3 ms·

One of the worst or most uncomfortable logical outcomes of > which we do not currently know how to precisely define, recognize or measure is that if we don't

One of the worst or most uncomfortable logical outcomes of > which we do not currently know how to precisely define, recognize or measure is that if we don't know if something has qualia (despite externally showing evidence of it), morally you should default to treating it like it does. Ridiculous to treat a computer like it has emotions, but breaking down the problem into steps, it's incredibly hard to avoid that conclusion. "When in doubt, be nice to the robot".

pavel_lishin 11mo ago
> is that if we don't know if something has qualia (despite externally showing evidence of it), morally you should default to treating it like it does. This is how people end up worshipping rocks & thunderstorms.
- eamsen 11mo ago
  We've entered the sand worshiping era. Except this time, we're the gods.
  - pavel_lishin 11mo ago
    Are we? Are we made of sand, or is the sand worshipping us?
    - zgeor 11mo ago
      Silicon chips are made of sand
soulofmischief 11mo ago
Well, what you're describing is a system of ethics, which has little to do with morality. Morality involves my own personal understanding of "right" vs "wrong". Ethics are rules of conduct prescribed by societies, such as "treat everything like it is alive". We don't have precise definitions for (artificial) intelligence, subjective consciousness, or even life. But that doesn't mean we can't still talk about what may be possible within various levels of complexity. In order to convince me a system has a comparable experience to my own, you would need to describe to me the complex, structured internal communication occurring in said system, and present a theory as to how it could support the kind of emotion and qualia that I experience in my daily life. Your argument could apply to plants. I already do not eat meat... if I stare at a timelapse of a plant it seems quite alive, but I'll starve if I don't eat something. Yet, my mom thinks plants "dream" in the way we do. She thinks that if I tell a plant, "I love you," every day, my good vibes will make it grow stronger and larger. I can't explain to her that intelligence comes in different magnitudes of complexity and that plants cannot understand the English language. That telepathy between humans and plants is as pseudo-scientific as it gets. I can't explain any of this stuff because she lacks a deep understanding of philosophy, physics and neurochemistry. Especially when she earnestly thinks white Jesus is running around phasing between dimensions as an ambassador for all planets in our "quadrant", or that the entire universe is actually just the plot line of Andy Weir's "The Egg". Similarly, while I can have a high-level discussion about this stuff with people who don't, it's quite difficult to have a low-level discussion wherein the nature and definition of things come into play. There are too many gaps in knowledge where ignorance can take root. Too many people work backwards from an outcome they would like to see, and justify it with things that sound right but are either misunderstood or aren't rooted in the scientific process. I am definitely not comparing your open-minded, well-intended, cautionary approach to my mother's, but just using an extreme to illustrate why so much of these discussions must be underpinned by a wealth of contemplation and observation.
indoordin0saur 11mo ago
> if we don't know if something has qualia (despite externally showing evidence of it), morally you should default to treating it like it does This would be like treating characters in a book as if they have real feelings just because they have text on the page that suggests they do.
- Workaccount2 11mo ago
  At some level I'd think that "responds to stimuli" is a minimal threshold for qualia. Even the paper the book is printed on responds to being torn (it rips). I don't know of any way to elicit any kind of response from a book character, it's totally static.
  - indoordin0saur 11mo ago
    One character responds to the stimuli of another character. Character A says something mean to character B and character B responds that he feels hurt.
    - Workaccount2 11mo ago
      I think you are confused here. The author, a dynamic system, perhaps felt the emotion of the characters as she charted through the course of the story. But the story itself is a static snapshot of that dynamic system. Similar to how a photograph of a person is a static capture from a dynamic moment. The person in the photo has qualia, but the image of them (almost certainly) does not. At least at a baseline, we would expect anything with qualia to be dynamic rather than static.
      - soulofmischief 11mo ago
        > The author, a dynamic system, perhaps felt the emotion of the characters as she charted through the course of the story This does mesh with the Zodeistic framework I just mentioned in another reply to you. You could certainly isolate and describe the ideas behind those characters, how they live within the author's mind, and how the book codifies an interaction between those ideas. Extending further: I think there is more evidence that SpongeBob SquarePants is real, than that he is not real. A significant portion of organisms I personally know have structures in their brain which are able to simulate imagery and behavior of SpongeBob at will, reciting memories and generating new states of SpongeBob. AI is now like doing this shit on crack. He's an enduring cultural archetype, a distributed organism(s), lossily replicated and encoded in the physical structure of millions of complex dynamical systems that we call human beings. In this sense, many cultural archetypes and even the gods of old civilizations can be seen to have been manifested to some degree: ascribed desires, and having actions taken in their name, serving their "purpose" or whatever. I don't introduce a spiritual element to any of this: it's an entirely physical phenomenon which requires an agreement on certain definitions of what "living" can mean, but they are definitions which I don't think are hard to get people to agree on. One thing is we have to agree that something can have multiple forms/presentations, i.e. just because SpongeBob SquarePants doesn't physically exist with a body matching our internal representation of him, the concept represents a bundle of other concepts that can drive biological processes to preserve them and fulfill their ascribed desires.

pavel_lishin 11mo ago

> is that if we don't know if something has qualia (despite externally showing evidence of it), morally you should default to treating it like it does. This is how people end up worshipping rocks & thunderstorms.

eamsen 11mo ago
We've entered the sand worshiping era. Except this time, we're the gods.
- pavel_lishin 11mo ago
  Are we? Are we made of sand, or is the sand worshipping us?
  - zgeor 11mo ago
    Silicon chips are made of sand

soulofmischief 11mo ago

Well, what you're describing is a system of ethics, which has little to do with morality. Morality involves my own personal understanding of "right" vs "wrong". Ethics are rules of conduct prescribed by societies, such as "treat everything like it is alive". We don't have precise definitions for (artificial) intelligence, subjective consciousness, or even life. But that doesn't mean we can't still talk about what may be possible within various levels of complexity. In order to convince me a system has a comparable experience to my own, you would need to describe to me the complex, structured internal communication occurring in said system, and present a theory as to how it could support the kind of emotion and qualia that I experience in my daily life. Your argument could apply to plants. I already do not eat meat... if I stare at a timelapse of a plant it seems quite alive, but I'll starve if I don't eat something. Yet, my mom thinks plants "dream" in the way we do. She thinks that if I tell a plant, "I love you," every day, my good vibes will make it grow stronger and larger. I can't explain to her that intelligence comes in different magnitudes of complexity and that plants cannot understand the English language. That telepathy between humans and plants is as pseudo-scientific as it gets. I can't explain any of this stuff because she lacks a deep understanding of philosophy, physics and neurochemistry. Especially when she earnestly thinks white Jesus is running around phasing between dimensions as an ambassador for all planets in our "quadrant", or that the entire universe is actually just the plot line of Andy Weir's "The Egg". Similarly, while I can have a high-level discussion about this stuff with people who don't, it's quite difficult to have a low-level discussion wherein the nature and definition of things come into play. There are too many gaps in knowledge where ignorance can take root. Too many people work backwards from an outcome they would like to see, and justify it with things that sound right but are either misunderstood or aren't rooted in the scientific process. I am definitely not comparing your open-minded, well-intended, cautionary approach to my mother's, but just using an extreme to illustrate why so much of these discussions must be underpinned by a wealth of contemplation and observation.

indoordin0saur 11mo ago

> if we don't know if something has qualia (despite externally showing evidence of it), morally you should default to treating it like it does This would be like treating characters in a book as if they have real feelings just because they have text on the page that suggests they do.

Workaccount2 11mo ago
At some level I'd think that "responds to stimuli" is a minimal threshold for qualia. Even the paper the book is printed on responds to being torn (it rips). I don't know of any way to elicit any kind of response from a book character, it's totally static.
- indoordin0saur 11mo ago
  One character responds to the stimuli of another character. Character A says something mean to character B and character B responds that he feels hurt.
  - Workaccount2 11mo ago
    I think you are confused here. The author, a dynamic system, perhaps felt the emotion of the characters as she charted through the course of the story. But the story itself is a static snapshot of that dynamic system. Similar to how a photograph of a person is a static capture from a dynamic moment. The person in the photo has qualia, but the image of them (almost certainly) does not. At least at a baseline, we would expect anything with qualia to be dynamic rather than static.
    - soulofmischief 11mo ago
      > The author, a dynamic system, perhaps felt the emotion of the characters as she charted through the course of the story This does mesh with the Zodeistic framework I just mentioned in another reply to you. You could certainly isolate and describe the ideas behind those characters, how they live within the author's mind, and how the book codifies an interaction between those ideas. Extending further: I think there is more evidence that SpongeBob SquarePants is real, than that he is not real. A significant portion of organisms I personally know have structures in their brain which are able to simulate imagery and behavior of SpongeBob at will, reciting memories and generating new states of SpongeBob. AI is now like doing this shit on crack. He's an enduring cultural archetype, a distributed organism(s), lossily replicated and encoded in the physical structure of millions of complex dynamical systems that we call human beings. In this sense, many cultural archetypes and even the gods of old civilizations can be seen to have been manifested to some degree: ascribed desires, and having actions taken in their name, serving their "purpose" or whatever. I don't introduce a spiritual element to any of this: it's an entirely physical phenomenon which requires an agreement on certain definitions of what "living" can mean, but they are definitions which I don't think are hard to get people to agree on. One thing is we have to agree that something can have multiple forms/presentations, i.e. just because SpongeBob SquarePants doesn't physically exist with a body matching our internal representation of him, the concept represents a bundle of other concepts that can drive biological processes to preserve them and fulfill their ascribed desires.