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Argument by insult isn’t appropriate. What exactly do you find “more common-sensical” about imaging a tree is conscious than something that can create English

Argument by insult isn’t appropriate. What exactly do you find “more common-sensical” about imaging a tree is conscious than something that can create English sentences describing the world?

avgcorrection 4y ago
Not so much an argument as a statement. A tree is made of living matter, like fauna. An AI is a program which runs on silicon, and I don’t think scientists have found silicone-based lifeforms on Earth.
- ben_w 4y ago
  The only way that statement would be relevant is if souls existed. I don't believe in souls. To your previous comment upthread, GPT-3 is about the complexity of a rat brain. Do rats have feelings? I don't know, as we share a common ancestor it might just be an anthropomorphisation of shared mammalian reflexes that makes me think rats act like they have them. Does GPT-3? I don't know, but it's a very good actor, so I can't even infer anything from the fact it can act like it has them — after all a VHS player can also perfectly reproduce human emotional affect. Is GPT-3 more like a VHS or more like a rat? I see aspects of both in it. I don't see a way to more than guess at which aspect makes a difference. A rat brain has to keep doing rat things to stay alive, but GPT-3 can use the same parameter space to instead communicate in Spanish and Mandarin, to answer physics questions and write poetry and Python. The "staying alive" process might, or might not, have anything to do with conciseness, but even if consciousness in vivo is about the process of staying alive, there is no obvious reason to think the process/structure cannot be replicated in-silico. Trees can't do any of those things that LLMs and diffusion models can do.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
    >> The only way that statement would be relevant is if souls existed. I think the OP is saying that carbon is not like silicon and perhaps carbon is special in a way that silicon isn't. They're not saying that humans are special because they have souls, or something along those lines.
    - avgcorrection 4y ago
      Yep, pretty much.
  - jimmygrapes 4y ago
    >I don't believe in souls. Why not? I mean I could presume a lot on your behalf, like how the concept is non-falsifiable, lack of evidence that can be replicated, past trauma from people you trusted who insisted upon it but then behaved hypocritically, etc. but every time someone says they don't believe in souls I can't help but ask why not. You don't have to answer but I'm always interested to hear what others say. Disclaimer: I personally believe in something akin to souls, not individualized, and it's hard to explain my ideas so I like to hear what others think before I say what I think.
    - Baeocystin 4y ago
      During my childhood, I moved around frequently, and one of my valuable experiences this taught me that a significant portion of a culture's understanding of the world is largely arbitrary. From my point of view, concepts like souls fall firmly in this category.
      - avgcorrection 4y ago
        And like concepts like conscious machines?
        Baeocystin 4y ago
        I'm a materialist, so that matter can think I take as possible a priori, simply because we do, and we're made of matter. And since I think consciousness (however one ultimately defines it) is a physical process, the particulars of any specific substrate might be interesting, but none of it surprising that it might exist.
        avgcorrection 4y ago
        Makes sense. Thanks.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      The more I learned about the world, the less room there has been for souls. Souls fit fine in a world where ghosts, mediums, possession by sprits, apparitions from the afterlife, dryads, and/or the katabasis of Orpheus are taken seriously. But each of these has turned out to have been mundane (in the old sense of the word) or pure fiction.
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    > The only way that statement would be relevant is if souls existed. I resent your presumptious attitude. My argument has got nothing to do with souls. And I don’t even personally believe in them. > Trees can't do any of those things that LLMs and diffusion models can do. LLM isn’t mystical. We know what they are made of. So why fantasize that they are conscious? It’s like an extra, unnecessary step.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  What makes it “common sense” that being made of cells makes you conscious but being able to learn and speak does not?
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    The made of cells thing is an old superstition that merely makes relatively more sense[1] than this modern techy superstition: A human is living matter, is conscious, so why not trees aswell The techy superstition, however, involves people looking at AI programs, acknowledging that we know how they work, and then for some odd reason want to insist that they could now or at some point gain the emergent property of consciousness. Based on what? Well because they “learn”. And “speak”. What are these two words? Metaphors based on what humans do. So some computer programs can do things that we metaphorically compare to our own skills. And that imbues them with consciousness? How? At this point you get the response that all theists insist upon in the end, when it all comes down to it: Why not? Incredulity, in other words. Why not God? Why not a ghost in the machine? Can you disprove that there is a ghost in the machine? [1] Not in an absolute sense

Argument by insult isn’t appropriate. What exactly do you find “more common-sensical” about imaging a tree is conscious than something that can create English sentences describing the world?

avgcorrection 4y ago

Not so much an argument as a statement. A tree is made of living matter, like fauna. An AI is a program which runs on silicon, and I don’t think scientists have found silicone-based lifeforms on Earth.

ben_w 4y ago
The only way that statement would be relevant is if souls existed. I don't believe in souls. To your previous comment upthread, GPT-3 is about the complexity of a rat brain. Do rats have feelings? I don't know, as we share a common ancestor it might just be an anthropomorphisation of shared mammalian reflexes that makes me think rats act like they have them. Does GPT-3? I don't know, but it's a very good actor, so I can't even infer anything from the fact it can act like it has them — after all a VHS player can also perfectly reproduce human emotional affect. Is GPT-3 more like a VHS or more like a rat? I see aspects of both in it. I don't see a way to more than guess at which aspect makes a difference. A rat brain has to keep doing rat things to stay alive, but GPT-3 can use the same parameter space to instead communicate in Spanish and Mandarin, to answer physics questions and write poetry and Python. The "staying alive" process might, or might not, have anything to do with conciseness, but even if consciousness in vivo is about the process of staying alive, there is no obvious reason to think the process/structure cannot be replicated in-silico. Trees can't do any of those things that LLMs and diffusion models can do.
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
  >> The only way that statement would be relevant is if souls existed. I think the OP is saying that carbon is not like silicon and perhaps carbon is special in a way that silicon isn't. They're not saying that humans are special because they have souls, or something along those lines.
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    Yep, pretty much.
- jimmygrapes 4y ago
  >I don't believe in souls. Why not? I mean I could presume a lot on your behalf, like how the concept is non-falsifiable, lack of evidence that can be replicated, past trauma from people you trusted who insisted upon it but then behaved hypocritically, etc. but every time someone says they don't believe in souls I can't help but ask why not. You don't have to answer but I'm always interested to hear what others say. Disclaimer: I personally believe in something akin to souls, not individualized, and it's hard to explain my ideas so I like to hear what others think before I say what I think.
  - Baeocystin 4y ago
    During my childhood, I moved around frequently, and one of my valuable experiences this taught me that a significant portion of a culture's understanding of the world is largely arbitrary. From my point of view, concepts like souls fall firmly in this category.
    - avgcorrection 4y ago
      And like concepts like conscious machines?
      - Baeocystin 4y ago
        I'm a materialist, so that matter can think I take as possible a priori, simply because we do, and we're made of matter. And since I think consciousness (however one ultimately defines it) is a physical process, the particulars of any specific substrate might be interesting, but none of it surprising that it might exist.
        avgcorrection 4y ago
        Makes sense. Thanks.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    The more I learned about the world, the less room there has been for souls. Souls fit fine in a world where ghosts, mediums, possession by sprits, apparitions from the afterlife, dryads, and/or the katabasis of Orpheus are taken seriously. But each of these has turned out to have been mundane (in the old sense of the word) or pure fiction.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  > The only way that statement would be relevant is if souls existed. I resent your presumptious attitude. My argument has got nothing to do with souls. And I don’t even personally believe in them. > Trees can't do any of those things that LLMs and diffusion models can do. LLM isn’t mystical. We know what they are made of. So why fantasize that they are conscious? It’s like an extra, unnecessary step.
zmgsabst 4y ago
What makes it “common sense” that being made of cells makes you conscious but being able to learn and speak does not?
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  The made of cells thing is an old superstition that merely makes relatively more sense[1] than this modern techy superstition: A human is living matter, is conscious, so why not trees aswell The techy superstition, however, involves people looking at AI programs, acknowledging that we know how they work, and then for some odd reason want to insist that they could now or at some point gain the emergent property of consciousness. Based on what? Well because they “learn”. And “speak”. What are these two words? Metaphors based on what humans do. So some computer programs can do things that we metaphorically compare to our own skills. And that imbues them with consciousness? How? At this point you get the response that all theists insist upon in the end, when it all comes down to it: Why not? Incredulity, in other words. Why not God? Why not a ghost in the machine? Can you disprove that there is a ghost in the machine? [1] Not in an absolute sense