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The danger of anthropomorphism is not we elevate the machines, it's that we debase humanity. I also think different ideas get conflated. It may be possible to

• rickydroll 4mo ago
  I think humanity deserves to be debased in part because it's awfully egocentric and insist on being special in the universe. There are numerous times when humanity's been debased. Copernicus, Kepler, Darwin, and the infinite number of animal behaviorists who have defined and documented consciousness And how it manifests in primates, parrots, dogs, cetaceans, and insects. (I just love the bumble bees taking time off from work to play with balls). It takes humans a really long time to accept the fact they are no longer as special as they thought they were And make room for yet another conscious intelligence. So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is?
  • hhthrowaway1230 4mo ago
    I agree with this fully. I don’t know about AI in this specific case, but I’m always amazed by human’s capacity to devalue conscious in things they don’t fully understand. Happy to meet someone who thinks this way too.
    • camillomiller 4mo ago
      Honestly mate, just join some animist religion
    • jeswin 4mo ago
      > I’m always amazed by human’s capacity to devalue conscious in things they don’t fully understand What? We devalue things we fully understand too. For example, veal = take a baby cow away from the mother, and fry it into cutlets. Or turn the mother into steak. We are well aware that animals have emotions; happiness, sadness and the full range. Humans are just inhumane.
  • haswell 4mo ago
    > So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is? Isn't this a bit like saying "So, if we had proof that god exists, how long would it take for you to accept that to be true?". When we have evidence that AI is demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, I'll be interested. Until then, I don't see a good reason to take the idea seriously.
    • JoachimS 4mo ago
      If we define a god as having magical powers, and there would be scientific, testable proofs for this. Those proofs had to be really good and numerous independent verifications. So probably a long time. But the comparison isn't fair, relevant. Proving and accepting that gods exist is not the same thing as an AI possible have consciousness. That is not a magic superpower and the AI being a deity. It is placing the AI in the same category as... us.
      • latexr 4mo ago
        > If we define a god as having magical powers, and there would be scientific, testable proofs for this. If you can scientifically test and prove the magic, then it stops being magic and starts being science.
        • jodrellblank 4mo ago
          Man: “God, please make this mountain disappear” God: “Ok” Man: “We measure that the mountain is gone, its mass-loss has measurably changed Earth’s orbit, weather patterns have changed, visually it’s not there anymore, we can walk though the space where it used to be.” God: “Where is the mass of the mountain, and how did I make it disappear?” Man: “God only knows! Pardon me; If I saw you do magic and can measure and test it, then that means it wasn’t magic. Internet people said so.” God: “that doesn’t sound like a satisfying explanation” Man: “it didn’t sound like a satisfying claim when it was just words on the internet either, but what can you do?” God: “I’m God I can do anything” Man: “can you make a boulder so heavy you can’t lift it?” God: “yes” Man: “how?” God: “haven’t we just gone over showing you that I can do ‘impossible’ things, and you seeing them happen with your own eyes, and still refusing to accept?”
  • keiferski 4mo ago
    I agree with your first part but don’t see how the second follows. Thinking that I should treat other life forms better does not mean I should treat my toaster better. Life can be a coherent category, I’m not sure conscious is, if it’s going to include anything displaying the outward form of conscious things.
    • JoachimS 4mo ago
      As one that have been quite certain my toaster is evil - throwing toast into the sink over an absurd distance, I recommend treating your toaster well. Besides it is an electrical device you put stuff into with your bare hands.
      • keiferski 4mo ago
        Heh, in fact I don’t actually own a toaster. It was just an example. But in general I treat my devices well; that doesn’t mean I need to think they are conscious beings, however.
        • JoachimS 4mo ago
          But if it seems to be possessed by a toast hurling daemon? ;-)
          • keiferski 4mo ago
            In that case an exorcism may indeed be necessary.
            • JoachimS 4mo ago
              Heat it to a crisp, oh wait.
  • satisfice 4mo ago
    This is a self-destructive way of thinking, similar to that of a man on a ledge saying “we’re all just made of dust, anyway.” Of course humans are special! This is a necessary premise of being human! Have you ever wondered how a mosquito can stand to live its (to us) miserable and meaningless existence? It can do it because, to a mosquito, mosquitoes are the best thing in the world! The mosquito life is the ultimate expression of creation. We are animals. We are human animals. And among human animals I am, to me, the very most special one of all. But I am aware that other humans feel that way, too, and that I must share the world with them. I do NOT have to share the world with any other competing intelligence! Especially one that was built by a human who now wants me to treat his imaginary friend as if it were human, too. Boo! I won’t do it. This is not some logical flaw. It’s the natural conclusion of being embodied.
    • alistairSH 4mo ago
      But you already share the world with other intelligences. Cetaceans, apes, octopoda, corvids, the list goes on and grows as we begin to fully understand our world. Are they conscious in the same way as us? No. Does that makes them less special? No. Sounds trite but every living being is special in some way.
  • camillomiller 4mo ago
    In your example you’re missing a key point. In those instances humanity was “debased” over centuries, or at least decades, thanks to the explosive ideas of some underdog that ended recusing themselves or burned at the stake. All I see here is a technology pushed by a cabal of ultrarich narcissists from the owner class to debase humanity in order to control it and concentrate power and wealth.
    • rickydroll 4mo ago
      I believe you're blending two important points. First, I believe AI systems may be showing nascent signs of consciousness as an emergent property, but based on the philosophy of "fake it till you make it", I think that's the way to bet. I'm also not going to go so far as to say it's going to happen Real Soon Now, but I think it'll happen sometime. Sort of like practical Fusion being 20 years away. Second, I'm with you on the malfeasance of our billionaire class. They are driving more than just AI. They are driving whatever they can to steal wealth from ordinary people and acquire it. I'd give some examples, but quite frankly, you could throw a small stone and hit a number of them. We need to find a way to throw a large stone and hit them where it matters. I see them as a bunch of toddlers with way too much power.
  • rerdavies 4mo ago
    With you mostly, but wondering how "suffering" got into the equation. Do humans lose consciousness if they aren't suffering? No. Just a reminder that the question is not whether they are the same as humans. Obviously they are not.
    • yencabulator 4mo ago
      One way to think about this, and not get hung on the word "suffering" that may be too corporeal: Could a future AI thing have its own drives? (As in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_theory) We could probably make a current-day LLM already exhibit basic outward signs of this with just a system prompt. Now consider adding memory that over time retrains the weights, allowing for behavioral drift. Would depriving it of fulfilling those drives be acceptable?
  • coldtea 4mo ago
    >I think humanity deserves to be debased in part because it's awfully egocentric and insist on being special in the universe. It is special in the universe unless proven otherwise. Aside from the animal world (also on Earth too, anyway) which is a cruder version of humanity, much more violent as well, the rest of the universe thus far is just uncaring rocks and gases. >It takes humans a really long time to accept the fact they are no longer as special as they thought they were And make room for yet another conscious intelligence. A "really long time" is the few years we've built LLMs? Which we have to take for granted (on your word?) they're already "conscious", and chastice ourselves for not already "accepting it"? >So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is? "If we had a parrot demonstrating symptoms of discussing with us, how long would it take for you to accept that it is?"
    • dTal 4mo ago
      Describing life on Earth as "a cruder version of humanity" is uh a choice. Your parrot snark is hilarious because that actually happened with Alex the African Gray - and indeed it took people a long time to accept. Your comment amounts to an anthropocentrism practically biblical in its hubris.
      • mcswell 4mo ago
        Many linguists (who know more about language than most other people) still don't accept the story of Alex.
    • dandanua 4mo ago
      > the rest of the universe thus far is just uncaring rocks and gases This is probably what ants think about humans when they run through their feet.
      • coldtea 4mo ago
        And they're wrong. Whereas, unless your claim is that rock and gasses are sentient, we're right.
  • gizajob 4mo ago
    We already effortlessly overlook this issue in other sentient and suffering beings by shooting them in the head and eating them, or catching them in nets so they can’t breathe and also eating them.
  • parasti 4mo ago
    > I think $my_species deserves to be debased in part because it's awfully egocentric and insist on being special in the universe. This is a scary viewpoint to hold, for a human. If you despise humans, that's scary for me, as a human reader of Hacker News. Surprised to see this take unchallenged. I think we can recognize flaws in parts of humanity without wanting it "debased".
    • latexr 4mo ago
      I think you’re reading too much into it. The commenter you’re replying to used the word “debased” because it was the word the comment before them used. Either way, “debase” means “reduce in quality or value”, in this context it could simply be interpreted as “not thinking of ourselves so highly, above all other life”. There’s nothing scary or despicable about that. On the contrary, it’s humbling.
      • meta_gunslinger 4mo ago
        We should most definitely think of human life higher and above all other life. Unless you are suggesting that e.g someone should even consider ploughing through a car driven by a human to evade running-over a deer.
        • sethammons 4mo ago
          I believe you missed the scale. Not a person vs a deer in a car accident. More like destroying whole ecosystems and injuring and killing untold amounts of life (equipped with their own capacity to experience suffering) in the pursuit of material wealth and comfort and entertainment.
  • refactor_master 4mo ago
    > So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is? Could an AI one day be suffering while plowing through some nasty legacy code? Well, who cares, I'll swing my whip, as I have a family to feed and a field to plow. I'll accept it as a fact and necessity, but ultimately it's either me or them. So practically it doesn't matter.
    • yurishimo 4mo ago
      To carry this analogy a bit further, it's also interesting to consider how humans use tools in general. Some craftsman really cherish their tools and maintain them immaculately for decades and use them within well defined boundaries that they set for themselves. Other craftsman, many times even in the same field, have a completely different philosophy and use the tool for absolutely no thought into how their actions will affect the tool itself. Imagine how people think about a "work truck" vs the 150k shiny lifted toy in the third garage. Same tool, totally different treatment from even the same person using the tool! Will AI ever cross into the realm of "beloved and cherished tool" in the minds of the masses? I think when that happens, we have probably safely crossed into a realm where AI has some sort of inherent value to society and therefore commands that respect from society, inherent consciousness not even relevant perhaps. For some people, this might already be the case, but I do think it requires a buy-in from the majority of society and then the laws and norms will be codified into law long after we've largely decided that this is how we feel collectively about AI. It's going to definitely be an interesting decade ahead.
      • yencabulator 4mo ago
        > Imagine how people think about a "work truck" vs the 150k shiny lifted toy in the third garage. Same tool, totally different treatment from even the same person using the tool! > Will AI ever cross into the realm of "beloved and cherished tool" in the minds of the masses? OpenClaw is the new rolling coal.
  • easyThrowaway 4mo ago
    I hope before I die we finally prove that the human brain has no peculiar qualia but it is an entirely deterministic, albeit extremely sophisticated, machine. And by touching the right triggers, even the worst human being can become a saint. That would finally force us to rethink how we see the morality of "virtuosity", punishment and our justice system.
    • sethammons 4mo ago
      Our thoughts are an electric cloud and I believe randomness is involved, and like a bolt of lightning, the path taken is unpredictable. And make it a tempestuous lightning storm where the state of all lightning bolts represents a moment of consciousness. That will take a lot to model accurately.
      • RALaBarge 4mo ago
        An electric cloud with quantum effects that we also don’t fully understand. There will always be a layer deeper that we just do not know the effects of or what actually exists there or “under there”.
    • criddell 4mo ago
      You may have set up a false dichotomy. Qualia and determinism aren't necessarily at odds with each other.
  • oguzmut 4mo ago
    I agree with you. I recently discovered that there is a term for this: the fourth narcissistic wound, which extends Freud's thesis of three narcissistic wounds by Copernicus (Cosmological), Darwin (Biological), and Freud (Psychological). What I like is that this time it is not a single person disproving a wrong popular belief, but a community/industry. I think this itself is a step in moving away from human/ego-centric world view.
  • graemep 4mo ago
    > Copernicus How exactly? By saying the earth was not the centre of the corrupt and debased part of the universe. Saying it was elevating humanity is looking at it from a modern perspective. For the previous view of the universe consider what Dante placed at the centre of the earth. > Darwin I do not think learning about evolution (and we should credit Wallace too!) had that effect. It created a hierarchy of the fittest, and guess who is at the top? Social Darwinism interpreted it as justifying elaborate hierarchies. > And how it manifests in primates, parrots, dogs, cetaceans, and insects People always loved dogs and other animals they interacted with enough, and at the very least knew they were capable of happiness and suffering. > So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is? It seems to me that most people are overly eager to accept that an AI is conscious than otherwise. For extreme examples read /r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and similar, but its much more widespread. People treat something that acts intelligent as a conscious being. > And make room for yet another conscious intelligence. Not necessarily. If a typical SF alien intelligence appeared very few people will have a problem accepting it. If its very alien and we cannot understand it then we might have a problem deciding. > I think humanity deserves to be debased in part because it's awfully egocentric and insist on being special in the universe. All your examples are drawn from the same culture, and a fundamental belief of that culture for most of its history that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and sinful and need redemption. Other cultures have been based on belief in reincarnation or pantheism or animism which have very different implications (not necessarily better as they often believe in a hierarchy too, and sometimes more so, but different). Your claims are based on what some people have thought in some periods of history from one culture.
    • RHSeeger 4mo ago
      > I do not think learning about evolution (and we should credit Wallace too!) had that effect. It created a hierarchy of the fittest, and guess who is at the top? Social Darwinism interpreted it as justifying elaborate hierarchies. I don't think that's accurate at all. Before Darwin, the thought was "we are special, we were born special, we were CREATED special". Darwin made it clear we weren't created special... we were apes before we were humans. There's nothing _special_ about a human as compared to an ape, other than some time to change.
  • mbesto 4mo ago
    > It takes humans a really long time to accept the fact they are no longer as special We ARE special because we determined we are special. Name another animal that can determine it's also special or more special than us?
    • JoachimS 4mo ago
      Cats. As we cat owners now, we are simple servants that have been graced with task of servicing our feline superiors. For now.
      • mcswell 4mo ago
        Well, that may be true. I've heard that when a dog sees its master loving it, feeding it, caring for it (minus the vet visits, I guess), the dog thinks "My master must be god." When the cat sees its humans treating it well, the cat thinks "I must be god."
  • gambiting 4mo ago
    >>So, if we had an AI demonstrating symptoms of consciousness and suffering, how long would it take for you to accept that it is? Never. To quote Greg Egan's Permutation City: “Opponents replied that when you modeled a hurricane, nobody got wet. When you modeled a fusion power plant, no energy was produced. When you modeled digestion and metabolism, no nutrients were consumed – no real digestion took place. So, when you modeled the human brain, why should you expect real thought to occur?”
• D_Alex 4mo ago
  >I also think different ideas get conflated. Yep. For example, your post conflates the idea of having a brain with the idea of having consciousness.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• kalcode 4mo ago
  I thought modern science doesn't reject anthropomorphism anymore? That's it's more nuanced and that it caused more problems than it helped by rejecting it out right? I think we were taught anthropomorphism was wrong and that wasn't truly settled. Anthropomorphism between animals though, not machines.
• cluckindan 4mo ago
  A fundamental misunderstanding of consciousness is to attribute it entirely to the brain.
  • wilg 4mo ago
    Where else?
    • cluckindan 4mo ago
      The rest of the nervous system
      • wilg 4mo ago
        I think "brain" is a shorthand here so your point isn't really illuminating much.