. -
5:56 - 5:59I work in a field called artificial life,
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6:00 - 6:05which basically means
using technology to explore biology. -
6:06 - 6:10And so I spend my days
making artificial creatures. -
6:10 - 6:12Sometimes robots.
-
6:12 - 6:18In fact I have a full-sized female,
mini-skirted robot sitting in my bedroom, -
6:18 - 6:20(Laughter)
-
6:20 - 6:22which causes a big shock
to anyone who comes in -
6:22 - 6:24to do something in my apartment.
-
6:27 - 6:31But mostly, I make virtual creatures
that live inside a computer. -
6:34 - 6:40The only thing worth knowing about this
is that they are also communities. -
6:40 - 6:44So I don't try to program computers
to behave like animals; -
6:44 - 6:47I try to program computers
to behave like brain cells -
6:47 - 6:49and kidney cells and liver cells,
-
6:49 - 6:53and then I try to find ways
to plug them together into systems, -
6:54 - 6:55into communities,
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6:57 - 7:02that collectively have thoughts
and feelings and hopes and dreams. -
7:04 - 7:08And many, many years ago,
about 20,000 years ago, -
7:08 - 7:13I took some of my little creatures
and put them into a computer game -
7:14 - 7:15and let people play with them,
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7:15 - 7:17and the results were wonderful.
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7:19 - 7:23At least a million people
started looking after my little creatures, -
7:23 - 7:26and they did great things.
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7:27 - 7:30They would set up adoption agencies,
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7:30 - 7:32write lots of stories,
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7:32 - 7:34do scientific experiments on them,
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7:34 - 7:36study their genetics.
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7:41 - 7:43Actually quite a lot of them went on,
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7:43 - 7:44when they grew up,
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7:44 - 7:47they went on to become
scientists and stuff, -
7:47 - 7:49because of the experiments
they had been doing -
7:49 - 7:51on my little artificial life forms.
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7:51 - 7:55But the most important thing
was that they asked a lot of questions, -
7:55 - 8:00deep questions about what is life,
what is the mind, what is consciousness. -
8:00 - 8:03And I just loved that;
it made my whole life worth living. -
8:05 - 8:07Because these questions really matter.
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8:09 - 8:12How do we know,
how can we make good judgements -
8:13 - 8:19about ethical questions
like abortion or animal cruelty -
8:20 - 8:22if we don't know what consciousness is?
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8:23 - 8:27You can't be cruel to something
unless it knows you're being cruel to it. -
8:27 - 8:29But how do we know whether it knows?
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8:31 - 8:33I live in America,
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8:34 - 8:39and over there, abortion
is a huge political subject. -
8:40 - 8:45It sometimes seems to me
like half the population believe this, -
8:45 - 8:48and the other half
of the population believe that. -
8:49 - 8:53They can't both be right.
They could of course both be wrong. -
8:55 - 8:59Are they sitting down
around a really long table, -
8:59 - 9:03having discussions and trying to work out
what the right answer is about abortion? -
9:03 - 9:07Well no, of course not. It's America.
They just shoot each other. -
9:07 - 9:09(Laughter)
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9:10 - 9:12So it's a mess.
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9:12 - 9:13We don't know what we're talking about,
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9:14 - 9:19and part of the reason is,
I think, that we're stuck. -
9:19 - 9:22We're stuck, we can't move
forward with these problems, -
9:22 - 9:26because we don't know
what the secret of consciousness is. -
9:29 - 9:34I guess that's me there.
Third time lucky, I'll tell you. -
9:34 - 9:37This time, I'll tell you,
and you're not going to like it. -
9:38 - 9:43Alright, so the great secret
of consciousness is ... -
9:45 - 9:48that there is no secret of consciousness.
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9:48 - 9:49(Laughter)
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9:50 - 9:52I'll tell you the bad news first,
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9:52 - 9:56and then I'll try to convince you
that it's actually good news. -
9:58 - 10:00The thing is -
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10:01 - 10:04Over the last few years,
I've been building some new creatures, -
10:05 - 10:08and I really think that now,
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10:08 - 10:13I am starting to get a glimmer
of consciousness out of these creatures. -
10:14 - 10:17And for me that's great.
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10:18 - 10:20I really wanted to bring them along.
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10:20 - 10:24I'm so sorry, but they misbehaved
and I just couldn't do it. -
10:24 - 10:26(Laughter)
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10:26 - 10:28So for me it's great
because this is my life's work. -
10:28 - 10:31I've spent 35 years doing this stuff,
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10:31 - 10:34and it's nice to feel that I'm starting
to get close to something. -
10:35 - 10:38But a lot of people don't feel
that way about these things, -
10:40 - 10:42because these creatures are artificial.
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10:43 - 10:44They live in a computer.
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10:44 - 10:48So they can't have a supernatural soul,
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10:48 - 10:53and they can't even have freaky,
weird things like quantum mechanics -
10:53 - 10:58to explain the consciousness
and all the other things that we concoct -
10:58 - 11:01to try to make ourselves feel better
about how special we are. -
11:05 - 11:06They're machines,
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11:07 - 11:10and therefore, if I'm right, so are we,
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11:11 - 11:14and nobody wants to be called a machine.
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11:14 - 11:18You just don't want to tell people that.
They don't want to be it. -
11:18 - 11:23It's not exactly special,
and machines wear out. -
11:24 - 11:26So what do I do?
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11:27 - 11:30What do you do if it bothers you?
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11:31 - 11:33Well, all that stuff I was telling you
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11:33 - 11:38about Christopher and feedback
and collections of little cells, -
11:39 - 11:41that's where the answer lies.
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11:41 - 11:45I can't explain it to you now,
but if you want to know -
11:45 - 11:49how to deal with the fact
that we are machines - -
11:49 - 11:52and that's not a bad thing -
that's where to look. -
11:53 - 11:57But let me try and finish
with a cosmogony, -
11:57 - 11:59a little story of a better origins,
-
11:59 - 12:01the creation story.
-
12:01 - 12:04You know the biblical creation story.
-
12:06 - 12:12Basically, God created the universe
perfect and fully formed, -
12:13 - 12:16and then some people came along
and screwed it all up, -
12:16 - 12:19and it's all been downhill ever since.
-
12:20 - 12:24So that creation story
is all about decline and decay. -
12:26 - 12:29But in my field, complexity studies,
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12:29 - 12:31complexity theory,
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12:32 - 12:36we can offer a different kind
of creation story. -
12:37 - 12:42And in that story the universe
wasn't created fully formed and perfect; -
12:43 - 12:49it was very, very simple and very, very,
very, very, very, very boring. -
12:50 - 12:55But it's a creative universe,
a self-organizing universe, -
12:56 - 13:00a universe that discovers and invents
things that didn't exist before - -
13:00 - 13:02all the time.
-
13:05 - 13:10Essentially thanks
to the power of feedback, -
13:10 - 13:16an empty universe once discovered
how to make matter out of empty space. -
13:17 - 13:19And once it had figured out
how to make matter -
13:19 - 13:21and the matter cooled down enough,
-
13:21 - 13:23it discovered it could do
chemistry with it. -
13:24 - 13:28And the chemistry practiced and practiced
and practiced for billions of years -
13:28 - 13:31and eventually figured out
it could make life. -
13:32 - 13:36And then as soon as life showed up,
it was never going to go away again, -
13:37 - 13:40so it experimented with different ways
-
13:40 - 13:42of plugging cells together
into communities -
13:42 - 13:45to do different things
that enabled it to survive, -
13:45 - 13:48made it self-sustaining,
-
13:48 - 13:51and during that process, eventually,
-
13:51 - 13:54it needed to build models of the world
-
13:54 - 13:58so that it could make plans
and predict things, -
13:59 - 14:01and I think that's where
consciousness came from. -
14:01 - 14:06So it's just what happens
when a certain kind of machine is working. -
14:06 - 14:09There's nothing freaky about it.
-
14:11 - 14:15But this is a pretty cool universe
-
14:15 - 14:17because we emerged out of all this.
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14:17 - 14:19So what I'm saying is that,
-
14:19 - 14:24yes, we are machines,
but we're not just machines; -
14:24 - 14:27we're amazing machines.
-
14:28 - 14:32We're the product
of 14 billion years of experiment -
14:33 - 14:35by an incredibly creative universe.
-
14:35 - 14:39And so hopefully that makes you
feel a little bit better -
14:40 - 14:42about being a machine.
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14:42 - 14:47So my advice is to try
and embrace you're in a machine, -
14:47 - 14:50and it's not a bad thing to be.
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14:51 - 14:52So thank you.
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14:52 - 14:55(Applause)
- Title:
- What is the secret of consciousness? | Steve Grand | TEDxOporto
- Description:
-
What is the secret of consciousness? Is it the quantum nano tubules inside our nerve cells? Is it a fundamental force of nature? Is it perhaps something from outside this universe altogether?
Steve Grand is an independent scientist who works on artificial life and, more specifically, creates artificial creatures both inside and outside a computer, namely robots. His first big idea was an artificial life computer game called Creatures, which was published in 1996. He has written up most of his philosophy and ideas about artificial life in a Popular Science book – Creation: Life and how to make it. He has also written another book called, "Growing up with Lucy: how to build an android in twenty easy steps," in which he describes his experiences on his projects.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 15:07
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Maria K. edited English subtitles for What is the secret of consciousness? | Steve Grand | TEDxOporto | ||
Maria K. edited English subtitles for What is the secret of consciousness? | Steve Grand | TEDxOporto | ||
Maria K. edited English subtitles for What is the secret of consciousness? | Steve Grand | TEDxOporto |