Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive

#11

Post by ljlolel » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 5:21 PM UTC

andy99 wrote: post #9

aswegs8 wrote: post #4

I mean, what is consciousness, really? Is there really any qualitative difference? It feels like something that emerges out of complexity. Once models are able to update their weights real time and form "memories", does that make them conscious?

When I read comments like this (and I've read seemingly hundreds of them), I wonder if some other people aren't conscious / sentient? I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness (as I experience it) could think that an algorithm could experience it.

Are bots writing those comments?

Re: Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive

#12

Post by andy99 » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 5:26 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #10

andy99 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read comments like this (and I've read seemingly hundreds of them), I wonder if some other people aren't conscious / sentient? I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness (as I experience it) could think that an algorithm could experience it.

I also read comments like that and wonder if other people aren't conscious. I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness could be confused about what it means to be conscious, or (in other threads, not this one) could argue that consciousness is "an illusion". (Consciousness is not the illusion, it's the audience !). However I don't see why you don't think an algorithm could be conscious? Why do you think th…

I think the burden of proof is on showing that they are. Since we have no idea what consciousness is or how it works, I don't see how we could assume it clearly follows from anything.

Re: Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive

#13

Post by shayway » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #10

andy99 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read comments like this (and I've read seemingly hundreds of them), I wonder if some other people aren't conscious / sentient? I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness (as I experience it) could think that an algorithm could experience it.

I also read comments like that and wonder if other people aren't conscious. I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness could be confused about what it means to be conscious, or (in other threads, not this one) could argue that consciousness is "an illusion". (Consciousness is not the illusion, it's the audience !). However I don't see why you don't think an algorithm could be conscious? Why do you think th…

> I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness could be confused about what it means to be conscious, or (in other threads, not this one) could argue that consciousness is "an illusion". (Consciousness is not the illusion, it's the audience!).

Do you mean to say there are objective criteria for consciousness? Could you expand on that?

Re: Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive

#14

Post by andy99 » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 5:34 PM UTC

xeonmc wrote: post #8

aswegs8 wrote: post #4

I mean, what is consciousness, really? Is there really any qualitative difference? It feels like something that emerges out of complexity. Once models are able to update their weights real time and form "memories", does that make them conscious?

Perhaps one day a criterion will be found for the equivalent of Turing-completeness but for consciousness — any system which contains the necessary elements of introspective complexity, no matter how varied or outlandish or inefficient in its implementation, would invariably develop consciousness over its course. Kind of like the handwaved premise in 17776.

I've read a (untestable) theory that consciousness is a property of matter, so everything has it, and we're just sort of the sum of the desires and feelings of our constituent matter.

In that construct, a computer program would never be conscious because it's a simulation, it doesn't have the constituent consciousness property.

I don't believe or not believe the consciousness-as-a-property-of-matter part but I do think programs can't be conscious because consciousness must sit outside of what they simulate.

Re: Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive

#15

Post by patcon » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

Bjartr wrote: post #5

Isn't this back to attributing conscious experience to an AI when you're actually just co-writing sci-fi? The system is doing it's best to coherently fill in the rest of a story that includes an AI that's been given a place to process its feelings. The most likely result, textually speaking, is not for the AI to ignore the private journal, but to indeed use it to (appear to) process emotion. Would any of these ideas…

Ugh, I hate that I'm about to say this, because I think AI is still missing something very important, but...

What makes us think that "processing emotion" is really such a magical and "only humans do it the right way" sorta thing? I think there's a very real conclusion where "no, AI is not as special as us yet" (esp around efficiency) but also "no, we are not doing anything so interesting either" (or rather, we are not special in the ways we think we are)

For example, there's a paper called "chasing the rainbow" [1] that posits that consciousness is just the subjective experience of being the comms protocol between internal [largely unconscious] neural state. It's just what the compulsion to share internal state between minds feels like, but it's not "the point", and instead an inert byproduct like a rainbow. Maybe our compulsion to express or even process emotion is not some greater reason, but just a way we experience the compulsion of the more important thing: the collective search for interpolated beliefs that best model and predict the world and help our shared structure persist, done by exploring tensions in high dimensional considerations we call emotions.

Which is to say: if AI is doing that with us, role-modelling resolution of tension or helping build or spread shared knowledge alongside us through that process... then as far as the universe cares, it's doing what we're doing, and toward the same ends. It's compulsion having the same origin as ours doesn't matter, so long as it's doing the work that is the reason the universe has given us the compulsion.

Sorry, new thought. Apologies if it's messy (or too casually dropping an unsettling perspective -- I rejected that paper for quite awhile, because my brain couldn't integrate the nihilism of it)

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0192...

Re: Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive

#16

Post by hhh » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

andy99 wrote: post #14

xeonmc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps one day a criterion will be found for the equivalent of Turing-completeness but for consciousness — any system which contains the necessary elements of introspective complexity, no matter how varied or outlandish or inefficient in its implementation, would invariably develop consciousness over its course. Kind of like the handwaved premise in 17776.

I've read a (untestable) theory that consciousness is a property of matter, so everything has it, and we're just sort of the sum of the desires and feelings of our constituent matter. In that construct, a computer program would never be conscious because it's a simulation, it doesn't have the constituent consciousness property. I don't believe or not believe the consciousness-as-a-property-of-matter part but I do thi…

why would it not be conscious in that construct? the bits exist physically just the same

Re: Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive

#17

Post by shayway » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

Fascinating! Reading this makes apparent how many 'subsystems' human brains have. At any given moment I'm doing some mix of reflecting on my own state, thinking through problems, forming sentences (in my head or out loud), planning my next actions. I think, long term, the most significant advances in human-like AI will come from advances in coordinating disparate pieces more than anything.

Re: Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive

#18

Post by xeonmc » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 5:40 PM UTC

andy99 wrote: post #14

xeonmc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps one day a criterion will be found for the equivalent of Turing-completeness but for consciousness — any system which contains the necessary elements of introspective complexity, no matter how varied or outlandish or inefficient in its implementation, would invariably develop consciousness over its course. Kind of like the handwaved premise in 17776.

I've read a (untestable) theory that consciousness is a property of matter, so everything has it, and we're just sort of the sum of the desires and feelings of our constituent matter. In that construct, a computer program would never be conscious because it's a simulation, it doesn't have the constituent consciousness property. I don't believe or not believe the consciousness-as-a-property-of-matter part but I do thi…

How about simulation programs that are impure, i.e. those which include I/O in its loop? After all, taking the Turing-completeness analogy further, while a machine that satisfies said criterion is capable of universal computation, actually performing a computation still requires an external input specified outside of the program itself. Perhaps it might turn out that stimuli residing outside of the simulated system is a necessary condition for non-incompleteness of consciousness, as a seed of relative non-determinism with respect to the program’s internal specification?

Re: Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive

#19

Post by add-sub-mul-div » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 5:41 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #10

andy99 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read comments like this (and I've read seemingly hundreds of them), I wonder if some other people aren't conscious / sentient? I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness (as I experience it) could think that an algorithm could experience it.

I also read comments like that and wonder if other people aren't conscious. I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness could be confused about what it means to be conscious, or (in other threads, not this one) could argue that consciousness is "an illusion". (Consciousness is not the illusion, it's the audience !). However I don't see why you don't think an algorithm could be conscious? Why do you think th…

The fact that our consciousness is so mysterious as for us to be unable to begin to truly understand it is the biggest clue to why our software isn't getting close to it.

And I'm not talking about spirituality, it could all be perfectly deterministic on some level. With that level being centuries or millennia or forever outside of our grasp.

Re: Dear diary, today the user asked me if I'm alive

#20

Post by parpfish » Sun, Jun 01, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

shayway wrote: post #13

jstanley wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also read comments like that and wonder if other people aren't conscious. I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness could be confused about what it means to be conscious, or (in other threads, not this one) could argue that consciousness is "an illusion". (Consciousness is not the illusion, it's the audience !). However I don't see why you don't think an algorithm could be conscious? Why do you think th…

> I don't know how anyone who experiences consciousness could be confused about what it means to be conscious, or (in other threads, not this one) could argue that consciousness is "an illusion". (Consciousness is not the illusion, it's the audience!). Do you mean to say there are objective criteria for consciousness? Could you expand on that?

When people say that consciousness is “an illusion”, I think they mean to say that the illusion is that consciousness has the ability to direct our actions and the consciousness is an epiphenomenon. Our body processes sensory inputs and convert them into look actions (including speech) all on its own without a conscious decision maker directing anything or making decisions. the experience of consciousness is us just going along for the ride like a Maggie Simpson playing with her toy steering wheel in the simpsons intro