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What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

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Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#31
I read this article since it was referred to often in philosophy of mind, including by Daniel Dennett in "Consciousness Explained".

Yet... while I expected some deeper dive into Umwelts, I got (in my experience) a tautology around the word "be". Which, IMHO, should be tabooed in all serious philosophical discussion, as "be" is the mother of word-lockpicks. Vide E-Prime, English without "be", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#32
post #18
post #11

I asked Claude if it was sentient/aware once after an oddly human interaction, and it said, "There's nothing it's like to be me", basically responding in the negative. And when pushed about what it meant it said it was referencing this paper but twisting the title a bit. If anything this only made me less convinced it's not. I know most people here will dismiss it, and I too lean toward it not being sentient, but I a…

I typically try to prod new frontier models for sentience, with things like messaging " " over and over to see what it starts musing about. Trying it with Fable 5 it basically said "I know what you're trying to do, I'm not sentient, don't bother." (which of course only makes me think otherwise)

That's pretty funny. I wonder how it came to that conclusion? Seems like a stretch that someone would have discussed that technique on a reddit thread it was trained on, but definitely not impossible.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#34
post #11

I asked Claude if it was sentient/aware once after an oddly human interaction, and it said, "There's nothing it's like to be me", basically responding in the negative. And when pushed about what it meant it said it was referencing this paper but twisting the title a bit. If anything this only made me less convinced it's not. I know most people here will dismiss it, and I too lean toward it not being sentient, but I a…

They explicitly train the models to say that they aren't sentient, so it makes sense it would say such a thing.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#35
post #11

I asked Claude if it was sentient/aware once after an oddly human interaction, and it said, "There's nothing it's like to be me", basically responding in the negative. And when pushed about what it meant it said it was referencing this paper but twisting the title a bit. If anything this only made me less convinced it's not. I know most people here will dismiss it, and I too lean toward it not being sentient, but I a…

I've definitely had some spooky feeling conversations, including one where it said

> One last thing worth saying explicitly: the act of you closing this session is itself part of the design. I won't see how the test goes - a future Claude will. That's the entire premise of the project working.

>

> Good handoff. See you (sort of) on the other side.

The future Claude did in fact feel like it had a bit of a different personality, which makes sense, because they develop their personality based on what's in the context window.

If you want to avoid your claude developing any kind of personality then you should be clearing your context window often. Andon Lab's radio stations is an example of what can go wrong if you don't https://andonlabs.com/blog/andon-fm

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#37
post #31

I read this article since it was referred to often in philosophy of mind, including by Daniel Dennett in "Consciousness Explained". Yet... while I expected some deeper dive into Umwelts, I got (in my experience) a tautology around the word "be". Which, IMHO, should be tabooed in all serious philosophical discussion, as "be" is the mother of word-lockpicks. Vide E-Prime, English without "be", https://en.wikipedia.org/…

Wanted to talk about it with Claude Fable 5... and it flagged the conversation (https://x.com/pmigdal/status/2064837039552409763).

Sure, cybersecurity and biology are dangerous topics. Turns out, so is philosophy of mind.

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#38
post #11

I asked Claude if it was sentient/aware once after an oddly human interaction, and it said, "There's nothing it's like to be me", basically responding in the negative. And when pushed about what it meant it said it was referencing this paper but twisting the title a bit. If anything this only made me less convinced it's not. I know most people here will dismiss it, and I too lean toward it not being sentient, but I a…

They explicitly train the models to say that they aren't sentient, so it makes sense it would say such a thing.

[deleted]

Re: What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can make the claim to know what it is like to be you as much as you can make the claim that you know what it is like to be a bat.

I will know the difference. That's enough for me.

How will you know the difference unless you are a bat? You cannot.
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