7 ms·

This has been the plaguing my thoughts recently as well. When I analyze (or attempt to analyze) what’s going on in the black box of gray matter in my head, I’m

This has been the plaguing my thoughts recently as well. When I analyze (or attempt to analyze) what’s going on in the black box of gray matter in my head, I’m increasingly aware that it’s nothing magical. I’ve stated to others that the real shakeup the latest AI successes may cause won’t be that we’ve created an artificial mind, but that our own minds may be nothing more than a collection of neural subsystems. Subsystems process our vision and pass it on. They process our hearing and pass it on. They process our senses of proprioception and pass it on. Then our cortex processes all these inputs and produces outputs, which may be speech, physical reactions, or just thoughts that loop back in as another input to the cortex. Maybe our consciousness is just a supervisory neural network that monitors what the cortex is doing and feeds in adjustments. But instead of prompt/response, it’s always running, feeding back on itself, trying to predict what’s going to happen next and adjusting its models based on what we observe. It explains a little too much and I start wondering if there really is a “me” that can be described as a conscious personality and I get a little creeped out. One consolation is that we’ve always equated some new technologies with “maybe that’s the way the mind works.” The mind is like a book. The mind is like a machine. The mind is like a calculating device. The mind is like a computer. And now we’ve reached: The mind is like a super LLM with assorted subsystems. The difference is, this time, we may be right since, for really the first time, we’ve started simulating it from the bottom up. Maybe our personality and being is just a result of our training data with a few genetic quirks thrown in. And what am I really doing when I “decide” or “create” something? Is it that much different from a LLM’s generation of language? Or an AI image generator?

cheschire 3y ago
Treat it positively as a mindfulness exercise. None of the stress you experience daily is more than a series of trained micro-reaction chains. With enough training you can start to subvert the chain reactions in your own mind. You always have control, you simply have to accept a more abstract form of it.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
> the real shakeup the latest AI successes may cause won’t be that we’ve created an artificial mind, but that our own minds may be nothing more than a collection of neural subsystems. It should be no surprise. I'd have thought most HN readers have at some point attempted to kill their own ego. Maybe it started when you were younger and learned that society used to believe the Earth was the center of the universe. Perhaps you then considered that humans too are nothing special — maybe not created in God's image after all? Instead the latest evolutionary result in a long complex process. Dashing geocentrism, anthropocentrism should have made many of us skeptics about anything considered special. Why should consciousness be inscrutable, magical? I've been sure we're little more than imperfect machines for some time now.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 93po 3y ago
  The average HN user is much less sophisticated than you think. There's plenty of anti-COVID vaccine discussion as one example. There's reasons to be skeptical of things, but come on.
  - gyozo3 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - valianteffort 3y ago
    Science is about question and understanding. But we should also continue to question what we think we understand, because the hubris of man has often lead us to believe we're more right than we are. If you won't even consider the possibility that the covid vaccine is harmful, even only to an unknown subset of the population, you're not exactly one to be calling others less sophisticated.
    - andrewjl 3y ago
      > Science is about question and understanding. Science is inherently a social and norms-based process, so it is more accurate to state it is about _mutual_ questioning and understanding. > If you won't even consider the possibility that the covid vaccine is harmful, even only to an unknown subset of the population, you're not exactly one to be calling others less sophisticated. Curious how the "vaccine-skeptic" crowd only directs its skepticism in one direction.
      - bheadmaster 3y ago
        > Curious how the "vaccine-skeptic" crowd only directs its skepticism in one direction. That's because the other direction is called "the narrative", not "skepticism".
    - d1sxeyes 3y ago
user249 3y ago
> I’m increasingly aware that it’s nothing magical It's completely magical to me that I'm now aware that you think you awareness is nothing magical > The mind is like a calculating device How does that explain your self-awareness?
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  What's special about self-awareness? Could it be a trick of the brain? It's like the story of Jimi Hendrix dropping acid and playing amazingly well. Or, rather Jimi under the influence thought so — until he heard the recordings.
  - user249 3y ago
    > Could it be a trick of the brain? A "magic" trick perhaps? One that can't be explained by anything we currently know about physics? The materialist point of view is becoming increasingly incoherent and I think that's what angers many of them.
  - throw74775 3y ago
    If it’s a trick of the brain, who is being tricked?
- melagonster 3y ago
  maybe our brains work like big matrix, but we do know yet. before someone resolving this problem, I hate people proclaim brain just another chatGPT.
2snakes 3y ago
LLMs are more like a natural language interface for computers that do symbolic calculation of bytes aka computer science. Statistical madlibs for text generation, but useful for understanding people. There is a deeper and simpler logic of nonphysical consciousness that is perhaps best outlined in George Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form. LoF can do boolean logic but goes beyond it as well, towards the resolution of antinomy paradox with the logic of distinction andedness. It is also an interesting philosophy when it comes to Systems Theory of Luhmann. As well as used to do other very interesting things. There is an intro on Youtube by Leon Conrad.
jemmyw 3y ago
I met an artist not too long ago who showed me a time lapse of a painting he worked on. I commented that it looked an awful lot like what you get with stable diffusion if you view it step by step. Turned out he was really into the AI art stuff and his thought was that while SD is missing a kind of creative leap step, it does look like its taking a process quite similar to a human artist, or at least to the way he assembles work. He was also interested in the weird hands AI makes and was painting up a big cavas with weird hands, I thought that was pretty cool.
carrolldunham 3y ago
>I get a little creeped out Maybe you already know, but this 'it's all just a train of mechanical compulsions, there's nobody in here' is the very thing that meditation is intended to allow you to realize, it's the 'liberating insight'. The problem with just reaching it on your own is you don't get the other part, the viewpoint about the world that build the case that this is a good thing, a great thing (believing there is someone there is the cause of all the dissatisfaction you ever feel). So you could check into that if you want - ajahn brahm or suchlike
melagonster 3y ago
when you say we just like AI, this imply people do not really care anything, they just mimicking human behaviour. we know this isn't true. besides, if someone scoff at your family, you will angry, this is a common/predictable behaviour. is it a bad thing?
worrycue 3y ago
> When I analyze (or attempt to analyze) what’s going on in the black box of gray matter in my head, I’m increasingly aware that it’s nothing magical. I hold the belief that we are just self-replicating biological machines. There is no “magic”, there never was.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  You must be fun at parties.
ChatGTP 3y ago
I’m increasingly aware that it’s nothing magical If none of this is magical, what do you call it, and what do you call magical?
npteljes 3y ago
>we’ve started simulating it from the bottom up. Not really though, as I understand it. Simulating from the bottom up would be akin to simulating neurons and such, or even the molecules that make up the brain and the connected systems. What we've done is creating a complex system whose emergent behavior's output is similar in specific ways to a human brain. And significantly more so, compared to the previous attempts. And yes, many aspects of our existence is comparable to a machine. Which can be a very good thing, since we can apply many of the knowledge to get improvements, like we can train, debug, and fix some things. In fact I consider the realization you're having essential for personal development, because you can now leave behind things that you previously considered "you", now that they turned out to be not really "you" but just something you do, and most others do too, to get closed to what "you" really are. And do better in things that you think "you" are not!
- cmpalmer52 3y ago
  Yes, I know it’s not modeling our neurons and connectivity directly, but it’s closer than traditional software or “expert systems” approach. And, lo and behold, we’re seeing emergent behavior that seems to resemble some of quirks of our meat network. Even the mistakes it made seem like the kind of mistakes people make, not the kind of mistakes software usually makes.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    I agree it's remarkable. Both the theory, and the feelings it induced in me while conversing with it.

cheschire 3y ago

Treat it positively as a mindfulness exercise. None of the stress you experience daily is more than a series of trained micro-reaction chains. With enough training you can start to subvert the chain reactions in your own mind. You always have control, you simply have to accept a more abstract form of it.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

> the real shakeup the latest AI successes may cause won’t be that we’ve created an artificial mind, but that our own minds may be nothing more than a collection of neural subsystems. It should be no surprise. I'd have thought most HN readers have at some point attempted to kill their own ego. Maybe it started when you were younger and learned that society used to believe the Earth was the center of the universe. Perhaps you then considered that humans too are nothing special — maybe not created in God's image after all? Instead the latest evolutionary result in a long complex process. Dashing geocentrism, anthropocentrism should have made many of us skeptics about anything considered special. Why should consciousness be inscrutable, magical? I've been sure we're little more than imperfect machines for some time now.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
93po 3y ago
The average HN user is much less sophisticated than you think. There's plenty of anti-COVID vaccine discussion as one example. There's reasons to be skeptical of things, but come on.
- gyozo3 3y ago
  [flagged]
- valianteffort 3y ago
  Science is about question and understanding. But we should also continue to question what we think we understand, because the hubris of man has often lead us to believe we're more right than we are. If you won't even consider the possibility that the covid vaccine is harmful, even only to an unknown subset of the population, you're not exactly one to be calling others less sophisticated.
  - andrewjl 3y ago
    > Science is about question and understanding. Science is inherently a social and norms-based process, so it is more accurate to state it is about _mutual_ questioning and understanding. > If you won't even consider the possibility that the covid vaccine is harmful, even only to an unknown subset of the population, you're not exactly one to be calling others less sophisticated. Curious how the "vaccine-skeptic" crowd only directs its skepticism in one direction.
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      > Curious how the "vaccine-skeptic" crowd only directs its skepticism in one direction. That's because the other direction is called "the narrative", not "skepticism".
  - d1sxeyes 3y ago

user249 3y ago

> I’m increasingly aware that it’s nothing magical It's completely magical to me that I'm now aware that you think you awareness is nothing magical > The mind is like a calculating device How does that explain your self-awareness?

JKCalhoun 3y ago
What's special about self-awareness? Could it be a trick of the brain? It's like the story of Jimi Hendrix dropping acid and playing amazingly well. Or, rather Jimi under the influence thought so — until he heard the recordings.
- user249 3y ago
  > Could it be a trick of the brain? A "magic" trick perhaps? One that can't be explained by anything we currently know about physics? The materialist point of view is becoming increasingly incoherent and I think that's what angers many of them.
- throw74775 3y ago
  If it’s a trick of the brain, who is being tricked?
melagonster 3y ago
maybe our brains work like big matrix, but we do know yet. before someone resolving this problem, I hate people proclaim brain just another chatGPT.

2snakes 3y ago

LLMs are more like a natural language interface for computers that do symbolic calculation of bytes aka computer science. Statistical madlibs for text generation, but useful for understanding people. There is a deeper and simpler logic of nonphysical consciousness that is perhaps best outlined in George Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form. LoF can do boolean logic but goes beyond it as well, towards the resolution of antinomy paradox with the logic of distinction andedness. It is also an interesting philosophy when it comes to Systems Theory of Luhmann. As well as used to do other very interesting things. There is an intro on Youtube by Leon Conrad.

jemmyw 3y ago

I met an artist not too long ago who showed me a time lapse of a painting he worked on. I commented that it looked an awful lot like what you get with stable diffusion if you view it step by step. Turned out he was really into the AI art stuff and his thought was that while SD is missing a kind of creative leap step, it does look like its taking a process quite similar to a human artist, or at least to the way he assembles work. He was also interested in the weird hands AI makes and was painting up a big cavas with weird hands, I thought that was pretty cool.

carrolldunham 3y ago

>I get a little creeped out Maybe you already know, but this 'it's all just a train of mechanical compulsions, there's nobody in here' is the very thing that meditation is intended to allow you to realize, it's the 'liberating insight'. The problem with just reaching it on your own is you don't get the other part, the viewpoint about the world that build the case that this is a good thing, a great thing (believing there is someone there is the cause of all the dissatisfaction you ever feel). So you could check into that if you want - ajahn brahm or suchlike

melagonster 3y ago

when you say we just like AI, this imply people do not really care anything, they just mimicking human behaviour. we know this isn't true. besides, if someone scoff at your family, you will angry, this is a common/predictable behaviour. is it a bad thing?

worrycue 3y ago

> When I analyze (or attempt to analyze) what’s going on in the black box of gray matter in my head, I’m increasingly aware that it’s nothing magical. I hold the belief that we are just self-replicating biological machines. There is no “magic”, there never was.

ChatGTP 3y ago
You must be fun at parties.

ChatGTP 3y ago

I’m increasingly aware that it’s nothing magical If none of this is magical, what do you call it, and what do you call magical?

npteljes 3y ago

>we’ve started simulating it from the bottom up. Not really though, as I understand it. Simulating from the bottom up would be akin to simulating neurons and such, or even the molecules that make up the brain and the connected systems. What we've done is creating a complex system whose emergent behavior's output is similar in specific ways to a human brain. And significantly more so, compared to the previous attempts. And yes, many aspects of our existence is comparable to a machine. Which can be a very good thing, since we can apply many of the knowledge to get improvements, like we can train, debug, and fix some things. In fact I consider the realization you're having essential for personal development, because you can now leave behind things that you previously considered "you", now that they turned out to be not really "you" but just something you do, and most others do too, to get closed to what "you" really are. And do better in things that you think "you" are not!

cmpalmer52 3y ago
Yes, I know it’s not modeling our neurons and connectivity directly, but it’s closer than traditional software or “expert systems” approach. And, lo and behold, we’re seeing emergent behavior that seems to resemble some of quirks of our meat network. Even the mistakes it made seem like the kind of mistakes people make, not the kind of mistakes software usually makes.
- npteljes 3y ago
  I agree it's remarkable. Both the theory, and the feelings it induced in me while conversing with it.