Oh, what a delightful interview! Indeed, it's the first time I've stumbled upon your channel, better late than never. And that only happened because I was doing a bit of browsing before ordering the new book. I had the pleasure of attending quite a few brilliant seminars with Thomas Metzinger back in the early 90s. Warm regards.

Metzinger is always fun to listen to. A good speaker

I don't agree about the possibility of consciousness in non-biolohical systems, but Thomas is very interesting in that he has explored phenomenology deeply, which can't be said about most academic contemplating AI consciousness, metaphysics, stc.

This really shaking my worldview, really excited to watch

What a fabulous conversation! So much to think about.

At 1 hr 29 min he mentions an article by Raphael M on self and second-order memories. Does anyone know the name of that paper?

What is better: no new living creature with the ability to experience suffering and (consequently) no suffering or an extra living creature than will experience suffering?

It is sad that human do not value future human life more. But....... I common expressed meme is that harse times will create good people, in luxury lives many people will not develop well. Maybe humans need a certain about of suffering to develop. In buddhism and Christianity an important meme is "Life is suffering"

Ethical rule: Do not create suffering in others by your own actions.

Increased computational power doesn't have to translate to increased potential of suffering or happiness. I don't believe that the amount of suffering or states of happiness has anything to do with computational power. More computational power might make a system aware of more things, see more complexity in things like vision but being able to be aware of thousands of objects at the same time doesn't mean that you are suffering a thousands time more or enjoying things a thousand times more, it just means that you are aware of more things. To be clear: I'm not stating that AI models can't suffer more than humans but that the potential of suffering isn't automatically bound to computational power.

In regards to Thomas's comments on antinatalism (better to not exist) -- Thought experiment: Imagine you're the only being in the entire universe. And so all of column one is true: there's suffering, experience, etc. But there is no one being spared from that suffering, and so it wouldn't make sense to say "hey, look at all the non-existent beings that are being protected from this experience!"... That's incoherent. There is conscious experience, and there isn't anyone being spared from it. ... Now let's do that same thought experiment, but instead of you being the one and only being that exists,bits some other being. And so there's experience. There isn't anyone being protected from that experience... And so, as far as there being experience itself, both versions of the thought experiment are the same. In both cases, there's subjective experience, and in both cases, that subjective experience is imposed... You cannot be spared from that consciousness, because you don't exist... In both scenarios a brain is responsible for the consciousness, and so in both scenarios consciousness is imposed by the existence of a living brain. ... The Asymmetry Argument breed of antinatalism has a metaphysical problem that actually reveals that it's completely incoherent and logically wrong. Thomas' antinatalism is based on David Benatar's Asymmetry Argument. But the thing is that it'd require non-existent people to have the ability to appreciate their own lack of existing. They (they!? Who are we pointing to??) Would have to *obtain* a peaceful _state_ that exists before birth, in which they're taken out of when they come to exist. Otherwise the Asymmetry Argument is not offering anything. It wouldn't be offering the peace that antinatalists want to obtain. And so, since there isn't anything it offers, it should be utterly disregarded. Think about being put under with anesthesia. You don't experience and appreciate the period of time you're unconscious. It isn't until consciousness resumes that the period of unconsciousness is appreciated. Even Benatar has referred to this as "a neutral state" (before we exist). He said this in an interview with Alex O'Connor. But no such state exists... Where would this state be occuring, and for who? So what would it be like if you were never born? Well, ask yourself, what was happening before you existed? The answer is that everything in the universe was happening, and that there was a lot of conscious experience back then. It was just being done by other brains - the brains that existed back then. So there was experience before you existed. There was nothing of you impeding that experience, because only if you exist can other conscious experience be impeded: If you imagine a universe completely devoid of all life, except for you and one other sentient organism... You're existence in this scenario is the only thing impeding the other consciousness from being experienced -- because if that other organism were the only being alive, then that'd be the only experience there is... As opposed to you in a black void being protected from that consciousness. So instead of your brain being the one that imposed consciousness, it would be the one brain that _does_ exist. There'd be no you to escape it. Even if all life in the universe died, there still wouldn't be the ability to obtain or have peace, or the sort of relief antinatalists want. There wouldn't be anyone to experience or appreciate the lack of suffering, so the lack of suffering is meaningless and doesn't matter in this scenario. You didn't appreciate not existing before you were born, and that wouldn't change even if you were the first sentient being to come to exist. This is because _only Experience is what's experienced_ ... Experience (noun), and experienced (verb).

AI will never be self-conscious. Suppose one manages to make AI conscious, what does that say? That it takes another conscious being to create consciousness.

It's impossible to make a model to understand what 'suffering' is. It's like making a model to understand the taste of chocolate. It's very private, very personal and just a label for an experience. Suffering has its purpose on this plane. You need to understand that overcoming suffering requires a shift in perception.

Suffering is not reality. Suffering is produced by the brain. You can influence your suffering by changing how you think.