6 ms·

> If we can't define, recognize or measure them, how exactly do we know that AI doesn't have them? In the same way my digital thermometer doesn't have quaila.

> If we can't define, recognize or measure them, how exactly do we know that AI doesn't have them? In the same way my digital thermometer doesn't have quaila. LLM's do not either. I really tire of this handwaving 'magic' concepts into LLM's. Qualia being difficult to define and yet being such an immediate experience that we humans all know intimately and directly is quite literally the problem. Attempted definitions fall short and humans have tried and I mean really tried hard to solve this. Please see Hard problem of consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

ajross 11mo ago
> In the same way my digital thermometer doesn't have quaila And I repeat the question: how do you know your thermometer doesn't? You don't, you're just declaring a fact you have no basis for knowing. That's fine if you want a job in a philosophy faculty, but it's worthless to people trying to understand AI. Again, c.f. furffle. Thermometers have that, you agree, right? Because you can't prove they don't.
- soulofmischief 11mo ago
  You're just describing panpsychism, which itself is the subject of much critique due to its nonfalsifiability and lack of predictive power. Not to mention it ignores every lesson we've learned in cognition thus far. A thermometer encoding "memory" of a temperature is completely different than a thermometer on a digital circuit, or a thermometer attached to a fully-developed mammalian brain. Only the latter of this set for sure has the required circuitry to produce qualia, at least as far as I can personally measure without invoking solipsism. It's also very silly to proclaim that philosophy of mind is not applicable to increasingly complex thinking machines. That sounds like a failure to consider the bodies of work behind both philosophy of mind and machine cognition. Again, "AI" is ill-defined and your consistent usage of that phrase instead of something more precises suggests you still have a long journey ahead of you for "understanding AI".
- nathan_compton 11mo ago
  God, can we fucking quit with this "philosophy is bullshit" stuff. Like there are literally Faculty in Philosophy all over the world trying to understand AI. Philosophy faculty do stuff, they try to understand things, most of the ideas we are talking about here came from philosophers.
  - encyclopedism 11mo ago
    It seems to me that 'Philosophy is meaningless' has been ingrained into so many people it's almost propaganda-esque! To see this sentiment from supposed 'scientific' individuals is shocking. I wonder if they could define what science actually is.
    - Nasrudith 11mo ago
      Blame philosophy as a field for actively kicking out anything which gains a practical application. If it is propaganda it is coming from inside the house of philosophy. I had a computer science professor who had degrees in philosophy because he was old enough that computer science didn't exist as a major at the time. The logical arguments of philosophy proved useful for understanding interactions of boolean mathematics. Yet that triumph of philosophy didn't further interest in the field or gain prestiege among philosophers. Just the opposite really. As far as I can tell it is for dumb reasons possibly related to Ancient Greeks and their obsession with 'purity of thought (read: not referencing reality) it is practically an axiom that if it is useful or grounded in objective reality it isn't treated as philosophy anymore. All likely stemming from motivated reasoning against checking their priors and from frankly many of the Ancient philosophers being influenced by a need to flatter their patrons who held the practical in disdain. As notoriously seen in Aristotlian physics with impetus physics where projectiles keep moving in the same direction until impetus is depleted and then fall. Speculation of the origon of the pathology aside, there seems to be this deep-seated antiempericalism in philosophy. Which means at best you get 'philosophy of science' which isn't proper philosophy because it pollutes itself by daring to use reality and experimentation as benchmarks for theories. When philosophy gains a practical usage it doesn't become something called 'practical philosophy' and the focus of more interest by philosophers, it gets shunned. Natural philosophy didn't remain philosophy - it became science. To be fair there is probably some interaction driving the divorce from the opposite direction, of the practical portions of philosophy being pilfered by those only looking for results as opposed to some sort of unquantifiable enlightenment. Science is of course a process of refinement of ideas against the reference point of reality. Anything mathematically consistent can be a model but experimentation is needed to see how well your model corresponds to reality.
Workaccount2 11mo ago
The problem is that just like your digital thermometer, 50 human brain neurons in a petri dish "obviously" don't have qualia either. So you end up either needing to draw a line somewhere between mechanical computation and qualia computation, or you can relegate it to supernatural (a soul) or grey areas (quantum magic).
- soulofmischief 11mo ago
  I think there are several lines. Phase changes happen relatively suddenly, when a system or subsystem reaches a critical threshold. The experience of "qualia" certainly involves many such phase changes as a complex, dynamical system grows in complexity while maintaining stability. A sufficiently complex organism lacking eyes but having light-sensitive organs still experiences qualia if you define it the right way. But do they experience heartbreak like I do? It isn't an all-or-nothing situation, even if we don't yet know where these lines are. This supports the idea that subjective consciousness emerges from complexity in systems that have sensory feedback loops. The simpler the system, the smaller the qualia space.
- encyclopedism 11mo ago
  What I'm trying to tease out is isn't an opinion alone. It's a generally understood problem in the scientific community. I'm highlighting it to illustrate the issues at hand. > So you end up either needing to draw a line somewhere between mechanical computation and qualia computation, or you can relegate it to supernatural (a soul) or grey areas (quantum magic). Quite literally the jury is still out. It is a hotly debated topic approached from various angles. Arguments are nuanced which is why you fill find ideas such as panpsychism thrown into the mix. I hate appealing to authority but in this instance it is more than warranted. Humans have grappled with this for centuries and the problem hasn't gone away. Please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
  - Workaccount2 11mo ago
    >In the same way my digital thermometer doesn't have quaila. LLM's do not either. The hard problem of consciousness doesn't support either of those statements, and instead illustrates why they can't confidently be made. So it's confusing because you seem to recognize that qualia cannot currently be measured, while also making a statement measuring qualia.

ajross 11mo ago

> In the same way my digital thermometer doesn't have quaila And I repeat the question: how do you know your thermometer doesn't? You don't, you're just declaring a fact you have no basis for knowing. That's fine if you want a job in a philosophy faculty, but it's worthless to people trying to understand AI. Again, c.f. furffle. Thermometers have that, you agree, right? Because you can't prove they don't.

soulofmischief 11mo ago
You're just describing panpsychism, which itself is the subject of much critique due to its nonfalsifiability and lack of predictive power. Not to mention it ignores every lesson we've learned in cognition thus far. A thermometer encoding "memory" of a temperature is completely different than a thermometer on a digital circuit, or a thermometer attached to a fully-developed mammalian brain. Only the latter of this set for sure has the required circuitry to produce qualia, at least as far as I can personally measure without invoking solipsism. It's also very silly to proclaim that philosophy of mind is not applicable to increasingly complex thinking machines. That sounds like a failure to consider the bodies of work behind both philosophy of mind and machine cognition. Again, "AI" is ill-defined and your consistent usage of that phrase instead of something more precises suggests you still have a long journey ahead of you for "understanding AI".
nathan_compton 11mo ago
God, can we fucking quit with this "philosophy is bullshit" stuff. Like there are literally Faculty in Philosophy all over the world trying to understand AI. Philosophy faculty do stuff, they try to understand things, most of the ideas we are talking about here came from philosophers.
- encyclopedism 11mo ago
  It seems to me that 'Philosophy is meaningless' has been ingrained into so many people it's almost propaganda-esque! To see this sentiment from supposed 'scientific' individuals is shocking. I wonder if they could define what science actually is.
  - Nasrudith 11mo ago
    Blame philosophy as a field for actively kicking out anything which gains a practical application. If it is propaganda it is coming from inside the house of philosophy. I had a computer science professor who had degrees in philosophy because he was old enough that computer science didn't exist as a major at the time. The logical arguments of philosophy proved useful for understanding interactions of boolean mathematics. Yet that triumph of philosophy didn't further interest in the field or gain prestiege among philosophers. Just the opposite really. As far as I can tell it is for dumb reasons possibly related to Ancient Greeks and their obsession with 'purity of thought (read: not referencing reality) it is practically an axiom that if it is useful or grounded in objective reality it isn't treated as philosophy anymore. All likely stemming from motivated reasoning against checking their priors and from frankly many of the Ancient philosophers being influenced by a need to flatter their patrons who held the practical in disdain. As notoriously seen in Aristotlian physics with impetus physics where projectiles keep moving in the same direction until impetus is depleted and then fall. Speculation of the origon of the pathology aside, there seems to be this deep-seated antiempericalism in philosophy. Which means at best you get 'philosophy of science' which isn't proper philosophy because it pollutes itself by daring to use reality and experimentation as benchmarks for theories. When philosophy gains a practical usage it doesn't become something called 'practical philosophy' and the focus of more interest by philosophers, it gets shunned. Natural philosophy didn't remain philosophy - it became science. To be fair there is probably some interaction driving the divorce from the opposite direction, of the practical portions of philosophy being pilfered by those only looking for results as opposed to some sort of unquantifiable enlightenment. Science is of course a process of refinement of ideas against the reference point of reality. Anything mathematically consistent can be a model but experimentation is needed to see how well your model corresponds to reality.

Workaccount2 11mo ago

The problem is that just like your digital thermometer, 50 human brain neurons in a petri dish "obviously" don't have qualia either. So you end up either needing to draw a line somewhere between mechanical computation and qualia computation, or you can relegate it to supernatural (a soul) or grey areas (quantum magic).

soulofmischief 11mo ago
I think there are several lines. Phase changes happen relatively suddenly, when a system or subsystem reaches a critical threshold. The experience of "qualia" certainly involves many such phase changes as a complex, dynamical system grows in complexity while maintaining stability. A sufficiently complex organism lacking eyes but having light-sensitive organs still experiences qualia if you define it the right way. But do they experience heartbreak like I do? It isn't an all-or-nothing situation, even if we don't yet know where these lines are. This supports the idea that subjective consciousness emerges from complexity in systems that have sensory feedback loops. The simpler the system, the smaller the qualia space.
encyclopedism 11mo ago
What I'm trying to tease out is isn't an opinion alone. It's a generally understood problem in the scientific community. I'm highlighting it to illustrate the issues at hand. > So you end up either needing to draw a line somewhere between mechanical computation and qualia computation, or you can relegate it to supernatural (a soul) or grey areas (quantum magic). Quite literally the jury is still out. It is a hotly debated topic approached from various angles. Arguments are nuanced which is why you fill find ideas such as panpsychism thrown into the mix. I hate appealing to authority but in this instance it is more than warranted. Humans have grappled with this for centuries and the problem hasn't gone away. Please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
- Workaccount2 11mo ago
  >In the same way my digital thermometer doesn't have quaila. LLM's do not either. The hard problem of consciousness doesn't support either of those statements, and instead illustrates why they can't confidently be made. So it's confusing because you seem to recognize that qualia cannot currently be measured, while also making a statement measuring qualia.