evolution

[The Grand Nudger]

That we eat and drink and breath of out the same orifice practically guarantees that some portion of us suffocate every year just trying to satisfy our biological needs. Both living creatures and machines can be faulty or spoofed. It's not a requirement of utility, biological or otherwise - that a system be impervious to fault or even that it's normal operation isn't associated with risks. It's hard to get to the bottom of the ocean for pearls, it's not exactly safe to mine gold. Crash diets can kill, negative ideations can be debilitating....don't even get me started on beauty products and rituals....

You're back to epiphenomenalism, category B - but neither of us believes that items in category B possess utility because we've defined that category by it's complete lack of any ability to effect an outcome. It still remains the case that some things..and yes..even this thing, seem like category A. The ability of a creature to actively locate a mate is advantageous - though, sure, it can be faulty, it can be spoofed, it can be risky. Most plants are stuck hoping to blow into them on the wind, also works.

Maybe a hammer has no utility, in fact, because it doesn't always drive the nail and in some cases, smashes your finger instead in the attempt?

[Angrboda]

You are so fucking clueless. Error proneness is not the issue. You've once again sloppily conflated unrelated things. And no, lacking utility is not a feature of items in B.

And I am out. Perhaps you can see if vulcan has an interest in continuing this discussion because I do not.

[The Grand Nudger]

Okay, wonderful, error proneness can also be written off. What's the problem with the beetle's ability A as having utility, then? Is it or is it not advantageous to an animal that has to locate or procure a sexual partner to have an ability A that can be and demonstrably is used to that effect?

[Angrboda]

You're talking to an empty chair, Nudger.

[The Grand Nudger]

I may as well be no matter who or when or what about in world b- anyway. As a discord buddy likes to say…no change, no deviation.

[Anomalocaris]

There's being unconvinced by a given explanation of self awareness, and there's being unconvinced that self awareness confers practical advantages to systems.  

There's a reason that we have an entire industry devoted to making self aware machines.  The advantages of self awareness are not open to any credible debate whatsoever.

What constitute self awareness?

Does a machine controlled by a integral computer which uses software model (“digital twin” in industry parlance ) of the machine it is controlling to help make and assess its control decisions possess self-awareness?

[The Grand Nudger]

What constitutes minimal self awareness? It's right on the tin. Being aware of self.

Those would be minimally self aware machines, using an ability A (a criteria added for purposes of this discussion to make any notion of the utility of self awareness, minimal or what we have, cogent), to quantifiable effect. Yes. I think we can say, with respect to those lab trials and with respect to human reproductive strategies, that the benefit or gain of function here is crystal clear, as a fact - not a theory or hypothesis... like the theory or hypothesis that we possess these/this ability because it's useful and those useful structures are retained in subsequent iterations of systems by selective pressure in biological populations.

That's obviously -not- why machines possess those abilities, for example. It also, obviously, not the case that a machine -can't- accomplish some task that a minimally self aware machine is demonstrable better at. It's also clear that a specifically human consciousness is not at all required to solve the problems that nonhuman species also face and also solve.

[Anomalocaris]

A computer model of how one’s interaction with one’s environment would go certainly seem to facilitate deeper predication of consequences of command decisions.     So self awareness, a software model including  many or all of one’s external interaction, would seem to facilitate much better and more sophisticated planning than could a command and control structure based on a reasonably sized set of heuristics.

However, to facilitate does not mean to realize.    Furthermore, even if realized, Better and more sophisticated planning may impart local survival advantage, but not global survival disadvantage.    Widespread planning ability may nullify eachother's and result in self-destructive stalemate.

So that there might be some advantage to having self awareness seems difficult to dispute.   But whether the overall effect of having self awareness is advantageous is too soon to tell.

There may be no one left to listen when it is told.

[The Grand Nudger]

Evolutionarily speaking, where this all began - and as I'm sure you're aware, global (and perpetual) survival advantage is a non factor. We may go extinct, but even if or when we do, it will still be difficult..or even impossible, to dispute that we used self awareness and abilities a to great effect until that day.

[Anomalocaris]

of course global survival, not in the sense of perpetual, but in the sense of specie wide, is a critical factor.

no global survival means self-awareness is a transient, non durable phenomenon.