It was kind of funny to me that Dostoevsky coincided with biology development which made him ponder painfully if we are just reactions of our neuron's "tails" and that there is nothing underlying (such as Soul and God).
"Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)
21–30 of 112 posts
Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely agreed. I find it embarrassing how STEM devalued non-STEM studies for years, and now that LLMs are center stage, so is the near-universal unpreparedness of interested parties and stakeholders to wrestle with issues of cognition, consciousness, and ethics. This, despite literally thousands of years of prior studies on these matters. Even now, I see basic refusal to engage with this extant literature, and a…
Are the STEM educated thinkers publishing AI doomsday think pieces or is it the supposedly enlightened non-STEM journalists?
Doesn't have to be 'doomsday'.
Plenty of 'stem' thinkers expound on 'what is consciousness' by re-hashing old ideas as if they just occurred to them.
It goes back to the old quote ~ "Stephen Hawking famously wrote that “philosophy is dead” because the big questions that used to be discussed by philosophers are now in the hands of physicist" And then the follow up, "physicists then proceed to re-invent bad philosophy"(unknown).
The math behind the stealth bomber sat on a bookshelf for decades before someone realized what it could be used for. In STEM education, there should be some attempt at a 'rear view mirror', to know what has come before. AI is just the latest obvious area.
Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)
#231879 These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. To at least be familiar with the science that has come before, either to know what was discarded, to be familiar with past dead ends, or forgotten knowledge that could still have value. A lot of the AI spurred arguments in the last year seem like so much re-hashing since they were being d…
Absolutely agreed. I find it embarrassing how STEM devalued non-STEM studies for years, and now that LLMs are center stage, so is the near-universal unpreparedness of interested parties and stakeholders to wrestle with issues of cognition, consciousness, and ethics. This, despite literally thousands of years of prior studies on these matters. Even now, I see basic refusal to engage with this extant literature, and a…
LLMs should requalify Liberal Arts education. The people who can ask questions and understand answers are quite relevant now, seeing how STEM worldview is in many ways no longer relevant.
SDEs should double down on soft skills now, since these are as useful with LLMs as with people.
Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)
#24Yes, we are and some observable Automatisms are hyper creepy. And if you become aware of them it turns society into a collection of walking grandfather clocks in some aspects. Not a recommendable direction to move, madness is preferable.
An old Fritz Leiber novel, You're All Alone, aka The Sinful Ones, is about a man who discovers that most of the people in the world are automata, and he has been functioning as one for some time.
Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)
#25Did not expect to see William James pop up on HN. If you're interested in philosophy (especially epistemology), the pragmatists were a fascinating offshoot. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James IMHO they were a reasonable response to the irreducible complexity that accreted as a result of applying increasingly specific and complex empiricism to questions far broader than it might be suited to. (E.g. How do w…
The Metaphysical Club is an excellent book about how the pragmatists shaped all of American thought, too. Obviously doesn’t replace reading the source material but it does articulate how ideas become encoded into a society.
It's been a minute now, but I'm pretty sure that was on the reading list for my undergrad pragmatism course. Enjoyed it as well!
PS: Hello to another Ethan, although we seem much more common these days.
Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely agreed. I find it embarrassing how STEM devalued non-STEM studies for years, and now that LLMs are center stage, so is the near-universal unpreparedness of interested parties and stakeholders to wrestle with issues of cognition, consciousness, and ethics. This, despite literally thousands of years of prior studies on these matters. Even now, I see basic refusal to engage with this extant literature, and a…
Are the STEM educated thinkers publishing AI doomsday think pieces or is it the supposedly enlightened non-STEM journalists?
I¹ get it. The STEM educated people are better at technical stuff like math and logic, thus they must be a lot more enlightened than these non-STEM journalists that walk around in the darkness of the intellectual void. We smart, They stupid. /s
You should ask yourself where this arrogance stems (so punny) from. Although you could argue that the liberal arts/humanities are stifled by leftist worldviews, which is true, I also believe that the study of the humanities is the one thing that created the societal structures -like democracy and education- that we cherish today and I believe they will be crucial for a nice non-authoritarian future. And the ideological pressure to discredit the humanities is something that I believe comes from a pro-authoritarian, conservative side of the political field.
¹STEM-educated (molecular biology, with a focus on computational analysis)
Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)
#27I tried to read this but I can’t deal with the writing quality. I think it’s partly the historical nature of the piece, but James is a terrible writer. He is obtuse and pompous and clouds his meaning with confusing sentences. Even the first sentence is a nightmare to read. I’ll try again when I have more focus! And yes, we have no free will. Not sure if that’s related to this piece.
You just have bad taste.
Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are the STEM educated thinkers publishing AI doomsday think pieces or is it the supposedly enlightened non-STEM journalists?
Doesn't have to be 'doomsday'. Plenty of 'stem' thinkers expound on 'what is consciousness' by re-hashing old ideas as if they just occurred to them. It goes back to the old quote ~ "Stephen Hawking famously wrote that “philosophy is dead” because the big questions that used to be discussed by philosophers are now in the hands of physicist" And then the follow up, "physicists then proceed to re-invent bad philosophy"…
I suppose for meeting Gen. Ed. requirements more history and philosophy classes with a focus on where certain Math and Science comes from could be great.
Additionally math courses for the non-stem majors that focus more on the history and importance of something, say the quadratic formula, instead of applying it/remembering it without much context from where it came from could help out a lot of non-stem majors with their math requirement.
However I think it boils down to interest and a degree of time whether or not someone in a stem field feels compelled or not to pay attention and learn where their math tools come from or the experiments that built the respective sciences.
That is, I've found while stem classes may not focus on the above, they do cover it and for the more enthusiastic and self motivated student right there in their books to read about.
I've also found professor's that love this stuff too, which I've found pleasure in them sharing these stories when they can.
Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)
#291879 These arguments aren't new. This is good argument for why tech/science/stem need to read history, or 'older' science history. To at least be familiar with the science that has come before, either to know what was discarded, to be familiar with past dead ends, or forgotten knowledge that could still have value. A lot of the AI spurred arguments in the last year seem like so much re-hashing since they were being d…
Absolutely agreed. I find it embarrassing how STEM devalued non-STEM studies for years, and now that LLMs are center stage, so is the near-universal unpreparedness of interested parties and stakeholders to wrestle with issues of cognition, consciousness, and ethics. This, despite literally thousands of years of prior studies on these matters. Even now, I see basic refusal to engage with this extant literature, and a…
> STEM devalued non-STEM studies for years
What does this refer to?
Re: "Are We Automata?" by William James (1879)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are the STEM educated thinkers publishing AI doomsday think pieces or is it the supposedly enlightened non-STEM journalists?
I¹ get it. The STEM educated people are better at technical stuff like math and logic, thus they must be a lot more enlightened than these non-STEM journalists that walk around in the darkness of the intellectual void. We smart, They stupid. /s You should ask yourself where this arrogance stems (so punny) from. Although you could argue that the liberal arts/humanities are stifled by leftist worldviews, which is true,…
I find it very suspicious that people who avoid learning rhetoric, or formal logic, or axiomatic thinking in general, are able to draw useful conclusions from studying humanities.