Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Is the same underlying assumptions that treats cells as machines, our body as a complex machine. These theories are flawed in the sense that they cannot account for subjective experience and agency, amongst other things Do you disagree with the assumption that cells are machines? They seem pretty machine-like to me. I certainly don’t think individual cells have any subjective experience or sense of agency. I would b…
It's not a huge leap to imagine biological cells might have a rudimentary consciousness Pan-psychists might argue that your subjective consciousness is an aggregate of all the cells/molecules, etc in the system "While each biological cell operates largely on its own chemical cues, they all coordinate through complex nervous and chemical networks to create your unified, subjective experience." You might be a rigid mat…
They’re made out of weights
401–410 of 739 posts
Re: They’re made out of weights
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
> An LLM is not a human brain, true > and does not try to emulate one citation please. something like the universal approximation theory comes to mind, transformer architecture clearly has the shape of a universal algorithm approximator
> something like the universal approximation theory comes to mind, transformer architecture clearly has the shape of a universal algorithm approximator That says nothing about emulating a human brain.
is human cognition not an algorithm? is it just woo? or vibes?
Re: They’re made out of weights
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Is the same underlying assumptions that treats cells as machines, our body as a complex machine. These theories are flawed in the sense that they cannot account for subjective experience and agency, amongst other things Do you disagree with the assumption that cells are machines? They seem pretty machine-like to me. I certainly don’t think individual cells have any subjective experience or sense of agency. I would b…
> Do you disagree with the assumption that cells are machines? Yes? Literally no machine ever built by humans is capable of (or even hinting at beginnings of capability for) replication or novel synthesis like cells are, let alone autonomously, it’s quite unconceivable that anyone would take this to be a reasonable assumption in the first place.
replication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)
autonomous replication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_worm
nb that writing your own quine remains in general terms a fun and challenging exercise in many programming languages, but not python.
Re: They’re made out of weights
#404[dead]
Re: They’re made out of weights
#405After reading Being and Time from Martin Heidegger, What Computers can't still do by Hubert Dreyfus, and some authors in cognitive linguistics (Langacker and Lakoff mainly), I strongly tend to disagree with any theory about emergent consciousness in modern or future AI systems, any theory proposing a similarity between AI systems and the human brain/mind, or any theory about the computational mind. What all these the…
> These theories are flawed in the sense that they cannot account for subjective experience and agency, amongst other things. On the contrary, it's precisely this assumption, that there is a "subjective experience" that requires explanation beyond the material, that is axiomatically assumed without evidence. It falls apart quickly, any "subjective experience" is completely tied to neurons, knock out the neurons and t…
Interesting, so you would say that your experience is .. illusory? In what medium exactly? Illusion requires a substrate of some kind. "Awareness"? What's that?
Neurons are themselves things we experience (indirectly). Once seen through a microscope or known about in some fashion the only way they "exist" is by you having the experience of knowing them. It's not the other way around. One thing is more fundamental here. What is this experience? What are the atoms of this? "Atomic particles"? How would you even approach an answer if your building blocks are themselves part of what needs to be explained?
The hard problem cannot even be touched if you start out like this.
Re: They’re made out of weights
#406Don't tell the big investors that AI is conscious, they'd really get into role playing slave-masters.
Re: They’re made out of weights
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you disagree with the assumption that cells are machines? Yes? Literally no machine ever built by humans is capable of (or even hinting at beginnings of capability for) replication or novel synthesis like cells are, let alone autonomously, it’s quite unconceivable that anyone would take this to be a reasonable assumption in the first place.
replication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) autonomous replication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_worm nb that writing your own quine remains in general terms a fun and challenging exercise in many programming languages, but not python.
We are talking about physical replication, please let me know when a computer worm can turn my laptop into 2 laptops
Otherwise you’re just arguing that Sims are totally alive because Sims can make baby Sims.
Re: They’re made out of weights
#408After reading Being and Time from Martin Heidegger, What Computers can't still do by Hubert Dreyfus, and some authors in cognitive linguistics (Langacker and Lakoff mainly), I strongly tend to disagree with any theory about emergent consciousness in modern or future AI systems, any theory proposing a similarity between AI systems and the human brain/mind, or any theory about the computational mind. What all these the…
You actually read Being and Time? What the heck do you get out of it? Heidegger just seems to play word games with German words without actually saying anything. "Time is the ripening of temporality." tf do phrases like that mean??
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 scratch. You essentially can read him without having to first study the whole western continental philosophy and he will construct the whole system by himself. Tremendous work
Re: They’re made out of weights
#409Definitely less mysterious to what we’re made of (-:
Re: They’re made out of weights
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
> These theories are flawed in the sense that they cannot account for subjective experience and agency, amongst other things. On the contrary, it's precisely this assumption, that there is a "subjective experience" that requires explanation beyond the material, that is axiomatically assumed without evidence. It falls apart quickly, any "subjective experience" is completely tied to neurons, knock out the neurons and t…
I find the claim subjective experience may be illusory absolutely baffling. I can only speak for myself with certainty, but I am entirely sure I have subjective experience. All the other propositions I believe could be false but I don't see how I can be wrong about experiencing something. I could be a brain in a vat (or weights on a GPU) and be specifically programmed to only come to false beliefs and still I can be…
Indeed. Even positing an illusion seems like a contradiction. If it's illusory, doesn't there need to be a subjective entity experiencing the illusion?