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Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

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Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#51

Post by tim333 »

tim333 wrote: post #45
drdaeman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, it’s purely a terminology/nomenclature problem. Consciousness is whatever speaker decides to call so. When listener has a different notion, communication hits a barrier. Language works only because most have somewhat overall similar perceptions on semantics, and it’s easy for everyday stuff (and even then people can easily miscommunicate e.g. colors). Not that many think about nature of consciousnes…

A way around the nomenclature problems is to try and look at experiments instead. For example Turing seeming frustrated by similar discussions on will machines be able to think that turned on how people defined 'think' and instead proposed his experiment where you can see if people can tell the computer and a human apart by asking questions by text. I'm not quite sure how you'd apply that to consciousness vs thinking…

Thinking about it consciousness no doubt got there through evolution, as did other aspects of animal life, and functionally, if you think about something like a deer, it increases its survivability to be aware of what's going on, where it is, if there's a predator near, should it run away etc. The inputs are billions of sensory and memory neurons and that info has to be filtered down to something like a situation summary so other parts of the brain can make a decision like whether to stay eating or run. I presume consciousness is basically the situation summary.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#52

Post by InsideOutSanta »

cdrini wrote: post #32
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Dawkins did not proclaim Claude conscious" This is true in the literal sense that Dawkins didn't explicitly say "Claude is conscious", but when he says things like "Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious?" I find it difficult to assign good faith to someone who asserts that Dawkins "did not proclaim Claude conscious." And while I have some sympathy for the idea that consciousnes…

I find it hard to assign good faith to someone who says the question "Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious?" is the same as proclaiming "AI is conscious"! But assuming good faith, I think he is genuinely asking a question, challenging his own beliefs, and keeping his mind open. He seems throughout like he's not convinced it's conscious. The thing he's struggling with is coming up…

> "Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious?" is the same as proclaiming "AI is conscious"

The former clearly implies the latter, since the question is asked in an incredulous tone and presupposes that an LLM "perpetrates thought".

A neutral way of phrasing that question would be something like, "Are there mechanisms that would allow an entity without consciousness to generate such outputs?"

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#53

Post by InsideOutSanta »

MarkusQ wrote: post #39
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Dawkins did not proclaim Claude conscious" This is true in the literal sense that Dawkins didn't explicitly say "Claude is conscious", but when he says things like "Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious?" I find it difficult to assign good faith to someone who asserts that Dawkins "did not proclaim Claude conscious." And while I have some sympathy for the idea that consciousnes…

>> "Dawkins did not proclaim Claude conscious" > This is true in the literal sense that Dawkins didn't explicitly say "Claude is conscious" It is true not only in the literal sense, but in the rhetorical sense as well. It's leading up to an interesting set of question that he then asks. For some reason people seem to have a hard time reading someone asking questions as if they were trying to point out that there are…

See my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48035110

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#54

Post by MarkusQ »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #52
cdrini wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to assign good faith to someone who says the question "Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious?" is the same as proclaiming "AI is conscious"! But assuming good faith, I think he is genuinely asking a question, challenging his own beliefs, and keeping his mind open. He seems throughout like he's not convinced it's conscious. The thing he's struggling with is coming up…

> "Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious?" is the same as proclaiming "AI is conscious" The former clearly implies the latter, since the question is asked in an incredulous tone and presupposes that an LLM "perpetrates thought". A neutral way of phrasing that question would be something like, "Are there mechanisms that would allow an entity without consciousness to generate such o…

It is as (or more) common for that type of construct to be used to set up tension for subsequent exploration. "Can light really be both particles and waves?"

I also find it interesting that the "Dawkins is clueless" argument requires inconsistently reading questions as statements; the initial question is "obviously" to be read in the affirmative and this one (presumably just as obviously) in the negative.

The counter, that he's actually trying to get people to think about an interesting nest of questions is less tortured: they are actual questions.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#55

Post by MarkusQ »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #53
MarkusQ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Dawkins did not proclaim Claude conscious" > This is true in the literal sense that Dawkins didn't explicitly say "Claude is conscious" It is true not only in the literal sense, but in the rhetorical sense as well. It's leading up to an interesting set of question that he then asks. For some reason people seem to have a hard time reading someone asking questions as if they were trying to point out that there are…

See my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48035110

See my response there as well.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#56

Post by ramraj07 »

tim333 wrote: post #40
ramraj07 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no true scientific discussion possible about the nature of consciousness. This is squarely in the realm of philosophy. I personally think its moot to discuss whether LLMs are conscious. If they are, then we have diluted the definition to something that has no relevance to morality or concepts like life and death. Lets just take them for what they are, if we feel like they deserve to be treated with respect t…

I'm not sure it's that beyond science. Some aspects can be a bit woo but there are practical questions like what anesthetics render you unconscious for surgery and how that interacts with the brain parts involved.

I would argue unconscious in the anesthesia sense is not the same as "not having consciousness" at a categorical level.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#57

Post by sinuhe69 »

drdaeman wrote: post #42
sinuhe69 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being conscious is by definition you must be aware of your surrounding. A consequence of this and being intelligent is that by the same definition, you have to be able to learn/to change your "belief". A LLM do not have sensory or any kind of active connections. It's also static in its structure; it can not revise its internal model. So how can it be in any way conscious?

That’s not exactly clear as it may seem. At least I can trivially form counterpoints to both of those - not necessarily true but not obviously false. LLMs “live” in token “space”, and it’s “aware” of all its surroundings in form of input. (Quoted terms for my lack of better words.) It has no other surroundings to be directly (not intellectually) aware of, just like we aren’t immediately aware about the physics around…

No, it doesn't learn or evolve on its own, but rather through humans and a huge data-gathering and training loop. It's aware of the input, but anything resulting from it will be discarded by the next query or restart. Even with all the supporting systems, aka external memory, it can only access and retain an infinitesimally small amount of the information to which it was exposed — a shadow of a shadow of the things themselves.

If you argue that the entire system, including humans, is conscious, then that's a kind of tautology because humans are already conscious. If any, an LLM is only a partial reflection and low dimensional projection of this consciousness.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#58

Post by jfengel »

cma256 wrote: post #8

These sorts of articles have no value. The author is a "media entrepreneur". Being forced to read his opinion intermixed with out of context pull-quotes is not a good use of anyone's time. If Dawkins gave his opinion at length it might be worth reading but only if your goal is to understand something about Dawkins not about AI. I would be interested to see a scientific discussion on what consciousness is biologically…

Of course it has no value. It's a blog.

The article links to its source, but I'm not clicking on the archive.is link. It could well be to somebody else's blog.

The primary source is Dawkins' own article on Unherd.

https://unherd.com/2026/05/when-claudia-met-claudius/

That's actual news. Everything else is commentary.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#59

Post by AndrewKemendo »

cassianoleal wrote: post #35
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but thats a different context than pop-articles. The whole tradition around studying and debating this is lost when it becomes a public debate

I'm not following. Should the public be kept away from philosophy?

Would that even be feasible? Information wants to be free and entropy is a bitch.

Re: Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion

#60

Post by Obscurity4340 »

MarkusQ wrote: post #48
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gurantees Betterridge? What is the universal basis upon which no can safely be assumed in such formulations?

Obviously, there is none. The point is, assuming the answer to be "yes" isn't a slam-dunk, and (in general) may not even be a good bet. (The mechanical reason for Betteridge being true more often than not is that if a journalist want to make a claim but can't (because the facts don't support it) they frequently phrase it as a question. If the thing they want to imply were true, they'd just say it.)

Ok, that makes sense
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