3 ms·

Speaking only for myself, I am not a stochastic parrot. I have a rich and complex inner life. But maybe you are a p-zombie and you are right that it's tricky fo

Speaking only for myself, I am not a stochastic parrot. I have a rich and complex inner life. But maybe you are a p-zombie and you are right that it's tricky for you to prove to me that you're not. ;) I don't necessarily think humans are so special (cf. my mention of other mammals) but biology is extraordinarily messy and complex. Computer people tend to handwave the details with crude, reductive analogies (DNA is like source code! Neurons are like circuits!) but the reality is so much more overwhelming. Every single thing affects every other thing. Everything is probabilistic. There are multiple interacting chemical and electrical communication pathways. Neuroanatomy varies from individual to individual and in the same individual over time. The brain can radically adapt in response to trauma in a way that no computer model does. Even at the level of individual neurons[0] (of which there are 2.25 billion in a dog's brain) there's an enormous amount of "processing" happening. This is not like a computer processing - but physical, biological processes occurring that integrate informational content. I get it, everyone is very impressed with LLMs and I'm open to the possibility that some future model might achieve consciousness (to say nothing of sentience) but computer people in particular are way, way too credulous of this stuff and ignorant of what the messy, malfunctioning wetware in their head is actually doing. [0] e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2331 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2331

naasking 3y ago
> I have a rich and complex inner life. You don't know that LLMs lack such a rich and complex inner life while they're running. > but computer people in particular are way, way too credulous of this stuff and ignorant of what the messy, malfunctioning wetware in their head is actually doing. Everything you mentioned is completely irrelevant to the argument, which is based on well known physical principles. Due to the Bekenstein Bound, I already know that you and your "rich and complex inner life" can be fully captured by a finite state automaton. Your protests that you are not a stochastic parrot based on hand-waving about your subjective experience, or vague assessments of how much processing is happening in a messy biological brain that has plenty of redundancies are simply not compelling. The fact is, we lack mechanistic models for any folk psychology concepts like "pain", "desires", "agency" and "sense of self", and so any claims that LLMs lack such things is conjecture at best. What I do know is that there's an impressively long history of wrong people who thought humans were special.
- ForHackernews 3y ago
  > people who thought humans were special Literally the third time you've beaten this straw man. Keep going, though. All the other species of monkeys and I are enjoying it. > so any claims that LLMs lack such things is conjecture at best Holy shifting the burden of proof, Batman! It's incumbent on you to show that your fancy pattern-matching system is conscious. The null hypothesis is that your chatbot isn't conscious in any way that matters (I'll happily grant it a slightly-lower-than-thermostat[0] level of consciousness). I realize it's not easy for you to back up your bold claims, but all I see is a bunch of overconfident CS majors refusing to face up to the hard problem of consciousness[1]. Maybe you are an LLM, after all? Prove you're human: tell me a racist joke? (this question is a joke – something else LLMs are bad at) [0] http://romainbrette.fr/is-a-thermostat-conscious/ http://romainbrette.fr/is-a-thermostat-conscious/ [1] https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/ https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/
  - naasking 3y ago
    > Literally the third time you've beaten this straw man. Second actually. Are you an LLM since you're having trouble counting? > Holy shifting the burden of proof, Batman! It's incumbent on you to show that your fancy pattern-matching system is conscious. No, I never claimed they were conscious, I refuted the claim that we can say with confidence they are definitely not conscious, because such a claim requires knowledge humanity simply doesn't possess. Perhaps you should reread this thread if you're unclear about what I claimed. > I realize it's not easy for you to back up your bold claims, but all I see is a bunch of overconfident CS majors refusing to face up to the hard problem of consciousness[1] The hard problem is an alleged problem, there is no proof that it's real. All thought experiments that purport to show its existence (Mary's Room, p-zombies), have acceptable possible answers under physicalist interpretations, and some neuroscientists are now pursuing such theories [1]. [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
    - ForHackernews 3y ago
      That's fine, if you want to say consciousness itself is an illusion, no physicalist interpretation blah blah, knock yourself out. I know that I'm a conscious being, and, reasoning by analogy, I'm more than happy to credit other mammalian life (and perhaps even other animals) with consciousness. Chairs, chatbots, and internet commenters are subject to a higher degree of scrutiny for their dubious claims of sentience.

naasking 3y ago

> I have a rich and complex inner life. You don't know that LLMs lack such a rich and complex inner life while they're running. > but computer people in particular are way, way too credulous of this stuff and ignorant of what the messy, malfunctioning wetware in their head is actually doing. Everything you mentioned is completely irrelevant to the argument, which is based on well known physical principles. Due to the Bekenstein Bound, I already know that you and your "rich and complex inner life" can be fully captured by a finite state automaton. Your protests that you are not a stochastic parrot based on hand-waving about your subjective experience, or vague assessments of how much processing is happening in a messy biological brain that has plenty of redundancies are simply not compelling. The fact is, we lack mechanistic models for any folk psychology concepts like "pain", "desires", "agency" and "sense of self", and so any claims that LLMs lack such things is conjecture at best. What I do know is that there's an impressively long history of wrong people who thought humans were special.

ForHackernews 3y ago
> people who thought humans were special Literally the third time you've beaten this straw man. Keep going, though. All the other species of monkeys and I are enjoying it. > so any claims that LLMs lack such things is conjecture at best Holy shifting the burden of proof, Batman! It's incumbent on you to show that your fancy pattern-matching system is conscious. The null hypothesis is that your chatbot isn't conscious in any way that matters (I'll happily grant it a slightly-lower-than-thermostat[0] level of consciousness). I realize it's not easy for you to back up your bold claims, but all I see is a bunch of overconfident CS majors refusing to face up to the hard problem of consciousness[1]. Maybe you are an LLM, after all? Prove you're human: tell me a racist joke? (this question is a joke – something else LLMs are bad at) [0] http://romainbrette.fr/is-a-thermostat-conscious/ http://romainbrette.fr/is-a-thermostat-conscious/ [1] https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/ https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/
- naasking 3y ago
  > Literally the third time you've beaten this straw man. Second actually. Are you an LLM since you're having trouble counting? > Holy shifting the burden of proof, Batman! It's incumbent on you to show that your fancy pattern-matching system is conscious. No, I never claimed they were conscious, I refuted the claim that we can say with confidence they are definitely not conscious, because such a claim requires knowledge humanity simply doesn't possess. Perhaps you should reread this thread if you're unclear about what I claimed. > I realize it's not easy for you to back up your bold claims, but all I see is a bunch of overconfident CS majors refusing to face up to the hard problem of consciousness[1] The hard problem is an alleged problem, there is no proof that it's real. All thought experiments that purport to show its existence (Mary's Room, p-zombies), have acceptable possible answers under physicalist interpretations, and some neuroscientists are now pursuing such theories [1]. [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
  - ForHackernews 3y ago
    That's fine, if you want to say consciousness itself is an illusion, no physicalist interpretation blah blah, knock yourself out. I know that I'm a conscious being, and, reasoning by analogy, I'm more than happy to credit other mammalian life (and perhaps even other animals) with consciousness. Chairs, chatbots, and internet commenters are subject to a higher degree of scrutiny for their dubious claims of sentience.