4 ms·

You’re just a bag of meat. That is why it’s just math is an unsatisfying argument. It’s not even an interesting question. Sentience has no definition. It’s mea

by sunir 6mo ago

You’re just a bag of meat. That is why it’s just math is an unsatisfying argument. It’s not even an interesting question. Sentience has no definition. It’s meaningless. People have needs that are being met. That is something we can meaningfully observe and talk about. Is the super stimulus beneficial or harmful? We can measure that.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
cortesoft 6mo ago
Sentience has a definition, it just doesn’t have a test.
prewett 6mo ago
> You’re just a bag of meat. I submit that there is a difference between me and a corpse. Or between a steak and a cow in the field. "Well, okay, you're just (living) flesh on bones." There's a difference between me and a zombie (or, if you prefer, brain-dead me). There's a difference between me and lab-grown organs [1], or even between me and my kidney cut out of me. > It’s not even an interesting question. Consciousness is an active area of research (ergo, interesting enough for some people to devote research to it): biologically [2] and philosophically [3]. Unless you enjoy nihilism, there are some serious problems with materialism (that is, matter is all that there is), which we are encountering. There are also some philosophical problems with it; a cursory search turned up this journal article [4]. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8889329/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8889329/ [2] https://www.nature.com/subjects/consciousness https://www.nature.com/subjects/consciousness [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness [4] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/abs/why-materialism-is-false-and-why-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-mind/5DC675B901E2F68E82643B88EE468EAE https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/a...
- fragmede 6mo ago
  The point is that if we're simplifying LLMs to being "just" a bag of math and can discard because of that, then humans are also "just" a bag of meat and can similarly be discarded. Somewhere in that bag of math, LLMs take on properties that some people find hard to simply dismiss because it is based on matrix multiplication. It's an oversimplification, and if you oversimplify, you lose resolution.

by sunir 6mo ago

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

cortesoft 6mo ago

Sentience has a definition, it just doesn’t have a test.

prewett 6mo ago

> You’re just a bag of meat. I submit that there is a difference between me and a corpse. Or between a steak and a cow in the field. "Well, okay, you're just (living) flesh on bones." There's a difference between me and a zombie (or, if you prefer, brain-dead me). There's a difference between me and lab-grown organs [1], or even between me and my kidney cut out of me. > It’s not even an interesting question. Consciousness is an active area of research (ergo, interesting enough for some people to devote research to it): biologically [2] and philosophically [3]. Unless you enjoy nihilism, there are some serious problems with materialism (that is, matter is all that there is), which we are encountering. There are also some philosophical problems with it; a cursory search turned up this journal article [4]. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8889329/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8889329/ [2] https://www.nature.com/subjects/consciousness https://www.nature.com/subjects/consciousness [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness [4] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/abs/why-materialism-is-false-and-why-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-mind/5DC675B901E2F68E82643B88EE468EAE https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/a...

fragmede 6mo ago
The point is that if we're simplifying LLMs to being "just" a bag of math and can discard because of that, then humans are also "just" a bag of meat and can similarly be discarded. Somewhere in that bag of math, LLMs take on properties that some people find hard to simply dismiss because it is based on matrix multiplication. It's an oversimplification, and if you oversimplify, you lose resolution.