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> living things Definition? > thinking can’t happen without a living organism Ah, it must have organs? By extension of your argument really leads to solipsi

> living things Definition? > thinking can’t happen without a living organism Ah, it must have organs? By extension of your argument really leads to solipsism. The only real evidence we have—sorry, that I have-is that I am conscious, because I experience qualia. You might experience qualia, and there is the only evidence you have. As you have done, you could then extrapolate that those that—by one's eye—share one's physiology (i.e. substrate, primate brain etc.) and kind of look and behave like one's self (i.e. other primates) are conscious and intelligent. But then cephalopods demonstrate intelligence with a completely different neural network structure. Maybe these alien creatures are also conscious? Maybe they feel pain? (Oestensibly they do, I'm sure you'll agree.) If so, what is it that is shared between these two different organisms that cause this to arise? And specifically why must it be just because they have squishy organs?

gregjor 2y ago
> living things... Definition? I feel confident we have shared definitions of living vs. non-living things, but if you insist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organism We don't need to get into what we mean by consciousness, or experiencing qualia. We only have direct evidence of our own consciousness. But I disputed a different statement, specifically: > A lot of people hold the prejudice that both 'thinking' and 'consciousness' are substrate dependent, without a lick of evidence. Define "a lot of people." In my anecdotal experience "a lot of people" believe in AI/AGI without any evidence for it. Those people implicitly believe that thinking and consciousness can happen in non-biological "subtstrates" whether they have thought that through carefully or not. I just pointed out that if we agree on what we mean by "thinking" and "consciousness" for purposes of discussion, we (human beings) have lots of evidence for it, and all of that evidence occurs only in biological entities we call "living" and "organisms." We have no evidence for thinking or consciousness in rocks, stars, or computers. You can call that a prejudice if you like. Not too long ago claiming that cephalapods or birds or insects could "think" or had something we might call "consciousness" amounted to extraordinary claims, rejected by people, mainly out of prejudice. Now we have persuasive evidence that non-human animals can think and appear to experience something that looks like consciousness, though we can't know for sure what happens in the mind of an octopus, crow, or ant. We have evidence but not definitive proof, in other words. Today we have people making claims about AGI and machine superintelligence, with no evidence (but large financial incentives). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Watching a crow use a stick to get at some food, or an octopus cleverly escaping from an aquarium, most people infer intelligence. Similarly many people infer intelligence when they "chat" with an LLM (and that happened back in the '70s with ELIZA). One possible explanation: we have created thinking, conscious software. Another explanation: our brains trick us (and people who stand to gain from deceiving us will trick us). Since we have lots of evidence for our brains tricking us, and other people defrauding us, and no evidence that computers can think or experience anything, I choose to wait for more compelling evidence of machine intelligence.
- h0l0cube 2y ago
  > Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The evidence can go two ways. Essentially the hypothesis that anything we observe to be conscious is actually conscious is unfalsifiable unless you make some assumptions. > We have no evidence for thinking or consciousness in rocks, stars, or computers. We have no evidence for consciousness in slime molds, but they do indeed display intelligence. Crucially, though, and more to the particular point I'm making, we have no evidence that they are not conscious. In fact, we have no idea how consciousness arises, but we are very much primed to believe it needs to look something like us. > (but large financial incentives). That's definitely not my motivation here. I'm talking about this weird and unfounded exceptionalism that we place on eukaryotes being a prerequisite for thinking and consciousness. And, there's actually large financial incentive to say specifically that AI can think but is not conscious, because it is somehow distinct from life. This could inadvertently spawn a new wave of slavery that everyone (well, 'most people') would be perfectly complicit in and comfortable with, and to the great profit of AI companies that gatekeep it.
  - gregjor 2y ago
    > Essentially the hypothesis that anything we observe to be conscious is actually conscious is unfalsifiable unless you make some assumptions. Yes, and I think we run into that problem because we don't have a good definition of, or test for, consciousness. Ultimately we only have our own internal experience, and extrapolate from that with a bunch of assumptions. But I was thinking more in terms of "We think we know it when we see it." Not scientific, I know. The LLMs and other software called AI seem good at appearing conscious, probably because humans have no other categories and match what LLMs produce (language) with intelligence and consciousness. People do the same thing with dogs and other animals -- assume an intelligence similar to their own, based on superficial behavior. > I'm talking about this weird and unfounded exceptionalism that we place on eukaryotes being a prerequisite for thinking and consciousness. Maybe unfounded, but not weird to me. Humans have no other examples of thinking or conscious entities other than the other living things on one planet that share an evolutionary history. Likewise humans have lots of experience with not seeing anything that looks like thinking or consciousness from non-living things. Animistic religions attribute natural phenomena like storms and earthquakes to deities -- they invent sentient entities because the ground and the clouds don't appear to have agency and don't match the pattern of "things that think and have goals." With a broad enough definition of "thinking" we can say that computers "think." A calculator qualifies with a loose enough definition of "thinking." As for people willingly complying with their own enslavement, history has plenty of precedents. A Marxist would call capitalism such a bargain. Benjamin Franklin famously warned against trading essential liberty for safety. I suspect you got it right that people will go along with whatever the masters of AI give them, conscious or not, without much consideration of the consequences as long as they see some short-term benefit, or even nothing more than novelty. History demonstrates that people fall for utopian plans over and over.

gregjor 2y ago

> living things... Definition? I feel confident we have shared definitions of living vs. non-living things, but if you insist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organism We don't need to get into what we mean by consciousness, or experiencing qualia. We only have direct evidence of our own consciousness. But I disputed a different statement, specifically: > A lot of people hold the prejudice that both 'thinking' and 'consciousness' are substrate dependent, without a lick of evidence. Define "a lot of people." In my anecdotal experience "a lot of people" believe in AI/AGI without any evidence for it. Those people implicitly believe that thinking and consciousness can happen in non-biological "subtstrates" whether they have thought that through carefully or not. I just pointed out that if we agree on what we mean by "thinking" and "consciousness" for purposes of discussion, we (human beings) have lots of evidence for it, and all of that evidence occurs only in biological entities we call "living" and "organisms." We have no evidence for thinking or consciousness in rocks, stars, or computers. You can call that a prejudice if you like. Not too long ago claiming that cephalapods or birds or insects could "think" or had something we might call "consciousness" amounted to extraordinary claims, rejected by people, mainly out of prejudice. Now we have persuasive evidence that non-human animals can think and appear to experience something that looks like consciousness, though we can't know for sure what happens in the mind of an octopus, crow, or ant. We have evidence but not definitive proof, in other words. Today we have people making claims about AGI and machine superintelligence, with no evidence (but large financial incentives). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Watching a crow use a stick to get at some food, or an octopus cleverly escaping from an aquarium, most people infer intelligence. Similarly many people infer intelligence when they "chat" with an LLM (and that happened back in the '70s with ELIZA). One possible explanation: we have created thinking, conscious software. Another explanation: our brains trick us (and people who stand to gain from deceiving us will trick us). Since we have lots of evidence for our brains tricking us, and other people defrauding us, and no evidence that computers can think or experience anything, I choose to wait for more compelling evidence of machine intelligence.

h0l0cube 2y ago
> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The evidence can go two ways. Essentially the hypothesis that anything we observe to be conscious is actually conscious is unfalsifiable unless you make some assumptions. > We have no evidence for thinking or consciousness in rocks, stars, or computers. We have no evidence for consciousness in slime molds, but they do indeed display intelligence. Crucially, though, and more to the particular point I'm making, we have no evidence that they are not conscious. In fact, we have no idea how consciousness arises, but we are very much primed to believe it needs to look something like us. > (but large financial incentives). That's definitely not my motivation here. I'm talking about this weird and unfounded exceptionalism that we place on eukaryotes being a prerequisite for thinking and consciousness. And, there's actually large financial incentive to say specifically that AI can think but is not conscious, because it is somehow distinct from life. This could inadvertently spawn a new wave of slavery that everyone (well, 'most people') would be perfectly complicit in and comfortable with, and to the great profit of AI companies that gatekeep it.
- gregjor 2y ago
  > Essentially the hypothesis that anything we observe to be conscious is actually conscious is unfalsifiable unless you make some assumptions. Yes, and I think we run into that problem because we don't have a good definition of, or test for, consciousness. Ultimately we only have our own internal experience, and extrapolate from that with a bunch of assumptions. But I was thinking more in terms of "We think we know it when we see it." Not scientific, I know. The LLMs and other software called AI seem good at appearing conscious, probably because humans have no other categories and match what LLMs produce (language) with intelligence and consciousness. People do the same thing with dogs and other animals -- assume an intelligence similar to their own, based on superficial behavior. > I'm talking about this weird and unfounded exceptionalism that we place on eukaryotes being a prerequisite for thinking and consciousness. Maybe unfounded, but not weird to me. Humans have no other examples of thinking or conscious entities other than the other living things on one planet that share an evolutionary history. Likewise humans have lots of experience with not seeing anything that looks like thinking or consciousness from non-living things. Animistic religions attribute natural phenomena like storms and earthquakes to deities -- they invent sentient entities because the ground and the clouds don't appear to have agency and don't match the pattern of "things that think and have goals." With a broad enough definition of "thinking" we can say that computers "think." A calculator qualifies with a loose enough definition of "thinking." As for people willingly complying with their own enslavement, history has plenty of precedents. A Marxist would call capitalism such a bargain. Benjamin Franklin famously warned against trading essential liberty for safety. I suspect you got it right that people will go along with whatever the masters of AI give them, conscious or not, without much consideration of the consequences as long as they see some short-term benefit, or even nothing more than novelty. History demonstrates that people fall for utopian plans over and over.