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The idea of replicating a consciousness/intelligence in a computer seems to fall apart even under materialist/atheist assumptions: what we experience as conscio
by mikemarsh 11mo ago
The idea of replicating a consciousness/intelligence in a computer seems to fall apart even under materialist/atheist assumptions: what we experience as consciousness is a product of a vast number of biological systems, not just neurons firing or words spoken/thought.
Even considering something as basic as how fundamental bodily movement is to mental development, or how hormones influence mood ultimately influencing thought, how could anyone ever hope to to replicate such things via software in a way that "clicks" to add up to consciousness?
- kalkin 11mo agoConflating consciousness and intelligence is going to hopelessly confuse any attempt to understand if or when a machine might achieve either. (I think there's no reasonable definition of intelligence under which LLMs don't possess some, setting aside arguments about quantity. Whether they have or in principle could have any form of consciousness is much more mysterious -- how would we tell?)
- mikemarsh 11mo agoDefining machine consciousness is indeed mysterious, at the end of the day it ultimately depends on how much faith one puts in science fiction rather than an objective measure.
- kalkin 11mo agoSeems like a philosophy question, with maybe some input from neuroscience and ML interpretability. I'm not sure what faith in science fiction has to do with it.
- danielbln 11mo agoI don't see a strong argument here. Are you saying there is a level of complexity involved in biological systems that can not be simulated? And if so, who says sufficient approximations and abstractions aren't enough to simulate the emergent behavior of said systems? We can simulate weather (poorly) without modeling every hydrogen atom interaction.
- hitarpetar 11mo agoI guess it depends, can you tell the difference between a weather simulation and the actual world?
- ACCount37 11mo agoCan you? You have weather readouts. One set is from a weather simulation - a simulated planet with simulated climate. Another is real recordings from the same place at the same planet, taken by real weather monitoring probes. They have the same starting point, but diverge over time. Which one is real though? Would you be able tell?
- mikemarsh 11mo agoThey're not asking about telling the difference in collected data sets, data sets aren't weather. The question is can you tell the difference between the rain you see outside your window, and some representation of a simulated environment where the computer says "It's raining here in this simulated environment". The implied answer is of course, one is water falling from the sky and one is a machine.
- ACCount37 11mo agoYou can't look at the "real weather" though. You can only look at the outputs. That's the constraint. Good luck and have fun. A human brain is a big pile of jellied meat spread. An LLM is a big pile of weights strung together by matrix math. Neither looks "intelligent". Neither is interpretable. The most reliable way we have to compare the two is by comparing the outputs. You can't drill a hole in one of those and see something that makes you go "oh, it's this one, this one is the Real Intelligence, the other is fake". No easy out for you. You'll have to do it the hard way.
- hitarpetar 11mo agothere is no "real weather". the rain is the weather. the map is not the territory. these are very simple concepts, idk why we need to reevaluate them because we all of a sudden got really good at text synthesis
- energy123 11mo agoBundling up consciousness with intelligence is a big assumption, as is the assumption that panpsychism is incorrect. You may be right on both counts, but you can't just make those two assumptions as a foregone conclusion.
- jimbokun 11mo agoAGI won't replicate our experience. But it could be more powerful than us.
- pixl97 11mo agoHonestly replicating our experience would be rather wasteful. Much like making planes the same way birds work to carry cargo.