4 ms·

Humans actually take very little to non relevant decisions. The "free will" is mostly an illusion, you "choose" between equivalent options, not between actually

by nb3423 4y ago

Humans actually take very little to non relevant decisions. The "free will" is mostly an illusion, you "choose" between equivalent options, not between actually different "life paths". You can "decide" you won't "build a nest", but you'll certainly look for refuge if it is raining, or it's very cold. In the end, the human behavior is actually fully deterministic. I'm sure FAANG already know this because they have the datapoints from billions of humans beings doing exactly the same stuff everyday for decades now. This is probably how LLM can extrapolate all the things they "know" from human generated text: their tokens reflect the human behavior determinism a its fullest expression (hence at more data for training, much better/closer their behavior ressemble the human behavior/ideas)

pnf 4y ago
I can't agree with you although I can understand why you believe these things. Human instinct is, as I say, insufficiently-determined for survival. Is "free will" mostly an illusion? Or is it "fully deterministic"? If it is mostly then it is not "fully" determined. I'd be curious to hear how you think that can be and whether you make decisions in your own life or if you are resigned to your fate. In any case, I'm not saying individual humans make many reasoned out decisions. Quite the opposite. Human individuals adopt a cultural second nature bequeathed to them by their heritage to avoid the necessity of making decisions. The culture over time adopts certain default decisions that are advantageous to survival. These are inculcated into the individual via their cultural conditioning. A baby has no culture and very few instincts (hunger, pleasure, pain, disgust). If you think humans are operating at the lower levels of instinct then why do they pursue or avoid certain behaviors that change over time? One answer is that they are responding to acceptable norms of behavior. As those norms change, they adapt and adopt. They change with the times, as the saying goes. A tiger can be trained to behave a certain way using stimulus/reward training but it doesn't self-regulate according to new norms. One could argue that elephants do this, if properly conditioned with a large stake early in life. But you could also make the case that elephants (like dolphins) are, like humans, self-conscious to a degree. I don't know if this is true, but it is an interesting thought. A more cynical person might say the elephant is not choosing anything but has been trained just like the tiger to avoid pain. LLMs, or let us say AGI based on probabilistic models, can mimic behavior represented in its data and is very impressive at these language games and, with the right feedback, can correct some of its more glaring productions but it must ever be a parasite on human cultural production for it to gain what you call "knowledge". As a thought experiment, suppose we could set an LLM running on autopilot and send it into space with a feedback loop where it could add its productions to its source corpora. Is there any point in the future where it is generating new and coherent output? Or does it degenerate into raving madness?
- nb3423 4y ago
  "I'd be curious to hear how you think that can be and whether you make decisions in your own life or if you are resigned to your fate." haha just living life as usual, whatever internal stuff is feeding my main loop. I left the deep thoughts to threads like this one and/or people more qualified.
  - pnf 4y ago
    Forgive the presumption, but I really think you should abandon that model of self understanding. Fatalism is a kind of disease that can be treated if caught early but is deadly if left undiagnosed. I don't believe you are really serious but I think it's important to not live hypocritically, which such a view makes unavoidable. But joking aside, one problem with thinking of your self as a kind of Javascript runtime is that it trivializes your life. Even if a computationalist model of mind were largely correct, which I don't believe, a life worth living would reject such a thing on principle, since to believe in it is to think of oneself as a philosophical zombie, which is a creature without consciousness, without will, condemned to infect others with its own nullity, treating brains as mere food rather than the seat of human uniqueness, unable to connect with others, or even notice others except as the motive objects of their ravenous impulses. Taken seriously to oneself, this attitude is a kind of spiritual suicide. I don't recommend.
    - nb3423 4y ago
      no biggy, thanks for your words, it's very much appreciated. I do live well, thinking about these things brings obviously some considerations, but ultimately I don't think about myself as a script, aside the technical considerations I also need to include a margin of error to these philosofical zombie hypothesis, and if there is 1% chance of error in it (which I think there should be a lot more, for there are lots of factors to be considered), I would be resigning my free will to a false assumption, so that's why I can't live under the assumption I have no free will. Look at the history, many "definitive" hypothesis have been refuted along the centuries, when thinking about these I can just wonder how many people have lived their entire life under false premises, just because they were 100% sure "their" philosophy was the "definitive truth". The truth in real life is a more fluid concept, it constantly changes with entropy (the main culprit if you go all the way down the reasons for change), so I can't take my hypothesis of human determinism as a definitive truth, neither live my life under that premise. I'd recommend to anyone also to not live theirs thinking they cannot change their own fate. Thanks again for your words, felt very touched.

by nb3423 4y ago

pnf 4y ago

I can't agree with you although I can understand why you believe these things. Human instinct is, as I say, insufficiently-determined for survival. Is "free will" mostly an illusion? Or is it "fully deterministic"? If it is mostly then it is not "fully" determined. I'd be curious to hear how you think that can be and whether you make decisions in your own life or if you are resigned to your fate. In any case, I'm not saying individual humans make many reasoned out decisions. Quite the opposite. Human individuals adopt a cultural second nature bequeathed to them by their heritage to avoid the necessity of making decisions. The culture over time adopts certain default decisions that are advantageous to survival. These are inculcated into the individual via their cultural conditioning. A baby has no culture and very few instincts (hunger, pleasure, pain, disgust). If you think humans are operating at the lower levels of instinct then why do they pursue or avoid certain behaviors that change over time? One answer is that they are responding to acceptable norms of behavior. As those norms change, they adapt and adopt. They change with the times, as the saying goes. A tiger can be trained to behave a certain way using stimulus/reward training but it doesn't self-regulate according to new norms. One could argue that elephants do this, if properly conditioned with a large stake early in life. But you could also make the case that elephants (like dolphins) are, like humans, self-conscious to a degree. I don't know if this is true, but it is an interesting thought. A more cynical person might say the elephant is not choosing anything but has been trained just like the tiger to avoid pain. LLMs, or let us say AGI based on probabilistic models, can mimic behavior represented in its data and is very impressive at these language games and, with the right feedback, can correct some of its more glaring productions but it must ever be a parasite on human cultural production for it to gain what you call "knowledge". As a thought experiment, suppose we could set an LLM running on autopilot and send it into space with a feedback loop where it could add its productions to its source corpora. Is there any point in the future where it is generating new and coherent output? Or does it degenerate into raving madness?

nb3423 4y ago
"I'd be curious to hear how you think that can be and whether you make decisions in your own life or if you are resigned to your fate." haha just living life as usual, whatever internal stuff is feeding my main loop. I left the deep thoughts to threads like this one and/or people more qualified.
- pnf 4y ago
  Forgive the presumption, but I really think you should abandon that model of self understanding. Fatalism is a kind of disease that can be treated if caught early but is deadly if left undiagnosed. I don't believe you are really serious but I think it's important to not live hypocritically, which such a view makes unavoidable. But joking aside, one problem with thinking of your self as a kind of Javascript runtime is that it trivializes your life. Even if a computationalist model of mind were largely correct, which I don't believe, a life worth living would reject such a thing on principle, since to believe in it is to think of oneself as a philosophical zombie, which is a creature without consciousness, without will, condemned to infect others with its own nullity, treating brains as mere food rather than the seat of human uniqueness, unable to connect with others, or even notice others except as the motive objects of their ravenous impulses. Taken seriously to oneself, this attitude is a kind of spiritual suicide. I don't recommend.
  - nb3423 4y ago
    no biggy, thanks for your words, it's very much appreciated. I do live well, thinking about these things brings obviously some considerations, but ultimately I don't think about myself as a script, aside the technical considerations I also need to include a margin of error to these philosofical zombie hypothesis, and if there is 1% chance of error in it (which I think there should be a lot more, for there are lots of factors to be considered), I would be resigning my free will to a false assumption, so that's why I can't live under the assumption I have no free will. Look at the history, many "definitive" hypothesis have been refuted along the centuries, when thinking about these I can just wonder how many people have lived their entire life under false premises, just because they were 100% sure "their" philosophy was the "definitive truth". The truth in real life is a more fluid concept, it constantly changes with entropy (the main culprit if you go all the way down the reasons for change), so I can't take my hypothesis of human determinism as a definitive truth, neither live my life under that premise. I'd recommend to anyone also to not live theirs thinking they cannot change their own fate. Thanks again for your words, felt very touched.