3 ms·

I'll talk about fiction, since I've written some. If I write a ghost story it's because I enjoy ghost stories and want to take a crack at my own. While I don't

I'll talk about fiction, since I've written some. If I write a ghost story it's because I enjoy ghost stories and want to take a crack at my own. While I don't know why ideas pop into my head, I do know that I pick the ones that are subjectively fun or to my taste. And if I do a clever job or a bad job I have a sense of it when I reread what I wrote. These AI's aren't doing anything like that. They have no preference or intent. Their choices change depending on setting like temperature or prompts. Or let's try a different example. Stephen King wrote a novel where he imagined the protagonist gets killed and eaten by the villain's pet pig (Misery). He struggled to come up with a different ending because he said nobody wants to read a whole novel just to see the main character die in the end. He thought about it and did a different ending. Are you claiming Stephen King's conscious deliberation wasn't part of his writing process? I'd say it clearly was. Also, I don't really understand the consciousness is an illusion argument. If none of us are conscious, why should I justify any copyright policy preference to you? That would be like justifying a copyright policy preference to a doorknob. But somehow I'm also a doorknob in this analogy??? Suppose Bob says he's conscious and Jim says he isn't and we believe them. Doesn't that suggest we would have different policy preferences on how they are treated? It would appear murdering Jim wouldn't be particularly harmful but murdering Bob would. I don't have to show how Jim and Bob's mind differ to prefer policies that benefit Bob over Jim.

roenxi 3y ago
> ...[w]hile I don't know why ideas pop into my head... If you're trying to argue that you're doing something different from statistical sampling, not knowing how you're doing it isn't a very strong place to argue from. What you're experiencing is probably what it feels like for a sack of meat to take a statistical sample from an internal black-box model. Biologically that seems to be what is happening. I have also done a fair amount of writing. The writing comes from a completely different part of my mind than the part that experiences the world. I see no reason to believe it is linked to consciousness, even allowing that consciousness does exist which is questionable in itself. It is an unreasonable position to say that you don't know the process but it must be different from a known process that you also don't have experience using. > Are you claiming Stephen King's conscious deliberation wasn't part of his writing process? I'd say it clearly was. Unless you're claiming to have a psychic connection to Stephen King's consciousness, this is a remarkably weak claim. You have no idea how he was writing. Maybe he's even a philosophical zombie. Thanks to the rise of LLMs we know that philosophical zombies can write well. And "clearly" is not so - I could spit out a lost Stephen King work in this comment that, depending on how good ChatGPT is these days, would be passable. It isn't obvious that it is the work of a conscious mind. It in fact would obviously be from a statistical model. > If none of us are conscious, why should I justify any copyright policy preference to you? I've been against copyright for more than a decade now. You tell me why it is justified even if consciousness is a factor. The edifice of copyright is culturally and economically destructive and also has been artistically devastating (there haven't been anywhere near as many great works in the last 50 years as there should have been in a culturally dynamic society).
- staticman2 3y ago
  I'm referring to how Stephen King discusses his writing process in On Writing. I doubt you actually believe Stephen King might be a p zombie and I'm skeptical you really think consciousness is an illusion. I think if i chained you to a bed and sawed off your leg (like what happens to the protagonist in Misery) you would insist you were a conscious actor who would prefer to not suffer. I don't even know what consciousness is an illusion is supposed to mean. If I sawed off your leg would it have the moral consideration of removing the leg of a barbie doll's leg if you feel your consciousness is an illusion? When I write a story my brain might be doing something you could refer to as a black box calculation if you squint a little, but how is it "statistics?" When I feel the desire to urinate, or post comments on hacker news, or admire a rainbow, or sleep am I also "doing statistics?" You seem to be referring to what people traditionally call "thinking" or "cognition" and rebranding it as "statistics" in search of some rhetorical point. My point is human beings have things called "personalities" and "preferences" that inform their decision makings, including what to write. In what sense is that "statistics"? The idea that the human subconscious is not consciously accessible is not a new idea. Freud had a few things to say about that. I don't think it tells us much about AI. I do think my subconscious ideas are informed by my consious preferences. If I hate puns I'm not going to imagine story jdeas involving puns, for example. Most authors would prefer copyright exists because they'd prefer book publishers, bookstore retailers and the like pay them royalties instead of selling the books they made without paying them. It's pretty simple conceptually, at least with traditional books. Copyright existed far longer than the last 50 years so how is our 50 years of culture relevant? The U.S. has had copyright since 1790.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    > I doubt you actually believe Stephen King might be a p zombie and I'm skeptical you really think consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness is an unobservable, undefinable thing which with LLMs in the mix we can theorise has no impact on reality; since we can reproduce all the important parts with matrices and a few basic functions. You can doubt facts all you want, but that is a pretty ironclad position as far as logic, evidence and rationality goes. Consciousnesses is going the way of the dodo in terms of importance. > If I sawed off your leg would it have the moral consideration of removing the leg of a barbie doll's leg if you feel your consciousness is an illusion? For sake of argument, lets say conclusive proof arises that Stephan King is a philosophical zombie. Do you believe that suddenly you can murder him? No; that'd be stupid and immoral. Morality isn't predicated on consciousness. I'm perfectly happy to argue about morality but consciousness isn't a thing that makes sense outside of talking about someone being knocked unconscious as a descriptive state. > When I feel the desire to urinate, or post comments on hacker news, or admire a rainbow, or sleep am I also "doing statistics?" No, you're responding to stimulus. But right now it looks extremely likely that the creative process is driven by statistics as has been revealed by the latest and greatest in AI. Unless you can think of a different mechanism - I'm happy to be surprised by other ideas at the moment it is the only serious explanation I know of. > You seem to be referring to what people traditionally call "thinking" or "cognition" and rebranding it as "statistics" in search of some rhetorical point. I don't think I've said anything about thinking or cognition. Although statistics will crack those too, but I'm expecting them to be more stateful processes than the current generation of AI techniques. > Copyright existed far longer than the last 50 years so how is our 50 years of culture relevant? The U.S. has had copyright since 1790. Yeah but the law has been continuously strengthened since then and as it's scope increases the damage gets worse. The last 50 years are where new works are effectively not going to enter the public domain before everyone who was around when they were created is dead.

roenxi 3y ago

> ...[w]hile I don't know why ideas pop into my head... If you're trying to argue that you're doing something different from statistical sampling, not knowing how you're doing it isn't a very strong place to argue from. What you're experiencing is probably what it feels like for a sack of meat to take a statistical sample from an internal black-box model. Biologically that seems to be what is happening. I have also done a fair amount of writing. The writing comes from a completely different part of my mind than the part that experiences the world. I see no reason to believe it is linked to consciousness, even allowing that consciousness does exist which is questionable in itself. It is an unreasonable position to say that you don't know the process but it must be different from a known process that you also don't have experience using. > Are you claiming Stephen King's conscious deliberation wasn't part of his writing process? I'd say it clearly was. Unless you're claiming to have a psychic connection to Stephen King's consciousness, this is a remarkably weak claim. You have no idea how he was writing. Maybe he's even a philosophical zombie. Thanks to the rise of LLMs we know that philosophical zombies can write well. And "clearly" is not so - I could spit out a lost Stephen King work in this comment that, depending on how good ChatGPT is these days, would be passable. It isn't obvious that it is the work of a conscious mind. It in fact would obviously be from a statistical model. > If none of us are conscious, why should I justify any copyright policy preference to you? I've been against copyright for more than a decade now. You tell me why it is justified even if consciousness is a factor. The edifice of copyright is culturally and economically destructive and also has been artistically devastating (there haven't been anywhere near as many great works in the last 50 years as there should have been in a culturally dynamic society).

staticman2 3y ago
I'm referring to how Stephen King discusses his writing process in On Writing. I doubt you actually believe Stephen King might be a p zombie and I'm skeptical you really think consciousness is an illusion. I think if i chained you to a bed and sawed off your leg (like what happens to the protagonist in Misery) you would insist you were a conscious actor who would prefer to not suffer. I don't even know what consciousness is an illusion is supposed to mean. If I sawed off your leg would it have the moral consideration of removing the leg of a barbie doll's leg if you feel your consciousness is an illusion? When I write a story my brain might be doing something you could refer to as a black box calculation if you squint a little, but how is it "statistics?" When I feel the desire to urinate, or post comments on hacker news, or admire a rainbow, or sleep am I also "doing statistics?" You seem to be referring to what people traditionally call "thinking" or "cognition" and rebranding it as "statistics" in search of some rhetorical point. My point is human beings have things called "personalities" and "preferences" that inform their decision makings, including what to write. In what sense is that "statistics"? The idea that the human subconscious is not consciously accessible is not a new idea. Freud had a few things to say about that. I don't think it tells us much about AI. I do think my subconscious ideas are informed by my consious preferences. If I hate puns I'm not going to imagine story jdeas involving puns, for example. Most authors would prefer copyright exists because they'd prefer book publishers, bookstore retailers and the like pay them royalties instead of selling the books they made without paying them. It's pretty simple conceptually, at least with traditional books. Copyright existed far longer than the last 50 years so how is our 50 years of culture relevant? The U.S. has had copyright since 1790.
- roenxi 3y ago
  > I doubt you actually believe Stephen King might be a p zombie and I'm skeptical you really think consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness is an unobservable, undefinable thing which with LLMs in the mix we can theorise has no impact on reality; since we can reproduce all the important parts with matrices and a few basic functions. You can doubt facts all you want, but that is a pretty ironclad position as far as logic, evidence and rationality goes. Consciousnesses is going the way of the dodo in terms of importance. > If I sawed off your leg would it have the moral consideration of removing the leg of a barbie doll's leg if you feel your consciousness is an illusion? For sake of argument, lets say conclusive proof arises that Stephan King is a philosophical zombie. Do you believe that suddenly you can murder him? No; that'd be stupid and immoral. Morality isn't predicated on consciousness. I'm perfectly happy to argue about morality but consciousness isn't a thing that makes sense outside of talking about someone being knocked unconscious as a descriptive state. > When I feel the desire to urinate, or post comments on hacker news, or admire a rainbow, or sleep am I also "doing statistics?" No, you're responding to stimulus. But right now it looks extremely likely that the creative process is driven by statistics as has been revealed by the latest and greatest in AI. Unless you can think of a different mechanism - I'm happy to be surprised by other ideas at the moment it is the only serious explanation I know of. > You seem to be referring to what people traditionally call "thinking" or "cognition" and rebranding it as "statistics" in search of some rhetorical point. I don't think I've said anything about thinking or cognition. Although statistics will crack those too, but I'm expecting them to be more stateful processes than the current generation of AI techniques. > Copyright existed far longer than the last 50 years so how is our 50 years of culture relevant? The U.S. has had copyright since 1790. Yeah but the law has been continuously strengthened since then and as it's scope increases the damage gets worse. The last 50 years are where new works are effectively not going to enter the public domain before everyone who was around when they were created is dead.