Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 181 posts

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#171

Post by GoblinSlayer »

tarsinge wrote: post #166
tim333 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recollection is that there was quite a lot of debate back then on whether machines would be able to think or be conscious with arguments on the can't think side being Searle's Chinese Room and similar ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room ), which I always thought was a bit silly and people don't seem to take seriously now but did back in 1991. The Made of Meat story was quite a nice counter argument to tha…

The argument that sentience can't derive from computation alone because computations can be slowed down and done by hand still hold for me. The piece of paper written on or the silicon doesn't acquire different properties because what the operation will be used for, the GPU doesn't differentiate between graphic rendering and weight computation when it's adding 1. That's in opposition with animal brains that not only…

>The piece of paper written on or the silicon doesn't acquire different properties because what the operation will be used for

I does though. Electric current in general doesn't compute, but electric current in a computer does compute. Thus electric current has a property of computation depending on what it's used for.

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#172

Post by VoodooJuJu »

shpx wrote: post #96

I've never understood what people see in this story. Meat is a complex organization of trillions of self-replicating machines, each of which (besides red blood cells maybe) is also incredibly complex... much more advanced than anything human minds have been able to build. I can't imagine what a sentient entity would have to be made out of or how much less "efficient" or stable it would have to be than me for me to fi…

It's just a cute little sci-fi story, that's all, nothing serious.

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#173

Post by whelp_24 »

tarsinge wrote: post #166
tim333 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recollection is that there was quite a lot of debate back then on whether machines would be able to think or be conscious with arguments on the can't think side being Searle's Chinese Room and similar ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room ), which I always thought was a bit silly and people don't seem to take seriously now but did back in 1991. The Made of Meat story was quite a nice counter argument to tha…

The argument that sentience can't derive from computation alone because computations can be slowed down and done by hand still hold for me. The piece of paper written on or the silicon doesn't acquire different properties because what the operation will be used for, the GPU doesn't differentiate between graphic rendering and weight computation when it's adding 1. That's in opposition with animal brains that not only…

Your consciousness can be slowed, it takes time for you process input and make decisions. Your sense of time varies by circumstance (and sometimes drug). I don't know if you would argue a single neuron is aware of the thoughts it is enabling. The fact is i could easy argue that you are a chinese room.

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#174

Post by GoblinSlayer »

boringuser2 wrote: post #112
kragen wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while they don't yet rise to the level i would describe as 'intelligent' without qualifications, they do seem to be less unintelligent than most of the humans, and in particular most of the ones criticizing them in this way, who consistently repeat specific criticisms applicable to years-ago systems which have no factual connection to current reality

It doesn't matter how it "appears". A disembodied paragraph that I've transmitted to you can appear to be intelligent or not, but it only really matters in the sense that you can ascribe that intellect to an agent. The LLM isn't an agent and no intellect can be ascribed to it. It is a device actual intelligent agents have made and ascribing it intellect is equally as erroneous.

The joke is how you decide that the machine isn't an agent. If you believe only meat can be an agent and given the fact that machine isn't meat, it follows machine isn't an agent. The story reverses this chauvinism and shows machines finding an idea of thinking meat absurd for arguably better reason that machines are better fit for information processing than meat.

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#175

Post by goldenkey »

kragen wrote: post #170
goldenkey wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is generated when the universe computes by executing conditionals/if statements. All machines are quantum/conscious in their degrees of freedom, even mechanical ones: https://youtu.be/mcedCEhdLk0?si=_ueWQvnW6HQUNxcm The universe is a min-consciousness/min-decision optimized supercomputer. This is demonstrated by quantum eraser and double slit experiments. If a machine does not distinguish upon certain p…

seems speculative

Lines up a bit too perfectly. Everyone has their threshold of coincidence I suppose. I am working on some hard science into measuring the amount of computation actually happening, in a more specific quantity than hz, related to reversible boolean functions, possibly their continuous analogs.

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#176

Post by blackmesaind »

kragen wrote: post #100
shpx wrote: post #96

I've never understood what people see in this story. Meat is a complex organization of trillions of self-replicating machines, each of which (besides red blood cells maybe) is also incredibly complex... much more advanced than anything human minds have been able to build. I can't imagine what a sentient entity would have to be made out of or how much less "efficient" or stable it would have to be than me for me to fi…

i think the point of the story is exactly what you've gotten from it namely, it's absurd to dismiss the possibility of self-awareness in some system because it's built out of parts different from the parts other self-aware systems you're familiar with are built out of a useful thing to keep in mind when the stochastic parrots start squawking about how large language models aren't actually intelligent shpxvat vf terng

The goalposts for intelligence always seem to change with each new foundation model that comes out. As long as people can understand the principles behind why a model works, it no longer seems intelligent.

hvsm bsjsf sldsqh fch tcifhssb

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#177

Post by kragen »

blackmesaind wrote: post #176
kragen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think the point of the story is exactly what you've gotten from it namely, it's absurd to dismiss the possibility of self-awareness in some system because it's built out of parts different from the parts other self-aware systems you're familiar with are built out of a useful thing to keep in mind when the stochastic parrots start squawking about how large language models aren't actually intelligent shpxvat vf terng

The goalposts for intelligence always seem to change with each new foundation model that comes out. As long as people can understand the principles behind why a model works, it no longer seems intelligent. hvsm bsjsf sldsqh fch tcifhssb

zaf 14, ngf uf ue zaf ea tmdp fa ruzp agf itmf dafmfuaz kag pup

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#178

Post by kragen »

isleyaardvark wrote: post #159
jakobson14 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> In Comments > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. I’ve been visiting this site for a long time, and it’s getting to the point where it feels like people are ignoring this rule regularly, and it’s disappointing.

to be fair to him i was being pretty rude in response to his incoherent trolling, so it's not surprising he responded rudely

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#179

Post by Grimblewald »

shpx wrote: post #96

I've never understood what people see in this story. Meat is a complex organization of trillions of self-replicating machines, each of which (besides red blood cells maybe) is also incredibly complex... much more advanced than anything human minds have been able to build. I can't imagine what a sentient entity would have to be made out of or how much less "efficient" or stable it would have to be than me for me to fi…

my take on it is the absurdity of denying capacity to something simply because you look down on it for one reason or another. If there are signs that a thing does a thing, then it does it. It should not be weird that this thing does it, we should simply update our internal model to better reflect reality as we now know it and move on.

To flip it around, it is equally absurd to say computers can't be sentient because they're just math, or just minerals and electricity etc.

Re: They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

#180

Post by blackmesaind »

kragen wrote: post #177
blackmesaind wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goalposts for intelligence always seem to change with each new foundation model that comes out. As long as people can understand the principles behind why a model works, it no longer seems intelligent. hvsm bsjsf sldsqh fch tcifhssb

zaf 14, ngf uf ue zaf ea tmdp fa ruzp agf itmf dafmfuaz kag pup

xrl vf lbh yyg vrn vsh viazo n ozgbrrkv cftuxi?!
Post reply on HN