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

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

blog.fsck.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 77 posts

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

#21

Post by kens »

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…

Yes, some comments make me wonder about other people; I have three hypotheses: a) Some people experience consciousness very differently, similar to how some people have no mental imagery (aphantasia). b) The confusion is due to ill-defined terms. c) People are semi-trolling/debating/devils-advocating. The most interesting would be if people have widely different internal experiences, but I don't know how you could tell.

I read an interesting book recently, "Determined", which argues that free will doesn't exist. It was more convincing than I expected. However, the chapters on chaos and quantum mechanics were a mess and made me skeptical of the rest of the book.

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

#23

Post by xeonmc »

parpfish wrote: post #20
shayway wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Corgi-towed ear go zoom.

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

#24

Post by iwontberude »

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.

David Parnas said it well recently that it’s verifiably true through past study that humans are often quite wrong about how describe their own cognitive processes. They will say one thing and then in practice do something else entirely.

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

#25

Post by tbrownaw »

patcon wrote: post #15
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 n…

A system is its interactions with its environment. Philosophical zombies aren't a coherent concept. (Cartesian dualism is unfalsifiable bullshit.)

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

#26

Post by koolala »

aswegs8 wrote: post #3
Mithriil wrote: post #2

Makes me think of the Google employee that had a conversation with Google's LLM back then, which got out and triggered a lot of discussions about consciousness, etc.

Didn't he insist that the LLM has consciousness and get fired because of this?

He said "sentient" which seems like it could be true.

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

#27

Post by ghurtado »

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…

> The system is doing it's best to coherently fill in the rest of a story

> Would any of these ideas been present had the system not been primed...

I would like to know of a meaningful human action that can't be framed this way.

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

#28

Post by LlamaTrauma »

patcon wrote: post #15
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 n…

The theory I've developed is that the brain circuitry passes much of the information it processes through a "seat of consciousness", which then processes that data and sends signals back to the unconscious parts of the brain to control motor function, etc. Instinctive action bypasses the seat of consciousness step, but most "important" decisions go through it.

If the unconscious brain is damaged it can impact the data the seat of consciousness receives or reduce how much control consciousness has on the body, depending on if the damage is on the input or output side.

I'm pretty convinced there's something special about the seat of consciousness. An AI processing the world will do a lot of math and produce a coherent result (much like the unconscious brain will), but it has no seat of consciousness to allow it to "experience" rather than just manipulate the data it's receiving. We can artificially produce rainbows, but don't know if we can create a system that can experience the world in the same way we do.

This theory's pretty hand-wavy and probably easy to contradict, but as long as we don't understand most of the brain I'm happy to let what we don't know fill in the gaps. The seat of consciousness is a nice fixion [1] which allows for a non-deterministic universe, religion, emotion, etc. and I'm happy to be optimistic about it.

[1] https://xkcd.com/1621/

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

#29

Post by koolala »

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…

Computers are made of matter. The Earth would be conscious too? A consciousness could contain consciousnessess.

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

#30

Post by TimTheTinker »

tbrownaw wrote: post #25
patcon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

A system is its interactions with its environment. Philosophical zombies aren't a coherent concept. (Cartesian dualism is unfalsifiable bullshit.)

A "mechanical turk" grandmaster playing chess from inside a cabinet is qualitatively different from a robot with a chess program, even if they play identically.

To reduce a system to its inputs and outputs is fine if those are all that matter in a given context, but in doing so you may fail to understand its internal mechanics. Those matter if you're trying to really understand the system, no?

Post reply on HN