Аннотация: An artificial intelligence and computer games have formed the basis for the idea that someone controls us. Is this true or not? Below we have attempted to answer this question not as clearly as it is posed.
Modern science sees a person as a kind of self-acting creature that owns the world.
But scientists do not attach importance to the fact that man and his race are something that, although thinking in an original way, is nevertheless finite.
What will remain then if the humanity suddenly ceases to exist for one reason or another? Who will then think and act, and how will the humanity be restored?
A stream of thoughts, if we understand them as something that has appeared as a result of the process of thinking, can only be created in the process of the information processing.
This means that thinking, and then the action, is nothing more than a derivative of the informational influence on a person. Apart from a person and other living beings, only the artificial intelligence succumbs to such influence. However, it functions exclusively within the framework of programs pre-set from the outside, that is, not independently, and with many other limitations. Therefore, thinking as a process of the independent information processing is characteristic exclusively of the living beings, unlike the artificial intelligence, which processes the information only at the request of a third-party user.
In fact, comparing the human actions with the actions of robots and other units controlled by the artificial intelligence leads to the idea that, just as for the artificial intelligence a third-party user, who is specifying for it everything the artificial intelligence has, and is using it for own purposes, and at the same time is essentially unknown to the artificial intelligence, is a person, so for a person by such third-party user, which a person cannot sense and fathom, is something that it, thinking independently, unlike the artificial intelligence, calls consciousness, that is, as if knowledge accompanying it, coming from nowhere.
Therefore, it is reasonable to note that the basis of the human actions, as well as all other living beings, is not thinking, but information and consciousness. It is by the instrument of consciousness is all living beings, including a person, which are capable of thinking due to their structure, which is actualized by consciousness.
If we recognize that information is at the heart of all that exists, then we have to pay attention to the fact that information does not exist by itself, manifesting itself only when it is perceived.
However, the problem immediately arises, which is that all objects of the material world, except for living beings, are indifferent to information. In other words, they are capable of reacting to certain influences, like a photographic film to light, but they cannot interpret these changes (analyze, structure) in any way, turning them into something understandable for themselves, which can be used in one way or another, that is, into the information.
Therefore, all objects that can only carry information without knowing about it, can be designated as the passive, and those objects that are able to perceive and use this information - the active.
Hence it follows that the information can be defined as data about the state of material objects, which are somehow perceived and recognized for subsequent use.
Only living beings are capable of this kind of decoding and use of information, that is, not objects, but subjects of reality, who have the means to extract the information, that is, those data that they understand, from own surrounding.
And in order to understand whether you need some data or not, you need to have at least some consideration, that is, to separate the necessary from the unnecessary, at least for own retention in the existing environment.
In other words, the information arises only in consciousness, more precisely, through the carrier of consciousness by means of the senses and the center or centers of data processing, as well as the form-building abilities, but not otherwise, being recognized in one way or another by a living being by a material copy of an object or objects accessible through sensations to consciousness, that is, available for their subsequent transforming into a specific environment around of a living being.
Information cannot be qualified as something immaterial and independent, since it is copies of data about objects from the vast environment, surrounding consciousness, selected and deciphered by consciousness by corresponding means.
Consciousness these decrypted copies of material objects through the corresponding center (centers) are also processing into images, meanings, feelings. They are also completely material components of consciousness, entailing subsequent actions of the carrier of consciousness. On their basis, together with memory, the carrier of consciousness interacts with the surrounding objects every moment of own "present".
Thus, all interactions of the being having consciousness are carried out in this end-to-end, irreversible process only on condition of arrival in his consciousness of the appropriate portions of information, each of which is processed, being laid down in a certain duration, making a row of sequential moments from the birth to death of the carrier of consciousness.
And if all objects, except for living ones, are passive fixers of data from the environment, interaction with which for them is reduced to responding to it by changing their own properties up to decay and emergence in a new quality, however, not chaotically, but according to some rules in current reality, which are being established by scientists, that is, if these inanimate objects do not show any initiative (activity) of their own, then living objects are able, thanks to the appropriate processing of incoming data , to figure out, how the information received can be used, making certain changes into own surrounding for own benefit and changing accordingly their behavior.
Naturally, the living beings first of all want to stay in the information flow that they are able to perceive and comprehend - each at the level of own consciousness, - distinguishing themselves from things, which are not understanding anything by the fact that they use them for own benefit and preservation, competing in this with other living beings.
Therefore, all living beings are active, that is, they use the environment at the instinctive-reflex level of consciousness to maintain themselves in action (nutrition and metabolism), trying to push competitors away from food (domination), including copying themselves in one way or another (reproduction) for further spread in time and space.
Thus, the finiteness of their own existence, which they, except for humans, do not understand, but feel due to the deterioration in the functioning of certain parts of the body, the living beings overcome by procreation (transfer of their own genome) by all possible ways, which requires a special growth program and development of both individual and general (generic).
In order to hold oneself in the information flow, which creates for a living being a sense of presence through his senses in the current reality, which is constantly changing, each living being has to fight with similar creatures for a place and food.
Any stop or delay in this struggle for life (sensations) in a changing environment means death, that means disappearance of sensations, which no creature wants to lose.
Therefore, each living creature is forced, in order to avoid stagnation, and hence death, to replenish its own database with new information, not being satisfied with the one has.
Hence, it is clear that the basic property of the activity of any living being consists in the dissatisfaction of its consciousness with oneself and the surrounding, transforming into aspiration for a better position, or at least for keeping what this creature has.
In other words, a complex protein formation that combines sensors capable of extracting from incoming signals precisely those that, after appropriate processing, can ensure its existence; a center for processing incoming data; and programs in accordance with which the growth and development of this formation occurs, is actualized only when it is, as it were, captured by consciousness, which leads it along the course of current time, created by these revived formations, certain period, marked by programs.
During a given approximate period of time, this formation that has appeared and come to life in a group of its own kind and in an environment of competing formations of a different form is forced willy-nilly to solve the problems of survival in the course of transforming incoming data into information understandable to itself, namely: how to survive, how to preserve the emerging sensations of stay in existence within the framework of the current time and how to transmit its characteristics and the ability to receive sensations to its copies, in which this ability and characteristics will be preserved.
That is, the change in the information, as well as the consciousness which is monitoring these changes force this already living being to be applied to what is happening in the only possible way - to react to the influence of the environment, determining those features of it that the being does not satisfy, and not automatically, like programmed mechanisms, but choosing this or that depending on what seems to him in his own feelings satisfactory. This choice may be erroneous or not, depending on the results of the analysis of one's own feelings, that is, considerations, at least how to act not to the detriment of oneself.
It is precisely this forced ability of the organism, based on dissatisfaction with itself and the environment, to figure out how best to adapt to its surrounding, that is thinking at its various levels of development of organisms, the highest of which is the choice of human consciousness not only from what is, but also extending to what a person intends to create as new and useful for himself by his conscious, purposeful actions, and not only by trial and error
It is precisely this ability of the human consciousness to strive to change its own surrounding, inventing something new, that has separated man from other living beings, capable only of using what is available.
In other words, since there are sense organs, then all living beings have the ability to the sensations of one kind or another, transmitting the data received by these organs to their control centers, which process this data, turning it into the information necessary for controlling the organism, and on this basis, over time, recipes are developed that in the course of development of organisms become instincts and reflexes, within the framework of which they exist.
That is, these centers give commands both to cells and to all organs of the body, including it as a whole, as a result of which this organism is constantly adapted to a changing environment in order to preserve the sensations received from the sense organs and, if possible, to improve their quality, that is, to make them more enjoyable. And all these living beings do not want to lose the received sensations and thanks to them, desires, for the sake of empty nothingness, with which they are familiar from fainting or falling into hibernation. The sensations themselves not only give them a feel of life with all its diversity, but also give them an impetus to preserve these sensations in posterity.
The ability to react to the impact of the environment, feeling its impact on oneself, and vice versa, forces the being to distribute its sensations into threatening, pleasant and neutral, striving, if possible, for pleasant ones. And what leads the being to pleasant things is not, first of all, thinking about this pleasant thing and achieving it one way or another, but a latent dissatisfaction with what is there, since dissatisfaction means, in essence, striving for something more pleasant with the help of the information center available to the organism, which, to a large extent, represents the apparatus of thinking.
However, the action programs. embedded in each organism, are supplemented in a person by programs configured for project-targeted actions with the corresponding mental preparation.
If the programs of all living beings are configured only for adaptive activity, then the programs of the human actions have expanded dramatically in the direction of acquiring the ability to set goals and achieve them, using the creative abilities that have appeared in him, penetrating into the future thanks to his ideas, and thereby owning time, that is, being aware himself in it, whereas the animals are always limited only to the present in the form of sensations.
The volume of information flows in this case increases dramatically, the environment begins to change purposefully under the influence of these creatures, changing also them at a much faster pace than it happened before.
That is, a person in his communities falls into the field of ever-increasing information flows that are perceived by his senses, developing both them and the body's control organs, as a result of which, for example, the mass of the human brain compared to the mass of the brain of primates has grown in about two million years several times.
Thus, the evolution represents the gradual accumulation of the various, more or less difficult living beings appearing and disappearing during natural selection during billions of years.
These beings are characterized by the full unity with the environment, i.e. they aren't capable to separate themselves from the environment independently, because the action program which is written down in genes of each living being determines it as a component of the living environment, and the sole support which is a instinctively-reflex activity, but not as the certain subject who is executing the conscious-target impact on the environment.
Therefore, the appearance of a person interrupts the course of evolution, creating a problem that science has not yet been able to solve.
The attempt to create a living being as an assembly in the form of an exact biological copy with a genome was unsuccessful.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from this fact is that all organisms in its diversity is able to feel and desire, or even understand its own existence, not due to only its ability to think thanks to the work of the organ that controls the processing of incoming information, not due to the ideal design of all parts of the body, and also not in the possession by them of the sense organs, but to something or someone else.
The fact is that any living being, except for an intellect, which, in fact, technically processes data coming through the senses to it, controlling the functioning of its own body, that is, turning these data into information that is understandable for use by a living being, beginning with the cellular structure, ought to have as if an manager-consumer of this information who came from the outside, for this manager to solve current tasks or achieve goals set by him, whether it is survival problems, the desire to get the most pleasant sensations or awareness of oneself in this world for the sake of knowledge and change of this world.
The intellect of any organism, represented by the information processing unit and the unit for controlling the functions of the organism (a kind of biological internal computer), does not turn on without this "internal" leader and consumer of the supplied information.
This invisible consumer of information and the leader of the actions of a living being makes the intellect in the form of a biological internal computer to work only at the moment of its own manifestation in a being, more precisely, in its embryo, and only this manifestation immediately makes this creature alive (active, and subsequently by capable for reproduction), and with the disappearance of this consumer, or the owner of a living being, or a serious failures in his carrier, for example, the destruction of neural circuits, sensory organs or a disease of other important organs, the intellect of this organism, despite the preservation of its organic structure, having lost its leader, loses its activity - ceases to act (death of the creature) or the information, which is supplied to this chief by the intellect does not find proper application (madness).
It is by means of a person this invisible consumer of information is gaining an understanding of his own existence not only through the ability to observe, feel and think, but also through the ability to create, solving various tasks, setting certain goals for oneself and striving to achieve them.
All this allows this individual manager to radically transform his environment on the basis of the accumulation of knowledge about the world and about himself in the face of the living beings, and therefore this manager-leader is called consciousness.