Quora user claims to have 'solved consciousness' via AGI theory?

Oh I think that sort of thing is quite useful - one of my favorite conversation starters with new people is whether they've had a paranormal experience. Once they realize I am not going to subject them to pseudo-skeptical mockery almost everyone has had at least one "weird" event in their lives.

I accept some of these people might be having a go, making something up, but I find most of these "testimonies" to be genuine for my personal satisfaction. As  you say it's not the kind of thing that will make it into a scientific journal yet for myself it's good to have reminders that there's still magic in the world...

Thanks, Sci ! Just to add, for me at least, this wasn't paranormal, just a matter of fact.

Thanks, Sci ! Just to add, for me at least, this wasn't paranormal, just a matter of fact.

That's a bit like foreign languages. The 'paranormal' isn't unusual any more than one's native language is foreign. It only appears so to others (non-native speakers of that language).

I haven’t read the actual links to this chap’s ideas so let me apologise if my comments are off track.

Although I don’t think technology will ever generate consciousness of itself, I can see how consciousness might be able to express itself through technology. 

Part of me suspects that might be what happens in reality anyway, in the sense that perhaps consciousness expresses itself as fully as it can through the mechanism it’s using. Generally that’s   a brain, perhaps explaining some of the connection between brain capacity and consciousness (though there seem to be some striking exceptions, even amongst humans).

The other issue with the original premise is that there is a lot of evidence from many sources that mean a purely physical explanation is unlikely to be right, unless he is ignoring it or has found some way to invalidate it, in which case surely a Nobel Prize cannot be far behind.

A late update, it appears this 'BA Rehl' is now on Reddit, and has made it clear he does not support dualism, idealism, panpsychism etc. He has already garnered suspicion from commenters, which can be viewed on his profile: https://www.reddit.com/user/BA_Rehl/

A commenter pointed out that he is making bold claims and yet has apparently never actually formed a coherent theory, nor has he actually published any of his own work. It seems his only supporter is a rigorous and very rude materialist who refers to Hoffman and Kastrup as 'pseudo-philosophers' or something, and falsely claimed Parnia is a skeptic based on the AwareofAWARE blog based on statements that were taken out of context. He also falsely claimed that Christof Koch had 'debunked' NDES, resulting in the r/NDE and r/consciousness subreddits refuting the article and the assertions of this guy. It would not suprise me if this 'SoraVGC' is an alternate account Rehl is using. This 'Sora' seems to be adamantly pushing materialism, to the point where he asked another materialist to basically bully a former friend of mine on the site just because Sora was losing an argument by making unproven assertions about consciousness. One of the guys who supported my former friend and refuted this Sora character is apparantly a non-materialist physicist who is humble enough to not jump to conclusions. 

To give you an idea of how bad this SoraVGC guy is, not only does he cherry pick and claim that Parnia now thinks NDEs are seizures (I'm pretty certain he doesn't), but he desperately tries to cling to his materialism and go 'look, see!'. Each time he's made a post, it gets massively downvoted because of the clickbait titles he uses and the snarky, cynical way he treats people. In this post, he claims we've proven consciousness is a product of entropy, completely glossing over the actual paper and the fact that not only was this study from several years ago, but it was very flawed and admitted to being inconclusive. https://www.reddit.com/r/consciousness/c...ness_is_a/

For those unaware, for him to have -50 comment karma on Reddit is usually a warning sign of someone who isn't very nice. He apeared on the site 2 months ago, and originally pretended to be skeptical of this Rehl. Despite being told that he probably isn't reliable, Sora seeminhly worships him and cites his work every time someone pokes holes in his materialist nonesense. Even other proponents of AGI cast doubt on his claims, especially when he lables other philosophies as 'woo' and 'religions' despite acting like a fundamentalist zealot himself.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the prime example of how arrogant, deceitful, manipulative, cynical and disgusting some materialists can be.

Amusingly, despite the fact that his Quora page suggests otherwise, Behl is now insisting that he 'hasn't solved consciousness' and is 'still working on it', but don't worry, he still has 'plenty of evidence'. Sounds like back-pedalling to me. These are his own words: 

I haven't solved consciousness and I don't know how to build either a conscious machine or a working AGI system. I did model what I've called the Awareness System in the brain in 2015, but that is a non-conscious system.
I've been working on AGI theory since 2013. Based on what has been published, I seem to be in the lead in terms of theory development by a large margin. That could mean that I'm the leading theorist in this particular area, or maybe I'm just completely wrong. But, even if I'm right, I'm not sure how that would make me a leading scientist. The theoretical work depends on research done by many other people who are scientists.
Where are my peer-reviewed articles? I don't have any.

He also brags that he is 'the world's leading AGI expert by a large margin' and yet he admits to these things. It seems he has let his ego go to his head, especially when he's going around claiming he's debunked the afterlife, God, Psi etc.

Yeah that Sora guy first showed up on Kastrup’s forum under the name AGI. I’m guessing he went there cuz Rehl mentioned Kastrup on his Quora account. He started off seeming like he was skeptical but interested, but comparing his timeline on reddit to his posts on the forum he really wasn’t. He is literally the guy posting about Rehl everywhere (BK’s forum, Reddit, the Awareofaware blog, even in YouTube comments). Like, it’d be one thing if Rehl actually had proper published work out there or at least actually articulated his ideas for this guy to be this obsessed, but he’s basically just taken what Rehl has said he’s done purely on faith, and possibly desire for AGI in the near future. I’m honestly still divided on whether he and Rehl are the same person but I kinda lean more towards they’re not. The writing styles feel too different. Though honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if this was some weird attempt at guerrilla marketing to get people talking about him.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the prime example of how arrogant, deceitful, manipulative, cynical and disgusting some materialists can be.

I think you're taking this whole thing too seriously. Pick any topic. And I really do mean ANY. Somewhere on the internet you will find arrogant, bullying types making nasty comments.

I think you need to separate this human behavioural thing from the subject matter.

If you enjoy aggressive, confrontational interchanges, then by all means spend time in those sites. But don't mistake it for legitimate debate. It is not. Again, I can only emphasise, it is not the subject matter which is the issue here. It is simply an example of the variety of ways humans choose to spend their time and energies. 

At least that's my take on the matter, for what it's worth.

It truly is incredible how deceptive this Sora guy is. He misinterprets and twists Sam Parnia's words, posts sensationalised studies with assertive, clickbait titles, bullied and attacked anyone who dared to criticise his precious materialism/physicalism and deliberately starts out online by pretending to be neutral before descending into blatant bias and showing his true colours. 

He claims on Bernardo's forum, once again like on Reddit, that he's 'agnostic' and 'neutral' before blatantly revealing himself as a fundamentalist zealot. You can't be agnostic if you're going around claiming 'religion has been disproven by science' and 'every other theory has no evidence', which is just a sign of congitive bias. 

On Reddit, he made a post listing 'evidence of emergence', and many of the studies seemingly had nothing to do with the consciousness that most on the r/consciousness subreddit are referring to. He seems to be vehemently in denial. The fact that he has the gall to then leave Kastrup's forum and go mock him on another site is disgusting. One minute he says he agrees with Kastrup and Annika Harris, the next he's saying on Reddit they're a 'part of the dark side' on consciousness theories. He also does not seem to understand that not all of the evidence he cites is up-to-date or even accurate anymore, acting as though materialist theories have remained unchallenged. And when they are challenged, he dismisses it and starts quoting Rehl again, as if Rehl is his trump card. One of my old friends on there (a guy who I think should be on this forum), Ziggle, provided him with evidence against materialism and supporting other theories, which Sora just dismisses. 

Speaking of Trump, Rehl genuinely claims that he won't be able to publish his results if Trump is still in power because it'll be 'attacked for contradicting and disproving' people's beliefs. This sounds like an excuse to me. A lot of people are accusing Behl of conflating intelligence with consciousness as well. 

The forum user Rigpa does a pretty good job getting the criticisms of both Sora and Rehl across. Rehl has only appeared on a single, obscure podcast where he apparently still does not properly explain his theory and instead dances around the question, trying to talk down everything else rather than explain himself. Politics shouldn't be relevant to him publishing his work either. 

I am probably going to make a throwaway account on Reddit just to expose this guy. His behaviour has gone on long enough. 

Either this SoraVGC is Mr Rehl himself using a guerilla account and is trying to make his work seem more credible by advertising it elsewhere, or he's a mentally unwell kid who doesn't seem to fully understand what consciousness is and is tricking people into thinking he's not a materialist. The same can be said for Rehl, who I think is either a con man or mentally ill.

Anyways, I do apologise if I'm taking this too seriously. It's just this guy is going around posting blatant misinformation about Sam Parnia, consciousness and neural correlates, not even bothering to properly read the articles and studies he links to. I have had to deal with people like him before myself and I do not want this guy to upset anyone else.

Pseudo-skpeticism was born on, and is quite at home, on the internet.

But humanity as a whole seems to be moving in another direction...

Some proponents seem to think convincing the most die-hard pseudoskeptic will ultimately shift the tide for parapsychology...I have serious doubts given all the other issues everyone argues about on the internet to little avail.

And if one's concern is personal, wanting to just *know* whether Psi, or the afterlife, or ghosts are real...I'd recommend a personal journey over internet arguments. The internet will just leave you adrift, switching your thoughts over and over on all these subjects and - if you fear death that much - continually making life an emotional rollercoaster.

[Or at the least use the internet to do some deeper reading. I can confidently say it is almost certain you won't be satisfied with anything on Reddit re: these topics...]

So against my better judgement I took a look at Rehl’s quora page. There were some odd things that I thought might be of interest.

The first thing is that while he is of the “brain makes mind” paradigm, he doesn’t consider consciousness to be an emergent property of the brain. I’ll be honest and say I didn’t fully read the post, so forgive me for extrapolating but I’m guessing he either means that it’s not an epiphenomenon (cuz his theory is about cognitive evolution) or that because of his theory he can actually describe how brain makes consciousness without claiming magic emergence.

He also does believe in qualia. The most on that is just a post where he responded that qualia isn’t an illusion (but that was from a few years back and it’s really the only time he mentions qualia at all). My best guess (and again this is just me extrapolating based on the little we actually know of this guy) is he probably thinks qualia has an evolutionary advantage and that sensory input is turned into it through “abstract information processing” or something since that’s one of his things.

And finally, apparently despite claiming brain makes consciousness, his theory barely touches on neuroscience at all. That’s from a very recent post too. Which is honestly kinda baffling when you consider how important the brain is for consciousness regardless of where you stand on the debate, you’d expect it to be an important focus for such a theory. Instead he focuses entirely on cognition theory, cognitive evolutionary theory, and his self made abstract information theory and knowledge theory (which seem to be extensions of information theory). 

I know until (or if, though I’d honestly be fine if he just didn’t) he actually publishes something there’s no point in still talking about him (and quite frankly I wish he didn’t have a devoted cultist to spread his word so he’d have just remained confined to Quora so there wouldn’t be any conversation about him) but I figured those three bits were at least relevant for painting a larger picture of quite the bizarre individual.

There's lot of people pinning their hopes on information processing. It really doesn't move me at all. It is just too close to following the trend of latching onto whatever is the fashion of the era in which one happens to live. I think consciousness is more timeless and belongs to any era and to none. We don't have a monopoly on wisdom or insights, it is hubris to simply assume that right now, in this time when we are alive, we suddenly found a solution which eluded everyone else for millennia. It just doesn't seem appropriate, it is too obsessed with the importance of this particular era. A longer perspective is needed.

As for the role of the brain in relation to consciousness. Well it seems to me the brain is primarily concerned with sensory input. We usually say humans have five senses. Only one of them is not related to sense-organs in the head. Four out of five physical senses are located in the head. The fifth, that is too, but it also exists throughout the body. So it seems the primary role of the brain is to gather all those sensory inputs and do something with them. That is very much like all sorts of mechanised automation we have these days, from digital cameras to self-driving cars. But I don't have any expectation that my digital camera is conscious.