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Not OP, but same here. I feel I am a sentient person only when fully concentrated. But when relaxed, it's stochastic autopilot, both in speech and actions I be

Not OP, but same here. I feel I am a sentient person only when fully concentrated. But when relaxed, it's stochastic autopilot, both in speech and actions I believe I've seen an article touching this topic here, long before GPT. Will link if I find it

feanaro 3y ago
What you're describing is a lack of volition ("free will"), not sentience. Even on autopilot, you still perceive things, meaning sensations and things constantly appear in your mindscape, right? That is sentience.
flangola7 3y ago
I think you're confusing sentience with thinking intelligence
haswell 3y ago
Sentience is usually defined as the ability to perceive/feel things. One way to see this is that sentience and language processing are just two aspects available to us in consciousness. We are also not identical to our thoughts or feelings, but most people never pause to contemplate this. I suspect the autopilot you describe is really closer to our default state, but it’s easier to notice when in a calm state and the “me-ness” of actions/thoughts doesn’t feel so strong.
deleted 3y ago
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taneq 3y ago
What's really interesting is that most of us feel we're our "best selves" when we reach a state of flow. We're in the zone. We're totally non-self-conscious. The only description I've ever seen of consciousness that makes any sense is that it's a kind of condition monitoring system for our minds, a cross-check evolved to catch some of the cognitive mistakes that the main machinery of our minds tend to make from time to time. And because our whole brain is linked into this system, including itself, we get that infinite regress of omphaloskepsis that we call "consciousness."
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  Personally, I feel I'm at my most "conscious" when I'm in a flow state. I'm laser focused on one thing, but I'm actively thinking about that thing very hard! I don't do a lot of metacognition (thinking about my thinking) while I'm in a flow state, which maybe was your point. But I can think about my prior flow state thinking after the fact, and I'm aware of how much my mind was working, and what that felt like.
- IIAOPSW 3y ago
  Hows this for a definition. Its not a definition of consciousness per se, but its a definition of the specific consciousness "you" in the general case: you are whatever you get in return when you ask yourself who you are. Consciousness thus defined exists entirely within the communicative medium. In other words, consciousness is an emergent phenomena that happens in a system of sending messages when eventually an agent starts sending messages to itself. "you" are the voices in your head not attributed to anyone else.
postsantum 3y ago
edit: found it, it was about GPT actually https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4AHXDwcGab5PhKhHT/humans-who-are-not-concentrating-are-not-general https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4AHXDwcGab5PhKhHT/humans-who...

feanaro 3y ago

What you're describing is a lack of volition ("free will"), not sentience. Even on autopilot, you still perceive things, meaning sensations and things constantly appear in your mindscape, right? That is sentience.

flangola7 3y ago

I think you're confusing sentience with thinking intelligence

haswell 3y ago

Sentience is usually defined as the ability to perceive/feel things. One way to see this is that sentience and language processing are just two aspects available to us in consciousness. We are also not identical to our thoughts or feelings, but most people never pause to contemplate this. I suspect the autopilot you describe is really closer to our default state, but it’s easier to notice when in a calm state and the “me-ness” of actions/thoughts doesn’t feel so strong.

deleted 3y ago

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taneq 3y ago

What's really interesting is that most of us feel we're our "best selves" when we reach a state of flow. We're in the zone. We're totally non-self-conscious. The only description I've ever seen of consciousness that makes any sense is that it's a kind of condition monitoring system for our minds, a cross-check evolved to catch some of the cognitive mistakes that the main machinery of our minds tend to make from time to time. And because our whole brain is linked into this system, including itself, we get that infinite regress of omphaloskepsis that we call "consciousness."

Wowfunhappy 3y ago
Personally, I feel I'm at my most "conscious" when I'm in a flow state. I'm laser focused on one thing, but I'm actively thinking about that thing very hard! I don't do a lot of metacognition (thinking about my thinking) while I'm in a flow state, which maybe was your point. But I can think about my prior flow state thinking after the fact, and I'm aware of how much my mind was working, and what that felt like.
IIAOPSW 3y ago
Hows this for a definition. Its not a definition of consciousness per se, but its a definition of the specific consciousness "you" in the general case: you are whatever you get in return when you ask yourself who you are. Consciousness thus defined exists entirely within the communicative medium. In other words, consciousness is an emergent phenomena that happens in a system of sending messages when eventually an agent starts sending messages to itself. "you" are the voices in your head not attributed to anyone else.

postsantum 3y ago

edit: found it, it was about GPT actually https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4AHXDwcGab5PhKhHT/humans-who-are-not-concentrating-are-not-general https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4AHXDwcGab5PhKhHT/humans-who...