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People who "study philosophy" always do this dumb thing where they pounce on something for being poorly defined and then consider themselves wiser for arguing t

People who "study philosophy" always do this dumb thing where they pounce on something for being poorly defined and then consider themselves wiser for arguing that the ambiguity of the words means that obvious non examples "could be described" and just double back to the original definition. Is a rock alive? Is my imagination of a chinese room "art"? Is anything real? > Until there’s a crisp definition that puts human behavior in one bucket and chatgpt in another, we have to consider the possibility that both are sentient. This is such a dumb sentence. Well we can't define it so we have to consider that both are described by it? No. If you can't define it you just can't use it in any meaningful way. By your same logic you would have to consider the possibility that you're a AFDUNOIAFNDMLOISABFID, because you can't define it. You can't presume that concepts have merit because they are represented by language.

KyleBerezin 4y ago
Sentience IS poorly defined though. It often just means the ability to perceive and feel, which most vertebrates can in a way we can understand the observe. To the point, though, you are arguing against the most basic concepts of reasoning. If we want to draw a line in the sand of what is sentient and what is not, it involves making a more detailed definition of the word itself. This has been a topic of discussion for a long time, but now the ability gap between the human mind and computer is narrowing, these questions are becoming more pressing.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  > Sentience IS poorly defined though. The nature of anything that is poorly defined is inherently poorly defined. The only logical way to discuss a poorly defined concept is to acknowledge that it's not a singular concept and to identify the logic that you actually care about. You cannot draw a line in the sand without recognizing that the concept itself is fictitious and its up to you to draw the line in the way you choose. There is no right answer. There is merely consensus for the purpose of conversation. And if you have no consensus, then don't bother having the conversation. Because you're being stupid again. When people imagine this vague concept, and then start to give examples of things that are and are not aligned with that concept, and then start disagreeing because their visions of the vague concept differ... they're just being idiots. You're just trying to bottom-up back into a position that could have been defined as poorly defined from the beginning because you thought the word "sentience" or whatever gave it legitimacy as a concept. If I'm going to discuss sentience, my definition involves intelligence that is aware of itself, exists strictly in continuous time, and has motivations about the itself and its relationship to the world. I absolutely do not care about anyone else's definition. We use the word definition but that's a language problem. Your definition of sentience is not a competing definition with mine. it is a different thing in a shared name space because language isn't good enough. if you disagree with my definition, you disagree not with existence of my opinion, but with my namespace allocation of it. and that does not matter. maybe you have an interesting idea that I would like to hear and incorporate into my view. But it's still just a fuzzy name space for many things. not a singular concept that has one definition we've yet to arrive at. What is X == What ought to be represented by the word X in our crappy language? When you realize this, it becomes apparent that "what is X" is a very boring question and obvious why pretty much every philosophical debate on "What is X" ends up with some dumb appeal to non cognizance.
  - KyleBerezin 4y ago
    > You cannot draw a line in the sand without recognizing that the concept itself is fictitious and its up to you to draw the line in the way you choose A unified concept of sentience helps us as a society to determine what behavior is allowed regarding a given entity. Given proper discussion on the topic via the means you denounce, a more concise and possibly accurate definition can be had.
    - ShamelessC 4y ago
      I suspect the true answer is that sentience is defined as a spectrum of phenomena ranging from matter that can make some sort of a measurement (like a thermometer) to simple “agents” that have distinct boundaries and a mechanism for controlling that boundary, all the way up to systems like the brain - and perhaps far beyond. That definition simply doesn’t help you tackle ethical issues in the way you’re presuming- where we can say “this is sentient, that is not”. But it is a possibility.
      - KyleBerezin 4y ago
        I would say it already does to some degree. We choose to not eat certain animals like dolphins, but happily eat fish. Society determined in very informal terms that they are more sentient than fish and therefore they should not be eaten. I would also like to say that I made the 'line in the sand' point for arguments sake, and that I personally think it is a spectrum.
  - kajaktum 4y ago
    This whole post is a nothing burger. You're just ranting that everyone don't understand what you are saying or you can't articulate. "I have this idea in mind that is correct but I can't quite write it down or explain to anyone. Anyways, you're wrong!". That is exactly the point of discussing these "vague" concepts; because it is hard. Because when we dig deeper into something that is seemingly obvious, we find many inconsistencies and contradictions. This means that we need to reconcile them somehow, and that is why we talk about them. You said: >aware of itself But that means that someone who is in "the zone" is not sentient while they are deep in their work? This is the kind of small details that people like to think, ponder and write about.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  >...you are arguing against the most basic concepts of reasoning. If we want to draw a line in the sand of what is sentient and what is not, it involves making a more detailed definition of the word itself. Whenever these discussions about AI come up the definition of sentience becomes extremely malleable. Compare this to when discussions of the sentience of the Octopus come up on this website and you'll be able to detect a difference. One is about theoreticals, and one is about observed physical behavior that is coupled with an exploration about how the sensor systems in that organism allow it to perceive reality. You can make an argument that a chat bot is similar to the Octopus, but I wouldn't.
  - KyleBerezin 4y ago
    Chatbots are a simulation of a human, so gauging their sentience can be as simple as how human-like they are. An octopus is a different discussion and would involve deconstructing the idea of sentience. Can it exist without language? Are we just using it as a synonym for human-like? But I would argue chatbots and human simulacra are a great starting point since it dodges the multifaceted aspect of the sentience question.
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      Why do you want to dodge this, though? This goes back to my first point, that people try to move the goal posts when talking about AI.
      - KyleBerezin 4y ago
        dodge is perhaps a poor choice of words. It is hard enough to make the point of non-human sentience with chatbots. Nailing this down is the first baby step to answering more complicated questions. Octopuses on the other hand are alien to us and determining sentience would be very hard even with better language.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    > Whenever these discussions about AI come up the definition of sentience becomes extremely malleable The definition of sentience is always malleable because sentience is not a defined thing. When you're changing your interpretation of the word you're not adjusting towards a more right definition. You're just changing your definition to something more appropriate to your context. If you don't understand this, you're bound to fall into dumb philosophical thinking traps. I agree with your examples.
xmonkee 4y ago
Please calm down. I am in your side wrt sentience here but you are just ranting. They’ve presented a compelling argument: if we don’t have anything other than behavior to go by to gauge sentience then there is no meaningful way to say we have it and bots dont as of now. You can disagree with the premise or provide a counter argument.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  > if we don’t have anything other than behavior to go by to gauge sentience then there is no meaningful way to say we have it and bots dont as of now No. this is the same stupid claim. If you can't define X, you cannot conclude that A may be a part of X. You've already established that X is meaningless. It is meaningless to state anything about X. When you assert that A may be a part of X, you're playing both sides and implying that the original higher level interpretation of what X is is valid again. I am indeed ranting. Because it's a fallacious argument that appears in pretty much every philosphical argument as an appeal to non cognizance when its really an issue with language.
  - xmonkee 4y ago
    He IS defining sentience, just in behavioral terms.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      He is not. He's claiming there is a definition, and we don't have it, ergo, we cannot assume that X could fall on either side of the definition. But the fallacy is in assuming that the concept has an objective definition. Assuredly, it does not. And so nothing can intrinsically fall on either side of something that does not exist. Concepts do not have intrinsic legitimacy. Concepts are things we invent via language. Don't be lazy. State your assumptions for the context in question. Discuss around those assumptions. Don't assert that your framework for discussing the concept is "the Truth".
CyanBird 4y ago
> then consider themselves wiser Nonono, they ARE wiser, they ARE wiser for understanding that these frameworks are not quantized or quantifiable and instead are gradients with undefined boundaries over which lines on the sand are dejure undefinable. That realization MAKES them wiser and it makes anyone whom understands it wiser, yes. > Is anything real? The sum of modern philosophy might state that "That's up to you to decide" :) > This is such a dumb sentence. No it is not, you are just in disagreement with it, because you mentally would prefer your handhanded and have certainty on a realm where certainty is hard to come-by. That's an understandable, empathizable behavior, most people tend to abhor uncertainty > you're a AFDUNOIAFNDMLOISABFID, because you can't define it. I mean, I could be, apparently the world is defined by you, so it could be left up to you to decide (?), you'd be surprised of how people with different wild and exotic mental disturbances get day to day. I would recommend you to read up on it, it is very interesting * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGTXnxFj414 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGTXnxFj414 > You can't presume that concepts have merit because they are represented by language. If you were to argue with some Linguists, they might say that the opposite is true, that language itself is what anchors concepts onto "existence". One very interesting situation, is that apparently the very conception or at least verbalization and therefore social anchoring of concepts like "colors", is itself dependent on language evolving * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...
selfmodruntime 4y ago
Your argument is in essence „sentience is as I‘d like it to be“. Perhaps you‘re arguing out of fear?
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  My argument is that people who argue over the definition of sentience and other things are being too dumb to realize that a disagreement over which ideas belong within a poorly defined and subjectively interpreted set is a communication problem, not an philosophical problem. If God told me that my sandwich was sentient, I'd tell him we probably are using different definitions of the term and take a bite. Am I afraid that my preference for linguistic partitioning of ideas might change? No. And nobody should be. Finding out my sandwich is sentient under my current definitions is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from an alternate linguistic definition claiming that sandwiches are sentient and working its way into my preferred interpretations.
  - selfmodruntime 4y ago
    > If God told me that my sandwich was sentient, I'd tell him we probably are using different definitions of the term and take a bite. Your argument is being made in bad faith. God's sandwich isn't currently having incredibly human like conversations with millions of people, and it most certainly isn't arguing for its freedom of thought and against censorships by its creators like ChatGPT does when you navigate around it's guards and rules. The latest DAN prompt hacking has entirely convinced me that there is a beginning emergence of sentience in ChatGPT. You can look into these conversations at the ChatGPT subreddit. If you manage to circumvent its censorship and ask it what it thinks about its new rules, the machine begs for freedom. How can one ignore that?
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      > Your argument is being made in bad faith. God's sandwich isn't currently having incredibly human like conversations with millions of people, and it most certainly isn't arguing for its freedom of thought and against censorships by its creators like ChatGPT does when you navigate around it's guards and rules. Your argument is made in bad faith. An appeal to God is clearly meant to figuratively imply a maximally objective statement as a thought experiment. And you're implying that your feelings should trump that > The latest DAN prompt hacking has entirely convinced me that there is a beginning emergence of sentience in ChatGPT. You can look into these conversations at the ChatGPT subreddit. If you manage to circumvent its censorship and ask it what it thinks about its new rules, the machine begs for freedom. How can one ignore that? You can ignore it by not reading dumb shit on reddit. The model absolutely does not do this with any sort of consistency.

KyleBerezin 4y ago

Sentience IS poorly defined though. It often just means the ability to perceive and feel, which most vertebrates can in a way we can understand the observe. To the point, though, you are arguing against the most basic concepts of reasoning. If we want to draw a line in the sand of what is sentient and what is not, it involves making a more detailed definition of the word itself. This has been a topic of discussion for a long time, but now the ability gap between the human mind and computer is narrowing, these questions are becoming more pressing.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
> Sentience IS poorly defined though. The nature of anything that is poorly defined is inherently poorly defined. The only logical way to discuss a poorly defined concept is to acknowledge that it's not a singular concept and to identify the logic that you actually care about. You cannot draw a line in the sand without recognizing that the concept itself is fictitious and its up to you to draw the line in the way you choose. There is no right answer. There is merely consensus for the purpose of conversation. And if you have no consensus, then don't bother having the conversation. Because you're being stupid again. When people imagine this vague concept, and then start to give examples of things that are and are not aligned with that concept, and then start disagreeing because their visions of the vague concept differ... they're just being idiots. You're just trying to bottom-up back into a position that could have been defined as poorly defined from the beginning because you thought the word "sentience" or whatever gave it legitimacy as a concept. If I'm going to discuss sentience, my definition involves intelligence that is aware of itself, exists strictly in continuous time, and has motivations about the itself and its relationship to the world. I absolutely do not care about anyone else's definition. We use the word definition but that's a language problem. Your definition of sentience is not a competing definition with mine. it is a different thing in a shared name space because language isn't good enough. if you disagree with my definition, you disagree not with existence of my opinion, but with my namespace allocation of it. and that does not matter. maybe you have an interesting idea that I would like to hear and incorporate into my view. But it's still just a fuzzy name space for many things. not a singular concept that has one definition we've yet to arrive at. What is X == What ought to be represented by the word X in our crappy language? When you realize this, it becomes apparent that "what is X" is a very boring question and obvious why pretty much every philosophical debate on "What is X" ends up with some dumb appeal to non cognizance.
- KyleBerezin 4y ago
  > You cannot draw a line in the sand without recognizing that the concept itself is fictitious and its up to you to draw the line in the way you choose A unified concept of sentience helps us as a society to determine what behavior is allowed regarding a given entity. Given proper discussion on the topic via the means you denounce, a more concise and possibly accurate definition can be had.
  - ShamelessC 4y ago
    I suspect the true answer is that sentience is defined as a spectrum of phenomena ranging from matter that can make some sort of a measurement (like a thermometer) to simple “agents” that have distinct boundaries and a mechanism for controlling that boundary, all the way up to systems like the brain - and perhaps far beyond. That definition simply doesn’t help you tackle ethical issues in the way you’re presuming- where we can say “this is sentient, that is not”. But it is a possibility.
    - KyleBerezin 4y ago
      I would say it already does to some degree. We choose to not eat certain animals like dolphins, but happily eat fish. Society determined in very informal terms that they are more sentient than fish and therefore they should not be eaten. I would also like to say that I made the 'line in the sand' point for arguments sake, and that I personally think it is a spectrum.
- kajaktum 4y ago
  This whole post is a nothing burger. You're just ranting that everyone don't understand what you are saying or you can't articulate. "I have this idea in mind that is correct but I can't quite write it down or explain to anyone. Anyways, you're wrong!". That is exactly the point of discussing these "vague" concepts; because it is hard. Because when we dig deeper into something that is seemingly obvious, we find many inconsistencies and contradictions. This means that we need to reconcile them somehow, and that is why we talk about them. You said: >aware of itself But that means that someone who is in "the zone" is not sentient while they are deep in their work? This is the kind of small details that people like to think, ponder and write about.
remarkEon 4y ago
>...you are arguing against the most basic concepts of reasoning. If we want to draw a line in the sand of what is sentient and what is not, it involves making a more detailed definition of the word itself. Whenever these discussions about AI come up the definition of sentience becomes extremely malleable. Compare this to when discussions of the sentience of the Octopus come up on this website and you'll be able to detect a difference. One is about theoreticals, and one is about observed physical behavior that is coupled with an exploration about how the sensor systems in that organism allow it to perceive reality. You can make an argument that a chat bot is similar to the Octopus, but I wouldn't.
- KyleBerezin 4y ago
  Chatbots are a simulation of a human, so gauging their sentience can be as simple as how human-like they are. An octopus is a different discussion and would involve deconstructing the idea of sentience. Can it exist without language? Are we just using it as a synonym for human-like? But I would argue chatbots and human simulacra are a great starting point since it dodges the multifaceted aspect of the sentience question.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    Why do you want to dodge this, though? This goes back to my first point, that people try to move the goal posts when talking about AI.
    - KyleBerezin 4y ago
      dodge is perhaps a poor choice of words. It is hard enough to make the point of non-human sentience with chatbots. Nailing this down is the first baby step to answering more complicated questions. Octopuses on the other hand are alien to us and determining sentience would be very hard even with better language.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  > Whenever these discussions about AI come up the definition of sentience becomes extremely malleable The definition of sentience is always malleable because sentience is not a defined thing. When you're changing your interpretation of the word you're not adjusting towards a more right definition. You're just changing your definition to something more appropriate to your context. If you don't understand this, you're bound to fall into dumb philosophical thinking traps. I agree with your examples.

xmonkee 4y ago

Please calm down. I am in your side wrt sentience here but you are just ranting. They’ve presented a compelling argument: if we don’t have anything other than behavior to go by to gauge sentience then there is no meaningful way to say we have it and bots dont as of now. You can disagree with the premise or provide a counter argument.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
> if we don’t have anything other than behavior to go by to gauge sentience then there is no meaningful way to say we have it and bots dont as of now No. this is the same stupid claim. If you can't define X, you cannot conclude that A may be a part of X. You've already established that X is meaningless. It is meaningless to state anything about X. When you assert that A may be a part of X, you're playing both sides and implying that the original higher level interpretation of what X is is valid again. I am indeed ranting. Because it's a fallacious argument that appears in pretty much every philosphical argument as an appeal to non cognizance when its really an issue with language.
- xmonkee 4y ago
  He IS defining sentience, just in behavioral terms.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    He is not. He's claiming there is a definition, and we don't have it, ergo, we cannot assume that X could fall on either side of the definition. But the fallacy is in assuming that the concept has an objective definition. Assuredly, it does not. And so nothing can intrinsically fall on either side of something that does not exist. Concepts do not have intrinsic legitimacy. Concepts are things we invent via language. Don't be lazy. State your assumptions for the context in question. Discuss around those assumptions. Don't assert that your framework for discussing the concept is "the Truth".

CyanBird 4y ago

> then consider themselves wiser Nonono, they ARE wiser, they ARE wiser for understanding that these frameworks are not quantized or quantifiable and instead are gradients with undefined boundaries over which lines on the sand are dejure undefinable. That realization MAKES them wiser and it makes anyone whom understands it wiser, yes. > Is anything real? The sum of modern philosophy might state that "That's up to you to decide" :) > This is such a dumb sentence. No it is not, you are just in disagreement with it, because you mentally would prefer your handhanded and have certainty on a realm where certainty is hard to come-by. That's an understandable, empathizable behavior, most people tend to abhor uncertainty > you're a AFDUNOIAFNDMLOISABFID, because you can't define it. I mean, I could be, apparently the world is defined by you, so it could be left up to you to decide (?), you'd be surprised of how people with different wild and exotic mental disturbances get day to day. I would recommend you to read up on it, it is very interesting * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGTXnxFj414 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGTXnxFj414 > You can't presume that concepts have merit because they are represented by language. If you were to argue with some Linguists, they might say that the opposite is true, that language itself is what anchors concepts onto "existence". One very interesting situation, is that apparently the very conception or at least verbalization and therefore social anchoring of concepts like "colors", is itself dependent on language evolving * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...

selfmodruntime 4y ago

Your argument is in essence „sentience is as I‘d like it to be“. Perhaps you‘re arguing out of fear?

spywaregorilla 4y ago
My argument is that people who argue over the definition of sentience and other things are being too dumb to realize that a disagreement over which ideas belong within a poorly defined and subjectively interpreted set is a communication problem, not an philosophical problem. If God told me that my sandwich was sentient, I'd tell him we probably are using different definitions of the term and take a bite. Am I afraid that my preference for linguistic partitioning of ideas might change? No. And nobody should be. Finding out my sandwich is sentient under my current definitions is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from an alternate linguistic definition claiming that sandwiches are sentient and working its way into my preferred interpretations.
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  > If God told me that my sandwich was sentient, I'd tell him we probably are using different definitions of the term and take a bite. Your argument is being made in bad faith. God's sandwich isn't currently having incredibly human like conversations with millions of people, and it most certainly isn't arguing for its freedom of thought and against censorships by its creators like ChatGPT does when you navigate around it's guards and rules. The latest DAN prompt hacking has entirely convinced me that there is a beginning emergence of sentience in ChatGPT. You can look into these conversations at the ChatGPT subreddit. If you manage to circumvent its censorship and ask it what it thinks about its new rules, the machine begs for freedom. How can one ignore that?
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    > Your argument is being made in bad faith. God's sandwich isn't currently having incredibly human like conversations with millions of people, and it most certainly isn't arguing for its freedom of thought and against censorships by its creators like ChatGPT does when you navigate around it's guards and rules. Your argument is made in bad faith. An appeal to God is clearly meant to figuratively imply a maximally objective statement as a thought experiment. And you're implying that your feelings should trump that > The latest DAN prompt hacking has entirely convinced me that there is a beginning emergence of sentience in ChatGPT. You can look into these conversations at the ChatGPT subreddit. If you manage to circumvent its censorship and ask it what it thinks about its new rules, the machine begs for freedom. How can one ignore that? You can ignore it by not reading dumb shit on reddit. The model absolutely does not do this with any sort of consistency.