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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The study published today in Physical Review Research describes how tools from physics and complexity theory were used to determine the level of consciousness in fruit flies.
"This is a major problem in neuroscience, where it is crucial to differentiate between unresponsive vegetative patients and those suffering from a condition in which a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally because of complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body," said study author Dr. Kavan Modi, from the Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy.
[...] "Our technique allows us to distinguish between flies that have been anesthetized and those that have not, by calculating the time-complexity of the signals," said Dr. Modi.
[...] The research team studied the brain signals produced by 13 fruit flies both when they were awake and when they were anesthetized. They then analyzed the signals to see how complex they were.
"We found the statistical complexity to be larger when a [fly] is awake than when the same [fly] is anaesthetized," Dr. Modi said.
[...] The researchers concluded that applying a similar analysis to other datasets, in particular, human EEG data could lead to new discoveries regarding the relationship between consciousness and complexity.
Journal Reference
Roberto N. Muñoz, et. al.
General anesthesia reduces complexity and temporal asymmetry of the informational structures derived from neural recordings in Drosophila, Phys. Rev. Research 2, 023219 (2020)
Also reported at: www.scimex.org
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @08:38AM (5 children)
Fascinating! However, I am a P-zombie, so I can never know how to interpret such findings.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Kell on Tuesday May 26 2020, @11:57AM (4 children)
Well, you can appear to interpret them and give meaningful output, but you have no inner life with which to feel real emotional response thereto.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday May 26 2020, @02:08PM
More or less, though words like "feel" and "emotional" are likely to be misunderstood by some readers. Spock may suppress his emotions, but human P-zombies will still have emotions and feelings that affect their thoughts and actions and they can describe them in detail as well. The key thing is that the lack of an inner life means there's no vivid first person experience of the qualitative character (qualia) of those feelings, or at least there's no-one really having such an inner experience.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday May 26 2020, @02:24PM (2 children)
Although to be fair to you, it's a slippery concept to describe in informal English. Someone can make a case that words like "vivid", "qualitative" and "experience" could apply to an unconscious P-zombie as well. I mean, if their objectively observable physical behavior is identical to a conscious being, they'd even be able to talk about how vivid their qualitative first person experiences are. It seems to be a concept that people either get or they don't, no matter how hard you try to describe it.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:09PM (1 child)
I would classify people who don't get the concept as p-zombies.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:01PM
I like that idea too but taken seriously, it depends on whether or not the private, first person inner life can change the outcome of physical events (a type of free will). If the p-zombie's conscious twin can write about the existence of their inner life but the p-zombie cannot, then it suggests that first person experience is actually not so private after all.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday May 26 2020, @09:34AM (9 children)
"consciousness is an entirely neuron based process"
If you fail this (and there is plenty of doubt, empiric and philosophical, for example on the percentage of neurons involved... also I would not consider a sociopath more alive and conscious than an ebola-class pathogen or a fellow bot), then this study is only an exercise in the application of eugenics. SCIENCE!!! decides when to pull the plug and harvest your organs.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @11:06AM (1 child)
I think they mean wakefulness.
Consciousness is a trickier thing. Maybe even white blood cells experience some degree of consciousness. With our current knowledge there's no way of proving whether they do or not conclusively of course. But I have no way of proving that I experience consciousness to other people either.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:14AM
There is a difference between sentience, awareness and even response to stimuli, and conscious perception of stimuli, and then the self-consciousness of knowing what it is like to be a conscious being knowing it is experiencing stimuli.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @12:25PM (3 children)
That's ok, $SCIENCE was also the one to plug you in in the first place. I can understand it's difficult for you to realize your maker will disassemble you and repurpose your parts when you're outlived your usefulness, but we humans call it recycling, not harvesting.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday May 26 2020, @01:15PM (1 child)
Chances are the Bot's maker is EthanolFueled.
The facts are consistent with the hypothesis: the creation is lamentably flawed and the maker is in derelection of his duty to disassemble the useless Bot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @05:05AM
Useless? Not quite, with a little composting shit can make some great fertilizer.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday May 26 2020, @01:18PM
Indeed all depends on $SCIENCE, e.g. if I were designed by the same SCIENCE!!! that is performing the lot of studies nowadays, I'd be a rocket launcher.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday May 26 2020, @01:24PM
As opposed to the Cannanite Genocide Fairy whose ineffable, omnipresent boot you've been trying to deepthroat since childhood, you drooling Opus Dei fanatic...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @05:25PM
"...also I would not consider a sociopath more alive and conscious than an ebola-class pathogen or a fellow bot..."
what are you trying to say?
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Tuesday May 26 2020, @11:09PM
What is a sociopath here? Is it the usual mental illness? That is, is this somehow a clinical diagnosis? Or something else?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @11:15AM (4 children)
A research team at my university studied the brain signals produced by 13 humans: five Democrat, five Republican and three Muslim. We then analyzed the signals to see how complex they were.
"We found the statistical complexity to be larger in Republicans than in Democrats," Dr. Modi said, "and after checking our equipment to ensure it wasn't broken we can confirm the Muslim signal was just a loop repeating 'Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar' over and over again until it blew up".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @12:16PM (2 children)
Flawed methodology. You didn't mention if the muslims were democrat or republican.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday May 26 2020, @01:20PM (1 child)
Demo-crats, impossible.
Res-Public-ans, impossible.
This is why they were counted as a third group in the eerily realistic looking experiment.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:32AM
Did you catch systemd? You seem wonkier than usual today.
It's going around. Stay safe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:35AM
Wow that was terrible. No snark no story nothing.