hutcawfee

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@aphercotropist I don't think it's a ridiculous question to ask if a jellyfish or nematode is conscious.. I don't think you would say that either. In your mind what separates that from a non-conscious thing ?

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

I think that definition is fixable- "something is conscious if there is a viewpoint experiencing being that thing"- what's wrong with that?

[Arbutus Tree @aphercotropist]

I love it when people who argue about consciousness define it like Nagel as "something is conscious if there is something that it is like to be that thing" as if that phrase itself is meaningful, and its meaning straightforwardly obvious

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@aphercotropist Idk if a camera has an experience or not. If it has an experience, if there is something that it is like to be a camera... it's conscious. I doubt it does mostly because idk how that ego would receive sense info from other parts of the camera(ditto all nonliving matter)

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@xereeto @_CLancellotti Isn't emergence just mechanistic functionalism? positing that qualia arise out of physical processes that we just so happen to run into via biology?

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@johnmark_taylor That makes sense... but I think self-reports are really suspect just by the way LLMs are made(writing in the training corpus being written by people who have interiority)
visual experience research sounds cool. What parts of visual experience aren't constrained by physics/bio?

[JohnMark Taylor @johnmark_taylor]

Turns out that formulating a theory of consciousness (hard problem, “why are there qualia”) without at least one crazy-sounding implication is pretty hard. They’re fun to list though:

- Consciousness is just an illusion
- There’s an immaterial soul that pushes atoms around in your brain
- Your thoughts/decisions do not drive your actions, even if you think they do
- Electrons are conscious
- Only particular carbon processes can be conscious
- A properly wired network of walkie talkies among the citizens of China could be conscious

For this reason I don’t think that mocking someone’s views of consciousness without offering one’s own is respectable.

(I do think the scientific questions regarding consciousness are mostly orthogonal to the hard problem)

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@hopes_revenge @sporadica some people are saying that. Anthropic doesn't even rule out Opus 3 being conscious

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@Philgebunts @FreeclubFudo @LinusMixson @notrealm3 Really? Then are those external observables also experienced by my hat? They should be, if what you say is true

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@OptimalBayes @LinusMixson Yeah when I say consciousness I mean 'possessing interior experience', I hope all the people arguing with me also have the same definition or we'd just be chasing our tails. How do you know rocks don't have an interior experience? You know you do, why draw the line were you do?

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@hugoamnov @LinusMixson It's actually fairly hard to make meaningful statements about human consciousness that aren't contradicted by some tiny number of humans+ I do not see how someone would go about proving someone/something isn't a pzombie, or even proving that a nonliving thing has no interiority

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@brrrrrrennan @LinusMixson Which do you chose though? If you start from some you end up with Boltzmann brains/any large organized agglomeration of mass is probably conscious, from others you can only say that humans are conscious and even then not all the time, with others you can say only you are for sure

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@AIQuanting @abcampbell I think it's literally just a cheaper entry point for those calls

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@Michael_Druggan What kind of world do we then live in? How are scarce resources allocated? How do we adapt to having no control over the direction of our species?

[Eric Weinstein @ericweinstein]

Then it should blow right by the Standard Model of Particle Theory/General Relativity by, say, breakfast tomorow!

Because with all our data, it would be rather mysterious/suspicious if it stopped more or less exactly where we humans were stopped dead in our tracks…53 years ago.

[Linus Mixson @LinusMixson]

In a world that wasn't actually just literally Hell, we'd have AI discourse other than "which provider is best this week?" and "is AI scary?"

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@yevgenydevine @LinusMixson that cell couldn't intake the info about sense perception from the rest of the body, no single cell has that capacity. I don't think individual cells are conscious(no proof tho), but I do think I have a good case as to why my experience isnt the sum of my cells' experiences

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@yevgenydevine @LinusMixson but even if my cells are individually conscious how does that have anything to do with my conscious experience? Conscious experience is unified, how does that unification of experience happen? and where? It can't be just one cell somewhere in my body that is 'me' for a few reaons

[hutcawfee @hutbleckcawfee]

@HdjDd65233682 @ereliuer_eteer Experience is a monad but there are processes underlying experience(ie why am I angry when I'm hungry, calm when im very full ect) that are not simple.. no reason that couldn't be how artificial life experiences too