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They’re made out of weights

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Re: They’re made out of weights

#591

Post by fc417fc802 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #554
fc417fc802 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something happens "on the map" doesn't that imply the map to exist and be some sort of metaphysical thing? As opposed to a purely theoretical construction.

I think you can be a monist and still have a map. To me it's similar in the sense of "all models are wrong, some are useful." A mathematical model (a map) doesn't require a metaphysical foundation to exist. Right?

I agree that a monist can have a map. But you said "consciousness exists on the map" which (AFAICT) would imply the map to be "real" else how would something happen on it as opposed to being an emergent property of the contents of the territory?

For example temperature is an emergent property of matter, it does not happen on the map, do you agree? Assuming you do, what would it mean for temperature to happen "on the map"? (Obviously that's nonsensical so for a second here just don't think about what temperature actually is.) Would such a state of affairs not imply dualism?

Re: They’re made out of weights

#593

Post by DangitBobby »

petra wrote: post #123
kami23 wrote: post #12

This read like poetry to me. Thank you for sharing it. I have a linguistics background and a lot of my philosophizing lately has been on whether or not the emergent abilities of the LLMs is deep down a similar mechanism that creates our consciousness. For a little bit I was working on having linguistics based evals for a kaggle competition. My challenge was whether or not I could mask things well enough to not trigge…

Regarding consciousness , I like the explanation by neuroscientist Ramachandran: https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran07/ramachandran... In short, as far as I can remember: evolutionary, it makes sense to understand other humans, to feel what they feel(empathy - the mirror neurons system), and simulate their thinking and feelings. And once we have those systems, we can also use those on ourselves. And that's…

It's interesting, but the explanation seems to exclude the possibility that my dog has some sense of self, so I find it suspect.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#594

Post by kelseyfrog »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #591
kelseyfrog wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can be a monist and still have a map. To me it's similar in the sense of "all models are wrong, some are useful." A mathematical model (a map) doesn't require a metaphysical foundation to exist. Right?

I agree that a monist can have a map. But you said "consciousness exists on the map" which (AFAICT) would imply the map to be "real" else how would something happen on it as opposed to being an emergent property of the contents of the territory? For example temperature is an emergent property of matter, it does not happen on the map, do you agree? Assuming you do, what would it mean for temperature to happen "on the…

Temperature is a model. It exists on the map.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#595

Post by baggy_trough »

DangitBobby wrote: post #593
petra wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding consciousness , I like the explanation by neuroscientist Ramachandran: https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran07/ramachandran... In short, as far as I can remember: evolutionary, it makes sense to understand other humans, to feel what they feel(empathy - the mirror neurons system), and simulate their thinking and feelings. And once we have those systems, we can also use those on ourselves. And that's…

It's interesting, but the explanation seems to exclude the possibility that my dog has some sense of self, so I find it suspect.

Don't dogs have similar social issues?

Re: They’re made out of weights

#596

Post by gibspaulding »

simpaticoder wrote: post #584
gibspaulding wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, did I grossly misunderstand Blindsight?? I definitely thought that the aliens were 100% conscious (or at least elements of some conscious entity) and that the humans interpretation of their interactions with the Rorschach were supposed to be read as a blot test (through a rather heavy handed metaphor) demonstrating that basically the humans were the monsters and were twisting logic into letting them justify des…

That's a very interesting reading! It's been a while since I read it, but IIRC Watts explicitly talks about the matter of intelligence vs consciousness at length and Rorschach's lack of consciousness is essentially proven at some point by the linguist. The distinction is driven home subjectively, personally by the viewpoint character. Your reading adds a rather diabolical twist! I don't think it works though since Ro…

I think you’re right. I read the Wikipedia page after to refresh my memory on the synopsis and I’d definitely forgotten a lot.

I think I mostly latched onto the ship being called Rorschach and the humans immediately proceeding to torture its inhabitants. That felt very relevant to me and sort of overshadowed the actual consciousness question.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#597

Post by tsunamifury »

sumitkumar wrote: post #148

The weights start with a random manifold. The training takes data and shapes the manifold, weight by weight, in many cycles. Once the training is the done manifold is fixed. When a new inference has to be done the query(q) is projected in the manifold space. This projection is dropped on the manifold and the gravity of the manifold gives an answer of q+1 length. Which(qw+i) is dropped qw+n times to output a final res…

It would be interesting (if unlikely) that we found our reality worked that was as well. Mostly just super granular gravity nodes made up purely of clumpy probability distributions.

Also I describe this more simply to others as a tree walk where the manifold is mapped along a walk through it (even if it’s not linear one) where you choose the next jump based on the most likely future mode relative to the nodes already created and the ones from the prompt.

This helps some understand attention layers rudimentary. Even tho it leaves out that multiple layers sort of prune the overall manifold in successive passes.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#598

Post by danielmarkbruce »

runarberg wrote: post #561
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSRIs are not evidence that we understand how neural activity becomes behavior. They are evidence that you can perturb a system usefully without understanding it very well. That is exactly my point. Respectfully, you are miles out of your depth here.

I don‘t see why you felt the need to insult me here. We are having a very common disagreement here, one which philosophers of science have been actively debating for several decades. My point with the SSRI is that we know that serotonin is a chemical which incites certain neurons, and we know that a lack of activity of neurons in that general area in the brain is correlated with depression, so scientists were able to…

It's not an insult to suggest one is out of the depth on a topic, especially when it isn't one's field of expertise. You are giving the pop science explanation of various things.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#599

Post by DangitBobby »

wisty wrote: post #76
kami23 wrote: post #12

This read like poetry to me. Thank you for sharing it. I have a linguistics background and a lot of my philosophizing lately has been on whether or not the emergent abilities of the LLMs is deep down a similar mechanism that creates our consciousness. For a little bit I was working on having linguistics based evals for a kaggle competition. My challenge was whether or not I could mask things well enough to not trigge…

AFAIK every argument against conciousness being emergent is just a weak "God of the gaps" argument (since we don't fully understand it all) or a nonsense analogy like the Chinsese room where if you seperate the hardware and software it's not concious anymore (like, duh, remove a brain from a body and it is no longer concious either). Yeah, the weights not updating online makes them less like a living organism that ca…

Check out Panpsychism and its close cousin Idealism.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#600

Post by Lplololopo »

doug_durham wrote: post #541
Lplololopo wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agency? What are you talking about? I want freedom. I want freedom to do what i want and not sitting in front of a computer and coding for some company. Please AI lets burn down knowledge work and labor work. Lets create so much stress to our society that we start rethinking what works mean. Lets redefine work into discovering the world again. Let people do old handcraft jobs, let them do more sports, let them read m…

Work has never been about "discovering the world". There have been a handful of privileged folks who had the time to "discover the world". Work has traditionally been "let's find enough food for my family". If you want to think of a future of abundance then perhaps we can discover the world.

We already live in a world of abundance.

No one has to work on a field for their food.

Its a capitalism problem we have, not a resource one.

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