The Evolution of Consciousness

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We don't have the tools to investigate whether or not something of is conscious in a way that we might not understand. My intuition is that they're not even close. I think these things are, are basically video games and there's no different. They would have the same pain receptors if they tweak an ankle or fake tweaking an ankle as humans do. But you know, but it's trivially easy to make a robotic soccer player who can beat human players. Like everything else coming out of Carnegie Mellon... You'm sure robotists will come up with some kind of answer for us.

While operating on a 16-year-old girl who suffered from severe seizures, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried stumbled on the region of the brain that makes us laugh. To neuroscientist Patrick House, Fried's ability to produce laughter surgically raises deep and disconcerting questions about how the brain works. Join Fried, House, and EconTalk's Russ Roberts for a live broadcast from Jerusalem's Shalem College that is a sequel of sorts to House's earlier appearance on EconTalk. House and Fried discuss the mystery of consciousness and try to square the biological bases for emotions with the circle of our humanity.