4 ms·

> How do you see emotion as being necessary for creativity? As its reward. Why should anyone be creative if it does not "feel" good? >releasing chemicals like

by qsera 8mo ago

> How do you see emotion as being necessary for creativity? As its reward. Why should anyone be creative if it does not "feel" good? >releasing chemicals like adrenaline, dopamine.. That does not explain how it results in a certain kind of "feeling".. >FWIW I think consciousness is also very mechanical I think I didn't really do an OK job of why I think otherwise in my comment above...

HarHarVeryFunny 8mo ago
> As its reward. Why should anyone be creative if it does not "feel" good? We've evolved to do things that are helpful for survival. Things like curiosity and exploration don't need to feel good - it's just our nature. They only need to attract and keep our attention.
- qsera 8mo ago
  >it's just our nature Yea, its our nature to feel good about it, which is what evolution does. If you are curious, and if exploration makes you feel good, you have a better chance to survive, and you pass that trait along. I can't believe we are arguing about this.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 8mo ago
    It seems we're basically in agreement, not arguing! The only quibble I have is whether "feeling good" is the right way to describe how evolution has made us choose to engage in exploration/etc. I don't think it's quite as simple as evolution making things that are good for us feel good, and making things that are bad for us feel bad. There are a bunch of neurotransmitters and hormones that control how we behave. Evolution discourages us from doing things that are bad for us via a range of emotions including things like fear and disgust (not just "feeling bad"). Evolution also encourages us to do, or keep on doing, things that are good for us via a range of emotions such as enjoyment (this is a tasty fruit), contentment (this feels nice - I'll keep doing it) to curiosity, again not just "feeling good". I think curiosity and exploration (which may lead to learning and discovery, which are good for us) are based around attention and focus ... rather than feeling good, it feels interesting.
    - qsera 8mo ago
      When I said, "feel good/feel bad", I meant it as an umbrella term to cover all such positive/negative things. So back to the point, there is no inherent motivation for LLMs/Machines, because they cannot feel. Where does the ability to fee come from? No fukcing clue!
      - HarHarVeryFunny 8mo ago
        I'd say that motivation and feeling are largely unrelated. We do what we do, not because of motivation, but because that what we've evolved to do. Feeling really comes after the fact, or independent of it, when we're introspecting on what we've already done (courtesy of evolution), and how we feel about that, or how can we explain it! There is tons of evidence that this is the way our brains work - we do things "because" then (if asked, or if thinking about it) concoct post-hoc explanations of why we did it. An example of this is split brain patients, where one half of the brain happily explains why the other half did what it did, despite there being no connection between the two (nor any subjective feeling by the patient that there is anything amiss with their brain)! But sure, we have feelings, closely related to qualia you could say. It does "feel like something" to be depressed, or excited, or inspired, or whatever. I don't see any big mystery to this - our brain is able to self-observe and not surprisingly able to detect it's own varied patterns of operation (including ones induced by brain chemicals, natural or otherwise). I presume where you may want to go with this is "but why does it feel like anything? why is there any subjective experience at all (and would a machine have it too)?", and I think the answer is that this is just an emergent property of having a cognitive apparatus capable of self-observation. We can already see the glimmerings of this in LLMs, maybe a bad example since their thoughts are derived from humans, but nonetheless LLMs self-report as if they are conscious, and have existential discussions about it on Moltbook. It's hard to imagine (to bring this back on topic) that LeCun's animal intelligence, basically something LLM-like that is trained from scratch (no baked in human knowledge) wouldn't report the exact same thing.
        qsera 8mo ago
        >We do what we do, not because of motivation So you are saying a living thing will try to feed even if it does not feel hunger?

by qsera 8mo ago

HarHarVeryFunny 8mo ago

> As its reward. Why should anyone be creative if it does not "feel" good? We've evolved to do things that are helpful for survival. Things like curiosity and exploration don't need to feel good - it's just our nature. They only need to attract and keep our attention.

qsera 8mo ago
>it's just our nature Yea, its our nature to feel good about it, which is what evolution does. If you are curious, and if exploration makes you feel good, you have a better chance to survive, and you pass that trait along. I can't believe we are arguing about this.
- HarHarVeryFunny 8mo ago
  It seems we're basically in agreement, not arguing! The only quibble I have is whether "feeling good" is the right way to describe how evolution has made us choose to engage in exploration/etc. I don't think it's quite as simple as evolution making things that are good for us feel good, and making things that are bad for us feel bad. There are a bunch of neurotransmitters and hormones that control how we behave. Evolution discourages us from doing things that are bad for us via a range of emotions including things like fear and disgust (not just "feeling bad"). Evolution also encourages us to do, or keep on doing, things that are good for us via a range of emotions such as enjoyment (this is a tasty fruit), contentment (this feels nice - I'll keep doing it) to curiosity, again not just "feeling good". I think curiosity and exploration (which may lead to learning and discovery, which are good for us) are based around attention and focus ... rather than feeling good, it feels interesting.
  - qsera 8mo ago
    When I said, "feel good/feel bad", I meant it as an umbrella term to cover all such positive/negative things. So back to the point, there is no inherent motivation for LLMs/Machines, because they cannot feel. Where does the ability to fee come from? No fukcing clue!
    - HarHarVeryFunny 8mo ago
      I'd say that motivation and feeling are largely unrelated. We do what we do, not because of motivation, but because that what we've evolved to do. Feeling really comes after the fact, or independent of it, when we're introspecting on what we've already done (courtesy of evolution), and how we feel about that, or how can we explain it! There is tons of evidence that this is the way our brains work - we do things "because" then (if asked, or if thinking about it) concoct post-hoc explanations of why we did it. An example of this is split brain patients, where one half of the brain happily explains why the other half did what it did, despite there being no connection between the two (nor any subjective feeling by the patient that there is anything amiss with their brain)! But sure, we have feelings, closely related to qualia you could say. It does "feel like something" to be depressed, or excited, or inspired, or whatever. I don't see any big mystery to this - our brain is able to self-observe and not surprisingly able to detect it's own varied patterns of operation (including ones induced by brain chemicals, natural or otherwise). I presume where you may want to go with this is "but why does it feel like anything? why is there any subjective experience at all (and would a machine have it too)?", and I think the answer is that this is just an emergent property of having a cognitive apparatus capable of self-observation. We can already see the glimmerings of this in LLMs, maybe a bad example since their thoughts are derived from humans, but nonetheless LLMs self-report as if they are conscious, and have existential discussions about it on Moltbook. It's hard to imagine (to bring this back on topic) that LeCun's animal intelligence, basically something LLM-like that is trained from scratch (no baked in human knowledge) wouldn't report the exact same thing.
      - qsera 8mo ago
        >We do what we do, not because of motivation So you are saying a living thing will try to feed even if it does not feel hunger?