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I agree there is a connection between ChatGPT, god and atheists but I don't think it's the one you point out. The commonality "general intelligence" and "god"
by rstuart4133 4y ago
I agree there is a connection between ChatGPT, god and atheists but I don't think it's the one you point out. The commonality "general intelligence" and "god" share is there is no agreed definition of either.
Science has forced a steady retreat in the number of things that can be attributed to god. But that shouldn't worry theists, because Godel's incomplete theorem means there are some things we will can never understand in a finite series of steps, so there will always be room for god. God explains the "rest". I suspect the "rest" is infinite, so that leaves a lot of room for god.
Whether LLM's are intelligent or sentient falls into the same category. As intelligent and sentient don't have a formal definition you can always change their definitions, and that's exactly what seems to be happening. A task is put up as "only humans can do this" (like the Turing test, or a captcha) then it's solved, then the goal posts are moved. Again, because of Godel's theorem I can say with certainty this is a game we can continue to play forever.
I debated on the atheists "team" in forums for a decade or two before it dawned I was effectively arguing about how many angles will fit onto the head of a pin. It's a peculiar game. Godel's theorem effectively says there is a no finitely sized rule that can describe a system of infinite states. As we are finite it's possible (in theory) we could one day find a rule that can predict every situation we could see, which means in the "atheists vs theists" game we win every battle because we've explained (or predict even) everything we experience. But the universe is infinite, so while we can explain everything we've experienced we can't explain everything there is. So we can win every battle - but still never disprove god because we can never experience everything. Thus we lose the war.
In other words I lost the "there is no god" debate. But it wasn't because I now think there is no god. It's because I realised I could never prove it, which to me is the same as losing it. The situation is exactly the same with "AI's are intelligent" debate, which makes it's just as pointless.
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y agoI don't know if you lost any debates there. If you were having those debates for a long time, you may have heard of Russel's Teapot: Russell's teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making empirically unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot So there's nothing there to disprove. Anyone who wants to convince you of the existence of the Gods they believe in, that person has the responsibility to convince you. Not you, them. But I think it's a bad idea to try to convince people to believe, or disbelieve things anyway. Why do that? Faith is a great thing to have, life is hard and there's horrible things that happen during it. There's nothing more powerful than knowing in your heart of hearts that there's someone big, and almighty, watching over you. Leave people believe. You're not doing them a favour by trying to refute their faith.