They’re made out of weights • Hacker News Board

Re: They’re made out of weights

#471

Post by overgard » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

kami23 wrote: post #12

This read like poetry to me. Thank you for sharing it. I have a linguistics background and a lot of my philosophizing lately has been on whether or not the emergent abilities of the LLMs is deep down a similar mechanism that creates our consciousness. For a little bit I was working on having linguistics based evals for a kaggle competition. My challenge was whether or not I could mask things well enough to not trigge…

This is a famous short story just rewritten sloppily by an AI.

Although it does amusingly do what annoys critics of AI: take something good written by a person, steal it and slop it up while overall misunderstanding it.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#472

Post by lmf4lol » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #449

lmf4lol wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but I have read Being and Time on and off over the years, and every time, I am blown away how precise Heidegger describes things and the being of things. Granted, I am German, so I can directly read the source without needing a translator. That might change things. Regardless, I think Heidegger gave one of the fullest metaphysic-free accounts of the human experience and what Being is. And he starts from scrat…

I keep hearing "it's better in German" which really reinforces my point that he's just playing word games with etymologies without saying anything.

i didnt say that at all :-)

Heidegger uses very specific German words to build a very specific vocabulary. This vocabulary then allows him to express very complicated sentiments very quickly and he can use this to express more and more complex structures.

Obviously this requires the reader to first learn the vocabulary and - granted - that is hard and challenging. I have a notebook here , which I consult and modify evertine i dive into Being and Time. But as I said. It keeps on giving. I often try to convey arguments and descriptions to others without falling back into Heideggers jargon, and its sometimes very hard and requires a lot of bloating . So you can argue that it was even necessary for him to invent the vocabulary, because otherwise the book would have been 10x in size

Your comment strikes me as a bit ignorant i must say. You accuse the work of being non-sensical word play but you’ve obviously not invested any time in learning the vocabulary. Because otherwise you wouldnt have made that comment. Id suggest to give it a chance. Its a wonderful piece of work and mind blowing in its own way. That a single mind can think something like that up. I’d argue its on the level of Hegel in terms of system building.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#473

Post by irishcoffee » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC

mjg2 wrote: post #452

Planktonne wrote: post #141

The original story is an original work made by a human consciousness exploring how it might be different from other forms of consciousness. This one is a pastiche made by a human consciousness borrowing extremely heavily from another human consciousness justifying why something else might be another form of consciousness. That rather undercuts the point; if this was generated by an LLM unprompted, it would be differe…

Thank you for your point. I don't understand why half these comments are taking this blog post seriously when it ends with "Weights helped me draft and proof this story." > Weights helped me draft and proof this story. Any HN reader here now, I encourage you to read the original ( https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.s... ) in one sitting, go about your day, then read it again. Maybe make some n…

People argue for AI sentience from a place of emotion couched in logic. they _desperately_ want it to be true and will not take a logical step back. Any argument comes back to "well doesn't a human brain work like that?" Or some variation of it.

My personal theory is a fuzzy thought about how people want to reject the concept of a higher being and want to embrace the fact that we are now able to create our own consciousness and religion is dead.

I don't understand why, but it is the undertone of every argument I've seen that is pro-AI-is-sentient, like some big unspoken elephant-in-the-room.

I would rather just judge this tech on its own merits.

edit: this comment got 1 upvote literally as I submitted it. I know @ doesn't work, but @dang, something seems very strange about that.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#474

Post by IsTom » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #456

IsTom wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internal experience affects movement of physical molecules in what way?

Internal experience is an input to your mind (that’s how you know about it), and what your mind perceives affects what it does. The better question is: how can what you experience possibly not affect your actions?

What you do is determined by physical action of neurons. There is no need for there to be someone to perceive it.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#475

Post by robrenaud » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

lesiki wrote: post #328

sumitkumar wrote: post #148

The weights start with a random manifold. The training takes data and shapes the manifold, weight by weight, in many cycles. Once the training is the done manifold is fixed. When a new inference has to be done the query(q) is projected in the manifold space. This projection is dropped on the manifold and the gravity of the manifold gives an answer of q+1 length. Which(qw+i) is dropped qw+n times to output a final res…

Does anyone have a link to a good video visualisation of training & inference?

3 blue 1 brown has a great visual introduction to transformers, the heart of LLMs.

It's chapter 5. Start at chapter 1 if you want more background on neural nets and backprop.

https://youtu.be/wjZofJX0v4M?si=HFXbrB-5cArprGaU

Re: They’re made out of weights

#476

Post by antonvs » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #199

lxgr wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> beyond a certain number of transformations, people are willing to treat it as some sort of miracle, and too tired to figure out why it came up with the answer it came up with It’s less about being too tired and more about being realistic about the limits of understanding. Consider mass and energy flows in planet-scale systems: At some point we call these “weather” and change the tools with which we study them, but…

When we attempt to recreate those complex, planetary atmospheric phenomena in a box, we're doing so in order to measure and study them. Making random turbulence in a box until it resembles the outside world, and calling it weather and extrapolating some predictive meaning from the result, is the total antithesis of what you're describing about why we come up with simplified models for impossibly complex systems. The…

> The purpose of LLM models is to give the illusion of answering questions while never answering why the answer was given.

This is just your own idiosyncratic and biased belief. You're not describing anything objective about LLMs, you're describing your personal attitude to them. This colors your understanding in a way that can't really be reasoned with until you let go of the artificial constraints you're imposing on your own understanding.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#477

Post by maxbond » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 4:01 PM UTC

keybored wrote: post #446

maxbond wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It directly parallels your argument. Much like Russel argued that the burden of proof of God's existence is on theists, the burden to establish this parallel is on you as the person forwarding the argument. I don't see any relevant connection. Russel isn't arguing that a teapot is as real as God in the same way it's disputed here that a toaster is as conscious as an LLM. > So far you have said that the argument is…

> Much like Russel argued that the burden of proof of God's existence is on theists, the burden to establish this parallel is on you as the person forwarding the argument. I pointed out the parallel in both statements. I can't do more than that. > Russel isn't arguing that a teapot is as real as God in the same way it's disputed here that a toaster is as conscious as an LLM. The teapot isn't real and the toaster cons…

> I pointed out the parallel in both statements. I can't do more than that.

You mean these statements?

    No one cares about teapots in space either (Russel).

    Teapots are not compelling.

I guess you did but that's pretty much leaving me breadcrumbs and expecting me to make your argument for you. It seemed to me like you were talking about reductio ad absurdum with that argument as an illustrative example. Perhaps you overestimate my cleverness.

> Which party is the burden of proof on? This is confusing since you are saying that the burden of proof is on a position (on them not being conscious).

It's metonymy. "X" stands in for "people who argue for X". May I ask if you were sincerely confused? You told me you aren't being coy but I have a hard time believing that this was so unclear.

> I have never heard about any principle in philosophy or in science that says that, given enough Looks Like A Duck points, it is a duck. Based on subjective experience, even.

If it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, you should adjust your priors to assign a higher likelihood that it is a duck. All measurements contain error; you can't ever observe, "that is a duck," only "that looks like a duck". All knowledge is founded on a sufficiently deep stack of "looking like a duck" that we may assert it with confidence.

To the extent we have objective measures (like conducting a Turing test on blind participants), it can meet them too. You can't say the same of a toaster.

> We obviously can't demand a falsifiable theory here. But we have to do better than arguing from incredulity.

"It is a statistical model, ergo it is not conscious" is also an argument from incredulity. I don't know if that's your view or not but it's the one my remarks have been addressing in general.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#478

Post by lxgr » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #199

lxgr wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> beyond a certain number of transformations, people are willing to treat it as some sort of miracle, and too tired to figure out why it came up with the answer it came up with It’s less about being too tired and more about being realistic about the limits of understanding. Consider mass and energy flows in planet-scale systems: At some point we call these “weather” and change the tools with which we study them, but…

When we attempt to recreate those complex, planetary atmospheric phenomena in a box, we're doing so in order to measure and study them. Making random turbulence in a box until it resembles the outside world, and calling it weather and extrapolating some predictive meaning from the result, is the total antithesis of what you're describing about why we come up with simplified models for impossibly complex systems. The…

> Sit next to a bank of slot machines for an hour and listen to the absolutely ridiculous shit most people will come up with to explain how they "know" if a machine is going to pay out soon, and then tell me if you think it's a good idea to give them an LLM in their pocket to answer their questions in whatever way they frame them.

If the LLM in their pocket has a more robust world model than they themselves and is e.g. able to refute their irrational convictions, it actually seems like a very good idea. (Big if, of course.)

Re: They’re made out of weights

#479

Post by jordigh » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

lmf4lol wrote: post #472

jordigh wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing "it's better in German" which really reinforces my point that he's just playing word games with etymologies without saying anything.

i didnt say that at all :-) Heidegger uses very specific German words to build a very specific vocabulary. This vocabulary then allows him to express very complicated sentiments very quickly and he can use this to express more and more complex structures. Obviously this requires the reader to first learn the vocabulary and - granted - that is hard and challenging. I have a notebook here , which I consult and modify e…

Yes, I'm ignorant, because Heidegger isn't saying anything. He didn't teach me anything. Thus I remain ignorant, unknowing.

You can't even explain what he said, you just said, "go learn his words". That's not knowledge, that's not insight. That's just "the wordplay is great". But it's not content. It's merely form, it's sophistry, it's useless and meaningless.

I asked a very specific question originally. What does "time is the ripening of temporality" mean? That's one way to translate one of the things he says, using different words for time and ripening in German. He's playing word games because those words sound similar in German and people like you confuse it for profundity.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#480

Post by wredcoll » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

aspenmartin wrote: post #398

SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two meanings to "the body is a complex machine" and I think you're missing the forest for the trees here. 1) The abstract "dictionary" version: It'd be technically correct to say that the body is a machine under the definition of "A machine is a thermodynamic system that uses power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action.". 2) But there's also the less abstract/technical: "The body is alike…

> With regard to AI, there's a lot of people extrapolating "There is no magical animating spirit, the brain is just a pile of stochastic molecules following the laws of physics" into "The brain is an inert pile of matter, computers are an inert pile of matter, ergo AI/LLMs are like the brain!" Why do you need a specific organization of molecules for a phenomenon similar to consciousness to arise? Does anyone seriousl…

> “AI/LLMs are just like the brain” is a strawman, why does this claim need to be true for LLMs or any artificial system to be considered to have something akin to the thing you think of as consciousness?

It doesn't need to be true but a lot of people make it/assume it.

There's a lot of, perhaps casual and uninformed, conversations that strongly imply a deeper understanding of the "physics" of brain chemistry than we actually have, mostly by comparing it to machines we've constructed.

(I believe) We don't need to replicate human neurons and dendrites and whatever else is in there in order to create a sapient "machine", but whether or not we've actually done that isn't being helped by arguing that what we currently have is all that similar to a human brain.