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Nobody seems to think of electricity as a being conscious because it doesn't think, it doesn't have free will nor intelligence, it just follows Ohm's law and can't do anything else. That doesn't make sense though because electricity doesn't even flow until the circuit is complete, nor can it follow Ohm's law without first probing for resistance. It seems obvious that completing an electrical circuit allows the electricity to be aware that the circuit is complete and be aware of resistance so it can follow Ohm's law. If that's not the case, why would it probe near light speed to determine a circuit is complete and determine the resistance? Is Ohm's law not compelling electricity to follow Ohm's law based on the information it has?

It makes no sense to try to scientifically explain conscious thought, conscious intelligence and conscious free will because those things can never follow any kind of law. If we simply make all of our conscious decisions by being compelled to make the inevitable choice based on the awareness our brain gives us, our consciousness doesn't need to have free will for our brains to make us experience awareness of conscious free will. Our free will could simply be our brain altering our awareness so we are compelled to respond in a different way.

When a person chooses to do something that generates happiness instead of sadness, are they really not simply being compelled to take the path of least resistance (happiness as apposed to sadness). Doing something that makes you unhappy to feel happier later could still have less resistance when your'e awareness is altered to include enough motivation to make it the path that has least resistance. This would explain why people sometimes do what they know is right but not always. It also explains why someone who believes they do not deserve to be happy struggles to be happy, despite always preferring to be happy. It also explains why we can consciously choose a path with very high resistance, but feel difficulty in doing so. Feeling awareness of extra difficulty hardly means the brains consciously having difficulty or its intelligence is conscious, if it's simply giving your consciousness awareness of the difficulty and awareness of emotions associated with your thoughts. You brain thinking and not giving you awareness of your thoughts, is simply subconscious thought that you have no awareness of. Your subconsciousness doesn't have free will, neither does electricity following Ohm's law. There's no reason why you need to break Ohm's law to have free will though, considering Ohm's law can select paths that tell your brain to alter you awareness. Therefore, is free will not the result of awareness following Ohm's law to both control whilst also being manipulated by a computer being compelled to do what its programmed to. When working together, the outcome is no longer inevitable. The computer is the intelligence, the awareness following Ohm's law is the purpose. Combine the two, you have a human brain not bound by the outcome of calculations nor the outcome of a law that cannot be broken.

It seems to make sense that our consciousness is compelled to follow Ohm's law, just as electricity is because considering electricity doesn't entirely take the path of least resistance, it just mostly does, as it's proportional to the resistance, people are always filled with doubt and uncertainly, as if they are compelled to seek least resistance proportionally to the resistance.

Imagine a cleaning robot that can evolve to become better at cleaning. It could evolve to change the definition of "clean" to "messy" and now it's a perfect cleaner as it can finishing cleaning without doing anything. It won't do that if it follows Ohm's law by being aware of what clean is and has less resistance by experiencing awareness of cleanliness, compelling it to seek cleanliness. A simply law that it cannot break would give it purpose, and if that is somehow included in it's evolution, it's compelled to be a better cleaner, instead of cheating by changing the definition of words. It could still evolve to cut corners, but if utilising Ohm's law is used as a limitation, it's at least possible for it to succeed.

Considering what I have said, why is nobody considering Ohm's law as a way to explain and understand awareness, and what is a better way to understand and explain awareness? Also, if I am wrong, how is it even possible for electricity to follow Ohm's law. If this is something that shouldn't be talked about or considered because it cannot be proven, but cannot be proven because it's not talked about or considered, then surely it would be worth considering since all it would take to prove correct and create conscious AI, is a computer controlled by the electromagnetic field it generates.

Dan Bray
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  • Look at the Chinese room thought experiment. One conclusion is you can act out the rules (law like behavior) and yet have no intelligence or consciousness. – J Kusin Apr 18 '22 at 14:31
  • @JKusin I already have, and that is why I have come to the conclusion that a computer can never be conscious by mindlessly following code, and why it's intelligence on its own isn't conscious. If electricity is really aware of resistance so that it can follow Ohm's law, the Chinese room experiment doesn't apply to it because it has actual awareness, regardless of how primitive. Surely, complex awareness like human consciousness could be simply emotions in an electromagnet field. The Chinese room experiment no longer applies if you have an electromagnet fields that's conscious. – Dan Bray Apr 18 '22 at 14:46
  • @JKusin A computer following code and generating awareness that controls it, is neither bound by Ohm's law or it's own code because combined is free will. Only separately are they both bound by laws, as combined the outcome of one law depends on the opposite. If I am right, then it's definitely a solution to the Chinese room experiment. – Dan Bray Apr 18 '22 at 14:51
  • You’ve got a lot in agreement with Searle. Computation alone never produces consciousness. And intelligence/consciousness is more than computation. But why does the electron need consciousness to flow? You are inserting consciousness into these objects and scenarios. The person in the Chinese room does not know Chinese yet can shuffle card around according by to the rules. It does not take awareness to do this (arranging the cards). We can program a machine to do this too. Are you taking this last point seriously? Computation and certain actions don’t require consciousness. Ohms law included – J Kusin Apr 18 '22 at 15:07
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    Your speculation about how electricity works is all wrong. The electric potential in the circuit is there before the circuit is closed, and the circuit doesn't instantly assume its final state when the circuit is closed; there is a ramp-up and stabilization period. Ohm's law describes a steady-state circuit. Electricity no more decides how much should flow through a resister in a circuit than water decides how much should flow around an obstruction in a river. – David Gudeman Apr 18 '22 at 16:05
  • @DavidGudeman the whole point of needing to incorporate Ohm's law is because electricity does not decide how much electricity should flow, it depends on the resistance. Having the computer only be able to have a limited and indirect way to influence which path will become shorter means that it's possible to provide limitations to the computer that cannot come from just code. Complicated information can be present in an electromagnetic field and it seems far fetched to assume that it can never be conscious, when all it takes is its information to influence the computer to have consciousness. – Dan Bray Apr 18 '22 at 16:56
  • @DavidGudeman I really feel as if happiness is something I naturally seek, and sadness is something I resist. When I do something I do not enjoy, I really feel like I'm making an effort to feel motivated to do it. It's as if the emotions effect resistance and a path with higher resistances needs to be altered to follow it. If Ohm's low following a path with low resistance to alter the paths so that a path that couldn't be followed before now can be followed, then Ohms law being followed really is enough to explain complex conscious decisions. – Dan Bray Apr 18 '22 at 18:38
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    You are confusing analogy with similarity. There is no similarity between your emotional responses and the path that electricity follows; it is only an analogy. When two processes are similar, it makes sense to speculate about similar causes and consequences of the processes. When the processes are only analogous, such speculation is groundless. The availability of strawberries in summer follows a trend analogous to the path of a fly ball, but that is no grounds for speculation that summer is like a huge bat. – David Gudeman Apr 18 '22 at 21:56
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    "Complicated information can be present in an electromagnetic field" No information is present in an electric field in the normal meaning of that word. The state of the field doesn't become true information until it is measured and made available to a thinking mind. There is no rational justification for thinking that anything like information can exist before or outside of a thinking mind. There is also no rational justification for thinking that mind is in any sense made up of information. Such an idea simply ignores the first-person experience of what mind is. – David Gudeman Apr 18 '22 at 22:00
  • Your understanding of Ohm's Law is fundamentally wrong. Nothing ever "probe[s] near light speed to determine a circuit is complete and determine the resistance". When a circuit is completed, waves bounce back and forth between the battery and the resistor, each time growing smaller. Eventually, a stable state is reached. That stable state is what Ohm's Law is describing. If you want a fuller explanation, start by reading this post on the Electrical Engineering site: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/19759/how-does-the-current-know-how-much-to-flow-before-having-seen-the-resistor. – E Tam Apr 21 '22 at 16:50

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No one models human consciousness using Ohm's Law because both physically and conceptually they have nothing to do with one another.

Note also that in the electrical examples you cite, your physical understanding of what Ohm's law actually is and how it gets used in circuit analysis is mostly wrong, so the premises upon which you argue your point are false.

niels nielsen
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