5 ms·
I'm not sure if you're dunking on "spiritual/religious/personal/subjective" stuff, but the hard question of consciousness is, in some ways, the most important q
by GMoromisato 3y ago
I'm not sure if you're dunking on "spiritual/religious/personal/subjective" stuff, but the hard question of consciousness is, in some ways, the most important question of all. Far more important than "science" questions like "what is dark matter?"
Literally our entire civilization is built on the idea that humans have qualia and therefore causing harm to humans is often unethical. If we were to somehow come to believe that consciousness is just an illusion--no more than a biochemical phenomenon, and no more special than transistor switching--then we would usher in a dystopia in which any horror inflicted on people is potentially justifiable and even necessary.
The rise of LLMs is forcing us to confront this head-on. LLMs can't be conscious--they are literally just matrix multiplication. But if LLMs can act like humans and not be conscious, then maybe humans aren't really conscious either.
- knightoffaith 3y ago> But if LLMs can act like humans and not be conscious, then maybe humans aren't really conscious either. Isn't this like saying "if the man in the Chinese room can act like he understands Chinese and not understand Chinese, then maybe nobody understands Chinese."?
- j16sdiz 3y agoYes. And that is one of the reasons why Chinese room thought experiment is interesting. We know how a Chinese-understanding human would respond -- they respond exactly like the room does -- but we don't know if he actually understanding anything.
- knightoffaith 3y agoIf you understood Chinese, you probably wouldn't have any doubt about whether you understood Chinese or not. And it seems incredibly strange to think that only you understand Chinese and nobody else does.
- Vecr 3y agoWhy does ethics need to be based on consciousness anyway? Can't you just stipulate your baseline requirements and then enforce them by any means necessary? Are the aesthetics not "cosmopolitan" enough?
- hazbot 3y ago>>> If we were to somehow come to believe that consciousness is just an illusion--no more than a biochemical phenomenon, and no more special than transistor switching. I believe this and yet I personally seek to inflict as little horror as possible, and am moderately restrained in the amount of force I believe the state should use.
- card_zero 3y ago> Literally our entire civilization is built on the idea that humans have qualia and therefore causing harm to humans is often unethical. Here's an alternative angle that doesn't lead to dystopia: Humans generate knowledge. Causing harm to knowledge is unethical. Broad human rights protect humans as knowledge generators (now or in the future or in potential) without going through the fraught process of arguing about each one. Consciousness and qualia don't have to come into it.
- smokel 3y agoKnowledge is too broad a concept to protect all of it. Taking it to the extreme would probably mean that all output of /dev/random should be treasured in multiple backups, to avoid any bits to die.
- card_zero 3y agoIt's straightforward to reject random noise as having no information content.
- smokel 3y agoNot at all. If you had rejected the pretty much random processes in the primordial soup that eventually led to life (and then knowledge) from the start, then where would we be? I think that it is almost impossible to determine randomness in an ongoing process.
- card_zero 3y agoBiological life itself embodies some knowledge. It uses trial-and-error evolution instead of thinking, but it arrives at solutions. Sometimes it arrives at the same solutions from different directions. This is different from randomness and the arbitrary results of random processes.
- smokel 3y ago